The Railroad War (24 page)

When Noah judged the steam pressure had built up enough, he hurled himself back across the gap between the locomotive and
the tender and, before the Union soldiers on the hillside above and below the train could bring fire against him, he wrenched
the lever that controlled the reverse gear hard backward. Then he opened up the throttle as hard as it would go and plunged
down to the floor of the cab.

The locomotive puffed hard, lurched back a little way, shoved against the tender and the two cars, and shuddered to a grinding
halt.

The brakes of the passenger car were still closed down.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Noah muttered. Then he yelled.
“Shit!”
Still screaming his anger and frustration, he pushed the throttle back to neutral. After that, he reached up and pulled the
whistle cord, and huge shrill blasts filled the air.

“What’s that for?” Hottel asked after Noah had let go of the cord and was back down on the floor of the cab beside him.

“I want some soldier back there with half a brain to open up the car brakes.”

“How will you know they’ve done it?”

“Trial and error, I guess,” he said. “In about half a minute I’m going to open up the throttle again.”

Hottel gave him an approving look. “You’ve pretty well got this situation under control, haven’t you?”

“Not yet,” Noah said.

When he tried the throttle again, the locomotive and tender again jerked back into the cars—but this time the cars moved!

“That’s it!” Noah cried. “That did it!”

The train lurched again, shuddered, staggered backward, slowly building up to walking speed, then crawled a little faster.

The Federal cavalry kept firing at them, but there was nothing they could do to halt the train. And they couldn’t pursue them
either—their horses were tied for safety’s sake on the far slope of the hill.

This setback didn’t seem to upset the First Tennessee Cavalry. On the contrary; just before the train chugged around the bend
and out of sight of their attackers, Noah glanced out of the cab window. There on the hillside in full view stood several
score men in blue, led by Colonel Tyler, and they were all laughing.

Noah pulled the train to a stop a few miles north of the spot of the ambush and waited for an hour. Then they resumed their
journey toward Meridian, edging cautiously forward. When they reached the barricade again, they discovered with relief that
Colonel Tyler and his men had gone to commit mayhem elsewhere. Fifteen minutes after they reached it, they had the barricade
pushed off the track.

Nine men from the train had been lost in the encounter with the First Tennessee Cavalry.

“That was a damned fool thing to do,” Hottel said, once they were under way once again. There was as much admiration as anger
and frustration in his voice. “I hope you realize that. It was brave, and all that, but all we accomplished was just to let
off spite. We didn’t do any damned good at all. If you’d surrendered, they would of let us just as free as we are now.”

Noah rode on awhile without speaking. “You’re probably right,” he admitted finally. “But it seemed the best thing to do at
the time.”

“I thought you were a cooler man than that. You’re an engineer, for God’s sake. Somebody who doesn’t act on impulse. Somebody
who doesn’t act until after long, careful consideration.”

“What makes you think an engineer has to always act the way people expect him to act?” Noah said with a rueful smile. “But
the truth is,” he continued seriously, “I did have to make a move this time, even if it was jut to lash out. I’m glad I did
it. I’m thrilled that I caused them as much consternation as we did. We did ourselves some good.”

“To tell
you
the truth,” Hottel agreed, to Noah’s surprise, “I’m glad, too.”

“It was worth it to risk your life that way, you mean?” Noah said.

“In times to come, I’ll remember this afternoon with approval, if not pleasure.”

“I’m surprised to hear that,” Noah said. “I had you pegged for a different kind of man.”

“People like me don’t always act the way people expect us to, either,” Hottel said.

“I’m pleased to learn that,” Noah said.

“So tell me,” Hottel asked, “what did get into you?”

“I had to pay them back,” he said with a bitter edge to his voice.

“Pay them back for what?”

The image of the screaming girl with her blackened and blistered hands raged in his mind, along with the image of men in blue
standing on a hillside laughing at him.

“I can’t tell you now. I’m sorry. Someday, maybe.”

From now on, he realized, I’m not going to let myself be drawn into tilting windmills the way I just did. There has to be
a better way to get back at them than that.

A few hours later, they were in Meridian.

