The Railroad War (41 page)

Miranda lay unclothed on her bed, and her nakedness was in itself pleasant, conjoined as it was with his. As he played his
fingers around and about Miranda’s breast, Sam gazed at her, resting with his chin propped up by his other arm, his legs and
body curled languidly over her, semi-encircling her. Both man and woman were sheened with a light film of sweat, which in
the soft illumination of the lamp next to the bed, made their bodies glow and set her hair alight, ginger-golden, fanning
recklessly across her pillow. Sam’s fingers occasionally strayed lovingly into it.

Her smile, whenever he thought about it, took his breath away.

“I love these curves,” Sam said quietly, almost inaudibly, running his hand over her breasts and flanks. “Woman curves.”

She looked at him. “It’s not often that I think of myself as a woman.”

“How do you think of yourself, then?” he asked. “I can’t think of you as anything but a woman.”

“I still see myself as a young girl most of the time. Do you believe that?”

“I can begin to understand it,” he said.

“A little girl,” she continued, “my mother’s pretty daughter, or my father’s—curly-haired, sweet, smiling, and agreeable.
I don’t like the little-girl part of me. But then, at other times I see myself as a businessman, maybe, or a plantation operator,
and I like that part of me more. But I scarcely ever see myself as a woman.”

“Until tonight,” he said, and caught her eye, “my stunningly beautiful young woman. We’ll have to make certain that you have
more opportunities to entertain that thought,” he said.

“More nights like tonight?” she said with a sly smile.

“Ten thousand more nights like tonight.” As he said that, he stretched so that his lips could reach hers. She parted her lips
to receive him.

A little later his fingers returned to the scar, exploring it, skimming gently over every part of it.

“You must have questions about that,” she said.

“Yes, you’re right,” he said. “I do.” He kissed it.

“It happened on the day I met you.”

“At West Point?” he asked wonderingly.

“No, on the journey up. On the train.”

“How?” he asked, screwing up his face. He had a dim recollection of an accident the morning they met.

“A flaming ember from the engine flew through the car window and landed on me.”

He looked at her. “I remember something about that. A burn?”

“A burn,” she agreed. “A bad one. It was quite painful. It was so severe that it very nearly prevented me from getting to
know you. Mother wanted me to rest all that afternoon for the ball, but Uncle Ash insisted that I go for a walk with Lam and
his friends. You were one of Lam’s friends.”

“I
was
one of Lam’s friends,” Sam sighed sadly.

She looked at him. “You miss him, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do. He was a good friend. And so was Noah Ballard.” He turned his face from hers.

“You haven’t asked about Lam all the time you’ve been here,” she said. “Do you want to know about him?”

His lips formed a wry smile. “All right.”

She told him about how the war had treated her brother.

“What do you know about Noah Ballard?” he asked. “Lam must have kept you more or less up to date on him.”

“You’d think that,” she said. “But I haven’t heard much news of him. He’s in Mississippi under Johnston. I think Lam mentioned
the last time I saw him that Noah had something to do with the fortifications at Jackson.”

Sam shook his head, maintaining his sad, wry amusement. “We may have been in Jackson together, then,” he said. “Imagine that.”

She lifted herself up and took his face in her hands and forced him to look at her. “You’ll see them again after the war,
and you can be friends again then.”

“It hardly seems possible,” he said, thinking of the heavy obstacles to their friendship that existed. It was hard to imagine
any way that the end of the war could remove those obstacles.

“Just wait,” she said, kissing him. “You’ll see.”

Sam shrugged. “Maybe….” his voice trailed off, helplessly.

“I wish you would never leave,” Miranda said to him later. They were still lying on her bed, but now they were deeply relaxed,
spent and calm.

“I wish I would never leave,” he answered, with a sad smile. “What I’m giving up has infinite attractions, and what I’m going
to I’d just as soon leave behind for good. But,” he said, sliding his fingers across her forehead, “you’ll still be here for
me—when we can make this night more permanent.”

“I’ll always be here for you,” she said, “wherever you are. And if you can’t come back to me, then I’ll go to you, or with
you. Consider this night permanent. Will you?”

“Yes, Miranda,” he said. “I will.”

