The Railroad War (46 page)

“You must need to use him very much to praise him so highly, Jane,” Sam said.

“Sam Hawken!
Goddamn
you!” she cried, her control finally snapping under his sarcasm. “Don’t you believe I ever tell the truth? Do you think I
can never be sincere?”

“How long have you known Noah, Jane?” he asked, pointedly avoiding her questions. “Where did you meet?”

“You didn’t answer me, Sam.”

“No, I didn’t. Now tell me when and where you met Major Ballard. And I
may
believe that.”

“Goddamn you!” she said in a near whisper.

He waited expectantly.

Finally she spoke, but her voice was still scarcely audible. “I met Noah in Jackson. He was in charge of designing and building
the fortifications there for Joe Johnston.”

“Were you already spying for Grenville Dodge then?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Did you like him then? Or was he just useful?”

“Of course I liked him. I still like him.”

“But you passed on his information to General Dodge, and later to me?”

She gave him a slight nod.

“What’s he useful for now, Jane? Is it because you want to get revenge against me?”

“If you’re trying to make me cry, Sam Hawken, you won’t have any luck. I’m going to give you no rewards.”

“You tell me you’re sincere, Jane. I’m curious as to the limits of your sincerity.”

“I came here because I wanted to help you, Sam Hawken! Goddamn you! I wanted to show you compassion because of our past…friendship,
and all you do is throw every word I say back in my face!”

“You came here because you wanted to gloat over how successfully you’ve managed to betray me, Jane. You’re jealous that I’ve
rejected you, aren’t you? You’re jealous because of Miranda Kemble. You’d have her in the cell with me if you could, as long
as that meant she’d be executed along with me. But at the same time you thought you’d try a little kindness with me, for the
sake of the possibility that I just might forget what you are, and maybe even forget Miranda Kemble, too, and that I just
might show you that I really want you and not her.” He looked with infinite coldness at Jane. “You told Noah Ballard I might
come to Mobile, didn’t you, darling Jane?”

“I’m glad of what I’ve done,” she snapped.

“That’s exactly my point, Jane. I know it.” He pressed his lips into another grim smile. “And there, Jane, for once you’re
sincere.”

“Why is it, Sam Hawken,” she said, lifting herself slowly to her feet, “that you provoke in people who care for you a burning
desire to see you dead?”

“You’re leaving, are you?” he asked.

“Civil conversation with you is impossible.” She bent down to retrieve the lamp.

“Good,” he said. “This is a delightful time for you to go.”

She made a move for the door, then paused and turned back to him. “I do wonder about you and the Kemble girl, Sam. I wonder
if you would be able to make a life with her—providing that you have a life at all, a doubtful outcome as matters now stand.
But I do wonder whether you wouldn’t drive her away just as you’ve driven away everyone else who has tried to love you.”

“One thing about you, Jane. You never lose hope. You still want me to throw myself at you, don’t you?”

“I told Noah Ballard you are a fiend. I was right to do that. You’re truly a creature from hell, Sam.”

“I could change your mind about that, dear girl, if I told you that Miranda Kemble doesn’t mean anything to me. If I told
you that it was really you I want, you’d probably find some way to help me out of this place.”

“I’m leaving, Sam.”

“Is that why you came to see me, Jane?”

“Go to hell, Sam Hawken,” she said as she rapped sharply on the door.

“Go to Noah Ballard, Jane Featherstone,” Sam said. “But a note of warning. You keep too many balls in the air, and you put
more in the air all the time. You’re a skilled juggler, but you can’t keep them up forever.”

“Go to hell, Sam,” she said. “Stew by yourself in the dark.”

The door opened, and without looking back, she left Sam’s cell.

After she’d gone, he left untouched the package she’d brought for him.

Later he gave it unopened to Jimmy Sutton. “I’d test it for poison if I were you, Jimmy,” he said, “if there’s food inside.”

“A woman scorned, is she?” Sutton asked.

Hawken gave him a wry smile.

While the two bow-damaged ferries were repaired, the one Hawken and Stetson did not sabotage shuttled locomotives between
Mobile and the connection with the Mobile and Great Northern Railroad. For five days
The Fair Hope
made daily trips from Mobile to the Tensaw River across the bay, and then five miles up the Tensaw to the railhead, a total
distance of twenty-five miles. On Monday the sixth of October, the other two boats were ready to sail.

