Greer had the captain send his men out to search for the remaining raiders. At most, they had half an hour before night settled over the mountains. It would be futile to fumble around in the dark, so unless the soldiers found something right away, the search would have to resume in the morning. With any luck, Greer thought, they would have need for more rope.
"Looks like home guard," Benjamin said, referring to the quasi-military patrols that roamed the roads, upholding the law as they saw fit.
"Once you start shooting, lad, don't stop," Flynn said. "Ready—"
"No!" Nellie put a hand on Flynn's arm as he was about to draw his revolver.
"Let me handle this," she said. To Flynn's astonishment, she walked out to meet the horsemen.
"We reckoned we'd find you hereabouts, Nellie," said a man wearing a long duster coat, leaning forward in his saddle and glaring at Flynn, whose hand was firmly on the butt of the Le Mat. "Where's Charlie?"
"He's dead."
"Dead? What happened?"
"We got ourselves mixed up in the middle of a train raid by some Reb soldiers." She jerked her chin at Flynn and Benjamin. "That's two of them."
"You want us to shoot them?" The horseman leveled a rifle at Flynn's chest. He was barely twenty feet away, and Flynn knew the man wouldn't miss. He held his breath and stared at Nellie, amazed.
She turned. Even in the gathering dark, Flynn could see Nellie's cold smile. She held his life, and Benjamin's, on the tip of her tongue.
"No," she finally said. "They helped me get the money off the train."
One of the men slid off his horse, and while the others covered Flynn and Benjamin with their guns, he relieved them of the sacks of money.
The man carried it back toward the horses, and as he divided the greenbacks among the saddlebags, the man with the long duster coat explained how they had come to find Nellie. They had dragged some trees across the tracks a short distance ahead as planned, in order to stop the train. But the train never arrived. Instead, they heard a crash and then gunfire. Leaving three men at their makeshift barricade, the rest had ridden the roads that paralleled the tracks, intending to find out what all the commotion was about.
"Knowing Charlie, I reckon he must have gotten itchy under the collar and raised hell," the man in the duster said. "I suppose it was enough to get him killed."
"Yes," was all Nellie said. Flynn was glad she didn't point out that he was the one who had done the killing.
"We done brought your horses along," the leader said. "Just in case we had to help you make a getaway."
Nellie walked over to one of the horses and the man still on the ground helped her swing up into the saddle. She straddled the horse, skirts and all, just like a man.
"Give them Charlie's horse," she said.
"We ain't giving them a horse," the leader protested. "These horses cost good money."
"There's Yankee soldiers on our trail," she said. "You want these two to get caught and tell those soldiers about us?"
"It ain't too late to shoot them," he offered. "They won't talk much then."
"Give them the horse."
One of the men led the animal forward and offered the reins to Flynn. He took them gladly, but couldn't take his eyes off Nellie. She had played him for a fool and outfoxed him all the way. Damn the woman.
"Might we request a few of those greenbacks for our troubles?" Flynn asked.
"I don't think so." Nellie laughed. "You have a lot of brass for asking, though. See you in hell, Irish."
The thieves turned their horses and quickly rode back the way they had come, leaving Flynn and Benjamin alone on the dark road.
"Well, it all makes sense now," Flynn said, watching as the horsemen were swallowed by the oncoming night. He sighed. "She never wanted to split the money with me in the first place. Nellie just needed someone to carry it off the train for her, so she could meet up with her friends there. That's why she wanted to make sure we were bringing the train this far. It was where those fellows were setting their ambush."
"Ain't you mad?" Benjamin asked.
"Mad? Hell no, lad. We're alive, which is more than some can say tonight." He looked back toward the river, where the railroad tracks ran, somewhere in the distance. "All the rest weren't so lucky."
"Maybe she ain't as smart as you think," Benjamin said.
"What do you mean, lad?"
Benjamin opened his coat, revealing several bundles of greenbacks stuffed into his belt. He reached into his coat pockets and pulled out more money. "Back when I pretended to stumble, I took some of the money out of the sack and put in a couple of rocks so it wouldn't seem any lighter."
Flynn stared, astonished, then threw back his head and laughed. "There's hope for you yet, lad."
He hooked a foot in the stirrup and pulled himself up onto the horse, then reached down and helped the boy up behind him. "If those Yankees chase us anything like they chased that train, they won't give up. Come morning, they'll be riding all over these mountains looking for us and that money. Only we're going to be in Virginia by then. Nellie saved our lives twice tonight, first by telling her friends not to shoot us, and then by giving us this horse. We can't ride fast or far, not with two of us, but we'll make better time than walking."
Flynn headed the horse south, toward the Confederacy. He and Johnny Benjamin were going home.
Chapter 33
The train crossed the border between Maryland and Pennsylvania sometime after dawn. Wedged into his hiding place beneath the coal car, Percy felt more dead than alive. Stiff as a corpse, he thought. His whole body was numb and cramped, but he didn't dare relax his grip for a moment because the spinning wheels of the coal car were just inches away, ready to cut him to ribbons if he fell.
The first leg of the journey, from where the trains had collided to the spur at Weverton that ran north, had taken hours. The train rolled backwards, slowly, because operating too fast in the mountains at night would have been disastrous.
The train stopped briefly during the early morning hours in what Percy guessed was Hagerstown. Another car was added, evidently so that Lincoln could ride comfortably, instead of in the locomotive's cramped cab. Percy considered carrying out the assassination while the train was stopped, but the station was pitch black and he heard the voices of many men on the platform. He could only imagine himself stumbling around in the dark, trying to find the Yankee president. Under those circumstances, he doubted that he could succeed.
Wait, he told himself. Be patient.
The train would stop again at Gettysburg, and there would be no mistaking Abraham Lincoln by the light of day.
The day dawned sunny and unseasonably warm for November, perfect for the crowds that would gather to hear the president's remarks. The pleasant weather seemed to be at odds for the dedication of a national cemetery where thousands of Union dead lay buried at the edge of town. The new national cemetery was an attempt to bring an added measure of dignity to all those who had sacrificed themselves in that decisive battle.
That wasn’t to mention the more practical reasons for the cemetery. In the wake of the battle, nearly every field around town had become a boneyard. Something had to be done.
The cemetery was laid out on a low ridge within sight of where the center of the Union lines had withstood the high tide of the Confederacy. It was arranged something like a Greek amphitheater, with designated sections for each Union state. At the center, where an amphitheater’s stage would be, there was instead a towering monument. The new headstones were flush with the newly turned earth. It was ground steeped in men's blood, and dignitaries like Lincoln and the scheduled orator, the famed Edward Everett, could say little to further consecrate the cemetery. Those buried there had already done that.