On Secret Service

by John Jakes

  Friday night, bedeviled by a mounting sense of failure, he settled down with his head resting on his saddle and his horse tethered nearby. Lincoln’s funeral train would have left Washington by now, bearing the President’s casket along with that of his son Willie, exhumed for the sad journey home to Springfield. Lon wished he’d been at the depot to pay last respects.

  On Saturday morning he rode into Port Tobacco. The place smelled of the leaf it was named for. He found a tavern and drank a pint of beer with his hard-cooked eggs and hominy grits. When he paid his bill, he asked about Miller. The publican, a wisp of a man, brightened noticeably.

  “Oh, I seen him. His horse went lame. He bought a new one at Fuller’s stable. Fuller couldn’t get over what a queer sort he was. Bad limp. Awful scars on his neck and hand. Myself, I didn’t like his looks much. Struck me as kind of crazed. He ate supper here before he bedded down at Fuller’s.”

  Fuller, the stable owner, said, “I sold him an old bay. His clothes was all-over dirt, like he’d slept out a lot.”

  “Where was he headed?”

  “He asked the best way down to Riverside. That’s on the west shore of the inlet.”

  “Close to Virginia?”

  “Pretty close, yes.”

  “Boatmen work out of there? Ferrying people over to secesh territory?”

  Guarded all at once, Fuller said, “Don’t know nothing about that.”

  Lon was already in the saddle, turning his horse’s head out of the stable yard.

  Saturday night at dusk, he rode into Riverside, little more than a way station on the water. A streak of sulfurous yellow daylight lay above the trees. He passed Negro shanties and heard the pleasing sound of a mouth organ playing “Aura Lee.” His back ached. The insides of his thighs burned from hours of riding.

  He jogged past ramshackle piers where dinghies and rowboats and a shrimping skiff were moored. An elderly black man sat on one pier repairing a crab trap. Lon repeated his description.

  “No, I don’t believe I seen anybody like that, sir.” The man’s nervous eyes gave him away.

  Instead of threats, Lon offered a gold dollar. “The man is one of the rebs who conspired to kill Mr. Lincoln.”

  The old man bit the dollar, then pocketed it. “I’ll take the money ’cause I got nine head of children to feed, but I’ll tell you the truth because of what Mr. Lincoln done for my people. Go ’bout a half mile along the south shore. Turn off on a sandy track marked by a round stone, big as this.” With upraised arms, he described a two-foot arc.

  “Travel down to the river ’bout a quarter mile. You’ll find a cabin belonging to my cousin Wilf. Wilf’s a high yella who knows the Potomac like he knows his own hand. I sent the white man to Wilf this morning. Seemed a pale and sickly sort. Said he felt poorly. You say he’s a bad man?”

  “He’s a killer,” Lon said, mounting up. “Much obliged.” He tossed the man another gold dollar; his last. “Take care of those children.”

  He missed the stone and the sandy road in the dark. When he realized he’d gone too far, he turned back. He waited until moonrise, munching his one remaining biscuit. As soon as white moonlight flooded the woodland, he found the sandy track with no trouble.

  He tied his horse, checked the Deane & Adams to make sure it had shells in all five chambers, hooked his flat-crowned hat over the saddle horn, and walked toward the murmuring river. He smelled chimney smoke.

  The cabin appeared when he rounded a bend in the track. Lamplight glowed in a window with no glass. Creeping closer, he failed to see a horse tied in the darkness. The horse whinnied. Someone in the cabin threw down a metal utensil. “What’s that?” Miller’s voice.

  “Don’ know, suh. Don’t get many callers out this way.”

  “Damn it, we should have crossed an hour ago.”

  “You said you wanted to eat, suh.”

  “Not this slop.”

  Crouched below the windowsill, Lon silently counted three, jumped up, and pointed the revolver into the room. There sat Margaret’s brother, feverishly sweaty in the light of a kerosene lantern. A spindly young man, yellow as a butternut squash, stood with his arm around his ebony wife.

  “Miller, sit still or you’re dead.”

  A confusion of emotions sped over Miller’s face, ending with a curiously smug smile. He raised his scarred left hand. “Guess you’ve caught me.”

  Lon’s eyes were blurring from tiredness. “Both hands,” he said, just as Miller’s right hand crossed over his left with a revolver. The barrel spouted flame. The bullet whispered by Lon’s ear.

