Bernard Cornwell - Battle Flag

There was a disorganized flurry of activity in the depot as rebel infantry seized whatever obstacles lay close to the track and hurled them across the rails. The most substantial blockage was formed from a pile of ties and rails that had been stacked ready for repair work and that were now hurriedly thrown into the locomotive's path.

The whistle sounded again. The bell was clanging incessantly, a tocsin of alarm in the darkness, while the rails were shaking with the weight of the approaching train. "Get back! Get back!" officers shouted, and the rebel soldiers scurried away from the tracks that were now bright with the reflected light cast by the locomotive's huge kerosene lamp. The windows of the passenger car flickered washes of yellow light over the fuel bunkers and water tower. Two rebels dropped a last length of rail over the track, then scrambled for their lives as the train thundered into the depot. The gilded and scarlet-painted locomotive plowed through the smaller barricades, splintered a heap of barrels and fence rails, scattered a cord of firewood as though the pine logs were mere twigs; then the engine flashed through the lamplit depot with its pistons pounding and its tall stack churning out a torrent of spark-ridden smoke. The engineer hauled on the whistle's chain as the kerosene lamp illuminated the ominous barricade of steel rails and massive timber ties that lay just beyond the depot. The train was still accelerating. Watching rebels held their breath in anticipation of spectacular disaster, then cheered as the locomotive's wooden cowcatcher struck the barrier, but the heavy barricade simply disintegrated in the face of the speeding train. There was a cascade of sparks from the front wheels, a tumbling of wooden baulks and clanging rails, a crash as the locomotive's lantern shattered into scraps of glass and metal, then the defiant whistle sounded once again as the train buffaloed its way through the remnants of the makeshift barrier and sped on northeast toward Manassas.

Passengers had peered anxiously out of the car windows as the train swayed and rattled through the depot, but the faces vanished when a handful of rebel soldiers opened fire. A bullet clanged off the locomotive, another severed a steam line, while a dozen windows in the hospital and passenger cars were shattered. Most of the bullets were fired at the boxcars, which the rebels fondly imagined contained a fortune in plunder that was being denied them. The train, safe through the obstacles, was sounding its whistle continually as a warning to the Federal troops ahead, though to the rebels the whistle sounded more like a mocking call of victory. The locomotive rumbled over the bridge that crossed the Broad Run stream just north of the depot, then disappeared into woods, and the caboose's twin red lanterns were the last things the rebels saw as the train hurried away. Men began firing at those lamps until officers shouted at them to cease fire.

The rumble of the rails died, then, mysteriously, swelled again. A staff officer had ridden a hundred yards south to where a small hillock offered a view, and now he cupped his hands and shouted back to the station. "Another train coming!"

"Pull up the track!" a second staff officer ordered. Just north of the depot, where the rails ran on top of an embankment toward the stream, an officer had discovered the trunklike box where the repair crews kept their tools, and suddenly the embankment was swarming with men carrying sledgehammers and crowbars.

The second train was still a mile away, but its rhythmic noise swelled drumlike in the night as the first lengths of rail were lifted and thrown aside. The work became more effective as it was organized; some troops were detailed to knock aside the chairs that held the rails to the ties, while others heaved the loosened rails off the track and down the embankment's slopes. Staff officers ordered the men not employed in lifting rails to hold their fire so that the approaching train would not be warned of danger.

"You'll get a passel of them through now," an elderly civilian observed to Starbuck. The Legion's help was not needed to destroy the line, so its men were standing in the village street, from where they hoped to get a prime view of the destruction. "They run 'em up empty this time of evening," the old man went on. "Then they start hauling 'em back again all night and day. One-way traffic, see? Empty this way, full that. You boys come far?"

"Far enough."

"Right glad to see you. Yankees are too high and mighty for my taste." The old man grinned as the new train sounded its whistle to warn the depot of its approach. "That first one'll be pulling into Manassas right now. Guess those Northern boys there will be pissing themselves with worry. They told us we'd never see you boys again! Leastwise not till they marched you through as prisoners."

The locomotive whistle sounded again. Men scattered away from the embankment as staff officers cleared the milling soldiers from the depot so that the engineer of the approaching train would not be alerted to his danger by the sight of a waiting crowd. The locomotive thudded into sight. It was hauling a train of boxcars that rattled and swayed under the moonlit smoke.

Starbuck looked down at the old fellow who had spoken to him. "Are you saying that first train will be in Manassas by now?" he asked.

"It's only an hour's walk that way." The old man pointed northeast. "Train does it in ten minutes!"

Ten minutes, Starbuck thought. He was that close to where Galloway's Horse had its lair? My God, he thought, but what pleasure there would be in doing to Galloway's house what Galloway's men had done to McComb's Tavern. Then he pushed that apprehension of revenge aside as the train thundered into the village. "Hold your fire!" an officer shouted from somewhere down the line. "Hold your fire!"

Starbuck saw some of his own men level their rifles. "No firing!" he shouted. "Guns down!"

But the target was irresistible. The men nearest Starbuck lowered their guns, but a score of others fired, and suddenly the whole village crackled with rifle fire. On board the locomotive the fireman's first reaction was to jump to the tender and haul on the hand brake, and for a second there was a shower of sparks from the protesting machinery, but then the engineer realized his danger and shouted for the brakes to be released as he poured more steam into the driving wheels. The train lurched forward with gouts of steam hissing from a score of bullet holes that surrounded the locomotive with a lamplit halo of vapor through which the boxcars were dragged toward the embankment.

The engineer ducked to shelter from the rifle fire and so never saw the missing track ahead of his train. His locomotive was still accelerating as it plowed off the end of the rails. For a few seconds the whole train kept going in a straight line as dirt and stones spewed in a dark wave beneath the locomotive's churning wheels, but then the boxcars began to concertina and tumble, and the locomotive rolled slowly over, spilling fire as it slid down the embankment. The boxcars piled into a heap of twisted frames and shattered planks. Jackson's men cheered as the destruction continued, and still cheered as the commotion ended. The engine had stopped a few yards short of the bridge over Broad Run, while, fifty yards behind, the last dozen boxcars still stood upright on the undamaged track. The wrecked train had no caboose; instead a pair of red-lensed oil lamps glowed at the back of the last boxcar. Some men began to tear open the undamaged cars, hoping to find Yankee luxuries to replace the stone-hard biscuit, hard green apples, and unripe scavenged corn they had eaten in the last two days. Rightly or wrongly every Southerner believed that no Yankee could go to war without a larder of delicacies on his back, and so the rebels splintered the cars open in hopes of finding a lavish supper, but the wagons were all empty.