The Railroad War Read online

  A train ride to triumph and tears—unforgettable men and women whose destination is a place forever in our hearts

  SAM HOUSTON HAWKEN. An iron-willed young Texan, this intrepid Union officer would risk his life to stop the Confederate train speeding toward Atlanta—and reach the beautiful Southern belle he loved.

  MIRANDA KEMBLE. Feisty daughter of one of Georgia’s wealthiest families, this stunningly beautiful woman would have to take on a man’s job when her father died—and watch her lover fight against her country.

  NOAH BALLARD. A man of the New South, his vision of a glorious future depended on one vital mission—to beat both man and nature to get the Confederacy’s last train from Mississippi to Atlanta.

  FANNY SHAW. A sophisticated and sensual British actress, her outrage against slavery derailed her marriage to powerful Pierce Kemble, but joined her heart with another Kemble—one as dangerous as he was rich.

  LAMAR KEMBLE. Proud son of the Southern aristocracy, this handsome cavalry officer was sent to stop the Yankees’ train—in what would become a violent confrontation between friendship and loyalty to the land he loved.

  Also by Jesse Taylor Croft

  THE TRAINMASTERS

  Published by

  POPULAR LIBRARY

  Copyright

  POPULAR LIBRARY EDITION

  Copyright © 1989 by Warner Books, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Popular Library® and the fanciful P design are registered trademarks of Warner Books, Inc.

  Popular Library books are published by

  Warner Books, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

  First eBook Edition: September 2009

  ISBN: 978-0-446-56704-6

  Contents

  Also by Jesse Taylor Croft

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  ♦ ONE ♦

  June 1856

  “I am trying to speak to you, Miss Miranda Kemble,” Ariel Kemble, eighteen, said to her sister, who was three years her junior. “I have spoken to you four times, Miranda,” Ariel went on more insistently, “and you didn’t even look at me once, much less answer me.” Then with a louder voice: “Miranda! Miranda!” But Miranda kept her face turned to the open window. Her gaze had been unwavering since the moment the train had left New York City. Though Ariel was less cross with Miranda than exasperated, she feigned serious anger because her sister’s attention was in fact important to her.

  The sisters, together with their father, Pierce, and their uncle Ashbel were journeying on the Hudson line to Garrison’s Landing, the hamlet that served as the station stop for West Point, which was across the river. The United States Military Academy was located at West Point, and their brother, Lamar, was graduating this week from that illustrious institution. Ariel, Miranda, and their father had traveled all the way from Georgia to participate in the ceremonies. Uncle Ashbel had joined them in New York City.

  The two men were seated just ahead of the girls. Unlike Ariel and Miranda, they were engaged in vigorous conversation. Pierce Kemble was usually excited and voluble, his head nodding with energy and enthusiasm, his face flushed as he spoke. Ashbel was atypically the listener.

  Pierce’s excitement had much justification. He was more than $350,000 richer than he had been only a week before, although much of that $350,000 was already spoken for since Pierce Kemble had incurred substantial long-term debts. Nevertheless, $350,000 was a vast sum, and it was his.

  The train was only a few miles from Garrison’s Landing. Ariel needed to speak to Miranda soon if she were to get her business over with before the excitement of their arrival. It was, however, a delicate situation.

  “Miranda!” Ariel repeated, for what she was sure was the millionth time. Then she reached over and shook her sister’s shoulder.

  After a long moment, Miranda, lazily turning her gaze from the window and the rugged, lovely landscape beyond it, fixed her eyes on Ariel, who was in the aisle seat next to her. Ariel’s lips were pressed tight, her brow was rigid, and her eyelids were lowered to a most ominous half-mast. Seeing this, Miranda let her own face brighten into her most radiant, most charming, most winning smile.

  “You were saying something, dear?” she said sweetly.

  “I’ve been trying to say something to you for hours,” Ariel said. “And you have pretended not to hear me.”

  “Oh, that can’t be true, Ariel. We’ve not been on the train for hours, and I’ve only been admiring the view for a short while.”