That night Dart and Javelin were loaded on one of the two,
The Bay Queen,
and Perseverance and another locomotive were boarded onto the second,
The Mobile Star.

That same evening the fishermen who worked the Gulf outside the bay all returned to port. Though these men usually spent several
days out at a time, they were troubled about the weather. The sky that Monday was cloudless and the breeze was mild, but there
was a chop in the water they didn’t like, and the frequency of the waves had picked up in a disturbing way. Normally in that
part of the Gulf, something like eight waves passed any given point every minute, but as that Monday wore on, the waves speeded
up to nine, then ten, then twelve per minute.

What that meant, they knew, was that somewhere in the Gulf a big storm was brewing. The Gulf was a big sea, and chances were
that the storm—at least the worst of it—would miss Mobile, but fishermen in small boats don’t get to be old fishermen without
treating the evidence of chop and waves with respect. They pulled in their nets and headed for home.

Early Tuesday morning, Sergeant Sutton and a team of guards gathered Sam Hawken and Tom Stetson and led them at gunpoint,
their hands and feet in irons, up the cellar stairs and out into Front Street. From there, the two men were paraded to the
ferry slip, and then escorted aboard
The Bay Queen.

Major Ballard himself greeted them on the rear deck, while Jane Featherstone stood quietly several feet behind him, carefully
avoiding any glance in the direction of Sam Houston Hawken. It hadn’t been hard for her to conclude by this time that Sam
was everything evil that she had told Noah he was.

Jane was elegantly and fetchingly dressed; she’d made herself into a fine lady for the occasion. And that elicited a number
of stares and comments from soldiers and deckhands.

Dart and Javelin were forward, chained to the deck—powerful, monstrous black machines that seemed to dwarf the little bay
ferryboat.

Indeed, with the two large engines aboard, the distribution of weight on the ferry was not all her captain desired. They made
the boat top-heavy, a potentially serious problem in rough weather.

The ferry captain was aware that a storm might be on the way. He knew the fishermen had come into port last night, and he
was aware of its significance. The summer hurricane season was just about over, but it was not so late in the year that he
could rule out a big, rough tropical storm. Still, the bay seemed quiet enough today, and save for high bands of wispy clouds,
the sky was blue. Furthermore, he knew his exposure on the bay would be scarcely four hours, enough time to allow him to avoid
any serious weather.

“Good morning, Sam,” Noah said, as Sutton led Hawken and Stetson aboard. Noah almost granted Sam a smile when he made the
greeting. He was feeling a degree more mellow and generous toward Sam than he had a few days earlier. This greater benevolence
did not owe anything to a change in Sam, nor to any change in Noah’s attitude toward him, nor especially to any change of
opinion about Sam expressed by Jane Featherstone. Rather, it was a consequence of Noah’s growing certitude that he’d at last
reached the frontiers of his one, totally consuming goal: the delivery of his large herd of Mississippi locomotives to Atlanta.

And of the herd, Dart, Javelin, and Perseverance, the engines he was about to ship across Mobile Bay, were the best of the
breed. The mellowness and generosity Noah displayed that morning sprang out of the pride and satisfaction he felt as he personally
escorted them through their difficult voyage.

It would be a misrepresentation, of course, to claim that Noah Ballard’s pleasure that morning was absolutely unmitigated.
He was still deeply troubled by the defection of Will Hottel, but Will was already in Atlanta, and that absence was most welcome.
It set Noah’s elation free to swell all the more luxuriantly.

At the same time, no small part of Noah’s pleasure was owed to the presence of Sam Hawken in chains to witness his success.
That was a consummation he devoutly prized.

“Good morning, Noah,” Sam answered cautiously, noting the change in Noah’s bearing toward him, but not knowing what to make
of it. Sam had no illusions about reconciliation between himself and his old friend, but he hoped for an opening to at least
communicate with him.

“I wanted you to be with me when we crossed the bay,” Noah said. “You’ll be with me,” he added pointedly, “all the way to
Atlanta.”

I’ve always treasured the companionship of close friends, Sam was about to say, but he thought better of it. Noah never found
great delight in Sam’s ironies. Instead he said, “Perhaps we’ll have a chance to talk during that time. I’d like very much
to share words with you, Noah.”