“Bong! Bong!” young Willy Sherman shouted at the top of his voice. As he shouted, he dragged a wooden railroad train through
the red-brown sand along a beach by the side of the Big Black River. Two days earlier, Willy, his mother, and three of his
brothers and sisters had arrived at the campgrounds along the river where the army under General Sherman had bivouaced for
the summer. Willy was nine years old, and he was currently accompanied by General Sherman’s aide, Sam Hawken.

Ten feet above Willy on the bank and ten yards downstream, Sam kept himself lazily busy with indolent target practice. He
sleepily fired his revolver at floating leaves and wood chips that passed by in the sluggish current. He hit most of what
he fired at, even though his mind wasn’t completely focused on the task.

Among the matters that occupied his attention was the presence of a new arrival in camp. Miss Jane Featherstone had appeared
the previous afternoon. At that time she had practically thrown herself at Sam’s feet, begging that Sam put her up and take
care of her. As General Grenville Dodge’s top agent, she told him, she deserved nothing less.

After checking with General Sherman, who agreed that something had to be done with her, suitable quarters were found until
arrangements could be made to ship her to a safe place—somewhere out of their hair.

The suggestion was again made that Jane avail herself of General Dodge’s offer to send her to San Francisco. She refused.
She liked it where she was, and she liked espionage. She’d be overjoyed, she informed Sam, to engage in more espionage, if
Generals Dodge and Sherman so desired.

Sam told Jane that he would take her request under advisement.

Now and again, when the spirit moved him, Willy would veer off from playing with the train and slide into the water, for which
reason he was at the moment wearing no clothes.

“Bong! Bong! Bong!” he kept shouting happily. “The Okolona Express!”

Sam, observing him from above, wondered where he got that name. Had the boy heard about the attack on the train near that
town the other day?

Meanwhile the wooden train lurched along under the guidance of Willy’s hand. Though he had smoothed out a kind of roadbed
in the sand, the track didn’t work as well as Willy intended. His wheels kept digging in and bogging down. That didn’t faze
Willy, however. He kept moving the train ahead with flinty purpose toward the ambush that he had planned up ahead. Just around
a bend, twelve soldiers in blue, on horseback, waited.

Seconds later the soldiers fell on the defenseless train and wrecked it so thoroughly that Willy was able to veer off into
the water yet one more time.

“Take off your clothes and come on in!” he yelled, splashing like a porpoise.

“Not now, Will,” Sam said, holstering his revolver. He’d had enough target shooting for the day. “Can’t.”

“You’re just yellow,” Willy said.

“There are uses for cowardice,” Sam said.

“That’s a lie,” Willy said, and put his head under the water.

The boy frolicked in the water for some time before returning to his toys. The day was growing hotter, and the water was inviting.
Sam took in with pleasure the sight of the boy splashing and bobbing with such joy and exhilaration. It was as peaceful and
unthreatening here as in Ohio, where Willy and his mother and his other brothers and sisters made their home.

Sam Hawken could relax now, maybe. The summer campaign had pretty well wound down. The Mississippi River was secure from its
headwaters to the Gulf, and it looked as if Sherman’s army would be resting and recovering here on the Big Black for at least
a couple of months. And Sam himself had nothing more important to do than baby-sit Willy Sherman. And that, as far as Sam
was concerned, was neither an obligation nor a burden—it was a delight. Willy was a splendid little man whom Sam adored almost
as much as Willy’s father did.

Sam should have felt good—or anyway, he should have felt relieved. But he didn’t. He felt empty and out of his element. He
liked watching the boy splashing in the river. Yet he knew in his deepest soul that Willy was out of place here in the heart
of the war. Just beyond the bank were not homes and families, quiet streets and shade trees and picket fences, but rank upon
rank of tents and dusty, rutted roads and tens of thousands of hardened soldiers resting from their work of killing and destroying.

And outside of camp there were miles and miles of horrors, a ravaged, pillaged land.

And the thing was, it was in that land and not here with the boy where Sam felt most at home. It was as much his element as
the sea was to dolphins. He was grateful for the rest and the comfort of the camp, but he knew where his real place was. It
was time for Sam to make a journey to some other Jackson. Though he did not see it the same way Jane did, Sam was as avid
for espionage as she was.