  Miller overturned the table. The wife screamed. Miller wheeled and shot her in the stomach. He snatched the lantern and threw it down. Rushes on the floor ignited instantly into a carpet of flame. Miller ran out the door on the river side.

  “Oh, Dee, oh, Dee, he done killed you,” Wilf moaned as he tried to lift his inert wife away from the spreading fire. Lon ran around the corner of the cabin, saw a shadow shape moving down the moonlit bank to a rowboat. Miller heard him coming. He fired twice. Both shots missed.

  Miller struggled into the rowboat and untied the painter from an iron stake. Lon dropped his gun and waded in. He threw himself over the gunwale, dragging Miller by the shoulders. Both of them tumbled backward, into the river.

  Miller was no weakling. He kicked Lon savagely as they floundered, then slashed his cheek with fingernails. Lon seized Miller’s throat; the two submerged. Lon held his prey tightly, choking him, wanting to stop his breathing, end his life…

  He remembered Margaret. He remembered that Miller had secrets. Panting and spitting, he dragged Miller up from the shallows, spun him around, and bashed his jaw. Miller fell on the bank.

  “Kill me, get it over.”

  Lon picked a bit of river weed off his forehead. He spotted his revolver on the ground. Miller spied it too, rolled toward it. Lon ran up the bank and stepped on Miller’s groping hand.

  “Oh, no. You have questions to answer. Where’s Booth?”

  “Who?”

  Lon jerked Miller up by his lapels. “Don’t try that. Where is he?” He pushed, slamming Miller’s head into the dirt. “Where?”

  “You can just go to hell.”

  “Trying to make it harder on yourself?”

  “Harder?” Miller laughed; he showed a strange mixture of fear and defiance. “You don’t know the meaning. If I told you what I know, my life wouldn’t be worth a gob of Yankee spit. You can drive nails through my hands and feet, you’ll get nothing out of me. Go find Booth yourself.”

  73

  April 1865

  Lon rode the whole way to Washington with his revolver drawn and ready. Miller preceded him, sagging in the saddle with his hands roped behind his back. The two-man procession drew farmers and their families to the roadside, but no one interfered. Lon’s gun deterred questions. They reached the city before midnight on Sunday.

  With his stomach growling and his clothes stinking and his skin feeling filthy, Lon delivered Miller to the steps of the Old Capitol. He said to the guard on duty, “Lock him up by himself. No outsider is to see or speak to him unless authorized by Colonel Baker.” The jailer signaled another guard, who cut Miller’s wrist ropes. Miller swung his leg over the saddle and tumbled to the ground, limp.

  The soldier with the knife said, “Should we call a surgeon?”

  Lon looked at the pathetic heap lying at his feet. Miller’s eyelids fluttered.

  “No. He’s faking.”

  Lon turned his horse away before anyone could argue.

  He slept two hours, woke, and filled a basin with tepid water. He washed his body and watched the water turn from clear to dark gray. He shaved by candlelight in front of a small mirror, then wrapped a skimpy towel around his waist and sat down to write a report, which he delivered to Baker’s office at seven o’clock.

  “Miller says that he, not Davis, planned the assassination. He claims that persons high up in our own government cooperated and helped t
he conspirators escape.”

  Baker laid his boot heel on the desk, a perennial sign of skepticism.

  “What persons? You don’t name them here.”

  “He never told me. If he knows, he won’t say. He’s afraid of retribution.”

  “We’ll keep him isolated. That may break him down.” Baker tossed the report aside in a dismissive way that disturbed Lon. Or maybe everything disturbed him. He still ached from hours in the saddle. He wanted to see Margaret.

  It wasn’t to be. A few minutes after nine, an uproar in Baker’s office brought Lon out of a little cell the detectives used for desk work. Choleric with excitement, Baker stood in the hall conferring with an Army lieutenant. As Lon ran up, Baker exclaimed, “Major O’Beirne’s search party is at Belle Plain, on the Virginia side of the Potomac. O’Beirne found witnesses who saw Booth and Herold riding south, toward the Rappahannock. Booth’s leg is splinted. He must have broken it jumping to the stage at Ford’s. He can’t be traveling fast. I will lead this expedition personally. Are you fit to ride with us, Price?”

