“But where?” she insisted.
Bird was taken aback by the intensity of the question and appalled by its implications. He had no doubts what business this girl had with Ethan and he disapproved of it mightily, yet he felt powerless to resist her demands. “He stays in his brother’s rooms. His half-brother, that is, in Grace Street. Shall I write the address down? You can read, yes?”
“No, but others can if I ask them to.”
Bird, sensing that he did something wrong, or at least something horribly tactless, wrote his friend Belvedere Delaney’s address on a piece of paper and then tried to salve his conscience with a sternly asked question. “Might I ask what your business with Ethan is?”
“You can ask, but you’ll get no answer,” Sally said, sounding more like her father than she might have cared to know, then she plucked the scrap of paper from Bird’s hand and tucked it deep inside her rainsoaked clothes. She was wearing two threadbare homespun dresses dyed in butternut, two frayed aprons, a faded shawl, a moth-eaten black bonnet and an oilcloth sheet as an inadequate cape. She was also carrying a heavy canvas bag, suggesting to Bird that she stood in his parlor with all her worldly goods. Her only adornment was the silver ring on her left hand, a ring that struck Bird as old and rather fine. Sally, returning Bird’s appraisal with her scornful blue eyes, had clearly dismissed the schoolmaster as a nonentity. She turned to follow Decker out to the street, but then paused to look back. “Is there a Mister Starbuck here?”
“Nate? Yes. Well, not exactly here. He went with the Colonel. And your father.”
“Gone far?”
“Indeed.” Bird tried to indulge his curiosity as tactfully as possible. “You’ve met Mister Starbuck, then?”
“Hell, yes.” She laughed briefly, though at what she did not explain. “He’s kind of nice,” she added in lame explanation, and Thaddeus Bird, even though he was as newly married as a man could be, felt a sudden surge of jealousy against Starbuck. He immediately chided himself for having had such an unworthy envy, then marveled that a daughter of Truslow’s could have provoked it. “Is Mister Starbuck a proper preacherman?” Sally frowned at Bird as she asked the odd question.
“A preacherman!” Bird exclaimed. “He’s a theologian, certainly. I’ve not heard him preach, but he isn’t ordained, if that’s what you mean.”
“What’s ordained?”
“It is a superstitious ceremony entitling a man to administer the Christian sacraments.” Bird paused, wondering if he had confused her with his impiety. “Is it important?”
“To me it is, yes. So he ain’t a minister? Is that what you’re saying?”
“No, he is not.”
Sally smiled, not at Bird, but at some inner amusement, then she ducked into the hall and so out into the wet street. Bird watched the girl climb into the saddle and felt as though he had been scorched by a sudden fierce flame.
“Who was that?” Priscilla called from the kitchen as she heard the front door close.
“Trouble.” Thaddeus Bird bolted the door. “Double toil and trouble, but not for us, not for us, not for us.” He carried the candle back into the small kitchen where Priscilla was arranging the leftovers from the wedding feast onto a plate. Thaddeus Bird stopped her work, gathered her into his thin arms, and held her close and wondered why he would ever want to leave this small house with this good woman. “I don’t know that I should go to war,” he said softly.
“You must do what you want,” Priscilla said, and felt her heart leap at the prospect that perhaps her man would not march to the guns. She loved and admired this awkward, difficult, clever man, but she could not see him as a soldier. She could imagine the handsome Washington Faulconer as a soldier, or even the unimaginative Major Pelham, or almost any of the sturdy young men who carried a rifle with the same assurance with which they had once wielded a spade or a pitchfork, but she could not envisage her irascible Thaddeus on a battlefield. “I can’t think why you should ever have wanted to go for a soldier,” she said, but very mildly so that he would not construe her words as criticism.
“Do you know why?” Thaddeus asked, then answered his own question. “Because I have a fancy that I might be good at soldiering.”
Priscilla almost laughed, then saw her new husband was serious. “Truly?”
“Soldiering is merely the application of force by intelligence, and I am, for all my faults, intelligent. I also believe that every man needs to discover an activity at which he can excel and it is a constant regret that I have never found mine. I can write a fair prose, it is true, and I am no mean flautist, but those are common enough accomplishments. No, I need to discover an endeavor in which I can demonstrate mastery. Till now I have been too cautious.”