Noah waited a long time before he replied. “That’s not impossible,” he said finally, in slowly measured tones. Then he went
on more rapidly, making a fluid gesture in the direction of Javelin, which was up ahead of him on the deck, just behind the
port sidewheel, flanking and nearly overshadowing it. “What do you think of my engines, Sam?” he said without trying to muzzle
his pride.

“I think they’re great beauties, Noah.”

Bells rang, announcing the imminent departure of
The Bay Queen.

“I have nearly fifty,” Noah said, “not as lovely as the two aboard here, and the other one across the way”—he pointed to Perseverance,
which was aboard
The Mobile Star
in the next slip over—“but they’re good, solid machines, all of them.”

“And all quite a feather in your cap,” Sam said with genuine admiration.

“The South needs them desperately,” Noah said diplomatically. “And I’m glad I could do my part in delivering them where they
are most desperately needed.”

Sailors cast the lines off, and the last bells sounded. The twin sidewheels turned slowly, driving the boat into the river.

Noah left Sam in order to settle Jane near the bow in a chair under a wide awning. Before he left, he ordered Sergeant Sutton
to chain Sam and Lieutenant Stetson to the drive wheels of Javelin. “You won’t be more uncomfortable here than you deserve,
Sam,” Noah said as he left.

“I’ve always counted on the kindness of friends,” Sam replied, unable to resist the crack.

Noah gave Sam a pained look and shook his head, then walked away to deal with Jane.

“How are you bearing up, Tom?” Sam asked after they were both fastened to Javelin. The two men had scarcely spoken since their
capture nearly a week earlier.

“I’ve been happier,” Tom said.

Sam smiled. “Me, too.”

“What’s likely to happen in Atlanta?”

“For you and me?”

Tom nodded.

“There’ll be a trial,” Sam said evenly, “a large trial for show. I’ll be found guilty of all the vilest crimes ever imagined
by mankind, and you may be found an accomplice or an accessory or whatever it’s called.” He breathed in deeply. “My guess,
if we reach Atlanta, is that once they’ve satisfied themselves of my guilt, they’ll lose interest in you and send you to prison.”

“
If
we reach Atlanta?” Tom asked, picking up on what sounded to him like hopeful words.

“We’ll do our best, Tom, not to reach Atlanta,” he said as coolly as he could manage.

Sam had very little hope of achieving that goal, and even less hope that the result of the trial would be as fortunate for
Tom as he was suggesting. Sam’s actual expectation was that they would both be shot, but he wasn’t about to tell Tom that.

“I heard you talking to Sergeant Sutton,” Tom said. “I thought that maybe you were cooking up something with him.”

Sam shook his head and gave a roll of his eyes. “Jimmy Sutton and I go back to the far distant past,” Sam said. “We rode with
Bobby Lee between San Antonio and Laredo, and we chased Coahuilan cattle rustlers across the Rio Grande together.” He smiled
almost in spite of himself. “You’ve never had a true experience with inebriation until you’ve been drunk with Sergeant Sutton.
And if you’re ever in Laredo with him, he’ll find you a girl who is not only beautiful beyond your wildest imaginings, but
who even likes gringos. He speaks their language like he was born to it.

“I like Jimmy Sutton about as well as any man I know. And he’d probably give up his life for me, except if doing that caused
him to violate his oath to his nation.”

“So he’s going to do nothing for us.”

“Not Jimmy Sutton, Tom.”

“He wouldn’t even turn a blind eye to give us a chance to run for it?”

“Not even that.”

“Well, goddamn,” Tom said, screwing up his face. Then, “Let me know what you want me to do, Captain, and when you want me
to do it. I’m here whenever you want me.”

“Yeah,” Sam said quietly, “I’ve noticed.”

There was a stiff breeze from just south of east when
The Bay Queen
sailed out of the Mobile River into the bay itself. The early fluffy, high banded clouds had firmed up and grown dark purple
and heavy with rain. And there was a snapping chop to the water. It made for discomfort among the travelers and concern in
the ferry’s captain.
The Bay Queen
was overloaded, and the weather was turning unkind to an overloaded ferryboat.

The captain ordered more steam, and
The Bay Queen
surged ahead a bit faster. The wind was veering more and more to the south, and its speed was picking up.