David Healey - Rebel Train

Pettibone shook his head. “I’ll stay, just in case. I wouldn’t get far with this leg, anyhow.”

“Good luck to you,” Flynn said.

Pettibone nodded grimly, then turned to face the oncoming train.

Flynn jumped. Benjamin followed. The train was moving so slowly that they landed easily enough. Benjamin started toward the river, but Flynn caught him by the shoulder.

“Where you going, lad?”

“The colonel said the river—”

“You come with me, or the Yankees will have you strung up within the hour.”

They ran alongside the train, which was still moving slowly enough for Flynn to catch a handhold on the side of the baggage car. He grabbed Benjamin by the back of his coat and swung him bodily onto the car’s steps, then climbed aboard himself.

“Why are we getting back on the train?” Benjamin asked. “It’s headed right for the Yankees.”

“You’ll see, lad. You’ll see.”

“We ought to be running.”

Despite his protests, Benjamin followed Flynn as he flung open the door of the car. They found Nellie stuffing a sack with the last of the payroll money.

“I thought you might be here,” Flynn said. “Planning to carry all this yourself, Miss Jones?”

“I knew you would show up, Flynn. Here.” She tossed a sack of money at him. “I’m glad you brought some help along. There’s a lot of money to carry.”

“We’re stealing the money?” Benjamin asked.

“It’s not stealing, lad. It’s the spoils of war. No sense letting the Yankees have it back. Now get to it.”

They carried the bags out and crowded onto the platform. The train was barely moving faster than a man could trot. Flynn threw the money off, being careful that the bags didn’t land too far into the underbrush, and then they jumped themselves.

Flynn came down in a tangle of brambles. Benjamin helped pull him free. Nellie landed expertly, hitting the ground running.

“Come on,” Flynn said, picking the worst of the thorns from his clothes and ignoring the scratches on his hands and face. “Let’s get out of here. There’s going to be one hell of a bang-up in a moment.”

In the distance, there was a shriek of iron on iron as the Yankee train tried to reverse itself as the Chesapeake rushed toward it. The Chesapeake , moving backwards, swept past Flynn, Benjamin and Nellie. They had a glimpse of Cephas Wilson standing at the controls. He was leaning from the cab, trying to see where the train was headed. Willie Forbes and Hank Cunningham were in the cab, too, but the three men didn’t even notice the trio staring up at them from beside the tracks.

They grabbed their sacks of plunder and started running, searching for a place to cross the C&O Canal so they could reach the towpath on the other side.

Flynn looked back just as the trains were about to collide. “Mother of God,” he said.

With a noise like a long, ragged rip of thunder, the trains crashed with bone-wracking force: CRAAAACK. Metal screeched, couplings snapped and popped. Steam gushed and filled the air with a hot, metallic smell. Even at a safe distance, Flynn felt his bones shudder. President Lincoln’s car derailed. It did not overturn, but tilted perilously on the edge of the bank that sloped toward the river.

The Yankee train was still on the tracks, although the iron cow-catcher grate in front was bent upward much like the lid of an opened tin can. The silenced that followed the crash seemed to roar in the survivors’ ears. Steam hissed like a dying groan.

Then the shooting started. Pettibone, who had managed to ride out the collision unhurt, appeared on the platform of the president’s car. Armed with Hudson’s revolver as well as his own, he poured shot after shot at the blue-coated soldiers swarming out of the tender.

Greer was bleeding from a nasty cut above his right eye. In the crash, he had lost his balance and struck a sharp corner of the cab.

Walter Frost was not so lucky. He was busy shoveling coal when the trains struck, knocking him off his feet. As he fell between the locomotive and tender, the iron wheels cut him in two. Captain Lowell saw the bloody heap of intestines and organs spilling from the dead man’s torso and vomited.

A trickle of blood from the gash on Greer’s forehead reached the corner of his mouth. The taste of his own blood made him go into a sudden rage. He pointed at the lone Rebel unloading his pistols at them from no more than thirty feet away. Already, the man had shot three soldiers. “Kill the bastard!”

Four soldiers fired a ragged volley. At that distance it was almost impossible for a rifle to miss. The heavy .58 caliber bullets struck Pettibone all at once, throwing him back into the wall of the car. He raised his pistol and fired a final shot as he slid down, leaving a smear of blood on the wall.

A dozen soldiers were still on their feet. Greer led them forward. “Fix bayonets,” he snapped. Captain Lowell came running up and joined them, his sword drawn and his pistol out.

Greer did not know how many raiders might be left to fight. He abandoned caution and rushed ahead because he didn’t want any of the Rebels to escape. He vowed there would be some hangings before dark. He would make damn sure of that.

They encountered no one until they reached the tender. There, they surprised two raiders trying to uncouple the tender from the first passenger car. Greer guessed they were hoping to run on, leaving the wreckage on the tracks behind them as a barrier.

The soldiers shot one raider. His ash-covered face and clothes marked him as the locomotive’s fireman. He fell in a heap beside the tracks, quivered, and went still.

The second man, who was small and wiry, took off running.

He did not get far. A soldier caught him in the back with a bayonet. He fell, screaming, and the bayonet plunged again to finish the job. The soldier had to kick at the body to get the blade free, and it came out, red with blood to the hilt.

Greer ran on. Aboard the locomotive, the Rebel engineer was waiting for them with a Colt in his hand. He shot the first soldier to appear. Then three rifles fired. The engineer’s lifeless body slumped over and hung out the cab window.

“Search the cars,” Greer ordered. The soldiers fanned out. There were two bodies on the platform of the derailed car, one white man, one black. They found another body in the baggage car. Curiously, it appeared the man had been stabbed in the heart. Another corpse turned up in a passenger car. His head was bandaged, but he had obviously died from the gaping bullet wound in his chest. Greer wondered what had happened aboard the train.

He was disappointed that they found only four dead. Some of the Rebels must have escaped into the woods.

One Rebel was found alive, hog-tied, in a passenger car. He claimed to be a passenger taken as a hostage by the raiders. Greer didn’t believe the man’s story, so he called in the lawyer, Prescott.

“He’s a Rebel, all right,” Prescott said. “His name is Cook.”

Greer smiled down at the man. “You’re going to hang, you damn Johnny Reb train thief. But before you do, you’re going to tell me all about this raid. I want to know how many got away, so we can start looking for them. We’ll put the local home guard to work.”

Desperate to save his life, John Cook told them everything. He twisted the story of the mutiny, playing up his own role and trying to make it sound as if he and the other mutineers had been trying to stop the train so they could all surrender.

“You’re not soldiers,” Greer said. “You’re thieves. You wanted that payroll money.”

“We weren’t after that money at all,” Cook said.

“Then why did you take the train?” Greer demanded.