The Railroad War (52 page)

“I’m going to leave you young people to yourselves,” Ash said. “That’s the best way to handle things. You aren’t going to
want an old man spoiling your fun, and innocent pleasure,” he grinned. “But I will add something special to the mix. I have
a quantity of very old, private-reserve, single-malt whiskey that I picked up sometime ago in Aberdeen. I’ll decant enough
of it to lubricate the affair.”

“You know what I think?” Miranda said quietly, almost timidly. “I think we’re going to have to tell the truth.”

The four of them—Miranda, Ariel, Lam, and Noah—gathered that evening on the second-floor gallery of the house on Pryor Street.
The gallery was just off the rooms that Lam, and now Noah, as well, used for sleeping, so it was a hardship for neither man
to hobble out to it. Chaise longues had been set up for them, and rocking chairs for the women. A crystal decanter and four
glasses had been placed on a small table. The decanter contained Ashbel Kemble’s single malt whiskey. There was also a lamp,
more for comfort than illumination.

A light, misty rain was falling, and it was cool.

But it was not so cool as to drive the young people inside. Light shawls on the women’s shoulders took care of their comfort,
and Ariel draped woolen throws across the legs of the boys.

Miranda decided to pass up her rocking chair. Instead she placed herself next to a column on the porch railing, which was
wide enough for her. Ariel moved her own chair very close to Noah’s chaise, for she spent the greater part of her energies
that day devoting herself to him. The effect of her devotion had been to drive out the worst of the demons that had encamped
in him after his battle with his father.

Miranda noted with interest Ariel’s position beside Noah, and she noted with even greater interest Ariel’s evident dedication
to caring for him. Her concern obviously went beyond mere nursing.

Ariel had not been brought into the conversations between Miranda, Lam, and Ashbel. The three feared that her grief over the
loss of Ben would color her judgment. But when Miranda became aware of Ariel sitting next to Noah, with all her concern directed
so sweetly toward him, she began to wonder if the three conspirators wouldn’t have served their cause better by telling Ariel
the truth—just as they planned to reveal it to Noah.

Well, Miranda thought, she’s going to hear the truth soon enough. If all goes as I hope it will….

Meanwhile she continued to be astonished at Lam’s remarkable recovery. He was by no means out of danger yet, but the sheer
fact that he’d been able to make his way under his own steam from bed to gallery was an exciting development. Did the energy
he was putting into the plot to save Sam also have a beneficial effect on his own recovery? she wondered.

The whiskey relaxed Noah and Lam, as Ash had designed it to, and it lubricated their conversation—not that either of them
required help from chemical intoxicants to talk rivers of words to one another. But each of them had come through difficult
times. The single malt was calming, with a taste that was deliciously smoky.

The talk in the gallery that evening started out light and airy, yet they were also warm and affectionate to one another.
By common and mutual, though silent, consent none of them brought up any of the matters that gnawed at their hearts. It was
enough that all four of them were together. Their warm communion was sufficient reason for rejoicing.

Even Noah Ballard managed to talk and smile with relative ease. And that meant that no one had cause to worry about him. He
wasn’t his old, whole self, but he wasn’t sullen and miserable and full of self-contempt, either.

When Ash and Lam agreed with Miranda on a course of truth-telling with Noah, the three of them fully expected that Miranda
and Lam would be able to choose the best moment to act on the course they’d chosen.

So it came as a surprise to both of them when Noah forced matters before either of them could do it.

“You all are holding back something from me,” he said out of the blue in a soft but firmly insistent voice. “What are you
holding back?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Ariel said quickly and truthfully, since she had not been privy to the private conversations.

At the same time Ariel was no fool, and she had already made some guesses about what was going on, some guesses that proved
to be in the main accurate.

So when she saw the flash of consternation on her sister’s and brother’s faces after Noah dropped his bombshell, she decided
she would do the only right thing—she would give them time.

“I’m not hiding anything from you, Noah. And I can’t imagine that Miranda or Lam would, either.”

“I believe you’re innocent, Ariel,” Noah said. “Truly I do. But I’ve been used by so many people over the past months that
I’ve grown cautious. Before they hauled me over those rocky places, I’d given my respect to the people that did the hauling.
And one or two of them were even family.

