The Railroad War (27 page)

“And what likelihood of success did you believe you had?”

“I thought there was a pretty fair chance of success at the time.” He paused. “And events proved I was correct. We got away
from them.”

And they laughed at us as we left, Noah said to himself.

Johnston just sat there and stared at Noah with an expression that wasn’t so much disgust as regret, which was worse. “Well,
son,” he said finally, “that does put some light on your actions. You were pissed over recent setbacks, so you determined
to tweak the Yankees’ noses. You’ve comported yourself in a fashion suitable, I’d venture to say, to a fifteen-year-old.

“Yes, sir,” was all Noah could manage.

“You, Major, are worth more to me than a troop of cavalry, because some of the time you use your head. So don’t go off half-cocked
again, ever. Hear me?”

“Yes, sir,” Noah whispered.

“Now get the hell out of here,” the general said. “And let me know by tomorrow morning what you plan to do about wrecking
the locomotives.”

When Noah Ballard emerged from General Johnston’s headquarters, Will Hottel was waiting for him, smiling like the cat who
just swallowed the canary.

“Who died?” Hottel asked when he saw Noah’s expression.

“What?” Noah asked, dazed at what he’d just undergone.

“Was it your mother or your sweetheart?”

“Oh,” Noah said. He wasn’t amused. Why is he so full of joy? Noah wondered.

“So,” Hottel said, “tell me what went on in there.”

“More painful than purgatory, but not so long as hell.”

“That bad?”

Noah shrugged. “I got chewed out for the business I led you into the other day.”

“He didn’t appreciate what you did?”

“Hardly.”

“Nor your reasons for doing it?”

“Even less.”

“Well, that’s too bad,” Hottel said with a sympathetic sigh. “Did you bring up the locomotives?”

“He won’t budge on that,” Noah said.

“Well, come on, then,” Hottel said. “We’re going to Butler’s.” Butler owned and ran what passed locally for a hotel. Much
more important than its accommodations for travelers was its saloon.

“What for?” Noah said. “I don’t need to drink right now; I need to get away by myself.”

“No, you don’t. You need to come with me to Butler’s. Goodman and the other two are there now.”

“What do I need to see them for?”

“Just come.”

Goodman, Butterworth, and Floyd had taken a round table in a corner of Butler’s Saloon. It wasn’t an especially large table,
but by dint of considerable squeezing, both Noah and Hottel were able to fit in.

“Drinks, gentlemen?” Goodman asked as soon as the maneuvering was successfully completed.

“Nothing for me,” Noah said.

“ I’ll have what you men are having,” Hottel said. They were drinking rum. Goodman motioned to Butler, and Will Hottel’s rum
arrived shortly.

“That was pretty damned rough in there,” Butterworth said.

“It sure as hell was,” Floyd agreed. “I’d always heard that Joe Johnston was stubborn, but I never realized how stubborn.
He just about takes the prize for bullheadedness.”

“I guess he probably does,” Goodman said. Then he turned to Will Hottel, but his gaze included Noah, too. “Despite the way
things went in there, I want to thank you two gentlemen for standing by us.”

For covering up for you, you mean, Noah thought bitterly. He didn’t like these men, and he wasn’t proud of what he’d done
to save their asses.

“And for holding steadfast to the truth, as you saw it,” Goodman continued. “I expect that we’d have been in considerable
hot water if you both had decided to speak and write other than the way you did.”

“We do our duty,” Hottel said somewhat sanctimoniously, Noah thought. Noah just nodded.

“Yes, thank you both.” Floyd and Butterworth raised their glasses, and Goodman joined them.

“Now if you gentlemen could only save those locomotives as successfully as you’ve located them,” Goodman said after he’d lowered
his glass. “For that, of course, I would be eternally grateful.”

Floyd and Butterworth gave him a look, but he ignored them. “It would have been a great shame if the equipment had remained…lost
to the end of the war.”

“With respect to the preservation of those locomotives,” Will Hottel said carefully, “we may not be totally without resources,
even in the face of the very stubborn General Joseph Johnston.”

“Do please elaborate on that, Captain,” Goodman said, keeping his anticipation and curiosity closely reined. “Is it because
of your awareness of those resources,” he asked, looking pointedly at Hottel, “that you saw fit to bring us all together now?”

So it’s Hottel who called this gathering, Noah said to himself. Why? And why has he been in such a good humor after the general’s
decree?

