Authors: Jesse Taylor Croft
“And you’re going to help me because I realized almost as soon as I first met you that you were the only man in Mississippi
with the fire and the drive to do it.”
Noah just looked at him. He was flattered, of course, but he was also eager to do the very thing the captain had in mind.
“You want to help me, don’t you, Major?” Will Hottel said, his face glowing with heartfelt sincerity.
“You know I do,” Noah said.
“Good,” Hottel replied with a brisk nod.
“Is the general aware of your secret orders?” Noah asked.
“Not yet,” Hottel said. “I was instructed by Jeff Davis himself not to tell anyone, not even Johnston.” He paused. “And you
know what Davis thinks about Johnston.”
“Yeah, I know,” Noah said. The enmity between Davis and Johnston was famous. “But you will tell him, won’t you? You’ll have
to.”
“When it proves necessary,” Hottel said. “I’ll deal with it.”
“Right,” Noah said.
When the Union cavalry attacked them, Noah Ballard and Will Hottel’s train was about eighteen miles south of Okolona on its
return trip to Meridian, and Noah Ballard was sound asleep. He had looked forward to a peaceful and restful journey back to
General Johnston’s headquarters—a peacefulness that was considerably enhanced for Noah by the rocking of the train coach and
by William Hottel’s sour mash. By his reckoning, he hadn’t had a good, sound, uninterrupted sleep since 1862.
After they reached Meridian, he knew, he could look forward to anything but rest and peace.
What would he—and Captain Hottel and General Johnston—do now that Will Hottel had come up with sixty-seven locomotives? And
what about Walter Goodman? Would he and the other railroadmen willingly give up their equipment? That seemed hardly likely
in the light of their record so far.
And these weren’t the only problems Noah would face. There was also General Joseph Johnston himself. He would have a lot to
say about the disposition of the engines, and what he had to say might well be different from what Noah Ballard wanted to
hear.
Rather than worry about all of that, however, Noah curled up in a seat and nodded off. Eight hours of sleep was a thousand
times more inviting than eight hours of worry.
The train was chugging around a curve when the engine driver blew the whistle hard and threw on his brakes. The whistle was
a signal to the corporal standing at the rear of the passenger car. When he heard it, he swung the brake wheel at the rear
of the platform around and around, and the train heaved to a stop.
As soon as the car ceased moving, the corporal leaned over the side in order to get a view ahead. What he saw was a great
pile of cut wood and brush piled onto the track.
Above the track was a rocky, partially wooded hillside. The hillside, he thought, would make a splendid place to set up an
ambush.
The corporal had no more thoughts after that one. A carbine cracked, the first shot of a volley that slammed into the locomotive,
the tender, and the two cars. The slug from the first shot crushed the corporal’s cheekbone and tumbled into his brain.
Inside the passenger car, men were starting to pick themselves up and grab their weapons. Noah, who had pitched forward when
the train made its sudden stop, was sprawled on the floor, struggling to raise himself up to something resembling consciousness—his
mind was fogged with both lack of sleep and good sour mash. Even so, his hand had reached for his revolver, and, somehow in
his fog of slumber, he was checking the load in the chamber.
William Hottel had crawled up the aisle and was now next to Noah.
He was trying to say something, but the noise of the firing drowned out his words. Noah shook his head and made a cut-off
motion with his hand to tell the captain to quit trying to make himself heard.
By this time, Noah was awake enough to put together a set of purposeful actions. He lifted himself up and looked around, and
he didn’t like what he saw: the troops were firing out of both sides of the car. They were bracketed.
“Shit!” he yelled at the top of his voice.
“You bet!” William Hottel yelled in answer; Noah’s obscenity was loud enough for him to hear.
Noah slowly and carefully peered just above the level of the windowsill in order to get some idea of the size of the forces
arrayed against them.
He had about two seconds of clear viewing before he dove down for cover.
“Shit!”
he screamed again. “There must be at least fifty of the bastards on this side alone!”
“How many!”
Hottel yelled.
“Fifty!”
“Son of a bitch!”
Why doesn’t the driver set us in reverse and get us out of here? he asked himself.
Then he answered his question with the obvious answer because he couldn’t.