“So tell me, Lam,” he said, staring hard at his friend, “what are you keeping from me? And,” his voice dropped an octave,
“how are you trying to use me?”

There was a long, nervous silence, which Miranda was the one to finally break.

“Tell him, Lam,” she said. “Tell him the truth.”

“I need some more whiskey,” Lam said. “A good deal more. Would you pour it, Ariel? I’d much appreciate that.” Ariel rose to
comply, “And you better give Noah a large splash as well.”

“I’m doing fine,” Noah said with a negative shake of his head.

“All right,” Ariel said, tilting the decanter over Lam’s glass.

“You better take some for yourself, too, Ariel, and give some to Miranda.”

“We both told you we don’t want any whiskey,” Ariel said.

“You’ve had enough time, Lam,” Noah said. “Why don’t you tell me the truth, the way Miranda said?”

Lam drank close to three of his four fingers of scotch whiskey, then said, “Well, it’s like this, Noah.” He stopped, drew
in a deep breath, and continued, “My sister Miranda ran into Sam Hawken in Atlanta last month. They’d met and liked one another
when the three of us graduated from the Academy, and they wrote a few letters back and forth after that, but the war came,
and they lost touch.

“Anyway, last month Sam was on his way out of town, and she saw him and offered to help.”

“Stop,” Noah said. “Wait.” He turned to Miranda. “You knew he was a Federal spy when you took him in?”

“Yes,” she said softly.

“You knew you were helping an enemy of your country?”

“This is not my country, Noah. I just live here. The United States is my country.”

“You own land here,” Noah announced quietly, without apparent rancor. “You were born here.”

“All the same…” she said. “I didn’t take Sam in
because
he was a Federal spy. I took him in because he was
Sam
and he was—is—my friend.”

“He’s more than a friend, isn’t he?” Noah asked, still thoughtful.

“Yes, Noah,” she whispered. “Much more.”

“God!” Noah sighed, shaking his head slowly.

“I can’t say I’m sorry,” she said.

“I won’t ask you to say that, Miranda. It’s just that…goddamn! He’s a goddamned Union
spy!”

“He’s also a friend, Noah, and he did save your life.”

“I know that. I won’t forget it. And,” he muttered bitterly, “nobody else I know will let me forget it.”

“We want to save him,” Lam announced cautiously. “That’s the other thing we’ve waited to tell you.”

Noah gave him a short nod. “I thought so; that makes sense.” He smiled sadly. “You know something, all of you? I was ready
to pin on that man every piece of hatred and rage I’d saved up for the entire North—and I have not a few pieces of hatred
saved up. His being a friend is probably what made it so easy to blame him, to make him the chief symbol of all that I despise.

“And he’s not innocent, either—not by a long shot. Just for one instance: on the night of the fourteenth of July, a train
carrying hundreds of women and children and old people collided head-on with a locomotive going at full throttle. Sam was
the one who set the locomotive running toward that train.”

“I know about that,” Miranda said.

“He told you about it?” Noah asked.

“He told me,” she said. “He also told me that he never knew there were women and children on that train.”

“And you believe him?” Noah asked, still soft voiced, without visible anger or hostility.

“I do, Noah. How could he have been aware of what any of those trains were carrying? He didn’t make the schedules. He’s not
God. He’s not omniscient. He was just doing what he was sent to do.”

“But that’s just it. That’s what bothers me most of all about Sam, or at least that’s what bothers me now. No gentleman, in
fact no man who professes to be civilized, would allow himself to be sent on the missions Sam Hawken went on. It wasn’t just
that he wasn’t forced to commit the crime of espionage, Sam put all of his energy and intelligence to the task of doing it
well. He has more of both than most men, and the job that bastard did was superb—but goddamn!”

“You’re right,” Lam said. “I agree with everything you’ve said, except for one thing. Sam Hawken has done nothing that I can
see that is criminal. He’s done what every soldier does—unless his crime consists in doing it on the other side of his enemy’s
battle lines. Is it the line that makes the criminal, Noah? Is it all right to smash up a train on the line, but not across
it?

