Booth sat in a chair and asked Garrett to help him pull off his tall, knee-high, leather riding boot. Garrett took a good hold and yanked hard until the snugly fitting boot popped off. On his other foot Booth wore a government-issue leather army shoe, slit open at the top to make taking it on and off easier. When Booth slipped out of his trousers, Garrett got a close look at the bad leg and asked how it had happened. Given John Garrett’s four years of service, Booth knew he had to talk convincingly to fool a man who had seen real war wounds before. His story worked again: “He told me that he was wounded at the evacuation of Petersburg. He . . . kept up the impression all along that he had been a Confederate soldier, and he now said that he had belonged to A. P. Hill’s corps, and that he had been wounded by a shell fragment at the evacuation of Petersburg. He said his wound was not very painful except when he touched it.”
Garrett offered Booth one of the beds, and he and his brother William shared the other. Their guest was exhausted. Booth got into bed, turned over, and spoke just two words: “Good night.” John Garrett assumed, correctly, that Mr. Boyd wanted to speak no more that night. The soft mattress and pillow lulled Booth to a quick slumber. It was his first night in a proper bed—not counting one night in the rude Lucas cabin—since April 15, nine days ago. It felt good to rise from the cold earth and sleep like a civilized man again. It was also the first night of the manhunt that Booth and Herold spent apart.
At Belle Plaine the manhunters had divided their forces, too. Two columns, one of five men commanded by Everton Conger, and the other with the rest of the men, led by Edward Doherty, both probed south. The cavalrymen searched farmhouses and barns, questioned inhabitants, and sometimes adopted various ruses to trick the locals. As the Sixteenth New York worked all night toward Port Conway, Booth’s hard-won head start from the manhunters began to shrink. It had taken Booth ten days to travel from downtown Washington to the Port Con-way ferry. It would take the Sixteenth New York, alerted by telegraph and transported by steamboat, just one day to close the gap between Washington and Port Conway. The same superior technology that the Union had used to defeat the Confederacy was now employed against Booth.
Booth’s mind surrendered to fatigue and roamed freely through the landscape of his dreams, where no man could follow him. He did not need his pistols during the night. He slept deeply and undisturbed and did not awaken until late in the morning on Tuesday, April 25. It was the eleventh sunrise since the assassination. John Garrett awoke early. Observing their guest still fast asleep, he dressed quietly and went downstairs. When William Garrett followed his brother down a few minutes later, Booth was still asleep. The actor was unaccustomed to farmers’ hours. His body followed the nighttime rhythms of the city and theatre life, not the crack-of-dawn rigors of country living. William told his eleven-year-old brother Richard to watch over Booth until he awoke, then bring their guest his crutches and gun belt and wait on him while he dressed. William left the house to graze the cattle before returning for breakfast.
When Booth failed to answer the breakfast call, John Garrett went upstairs to check on him. Booth, awakened by the summons echoing through the house, had just gotten up. Garrett told him that breakfast was ready, but Booth, still weary, begged off. Please tell the family not to hold the meal for him, he requested. That was fine, replied Garrett: “[I]t was entirely unnecessary as we were not in the habit of waiting meals for soldiers as they were privileged characters and might eat when they got ready.” John Garrett walked downstairs, ate, and rode over to Mr. Acres, a neighborhood shoemaker, to have a pair of boots repaired.
Eventually Booth roused himself. Little Richard Garrett fetched his clothes and crutches and helped him dress. Booth sat in the chair, inserted his leg into the tall boot and, unable to use his bad leg for leverage, pulled extra hard with his arm and back muscles. Delicately, he slipped the foot of his broken leg into the low-cut shoe. He eyed his pistol belt, still hanging on the headboard. He decided that he would not need his revolvers or Bowie knife this morning. He left the belt on the bed. He stood up, took the crutches, and, unarmed, proceeded downstairs, careful not to misstep and tumble down the stairs. Booth headed to the front porch, reached into a pocket for his pipe and a pinch of tobacco, and enjoyed a late-morning smoke. After he finished off the bowl, Booth stepped down to the front yard and inspected the property a little, venturing to the barn and back. On the front porch he reclined on a bench and promptly dozed off. His spent body and overtaxed brain craved the rejuvenating sleep.
