David Healey - Rebel Train

Turning, Percy leaned out from the locomotive’s cab as far as he dared and looked back at the tracks leading to Sykesville. There was no sign of pursuit. Of course, they were traveling so fast that no cavalry squadron could keep up, especially over the rough, uneven footing of the track bed. Still, Percy thought it was a good thing that it had been infantry, not cavalry, camped back in Sykesville.

“Wilson, we’ll be crossing the Washington Road in about three miles,” Percy said. “I want you to stop, and I’ll have Willie Forbes shimmy up the telegraph poles to cut the wires. We can outrun cavalry, but we can’t outrun the telegraph and we don’t want the Yankees to put a barrier across the tracks somewhere ahead of us.”

“Yes, sir,” Wilson said. He eased the throttle open a notch wider, and they roared along the twisting tracks as quickly as they dared.

Greer found the first body lying face down across the tracks.

“Lord have mercy,” he said, stopping to flip the man over with the toe of his boot. From the man’s face, he recognized him as one of the passengers from the Chesapeake . There was an ugly purple bullet hole in the man’s temple.

He felt a wave of nausea wash over him. The sight of the bullet wound brought back memories of the terrible things he had seen on the battlefield at Bull Run. He forced himself to look away from the dead man.

A shout from Schmidt interrupted his thoughts. “Greer, up ahead!” Schmidt shouted.

Another body was sprawled alongside the tracks. Blood stained the front of the dead man’s shirt.

“They’re shooting the passengers,” Greer said in disbelief. The situation was even worse than he had imagined.

“Maybe these two tried to stop them,” Schmidt pointed out.

“If that’s what happened, then we’re dealing with murderers, not just train thieves,” Greer said. His horror at the sight of the dead men had turned to anger. He clenched and unclenched his fists. “Whoever is doing this needs to be brought to justice.”

“It ain’t right,” Frost agreed.

“Let’s go.”

Greer set off at a run down the tracks, cursing at his engineer and fireman to keep up the pace. Frost was young enough that he hardly broke a sweat as they moved through the dappled November sunshine. He was in good shape from hauling wood from tender to firebox. Greer decided Frost could most likely run all day long, but he only seemed to have one speed and it wasn’t fast enough.

Schmidt was another matter. He was fond of his German wife’s cooking, and he washed down his schnitzel and sauerkraut with great quantities of beer from Baltimore’s breweries. His huge belly bounced as he ran and his lungs chugged like the steam locomotive he normally operated on these same tracks.

“ Mein Gott ,” he panted. “Let them have the damn train.”

“Shut up and save your wind,” Greer snapped. “We’ve got to catch these damn thieves.”

“What will we do if we catch them?” Schmidt huffed. “They killed two passengers. What do you think they’ll do to us? We don’t even have a gun.”

Before finding the bodies, it hadn’t occurred to Greer that the train thieves probably had guns. Neither he, Schmidt nor Frost were armed. Well, he decided, they would worry about that when they found the train. With any luck, the thieves would abandon the train as soon as it ground to a halt.

Greer thought they would have found the Chesapeake by now. They were already three or four miles out of Sykesville. There might have been enough steam left in the boiler to get the train moving, but someone aboard knew something about running trains to get her this far.

He still believed that deserters had taken the train, even if the surly young captain back in Sykesville had claimed otherwise. Many men were making a career of signing on for the bonus money offered new recruits, then deserting and signing up yet again to collect more money. A train would be a handy means of escape for men like that. Deserters might also be desperate enough to commit murder, knowing that a hangman’s rope or a firing squad most likely awaited them if they were caught.

One of the deserters must have had some knowledge of trains to keep the Chesapeake running this far. Still, at any moment, Greer expected to come across the train stopped on the tracks. He braced himself to deal with the irate passengers who would be spilling out from the cars, wondering what had happened.

The train thieves would be long-gone, and Greer would have to back the Chesapeake the few miles into town to pick up the passengers left behind at Sykes’s Hotel. The incident would be embarrassing, but not disastrous.

They ran another mile, but there was no train. Not even a sign of the Chesapeake . No screech ahead of wheels on iron rails. No plume of smoke above the treetops. The train had vanished.

“Bastards,” Greer cursed the thieves. He was sure the owners of the B&O Railroad might just be inclined to fire a train crew who had allowed a locomotive and several cars to be stolen, all because they had stopped for breakfast. “Why would they take my train?”

“Payroll money,” panted Frost, struggling to keep up. “Must have been several thousand dollars in that baggage car.”

Greer dismissed the idea. “If thieves wanted the payroll money, it stands to reason they would have taken the money, not the entire train,” he said. “Besides, the baggage car had been well-guarded.”

It never occurred to any of them that the last car, mysteriously attached to the train during the night, had anything to do with the morning’s events.

“Whatever the reason, the directors of the B&O Railroad aren’t going to be happy about what had happened,” he added.

Anger gave him new strength and he ran faster, determined to find the Chesapeake . He knew it was the only hope of redemption he, Schmidt and Frost had.

“Nobody steals my goddamn train,” he panted.

“For pity’s sake, Greer,” Schmidt gasped, sounding close to collapse. “I can’t keep this up much longer.”

“Shut up and run,” Greer growled.

A few miles up the tracks, the Chesapeake was coming to a halt, not because it had run out of steam, but because Colonel Percy had ordered it. The train crept across the Washington Road and stopped.

“Keep her under steam,” Percy told Wilson. “We’ll only be here a few minutes, just long enough to cut the telegraph wires.”

Percy jumped down from the locomotive and ran back to the cars. He was anxious to get as far as possible before there was any sign of pursuit, but he hoped cutting the wires would increase their chances of escape. Several of the raiders were leaning out the windows to see what was going on.

“Keep one man in each car to guard the passengers and the rest of you get down here,” Percy shouted. “We have work to do. Forbes! Where the hell are you?”

A head appeared in a window. “Here, sir!”

“Get out here. I have a job for you.”

The raiders quickly jumped down and gathered near the locomotive. Lieutenant Cater came running up from the last car, the one that held Lincoln, but Percy waved him back.

“All right, boys, we’re going to do two things while we’re stopped — cut the telegraph wires and pull up a couple of rails in case the Yankees send a train after us. First, I want to know how the passengers are behaving.”

Flynn spoke up. “Well, sir, we had to shoot two of them.”

Percy blinked in surprise. “Dead?”

“Yes, sir. I got one and the lad got the other.”

“I hope you had good reason.”