Rebel Train: A Civil War Novel

by David Healey

  "Tickets, please!" he repeated. Greer was friendly in an officious way as he passed through the car. He puffed out his chest as he paraded the aisles in his blue conductor's uniform with its bright, brass buttons. It was as fancy as any general's uniform. He nodded at the men, tipped his hat to the women.

  His eye lingered longer than usual on the couple who occupied the last seat. The two had come aboard at Mount Clare Station in Baltimore with tickets for Cumberland, a tall, muscular man with a pretty young woman on his arm. They wore flashy clothes — the man a bowler hat with a red silk tie at his neck, the woman wearing a wide hoop skirt that rustled with expensive crinoline petticoats. The front of the dress was cut low enough to reveal the milky white tops of her breasts, and the silk fabric was a bright, racy green — hardly the sort of clothes most women wore for traveling. They had the look of people who had worn their best clothes and were flaunting their finery like peacocks. Greer sensed they were trouble as soon as he laid eyes on them.

  The man caught Greer studying him and returned the look with a taunting stare. He had a tough face, Greer decided, hard black eyes and oiled, dark hair. Everything about him was cocky. Greer had seen his kind often enough in the gangs of toughs known as Plug Uglies who hung around the wharves in Baltimore. Troublemakers. The city was full of thieves and copperheads who sympathized with the Confederate cause.

  "Do you have your ticket, sir?" Greer asked. He could have moved on, but he didn't like the way the man was sneering at him.

  "You ought to know," the man muttered. "You checked it yourself back in Baltimore.”

  Greer didn't like surly passengers. He wasn't having any nonsense on his train. He did not move, but stood waiting in the aisle, and the passenger knew well enough it was the conductor's right to check tickets because the train stopped at every station and new people were constantly coming aboard. He thrust the ticket at the conductor.

  Greer gave the piece of paper a long look, then handed it back. "Thank you, sir."

  He walked on, feeling the man's eyes boring into his back. Greer wasn't afraid of anybody, but he also knew it wasn't his job to pick fights with the passengers. The B&O didn't pay him for that. Still, it didn't mean he couldn't put an uppity passenger in his place.

  He opened the back door of the car and stepped out onto the platform where the wind blew with sudden force. Clamping his round conductor's cap onto his head with one hand, he crossed to the next car and went in. As soon as the conductor shut the door behind him, the woman in the green dress whispered harshly to her companion, "Charlie, what are you trying to do, ruin the whole plan?"

  "The son of a bitch was giving me a hard look, Nellie."

  The woman shook her head angrily. "We're here to ride the train, Charlie Gilmore. That's all. We want to get a feel for it. We need to learn the routine. Next time we ride this train you can shoot that conductor if you want, but for now you'd better smile at him. Don't cause trouble."

  "Don't tell me what to do," the man said, raising his voice just enough that he attracted the attention of the other passengers. He glared at them until they looked away.

  Nellie leaned close so that only he could hear what she said. She smiled as she spoke, although her low voice was cold and steely. "Behave or I'll put a knife in your ribs and save that conductor the trouble of putting you off at the next station."

  "You'd do it, too, wouldn't you, Nell?"

  In answer, he felt the sharp point of a blade between his ribs. One thrust and the steel would bury itself deep in his heart. He held himself very still. A man could never be sure what Nellie Jones would do next. She was a dangerous woman. Crazy, some said. At the moment, he had to agree.

  Just as quickly as it had appeared, the knife vanished into the sleeve of her dress. No one else had seen because Nellie was pressed up close against him. Anyone watching would think they were lovers.

  He forced a laugh to show he hadn't been afraid. "You wouldn't stab me, now would you, Nell?"

  "I want to be rich," she whispered. "And you're not going to stop me. Now sit up straight and act proper."

  The door to the car opened again and the conductor reappeared. He gave the couple from Baltimore a quick glance and continued down the aisle.

