Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout Read online

  CHAPTER V

  INSIDE THE CONFEDERATE LINES--"SAIREY" WARNS TOM--OLD MAN TOMBLIN'S "SETTLEMINT"--STEALING A LOCOMOTIVE--WILKES BOOTH GIVES THE ALARM--A WILD DASH FOR THE UNION LINES.

  Three days afterwards, Tom found himself "on special service," on thestaff of Gen. O. M. Mitchell, whose troops were pushing towardsHuntsville, Alabama. They occupied that delightfully sleepy old town,the center of a group of rich plantations, April 12, 1862, but Tom wasnot then with the column. Five days before, with Mitchell's permission,he had volunteered for a gallant foray into the enemy's country. He hadtaken prompt advantage of Lincoln's hint that he might fight a bit if hewanted to do so. He was to have his fill of fighting now.

  Tom was one of twenty-two volunteers who left camp before dawn on April7, under the command of James J. Andrews, a daredevil of a man, who hadpersuaded General Mitchell to let him try to slip across the lines witha handful of soldiers disguised as Confederates in order to steal alocomotive and rush it back to the Union front, burning all the railroadbridges it passed. The railroads to be crippled were those which ranfrom the South to Chattanooga, Tennessee, and from the East throughChattanooga and Huntsville to Memphis. A few miles from camp, Andrewsgave his men their orders. They were to separate and singly or in groupsof two or three were to make their way to the station of Big Shanty,Georgia, where they were to meet on the morning of Saturday, April 12.Andrews took Tom with him. For two days they hid in the wooded hills byday and traveled by night, guided by a compass and by the stars. Thentheir scanty supply of food was exhausted and they had to take to theopen. Their rough clothing, stained a dusty yellow with the oil of thebutternut, the chief dye-stuff the South then had, their belts with"C.S.A."--"Confederate States of America"--upon them, their Confederaterifles (part of the spoils of Fort Donelson), and their gray slouchedhats made them look like the Confederate scouts they had to pretend tobe.

  Danger lurked about them and detection meant death. They did their bestto talk in the soft Southern drawl when they stopped at huts in thehills and asked for food, but the drawl was hard for a Northern tongueto master and more than one bent old woman or shy and smiling girlstarted with suspicion at the strange accents of these "furriners." Themen of the hills were all in the army or all in hiding. On the fourthday they reached a log-hut or rather a home made of two log-huts, with afloored and roofed space between them, a sort of open-air room where allthe household life went on when good weather permitted. An old, oldwoman sat in the sunshine, her hands busy with a rag quilt, hertoothless gums busy with holding her blackened clay pipe. Behind her sather granddaughter, busy too with her spinning wheel. The two women withtheir home as a background made a pleasing and a peaceful picture.

  "Howdy," said Andrews.

  The wheel stopped. The quilt lay untouched upon the old woman's lap. Shetook her pipe from her mouth.

  "Howdy," said she.

  The conversation stopped. The hill-folk are not quick of speech.

  "Please, ma'am, may I have a drink of milk?" asked Tom.

  "Sairey," called the old dame, "you git sum milk."

  Sairey started up from her spinning wheel, trying to hide her bare feetwith her short skirt and not succeeding, and walked back of the house tothe "spring-house," a square cupboard built over a neighboring spring.It was dark and cool and was the only refrigerator the hill-folk knew.While she was away, her grandmother began to talk. The man and boy wouldmuch rather she had kept still. For she peered at them suspiciously, andsaid:

  "How duz I know you uns ain't Yankees? I hearn thar wuz a right smartheap o' Yankee sojers not fur off'n hereabouts."

  At this moment Sairey fortunately returned. She brought in her brownhand an old glass goblet, without a standard, but filled to the brimwith a foaming mixture that looked like delicious milk. Alas! Tom, wholoathed buttermilk, was now to learn that in the hills "milk" meant"buttermilk." He should have asked for "sweet milk." Sairey handed himthe goblet with a shy grace, blushing a little as the boy's hand touchedhers. He lifted it eagerly to his thirsty lips, took a long draught, andsputtered and gagged. But the mistake was in his asking and the girl hadgone a hundred yards to get him what she thought he wanted. He was aboy, but he was a gentleman. He swallowed the nauseous stuff to the lastdrop, and made his best bow as he thanked her. Suddenly the old womansaid to him:

  "Where wuz you born, bub?"