“I dearly hope that you will go on being cautious,” Priscilla said sternly.
“I have no wish to make you a widow.” Bird smiled. He could see his wife was unhappy, so he sat her down and poured her some wine into an inadequate unstemmed glass. “But you should not worry,” he told her, “as I daresay it will all prove to be a dreadful fuss about nothing. I can’t imagine there’ll be any serious fighting. There’ll just be a deal of posturing and boasting and much ado about not very much and at summer’s end we’ll all march home and brag about our bravery, and things won’t be a whole lot different than they are now, but, my darling, for those of us who don’t join the farce the future will be very bleak.”
“How so?”
“Because our neighbors will judge us cowards if we refuse to join. We’re like men bidden to a dance who cannot abide dancing and who don’t even much like music, but who must caper nimbly if we are to sit down to supper afterward.”
“You’re frightened of Washington sending you a petticoat?” Priscilla asked the pertinent question in a humble voice.
“I’m frightened,” Bird said honestly, “of not being good enough for you.”
“I don’t need a war to show me your goodness.”
“But it seems you have one anyway, and your ancient husband shall astonish you with his capabilities. I shall prove to be a Galahad, a Roland, a George Washington! No, why be so modest? I shall be an Alexander!” Bird had made his new wife laugh with his bravado, and then he kissed her and afterward he placed the glass of wine into her hand and made her drink. “I shall be your hero,” he said.
“I’m frightened,” Priscilla Bird said, and her husband did not know whether she spoke of what this night promised or what the whole summer held in store, so he just held her hand, and kissed it, and promised that all would be well. While in the dark the rain beat on.
IT BEGAN TO RAIN AS THE TRAIN CLANKED AND HISSED TO A FULL HALT with the locomotive’s great skirtlike cowcatcher just twenty paces from the gap that Truslow had torn in the rails. The smoke from the high and bulbous funnel was whipped in the rainy wind toward the river. Steam hissed momentarily from a valve, then the locomotive’s two engineers were chivied out of their cab by one of Truslow’s men.
Starbuck had already returned to the bridge to shout down the news of the train to the Colonel who, standing beside the stream sixty feet below, demanded to know why the appearance of a train should delay the bridge’s destruction. Starbuck had no good answer. “Tell Hinton to come back across the bridge now!” Faulconer cupped his hands to shout the order up to Starbuck. He sounded angry. “You hear me, Nate? I want everyone back now!”
Starbuck edged past the barricade to see the engineers standing with their backs against the locomotive’s huge driving wheels. Captain Hinton was talking to them, but turned as Starbuck approached. “Why don’t you go and help Truslow, Nate? He’s working his way forward from the caboose.”
“The Colonel wants everyone back across the bridge, sir. He sounds kind of urgent.”
“You go and tell Truslow that,” Hinton suggested. “And I’ll wait for you here.” The hissing locomotive smelt of woodsmoke, soot and oil. It had a brass-edged nameplate above the forward driving wheel with the name “Swiftsure” cast int
o the metal. Behind the locomotive was a tender stacked high with cordwood, and beyond the tender four passenger cars, a boxcar and the caboose. Truslow had men inside each car to keep the passengers docile while he went to deal with the guards in the caboose. Those guards had locked themselves in and, as Starbuck started down beside the stalled train, Truslow put his first shots through the caboose’s side.
Some women passengers screamed at the sound of the gunshots. “Use your gun if anyone gives you trouble!” Hinton shouted after Starbuck.