  Gilmore watched the conductor closely. "He's damn full of himself," he grumbled. "The man runs a train and acts like he owns the world. He must think he’s a general instead of a two-bit railroad conductor.”

  Beside him, Nellie squeezed his arm. "You just wait," she said. "If we pull this off you can buy your own goddamn train."

  Chapter 3

  Confederate Secret Service, Richmond

  November 8, 1863

  Colonel William Norris worked through the pile of dispatches on his desk. Most contained routine intelligence and he glanced at the messages, then put them aside. It wasn't until he was nearly at the bottom of the pile that he came across a report that made him sit up very straight at his desk and begin giving the message a close second look. He stared at the words on the page, scarcely able to believe what he was reading. Was it possible?

  "Fletcher!"

  Boots sounded in the hall and a young captain in an immaculately tailored uniform entered the office. He snapped to attention.

  "Sir?"

  Norris handed him the sheet of paper. "Who sent this dispatch?"

  "One of our agents in Pennsylvania. He has always been highly reliable in the past."

  Norris smiled. He had the sort of grin that seemed to make the air in the room grow cold. Fletcher shifted uneasily from foot to foot, making the leather of his highly polished boots squeak.

  "We need to be very sure of what this says, Captain Fletcher. I want you to make certain there were no mistakes in decoding the cipher."

  "Yes, sir."

  Fletcher hurried out as Norris lit a cigar and tried to make some sense of the spy's report.

  The Confederate Secret Service in Richmond was virtually unknown to most people, except those with some stake in the war fought over information, far beyond the battlefield. Officially, Norris was chief of the Confederate Signal Bureau. On paper, the Secret Service he directed did not even exist.

  Norris was a West Point graduate who had resigned from the United States Army to fight for his native Virginia. Early in the war, he had developed the system known as "semaphore," which enabled military units to communicate over long distances using signal flags. Once the equipment had been developed and men trained, Norris had turned his attention to an altogether different kind of communication.

  To all appearances, he was a quiet and intelligent man whom few would have suspected of directing the Confederacy's vast network of spies. Norris was also ruthless, and more than one of the bloated bodies found in the James River or in the stinking wastelands surrounding the Tredegar Iron Works was a result of his long reach.

  The work was not nearly as exciting as it might seem. Most of what Norris did was collect dispatches from various spies scattered from Virginia to Canada. Some of what he received was quite useless or even inaccurate. He thought of it as a process not unlike distilling sour mash into whiskey. Norris did his best to sort through it all and then pass the information along to the appropriate commanders and political leaders. When necessary, he took matters into his own hands.

  Norris had known for some time that the Yankee president, Abraham Lincoln, planned to take part in the ceremony dedicating the new cemetery for the Union dead at the Gettysburg battlefield. That information was hardly news because a president took part in similar public events on a regular basis. But Norris had anticipated an opportunity. He had sent a small band of saboteurs to ambush Lincoln's train on its way to Gettysburg.

  There were many in the Confederacy who opposed such means of winning the war. But if Norris had learned anything in nearly three years of war, it was that the South had to exploit every Union weakness it could find if the Confederacy was to survive.

  However, the dispatch he had just read changed everything. That
Scottish zealot Alan Pinkerton, who ran the Union's network of spies, had rooted out the saboteurs. Still, to avoid any further danger to the president the Yankees proposed to do something quite daring and extraordinary. It also presented Norris with a great opportunity. He could make the Yankees' cleverness work against them.

  Norris paused to light another cigar. He puffed a blue cloud of tobacco smoke toward the ceiling, thinking. Several minutes passed before he suddenly called out in annoyance, "Fletcher! Where the hell are you?"

  The captain hurried back in. "No mistakes, sir. The dispatch is accurate. I would stake my life on it."

  Leaning back in his chair, Norris kept his eyes focused on the ceiling. "Would you? I'll keep that in mind. Now tell me, is that fellow Arthur Percy still in Richmond? Or has the general shot him?"

  "Percy?" Fletcher didn't want to show that he listened to common gossip, so he pretended not to know the name, even though the whole city had heard the scandal.

