Authors: Jesse Taylor Croft
Night fell, but still they were forced to stay hidden in their cave of branches and undergrowth and mosquitoes. Federal longboats
with lanterns at fore and aft kept cruising by late into the night.
“What can they possibly want with us?” Fanny asked at one point.
“I don’t know,” Ash said. “Chances are, I suppose, that they caught somebody in the crew, and they talked.”
“But still,” Fanny persisted, “why us?”
“I don’t know.”
“They’d very much like to get hold of Mr. Kemble, ma’am,” Muller said quietly. He was not much of a talker at the best of
times, and during the chase and the burial of the chests, he hardly spoke at all. This statement was the most that Fanny had
ever heard from him. “Chances are they know he’s in the swamps. He’s as famous a blockade runner as they’re ever likely to
get hold of.”
“You should be flattered, then,” Fanny said after she had taken that in. “Honored.”
“I could do without such honors,” Ash said, his voice grim. “I’ve lost one of my best ships, a good part of one of my best
crews, I’m muddy and stinking and covered with leeches, and I’m skulking in a marsh like a hunted animal. If this is an honor,
maybe I’d like a little more ignominy.”
Fanny tried to make out his face in the wet, pressing gloom, but he was only a blur. She was looking for Ash’s usual self-mocking
grin, his devil-may-care flash of eyes. But somehow she didn’t expect to find that now. Ash’s loses had finally broken through
his seemingly impenetrable defenses.
Even Ash Kemble has a soft and vulnerable core, she thought to herself.
She almost said something more about that, but stopped herself. Anything she said to Ash now was likely to hurt.
She crossed over the boat and slid next to him on the wide seat.
“What are you doing, Fanny?” he asked absently.
“Hold still,” she said.
He turned and faced her. His eyes—she could see them now—were blank. She could also see leeches on his neck and arms, many
of them already fattened on his blood.
She reached out, and with a deep grimace of fright and revulsion, working more by feel than by sight, she started to pluck
them off his flesh.
“What are you doing, Fanny?” he asked.
“I can’t take care of the Yankees, Ash, but I can take care of the leeches.”
The estimates of Lam Kemble’s scouts turned out to be incorrect. The Federal cavalry reached Noah Ballard’s fourteen locomotives
ahead of the troop train. That was because the train had slowed to five miles an hour due to their concern about the possibility
that the tracks had been ripped up.
But it was the cavalry that attacked—not as Lam had done at dawn, in a massed charge, but dismounted, in skirmish lines. And
not all the Federal cavalry sighted by Lam’s advance scouts attacked the engines. Half of them rode on ahead to take up positions
along the track in case the Rebels succeeded in breaking free of the initial efforts to capture them.
Lam’s troops had been placed in position not far from the locomotives when word of the approach of the Federal forces came.
They were not heavily dug in, for they did not expect to stay for long. The locomotives should be ready to move any time.
But the delays kept coming—bearings in one froze, a control rod broke free of a crosshead in another. Neither was a major
problem, and both were being repaired with considerable dispatch, considering the situation. But both engines were near the
front of the line; none of those behind could move without those moving first.
Meanwhile the Federal cavalry were already pinning people down with their gunfire. Luckily nobody was really in much danger.
It was too dark to aim at anything smaller than the bulk of the locomotives themselves. And indeed, they didn’t succeed in
hitting even these very often. But their plan seemed to be to keep the Rebels busy until the troop train arrived. With these
reinforcements they would smother anything the Rebels could put in their way.
It looked as if they might succeed in their plan.
The skirmishing had been going on for half an hour before Lam Kemble came to brief Noah about what was going on. Noah had
enough on his mind, Lam reasoned, without having to deal with the combat situation, too.
When Lam did finally go to Noah, it was because the military situation they were in threatened to turn very bad very shortly.
The troop train had halted a mile away, and the troops had disembarked and were already marching down the track.
“What’s going on, Lam?” Noah said without looking up from the control rod he and two mechanics were working on with desperate
intensity.
