Tom was struggling with the soldiers when they all felt the ground shake and heard a noise like screaming metal. “It’s going to blow!” Tom yelled.
Fear replaced anger in the soldiers and they loosened their grip on Tom. They turned to see what he was talking about. The side of the steam gun’s boiler was beginning to bulge and glow red. Tom yanked away and ran for the water, leaving the soldiers to wonder what was going on. The pressure became so intense that the rivets began to blow off at the seams, sounding like bullets being fired. Fear in the soldiers was now displaced by despair.
With the ground trembling, Sarah and Jenny ran for cover behind the hills. Ray ran for cover in another direction. The noise was enough to make everyone think they were going to die, so they started putting distance between them and the steam cannon. Tom began to run in the opposite direction.
There was a huge explosion. The soldiers who had let loose of Tom were torn apart. Everyone that didn’t make it to cover in the vicinity was torn apart by the hot metal fragments of the boiler. Body parts were scattered about the ground. Horses and mules were also ripped apart. Blood and guts spewed out all over the dirt. Confusion, despair, and misery came over all who survived and witnessed the destruction of the steam cannon.
***
Sarah and Jenny turned around to see a great plume of black smoke rising in the afternoon sky, beyond the distant hill that overlooked the village of Union Mills.
“Hope that was the steam thingy?” Jenny said.
“I believe it was,” Sarah said.
Relieved that the steam gun was now blown to smithereens and the death machine destroyed, Jenny could finally relax and reflect. They sat on a grassy knoll for a moment.
“I could use a beer,” Jenny said.
“Do you think Mike got away?” Sarah asked.
“Don’t know,” Jenny said.
They both looked around for Ray, but he was gone.
“Where did Ray go?” Jenny asked.
“Let’s hope he and Mike got to cover,” Sarah said.
“Ray’s supposed to meet us on the road, right?” Jenny said.
“That’s right.”
They got up and walked up to the road. Sarah saw two horses pulling a buckboard and coming straight at them. Sarah looked at the driver and, lo and behold, it was Ray, dressed in Confederate gray, driving the buckboard at a break-neck speed. She saw panic in his face.
Sarah pulled Jenny out of the way. At the same time, Ray pulled up on the reins and stopped the horses. He took off his brown slouch hat and motioned wildly to the women.
“Get aboard, quick. They’re after me.”
Sarah and Jenny climbed aboard and got in the back seat. Ray was in the front, looking back at Jenny, when he saw two men running toward them as fast as they could. Ray put his hat on as he spun in his seat and slapped the horses with the reins. The buckboard jolted off down the road, leaving the two men far behind.
“Where did you get this?” Sarah asked.
“Since our wagon was surrounded by soldiers, I stole this one.”
“Where’s Mike?” Sarah asked.
“Last time I seen him he was at the gun,” Ray said.
“So you didn’t pick him up?” Sarah said.
“I couldn’t get close enough,” Ray said.
“We can’t just leave him,” Sarah said. She remembered the total destruction. Sarah started to cry. Jenny pulled her close.
“Sorry, Sarah,” Jenny said, consoling her. “What about Treble?”
“I don’t know.” Without thinking of the implication, Ray blurted, “My guess is that the explosion killed everybody in the area.”
Jenny gave Ray an angry look while holding Sarah and tried to cover her ears. “Do you have to put it that way?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Sarah,” Ray apologized. Thinking the explosion might have killed his best friend, tears swelled up in his eyes.
“Why are you dressed like that?” Jenny asked Ray.
“I was trying to blend in,” Ray said.
Suddenly, a squad of Confederate soldiers was in the road coming toward them.
“Shit,” Ray mumbled.
He slapped the horses again and they picked up speed.
“Hang on,” Ray yelled.
Ray went to ramming mode as he drove right for the soldiers. The soldiers raised their rifles, but Ray was on top of them. At the last second, the soldiers managed to get out of the road. Some jumped into the ditch full of water.
Ray was putting distance between the Confederates and the buckboard. But the Confederates regrouped and came to a company front to fire one last volley at them.
“Squad. Ready-aim-fire!”
Down the road they went, as fast as horse flesh could carry them. In his panicked state, Ray didn’t know where the road led or where he was going, but nothing was going to stop him.
Ray didn’t hear the crack of musket fire until after the lead flew past his ear.
“Damn, that was close. You guys hear that? Sounded like bees.” Then he heard a moan coming from the back.
“You guys okay back there?” Ray asked.
“Jenny’s been shot,” Sarah cried.
Ray pulled up on the reins bringing the buckboard to an abrupt stop. Ray jumped in the back to see what had happened to Jenny. There was blood on her left side. Sarah ripped her clothing off in that area to have a better look.
Sarah felt around the wound. It was bleeding profusely. She felt wood sticking out. The wood splitters from the buckboard had entered her wound along with a 58-caliber Minié ball that she could feel lodged under Jenny’s skin. She could remove the wood splitters, but didn’t have any tools to remove the lead ball.
Sarah looked out across the meadow. She was raised in this part of the country and she knew that witch hazel plant grew wild in the area. But to her dismay there was none to be found here.