  "New--New----" stammered Tom. His tongue did not lend itself readily toa lie, even in his country's cause. When he was still too young tounderstand what the words meant, his mother had told him: "A lie soils aboy's mouth." As he grew older, she had dinned that big truth into hissmall mind. Now, taken by surprise, the habit of his young life asserteditself and the tell-tale truth that he had been born in New York was onhis unsoiled lips, when Andrews finished the sentence for him.

  "New Orleans," said Andrews, coolly.

  "He don't talk that-a-way," grumbled the old beldam.

  "He was raised up No'th," Andrews explained, "but soon as this yeronpleasantness began, he cum Souf to fight for we-uns."

  Andrews had overdone his dialect.

  "Sairey," commanded the old woman, "put up the flag."

  "Why, granma," pleaded Sairey from where she had taken refuge behind hergrandmother's chair, "what's the use?"

  "Chile, you hear me? You put up the flag."

  From her refuge, Sairey held out her hands in a warning gesture, andthen, before she entered one of the log-houses, she pointed to acart-track that wound up the hill before the hut. She came out with aConfederate flag, made of part of an old red petticoat with whitestripes sewn across it. It was fastened upon a long sapling. She put thestaff into a rude socket in front of the platform. As she passed Tom inorder to do this, she whispered to him: "You-uns run!"

  "What wuz you sayin' to Bub, thar?" her grandmother asked in anger.

  "I wuzn't sayin' nuthin' to nobuddy," Sarah replied.

  But Andrews' ears, sharper than the old woman's, sharpened by fear, hadcaught the words.

  "We-uns'll haf to go," he remarked. "You-uns haz bin right down good tous. Thanky, ma'am."

  "Jes' wait a minute," the old woman answered. "I'll give you somethin'fer yer to eat as ye mosey 'long."

  She walked slowly, apparently with pain, into the dark log-room. Saireywrung her hand and whispered: "Run, run. Take the cart-track." Instantlythe grandmother appeared on the threshold, her old eyes flashing, adouble-barreled shot-gun in her shaking hands. She tried to cover bothman and boy, as she screamed at them:

  "You-uns stay in yer tracks, you Yankees! My man'll know what to do withyou-uns."

  Their guns were at her feet. There was no way to get them, even if theywould have used them against a woman.

  "Run!" shouted Andrews and bounded towards the cart-track.

  Tom sprang after him, but not in time to escape a few birdshot which theold woman's gun sent flying after him. The sharp sting of themredoubled his speed. The second barrel sent its load far astray. Theyhad run just in time, for from another hilltop behind the hut a dozenarmed men came plunging down to the house, shouting after the scaredfugitives. The raising of the flag had been the agreed-upon signal fortheir coming. Sairey's father and several other men had taken to thenearby hills to avoid being impressed into the Confederate army, butthey adored the Confederacy, up to the point of fighting for it, andthey would have rejoiced to capture Andrews and Tom. The old woman'seyes and ears had pierced the thin disguise of the raiders. So she hadforced her granddaughter to fly the flag and the girl, afraid to disobeyher fierce old grandmother but loath to see the boy she had liked atfirst sight captured, had warned him to flee. Man and boy were out ofgunshot, but still in sight, when their pursuers reached the house,yelled with joy to see the abandoned guns, and ran up the cart-tracklike hounds hot upon the scent. As Tom and Andrews panted to thehilltop, they saw why Sairey had bidden them take the cart-track. Atthe summit, it branched into half a dozen lanes which wound through apine forest. Lanes and woodlands were covered
with pineneedles, thedeposit of years, which rose elastic under their flying feet and left nomarks by which they could be tracked. And beyond the forest was a vastlaurel-brake in which a regiment could have hidden, screened fromdiscovery save by chance. It gave the fugitives shelter and safety. Oncethey heard the far-off voices of their pursuers, but only once. Ere manyhours they had the added security of the night.

  When they found a hiding-place, beside a tiny brook that flowed at theroots of the laurel-bushes, Tom found that his wound, forgotten in thefierce excitement of the flight, had begun to pain him. His leftshoulder grew stiff. When Andrews examined it, all it needed was alittle care. Three or four birdshot had gone through clothing and skin,but they lay close beneath the skin, little blue lumps, with tiny smearsof red blood in the skin's smooth whiteness. They were picked out withthe point of a knife. The cool water of the brook washed away the bloodand stopped the bleeding. Andrews tore off a bit of his own shirt,soaked it in the brook, and bandaged the shoulder in quite a goodfirst-aid-to-the-injured way. Tom and he were none the worse, except forthe loss of their guns. And that was the less serious because bothknives and pistols were still in their belts.