“Yes, of course,” Hottel said easily, spreading his arms welcomingly. “I didn’t want to see anyone plunged into despair,”
he smiled, “over a situation that might prove transient.”

“Yes?” Goodman said. “What do you know that we don’t?”

“That Colonel Sims, the chief of the Railroad Bureau, currently has the ear of Secretary Seddon.” James Seddon was the Confederate
Secretary of War. “And that I have been in communication with Colonel Sims by telegraph ever since I began to make my, ah,
fortuitous discoveries of locomotives in northern Mississippi. This knowledge Colonel Sims has transmitted to the Secretary.
And, I take it, the Secretary has expressed considerable interest in the equipment.”

“What does that mean practically?” Walter Goodman asked cautiously.

“I think it means practically that the Secretary might be persuaded to order General Johnston to change his mind about destroying
the locomotives
if
you gentlemen would be prepared to give them to the Railroad Bureau.” His eyes flashed at their sudden consternation. “As
a loan,” he added with a smile, “until the completion of the war.”

“But that’s impossible,” Anson Floyd said. “Those are our locomotives. We require them here.”

“I agree,” Butterworth said. “What you have proposed is tantamount to their destruction.”

“Perhaps you gentlemen have forgotten,” Hottel pointed out, “that many of those machines originated in Tennessee and were
brought south, presumably for safe keeping. Perhaps half of them, in other words, are not legally yours to start with. What
I am suggesting is that we attempt to take these locomotives where they will be most useful.”

Noah now began to realize why Hottel had been so pleased with himself all morning. He probably stood to get the locomotives
for the Railroad Bureau. And he stood to get the cooperation of these men in doing it—something that Noah had never believed
possible.

“What I think you’re telling us,” Walter Goodman said, “is that if we donate the equipment to you, then we might get it back
at some later date.”

“Exactly,” Hottel said with a smile.

“And that if we don’t donate it to you, then you will stand aside and let Joe Johnston have it destroyed.”

“Exactly.”

“That doesn’t leave us much choice, does it? Either way, we don’t have much to run our railroads with.”

Hottel frowned in mock sympathy. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “But I trust you energetic and resourceful gentlemen will
manage somehow. Meanwhile I do need your backing on this—so Colonel Sims assures me—if we are to win Secretary Seddon’s approval.
He doesn’t want to act unless he has the assurance that you men are willing to go along with the idea.”

Goodman pondered that for a time. Then he bowed his head with all the enthusiasm of a condemned man lowering his neck to the
block. He looked at the other railroad men. “Well?” he asked, and they both gave resigned assents.

“Then I can assume that all of us are together in this endeavor?” Hottel said.

“Yes, we’ll do it,” Goodman said, and the others nodded.

“How about you, Noah?” Hottel asked. “I haven’t heard from you since you came into Butler’s. I had every expectation that
you’d be delighted at the outcome of this gathering.”

“Let’s do it,” Noah said, feeling considerably less pleased than Will Hottel had believed he would. This whole meeting was
leaving Noah Ballard very uneasy. And yet he knew that he was obtaining his greatest wish—he was getting the locomotives.

Three days later a telegram arrived from the Secretary of War in Richmond. The gist of it was that every effort was to be
made to preserve the sixty-seven locomotives in northern Mississippi and to transport them to Atlanta by whatever means proved
feasible.

Fanny Shaw fidgeted in her Drury Lane dressing room while her attendant removed her costume. Fanny had just completed a performance
as Lady Macbeth, and she was thrilled with herself. The role was one of her favorites, with its mixture of fire and ice, passion
and treachery. It was a role for which she was well suited. Fanny shared with the wife of the Scottish king a kind of ambition
and force of will that most men found unbecoming in the fair sex. She was not, however, as willing as Lady Macbeth to sacrifice
the lives of others to her ambitions.

Fanny’s performance this evening, she was convinced, had been electrifying, and the audience—a full house—had responded with
gratifying enthusiasm. There was absolutely nothing in the world so exhilarating as wave upon wave of applause from a theater
full of people. Adulation was a much more potent drug than laudanum or alcohol.

Once she was out of the flowing, heavily draped gown, Fanny slipped into a light robe, sat down before her dressing table,
and stared into the mirror. She’d observe herself in this way just twice more before the run of
Macbeth
would be finished.

