The Railroad War (51 page)

“He decided to forget all that, it looks like, after his life got saved.”

“That’s good. He can be a horse’s ass sometimes.”

“Most of the time,” Sutton said. “You’d think he’d be grateful to you for being alive, and consider returning the favor.”

“There’s nothing he could do even if he wanted to,” Sam said.

Sutton shook his head. “I’m not so sure,” he said, moving to the cell door. “Well, I’ve got to go.”

“I’ll see you, Jim.”

“Yeah.”

Then he gave a holler for the guard and was let out.

Sam’s second visitor was Jane Featherstone.

When she appeared at the cell door, he laughed. “Well, congratulations, Jane. I knew you would make it. It would take more
than a storm and a sinking boat to snuff out Miss Jane Featherstone.”

“Try to be civil this once, Sam,” she said. “I haven’t much time. I have to catch a train.”

“Be my guest,” he said civilly. “How’s Noah?”

“I haven’t seen Noah. And I won’t see him.”

“What did you do to him that made him see the light?”

“Sam, goddamn you!”

“My apologies, Jane. My mouth runs away from me sometimes. I have a will to prevaricate, but somehow or other the truth gets
blurted out.”

“I’m going to ignore your taunts and your mocking, Sam,” she said. “I’ll never get out of here if I don’t.”

“Please continue.”

“What I’ve come to tell you, Sam,” she said, pressing on, “is that I’m going to California.”

“That
is
good news—and smart, Jane. Traveling away from this place is a brilliant move. There’s danger you’ll be recognized here.
And if they do, I imagine they can find one more cell. It only has to be a small one.”

“I’m not going to try to keep on with Noah,” she said, continuing to ignore his sarcastic comments. “I’m not good for him.”

He started clapping. “Good for you.”

“But you could have come with me,” she said seriously.

“Unfortunately, I’m already engaged.”

“I can’t do anything here. I could have gotten you out of Mobile, though. You knew that. And we could have been halfway to
San Francisco by now. I have money there, and you could have turned it into much more.”

“The dream is staggering, isn’t it?”

“Why didn’t you come with me when you had the chance, Sam?”

“The truth is, Jane, that all the other alternatives looked more inviting.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I guess I am.”

“Well, then, I’m sorry, Sam.” She rose to leave. “Goodbye again. It’s a shame…”

“You know something, Jane? I have a dread suspicion that we’ll keep on running into one another, even after I leave Atlanta.”

“I’m not going where you’re going.”

He shrugged.

Sam Hawken’s third visitor was Ashbel Kemble.

“You’re not someone I expected to see in a cell in Atlanta, Mr. Kemble,” Sam told Ash after introductions were taken care
of. “But it’s a pleasure to see a friendly face, that’s for sure.”

“I’ll only stay a few seconds now, Captain,” Ash said. “I hope to be able to spend much more time with you later.”

Sam looked up at Ash sharply at the remark, but he didn’t attempt a response.

“But we have a few, quick matters of business to take care of now.”

“You didn’t come…?” Sam stopped himself. He was about to say “from Miranda,” but he realized that she may not have told this
man about him, that she may not have wanted to admit to her connection with a spy who was close to being executed.

“You were about to ask if Miranda sent me?” Ash said with a broad, warm smile. Sam liked this man.

Sam nodded, just a little sheepishly.

“She’s told me all about you,” Ash went on. “And in so doing, she has given me considerable reason to think well of you, and
to wish to see the two of you together in a more lasting way. And yes, she’s most of the reason why I’m here. And yes, she
sends you her love. And yes, I had to fight her off in order to keep her from coming with me. It simply wouldn’t do to bring
her—though I know how much you both want to be with one another.” He smiled again. “Is that good enough, son? Is that what
you want to hear?”

“It’ll do until something better comes,” Sam said. “You’ll tell her that I miss her. And that…”

“I know what you’ll want to say to her, and you can be sure I’ll give her the message. Meanwhile I told you I have business
with you.”

“I’m not sure there’s any business I’m in a position to transact.”

“You leave that to me to decide, son.”

“All right,” Sam said with an amazed shake of his head.