“Would a southern gentleman be justified in taking a shot at President Abraham Lincoln across the battle lines?” He looked
at Noah, then answered his own question. “Of course,” he said with certainty. “Would the same gentleman be justified in putting
the same bullet into the same gentleman on a street in Washington?”

“I can’t answer that,” Noah said, staring off into the light misting rain. He looked empty, depleted.

“I can’t either,” Lam replied. “And if we asked Sam, I bet he couldn’t answer it any more than the two of us.”

“But there are rules of war, laws, conventions to follow,” Noah insisted. “And there has to be, or else we are all barbarians.
Sam broke the laws of war, and he knew he was breaking them.”

Lam fell silent, then turned and locked his one good eye on Noah’s. “And your own father…?” he asked. “What rules has he kept
sacred?”

“He wasn’t…” Noah stammered. He finally managed to say, “He’s not the same as Sam. They’re different. It’s not fair to speak
of them in the same breath.”

“That’s exactly what I’m trying to get through to you. Sam may or may not have failed to observe the laws you hold so dear.
But he never betrayed you, Noah.”

“I’ve thought about that all day,” Noah sighed.

“Tell me, Noah,” Lam said very slowly, very softly, “what are you going to do about your father?”

“Do about him?” Noah said, his voice a controlled sob. “Now? Nothing. Later? I don’t know. He and Will Hottel have won for
now. There’s not a goddamned thing I can do to change that. The thing’s done, and I’m a goddamned fool to have let Will Hottel
have his way with me.” Then he added bitterly, “To have let both Will Hottel
and
my father have their way with me. I believed Will Hottel when he told me he had secret orders from James Seddon to do with
those engines exactly what I wanted done with them. He had secret orders all right, but from my father.”

“I think you’re right,” Lam agreed. “It looks like the two of them have got you where they want you, and there’s not much
you can do about it.” Lam caught Miranda’s eye and gave her a compelling, confident wink. “I guess what’s left for you to
do is slink back to Mississippi once your leg heals, and bury yourself in your work.”

Noah did not, could not respond to that. Finally he looked at Ariel. “You better pour me some more of that whiskey,” he said.

“Your father’s been passing it around that you saved Sam’s life in the storm.”

“That’s the story my father’s giving,” Noah agreed.

“What do you think he’s doing that for?” Lam asked cautiously.

“I don’t know,” Noah answered, confused and uncertain.

“I guess it makes him look good when I look good.”

“Yes,” Lam replied, “it does. But it also gives you something to be in complicity with him about, doesn’t it?”

“What do you mean?” Noah asked softly.

“It means that if you go along with that lie, you put yourself—partly at least—on his side.”

Noah gave a nod. “Yes, I guess that’s right.”

Lam didn’t add to what he had already said. Ariel sat on the edge of her chair, having returned there after filling Noah’s
glass. And Miranda sat on her rail, her hands gripping it; they were white with tension.

“What do you want me to do, all of you?” Noah asked, looking at each of the Kembles in turn, his eyes lingering longest on
Ariel.

Ariel was the first to respond to him. “How about telling the truth?”

“What do you mean?”

“Here is the thing, Noah. I wasn’t in on the talking Lam and Miranda were doing all afternoon. And I wasn’t in on any of the
conversation the two of them had with Uncle Ash, either. So in a lot of ways I’m as much in the dark as you are about what
they’re up to. What I know—and believe—is just what you’ve heard this evening. I think you’ve heard the truth—or at least
as much of it as they know. I trust my brother and my sister, and I trust my uncle, too. And I think you ought to do the same.
There’s more reason to trust them than there is to trust most of the other people we’ve talked about this evening.”

Miranda felt at that moment more grateful to her sister than she had ever felt before.

“So what should I do?” Noah asked.

“Do as she said,” Lam answered. “Tell the truth about Sam. Do it so you won’t be in complicity with your father. Do it knowing
it’s not a big victory against your father—but it’s a victory for you.

“We need you to help us delay the trial. Ash thinks he has a way to save Sam, but he needs a couple of weeks to carry it off.
If we can delay the trial, Ash will have time to put through his plan.”