  “Must you be so literal?” Ariel said, her exasperation growing. She hated when Miranda played the innocent. In Ariel’s opinion, her sister was never, never innocent. For Miranda, tricks and mischief came more naturally than sleep, especially when Ariel was the target. Which was the main reason why Ariel wanted to conclude her business with Miranda before they left the train. In the restricted setting of a passenger car, Miranda was on her best behavior. Heaven only knew what deviltry she’d find to wallow in once the ferry brought them to West Point, with its dozens of unattached young men for an audience.

  “Isn’t the river beautiful?” Miranda was exclaiming, changing the conversation to her liking. As she spoke, she lifted her hands high above her lap, where they had been resting, and opened her palms reverently to the scene outside the window. “The hills, and cliffs, and bluffs… I’ve never seen anything so achingly lovely, have you, dearest?”

  The train was passing through one of the most delightful scenes on the river. Just north of Peekskill, near Bear Mountain, the river narrowed into a rocky gorge. Rough, bouldered hills strained against one another, then tumbled down sheer flanks to the river edge.

  “It’s so fierce looking out there,” Miranda continued, attempting, Ariel was convinced, to use the beauties of the landscape to avoid hearing what her sister had to say. “And yet it all seems to be moving—almost to flow. And we seem to be standing still.”

  Ariel glanced sourly out of the open window. It was the noise and the jolting discomfort of the train and the grit and ashes drifting inexorably in more than the scenery that excited her attention. And distaste. The train’s rattles, creaks, and metallic cracks and bangs made the trip feel to Ariel more like a punishment than a purposeful and speedy progress toward a destination. Even the breeze from outside was no pleasure to her. It destroyed her hair. And infinitely worse, it grimed her gorgeous new clothes, which were a small portion of the glorious abundance of new things their father had during the past week bought for them at the most fashionable clothing emporia of New York. Their luggage was all but overflowing with the newest New York and Paris fashions.

  Miranda, contrarily, indifferent to the dirt, adored the breeze; she reveled in the wind rushing against her face and through her sherry-colored hair, lifting it, making it fly.

  “If the train weren’t lurching and jostling,” Ariel grumbled, “and if it weren’t so filthy, and if I weren’t so uncomfortable in it, I could perhaps look with pleasure at the countryside.” As she spoke, she dabbed with her handkerchief at the soot on her face.

  Miranda gave her a sharp stare, followed shortly by a darling smile. She didn’t like her sister to contradict her when she was off on one of her imaginative flights, but since at the moment she was playing innocent, she decided she shouldn’t step out of character.

  And then the train plunged into a tunnel. br />
  “Oh!” she yelped.

  “It’s only a tunnel,” Ariel explained without either concern or patience.

  A moment later they were out of it, and Miranda was smiling again. “You were saying?” she said, as if it were her sister and not Miranda herself who was keeping Ariel from getting on with her urgent business.

  “I want you to do something for me,” Ariel said, catching her sister’s eye. Miranda’s irises were a devious yet penetrating green, with yellow catlike flecks.

  “Just tell me what it is,” Miranda said guilelessly.

  Ariel gave her a long look. “While we’re at the Academy,” she said finally, carefully, “I’d like it that…” She turned her eyes away for a second. And then: “It’s about my engagement to Ben Edge.”

  Ariel was scheduled to marry Ben Edge of Virginia early in September. He was a fine, and very wealthy, young man. It was a good match, as Ariel well knew.

  “Your engagement?” Miranda repeated, urging Ariel to continue, her mouth slipping into a somewhat less innocent smile. Miranda could guess what was on her sister’s mind.

  “That’s right,” Ariel said. She looked into Miranda’s eyes again. “I think it might be best if we… kept the knowledge of it out of…”

  “You don’t want the boys at West Point to know you are about to be married?” Miranda said.