“But you have managed to put your finger on the heart of the problem we have to face,” Ash said wryly. “Your reputation in
these parts right now could hardly be lower, and your prospects are pretty dismal, too. However, I think there’s a chance
we can do something about that. And without,” he added when he saw the look Sam was giving him, “having to bring in a Federal
army corps to break you loose.”

“I can’t say I’m not eager to hear what you have in mind,” Sam said, unable to contain his smile.

“All in due time,” Ash said. “All in due time. The first thing we have to do, though, is make sure that there’s no trial any
time soon. Once the trial has happened,” he shrugged, “well, that’s it.”

“I’d prefer not to go through that trial.”

“So what do you think about Noah Ballard?” Ash asked, abruptly changing the subject. “Do you think he will testify for you
or against you?”

“I think Noah Ballard will try to tell things the way they appeared to him. He won’t lie.”

“So part of him is going to say that you did all those bad things they say you did, and part of him is going to want to say
that you saved his life.”

“I imagine that’s the way he’d like to testify.”

“He
will
testify that way,” Ash said, “unless he decides to forget some of the bad things.”

“The truth is, Mr. Kemble, that most of the things they say I’ve done, I did do. Whether or not what I’ve done is bad or not
is the point at issue. And that depends on where you stand geographically.”

“You should have been a Jesuit, son, and not a soldier.”

“Then I wouldn’t have been able to court your niece.”

“Not officially, no,” he laughed. “But consider this, Captain. Last night I sought and obtained the permission of Noah Ballard’s
father to bring him over to stay with my nephew, Lam.”.

“Noah is all right, then? I haven’t heard.”

“He’s all right—except that he’ll probably go through the rest of his life with a gimp leg and a rolling walk. It’s Lam that
just missed the big one. But he’s apparently going to be fine, too.”

“I’m glad of that.”

“So, like I said, I brought the two boys together. I thought they’d both recover easier together than all alone. And I had
other ideas, too.”

“I’m beginning to see that.”

“But before I did that, I went to see Noah last night, and I took Miranda with me. I learned some things then that I hardly
expected to learn.” He looked at Sam. “Are you familiar with the story of how and why Noah brought his locomotives to Atlanta?”

“I know he wanted to do it badly. And I know how desperately his people need them. It’s why I was sent to stop them.”

“Right. Well, one small addition to that: Noah was given the impression by Captain Hottel that the locomotives would be kept
together and placed into a kind of Confederate military railway corporation. You’ve got something like that in the North.
They can take what rolling stock and equipment they need—expropriate it—and use it for as long as they need it.

“He thought they were going to get that kind of thing here.” Ash paused for a long breath. “But he was lied to. The locomotives
are going to be divided up among various rail lines in Georgia and Alabama. His own father looks to be getting something like
twenty in the deal.”

“How did you find out all this?”

“Part of it came out last night, and the rest of it came out this morning. We sent a carriage over to pick Noah up. What we
found out when we got there was that Noah and his father had fought all night. One of them would probably have killed the
other if Noah had been able to walk.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “I know Noah.”

“What came out of it is that Noah and his father aren’t likely to be friendly for the rest of their lifetimes. And the other
thing is that Captain Hottel was paid twenty-five thousand dollars in gold to oversee transferring the engines to Atlanta.”

“Jesus!” Sam said.

“And both Hottel and John Ballard knew that Noah was the best person on the scene in Mississippi to bring the locomotives
through.”

“But they didn’t tell him the real reason he was doing it?”

“John Ballard couldn’t trust Noah
not
to be virtuous.”

“It’s a hell of a thing,” Sam laughed, “when a father can’t trust his own son to be bad. Noah just resists being bad. When
Noah Ballard joins a crusade, there’s no turning him.”

“That’s just what John Ballard said.”

“Well, he should know,” Sam said.

“The point about all this, son,” Ash said, moving on, “is that your old friend Noah Ballard is a very confused young man.
His whole world has been thrown into violent and, I suspect, terrifying disorder. If things don’t look totally topsy-turvy
to him right now, I’ll be very much surprised. And my guess is that even as we talk, he’s lying in his bed asking himself
hard questions about what makes him tick—about loyalty, and trust, and betrayal. And what will happen next is that he’s going
to have to reassess a lot of things.

