When This Cruel War Is Over (15 page)

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Authors: Thomas Fleming

BOOK: When This Cruel War Is Over
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“We don't expect any,” Gabriel Todd said.
“Excuse me, Colonel Todd, but you're dreaming. Do you know how many deserters the Confederate Army has had, up until now? One hundred and twenty-five thousand. I'm sure the Union Army has had double that. Would you agree, Major Stapleton?”
“Emphatically. I've spent the last six months hunting a lot of them through southern Indiana.”
For a moment Janet was in complete agreement with her own generation. She was
one
with these angry knowing young men who had heard bullets hiss and seen men die. But the distress on the faces of the older men shocked her back to reality. What did Adam Jameson think he was doing? He was exactly like his father, a behemoth with a small pugnacious brain. Someone had to rescue this situation before the western confederacy collapsed before her eyes.
“Just a moment!” Janet said. “Adam—you're not giving us a chance to tell you the full dimensions of our plan. It includes an army—several armies—of trained soldiers, men whom you and Major Stapleton here will be proud to command.”
Her rebuke had a startling impact on Adam. He rubbed his eyes like a tired child. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I haven't had much sleep for the last three days. I've had nothing to think about all day, hiding in attics and barns, but our dead—”
Gabriel Todd tried to regain control of the situation.
“We understand, Adam. We appreciate your concerns. Sit down and let me tell you the rest of our plan—”
“Tell him about the prison camps,” Janet said.
“Outside Indianapolis, there are at least ten thousand Confederate prisoners in Camp Morton,” Gabriel Todd said. “Outside Chicago, in Camp Douglas, are another twenty thousand. When we free these men and arm them, we'll have thirty thousand trained troops in the heart of the West.”
Janet's eyes were on Paul Stapleton. His face remained expressionless, although they had not told him about arming the Confederate prisoners. Janet had decided that revelation could come later. “Do the prisoners know the part they're supposed to play?” Paul asked.
“Yes. Guards have been bribed, messages passed in both camps,” Colonel Todd said.
“Do you expect me to free both camps with two thousand cavalrymen?” Adam said. “Fight our way from Indianapolis to Chicago?”
“Of course not,” Gabriel Todd replied. “Camp Douglas will be freed by two regiments of Sons of Liberty who are armed and training secretly at this very moment in Chicago. Your column will strike for Indianapolis. With the Sons of Liberty in arms along your route, you should meet very little opposition. What troops the Republicans have at their disposal will be busy fighting the Sons.”
“Tell him about Greek fire,” Janet said.
“Inside Indianapolis there will be men trained in the use of Greek fire, a form of combustion first used by the Byzantines against the Saracens. It's a mixture of sulfur, naphtha and quicklime—practically impossible to extinguish, once it's ignited. They'll go to work on a prearranged signal as you approach the city. Governor Morton and his crew will have to choose between fighting you and trying to save Indianapolis from burning down around their ears.”
This avalanche of information had a peculiar impact
on Adam Jameson. He began to slump in his seat, as if each part of the plan were a weight that had been dumped in his lap without his full approval. Janet sensed he had come here determined to withdraw his men from participation in the plot. What he was hearing made it harder and harder for him to refuse to join them.
While this intuition did nothing to improve Janet's opinion of Adam's intelligence, she found herself moved by the intensity, the sincerity, of his purpose. There was a pathos, even a nobility, to his concern—no, put it more frankly—his love for his men, his grief for his dead that made it impossible to despise him.
“I must confess—I'm impressed,” Adam Jameson mumbled. “You gentlemen have given this affair more thought than I imagined. I can see my part in it clearly enough. What will Major Stapleton here do?”
“We haven't decided. He's only joined us two hours ago,” Gabriel Todd said.
“I hope he doesn't plan to campaign in that uniform,” Adam said.
“Are you appointing yourself the commander in chief of this operation, Colonel Jameson?” Paul asked.
Dislike crackled in every syllable. For a moment Janet felt nothing but anger. She had to remind herself that Adam's tone was almost as obnoxious.
“Not at all,” Adam said. “But I strongly urge that one be designated.”
“I've already offered them the same advice,” Paul said.
“What about money for food, ammunition, fodder for horses?” Adam asked.
“The Confederate government has promised to supply us with a million dollars in gold,” Gabriel Todd said.
“Rifles will begin arriving from New York in early August,” Janet added.
“It seems as if there's nothing left to do but select the day,” Adam said.
“That will require another visit to Richmond,”
Gabriel Todd said. “Their secret agents are coordinating our operation with the people in Illinois. At the moment they lean toward the first day of the Democratic Convention in Chicago—August twenty-ninth. They want the city full of Democrats who'll support them. But we're a bit unhappy with the date because it will draw many of our best leaders out of Indiana and Kentucky. If they stay behind, it may attract the attention of federal agents.”