  “That’s right, Miranda,” Ariel sighed, relieved she didn’t have to actually say the words, for she was in fact a bit ashamed of herself. She did love Ben Edge, but she was not going to deprive herself of a few pleasant days with other handsome young men.

  “Oh, my,” Miranda said innocently, “I don’t know if I could do that!”

  “Why not?” Ariel said in a rush.

  “Well,” Miranda said, “what about Father and Uncle? And what about Lam?” Lam was their brother Lamar’s nickname.

  “I’ve already talked to Father and Uncle Ashbel, and I can deal with Lamar.”

  “You’ve already talked to Father? And he is going along with your”—she smiled sweetly—“lies?”

  “Oh, come,” Ariel said. “It’s no lie. It’s simply a”—she searched for the word—“a little piece of ‘practical diplomacy,’ as Daddy himself calls it.”

  “That’s what he said when you told him?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Sounds like him,” Miranda said with a shake of her head.

  “And then he said, ‘We aren’t lying when we don’t report the truth fully. We’re just being smart. Only a fool tells the whole truth.’ “

  “And what if Lam has already told all the other men at the Academy?”

  “I told you that I would deal with Lam later. Now I’m dealing with you.”

  “All right,” Miranda said with a quick, decisive nod.

  “What do you mean, ‘All right’?” Ariel blurted. “Do you really mean yes, you’ll do it?” She was astonished that Miranda might have been won over without a longer fight.

  “Of course I’ll do it for you, darling. There’s no harm done in something like that”—she lifted her head and glanced sideways at Ariel—“is there?” When she finished these words, Miranda leaned over and kissed her sister on the cheek.

  “Thank you,” Ariel said, returning the kiss. “Thank you so much. That will be such a relief to me. I just want to make my stay at the Academy… uncomplicated.”

  “I’m sure you do,” Miranda said. Then she laughed. “And what did Uncle Ashbel tell you when you told him what you wanted to do?”

  “Uncle Ashbel? Oh, you know him,” Ariel said, giggling nervously.

  Uncle Ashbel could be counted on to have a witty, sophisticated opinion on every subject under the sun. Unlike most sons of the South, he was a traveler. He’d journeyed everywhere, from Shanghai to Cape Town, from Patagonia to Vladivostok, and up every river that the girls had ever heard of.

  He was full of shocking and delicious tales about the nearly naked and very willing girls of the South Pacific and the equally willing and even more naked girls of West Africa. He told them about the golden idols of Peru, the elegant and amusing thieves in Morocco, the ruthless British opium traders in Hong Kong, and the jungle-shrouded pyramids in the Yucatan. The two nieces only half believed his outlandish claims.

  Their skepticism was in fact mostly justified, although there was more than a grain of truth in Ashbel’s tales. He was an international trader who owned enough ships to make him quite wealthy and allow him to travel to exotic ports.

  Besides, it wasn’t the truth of Uncle Ashbel’s stories that counted, it was his style.

  Then Ashbel Kemble himself, craning over the seat back ahead of the girls, was facing Ariel and Miranda. “I heard my name spoken in vain,” he said with a warm look. He liked his two nieces very much.

  “We’d never speak your name in vain, Uncle,” Ariel said.

  He laughed. “I suppose not,” he said. “At least not when I can hear you. You both want too much from me.”

  “Uncle!” they both said as one.

  “Well,” he said, “I did hear my name. What do you hungry tigresses want now?”

  “Nothing at all, Uncle,” Ariel said.

  Miranda, grinning, looked at him and then at Ariel. “She was just explaining to me,” Miranda said, “that she intends to put her engagement out of sight during her time at West Point. And,” Miranda’s eyes flashed, “I am sort of curious to hear what your reaction was to her plans.”

  “Me?” he said, laughing. “What’s so fascinating about my opinions of a young lady’s deceptions?”

  “Uncle, please,” Ariel said, her face flushing bright rose, “can we talk about something else?”

  He looked at Miranda. “You know I can’t say no to a girl so lovely as you, especially when she is my niece.”