“And you’re going to be one of the chief things he’s going to reevaluate—not that you’re going to suddenly become an exemplar
of virtue and right thinking—don’t get me wrong about that. But you are just not going to look as bad as you once did.

“And that means he will probably be persuaded to speak up on your behalf—at least to the extent of disposing the people in
charge to delay your trial.”

“I won’t dispute that delay,” Sam said. “But what good will it do me?”

“That you’ll have to leave to me, son,” Ash replied. “But believe me, a lot can be changed in two weeks—if we can put together
a two-week delay.”

“Well, I’m at your service,” Sam said with a smile, beginning to think that he liked this man very much.

“There’s one thing you can do for me,” Ash said. “You can tell me about your sergeant friend Jim Sutton.”

“What do you need to know?”

“Can I trust him? Will he help me if I ask him?”

“Depends, I guess, on what you want him to do. But he’s a good man. You can believe him if he says he’ll help you.”

“You know where to find him?”

Sam told him.

“I’ll be in touch with you, Sam,” Ash said.

For the rest of the day Ashbel Kemble held delicate and very unofficial talks with the great powers of Atlanta—with James
Calhoun, Colonel Marcus Wright, the Reverend Charles Todd Quintard, a doctor by the name of Meade, who was in charge of the
hospitals, and one or two others. Despite the many tactical difficulties involved, the talks moved satisfactorily. He felt
by the end of the day that he was making good initial progress.

While Ash was occupied, Miranda had at some length bared her soul to her brother. For the first time she opened up to him
about her love for Sam Hawken.

When she first began to bare her soul before him, she expected a battle to follow. And she was prepared to be bruised in the
fighting, for she was convinced Lam would be nearly impossible to win over. How could a passionate and convinced son of the
South like Lam ever approve of her Yankee spy lover?

But the battle she expected failed to occur. She had not reckoned on Lam’s love for her—or on Lam’s own good sense and hard-earned
experience. It turned out that Lam did not hate Sam Hawken. He even doubted that Sam had actually committed crimes against
the South.

To Lam, Sam’s original choice of loyalties was questionable, but his acts following from that were not. Indeed, Sam’s spying
and his destruction of property were the equivalent of the kind of long-range cavalry raids that he himself had taken part
in, and for which he had been decorated.

And besides, for Lam his family came before his country. As long as Miranda wanted to unite herself with a gentleman, then
he would do everything in his power to help her.

Thus Lam proved to be anything but an obstacle to Miranda. It was almost disarmingly easy for Miranda to enlist him in the
campaign to handle the problem of Noah Ballard.

Uncle Ash made a brief, rushed appearance at supper-time. He ate a hasty meal with Miranda, Ariel, Robbie, and Fanny Shaw.
Much to Fanny’s chagrin, the meal had all the leisure and grace of a rest stop at a station during a rail trip. After supper,
Ash led Miranda up to Lam’s bedroom, and the three of them held a fast strategy session.

During the session he declined either to tell them anything at all concerning the talks he’d held all day, or to answer any
of Miranda’s or Lam’s insistent questions about them.

“Privacy is the first requisite of diplomacy,” he explained. Neither accepted his explanation, and neither succeeded in prying
anything out of him.

The one piece of news he allowed them was the hopeful and disturbing fact that Noah Ballard was the crucial link in the effort
to save Sam Hawken’s life. Ash needed two weeks, he told them, to activate the plan he believed could save Sam. The great
powers of Atlanta were willing to give him his two weeks—provided they could put forward a plausible excuse to do it.

That meant the trial had to be delayed, and that meant that the key witness must be persuaded to offer some mitigating reasons
to delay it. The great powers had agreed to accept the reasons, Ash explained, but Noah had to come up with them.

“So how are we going to deal with him?” Lam asked. “Noah is not well disposed to help Sam Hawken.”

“No,” Ash admitted, “and in his current frame of mind, I don’t expect he’s going to move easily off the position he’s occupying.”

“I think we’re just going to have to do the best we can with the cards we’ve been dealt,” Lam said. “We’ll sit with him this
evening, and we’ll chat about old times together, and we’ll play the difficult part by ear.”