David Healey - Rebel Train

Private Cook put his revolver away and gave a low whistle. “You should of shot him, Lieutenant. That man ain’t goin’ to give up.”

Behind them, from within President Lincoln’s car, a voice called through the door. Both men had forgotten all about their captive passengers and they jumped at the sound. “What’s that shooting about?”

“Ain’t nothing important,” Cater said.

“What was it?” the voice demanded.

“Just some snakes beside the tracks,” he said. “We were shooting at them.”

He had been cool enough dealing with the pursuit, but he was unnerved when he thought about the presence on the other side of the oak door. The president of the United States! In all the excitement of the raid, it was easy to forget that Lincoln was even aboard the train. If they got the president to Richmond, the war might be over next week. Cater felt relieved when there were no other questions from behind the door.

“We’re goin’ to have quite a story to tell our grandchildren, Cook.” Cater smiled and holstered his Colt. “Yes, indeed. We done captured the chief Yankee of them all. Ol’ Abe Lincoln himself.”

Cook was staring at the receding figure on the tracks, who was still shaking his fist at the train and shouting, although he was too far away now for Cook to hear him. “Lot of miles between us and Richmond, Lieutenant,” the private observed. “Lot of miles.”

Greer did not watch the train out of sight. Cursing and gasping for breath after his futile chase, he headed back to the others. Schmidt and Frost looked about as worn out as he felt, he decided. Both men wore hangdog expressions on their faces, and they were battered and dirty. It was exhausting, working the car’s handle up and down, mile after mile, as they chased the Chesapeake . Now they had been forced to stop at the gap in the rails and watch the train disappear once again. They were watching him, wondering what to do next.

“Well, I reckon that’s that,” Frost said. He sounded relieved.

“Jump down and grab a corner of the car,” Greer growled. “You, too, Schmidt.”

“What?”

“You heard me. We’re going to carry this thing across the gap here and go after them.”

“You’re crazy, Greer,” Frost said. “You’ve gone goddamn crazy on us. We ain’t goin’ to catch that train. Not now. Ain’t that right, Oscar?”

The big German scratched his beard. “Why not?” he finally said. “Greer is right about us letting the train be stolen. Someone will have to be punished for this, and that someone might be us if we don’t catch the raiders. Otherwise, we’ll never have jobs on a railroad again.” He climbed off the car and claimed the back corner. “We have to go after that train. There is no other choice.”

“Hell, you’re both crazy.”

Still, Frost jumped down and joined in as the other two men began the arduous task of moving the hand car across the gap in the rails. It was only a distance of twelve feet, but the iron and wood structure was heavy and the wheels did not roll easily over open ground. Carrying the car was out of the question because of its weight. Instead, all three men put their shoulders against the back of the car and pushed. Inch by inch, foot by foot, the car crept forward. Finally, after much heaving, sweating and cursing, they crossed the gap and lined the wheels up for the final push back onto the rails.

The Chesapeake was nowhere in sight. Even the telltale smoke was gone, leaving an empty, blue bowl of autumn sky.

Schmidt swore in disgust. He put his shoulder to the back of the car and single-handedly forced it onto the rails again.

Greer jumped aboard. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get going.”

With a sense of resignation, the other men scrambled up and took hold of the pump handle. Greer winced as he gripped the metal. Unlike Frost, whose hands were like leather from handling wood all day, Schmidt and Greer did little real labor anymore and their hands were blistered and raw. Still, Greer shoved down mightily, ignoring the pain, and the car began to roll. They took up the chase once more, although they seemed impossibly far behind, and too slow to ever hope of catching up again.

Colonel Percy watched the scenery flash by as the Chesapeake built speed. Beside him in the locomotive’s cab, Cephas Wilson opened the throttle even wider. Wind howled beyond the glass windows enclosing the cab as the locomotive rushed west. Hank Cunningham scurried between the firebox and tender, feeding the engine’s incredible hunger for wood.

Percy laughed out loud. He was in the best spirits he’d been in since that day in Richmond when Fletcher had summoned him to Colonel Norris’s office at the Confederate Secret Service. Up until now, Percy had half-expected the Yankees to catch them at any moment. Lord knows there had been enough opportunities for things to go wrong — crossing the Potomac, gathering at the train station in Ellicott Mills, even taking the train under the noses of Yankee infantry, not to mention those relentless pursuers whom they had finally lost. The stakes were high. Capture would mean death at the end of a rope for himself and his men because they would all be considered spies, not soldiers. Percy didn’t plan on allowing himself or any of his men to be taken alive, if it came to that.

They had succeeded so far in spite of all the odds against them, and for the first time, Percy allowed himself to believe they might actually get Lincoln to Richmond, after all. At the moment, anything seemed possible.

“We’ll make good time until the Parr’s Ridge grade, sir,” Wilson shouted, interrupting Percy’s thoughts. “That will slow us down some. Just beyond Mount Airy is the Monocacy River. There’s a bridge, and I’m sure the Yankees have it guarded.” He sounded apprehensive. The crossing — known officially as Frederick Junction for the rail spur that connected the city of Frederick to the main B&O line — would have troops guarding it.

“We’ll be there and gone before the Yankees know it,” Percy said, trying to reassure Wilson. In reality, he was worried about the guard at the Monocacy crossing, but if the luck they’d had so far held, they would have surprise on their side. “We won’t so much as slow down.”

“We’ll see about the bridge, sir.” The engineer sounded doubtful. “We’ll see.”

“How fast are we going?” Percy asked. The ground beneath them was a blur.

“Sixty miles per hour, Colonel,” Wilson said, the tone of his voice betraying some amazement. “I ain’t got a stopwatch, but I reckon that’s about right.”

Sixty miles per hour. A mile a minute. It hardly seemed possible. Percy was amazed. The worries of the past few days slipped even further away, and he put looming problems such as the Monocacy crossing out of his mind for the moment.

“Ever run a train through Virginia this fast?”

“Yes, sir. From time to time. We’ve got locomotives that can manage sixty.” He cracked a smile. “Mostly it’s the tracks that’s slow.”

“These Yankees know how to build a railroad,” Percy agreed. So far, all the bridges had been iron or stone, all the tracks well-tended. Far different from Virginia, with its wooden bridges and tracks left in ruins because of the war.

“Too bad these tracks don’t go clear to Richmond,” Percy said. “We’d be there in time for Mr. Lincoln to be Jefferson Davis’s dinner guest.”

“With any luck, we’ll get there all the same in a few days.”

Percy looked out again at the rapidly passing countryside. Beautiful country. The rolling landscape was a patchwork of woods and fields. The corn and wheat had been harvested recently, but it was easy to see this was rich farming country. He wouldn’t mind coming back to spend some time here, maybe when the war was over, although it was getting so he could hardly remember when there hadn’t been a war. Compared to the bleak, untended fields in Virginia, Maryland looked like the land of plenty, even in mid-November. There were woods, too, filled with timber, and while most of the trees had lost their leaves, some still clung tenaciously to the oaks they passed. Here and there a flaming red sumac stood out defiantly against the brown and gray landscape.