“What are you looking for? We need to get her to a hospital,” Ray said.
“A plant used for clotting blood.” Sarah explained. She tore strips from her dress and used them as bandages.
“Where’s the closest hospital?” Ray asked.
“We’re not going to the hospital,” Sarah said.
“What, so where are we going?” Ray asked, confused as ever.
“We need to get to my family’s barn in Gettysburg.”
Ray remembered the big red barn. That was where this all started. That’s where the spell was cast that sent them back in time in the first place.
“You sure we want to go there?”
“I have a garden behind the barn.”
“So?”
“In that garden is the herb, witch hazel.”
“Witch hazel?”
“An old Indian treatment for clotting blood. I can stop Jenny’s bleeding when we get there.”
“How far to Gettysburg?”
“About seventeen miles.”
Ray smacked the horses and the buckboard lunged forward, and up the road they went. Ray now was on a mission, and nothing was going to stop him from getting to that barn where this whole thing got started. And Sarah, she was headed home.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Sunday, July 5, 1863
They got into Gettysburg that evening at about 6 P.M. Ray pulled up on the reins until the horses came out of their trot. They slowly made their way up Emmitsburg Road toward the big red barn. Sarah’s old homestead, where she played as a child, had the smell of death in the air.
Ray looked out across the fields. The sun was low in the sky. He watched as details of Union troops foraged the bodies of the dead, looking to restock their depleted supplies of ammunition.
Ray started to have flashbacks to when he was badly wounded and on a stretcher. Mike and Gordon were carrying him to the same red barn. He remembered being dropped a few times along the way.
“Ray—sentries ahead,” Sarah said.
Ray kept driving, oblivious to his surroundings.
“Please, Ray, wake up!”
Sarah yelled.
Ray was startled out of his daydream and saw the sentries. Awake now, he straightened up. He was hoping the sentries wouldn’t pay him much mind. He and the women would be just another civilian family coming home after the battle. Sarah stayed quiet in the back, holding Jenny.
Then the sentries walked out onto the road in front of him and put their hands up.
“Halt!” one yelled.
Ray instantly got the sweats. His heart started pounding as he got closer. He was on the verge of a full panic attack when he pulled up to the guards and stopped.
“Where do you think you’re going?” asked one of the guards, a husky man with sergeant’s stripes.
“To that farm over there. We’re returning home now that the fighting is over,” Ray said.
The guards looked at each other and smiled, and then they pointed their Springfield rifles at Ray.
“Get down from there,” the husky sergeant ordered.
At this very moment Ray remembered he was wearing a Rebel gray coat.
“S-h-h-h-it,” he sighed, and got down from the buckboard.
“The women, also,” the sergeant said.
“She’s wounded,” Sarah said.
The sergeant turned to his corporal.
“Get the ambulance and bring a stretcher,” he ordered his corporal.
“Yes, sergeant,” the corporal said, and he went for help.
“You’ve got this all wrong,” Ray said.
“How’s that, Reb?” the sergeant asked in a deep voice.
“We stopped a top-secret weapon from destroying Union Mills. You see, I’m a spy for the Union.”
“What top-secret weapon?” the sergeant said.
“The one that destroyed Mount Pleasant.”
The sergeant looked at him as if he had two heads. It was obvious that the news had not yet reached Gettysburg about the steam gun and the destruction of Mount Pleasant.
While Ray sweated, the corporal returned with a steward and a stretcher.
“The woman in the buckboard needs to go to the field hospital,” the sergeant ordered.
“Yes, sergeant,” the steward said.
In the distance, there was a horse with a man slumped over in the saddle, heading in their direction. The rain made it hard to see.
“Corporal, take two men and check that out,” the sergeant ordered.
The corporal and two men ran over to the side of the horse. The man was hanging from the saddle, and the soldiers pulled him the rest of the way off and laid him on the ground. They saw that he was wounded and bleeding through his bandages. One gave him water from his canteen.
“Help me up,” the man said.
“You need a stretcher, mister.”
“I’m okay. Just get me to my feet.”
They got under his arms and picked him up. He was bigger than most men of that day, and the soldiers struggled with him. They managed to get him to his feet and walked him toward the waiting sergeant.
Sarah glanced in their direction and saw that the man looked familiar. And then she recognized him and screamed in amazement.
“Michael!” She started crying again.
Mike was dressed in civilian garb that was torn and soaked and he appeared to be thrashed. Sarah ran to his side.
“Michael!” she wailed.
Sarah tried to put her arms around him, but the guards held her off.
“Please let me help,” she asked the guards.
One guard gave her an okay nod with his head and Sarah took his place under Mike’s arm. They walked him over and stood him in front of the sergeant.
“I can explain,” Mike choked out the words.
“I’m waiting,” the sergeant said.
“They’re with me. We are the ones who blew up the death machine back in Union Mills.”
“Oh, now it’s the death machine.”
“We stopped the damn thing from destroying the Union army,” Mike said.
“Damn, boys, we have some real heroes here today. Sounds like the same story your friend, the Reb here, told us about. But there’s just one flaw, there’s no reports of any towns being destroyed.”
Mike realized that the news of the death machine had not reached them yet.