  “Uncle Ashbel!” Ariel said, blushing even more. Then turning toward the aisle, she covered her face with her hands. “Please! Don’t embarrass me any more!”

  “Few things give me greater pleasure than embarrassing you, dear child,” he said. “Shame becomes you.”

  Suddenly Miranda screamed—a long, wailing cry of pain and terror.

  Ariel instantly jerked around to see what was the matter, for with her eyes covered, she hadn’t seen what had happened to her sister.

  Miranda cried out again, and her hands were brushing at her breast. It was smoking!

  “Oh, my Lord!” Ariel said to herself with a heavy shudder. She was otherwise frozen with shock. Flames and smoke swelled out of a patch of Miranda’s blouse. The patch was not large, covering only the space over her heart, but she was on fire nonetheless.

  A plum-sized ember from the locomotive had been sucked through the open window onto Miranda’s breast. Miranda had by this time managed to shake it off, and now the horrid-looking thing was still glowing on the floor of the train. As soon as Ariel was able, she ground the flame under her shoe.

  Miranda screamed again. “My blouse!” she cried. “My new blouse!” Now Ariel used her shawl to smother the place where the cinder had landed. When she stopped and pulled back, Ashbel, with no thought of decency, ripped away the front of Miranda’s blouse. Ariel hardly noticed that he was cursing like a sailor all the while. “Jesus Christ! Goddamn! Bastard railroads! Goddamned pine burners!”

  Pierce Kemble looked on, standing with a pained but helpless expression on his face. Ariel knew better than to count on her father in a crisis.

  The train conductor was by this time present in the aisle next to Ariel, and several of the passengers had joined him. A pair of elderly woman who occupied the seat behind the girls were now bent over Miranda and Ariel in order to get the best possible view. The conductor drew a gold watch from its pocket and worriedly flipped it open, as if he feared that the incident might delay his schedule.

  “Is she all right? Can I be of assistance?” he said.

  “For God’s sake, just move back,” Ashbel shouted, “and give the girl room!” The conductor and the passengers o
beyed, all except the elderly women, who looked more eager to see the spectacle than the rest.

  What they saw on the girl’s breast was a flame-blackened piece of undergarment framing a blistered and raw-looking coin of flesh.

  “Do something about those two women,” Ashbel said to Ariel in a commanding voice. Ariel did as she was told. She placed a palm on each old lady’s shoulder and forcibly shoved them back into their seat. They started to protest, but Ashbel wouldn’t let them finish. “Close your mouths, ladies, and keep quiet,” he shouted. “And don’t either of you make a move. The world would be a better place minus you two.” And then to Miranda, much more softly, “How do you feel, darlin’?”

  She groaned. “Dizzy,” she managed to say. “Hard to breathe. It’s ruined, isn’t it? The lace? The embroidery?” And then she looked at Ariel, her eyes wide with apprehension. “And… Mother! she whispered hoarsely. “She will be at the hotel! She’ll kill me for ruining my new…”

  “You’re right, I’m afraid,” Ashbel said. “You won’t be wearing that blouse again, darlin’, I’m sorry to say. But I don’t think you should be concerned about your mother.” As he said that, he looked at Ariel. Her expression confirmed that he was right. The girls’ mother wouldn’t be unhappy if all the new things Pierce Kemble had purchased for them had burned. The marriage of Pierce Kemble and Fanny Kemble—now once again Fanny Shaw—had been dissolved ten years earlier in a famous and acrimonious divorce. Time had not healed the bitterness.

  Then Ashbel spoke to Ariel. “I don’t want this girl going into shock. Let’s make her more comfortable.” And stretching out his hand, he began to unfasten the buttons of the high collar of her blouse. He also very gently plucked away the scorched undergarment from around the burn.

  “I don’t think that is proper,” Ariel said, putting her hand up to restrain him.

  “You may have noticed, or you may not have,” he said, ignoring her hand, “but the girl is already showing a fair portion of naked breast. Not that anyone would bother to notice the shame of it, not in the condition it’s in right now.”