Starbuck had almost forgotten the big twin-triggered Savage revolver that he had carried ever since the day he had ridden to fetch Truslow from the hills. Now he tugged the long barrel free. The cars towered above him, their small furnace chimneys wisping dribbles of smoke into the cold wet wind. Some of the car’s axle boxes were so hot that the rain falling on their metal cases was boiled into instant steam. Passengers watched Starbuck from behind panes of window glass that were streaked with rain and dirt, and their gaze made Nathaniel Starbuck feel oddly heroic. He was dirty, disheveled, unshaven and with long, uncut hair, but under the passengers’ fearful scrutiny he was transformed into a dashing rogue like one of the raiders who galloped the marcher fells in Sir Walter Scott’s books. Behind the train’s dirty window glass lay the respectable, mundane world which, not six months before, Starbuck had inhabited, while out here was discomfort and danger, risk and devilment and so, with a young man’s pride, he strutted before the frightened passengers. A woman put a hand over her mouth, as though shocked to see his face, while a child rubbed a window free of mist just to see Starbuck better. Starbuck waved to the child, who shrank away in fear. “You’ll hang for this!” a man with muttonchop whiskers shouted from an open window, and the angry threat made Starbuck realize that the passengers had mistaken Faulconer’s raiders for common thieves. He found the idea absurdly flattering and laughed aloud. “You’ll hang!” the man shouted, then was told to sit down and shut the hell up by one of the raiders inside the car.
Starbuck reached the caboose just as one of the men inside shouted for Truslow to stop shooting. Truslow, armed with a revolver, had been working his way calmly down the caboose’s side, putting a bullet into every third plank and thus driving the inmates to the very back of the wagon, but now, knowing that the next bullet must surely hit one of them, the men inside shouted their surrender. The rear door opened very cautiously and two middle-aged men, one thin and the other fat, appeared on the caboose’s platform. “I ain’t even supposed to be here,” the fat man wailed at Truslow, “I was just taking a ride with Jim here. Don’t shoot me, mister. I got a wife and children!”
“Key to the boxcar?” Truslow enquired of the thin man in a very bored voice.
“Here, mister.” The thin man, who was uniformed as a guard, held up a heavy ring of keys, then, when Truslow nodded, he tossed it down. The guard, like Truslow, gave the impression of having been through the whole performance before.
“What’s in the housecar?” Truslow demanded.
“Nothing much. Mostly hardware. Some white lead.” The guard shrugged.
“I’ll have a look anyways,” Truslow said, “so both you boys come on down.” Truslow was very calm. He even thrust his empty revolver into his belt as the two men climbed down to the stones of the railbed. “Hold your hands up. High,” Truslow ordered, then nodded at Starbuck. “Search them. You’re looking for guns.”
“I left mine inside!” the guard said.
“Search ’em, boy,” Truslow insisted.
Starbuck found it embarrassing to stand so close that he could smell the fat man’s terror. The fat man had a cheap gilt watch chain thick with seals stretched across his belly. “Take the watch, sir,” he said when Starbuck’s hand brushed against the seals, “go on, sir, take it, sir, please.” Starbuck left the watch alone. A pulse in the man’s neck fluttered wildly as Starbuck emptied his pockets. There was a flask, a cigar case, two handkerchiefs, a tinder box, a handful of coins and a pocket book.
“No guns,” Starbuck said when he was finished with both men.
Truslow nodded. “Any soldiers where you boys come from?”
The two men paused, almost as if they were preparing to lie, then the guard nodded. “There’s a whole bunch of ’em ’bout ten mile back. Maybe a hundred horse soldiers from Ohio? They said how they was expecting rebels.” He paused, frowning. “Are you rebels?”
“Just plain rail thieves,” Truslow said, then paused to jet a stream of tobacco juice onto the ties. “Now you walk back to those soldiers, boys.”
“Walk?” the fat man said aghast.
“Walk,” Truslow insisted, “and don’t look back or we’ll start shooting. Walk between the rails, walk real slow, and just keep going. I’m watching you real good. Start now!”
The two men began walking. Truslow waited till they were out of earshot, then spat again. “Sounds like someone knew we were coming.”
“I told no one,” Starbuck said defensively.
“I never said you did, never thought you did. Hell, the Colonel’s been talking about this raid for days! It’s just amazing there ain’t half the U.S. Army waiting for us.” Truslow climbed up into the caboose and disappeared into its dark interior. “Mind you,” he went on, speaking from inside the wagon, “there are men who think you’re a spy. Just ’cos you’re a Yankee.”
“Who says that?”
“Just men. And it ain’t anything to worry you. They’ve got nothing else to talk about and so they wonder what in hell’s name a Yankee’s doing in a Virginia regiment. You want some coffee off the stove here? It’s warm. Ain’t hot, just warm.”
