The Railroad War (15 page)

“Not enough. Not enough.” His voice, as he spoke, was quiet, cold, and even.

“Do you know why I didn’t go after Joe?”

“No, sir, I don’t.”

“Because even if I caught him and beat him, that wouldn’t have been enough.”

“Enough?”

But Sherman didn’t hear Sam. His face was intent, rapt. He was conscious only of his own thoughts. “The Russians let Napoleon
drive all the way to Moscow. They let him have the city. You know about that, Sam? Of course you do.”

“I studied that at the Academy.”

“Of course you did. Anyhow, they gave him the city, but they left him nothing to eat. No supplies. He had the capital city
of the largest country on earth, and he had no supplies. His army starved. The retreat from Moscow was what finally did Napoleon
in.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I bet you anything that Joe is thinking that he’s just like the Russians, and that he can lure us deep into the interior
of the country and let us starve.”

“Yes, sir.”

“But there’s a difference. Things are just the opposite.”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“We’ll never starve. Not so long as we’ve got the rivers and the railroads—which we have now—And the navy to control the oceans
and seashores.

“What Joe Johnston doesn’t realize is that
I
will be the Russians and
he
will be the French!”

“Sir?”

“He can move around all he wants, but there’ll be nothing for him to eat—no forage for his animals, no ammunition for his
weapons, no clothes to keep his men warm, no tents to keep them dry.

“The Rebs are going to
have
to quit, because they won’t have anything left to fight with.

“That’s why, when I see prosperity and military capability here in Jackson, I get to thinking—I’m going to destroy it.”

“The prosperity, sir?”

“No, Sam. I’m going to destroy the town and everything useful around it. I don’t give a damn anymore whether I fight a battle
or not. I only need to execute my plans in several more towns and cities, and the South will fall like a dead tree in an ice
storm.”

Jesus! Sam said to himself. He was torn between admiration and revulsion.

“Francoise! Francoise!” Jane Featherstone called out. She had been sleeping; her head was buried in a pile of pillows, and
not much sound escaped.

There was no reply.

“Francoise! Francoise!” she called out again, raising her head to allow her voice to carry. “Where are you, Francoise, you
lazy thing?”

There was still no reply.

“I don’t want any of your games, Francoise, you beastly, lazy thing. I want you in here this instant!”

That didn’t do any good, either, for Francoise was miles away, sent off on the last train out of Jackson, the train that Jane
herself had promised Noah Ballard she would be on. But she’d had no intention of going on that train. Her interest in Sam
Hawken had become so great that departure was out of the question.

All this, for the moment, she had forgotten, so she called out to Francoise a fourth time.

Jane raised herself on her elbows and glanced at the clock on the bureau.

She stared at the clock face for a long time, until at last the time sank in and she jerked herself up to a sitting position.
“Twelve-fifteen!” she cried. “Oh, my Lord! It’s afternoon! Francoise, where
are
you?”

And then she remembered. “Oh, God, she’s not here. She’s off in Meridian or some damned place. Why did I let you go, Francoise?”

Jane shook out her hair, threw the light sheet that had covered her toward the foot of the bed, set her feet down onto the
floor, and lurched unsteadily over to the bedroom window.

Jane’s disorientation was not due to a bad night. On the contrary, she was confused
because
she had fared better than she’d done in weeks. Since there’d been no northern artillery to keep her awake, she’d slept like
a child from the moment she’d said good-bye to Noah. She was unsure on her feet because she had slept so deeply and dreamed
so peacefully.

In the street below several Union soldiers were milling about, full of swagger and exultation and mayhem. They had been breaking
into businesses and private homes, performing a kind of preliminary looting in preparation for the more serious pillage that
was to follow. At the moment a few of them had dragged a large piano out of the home of a doctor whose house was diagonally
opposite the building where Jane maintained her rooms. Two soldiers were pounding at the keyboard while another haphazardly
tore out the strings with a crowbar and another chopped at the wood with an ax.