When Booth woke up, William Garrett joined him on the porch. William asked the same question that his brother posed last night: where had he been wounded? On cue, the actor trotted out the stock story about Petersburg, the exploding artillery shell, the leg wound. Why did William ask? Hadn’t his brother already told him this morning what Booth had said the night before? Booth, perhaps suspicious that William was testing him for any discrepancies in his story, spun a convoluted tale to explain how he ended up at Locust Hill.
It all started at Petersburg, began Booth, showing William his injured leg for effect. After the evacuation of that city, he wanted to go to Annapolis, Maryland. He crossed the Potomac but then discovered that the federals were forcing all Confederate soldiers to swear a loyalty oath to the Union, and of course he would never agree to that. Booth claimed that until a few days ago, he had taken refuge in a small, unnamed Maryland town. Then he and his cousin, also named Boyd, went on a “spree,” hired two horses, and encountered some Union cavalry troops. Unwisely, they boasted to their former enemies how easily they had crossed the Potomac. This riled the cavalrymen, who informed on them and triggered a subsequent pursuit. Booth laid it on thick for Garrett now. When the cavalry caught up with them, they got into a “fracas” that led to “a little shooting touch” before they escaped by fleeing into a swamp, where they spent the night. The next evening, Booth explained, he and his cousin tied their horses in a pine thicket and walked down to the Potomac River, where they had to spend almost all of their money to buy a boat, to cross back over to Virginia. But it was a stormy eve, and they spent all night on the river without crossing, instead finding themselves opposite Mathias Point. Then, finally, reaching the point, they made their way to Port Royal, and the Garrett farm.
It was a wild, deceitful tale, sprinkled cleverly with sufficient truthful details—Booth was chased by cavalry, he did travel with another man, he did cross a swamp, he did hide in the pines, he did buy a boat, and he did cross the Potomac—that it seemed believable, or at least coherent. Booth told this complex tale to establish in Garrett’s mind two vital ideas, one true, the other false: the truth that the Union cavalry was after him, and the lie about why. Booth wanted William Garrett to know, by his own admission, before William discovered it later on his own, that the cavalry might be coming. And he wanted him to believe that it was for a trivial reason. That way, if horse soldiers did arrive in the neighborhood, asking questions about two men, William Garrett would not be surprised, and he would never suspect that his house-guests were Lincoln’s assassins. William Garrett did not challenge the saga’s authenticity. Booth, satisfied that he had accomplished his purpose, got up from the porch and, with the help of his crutches, went for another solitary walk, again in the direction of the barn. Then Booth returned to the house and sat down on the lawn with the young Garrett children.
It was a beautiful day, remembered eleven-year-old Richard Baynham Garrett: “That day was bright and warm. It was an unusually early spring that year, and the grass in the yard was like velvet, while the great orchard in front of the house was white with apple blossoms.” Booth relaxed by entertaining his little audience. “All the forenoon,” recalled Richard Garrett, “our visitor lounged upon the grass under the apple trees and talked or played with the children . . . he had a pocket compass, which he took pains to explain to the children, and laughed at their puzzled faces when he made the needle move by holding the point of his pocket knife above it.” Booth took special delight
in three-year-old Cora Lee Garrett. “He called her his little blue-eyed pet,” recalled her nine-year-old sister Lillian Florence Garrett, or Lillie. “At the last meal he took with us, she sat by his side in her high chair.” At the dinner table, Cora’s mother spoke sharply to the girl and, Lillie reported, the child “burst into tears. Booth at once began to soothe her, and said, “ ‘What, is that my little blue eyes crying?’”