“Maybe you should go to the hospital and get that wound looked after. We’re gonna take your friends to the provost. The Captain would like to hear this one.”
“It’s the truth. We’re on your side,” Mike said.
“Save it for the inquiry,” the sergeant said.
Suddenly, a pipe bomb rolled out from under one of the wagons parked nearby and stopped between Mike and the sergeant. It had a cannon fuse burning at one end. In a split second, Mike looked around and saw Tom Treble standing about fifty feet away, with his clothes wet and hanging off. Tom saw that Mike spotted him and ran off.
“What the hell is that?” the sergeant asked.
“Hit the deck!” Mike yelled.
The sergeant didn’t know what he meant, but he backed away from the bomb and Ray jumped into the back of the buckboard. Sarah bent down and covered Jenny, and Mike took a few steps and fell to the ground.
Seeing the confusion, the soldiers started to back away also. The sergeant was still standing when the pipe bomb went off. The explosion sent fragments everywhere. A piece of jagged metal went through the sergeant’s mouth and out the back of his head killing him instantly, his bloody brains running onto the ground.
His corporal received shrapnel to the stomach, which disemboweled him. His guts poured out onto the dirt. Another took two to the chest. A piece of iron cut through his heart. Both soldiers fell dead at the sergeant’s side.
Using the confusion to their advantage, Ray picked up Jenny and got out of the wagon. Sarah helped Mike walk toward the red barn, but in an instant, the area was buzzing with soldiers. The four hid behind some shrubbery on the left side of the property.
As the sun set behind the trees, Sarah watched a company of soldiers assemble on the road in front of the barn. Being familiar with her childhood farm, she knew right where her herb garden was located behind the barn. She needed the witch hazel more than ever. She needed to stop Michael’s and Jenny’s bleeding.
***
“Company—break into platoons,” the captain ordered.
The company was broken into right and left platoons.
“Platoons-break into squads.”
The first sergeant went down the line counting his men. Each platoon was divided into squads.
The company was now broken into four squads. The captain addressed them. “We have escaped fugitives. First and second squads search the entire area. Places they can hide, like shrubbery or ditches, even the outhouses. Third and fourth squads search all the outbuildings, houses and barns in the immediate area, inside and out. They couldn’t have gotten far. Sergeants—take charge of your squads.”
***
Hearing the sergeant’s orders, Mike wanted to follow the hedge line toward the side of the barn and then slip in the side door. Sarah wanted to get to her garden and collect the leaves of the plant.
***
“First squad—left face, march!” followed by, “Second squad—left face, march!”
“Fourth squad—right face, march!” followed by, “Third squad—right face, march!”
The sergeants led their squads in and around the property. Watching from behind the hedgerow, Mike and Sarah saw one squad of soldiers go in the side door of the barn.
Sarah saw Mike cringe in pain. The garden was thirty feet from the side door. She knew she could make it.
Mike and the others waited for the soldiers to exit the barn. It was getting dark when they did.
“When I say go, we head for the side door. Ray, you’ll have to carry Jenny.”
“No problem,” Ray said.
“Wait, let me get the herb from the garden first.”
“Too far. You’ll be in the open when you leave the cover of the hedges to get it,” Mike said.<
br />
“I need it for yours and Jenny’s wounds,” Sarah said.
“No. Too dangerous,” Mike said.
“I’ll be right back,” she told Mike. She started toward the garden, but was pulled back by Mike. He pointed at two more soldiers leaving the barn.
“I told you,” Mike said.
They watched as the soldiers moved on. The squads had broken into two-man search groups covering the entire area, but none approached the side door.
Mike knew it was now or never. “Here’s our chance.”
Ray picked up Jenny in his arms and followed Mike toward the side door. Sarah broke and ran to the garden. Crouching, she grabbed the plant. Then she saw two soldiers walking toward her. With a yank, she pulled what she needed and ran toward the side door. As she slipped inside, she heard the soldiers yell, “You there! Stop!”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Sunday, July 5, 1863
Once Sarah was inside the barn, Mike shut the side door and they all peered outside for the soldiers. The two soldiers ran past the barn. Apparently they were calling out for someone else, not Sarah.
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. They lay on the straw and rested.
Sarah held up the witch hazel plant. “Let me dress your wound,” she told Mike.
“You want me to take my pants off?” Mike objected. “What if the soldiers come back?”
“I’ll work on Jenny’s wound first, while you’re taking your pants off.”
Sarah began crushing the leaves with her hands. She rubbed the witch hazel into a makeshift salve and then applied it to Jenny’s wound. She tore strips from her dress for bandages. After wrapping Jenny’s wound, she turned to Mike.
“Okay, you’re next.”
Mike wasn’t ready. He wasn’t about to pull his pants down. Then the silence was broken and Mike turned to a noise in the dark corner. Out from the shadows walked big Tom Treble.
“Thought you were dead,” Mike said.
“Do you think I’m not smart enough to get in out of the rain of hot metal?”
Suddenly the side door opened, and in walked the two soldiers. They saw Mike and Sarah but didn’t see Tom move into the shadows. Mike put his hands up since the soldiers had their Springfield’s pointed at them.
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