“Things are not real good, Noah,” Lam said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“Give me fifteen minutes, Lam,” Noah said.
“Sooner than that,” Lam said. “We’re in for a lot of trouble.”
“Give me ten minutes, then,” Noah said without looking up. “What’s the problem—the
new
problem.”
“The immediate trouble,” Lam said, “is the gunfire that’s going on right now—but that we can handle. There can’t be many more
of them out there now than there are of us. At least half of the cavalry rode on up ahead. But the bad news is that the troop
train has finally got here, and it’s carrying artillery. They’re arriving any minute, and when they start using their cannon,
we might as well slip away quiet and fast, because there’s no way we can sustain cannon fire.”
“I understand.”
“What I’m telling you is this, Noah. I’m a colonel and you’re a major. This operation is your deal, and it’s been yours to
run. But when it comes down to the survival of my own men, I’m in charge. I’m not going to wait around for your lame engines
to get fixed when they start firing their cannon. We’re going to ride like hell out of here.”
“I understand, Lam,” Noah said through tight lips. He seemed emotionless, though he was anything but: he was ready to explode.
“Give us five minutes. We’ll move in five minutes or else you all leave. We don’t have much else to do here, and the trains
are steamed up and ready.”
“I’m sorry, Noah.”
“Go take care of your people, Lam. I’ll take care of my lame engines.”
Lam walked away without another word. He couldn’t think of anything to say.
By the time he reached the place where he had set up his command position, the volume of fire from the Union lines had doubled.
The first of their infantry reinforcements had arrived, and they were starting to press forward. Bugles cried, and weapons
flared, but it was impossible to see in the darkness what exactly was going on. Would they attack all along the lines, or
would they feint and probe and try to punch ahead to a breakthrough?
Lam’s line was 150 yards from the locomotives. He ordered his people to pull back, but slowly. He also had the horses made
ready for instant departure.
The Union troops had their cannon in place and ready to fire only moments after the bulk of the troops from the train arrived.
The cannon flashed for the first time the same instant fourteen locomotive whistles screamed as one, a single mad orgy of
noise so loud it drowned the terrifying roar of the cannon.
There were one, then two, then three cannon flashes. Grenville Dodge had his men well trained; they’d moved with great speed
to bring up the artillery. But their effect was much diminished by the majestic elephantine thunder of fourteen locomotives,
not quite in unison, but close, lumbering forward off the spur and onto the main line of the Mobile & Ohio.
“Let’s get the hell out of here!”
Lam hollered above the roar. His horse soldiers lost no time obeying him.
Two of the three cannon were firing canisters into the positions recently vacated by the Confederate cavalry, while the third
hurled shells in the direction of the locomotives. Some of the shells found their marks, and did damage. But none of the damage
was sufficient to impede the momentum of the engines as they pounded ahead, groaning forward.
Noah Ballard set himself up in the lead locomotive, Perseverance. The other thirteen followed at hundred-yard intervals, all
accelerating to a speed that just matched a comfortable canter for a horse.
After he had made sure that the members of his squadron were all accounted for, mounted, and heading south in good order,
Lam Kemble rode his own horse, Horatio, up beside the cab of Perseverance.
Noah leaned far out of the cab window, reached out, and grasped Lam’s hand. For a long moment the two men rode together joined
that way, until Lam had to swerve aside to miss an obstacle.
When he was again riding beneath the cab window, he called out, “What do you think?”
“I think, by God, that we did it!” Noah yelled.
“We did!” Lam answered. “And it was whisker close!”
“Thanks, Lam,” Noah added, growing more serious, “for standing by us until we could make our move.”
“For you,” Lam said, with a hint of his old grin of bravado, “anything. But only for you.”
“Did you lose many?”
“Surprisingly few,” Lam said. “Ten or fifteen casualties—they’re on some of your tenders, or should be—and three or four deaths.
For that we owe the darkness.”
“So the long wait had its small payoff.”
“Appears so,” Lam said. And then, “I have to go. We’ll keep to your flanks, the way we talked about this afternoon.”
