Lincoln's Ransom

by Tim Champlin

  The afternoon was gray, and a chilly rain appeared to be settling in for the evening. Would Sterling awaken, find her note, and come after her? She felt she had given herself ample time to escape.

  Several packets were lined up at the landing, and, after three inquiries, she found one — the Vicksburg — that was bound downriver to St. Louis and from there to New Orleans. Steam was up, and the steward on the foredeck informed her the stern-wheeler would be underway within the hour.

  “You’re running at night?” she asked.

  “Our pilot is an old hand who knows this stretch of the river like his own stateroom. He’d just as soon navigate on a moonless night as the brightest day. Besides, the river’s rising, covering some of the shoals.”

  “Marvelous,” she breathed to herself.

  “Come aboard, miss, if you’re headed downriver. Can I take your luggage?”

  “I don’t have any.”

  Janice felt the steward’s eyes evaluating her, trying to calculate what manner of woman this might be. She was sure he wasn’t admiring her bedraggled beauty.

  “What’s the fare to New Orleans?”

  “One way?”

  “Yes.” Then she added: “I’ll make return arrangements later.”

  “That would be ninety dollars.”

  She reached into the pocket of her dress and pulled out the roll of bills, turning away from him to count out the fare.

  “There you are.”

  “Your name?”

  “Anna Lee,” she lied quickly.

  He turned to enter her name on the passenger list.

  “Your cabin is the first one on the starboard side. Not many passengers on this leg of the trip.”

  “Thank you.”

  As she climbed the stairs to the boiler deck, she repeated her new name — Anna Lee — over and over to herself to ensure it was committed to memory and she would answer to it. Secure in her cabin, she removed her clothes and, using the large pitcher of water and the bowl on the tiny table, took a sponge bath. Not as good as the real thing, but refreshing, nonetheless. While thus engaged, she tried to think of anyone she knew in New Orleans. She had a great aunt who’d lived there before the war, but the old lady was probably long dead. As with most of her family, she’d not kept in touch.

  Forty minutes later she stood at the railing outside her stateroom and watched Nebraska City fade into the murky rain. It seemed a great weight had been lifted from her. Kinealy and McGuinn had departed for Omaha shortly before noon, going in the opposite direction. It would be many days before she felt completely safe from pursuit by the law, but she was her own boss now for the first time in her life, and it was a heady feeling. In the tangle of human events, it was difficult to sort out right from wrong, good from bad, while at the same time dealing with personal emotions and weaknesses. She had married James Kinealy for better or for worse, and she’d definitely received some of both, but, given the situation, she felt she had taken the right step for both of them. As long as he lived, there could be no thought of divorcing Kinealy or marrying Packard regardless of how much she cared for him. Her decision was based on a code of conduct instilled in her many years before. Whatever else she might be guilty of, she had made a vow, and she was going to keep it. It was as simple as that. But she was not yet forty. No one knew what the future might bring. And, as she thought of the future, her need for love and caring made her wonder if perhaps Florence Nightingale had established one of her training schools for nurses in New Orleans.

  In the gathering dusk, the young steward came along the walkway under the overhang. He nodded, eyeing her with the kind of appreciative look she knew so well. “Dinner will be served at six, Miss Lee.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  He paused expectantly, but, when she said nothing further, he moved away down the deck, leaving her alone with her thoughts.

  * * *

  Packard read the note again, almost hearing Janice’s voice speak every word, committing her handwriting to memory. Then he twisted the damp paper and held it over the lamp chimney. It dried, began to smoke, and burst into flame. When the blaze reached his fingers, he dropped the end of the paper and watched the dying fire consume the last of his connection with Janice Kinealy. Then, taking a deep breath, he picked up the lamp and started back through the tunnel toward the house, determined to find out if there was a night train with a Pullman going West from here.

  He was bone tired, yet knew it was a weariness that sleep couldn’t lift. It was caused by the unrelenting press of danger and physical effort and mental strain which had slowly built up a terrible fatigue in him, solidifying like old age. It was a weight he no longer had the strength to carry. He would have to begin relieving himself of this burden before a fresh start could be made. The first step would be to telegraph his resignation to the Chicago office of the U. S. Secret Service, giving poor health as an excuse — and possibly justifying Elmer Washburn’s accusations in the process — but somehow that didn’t seem to matter. He had always heard that New Mexico boasted a healthy climate. Maybe with time and luck, it could also cure an ailment of the heart.

  Epilogue

  James Kinealy and Jack McGuinn were apprehended by police detectives at the riverboat landing in Omaha that night and returned to Chicago. Neither man was ever sure if they had been betrayed by Sterling Packard or Janice Kinealy, or both. Twelve days later a grand jury indicted them on a charge of burglary. Insufficient evidence was found to try them for extortion, since no direct link could be found between the ransom demands and the defendants.

  Three weeks after these indictments, a suspicious bank president in Río de Janeiro alerted police when an American, identifying himself as Benjamin Boyd, tried to convert two hundred thousand dollars in crisp U. S. currency into gold. He was detained for questioning by Brazilian authorities who later returned him to the United States as an escaped criminal. Based on Janice Kinealy’s telegram, a search party was dispatched from Springfield to recover Lincoln’s body. The lead coffin was located a few days later under a collapsed dirt bank near the Hanrahan mansion. After verification of its contents, the coffin was crated and shipped, under armed escort back to Springfield for re-interment in its mausoleum.