“How can you be sure this fellow isn't one of them?” Adam asked, pointing to Paul Stapleton.
“Colonel Todd—and Miss Todd—have vouched for him,” Luke Bowman said.
Adam stared stonily at Janet. “Is that true?”
“Yes,” Janet said, feeling her face grow warm. “Major Stapleton has convinced me that his desire for peace is sincere.”
“His desire for
peace
?” Adam said, his eyes on Paul Stapleton now. The derision in his voice was unmistakable. He was suggesting Paul desired something—or someone—else.
“That will be the first result of the creation of a western confederacy,” Janet said. “We'll call for peace—immediate peace—and both sides will have to accept it. We'll hold the balance of power.”
“Excuse me, Janet, but that's the damnedest nonsense I've ever heard,” Adam said. “Is this Major Stapleton's idea? Immediate peace? Leaving the Union Army in control of half of Virginia, two-thirds of Tennessee and Kentucky, and a third of Georgia? Not to mention even more of Louisiana and Mississippi? If we get a choke hold on them by cutting off their supplies from the west, I say kill as many as possible before they get out of range.”
Rogers Jameson seized his pencil and scrawled:
I AGRE WITH EVERY WURD OF THAT.
“What do you think, Major Stapleton? Does that idea
upset your digestion any?” Adam asked. “Do you think we can win the war just by proclaiming this western confederacy? Are you a soldier or a politician?”
“I'm a soldier who's been trained to think as well as fight,” Paul said, sarcasm again edging his voice. “I believe we can end the war rather quickly if we negotiate from strength and refrain from killing people unnecessarily.”
“I don't know what that last word means. When I see a man in a blue uniform, I want to kill him before he kills me,” Adam said.
“I begin to think it might be best if you and I served in separate commands, Colonel,” Paul said. “I doubt very much if I could ever take orders from you.”
Adam stared dazedly at Paul. He rubbed his eyes again. “I guess maybe I ought to get some sleep,” he said.
“A good idea,” Gabriel Todd said. “We can talk this whole thing over tomorrow in a more even temper.”
“Just understand this,” Adam said. “I'm ready to do everything and anything—including die—for Southern independence. My men are ready to do the same thing.”
“We understand that,” Gabriel Todd said. “We understand that perfectly.”
Adam staggered to his feet. Rogers Jameson threw his arm around his exhausted son. As the two big men walked down the hall to the door, Adam's knees buckled. He sagged against his father. Janet watched, suffused with the sorrow and the pity of it all.
HENRY TODD GENTRY TOSSED IN his sweaty bed. He was having the dream again. He knew it was a dream but it was also not a dream. It was a wild mixture of history and memory. The Mississippi swept past the raft, tied up to a huge cottonwood tree on the Tennessee shore above Memphis. The river made a gushing, throaty sound as it began its race to the Gulf of Mexico.
On a series of rafts and steamboats, American heroes and cowards, geniuses and fools, acted out their personal stories. Aaron Burr, the personification of the corrupt East, was there pouring coins into the gaping mouths of gullible western volunteers in his doomed foray to seize the gold and silver mines of Mexico. Willard Gentry, Henry's father, was one of the true believers. Did the failure of that fabulous dream rip something out of his heart, reducing him to a mere merchant, making him easy prey for Millicent Todd?
Then came the idol of Gentry's youth, Henry Clay, dueling at ten paces with his nemesis, Andrew Jackson. The gaunt spectral face of the Tennessee demagogue cast a weird glow on Clay's handsome features, revealing his bafflement and fear. Clay pulled the trigger of his pistol but the hammer clicked fecklessly. The gun was empty. A sneering Jackson fired and with a sad cry Clay toppled from the raft to disappear in the Mississippi's silted darkness.
Next came a magnificent white steamboat. On the top deck Amelia Conway stood in her wedding dress, gazing mournfully at Henry Todd Gentry. Beside her stood
Rogers Jameson, triumph on his porcine face. He began undressing her, carefully at first, then impatiently ripping the white gown from her trembling shoulders.
While the pageant sailed past them, Abe Lincoln lay with his head on a burlap bag of wheat, sleeping peacefully. Innocence, nobility, contentment suffused his young face. The veins of thought and furrows of disappointment were in the distant future. This face was the image of his unspoiled questing soul. For a moment Henry Gentry yearned to kiss that supple mouth, to rest his head on that broad chest and confess the love he felt for this unique human being.
