Rebel Train: A Civil War Novel

Chapter 22

Flynn stalked back inside the car, empty now except for Johnny Benjamin, Nellie and the wounded lieutenant. Nellie had found a rag and a bottle of water, and she was busy cleaning the caked and crusted blood from Silas Cater's face. Flynn crouched beside her. Cater's breathing was shallow and the taut skin stretched over his features was pale.

"How is he?" he asked.

"Hard to say. If he doesn't come around soon, I don't give him much of a chance. The bullet might have done more damage than we can see. His skull could be cracked."

"Too bad. He's a good lad." Flynn made sure the others were too far away to hear, then lowered his voice. "You’re a clever one, Nellie. That was quick-thinking on your part, offering to stay and help the wounded because you’re a Rebel at heart. You were so convincing that I almost believed you myself. Not willing to give up that money, were you?"

"No," she said. "I hope you didn't think you were going to get it all to yourself."

"There's plenty enough to go around, lass. More money than one person can carry, at least. We need a plan."

Nellie nodded. "Just outside Cumberland, I have some friends who will help. They're not expecting a train filled with Confederates, of course.”

Flynn raised his eyebrows. "Friends?"

She smiled. "Yes. But you said yourself, Sergeant Flynn, that there's plenty to go around."

Flynn nodded. He wondered how much more she hadn’t told him. Not that he was surprised. With such a large quantity of money at stake, he should have guessed that Nellie and Gilmore had not planned the robbery alone. After all, the money had been guarded by three Yankee soldiers, and Gilmore could not have planned to take on the guards by himself. He had been cocky, but not stupid.

Fortunately, Hudson had managed to surprise and overpower the guards when the raiders seized the train. While it was convenient that the raiders had removed one of the obstacles in stealing the money, they had created a much bigger problem in that the thieves would be expecting a trio of sleepy Union guards, not a train carrying several trigger-happy Rebels. The thought was enough to make Flynn smile.

"What was your original plan?" he asked, wondering how much of the truth Nellie would actually tell him. "What were you and Gilmore going to do before things… changed?"

“You mean, before you killed him?”

“That’s not quite how I would have put it.”

Nellie hesitated, then shrugged, as if deciding there wasn't any reason not to tell him. "Our friends are going to stop the train well outside of Cumberland by putting some trees across the tracks," she said. "When the train stops, the plan is to rush aboard and take the payroll money."

"What about the guards? They wouldn’t have let you walk off the train with all that money without a fight.”

"They would have been outnumbered," she said. "Me and Charlie, our job was to help from the inside, any way we could. Then we would ride off with the gang."

"You would have been caught in no time at all, in the mountains," Flynn said, impressed in spite of himself. It was quite a scheme.

Nellie shook her head. "There's one or two with us who know the mountain roads like they know the laces on their boots. Nobody would ever find us. We would be long-gone."

"Back to Baltimore?"

"Why not?"

Flynn nodded. It was a good enough plan, except it wouldn't work now. "You know that if your friends stop this train then all hell's going to break loose?"

Nellie nodded. "There's got to be another way."

"We'll figure something out, even if we have to throw the money out the window and come back for it later.”

Captain Fletcher entered the car and Flynn gave Nellie a wink that ended their conversation. Fletcher walked over and looked down at Lieutenant Cater, who still lay unconscious on the floor. "Well, Flynn, is he going to make it?"

"He's a strong lad." Flynn refused to address Captain Fletcher as sir. "There's not much more we can do for him aboard this train — except pray."

"You realize that with him wounded, I'm second in command of this raid."

Flynn crossed himself.

"What are you doing?"

"Praying," Flynn said. "Praying for the lad's life."

Fletcher scowled and stalked off.

"That man's a fool," Nellie whispered.

"Oh, he has his purpose in life, just like rats and snakes. He fetches and carries well enough back in Richmond, licks boots and kisses arses. He's a natural-born staff officer, but he's no soldier."