  Kinealy and McGuinn were brought to trial before a jury in May, 1877. Both were found guilty, based mainly on the testimony of Boston Corbett, the revelers at Kinealy’s saloon, and Louis Griffin, the Wells Fargo express messenger, all of whom had seen Kinealy and McGuinn in possession of the lead coffin identified as containing the remains of the late President. Additional evidence was the empty cedar casket, found in the back room of Kinealy’s saloon. When the issue of their guilt was no longer in doubt, Kinealy, with a touch of professional pride, requested that he be allowed to make a statement for the record so “the newspapers don’t get it all screwed up,” as he told his attorney. In the process of boasting about how he had planned and pulled off the sensational burglary, he mentioned that he had ordered McGuinn to stay close to Sterling Packard the entire time they were in Oak Ridge Cemetery. Thus it became clear that Packard had had no opportunity to signal the waiting lawmen. Based on this testimony, Elmer Washburn quietly dropped all charges against his former agent.

  Kinealy and McGuinn were each sentenced to serve one year at hard labor in the state penitentiary at Joliet. (In 1879, a law was belatedly passed by the Illinois legislature specifically prohibiting the theft of a body from any grave in the state. The penalty for this offense was to be from one to ten years in prison.) Stan Mullins was never heard from again.

  Sterling Packard, working in a Santa Fé hotel under an assumed name, followed the trial in a local newspaper. After the verdict, he moved to Las Vegas, New Mexico, resumed using his real name, and took up teaching again, this time as a private tutor. As the months passed, he met and began courting a young widow who lived in the town. Yet, in quiet moments, his thoughts still turned to Janice Kinealy. Where was she? What was she doing?

  One hot S
unday in August, 1878 he sat in the shade of his porch, scanning the newspaper. His attention was drawn to a story concerning a severe outbreak of yellow fever that had been raging for several weeks along the lower Mississippi River from New Orleans to Memphis. The more affluent residents were fleeing to cooler, drier areas. But among the more than four thousand who had so far perished in the epidemic were several nurses and doctors. Packard took little notice of their names, but one of the deceased nurses singled out for special heroism in selflessly treating the afflicted was a woman identified as Anna Lee.

  THE END

  About the Author

  Tim Champlin, born John Michael Champlin in Fargo, North Dakota, was graduated from Middle Tennessee State University and earned a Master’s degree from Peabody College in Nashville, Tennessee. Beginning his career as an author of the Western story with SUMMER OF THE SIOUX in 1982, the American West represents for him “a huge, ever-changing block of space and time in which an individual had more freedom than the average person has today. For those brave, and sometimes desperate souls who ventured West looking for a better life, it must have been an exciting time to be alive.” Champlin has achieved a notable stature in being able to capture that time in complex, often exciting, and historically accurate fictional narratives. In all of Champlin’s stories there are always unconventional plot ingredients, striking historical details, vivid characterizations of the multitude of ethnic and cultural diversity found on the frontier, and narratives rich and original and surprising. His exuberant tapestries include lumber schooners sailing the West Coast, early-day wet-plate photography, daredevils who thrill crowds with gas balloons and the first parachutes, tong wars in San Francisco’s Chinatown, Basque sheepherders, and the Penitentes of the Southwest, and are always highly entertaining.

  Other Books by Tim Champlin

  TREASURE OF THE TEMPLARS

  An archeology professor finds a journal in the ruins of a Scottish dungeon. The journal of a long-dead knight reveals the location in the new world of the vanished treasure of the Knights Templar. An 1898 shadow organization is also after the treasure and try to kill McGinnis. Marcus Flood, former monk, becomes the professor’s bodyguard. They team up with the professor’s niece and the three of them go after the treasure deep in the American southwest.

  WAYFARING STRANGERS

  In 1849 three routes existed to the California gold fields. One was cross-country via wagon train, one was around Cape Horn by ship, and the third was across the Gulf of Mexico, overland through Panama and up the west coast. Three parties take one route each--two men fleeing a murder charge, another man pursuing them, and a Melungian family from East Tennessee, trying to better themselves. How their lives touch each other is the focus of this gold rush adventure.

  THE LAST CAMPAIGN

  The U.S. Cavalry pursues Geronimo and a small band of followers into Mexico. He and a few renegades have resisted all attempts by the dominant white invaders to force the Apaches onto reservations to become farmers. A thrilling, fast-paced historical novel.

  THE SURVIVOR

  Marcel Dupre, is condemned to the penal colony at French Guiana on the east coast of South America. While a convict, he writes an expose of life in the Foreign Legion and in the penal colony. He finally escapes by sea and reaches the U.S. where he hopes to have his book published. Agents of the shaky French government will do anything to destroy him and his expose. A Wells Fargo messenger is dispatched to find and assist him.

  DEADLY SEASON

  An early minor league baseball player in San Francisco teams up with a friend on the police force to stop the smuggling of opium into Chinatown.

