by Larry Hunt
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Escape
It has been three days since the wagon train left Surratt’s Tavern. Jamie finally arouses, woozy, but alert asks, “What happened Luke?” Feeling with his hand, “Who put the needle and thread to my head? All I remember is that Yankee striking me with the butt of his musket last night.”
Luke smiles, “Last night you say? That was days ago Jamie. I am the one who sewed you up after a stranger provided me with the medical supplies. He also gave us food and water.”
“Who was he Luke? I’m starvin’, how ‘bout some of his water and food.”
“I never found out for certain Jamie, but he doesn’t like President Lincoln, I can tell you that. I overheard one of the guards call him by name, but right now I cannot for the life of me remember what name they called him.”
Luke, holding his right index finger in the air, rubs his chin with the other hand. He is absorbed in deep thought. “Give me a second and let me think, “B,” yeah that’s sounds right, his name started with a “B.” I’m pretty sure it was a letter like that, Bolding, Boles, Bonner, no Booth! That’s it! His name was Booth...John Wilkes Booth. Those Yankees must have known him though, but I have never heard of him. Have you Jamie?”
Jamie shakes his head, “Nah, but that don’t mean nothin’, he must’a not been too important or we’d have hear’d about him. I’d say he was a kind man with a gentle heart tho’. He probably wouldn’t even swat a fly.”
“Yeah, he did seem like he was more interested in savin’ lives than taken them.”
“You figure us out a plan Luke?”
“No, not yet, but I reckon we’ve got to make our move before we get to that prison camp. Once there, I don’t believe we will have much of a chance to get away.”
Before Luke finishes speaking the wagon driver yells to his mule team, “Whoa! Whoa!” The wagon stops so fast Luke, who has been kneeling beside Jamie, falls to the wooden floor. They hear gunfire toward the front of the wagon train. The Yankee guard grabs his rifle, swings from the wagon’s seat and heads at a dead run toward the sound of the firing. The commotion is being created by ‘A’ Company of Hampton’s Legion under the command of Captain Nicholas James. General Wade Hampton had been with General Lee on the retreat from Gettysburg when word is received that the Yankees are moving prisoners of war from the vicinity of Pennsylvania to Point Lookout, Maryland. General Hampton dispatched ‘A’ Company to do something about it – they caught up with the wagon train a couple of days before it reaches the prison camp.
“Come on Jamie, now’s our chance – let’s go. Jump from the wagon and run into the woods. If we get separated go south. Just remember if you are facing the sun in the early morning head to your right.”
At the front of the wagon train, one of the Confederates fighting the Yankees is a man with a name Luke might not recognize – Sergeant Yancey Coker. He might not recognize his name, but Luke’s family had a past connection with this Coker family. Yancey’s great-great-grandfather was Captain John Coker. The same John Coker that was guarding the two heavy-laden wagons out of Dahlonega, Georgia during the Revolutionary War – the same John Coker that fought beside Luke’s great-great-great-grandfather Jacob Ingram at the Battle of Scarburg Mill.
Sadly the two will never meet; Luke slips out the back of the wagon, and hits the ground running. Jamie still groggy follows, but he isn’t nearly as fast. One of the Yankee guards sees Luke scampering into the woods beside the road, but he doesn’t have time to fire his musket, Jamie wasn’t as fortunate. The guard draws a bead on Jamie, cocks the hammer and fires. Luke stops in the tree line long enough to see the bullet tearing through Jamie’s back and exiting under his right armpit, killing him instantly. Luke turns from the bloody scene, he knows there is no reason to go check on him, using the same advice he had just given Jamie, he heads south.
A few wagons up in Robert’s wagon, one of the prisoners lying on the floor comments, “Whosever is shootin’ at us must of stirred up a hive of hornets, listen?”
“Hornets, the Devil,” says Robert, “Those are bullets comin’ through our canvas. Keep your head down!” The men in the wagon needed no encouragement they hug the floor as though they are squeezing their long ago sweethearts.
Robert thinks of slipping from the back of the wagon and trying to escape; however, with the wound to his chest and the bullet gash on his head, he knew he had little, if any, hope of making a successful escape. He lay on the floor of the wagon listening to the ‘hornets’ zing through the canvas, all the time cursing his luck. Finally, the firings of the rifles begin to abate, and the wagon train begins to move once again. He thinks, hopefully, a few of the Rebel prisoners might have escaped – son Luke, if he only knew. He knows another rough day slipping and sliding should bring Point Lookout mighty close.
He is right. The next day around mid-morning the wagons pull into Lookout Point. The men in the wagons do not have to peep outside to verify they have arrived – they can tell by the smell! Most of the Rebs in the wagons were raised on farms – they never smelled anything around their barns that reeked as badly. One man remarked he always thought his pigpen had a bad odor, he now reasons his pigpen smelled better.