She gave him a radiant, fetching smile. “But you will stay another day or two, won’t you? What difference will another day
or two make to them? And besides”—the smile altered from fetching to bawdy—“it will make such a difference to me!”

“Truly, I have to go. My obligations are real, and I don’t think I can hold Jane back any longer.”

“Jane!” she sneered contemptuously.

“Contempt comes easy to the winner.”

“Sam!” she yelped, digging her knuckle deep into his side. “I hope there wasn’t a contest.”

“No,” he acknowledged, “there wasn’t. When you appeared, there wasn’t a chance of a contest.”

“Well, then,” she smirked triumphantly.

“But I still have to leave you. You know that.”

“Yes,” she said. Then she looked at him earnestly. “But, Sam?”

“What is it?” he smiled. “You’re perfectly lovely when you put on your serious face.”

“I know,” she said with the trace of a smile. “But we must be serious for a moment.”

“All right,” he nodded.

“You will be careful, won’t you, around the Featherstone woman?”

“Jane? Naturally,” he said vaguely. “I’ll watch out for her.”

“You have to do better than that, Sam. She’s a dangerous person. She dreams vendettas and daggers. And she hates me. She’ll
hate you, too, now for loving me. Watch out for her. Watch what you eat and drink, and cover your back.”

He laughed at her—uncomfortably. “Jane Featherstone is no pussycat, Miranda,” Sam said. “But she’s not what you fear she is,
either.”

“Listen to me, Sam. Do it.” She cocked her head then in the gesture that Sam remembered well. “In fact, would you be willing
to guess where she is now?”

“In her room, asleep,” Sam answered.

“I’ll bet she has been outside my door for the entire evening.”

“Jane? Why?” Sam said, “Jane knows she’s lost to you. She’ll just sleep and go on to something else.”

“It’s because she has lost that she will want to know everything that happens between us,” Miranda said, making a move to
leave the bed. “Shall I go open the door and prove which of us is right?”

“No, Miranda. Stay where you are.”

Miranda smiled, snuggling against him. “All right, Sam. If you say so. I’ll do what you say. I’ll always obey you. You
know
that I will.”

“That’s the one thing about you,” Sam said, “that I will never count on.”

Miranda was wrong. Jane Featherstone was not at that moment listening outside her door. She was sitting on the ground outside
Miranda’s window. Miranda’s bedroom was on the first floor of the house.

Noah Ballard and Will Hottel strolled through the rail yards of Meridian, admiring the results of their labors of the last
weeks—over five dozen working locomotives and tenders ready to be transported to where they could be put to best use.

“So this is all of them,” Will said to Noah. Hottel, as always, was impeccably uniformed and smoothly shaved. Noah was in
shirtsleeves.

“All we could save, anyhow,” Noah said, always cautious and precise. “Sixty-one locomotives, more or less in working order.”

“You should be proud, Noah,” Hottel said. “If it hadn’t been for you…”

“There’s pride and honor enough to go around, Will,” Noah said. “We did good work. All of us.”

Hottel took in a long, pleased breath. “Still,” he said, “I stand by that statement. If it hadn’t been for you, these engines
would still be scattered all over north Mississippi.”

“All right, Will,” Noah said, “I won’t keep arguing with you.” Noah was aware, beneath his good breeding and his modesty,
that there was truth in what Hottel said. The engines would not be sitting here in Meridian if Noah had not put his shoulder
to the job and come up with the plan that got the Yankees so excited and distracted up along the Mobile & Ohio that they missed
completely the more important, secret goings-on north of Jackson on the Mississippi Central and the Mississippi & Tennessee.

Will Hottel had done his part superbly. He’d moved the machines quietly and efficiently. When trouble and obstacles came,
he maneuvered around them, using whatever it took to make things work.

Bridges had been destroyed by Sherman’s men on the Tallahatchie and the Yalobusha rivers between Grenada and Sardis, but Hottel
improvised ferries, and the locomotives beyond the Yalobusha were moved south. Whole five-mile sections of rails were ripped
up, but he scrounged and begged and stole replacement rails, and he found crews to lay them. Many of the forty-one engines
he was gathering turned out to be in much worse shape than the ones Noah had to work with. But Hottel managed to salvage all
but four of them.

“So when will we start moving them down to Mobile?” Hottel asked.