  THE TOMBSTONE CONSPIRACY

  A former Confederate officer forms a secret society in the Arizona Territory to wreck revenge on Yankee industrialists by robbing their gold and silver shipments.

  A TRAIL TO WOUNDED KNEE

  An Army officer, is cashiered from the U.S. Cavalry for insubordination. His wife leaves him with their children. He teams up with a Sioux Indian, Swift Hawk, to form a freighting company. Later, he is reconciled with his family and goes to work for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He is assigned to force the Indians back onto Pine Ridge reservation. He and Swift Hawk meet again—at the massacre called Wounded Knee.

  BY FLARE OF NORTHERN LIGHTS

  A young man from the U.S. sets out to seek his fortune in the frozen north when he joins a stampede to the Yukon gold fields in 1898.

  WHITE LIGHTS ROAR

  A missing shipment of stolen rifles is the common link between Pancho Villa’s raid on Columbus, New Mexico in 1916 and the Irish rebellion against the English on Easter Sunday, 1916.

  RAIDERS OF THE WESTERN & ATLANTIC

  During the Civil War, the Andrews Raiders—a squad of Yankee soldiers in disguise—capture a train near Atlanta to destroy the railroad and block the Confederates from coming to the defense of Chattanooga.

  FIRE BELL IN THE NIGHT

  A young Rudyard Kipling is sent on a world tour by his Indian newspaper to save him from the clutches of Indian white collar criminals he has exposed. Indian big shots send killers to pursue him across the U.S. An American Wells Fargo messenger assumes bodyguard duties for the English visitor. A wild climax ensues in the home of Mark Twain.

  THE BLAZE OF NOON

  The Devil’s Highway across the southern Arizona Territory is an unwitting villain in the clash between a prospector, and escapees from the Yuma Territorial Prison. Both are seeking a lost Spanish gold mine, and a widow who runs a stage station is caught in the middle.

  DEVIL’S DOMAIN: FAR FROM THE EYE OF GOD

  A Yankee POW escapes from the horrors of Andersonville prison stockade in Georgia. With the help of a young Confederate guard, he flees on foot across Alabama where they are aided by a young widow on a deserted plantation. She guides them north to Nashville where they are instrumental in saving the life of a visiting Abraham Lincoln.

  TERRITORIAL ROUGH RIDER

  Peter Ormond steals a valuable coin from his father’s collection. His father sends a black servant to apprehend him. Peter escapes to the west where he and a friend take jobs rounding up wild mustangs. Bushwhackers steal their stock and they flee for their lives, leaping aboard a passing train. The train is loaded with recruits bound for Cuba and a war with Spain.

  WEST OF WASHOE

  Gil Ross, mine inspector goes to Virginia City, Nevada where he winds up in a war between newspapers, dishonest mine owners, and stage robbers.

  TOM SAWYER AND THE GHOSTS OF SUMMER

  Twelve-year old Matt Lively is living the best time of life—in Missouri, summer of 1950. He doesn’t want to grow up. A mysterious tramp shows up and lures him and his friend, Rob, into volunteering to travel back in time to meet Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, Jim, Aunt Polly, Judge Thatcher, and other characters from Mark Twain’s novels. While trying to return to their own time, Matt and Rob have a wild adventure on the Mississippi River and save the life of Sam Clemens, thus allowing him to grow up and write his classics.

  ANNIE AND THE RIPPER

  Annie Oakley, young and beautiful and probably the world’s greatest marksman, finally agrees to assist Scotland Yard in luring Jack the Ripper out of hiding. Their ultimate clash in the foggy streets of London will send chills up your spine.

  Chapter One from Tim Champlin's Wayfaring Strangers

  EAST TENNESSEE MOUNTAINS MARCH 2, 1849

  "Pull up, there!" Rob Merriman held up a hand and slitted his eyes against the blowing snow.

  The buckboard driver drew his mule to a halt and swung up the twin barrels of a shotgun. "Who are you, mister? And what do you want?"

  "You Deputy Sheriff Cyrus Hobgood?" Merriman called, raising his voice above the gusting wind. He kneed his horse closer to the wagon. His mount, along with a pack mule he was trailing on a long tether, effectively blocked the narrow road that was lined on both sides with heavy timber.

  "Yeah, I'm Hobgood." The shotgun didn't waver.

  "I'm Robert
Merriman, deputy United States marshal from North Carolina, come to take charge of your prisoner," he lied, pointing at the other figure hunched over on the buckboard seat.

  "Nobody told me about any marshal," the whip-thin lawman rasped. As if to emphasize his words, he shot a brown stream of tobacco juice to one side into the snow and wiped the white stubble around his mouth with a gloved hand.

  "I was sent to escort one Clayburn Collins down to Asheville for trial on federal charges of counterfeiting," Merriman continued, tugging down his hat brim to further shield his face.

  "That's where I was taking him," Hobgood said.

  "Tried to get there before you left Sneedville, but the weather slowed me up," Merriman said apologetically. "Sheriff Fowler said I could probably catch up to you on the road." Merriman held his breath, praying his impersonation was convincing enough.