Other soldiers had found trunks and boxes full of clothes. They were rummaging through these, flinging the contents every
which way onto the street, paying little attention to the clothes themselves. Jane concluded that they must be searching for
jewelry or other valuables, or else they were simply engaged in a orgy of destruction because there was so much that was available
to be destroyed.

There were a few local inhabitants about, for not everyone had chosen to leave Jackson. In fact, the majority of the town’s
inhabitants still stayed on. The few remaining women suffered gibes and taunts, and even physical harassment.

They should have remained indoors, Jane thought, until the soldiers stopped marauding.

Jane had every expectation that the occupaton would be orderly and sane, and that the Union soldiers would respect the lives
and property of those they had conquered. In this she was wrong.

As these thoughts went through her mind, she heard loud, lewd noises from just below her window. When she looked down, she
saw three or four very young men in blue staring up at her and shouting gleefully.

She realized then that she was wearing only her sleeping gown, and she drew quickly back from the window. Then she was aware
of what the young men were yelling: “Don’t go away, darlin’. We’ll be up there for you before you know it.”

“Oh, Lord!” she sighed as a feeling of alarm hit her. Her apprehension grew when she heard boots and shouting on the stairway.

Jane Featherstone was not a woman who panicked easily. Danger excited and energized her. She would never become helplessly
faint, or breathless, or fall prostrate with anxiety as so many other women contrived to do.

Moments later she’d bolted her bedroom door and was once again in her bed, propped against her pillows, with the sheet drawn
up. The Colt revolver that Noah had given her was beneath the sheet, next to her hand. She had checked it the night before.
It was loaded and ready to fire.

She heard doors in the hallway being opened. The shouts became more urgent. And they became more urgent still when the men
broke into her parlor. Finally they came to her bedroom door.

“Is this yours, honey?” the ugly, oily voice outside said. She didn’t answer. Her hand was tight on the pistol grip.

“It has to be,” another voice said.

They tried the knob, but of course the door was bolted. That restrained the men for only a short while. There was a crash.
Then the largest of the four burst into Jane’s room.

He stood in the middle of the floor and stared at her. Soon he was flanked by the others. “Hoooeee!” he hollered, grinning
like a boy with a filthy picture.
“That
is what I came to Jackson, Mississippi, for. Have you ever seen anything so pretty?”

“I haven’t,” the youngest of them said. He could not have been more than fifteen.

“Now, what I have to say,” the third one said, giggling, “is that this here woman is right where a woman had best be, laying
in a big, soft bed. The only thing is, this one is wearing too many clothes, and her legs ain’t spread. My pap always told
me that a woman’s place was to make things easy for a man.” He looked at Jane. “Come on, honey,” he said, “spread those legs.”

The fourth one. who looked more than a little dim, just grinned.

“I’d like you all to leave my room,” Jane said softly, steely-voiced.

“Did you hear that?” the big one said. “What did the lady say?” He was already fumbling with the buttons of his trousers.

“I said,” she warned, her voice even more steely, “that I don’t welcome you here. I want you to get out.”

“Not yet, honey,” the big one said. “That ain’t possible.”

“I want you out of here, now.”

“Hear her beg,” said the boy who had been giggling. “I just love hearin’ Rebels beg.”

The big one’s trousers by now had dropped below his knees, and he was hobbling toward the bed.

“I’m not begging,” Jane said. “I’m ordering.”

They laughed at that. Their laughter was at once boisterous and full of innuendo.

“You’ve got until I count to five.”

The laughter kept up, louder. “Until five?” the big one snorted. “And then what are you goin’ to do, pretty woman? Huh?”

She pulled the Colt out from under the sheet and pointed it at his middle.

“I’ll put a hole through you where this is pointing,” she said calmly. “Now go. Fast.”

“Wait a minute,” the big one said, waving his hand vaguely in her direction, as though the gesture might somehow deter her.

“One,” she said. Then quickly, “Two. Three.”

On three, the youngest one and the dim one began to back away in the direction of the door.

“You ain’t gonna use that thing, are you, miss?” the big one said. “You don’t know how.”

“Four.”

The older boy twisted indecisively toward the door, where the other two were exiting, then toward the big one. He was searching
in his mind for some action to take, but what that action was eluded him.