“I’ll start Wednesday or Thursday,” Noah said, “I want the mechanics to check them all over and fix whatever is fixable. The
big stuff we’ll leave for Atlanta. My father’s shops can handle all kinds of problems that we can’t handle here.”

“Speaking of him,” Hottel asked casually. “have you heard from your father lately?”

“He writes sometimes, and I write sometimes. Not often. He’s probably as busy with the war as we are.”

“I can believe that,” Hottel said.

“Though actually, now that we’re speaking of it, I’ve gotten three good, long letters from him over the past couple of weeks.
He’s showed considerable interest in the progress of our locomotives.”

“Well,
there’s
no surprise,” Hottel said with a merry laugh. “I don’t know of a railroad man who’d fail to be fascinated about the fate
of those sixty-odd engines. I’ll bet your father breathed a little harder and his heart beat a little faster whenever he got
a letter from you over the past few days.”

Noah laughed. “Well, I guess you’re probably right,” he said. “John Ballard is more loving and solicitous of his locomotives
than most grooms are of their brides on wedding night.”

“So what have you told him?” Hottel asked.

“Just that we’re coming,” Noah said. “As soon as we can get the machines over Mobile Bay. There’s not much else to tell him.”

“Good,” Hottel said. Then he said slowly and carefully, but still casually. “By the way, Noah, you didn’t mention my orders
from James Seddon, did you? They’ve got to be secret, even from your father.”

“Of course not,” Noah said. “Why would I do that?”

“I’m sorry I asked. Forget about it.”

“And, Will?” Noah said. There was a new, imperative note in his voice. He had switched from his friendly to his command aspect,
and Hottel instantly picked up on the change.

“Yes, Major,” Hottel said.

“What I’d like is for you to go on down to Mobile tomorrow. I’d like you to start working on how to move the locomotives across
the bay.”

“Yes, sir. I’d be glad to do that. It’s what I was going to suggest.”

“If this were a well-run operation,” Noah said, “I’d have already had somebody working on that weeks ago.”

Hottel laughed. “You’ve done what you’ve had to do,” he said. “And we’ve all made out all right that way.”

“You’re such a diplomat, Captain Hottel.” Noah laughed.

“I try to be obliging,” Hottel said.

After services that Sunday morning at the Episcopal Church of All Saints, the Edge family, everyone save Ben, who was on duty,
lingered outside the front steps of the meeting hall and socialized with the old and dear friends of James and Mary Edge.

Somewhere near one in the afternoon, the Edges embarked in their carriage and returned home for their regular Sunday afternoon
supper, the lavishness of which the war had scarcely dimmed. After supper, James played some hard-fought games of checkers
with young Robbie, games that James contrived to lose. Then he took the boy and himself upstairs for naps.

While the men napped, the two women sat quietly in the parlor. Mary read in her Bible from the Book of Psalms, finding texts
suitable to times of sorrow and travail. And Ariel sewed on the new and very fine uniform coat she was preparing as a Christmas
gift for Ben.

Sometime after five in the afternoon, while Mary and Ariel were dozing lightly in their chairs, they received two unexpected
visitors.

Or rather, more precisely, the visitors had come to see Ariel.

Elizabeth, the housekeeper, shook Ariel gently awake. “Miz Ariel,” she whispered, “They’s two gentlemens to see you, honey.
One of ‘ems a preacher, and t’other’s a colonel.”

“Show them in, Elizabeth,” Ariel said. But a glance at Mary, who was sound asleep and snoring with her head slumped onto the
seat back made her think better of that. “No, Elizabeth, don’t do that,” she said, rubbing her eyes and stretching. “I’ll
see them outside on the porch.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Elizabeth said.

Ariel stood, straightened her skirt and blouse, and composed her hair and face. Then she went to greet the colonel and the
preacher. A pinprick of dread lodged in her mind as she took a last look at Mary Edge on her way out of the parlor. And as
she passed through the house to the front porch, the dread swelled stronger. Before she even saw the colonel or the preacher,
she had the conviction that their visit was official. And terrible.

The colonel introduced himself. He was hard and leathery, clearly a field officer and not some flabby-waist who spent his
time far behind the lines. His name was Hightower, and he was here, he said, because General Early was unable to make the
journey himself. General Early sent his regrets, he said.