  They slept that night in the laurel-brake, forgetting their hunger inthe soundness of their sleep. Just after dawn, they were startled tohear a human voice. But it was the voice of a gentle girl. It keptcalling aloud "Coo, boss, coo, boss," while every now and then it saidin lower tones: "Is you Yanks hyar? Hyar's suthin' to eat." At firstthey thought it was a trap and lay still. Finally, however, spurred byhunger, they crept out of their hiding-place and found it was Sairey whowas calling them. When she saw them, she ran towards them, while thecows she had collected from their pasture stared with dull amazement.

  "Is you-uns hurt?" she asked, clasping her hands in anxiety.

  Reassured as to this, she produced the cold cornbread and bacon she hadtaken from the spring-house when she left home that morning for herdaily task of gathering the family cows. Man and boy bolted down thefood.

  "You're good to us, Sairey," said Tom.

  "Dunno as I ought to help you-uns," the girl replied, peering slyly outof her big sunbonnet and digging her brown toes into the earth, "but Idun it, kase--kase--I jes' had to. Kin you get away today?"

  "We'll try."

  "Whar be you goin'?"

  Should they tell her where they were going? It was a risk, but they tookit. They were glad they did, for Sairey was not only eager to help themon their way, but could be of real aid. Once in her life she had been atBig Shanty. She told them of a short cut through the hills, by whichthey would pass only one "settle_mint_," as the infrequent clearings inthe hills were called.

  "When you-uns git to Old Man Tomblin's settle_mint_," said Sairey, "I'low you-uns better stand at the fence corner and holler. Old ManTomblin's spry with his gun sometimes, when furriners don't do nohollerin'. But when he comes out, you-uns tell him Old Man Gernt'sSairey told you he'd take care of you-uns. 'N he will. 'N you kin tellBud Tomblin--no, you-uns needn't tell Bud nothin'. Good-by."

  The hill-girl held out her hand. She looked up to Andrews and smiled asshe shook hands. She looked down at Tom--she was half a head taller thanhe--and smiled again as she shook hands. Then suddenly she stooped andkissed the startled boy. Then she fled back along the lane by which shehad come, leaving the placid cows and the thankful man and boy behindher. With a flutter of butternut skirt and a twinkle of bare, brownfeet, she vanished from their sight.

  Thanks to her directions, they found Old Man Tomblin's settle_mint_without difficulty. They duly stood at the corner of the sagging railfence and there duly "hollered." Old Man Tomblin and Bud Tomblin cameout of the cabin, each with a gun, and were proceeding to study the"furriners" before letting them come in, when Andrews repeated what OldMan Gernt's Sairey had told them to say. There was an instant welcome.Bud Tomblin was even more anxious than his father to do anything SaireyGernt wanted done. The fugitives' story that they had been scouting nearGeneral Mitchell's line of march and had lost their guns and nearly lostthemselves in a raid by Northern cavalry was accepted without demur. OldMrs. Tomblin, decrepit with the early decrepitude of the hill-folk,whose hard living conditions make women old at forty and venerable atfifty, cackled a welcome to them from the corner of the fireplace whereshe sat "dipping" snuff. "Lidy" Tomblin, the eldest daughter, helped andhindered by the rest of a brood of children, took care of their comfort.They feasted on the best the humble household had to offer. They sleptsoundly, albeit eight other people, including Mr. and Mrs. Tomblin andLidy, slept in the same room. In the morning they were given a bountifulbreakfast and were bidden good-by as old friends.

  "I hate to deceive good people like the Tomblins," said Tom, when theywere out of earshot.

  "Sometimes the truth is too precious to be told," laughed Andrews.

  But Tom continued to be troubled in mind as he tramped along. He made uphis mind to fight for his country, the next time he had a chance, insome other way. Telling a lie and living a lie were hateful to him.

  The next morning found them at Big Shanty, a tiny Georgia village, whichthe war had made a great Confederate camp. It was the appointed day,Saturday, April 12, 1862. Of the twenty-two men who had started withAndrews, eighteen met that morning at Big Shanty. The train forChattanooga stopped there for breakfast on those infrequent days when itdid not arrive so late that its stop was for dinner. It was what iscalled a "mixed" train, both freight and passenger, with many freightcars following the engine and a tail of a couple of shabby passengercars. On this particular morning it surprised everybody, including itsown train-crew, by being on time. Passengers and crew swarmed in tobreakfast. The train was deserted. The time for the great adventure hadcome.