“Five.”

“You crazy or something, lady?” the big one screamed, for the muzzle of the revolver was leveled precisely at the spot where
his stomach emptied into his intestines.

Hobbled by his trousers, he made a lunge at the bed. The gun made a sharp crack, and then the big man staggered backward.
The noise was loud, and Jane had to shake her head to clear her ringing ears.

After a brief moment, she was alert again, and she looked at the man she’d shot, then at the others. The big man was now on
his knees, swaying with pain. There were sobs and whimpers coming from his mouth, but Jane hardly noticed. The young one and
the dim one were at the door. When they saw her looking at them, they turned white and fled down the hallway to the stairs.
The older boy was staring open-mouthed at the big one. Blood was spreading over the front of his shirt. When he had launched
himself toward Jane, he had lowered his body, and the bullet had punctured a lung.

“He’s dyin’!” the boy managed to say.

“I know that,” Jane said, calm and cold. “Now you move on out of here.”

“Do you know what you’ve done? He’s dyin’!” He was now squatting next to his friend, who had by this time crumpled down on
the floor. Frothy blood was foaming out of the big man’s mouth.

“Go.” As she said this, she waved the gun slightly. It was heavy, and she had to use both hands.

“But he’s dyin’!” The boy’s hands had begun to paw at the big man’s face. The pawing had no effect.

“Should I care about that?” she yelled. “Do you want me to care about him? Go!”

The boy had for the most part been in shock. But now the shock turned to rage, and he leapt up and spun toward Jane.

“You ain’t goin’ to…” he cried, but the firing revolver blotted out his voice.

He stared. The bullet had missed. “You…!” he whispered hoarsely.

“Out!” she said, and fired again. This time the bullet hit him in the fleshy part of his thigh. Despite the wound, he managed
to drag himself out of the room and down the hall.

He was lying collapsed at the head of the stairs when a lieutenant and a sergeant who had heard the gunfire rushed up. Their
own pistols were raised and at the ready when they burst into Jane Featherstone’s bedroom.

But when they saw Jane sitting quietly in her bed, the pistol laid at her side, the big man, not dead yet, crumpled in a heap
on the floor, all of their excitement and military training seemed to drain out of them.

“Oh, my God,” the sergeant said.

Then the lieutenant raised his pistol before him, almost as though he were raising a cross as protection against a vampire.
“What happened?” he managed to ask.

“What’s it look like, Lieutenant?” Jane said. “Four men tried to violate me. I protected myself.”

The eyes of both the lieutenant and the sergeant were locked on the dying man—on his wound and on the trousers that had fallen
around his ankles.

“She’s tellin’ the truth,” the sergeant said.

“I know she is,” the lieutenant said. “But I don’t know what the hell to do about this.” Neither of them moved to help the
man who was dying. Then they tore their eyes from him and turned their attention to Jane. “And I don’t know what to do about
her, either.”

Jane was breathing hard and her hands had begun to tremble, but she managed to conceal her distress from the two soldiers.

She lay one hand on top of the other to calm them, then took a deep breath and spoke. “Lieutenant,” she said, “I’d like to
get dressed. And after that, I would appreciate it if you would escort me to Captain Hawken.”

“Huh?” the lieutenant said.

“Captain Hawken is General Sherman’s aide. He knows me. I’d appreciate it if you would take me to him.”

“I can’t do that,” the lieutenant said. “You’ve just killed one of our men. We have to take you for charges.”

She smiled sweetly. “Take me to the captain, please, Lieutenant, and I’m sure he will work out all the details.”

“Even if the captain is an acquaintance,” the lieutenant said, “I’m afraid I must go through the proper procedures before…”

“Urn, Lieutenant Gregg,” the sergeant interrupted, “maybe she has a good idea. If she is a friend of General Sherman’s aide,”
he said pointedly, “then maybe he’d be the best one to iron out this mess.” The sergeant was an old noncom in the regulars
who knew the ropes. He knew when to drop a disaster into someone else’s lap. The lady had given him the hint he needed about
whose lap to drop this one into.