“No.” Starbuck was offended that his loyalty had been so impugned.
Truslow reappeared on the back platform with the guard’s discarded pistol and a tin mug of coffee. He checked that the gun was loaded then drained the coffee before jumping down to the track. “Right. Now we go and search the passenger cars.”
“Shouldn’t we leave?” Starbuck suggested.
“Leave?” Truslow frowned. “Why the hell would we want to leave? We just got the son of a bitch train stopped.”
“The Colonel wants us to go. He’s ready to blow the bridge.”
“The Colonel can wait,” Truslow said, then gestured Starbuck toward the passenger cars. “We’ll start with the last car. If any bastard gives us trouble, shoot him. If any women or kids start screaming, slap them down fast. Passengers are like hens. Once you get ’em flustered they’re noisy as hell, but treat ’em tough and they’ll stay nice and quiet. And don’t take any big stuff, because we’ve got to ride fast. Money, jewelry and watches, that’s what we’re after.”
Starbuck stood stock still. “You’re not robbing the passengers!” He was genuinely shocked at the thought. It was one thing to stride down the train like a free-booter under the gaze of awestruck passengers, but quite another to break the Sixth Commandment. The worst beatings Starbuck had ever taken had been as punishments for theft. When he was four he had helped himself to some almonds from a jar in the kitchen, and two years later he had taken a toy wooden boat from his elder brother’s toy chest, and both times the Reverend Elial had drawn blood for a recompense. From that day until Dominique had persuaded him to take Major Trabell’s money, Starbuck had been terrified of theft, and the consequences of helping Dominique had only reinforced his childhood lessons that thieving was a terrible crime which God would surely punish. “You can’t steal,” he told Truslow. “You can’t.”
“You expect me to buy their belongings off them?” Truslow asked mockingly. “Now come on, don’t lag.”
“I’m not helping you steal!” Starbuck stood his ground. He had sinned so much in these last weeks. He had committed the sin of lust, he had drunk ardent spirits, he had made a wager, he had failed to honor his father and mother and he had failed to keep the Sabbath Day holy, but he would not become a thief. He had only helped Dominique steal because she had persuaded him that the money was owed to her, but he w
ould not help Truslow steal from innocent train passengers. So much of sin seemed nebulous and hard to avoid, but theft was an absolute and undeniable sin, and Starbuck would not risk the slippery path to hell by adding that transgression to his woefully long list of wrongdoings.
Truslow suddenly laughed. “I keep forgetting you’re a preacherman. Or half a preacherman.” He tossed Starbuck the ring of keys. “One of those will open the boxcar. Get inside, search it. You don’t have to steal anything”—the sarcasm was heavy—“but you can look for military supplies and if you see anything else worth stealing, you can tell me about it. And take this.” Truslow whipped his enormous bowie knife from its scabbard and tossed it to Starbuck.
Starbuck missed the catch, but retrieved the clumsy blade from the railbed. “What’s it for?”
“It’s for cutting throats, boy, but you can use it for opening boxes. Unless you were planning on using your teeth to get into the crates?”
The heavy brass padlock on the boxcar’s sliding door was a good ten feet above the railbed, but a rusted iron stirrup suggested how Starbuck could reach the lock. He pulled himself up and clung precariously to the hasp as he fiddled with the keys. He eventually found the right one, unlocked and slid the heavy door aside, then stepped inside.
The wagon was filled with boxes and sacks. The sacks were more easily opened than the crates and proved to hold seed, though Starbuck had no idea what kind of seed. He trickled the grains through his fingers, then gaped up at the stacked boxes and wondered how he was ever to search them all. The easiest way would have been to hurl the boxes out onto the ground, but the boxes were probably private property and he did not want to risk breaking anything. Most of the crates were marked for collection at either the Baltimore or Washington depot, proof that the occupation of Harper’s Ferry had not entirely closed federal traffic through the mountains. One of the crates marked for Washington was a dark-painted box that bore a stenciled and misspelled legend on its side: “1000 Rifle Musket 69IN Cartridgs.”
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