The boy had paused for a moment in his play and was now standing still in a shaft of sunlight, thigh deep in water, face upturned,
eyes closed, drinking in the rich, bright heat.

He himself must have looked very much like Willy Sherman at that age—tanned, carrot-topped, freckled, and with irrepressible
energy.

A rustle farther up the bank shattered his recollection. When he looked over his shoulder to see what the rustle was, he saw
Willy’s father.

“General,” Sam said, rising to his feet.

“How are you surviving your encounter with the enemy, Sam?” Sherman said.

“Wounded but still undaunted,” Sam said. Then added, “He’s always a delight, sir.”

Just then Willy’s head emerged from the stream, and he shook the water off to see who had arrived. “Daddy!” he screamed.

“Hi there, Sergeant,” Sherman said, using the nickname he’d recently acquired. The general’s troops had taken to calling Willy
that after Willy kept constantly turning up at his father’s side. The boy was as much the favorite of the soldiers as he was
of his father. “Get yourself dry and put some clothes on, and I’ll take you for a ride out of the camp. Would you like that?”

“Oh, yes!” Willy shouted. He rushed up the bank and started to stuff his feet into his trouser legs.

The general gave him a stern look. “Dry first, I said. Your mother will have my head if you catch a chill.”

“Here,” Sam said, and threw the boy a towel that he’d kept handy. “Catch.”

“Sam?” Sherman said, turning to his aide as soon as he was sure that Willy was obeying.

“Yes, sir.”

“It’s actually you that I’ve been looking for,” he said, catching his eye. “General Dodge has come into camp as of this morning.
I thought it would be useful if you participated in a meeting I’m setting up with him after lunch.”

“Yes, sir,” Sam said.

“Well, Sam,” Sherman continued with a sigh, “the general, as I feared he would, has heard about your exploits in Jackson,
and he has some ideas about another job for you on similar lines. Much as I need you with me, I think he probably has a point.”

Sam felt a stirring within him. Grenville Dodge had many superior talents, but the most surprising of these was that he was
the spymaster for General Grant.

“I’ll tell you, General,” Sam said, cocking his brow with amusement. “I can’t guess what sort of thing General Dodge wants
me to do, but if it means leaving Willy in the lurch, I just can’t do it. The boy would be lost without me.”

“That boy,” General Sherman said with a snort of laughter, “would miss you mightily for maybe thirty minutes or so. Then he’d
find some other gull to charm. Don’t you worry about young Willy. It’ll do him good to be a little lonesome for a change.”

“You’re being over hard on that poor boy,” Sam said, smiling. “And I would miss him if I had to go off someplace, I truly
would. But”—he caught Sherman’s eye—“I am more than a little curious about the job General Dodge has in mind for me.”

“Rein in your curiosity until after lunch, Captain,” Sherman said, pleased to see his eagerness. “The word had best come from
General Dodge.”

“Yes, sir,” Sam said. “Where would you like me to meet you?”

Sherman glanced wistfully at the shade under the cottonwoods by the bank. Then he looked purposefully at Sam. “I’ve scheduled
us at my quarters at two, Sam. But after further reflection and consideration—in light of the strategic and tactical necessities
of our situation—I’ve come to the conclusion that here on the bank might do very nicely.”

“It would be considerably cooler,” Sam allowed.

“Exactly,” Sherman said. “Or at least marginally so.”

“I’ll see you then, sir,” Sam said.

“Sergeant!” Sherman bellowed in his best command voice, “why the devil does it take so long to put your clothes on? If that
river was Rebels, you’d be flat on your back with lead in your skull by now. Move it!”

Willy looked up at his father, and then he speeded up his dressing.

Grenville Dodge was a slight, clerkish-looking man with a high-pitched voice, nervous eyes, and long, thin hands that he kept
folded most of the time. The only part of him that seemed to move when he talked was his face. Dodge was only a few years
older than Sam, but his land speculations in Iowa and his exploits as a railway engineer had given him a national prominence
that resulted in a general’s commission. Even though it was gained politically, the commission was deserved.