  "Don't be difficult, Fletcher. I'm talking about the one who was philandering with the general's wife."

  "Oh. I suppose just about everyone has heard of that Colonel Percy." Fletcher sneered. "Not a very respectable sort, from what I understand."

  "He's just the one I want," Norris said. "He's a good cavalry officer and a very brave man, no matter what else is being said about him. Find him and bring him here, Fletcher. He's about to undertake a mission for me."

  Fletcher saluted and began to leave. Norris called him back. "While you're at it, Fletcher, find Tom Flynn as well."

  "Flynn, sir?" Fletcher made no pretense about not knowing that name. He curled a disdainful upper lip in disgust. "The Irishman."

  "I take it you don't like him, Captain?"

  "No, sir. He's a lowborn immigrant."

  "Why don't you point that out to him, the next time you see him?"

  Fletcher cleared his throat nervously, plainly uncomfortable. "Flynn isn't worth the effort, sir."

  "Go find them for me, Fletcher. Find Colonel Percy and the Irishman. They're just the men for the job I have in mind."

  “Yes, sir.”

  Norris smiled again with a grin that could freeze water, not to mention the blood in Fletcher’s veins. “Who knows? There might even be something in it for you, Captain.”

  Chapter 4

  Richmond

  November 8, 1863

  “Forbes has got to be here somewhere," Colonel Arthur Percy said.

  "Last time I seen him was on this street with that woman," Bill Hazlett replied, then leaned over to spit tobacco juice. "Ugly bitch. Tits like a goat."

  "You see, boys, I told you women are nothing but trouble," Percy said, lecturing the small band of soldiers who walked with him down one of Richmond's most wretched streets.

  "You would know, wouldn't you, Colonel?" asked Hazlett, a tall, evil-looking man with a nasty scar under his right cheekbone. He smiled, revealing long, unevenly spaced teeth that resembled fangs. Sergeant's stripes slashed across the arm of his tattered Confederate uniform.

  The others laughed and Percy joined in, even though Hazlett’s comments irritated him. Hazlett had a way of making salty remarks that marched right up to the edge of blatant. Most officers would not have tolerated insubordinate talk from a mere sergeant, but Hazlett was family, more or less. He was capable enough as a sergeant, but the real reason he wore stripes was because he was married — badly — to one of Percy's cousins. Twice the poor woman had shown up at the Percys' big house with bruises and a black eye. There might even have been trouble between Percy and Hazlett if the war hadn't broken out.

  It was hard to pull rank on your cousin-in-law. Most of the time, Percy tried to treat Hazlett like an equal. The last thing he needed was a feud from back home to haunt them now. Still, he suspected that Hazlett despised him behind his back.

  It did not help that Percy's recently ended affair with a prominent general's young wife was still feeding the gossip mills of Richmond. Everyone expected a duel as soon as the hot-headed general returned to the capital. The colonel had a nonchalant attitude toward all the talk. A Yankee bullet or the general's— it was all the same to him.

  "Do as I say, but not as I do," Percy added in a fatherly tone when the laughter died away. "A truly wise man — wiser than any of you, at least — learns from the mistakes of others, not his own."

  "Hell, Colonel, a wise man would have made damn sure her husband didn't find out," a soldier named John Cook said, and once more the group erupted in laughter.

  Percy laughed with them. Even though he was an officer, he had been with these men too long for anything but an easy familiarity. He had even grown up with a few of them. They would all be neighbors again back home, if they survived the war.

  Percy was thirty-five years old, sandy haired and blue-eyed. Every inch of his lean, six-foot frame looked the part of Southern hero. He was one of those dashing men the South had a gift for producing: a cavalier at home on horseback, who rode with a sword in one hand and a revolver in the other. He could shoot, he could ride, and he wasn't afraid of anything or anyone — especially not the Yankees who had invaded his homeland.