The train lurched, then began to creep ahead. The cars felt strangely empty without the civilians. Outside the windows, trees began to pass by as the Chesapeake gathered speed. The passengers they had put off stood along the tracks, watching the train roll west.

“You’ll notice they didn’t wave,” Flynn said. "We're on our way, lass."

"Stop calling me 'lass,' Irish. My name is Nellie. Miss Jones, to be proper.”

Flynn smiled. Between the two of them, they just might manage to steal the money, after all. But doubts nagged at Flynn. The cargo they carried was so precious: a fortune in cash, the Yankee president, the hopes of the entire Confederacy. Their odds of success were long, indeed. They still had to cross Maryland and the state was crawling with blue-coated soldiers.

“You have spirit, Miss Jones. I like that. And you’ll need it before this day is through. Right now, we’re like a couple of rats trying to run the length of an alley filled with stray cats. That’s us, all right, little gray rats in an alley.”

"Now what do we do?" Mrs. Henrietta Parker wondered out loud, a plaintive not in her voice. She paced up and down beside the tracks, hands on her hips, looking for all the world like a plump, rumpled, very angry hen. "Those Rebels abandoned us to the elements!"

"Henrietta— "

"Be quiet, Alfred! The least you and the other men on this train could have done is stand up to them."

"They had guns," Alfred pointed out. "And from what we saw, they did not hesitate to use them."

"Thieves and murderers," she said. "How dare they call themselves soldiers. Why, my honor felt threatened."

Nearby, James Prescott put his hand to his face to hide a smile. It was highly unlikely, he thought, that the raiders would have stormed the formidable fortress that was Mrs. Henrietta Parker.

The woman who had stayed aboard the train was another matter. He thought it highly imprudent for her to ride along. That attractive young lady was far more likely to find her honor threatened than was Mrs. Parker, he decided. He was a little surprised she had cast in with the train thieves, considering they had killed her traveling companion. Maybe she truly was a Rebel sympathizer. Baltimore was full of them. Then again, she appeared to be a woman who could take care of herself. She looked as if she welcomed adventure.

Did he? Not really. The truth was, he was glad they were no longer on the train, wondering from one minute to the next if the raiders would shoot them. He realized now how stupid he and Gilmore had been in trying to overpower the Rebel sergeant and the young soldier. Even if they had succeeded, what then? Prescott knew he was lucky to be alive, considering what had happened to Gilmore. The man had paid for their foolishness with his life.

In spite of all that, Prescott felt some pangs of regret as he watched the train disappear. There went an adventure, he thought, going on without him. Somehow, the fact that the young woman had chosen to ride the train while he had been eager to get off made him feel like less of a man.

A shout interrupted his thoughts. "Look!" someone cried. "There's smoke on the horizon. Must be a train coming."

"Flag it down!"

"No, no, no," Mrs. Parker sputtered. "It could be the Rebels coming back! Alfred, tell them, tell them!"

"Shut up, Henrietta," Alfred said wearily. "The Rebels are not coming back this way. Now get over here and start waving."

Prescott joined the group that pressed up to the tracks. Some of the men took off their coats and flapped them up and down, the better to catch the engineer's attention. Prescott thought it unlikely the engineer wouldn't notice a crowd of people standing along the tracks in the middle of nowhere.

He could see it now, too, a column of smoke approaching from the west. Well, he thought, maybe the adventure wasn't over quite yet. He made up his mind that he was going along for the chase, if there was one.

Percy took out his Colt revolver and double-checked to make certain it was loaded. It was a soldier's nervous habit. Any veteran knew his life depended upon the proper functioning of his weapons.

From the looks of things, he might soon need his revolver. He squinted into the distance, where he could just make out the fast-approaching column of smoke that heralded an oncoming train. Percy had no way of knowing if the other train was simply headed east to Baltimore or whether it was loaded with Yankee soldiers intent on stopping the raiders.

"At least we're moving, sir," said Cephas Wilson, the engineer, as if reading Percy's mind.

