Manhunt (45 page)

Conger, Baker, Doherty, and Jett hurried out of the Star Hotel and mounted their horses. At about 12:30 A.M., Wednesday, April 26, the Sixteenth New York Cavalry headed for Garrett's farm and, they hoped, a rendezvous with Lincoln's assassin. Baker warned Jett not to try any tricks: “He shook hands with the Colonel, and promised on his honor as an officer and a gentleman that he would be true to us. We told him
that if he deceived us, it would be death to him—we thinking that perhaps it might be his design to lead us into an ambuscade.”

After two hours in the saddle, Jett told Conger that he should slow the column: “We are very near there now to where we go through: let us stop here, and look around.” In the dark, Jett had trouble finding the gate to the road that led to Garrett's house. Conger ordered the patrol to halt. He and Jett rode on alone. It is just a little way up, Willie reassured him. Conger trotted ahead of Jett. His eyes scanned the dark roadside but detected no opening. All Conger could see was a bushy, unbroken fence line skirting the road. He turned his horse around and retreated. There is no gate, he complained to Jett.

Then it is just a little farther up the road, Booth's Judas promised. It is hard to judge these distances in the dark. They rode on three hundred yards more, and Baker spurred ahead from the main body to help Conger search for the gate. This time they found it. After unlatching it, Conger sent Baker ahead to find and open the second gate; Jett had told them that it would block their way. Baker vanished into the black night while Conger backtracked to fetch the cavalry. The detective asked Jett a final question: when the cavalry charges down that road, where should they look for the house?

As before, Jett obliged: “I took them to Garrett's gate and directed them how to go into the house and they went in, leaving me at the gate.”

Conger ordered Jett and Rollins to remain at the gate, guarded by only one trooper. Soon Baker located the last roadside obstacle that separated them from Booth: “We found a gate, fastened by a latch, dismounted, opened the gate, and the command came through, and a charge was ordered.” The Sixteenth New York Cavalry raced up the dirt road and toward the farmhouse.

As the Sixteenth New York closed in on Booth and Herold, the nation did not hold its collective breath, awaiting the exciting climax of the manhunt. Nobody—not Stanton, his officers, the other pursuers, or the press—knew that Conger, Baker, and Doherty had tracked Lincoln's
assassin to Port Royal, and to the Garrett farm. Elsewhere, all over Virginia and Maryland, other manhunters, ignorant of what was happening at Garrett's farm, continued the chase. In Maryland, S. H. Beckwith, the man whose tip had set in motion the sequence of events that led the Sixteenth New York to Booth's hiding place, sent, at 1:30 A.M., April 26, another telegram to Major Eckert. The major did not receive it until 8:00 A.M. And Booth had escaped Maryland days ago.

T
HE DOGS HEARD IT FIRST
. R
ISING FROM THE SOUTHWEST
. Distant sounds, yet inaudible to human ears, of metal touching metal; of a hundred hooves sending vibrations through the earth; of deep, labored breathing from tired horses; of faint human voices. These early warning signs alerted the dogs sleeping under the Garretts' front porch. At the farm John Garrett, corn-house sentinel, was already awake and became the first one there to hear their approach. William Garrett, lying on a blanket a few feet from his brother, heard them, too.

It was dark and still inside the farmhouse. Old Richard Garrett and the rest of his family had gone to bed hours ago.

All was quiet, too, in the tobacco barn. It was well past midnight, and the Garretts' unwitting prisoners were asleep. As far as John and William could observe from their hiding place, neither Booth nor Herold stirred during the night, realized their predicament, and tried to escape their rustic jail. The horses were safe, and the suspicious Boyd cousins were trapped. The barking dogs and the clanking, rumbling sound finally woke up Booth. Recognizing the unique music of cavalry on the move, the assassin knew he had only a minute or two to react before it was too late.

Booth woke up Davey fast. The cavalry is here, Booth hissed in a low whisper. The assassin's groggy companion snapped to attention. They snatched up their weapons and rushed to the front of the barn. “We went right up to the barn door and tried to get out,” recalled Davey, “but found it was locked.” The Garretts had imprisoned them! Booth wasted no time and began trying to pry the lock from its mountings. Every second was precious: they had to flee the barn before Union troops surrounded it. Booth guessed that the riders would move on the farmhouse first. He and Herold had to clear out of the tobacco barn before the cavalrymen
turned their attention to the outbuildings. No doubt the treacherous Garrett boys would guide the Yankees to the right one.

Booth wheeled around one hundred and eighty degrees. “Come on!” he called to Davey. The assassin scampered fifty feet to the back wall. “[W]e went directly to the back end of the barn, and we tried to kick a board off so we could crawl out,” witnessed Herold. Booth, impaired by his injury, and hobbled by his crutches, could not leverage his full weight on his left foot to swing a powerful kick with the right. He struck weakly. The board did not give. Davey fared no better. “Let's kick together!” Booth proposed. They aimed their kicks to strike one board together. Still the iron nails held tight as though cemented into the framing. David Herold was getting worried: “Although we did, our kicks did not do the work.”

T
HE
U
NION COLUMN RACED UP THE ROAD AND THREW
A CORdon around the Garrett farmhouse. Edward Doherty, Luther Baker, and Everton Conger dropped from their saddles, leapt up the porch, and pounded on the door. Awakened by the commotion, Richard Garrett climbed from his bed and walked downstairs in his nightclothes.

D
AVID
H
EROLD
P
ANICKED
: “Y
OU HAD BETTER GIVE UP
,” HE urged Booth.