Early in the afternoon the Garretts and their guest took their seats at the dinner table. John, back from Acres the shoemaker, sat down next to his brother William, and opposite Booth. He had heard some exciting news while on his errand, John announced. A man told him that a recent issue of a Richmond newspaper reported that the U.S. government was offering a $140,000 reward for Abraham Lincoln’s assassin. The Garretts had heard rumors about the murder as early as April 22 or 23, but without confirmation until John heard the story about the reward a couple of hours ago. William boasted that if the reward was that big, the assassin “had better not come this way or he would be gobbled up.” Booth smiled wryly. How much was that reward, again? he asked. John restated the figure. “I would sooner suppose more like $500,000,” suggested Booth, suppressing mild hurt at what he felt was too modest an amount. Surely the president’s assassin, the most wanted man in America, was worth more than $140,000? Had Booth known the true, much lower figure—a mere $50,000—he would have been truly insulted.
The family began a lively discussion of the assassination. “While at dinner the tragic event was commented upon, as to the motive which prompted the deed and its effect upon the public welfare,” Lucinda Holloway observed. Booth listened attentively, not speaking a word. Then one of Garrett’s daughters suggested that Lincoln’s assassin must have been a paid killer.
Booth gazed at the girl, smiled, and broke his silence: “Do you think so, Miss? By whom do you suppose he was paid?”
“Oh,” she replied witlessly, “I suppose by both the North and the South.”
“It is my opinion,” Booth replied knowingly, “he wasn’t paid a cent.” Instead, he speculated, the assassin “did it for notoriety’s sake.”
Booth improvised this little bit of theatre flawlessly. The Garretts did not know it, but the actor-assassin had just staged a spontaneous, unscripted performance at their dinner table. “I did not notice any uneasiness about him,” admitted John Garrett.
Ingeniously, while masquerading as another man, the assassin commented on his own crime, and analyzed, for the pleasure of his private audience, and also for his personal amusement, the motives of Lincoln’s killer.
After dinner Booth went outside and relaxed on the porch bench, by now his favorite place at the house. He was in no hurry to leave Locust Hill. He needed rest. Considering his ordeal over the last eleven days, he would happily spend a month with the Garretts recuperating from his injury and regaining his strength. Plenty of sleep, good cooking, some pipe tobacco, clean clothes, and leisurely rests in the fields would revive his body and spirit. And perhaps an occasional shot of whiskey or brandy, his favorites. Reluctant to break the spell of this idyll, Booth said nothing to the Garretts all morning or at the afternoon dinner table about leaving Locust Hill.
But it was time. Booth asked John Garrett if he had a map of Virginia. Booth owned one, but his copy of “Perrine’s New Topographical War Map of the Southern States,” a handy field guide that folded into a pocket-size booklet protected by yellow, paper board covers, was back in Washington, in the hands of U.S. detectives who had discovered it in George Atzerodt’s room at the Kirkwood House. Garrett told Booth that he owned no map of the state. Then what about that big map of several Southern states hanging on a wall in the house, suggested Booth. Would John be kind enough to take it down so that Booth could study it? Garrett went inside, unpinned the school map, and spread it on a table.
Booth’s eyes ranged over the map and he asked Garrett for a piece of paper. John obliged, asking why Booth wanted the map. He explained that he was plotting the route from Locust Hill to Orange Court House. There he hoped to obtain a horse from one of the many Marylanders who he heard frequented the area. Then Booth told John, just as he had told William Garrett that morning, that he refused to return to Maryland because he would never sign an oath of allegiance to the Union. From Orange Court House, Booth planned to ride for Confederate General Joe Johnston’s army, still in the field and, unlike Lee’s surrendered Army of Northern Virginia, still a viable fighting force. And from there he would cross the border into his ultimate destination, Mexico. Booth declared that it was better to leave the country than swear loyalty to the Union. Garrett left the room and Booth remained hunched over the table, staring at the map, writing notes on the routes to distant places he hoped to reach. Alone, Booth tore a piece out of the map and stuffed Virginia in his pocket.