  Percy didn't like regular soldiering with its "Yes sirs" and "No sirs" and gallant charges into the mouths of cannons. Percy liked playing the fox. Outsmarting Yankees. Beating the odds. His raids behind Yankee lines had made him famous when accounts of his deeds had appeared in newspapers in the North and South. Then his luck began to run out. A Yankee bullet had put him in a Richmond hospital.

  It was in the Confederate capital that Percy had met the general's wife. She had been his undoing, a raven-haired, green-eyed beauty too young to be safely left alone while her older and esteemed husband was off leading his troops in Mississippi. The general was a violent and jealous man, and society as a whole did not approve of men who seduced wives while their husbands were away doing their duty and serving the Confederacy.

  Percy had already been threatened by several of the general's friends in Richmond, and was almost shot outright by one of them, until his lover had interfered. Percy expected he would have to fight a duel when the general returned to Richmond, and it was a duel Percy might not win because the general was known as a particularly vengeful bastard.

  Not that Percy gave a damn either way. What really mattered was that few general officers wanted him in their units after such a scandal, including his old commander, who had already sent Percy a terse note declining his services. Percy waited to be reassigned to some unit, somewhere. Meanwhile, he found there was never a dull moment for a soldier on leave in Richmond.

  • • •

  A few people stared from the doorways as Percy and his ragtag band passed. This was a rough part of the city and any one of the soldiers alone might have been in danger. But the seven together were a tough-looking and battle-hardened bunch, lean as a pack of wolves. Heavy revolvers hung in holsters at their sides, the iron and leather looking worn as a workman's well-used tools.

  Five of the men wore threadbare cavalry uniforms, the gray fabric stained with sweat, dirt and blood. Percy's uniform had the golden "chicken guts" braiding of an officer reaching above the elbows of his uniform coat while another man, Silas Cater, wore the less ornate insignia of a lieutenant.

  In addition to Lieutenant Cater and Hazlett, there was a tall, whip-thin man named Douglas Pettibone who wore the double stripes of a corporal. John Cook was also a corporal. Private Johnny Benjamin, who was hardly more than a boy, was on furlough after being released from the hospital. Although he wasn't part of their old regiment, some of the other men had taken the boy under wing.

  The seventh man in the group wore no weapon or uniform. He was Percy's servant, a huge black man named Hudson. At six feet, four inches tall, he was the biggest member of the group, powerfully built, and his dark, African face answered the stares from the doorways with an open defiance that made even these unsavory Richmond residents look away.

  Hazlett came to a stop and nodded at a ramshackle dwe
lling a few doors ahead. "This is the place."

  Percy made a disapproving noise. "You would think Forbes could have done better," he said.

  "He was drunk, sir," explained Corporal Pettibone, who also had been with Forbes the night he disappeared.

  "When isn't he drunk?" Percy pointed out.

  As a soldier, Willie Forbes functioned well enough even when he was awash with liquor, and he always managed to get away with things that a sober man couldn't. Only this time he'd gone on a binge in Richmond's seedier streets, which were not kind to drunken soldiers. So his comrades had gone to rescue him, or what was left of Forbes after a two-day drunk with rotgut whiskey and a cheap whore.

  Percy took charge. He felt responsible. The five cavalrymen were on furlough from the regiment and had come to Richmond to visit their colonel just out of the hospital — and to have a good time with the ample food, liquor and women the city had to offer. It was the last two temptations that had landed Forbes in trouble. As for Percy, he had already recovered from the minié bullet that had pierced his upper arm and had found his own difficulties in the form of the general's wife. Richmond was a city of sin and decadence, as far as he could tell. He was eager to return to the war.

  "That's the place, sir," said Pettibone, who had seen Forbes disappear with the woman on his arm.

  Percy sighed. "Bastard will have the pox," he muttered.

  They were looking at a shabby, two-story house that was hardly fifteen feet wide. The gray, unpainted clapboards had long since splintered and cracked, and the whole house, like many others on the street, gave the impression that it might blow down in the next strong wind.

  Hazlett leaned over and spat. “Ain’t much of a place.”