She regretted that, but she was also looking forward to the freedom the end of the run would yield. Friends in Dorset had
begged her to visit them for a week. She would grant them their wish gladly, for they had fine horses, and Fanny loved riding.
She rode like a man, in trousers, astride her horse rather than sidesaddle. And she sat her horse better than most men did,
better even than most longtime cavalry officers. Her penchant for taking solitary rides had been one of the thousand causes
of friction between herself and her former husband, Pierce Kemble.

Fanny had not yet learned of Pierce’s death.

There was a sharp, loud rapping on her door.

“Tell them to go away, will you please, Becky?” Fanny asked her attendant, Becky Grantham. “I don’t want admirers this evening.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Becky said.

While Becky went to the door, Fanny worked at her greasepaint with a cotton cloth.

There were words at the door between Becky and the visitor, but Fanny was much too involved with the task at hand to pay attention
to what was said. Nor did she notice Becky approaching with an armful of long-stemmed white roses.

“Look, ma’am,” Becky said excitedly.

“Not yet,” Fanny said. She was wiping away the makeup on her eyelids.

“You’ll want to hurry, ma’am,”Becky said.

But Fanny took her time.

“There,” she said when she was satisfied. “Now what have we to look at?” She turned to Becky and cried out in amazement. The
girl held more than three dozen white roses, and she was beaming like a new bride.

“Oh, my,” Fanny said softly. Then louder, “Oh, my! Who could have possibly done this for me?”

“There was no card, ma’am.”

“No card?” Fanny said, perplexed.

For the first time, Fanny noticed a figure standing in the shadow between Becky and the still open doorway. He was a cripple,
bent and gnarled of body, shabbily dressed, with a slouch hat and a muffler obscuring most of his face.

“Who are you?” she called out. “How did you get in?”

Becky turned to him. “I thought I told you to stand outside,” she said to the man, annoyed that he would disobey her. “I didn’t
tell you to enter.”

“I’m sorry, mum,” the man croaked, “but I wuz s’posed to bring the flowers to the lidy personal, and so 1 done it like I promised.”

“That didn’t mean barging into a lady’s dressing room, you ugly mongrel,” Becky said.

The man’s body seemed to sag even more, if such a thing were possible. “Sorry, mum. I wuz only doin’ me dooty, if yer gets
me meanin’.”

“Come on,” Becky said. “Out with you.” And, roses and all, she moved to drive him out the door. The man shuffled to obey her,
moving awkwardly sideways like a crab.

“Wait,” Fanny said.

Both Becky and the man came to a stop. The man inclined his face a little toward Fanny, but not enough to reveal any of his
features.

“Who sent you?” she asked.

“A gen’lmun. ‘E woul’n’t give ‘is nime,” the man said in his croaking voice. “But ‘e wuz a forrin’r, I’d judge from the wiy
‘e spoke. Tall, wealthy, ‘andsome, dashin’, powerful, alluz gits ‘z wiy—if yer gets me meanin’.” Fanny gave him a hard, penetrating
look. ” ‘E ast if yer wuz free ter dine wif ‘im. An’‘e sez I’m not ter tike no fer an answer.”

There was something about the man’s voice beneath the croak that Fanny recognized, and something about the man, beneath the
bent, gnarled body and the crabwise shuffle, that was familiar. The man’s voice was a pretty fair imitation of an East End
guttural, but his vowels and consonants were actually disguised southern American.

“How am I to meet this…gentleman,” Fanny said, perceiving in a flash who the man really was, “if I do indeed choose to dine
with him?” Fanny asked.

I’ll give him back as good as he’s giving me, she thought, laughing to herself.

“I’m ter tike yer to ‘im,” the man said.

“I couldn’t possibly be seen with the likes of you,” Fanny said firmly.

“Yer’d be much ‘vised to do’t, mum. The gen’lmun don’t tike no fer an answer, like I said. An’’e’s a mean one. I’d hite ter
tike the cons’quence uv refusin’’im, if yer tikes me meanin’.”

“After such a recommendation,” Fanny said in her best and most outraged Duchess of Malfi tones, “how can I dare to take this
man’s offer. I’ll
never
do such a thing.” Then she turned to Becky. “Deposit the roses with their original bearer. I do not choose to accept them.”
Then to the man: “But before you retrace your steps to your master, do me the kindness of showing me your face.”