"If they try to flag us down, don't stop," Percy said. "They can chase us if they want, but we're not going to make it easy for them."

Wilson started to ask a question, then seemed to think better of it. "What about the president, sir?"

"If we can't get him to Richmond, our orders are to shoot him. You know that as well as I do, Wilson."

"Yes, sir… it just don't seem right."

Percy agreed, although he did not tell that to Wilson. To shoot Abe Lincoln, unarmed, seemed wrong, even if he was the president of their sworn enemy, the United States of America. In fact, in Percy's mind it would be murder. If it came down to killing Lincoln, he would do it himself rather than burden one of his men with the assassination of the Yankee president.

Again, Percy checked the cylinder of his Colt. Each of the six chambers was loaded with a paper cartridge of powder and ball. A percussion cap covered each of the six firing cones, waiting for the blow of the hammer. Was one of these bullets destined for Lincoln?

He swung the cylinder shut and holstered the Colt. Ahead of them, on the opposite track, the approaching train had come into view. His eyes were not what they used to be, so Percy strained to see if there were muskets aimed at them from the windows.

"Here she comes, sir," Wilson said.

"Are they armed?" Percy asked, fishing in a pocket for his spectacles.

"Can't tell for sure, sir."

"Give her everything she's got, Wilson. Pour it on."

The engineer opened the throttle wide. Hank Cunningham worked like a fiend, hurling wood into the open maw of the firebox. The task was becoming harder because the supply of cordwood in the tender was getting low. Percy held his breath and kept one hand on his revolver.

The train hurtled toward the Chesapeake, spewing smoke and cinders into the sky from its enormous smokestack. In seconds, the locomotive was even with them. The engineer leaned from the window and gave them a wave. Then the train was rushing past, bound for Baltimore. It would not get far. Percy was sure the other train would stop when it spotted the passengers the raiders had put off. But by then, the Chesapeake would be far ahead if the other train decided to give chase.

Percy breathed again. And then he whooped. "Ha! They don't know about us, boys! On to Virginia!"

Busy at the Chesapeake's controls, Cephas Wilson looked less than elated. They were rounding a bend in the tracks, and he pointed ahead. There, as the curve straightened, was a siding. A locomotive waited under steam. It was a new 4-4-0, the designation coming from the fact that it had four large driving wheels behind four much smaller ones. The huge driving wheels were bigger even than the Chesapeake's. The locomotive’s new black paint gleamed. Lord Baltimore was painted on the locomotive's cab in gold letters a foot high. The engineer leaned out the window and lifted his hand in greeting as they passed.

Percy's smile faded. "That’s the same train we saw come through Ellicott Mills this morning."

"What do you want to do, Colonel? We ought to wreck that locomotive."

Percy hesitated, then made up his mind. If they stopped, the eastbound train they had just passed could easily overtake them if it reversed direction. "Keep going, keep going."

A knot of men stood by the new locomotive, watching the Chesapeake rush past. The Lord Baltimore had only a tender attached. The locomotive would be fast, all right, if it came after them. But there was no sign the crew standing around on the siding was prepared to give chase. They did not appear excited by the sight of the Chesapeake. A few even waved.

Hank Cunningham paused in his work feeding the firebox to wave back. He grinned, his teeth showing white against the sooty mask of his face. "Yankees sure are a stupid bunch," he muttered through his teeth. "If this keeps up, we'll be in Richmond the day after tomorrow."

"We're not there yet," Percy reminded him.

Percy knew they were running out of time. Every minute counted. The Yankees might not know the raiders had kidnapped the president, but it was enough that they had seized a train and were running toward the Confederate haven of the Shenandoah Valley. The telegraph wires would come alive, and every Yankee in Maryland would work himself into a frenzy of righteous indignation over the raid.

"More wood, Hank," Percy shouted above the roar of the wind and the engine. "Pile it on. We need speed, man, speed!"

The race for their lives, for the fate of Abraham Lincoln, for the survival of the Confederacy itself, had begun.