  Before the train was seized, one thing must be done. The telegraph wirebetween Big Shanty and Chattanooga must be cut. If this were leftintact, their flight, sure to be discovered as soon as the train-crewfinished their brief breakfast, would end at the next station, put onguard by a telegram. To Tom, as the youngest and most agile of theparty, the task of cutting the wire had been assigned. He was already atthe spot selected for the attempt, a clump of trees a hundred yards fromthe station, where the wire was screened from sight by the foliage. Assoon as the train came in, Tom started to climb the telegraph-pole. Hehad just started when he heard a most unwelcome sound.

  "Hey, thar! What's you doin'?"

  He turned his head and saw a Confederate sentry close beside him. Herecognized him as a man with whom he had been chatting around acamp-fire early that morning. His name was Bill Coombs. Tom's ready witstood by him.

  "Why, Bill," he said, "glad to see you. Somethin's wrong with the wire.The Cunnel's sent me to fix it. Give me a boost, will ye?"

  The unsuspicious Bill gave him a boost and watched him without a thoughtof his doing anything wrong while Tom climbed to the top of the ricketypole, cut the one wire it carried, fastened the ends to the pole so thatfrom the ground nobody could tell it was cut, and climbed down. Billurged him to stay and talk awhile, but Tom reminded him that sentriesmustn't talk, then he strolled at first and soon ran towards thestation. He had to run to catch the train. The instant Andrews saw himreturning, he sprang into the cab of the locomotive.

  THE LOCOMOTIVE TOM HELPED TO STEAL]

  One of his men had already uncoupled the first three freight cars fromthe rest of the train. All the men jumped into the cab or the tender orswarmed up the freight-car ladders. Andrews jerked the throttle wideopen. The engine jumped forward, the tender and the three cars boundingafter it. The crowd upon the platform gaped after the retreating train,without the slightest idea of what was happening under their very noses.A boy came running like an antelope from the end of the platform. Hejumped for the iron step of the locomotive, was clutched by a half-dozenhands and drawn aboard. But as he jumped, he heard a voice he had reasonto remember call out:

  "They're Yanks. That's Lieutenant Strong, a Yankee! Stop 'em! Shoot'em!"

  Livid with rage, his long black hair
streaming in the wind as he ranafter them, Wilkes Booth fired his pistol at them, while the motleycrowd his cry had aroused sent a scattering volley after the train.Nobody was hurt then, but the danger to everybody had just begun.

  There was instant pursuit. The train-crew, startled by the sound of thedeparting train, came running from the station. They actually started torun along the track after the flying locomotive. They jerked a hand-caroff a siding and chased the fugitives with that. At a station not faroff, they found a locomotive lying with steam up. They seized that andthundered ahead. Now hunters and hunted were on more even terms. Thehunters reached Kingston, Georgia, within four minutes after the huntedhad left. The latter had had to make frequent stops, to cut the wires,to take on fuel, to bundle into the freight cars ties that could be usedto start fires for the burning of bridges, and to tear up an occasionalrail. This last expedient delayed their pursuers but little. When amissing rail was sighted, the Confederates stopped, tore up a railbehind them, slipped it into the vacant place, and rushed ahead again.

  Andrews was running the captured train on its regular time schedule, sohe could not exceed a certain speed. From Kingston, however, where theonly other train of the day met this one, he expected a free road andplenty of time to burn every bridge he passed. He did meet the regulartrain at Kingston, but alas! it carried on its engine a red flag. Thatmeant that a second section of the same train was coming behind it.There was nothing to do but to wait for this second section. Therailroad was single-track, so trains could pass only where there was asiding. But in every moment of waiting there lurked the danger ofdetection. Southerners, soldiers, and civilians, crowded about thelocomotive as she lay helplessly still on the Kingston sidetrack,puffing away precious steam and precious time.

  "Whar's yer passengers?" asked one man. "I cum hyar to meet up withCunnel Tompkins. Whar's he'n the rest of 'em?"

  "We were ordered to drop everything at Big Shanty," explained Andrews,"except these three cars. They're full of powder. I'm on GeneralBeauregard's staff and am taking the stuff to him at Corinth. Jove,there's the whistle of the second section. I'm glad to hear it."

  He was indeed glad. At one of his stops, he had bundled most of his meninto the freight cars. The cars were battered old things without anylocks. If a carelessly curious hand were to slide back one of the doorsand reveal within, not powder, but armed men, all their lives would paythe forfeit. Andrews was in the cab with engineer, fireman, and Tom, whohad been helping the fireman feed wood into the maw of the furnace onevery mile of the run. His young back ached with the strain of theunaccustomed toil. His young neck felt the touch of the noose thatthreatened them all.