No, no, the actor declared, “I will suffer death first.”

D
OHERTY
, B
AKER, AND
C
ONGER WAITED IMPATIENTLY ON THE
front porch, and the trio pounced as soon as old man Garrett opened the door.

Conger barked first: “Where are the two men who stopped here at your house?”

Startled, Richard Garrett replied vaguely: “They have gone.” “Gone where?” Conger demanded. “Gone to the woods,” explained Garrett.

“What!” Luther Baker interrupted mockingly, “a lame man gone into the woods?”

Well, he had crutches, old Garrett pointed out.

“Will you show me where they are?” Baker continued.

“I will,” Garrett promised, “but I will want my pants and boots.”

Garrett's interrogators refused to let him back into the house to dress, so his family passed his clothes and boots to him through the door. There on the front porch, in full view of the soldiers, he dressed himself.

Conger decided to play the old man's game, at least momentarily: “Well, sir, whereabouts in the woods have they gone?”

Garrett began a long-winded story of how the men came there without his consent, that he did not want them to stay, and that …

Enough, Conger interrupted: “I do not want any long story out of you: I just want to know where these men have gone.”

Richard Garrett was afraid, and he babbled his defensive monologue all over again. Conger had heard enough. He turned from the door and spoke gravely to one of his men: “Bring in a lariat rope here, and I will put that man up to the top of one of those locust trees.” Even under the threat of hanging, marveled Conger, Garrett “did not seem inclined to tell.” A soldier went to get the hemp persuader.

John Garrett emerged from the corn house, walked up to the nearest cavalryman, and asked whom they were pursuing. “That I cannot tell you,” the trooper answered mysteriously, telling another soldier to take John to the house. When they got near the house, John saw Doherty, Conger, and Baker on the front porch talking to his father. Spotting John Garrett, Conger bellowed to his soldier escort, “Where did you get this man from?” John Garrett spoke up and came to the rescue of his tongue-tied father.

“Don't hurt the old man: He is scared. I will tell you where the men are you want to find,” he said.

“That is what I want to know,” said an exasperated Conger. “Where are they?”

Before John had time to answer, Doherty seized him by the collar, pushed him down the steps, put a revolver to his head, and ordered him to tell him where the assassins were.

“In the barn,” John Garrett cried out. The two men are in the barn.

Not good enough, warned Conger: “There are three rooms around here, the tobacco-house and two corn houses; if you don't tell me the exact house he is in, your life will pay the forfeit.”

They are in the tobacco barn, divulged Garrett.

“Show me the barn,” Doherty commanded.

B
OOTH AND
H
EROLD HEARD THE SOLDIERS RUSH AND SUR
round the barn. Maybe stealth could save them just once more, like it had served them in the pine thicket. Booth hushed Herold to remain silent and motionless: “Don't make any noise,” he whispered, “maybe they will go off thinking we are not here.” Conger, close to the barn now, heard someone moving around inside, rustling the hay. It was David Herold walking about, failing to heed Booth's orders to take cover and, stupidly, revealing that they were in the barn.

T
HE LEADERS OF THE
S
IXTEENTH
N
EW
Y
ORK
E
XPEDITION WERE
not done with John Garrett. They had a special mission for him. Luther Baker summoned John to his side and pointed to the tobacco house: “You must go in to the barn, and get the arms from those men.” Garrett objected to the suicidal plan. Ignoring his reaction, Baker went on: “They know you, and you can go in.” Yes, Booth and Herold
did
know John Garrett—as the man who ordered them out of his house,
refused them the comfort of a bed, and locked them in the barn. That is precisely why he refused Baker's request. He had seen Booth's weapons and knew he would not hesitate to exact vengeance for Garrett's inhospitality and betrayal. No, he would not be the assassin's last victim.

Perhaps Garrett did not understand, Baker explained to him, that this mission was not optional: “I want you to go into that barn and demand the surrender of the arms that man has and bring them out to me. Unless you do it, I will burn your property.” Baker didn't mean just the tobacco barn. He meant it all—house, barn, corn houses, and stables. Either John went in, or Baker would “end this affair with a bonfire and shooting match.”

By now William Garrett had also emerged from the cover of the corn house and joined his brother near the tobacco barn. William, who had imprisoned the fugitives, pulled the key from his pocket and surrendered it to Baker.

Baker stepped forward and shouted to John Wilkes Booth: “We are going to send this man, on whose premises you are, in to get your arms; and you must come out, and deliver yourselves up.” Booth said nothing. It might be a trick, he considered. He readied himself for a dismounted charge by more than twenty cavalrymen the moment the door opened. Baker, key in hand, strode right up to the barn door. He stood within close range of Booth's pistols now. Baker inserted the key, turned the lock, and, slowly, opened the door a little. Booth remained invisible, hiding just several yards away in the black, inner recesses of the barn. He saw movement. He held his pistols tightly, fingers in the trigger guards, thumbs ready to cock the hammers of the single-action Colts. But he held his fire. Baker seized John Garrett and half guided, half pushed him through the door and closed it behind him.

John Garrett stood alone, in the dark, at the mercy of Lincoln's killer. He spoke timidly to the unseen fugitives, reporting that “the barn was surrounded, that resistance was useless, and that [you] had better come out and deliver [yourself] up.”

A growling, tenor voice, dripping with malice, echoed from the darkness in reply: “You have implicated me.”

Garrett tried to reason with them: “Gentlemen, the cavalry are after you. You are the ones. You had better give yourselves up.”