  Ready to drop from exhaustion, Lon said, “Yes, sir.”

  “Find Conger, Sandstrom, and three or four others. Be ready in one hour.”

  They boated across the Potomac in midnight darkness. Fresh horses waited on the Virginia side. They pushed south through the war-blasted countryside at a killing pace, greeted every hour or so by a military courier who came pounding up the road. About ten-thirty in the morning, after dismissing the newest courier, Baker wheeled his horse around and addressed his sweating and disheveled detectives.

  “Booth and Herold have gone to ground on a farm near Port Royal. A detachment of the Sixteenth New York Cavalry discovered them. Apparently they’ve been there some time. The trap is sprung shut, gentlemen.”

  Baker galloped away on the sunlit road. Lon dug his heels into the sag-bellied gray he was riding. He and Sandstrom and Everton Conger and the others ate Baker’s dust trying to keep up with him.

  About two in the afternoon, guided by an Army corporal, they reached a gate at the head of a tree-covered lane. At the lane’s far end Lon saw a white-painted farmhouse, a henhouse, a corncrib, and a large tobacco barn.

  Near the gate, a cavalry officer and a corporal held a prisoner at gunpoint. The prisoner was a young man of twenty with terrified eyes and tattered butternut clothing. The officer saluted Baker. “Lieutenant Jethro Murdock, sir.”

  “Colonel Lafayette Baker. I’m taking charge. Who is this man?”

  “Name’s Willie Jett, sir. He brought Booth and Herold to the farm last night. He knows the Garrett brothers, who own the place. He suggested the fugitives rest here until a boatman could be hired to ferry them over the Rappahannock. He broke down the moment we caught him.”

  A yellow butterfly circled Lon curiously. A mockingbird warbled in a bush nearby. Baker drew his Army Colt, leaned down, and pressed the muzzle against Jett’s forehead.

  “Where are they hiding?”

  “In—in”—Willie Jett could barely sputter it out—“the tobacco barn. Leastways I think so.”

  “Murdock, where are your men?”

  “Just up the lane, sir. Out of sight behind that hedgerow.”

  “We’ll dismount and walk in. No talking. Divide right and left once we reach the property, but wait for my signal before advancing further.” Lon slid his Deane & Adams out of the shoulder rig.

  Puffs of dust rose from the sun-dappled lane as they took their curiously pleasant walk in the spring air. The humming and buzzing and rustling of the new season contrasted with the tense faces and wary eyes of the soldiers who melted out of the hedgerow behind them. Baker’s eyes shone under his hat brim.

  The lane widened into a dooryard. A civilian, middle-aged, dressed in plow shoes and overalls, eyed them from the porch of the well-kept farmhouse. Baker walked directly to him.

  “I am Colonel Lafayette Baker of the Washington detective police. Who are you?”

  “R—R—” The farmer shook his head, angry at his stammer. “Richard Garrett. M—m—my brothers an’ me own this farm.”

  “We understand you’re sheltering two visitors.”

  “N—n—no, sir, ain’t no visitors hereabouts. We—” He got no further because a long-eared hound ran from behind the tobacco barn and barked. Other dogs, unseen, joined in. Another civilian, younger, peeked out of the corncrib. One of the cavalrymen aimed his carbine. The younger man flung his hands over his head and came toward them, cowering.

  “I’m John Garrett. Please don’t shoot me.”

  Baker said, “Not if you cooperate, Mr. Garrett. Where are Booth and Herold?”

  One of the hounds kept yapping. John Garrett glanced at his brother, who scowled to silence him. John Garrett bobbed his head, apologetically, Lon thought. “Richard, they’ll arrest us if we don’t tell.” Before his older brother could react, John Garrett rolled his eyes toward the tobacco barn and whispered, “There.”

  Baker smiled. He hitched up his wide belt and strode toward the barn, signaling men to follow. Lon fell in behind him, Sandstrom and Conger on either side. Outside the barn, Baker called, “Booth? Herold? We have you surrounded. Throw down your arms and surrender.”

  The ensuing silence was so protracted, Lon wondered whether the Garretts had gulled them and the conspirators had slipped away. Finally someone answered. Lon recognized the voice, rich but weakened.

  “I will not play the coward. I demand a fair fight.”