This was no time for a geography lesson. Booth should have departed Locust Hill at first light, and certainly no later than several hours ago, when he awoke in late morning. He was still too far north, and Garrett’s farm sat within striking distance of Union troops. In truth, as the afternoon lengthened, Booth shouldn’t be there at all. The man-hunters could appear at any moment without warning. He should leave at once; he dare not remain there any longer than one more night. Finished with the map, Booth came out onto the porch and sat on the bench. John Garrett saw him remove from his pocket “a small memorandum book” and begin writing. From his position, sitting below Booth on the front steps, John could not see what he wrote.
Distracted by noise from the road, Garrett looked up and saw a few riders moving past their front gate. “There goes some of your party now,” John said, guessing the riders were the same men who had dropped Booth at Locust Hill yesterday afternoon. Booth looked up from his book. He asked John to go into the house, walk up to the bedroom, and get his pistol belt. Confused, Garrett asked why Booth wanted his revolvers. “You go and get my pistols!” the assassin commanded without explanation. Garrett obeyed, but when he got to the bedroom and looked out the window, the men were gone. They had ridden past the gate, in the direction of Port Royal, without turning into the farm. He left the gun belt hanging on the headboard, returned to the front porch without the pistols, and told Booth that the men were gone. The assassin and Garrett took their seats.
Five minutes later John Garrett noticed a stranger, on foot, walking from the gate toward the house. Booth rose from the bench and shouted for eleven-year-old Richard Garrett to run upstairs and bring down his pistols right away. In a flash, the child was back on the porch carrying the heavy gun belt. Quickly, Booth swung the belt under his coat and wrapped it around his waist, cinching the buckle tight. Then he stepped off the porch and began walking toward the approaching stranger. John and little Richard Garrett watched transfixed, expecting a gun battle to break out in their yard at any moment. Booth and the stranger, who had a carbine slung around his shoulder, met midway between the road’s inner gate and the farmhouse. Booth did not draw his pistols and the stranger did not level his long arm. It was David Herold, who was back from his overnight stay a few miles southeast of Bowling Green at the home of Joseph Clarke, a friend of Bainbridge. After waiting for Davey all day, Booth had begun to wonder if he was coming back.
Booth and Herold stood in place about fifty yards from the house and talked for several minutes. “What do you intend to do?” asked Davey.
“Well, I intend to stay here all night,” Booth announced.
Herold did not like the sound of that plan. Lingering in one place too long increased their risk of capture. And he was losing heart for life on the run: “I would like to go home. I am sick and tired of this way of living.”
Then, together, they walked to the house. Booth introduced Davey as his cousin, David E. Boyd. Booth asked John Garrett if cousin Boyd could spend the night, too. Naturally, after the regal treatment the Garretts had accorded Booth, the assassin assumed that Garrett would offer his cousin similar hospitality.
John’s reply shocked him: �
�I told him that father was the proprietor of the house and that I could not take him in.” John adopted a sudden, brusque manner and cold tone of voice to convey an additional message, “intending by what I said to let him see that I did not want to take him.”
Booth’s panic at the sight of the riders and of the stranger walking up the road had made Garrett suspicious. To discourage the Boyds, John added that his father was away and he had no idea when he would return to approve or veto Booth’s request. Unperturbed, Herold offered to sit on the porch steps and wait as long as it took for old man Garrett to come home. After eleven days of hiding out, he was used to waiting.
•••
And after eleven days of searching, some of the man-hunters were getting frustrated. Captain William Cross Hazelton of the Eighth Illinois Cavalry, one of the units pursuing Booth in Maryland, wrote a letter to his mother that typified the exasperation felt by many of the soldiers and detectives in the field:
I have been endeavoring to get an opportunity to write you but have been so constantly on the move for the last two weeks that I’ve had no chance to write.
Manhunt Page 31