A scraping sound swung Gentry's eyes to the shore. Shapes moved there. Someone was hauling the raft closer to the riverbank! The dream was becoming memory—the most vivid memory of Henry Gentry's life. Looming at the far end of the raft were a dozen figures, dark against the moonless darkness of the landscape.
“Abe!” Gentry cried as the intruders rushed toward them.
They were Negroes. Runaways, perhaps, living by their wits in the woods. Or slaves on the prowl for loot. They intended to kill these two white men and appropriate their six hundred pounds of wheat and corn. Henry Gentry seized the pole he used to fend off floating trees and other large debris and swung it at the leader of the pack. He brushed it aside and struck Gentry on the shoulder with a club, paralyzing his right arm. Another club thudded against his head.
“Abe!” he cried one more time as he toppled to the deck.
Lincoln was on his feet, wielding a thick chunk of the driftwood they had collected to cook their dinners. He smashed the face of the first man to come at him. Gentry heard the crunching sound of the wood against bone. With a muffled cry, the attacker hurtled sideways off the raft into the river. The power of that blow drained
courage from the rest of the gang. For a split second they recoiled and gave Lincoln the momentum he needed.
With a snarl he waded into them, smashing them left and right, breaking arms and jaws and knees with every ferocious swing. They fought back but there was no defense against the strength in Abe's long arms, toughened by a thousand hours of axwork. Lincoln could make more money in two hours chopping wood than any other man in Indiana could earn in a day. Now he was chopping men with the same devastating results.
Gentry was back on his feet, clubbing them from the flank in spite of his half-paralyzed arm. “Nigger bastards!” he shouted. But Lincoln never made a sound. He just kept swinging that murderous club until there was only one attacker still on his feet.
He was as tall as Lincoln, with a heavier frame. As Lincoln advanced on him, his club ready, Abe lost his footing on the wet deck and fell on his back. The black leaped forward, a knife gleaming in his right hand. Gentry stepped into his rush and swung with all the strength he could muster in his sixteen-year-old arms. He struck the man in the face and he floundered to the left, screaming with pain. Lincoln leaped to his feet and knocked him into the river.
With a collective howl the surviving attackers fled. Several fell off the end of the raft as they tried to get ashore and were swept downstream uttering frantic cries for help. Lincoln stood in the center of the raft, his club hefted for another blow. “Thanks, Henry,” he said. “You're a good man in a fight.”
Henry Gentry awoke as the dream faded into the dull light of a clouded moon. For a long moment he savored the memory of that compliment, which forever bound him to Abraham Lincoln in the mysterious fellowship of manhood.
Ting a ling
.
Ting a ling
. The alarm system Gentry had
constructed beside his bed to enable his agents to contact him during the night banished sleep. He pulled on his pants and hurried down to the cellar through the dark still house. Over to the storm cellar door he lumbered, calling softly, “I'm coming!”
At the door he held up his candle and was startled to find the light flickering on the gleaming black face of Janet Todd's Lucy. “How did you get here?” he asked.
“I paddled Miz Janet's canoe, Colonel,” she said. “I got some
real
important information for you. I'll tell it fast because I got to get back before sunup. Colonel Adam Jameson come to Hopemont tonight. He met his father and four rebel colonels and Major Stapleton and Miz Janet and her father. He kiss Miz Janet and made the major real mad. I guess he come to plan the risin'. I couldn't get close enough to de dinin' room to hear dem talk, but I don' got no doubt they goin' to come after you and your nigger soldiers first thing—”
“Is Colonel Jameson staying at Rose Hill?”
“I thinks so. He lef' with his daddy.”
“I'm going to find Maybelle if it's the last thing I do on earth. Get back to your canoe. I've got work to do.”
Within five minutes, Gentry was in his uniform, writing a telegram to Major General Stephen Burbridge, the commander of the Union forces in Kentucky
I HAVE SOLID INFORMATION THAT COLONEL ADAM JAMESON IS AT HIS FAMILY'S HOME ROSE HILL IN DAVIESS COUNTY PLOTTING A RAID WITH THE HELP OF INSURGENT DEMOCRATS. SUGGEST IMMEDIATE ACTION TO SEIZE HIM.
Rushing out to the barn, Gentry hitched his fastest trotting horse to his sulky and rode into Keyport. There he roused Western Union telegrapher Clem Mahoney from his bed above his shop on Main Street and ordered him to send the message to Union Army headquarters in
Louisville immediately. There was a troop of cavalry stationed in Owensboro, only ten miles from Rose Hill. He ordered a duplicate sent there.
Back in his cellar office, Gentry poured himself a glass of bourbon and held it up to the picture of Lincoln on the wall. “Maybe this one is good enough, Abe,” the colonel said and drank it down as the clock in the upstairs hall struck midnight.

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