He quickly raised himself up above the window ledge and fired a pair of shots. Then he sank down out of sight again.
“They’re wavin’ a white flag!” somebody yelled before he could set himself in action.
For a time nobody paid attention, but then somebody else yelled, “Cease firing!” It was the lieutenant who commanded the platoon,
Noah realized after a moment. The lieutenant kept yelling until all the shooting stopped. There was no noise of firing from
the flatcar either as they, too, saw the white flag.
Two minutes later the man with the white flag made his way to a grassy knoll sixty feet from the train cars.
“Colonel Tyler would like a word with your commander,” he shouted. “With your permission, he’ll come aboard your train.”
The lieutenant, whose name was Downer, glanced over to Noah for instructions.
“Tell him, Lieutenant, that Colonel Tyler can speak to us just fine from that knoll. I don’t want him here in our train.”
“As you like, sir,” Lieutenant Downer said, and shouted that message out the window.
“Colonel Tyler ain’t goin’ to be pleased,” the man with the flag replied.
“Tell him,” Noah instructed the lieutenant, “that it isn’t our business to attend to Colonel Tyler’s pleasure.”
The lieutenant repeated the message.
Colonel Tyler turned out to be a little banty of a man, shorter even than Joe Johnston.
While Tyler walked up to the knoll, Noah made his way to the rear platform of the car. He decided he would do the talking
and not the lieutenant.
“So what’s on your mind, Colonel?” he shouted once the colonel was within hearing distance.
“Do you have a name, sir?” Colonel Tyler asked. He had a cool, mocking voice. It was the voice of a man who was enjoying himself;
he was obviously delighted with the predicament he had caused Noah and his men.
“Ballard,” Noah answered. “Major.”
“Glad to make your acquaintance, Major,” Colonel Tyler said. “Now may I come aboard?”
“No.”
“You’re not real hospitable.”
“No,” Noah answered, “I’m not. Now tell me what’s on your mind.”
The colonel gave Noah a good hard look. “Very well, Major Ballard,” he said, grinning broadly. “First of all, we’ve got you
beat.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Noah said.
“Notwithstanding that, you are beaten,” he replied. “Second of all, you’ll be glad to know you’ve been beaten by fellow southerners
who have chosen not to pursue the errors of our brethren. We’re the First Tennessee Cavalry.” The First Tennessee Cavalry
had been recruited by Grenville Dodge from eastern Tennessee, where many of the people had remained loyal to the Union. Southerners
in blue were not much loved by their brothers in gray—understandably.
“Third of all,” Tyler went on, “we want your surrender. But fourth of all, once you’ve given yourselves up, we’ll let you
free. We don’t want you; you can go home.” He stopped and looked pointedly at Noah. “How’s that for a deal? You can’t do any
better than that.”
“I don’t like it,” Noah answered automatically.
“What’s the matter with you, Major Ballard, you crazy?” Tyler yelled, exasperated.
“What he says sounds fine to me,” Will Hottel said. The captain had come out onto the platform and placed himself near Noah’s
elbow while Noah was talking to Colonel Tyler.
Noah looked at Hottel and then at Tyler. “I’ll need some time,” Noah said, giving the colonel an uncertain look.
“You have five minutes,” Tyler said.
“All right.”
“And, Major?” Tyler added.
“Huh?”
“If you have any women on your train, consider them. If you surrender now, I can promise they’ll be safe. If we have to come
and get you—some of my troops are pretty hungry for loving.”
“Go hang yourself,” Noah muttered under his breath. He had had no intention of surrendering, but especially not now. There
were no women aboard the train, but that mattered not at all to him. He would never give himself up to pirate southerners.
Once they were inside the car, Will Hottel grabbed Noah’s shoulder. “If I were you,” he said uneasily, “I’d go along with
Tyler.”
“Not damn likely,” Noah said.
“So we surrender,” Hottel said more insistently, “and then we go free. I don’t see anything bad about that.”
“I don’t know whether it’s bad or not,” Noah said. “I’m just not going to do it.”
“Look here, Noah,” Hottel said, “put some sense into yourself.” The big man was shaking Noah hard by the shoulder. “Why get
killed when there are better alternatives? And,” he added with renewed emphasis, “they’ll let us free. Goddamn, be sensible.”