“Much obliged, Lam,” Noah said with a wide flourish of his hat. “Much, much obliged.”
There was a section of track a dozen miles north of Tupelo that for nearly four miles went straight and flat as a line on
an engineer’s drawing. At other times and in other circumstances, the Mobil & Ohio engine drivers would have opened their
throttles wide and let their engines go flat out. Noah went into the flat section so elated that he was tempted to do that
tonight, even if it meant leaving his cavalry escort behind. But the temptation died as soon as Perseverance entered the section.
For Noah could see a gleam on the tracks maybe two miles ahead, a gleam that quickly grew to a smudge of flames. The second
unit of Union cavalry, the ones who had gone on ahead, had staked out a position up ahead, and they had signaled their intentions
by means of a flaming barricade.
The engine driver of Perseverance went into action as soon as he saw what the gleam was. He blew his whistle three long blasts—the
signal for the other thirteen engines to stop. And then he started letting off steam.
Noah thought about that move for a time, not liking it. But he didn’t contradict his driver. At least not yet. He glanced
to his right and left. Lam Kemble was already spreading his troops out in a wide, curving fan shape.
He drew up next to Noah’s cab. “We’re going to attack,” he yelled.
“Splendid,” Noah yelled back.
“You’re going to want to wait until the issue is decided, aren’t you?”
Noah thought for three or four heartbeats, then made up his mind. “No,” he yelled. “I’ve decided to push through.”
“Through the bonfire?”
“That’s right.”
“Jesus!” Lam said. Then, “But maybe that’s the best way.”
“It
is
the best way. You won’t have to stop. You’ll just sweep on through the Yankees. It means minimal risk and minimal casualties
for everybody.”
“Will your machines make it?”
“They should,” Noah said, glancing to the engine driver for support. “What do you think?” he asked.
“The engines should be fine,” the driver said. “I don’t worry about them.” He paused. “But I am worried about the track. If
that fire has been burning for long, it’ll have burned through a lot of ties and maybe warped some of the track.”
“What’s he say?” Lam asked, unable to hear the driver.
“He said that the flames may have ruined the track.”
“So what do you want to do?”
Noah turned again to the engine driver. “Short blasts!” he yelled, meaning short blasts on the whistle, the signal for full
speed ahead.
As Lam veered off to lead his charge, the fireman of the Perseverance poured wood into the firebox, and the machine surged
ahead.
“Sabers!”
Lam called out to his horse soldiers. Noah couldn’t hear the call, but he saw through the dark dozens of flashes of silver
illumined by the headlamps of the engines following behind his own.
Perseverance was pulling far ahead of the cavalry now, bearing down on the bonfire, making a noise like the bursting seams
of hell.
The engine’s pilot struck the burning mass. The locomotive shuddered, slowed, shuddered again. Then the pilot scooped the
logs and brush on the track up and away. Flaming embers, balls, and faggots hurtled into the air. Fiery missiles streaked
up and out and over and behind Perseverance, and for a long, incredible moment, the engine was surrounded by a terrible spreading,
arcing bloom of flames.
And then they were on the other side of the fire. And they were undamaged.
The tracks, Noah thought almost in afterthought, had held.
He craned out of the cab window to see what was going on behind him. As he did so, he remembered that the Federal troops would
probably be firing at him. But when he saw what was actually going on, any fear of that left him. Lam’s squadron had swept
down on the Federals, and through them.
“Slow down again,” Noah ordered, and the engine driver obeyed.
Once they had passed well beyond the Federal positions, Lam’s horsemen closed in around the fourteen locomotives.
They’d all be in Tupelo in a short while, and in Meridian by morning.
Sam Hawken’s fingers traced lightly the tip of Miranda Kemble’s nipple. He moved his finger pads tenderly across it, feathery
but firm, as delicate and confident of his touch as a master musician, and then trilled down onto the rose-tan flesh that
encircled it. There was a long moment when his fingers stopped their moving, resting in the slow, steady rise and fall of
her breathing. When his motion resumed, he inscribed with the nail edge of his index finger the borders of her railroad-funnel
scar.