  "Tom, you run ahead and throw that switch for us as soon as the othertrain pulls in," said Andrews. "We mustn't keep General Beauregardwaiting for this powder a minute longer than we can help. He needs it toblow the Yankees to smithereens."

  So Tom ran ahead, stood by the switch as the second section came in, andpromptly threw the switch as it passed. But his train did not move anda brakeman jumped off the rear platform of the caboose of the secondsection, as it slowed down, told Tom he was an ass and a fool, pushedhim out of the way and reset the switch.

  "You plum fool," shouted the brakeman, after much stronger expressions,"didn't ye see the flag fur section three?"

  Tom had not seen it, had not looked for it, but it was too true that theengine of section two also bore the red flag that meant that sectionthree was coming behind it.

  Again there was a long wait, again the sense of danger closing in uponthem, again the thought of scaffold and rope, again the necessity ofplaying their parts with laughter and good-natured chaff amid the foeswho thought them friends. The slow minutes ticked themselves away. Atlast the third section came whistling and lumbering in. Thank fortune,it bore no red flag. This time Tom threw the switch unchecked and thenjumped on the puffing engine as she reached the main-track and spedonwards.

  "Free, by Jove!" said Andrews, with a deep breath of deep relief. "Nowwe can burn Johnny Reb's bridges for him!"

  * * * * *

  Four minutes later, while section three of the train that had so longdelayed them was still at Kingston, a shrieking locomotive rushed intothe station. Its occupants, shouting a story of explanation that putKingston into a frenzy, ran from it to an engine that lay upon a secondsidetrack, steam up and ready to start. They had reached Kingston sospeedily by using their last pint of water and their last stick of wood.They saved precious minutes by changing engines.

  Five seconds after their arrival, the station-agent had been at thetelegraph-key, frantically pounding out the call of a station beyondAndrews's fleeing train. There was no reply.

  "Wire cut!" he shouted, running out of the station. Of course that hadbeen done by the fugitives just out of sight of Kingston. "Wire cut! Ikain't git no message through."

  "We'll take the message!" answered the Confederate commander, from thecab of the locomotive that was already swaying with her speed, as shedarted ahead.

  They came near delivering the message within four miles of Kingston.Andrews's men, with a most comforting sense of safety had stopped andwere pulling up a rail, when they heard the whistle of their avengingpursuer.

  "Quick, boys, all aboard," Andrews called. "They're closer'n I like tohave 'em."

  Quickly replacing the rail, the Confederates came closer still. Aroundthe next curve, quite hidden from sight until close upon it, thefugitives had put a rail across the track. It delayed the pursuit notone second. Whether the cowcatcher of the engine thrust it aside orbroke it or whether the engine actually jumped it, nobody knew then inthe wild excitement of the chase and nobody knows now. The one thingcertain is that there was no delay. Very likely the rail broke. Railsof those days were of iron, not steel, and throughout the South theywere in such condition that at the close of the Civil War one of thechief Southern railroads was said to consist of "a right-of-way and twostreaks of rust." The locomotive whistled triumphantly and sped on.

  On the Union train, Tom had crept back to the rear car along therolling, jumping carroofs, with orders to set it on fire and stand readyto cut it off. The men inside arranged a pile of ties, thrust fat pinekindling among them, and touched the mass with a match. It burst intoflame as they scuttled to the roof and passed to the car ahead. A longcovered wooden bridge loomed up before them. Halfway across it, Andrewsstopped, dropped the flaming car, and started ahead again. In a very fewminutes the bridge would have been a burning mass, but the few minuteswere not to be had. The Confederate locomotive was now close upon them.It dashed upon the bridge, drove the burning car across the bridgebefore it, pushed it upon a neighboring sidetrack and again whistledtriumphantly as it took up the fierce chase. The two remaining cars weredetached, one by one, but in vain. The game was up.

  "Guess we're gone," said Andrews, tranquilly, as he looked back over thetender, now almost empty of wood, to the smokestack that was belchingsooty vapor within a mile of them. "By this time, they've got a telegramahead of us. Stop 'round that next curve in those woods. We must take tothe woods. Don't try to keep together. Scatter. Steer by the North Star.Make the Union lines if you can. We've done our best."

  The engine checked its mad pace, slowed, stopped.

  "Good-by, boys," shouted Andrews, as he sprang from the engine anddisappeared in the forest that there bordered the track. "We'll meetagain."

  Seven of them did meet him again. It was upon a Confederate scaffold,where he and they were hung. The other six of the fourteen who werecaptured were exchanged, a few months later. Three others reached theUnion lines within a fortnight, unhurt. But where was Tom Strong?