Noah shrugged Hottel off and stepped away from him. “Will,” he asked softly, “do you actually believe a word out of that man’s
mouth?” Before Hottel could reply, Noah turned to Lieutenant Downer. “We don’t have much time left, Lieutenant, maybe three
or four minutes. So Captain Hottel and I are going to see what we can do to get us out of this mess.”
“What do you mean?” Hottel asked, not at all liking what he was hearing.
“Just do what I tell you, Will,” Noah answered.
“Wait a goddamned minute, Noah,” Hottel said, choking the words out. “If they see you doing anything at all, the truce is
off.”
“That’s right,” Noah said. “All the more reason to move fast.”
“I don’t like this,” Hottel said.
Noah moved over to Hottel and yelled in his ear: “Come on!”
“You’re mad, Noah Ballard!” Hottel said. But he mobilized himself to follow.
When they reached the front of the car, Noah opened the door and extended his head cautiously, turtle fashion. There were
two men collapsed on the wood plank floor of the platform, and there was also a good deal of blood. From the quantity of blood
on the platform, he had little doubt about their fates.
Noah opened the door wider and made a summoning motion to the sergeant who was in command of the squad up ahead on the flatcar.
When the sergeant was close enough to communicate in whispers, Noah, without opening the door wide enough to show himself
to any watchers on the hillside, explained what he wanted if the firing started again.
Once that was clear, Noah drew his head back inside the car and turned to Hottel.
“Do what I do, and do it fast!” he said. “Don’t hesitate! Don’t pause!”
“What are you going to do?”
But Noah didn’t answer. By the time the words were out of Hottel’s mouth, Noah was out of the door and scrambling down the
steps in as low a crouch as possible. When he reached the gravel of the roadbed, he ducked under the car platform and flattened
himself.
Seconds later, Hottel joined him.
“Jesus Christ!” Hottel said. “What did you do that for?”
“We’re going up to the cab, you and I,” Noah answered.
“What for?”
“To drive the train.”
“How are you going to do that?”
Noah looked at him. “The easy way,” he said, without trying to hide his sarcasm.
He set off on his stomach underneath the axles of the flatcar and, moments later, the tender.
The two men had been noticed by the troops on the hillside. Soon there were shouts for them to come out and show themselves
and surrender. Then cavalry carbines were firing at them. As soon as that happened, the two squads on the train started to
return fire again, and the fighting resumed.
When Noah, much bruised and scraped, reached the coupler that joined the locomotive to the tender, he paused to catch his
breath, then rose to a squat, hoisted his foot up to the coupler, and sprang into the cab.
The engine driver and the firemen were both dead—which was as Noah had expected. The driver had pitched out of the cab onto
the side of the roadbed, and the fireman, once he was wounded, had tried to hide in the tender.
Noah gave Hottel his hand and pulled the big man up into the cab. Both men then huddled below the level of the window ledge
and took long breaths until they calmed a little.
“You move pretty fast for a big man,” Noah said to Hottel after a moment.
“That’s what they said to the bear when his tail was on fire,” Hottel said.
“Yeah,” Noah agreed, “I guess so!”
“Speaking of fires,” Hottel said, his attention now turned to the locomotive’s firebox, “this one ain’t going real hot.”
“We’ll need to add wood,” Noah agreed. “I’ll get it,” he added when the other man gave him a look that said that a trip to
the tender was the very last thing he was willing to undertake.
There was a narrow passage down the center of the tender, and the cut wood was stacked on either side. Noah gathered himself
and leaped across to the tender and into the aisle. Then, in the relative safety of the stacked wood, he raised himself up,
picked up a load of pine logs, and heaved them over to the cab. Hottel had the fire door open by then, and he stuffed the
logs into the firebox.
It took a few minutes for the steam pressure to rise again, and Hottel spent that time trying to make himself small, for bullets
were snapping and ricocheting all around him. It was not just an impossible task, it was ludicrous, because William Hottel
was too big to hide in such a tiny cab.
Noah, who was enjoying the relative security of his barricade, did not gloat over the big man’s predicament. Will had lost
his nerve earlier, but he was doing himself proud now.