  Baker gave a scornful snort. “Well, Mr. Booth, you won’t get that, and you have no right to ask. Will you come out?”

  “No.”

  Someone else in the barn yelled, “I will.”

  Baker waved Conger forward to the barn door. Lon and the rest heard Booth arguing and swearing at his cohort. The door rolled open. A stocky young man stumbled into the sunshine, hands over his head. Baker shouted, “Booth?”

  A pistol shot from the dark interior scattered the detectives and the soldiers. Baker dropped to the ground. Conger rolled the door shut as two of Murdock’s men seized Herold and hauled him off to the corncrib. Baker jumped up.

  “You men gather up some of that loose hay. Pile it around two sides of the barn. We’ll burn him out.”

  In five minutes, they were ready. Baker called, “Your last chance, Mr. Booth.”

  Silence. Baker slapped his hat against his leg.

  “Mr. Conger, set the fire.”

  The old, unpainted barn burned like fatwood once the flames reached it. The fire licked through cracks in the siding and spread rapidly inside. “Price, go up there. Look in. Tell me what’s happening.”

  Lon trotted to the side of the barn where no hay had been piled. He pressed his eye to a crack and saw Booth on his back holding a carbine, his splinted leg stuck out in front of him. Hay bales in the barn had caught fire. Booth’s red-tinted face had a mad, wasted look.

  “I see him, sir. He’s obviously in pain.”

  “Shoot, then.” Hair on Lon’s neck stood up. “Kill him before he gets away.”

  Lon spun around, unable to believe he’d heard correctly.

  “Sir, he can’t run. He’s injured.”

  “Do as I say, Mr. Price. Shoot him.”

  And then Lon saw it all slipping away, the answers to questions about who had really planned the heinous murder in Washington. Baker’s face had a sweaty, expectant look. The men around him, civilian detectives and soldiers alike, stared at Lon.

  “I said shoot him, Mr. Price.”

  This has been a long time coming, Lon thought.

  “Sir, I won’t do it. Booth must stand trial, along with Cicero Miller.”

  “I gave you an order.”

  Smoke blew past Lon, stinging his eyes. In the midst of a sunny spring afternoon, everything was crumbling away, all reason, all logic, all humanity…

  A peculiar calm descended on Lon suddenly. His pulse slowed. He felt as if a cool breeze bathed him, though in the fire’s heat that was impossible.


  “Colonel, I refuse. The country deserves to see Booth tried and punished.”

  Baker raised his Colt; sighted along the barrel at Lon’s head. “Obey the order, Mr. Price. You work for me.”

  Lon fished in the sweated pocket of his black suit; found the badge.

  “No, sir. Not as of this minute I don’t.” He threw the badge in the dirt, took his revolver off cock, and shoved it under his coat. He stepped away from the burning barn.

  Baker held his Colt at arm’s length for ten long seconds. Lon waited, not breathing.

  The gun barrel dropped to Baker’s side. Flushing, he shouted, “Conger! Roll the door back. Someone—anyone—shoot Booth. I order it!”

  A sergeant of the Sixteenth New York Cavalry ran up to the open barn door and fired once. The man capered and waved his weapon. “He’s down. Got him through the neck.”

  “Bring him out, bring him out,” Baker yelled. Sandstrom trotted forward, giving Lon a pitying look. Lon walked toward half a dozen men in the center of the dooryard, a human barricade. Other soldiers and detectives brought Booth’s limp body out through the firelit smoke.

  Lon kept walking toward those standing between him and the lane. Every man except Lafayette Baker fell back. Lon’s heart pounded. He walked straight up to Baker and stopped.

  Baker raised his Colt. He tucked the muzzle under Lon’s chin.

  “Mr. Price, you’re finished.”

  Lon touched the gun barrel; pushed it aside.

  “And none too soon.”

  He sidestepped, strode past Baker, and walked down the lane to his horse.

  He learned later that the bullet fired by Sergeant Boston Corbett effectively paralyzed John Wilkes Booth. The actor lay on the Garrett porch until seven that evening, rousing twice to speak. “Tell my mother I died for my country,” he said. And then, when he caught sight of Willie Jett, “Did that man betray me?” He died a few minutes past seven, taking his secrets with him to whatever hell awaited assassins.