The Blue and the Gray Undercover

by Ed Gorman

  Mary probably did succeed in conveying that first message. In those early days, it was relatively easy for a woman to cross the lines. But she never got a chance to carry another one. If Swann patented his skate in the Confederacy, it proved to be pointless. He never did apply for a patent in the North, so I concluded he was stuck in the Confederacy. James Leonard Plimpton patented a roller skate in New York in 1863 and became known as the father of modern roller-skating.

  When McClellan was removed from command in November of 1862, Pinkerton retired from the eastern theater, and I left his company and started my own private Investigation office in New York City. I never did tell him that I thought Mary and Charles Swann were the same person. I had many other cases over the years, but I always considered the Swann case to be open until I settled that last question.

  Now I was in Muncie, Indiana, with a chance to finally close the case.

  Over one thousand people were said to have paid fifteen cents to participate in the grand opening of the Imperial Roller Rink. The rink was a large wooden building, and inside it was essentially one big room. Most of the floor space was given to the polished skating surface. There was railing all the way around and then seating and standing room for spectators. Above, there was a balcony for spectators, too. Both the lower and upper spectators’ areas were crowded tonight. The space was bright with electric lights and loud. Sounds echoed and collided. The band had a hard time sounding good.

  Men and women skated in an unorganized jumble. It reminded me of formal dancing except that it was too fast and not everyone had partners. Boys in plaid skating caps darted around dangerously. The scene also reminded me of a mob milling and stewing but not yet quite at the point of rioting. You didn’t have to watch long to see someone fall down.

  Roller-skating was popular all over the country in the eighties, but in Muncie it was phenomenal. People were crazy for it. Everyone was doing it. The papers were always talking about it. Tonight’s big event was not the first in Muncie, which was well known among skaters as the home of the Muncie Roller Skate. In fact, there were four or five skate manufacturers in town. I knew none of the patents had Charles Wyatt Swann’s name on them (and certainly none had Mary’s), but I wondered how much influence her designs had had on Muncie skates.

  Finally, the organizers cleared the floor, and the grand promenade of Muncie’s finest followed. The Wild West show was next. It was not very exciting. Men in costumes I had never seen on anyone in the real West zoomed out onto the floor. Some wore feathers and others had pistols and exaggerated holsters and decorated chaps and oversized hats. The part I liked best was the horse on wheels which was constructed of two men inside a horse costume. They were a big hit since they fell over more than once.

  The Wild West show got a less than unreserved applause. The local barrel racers did a lot better.

  Then it was time for the big event. Everyone quieted down, and the band sounded a little better when not competing with so many other noises. They played for a moment and then with a drumroll the Swan glided onto the floor. We all participated in one huge gasp of surprise.

  Mary Elizabeth Swann was, as I had long suspected, a bearded woman. She wore a formal ball gown of a cut I had not seen in many years. It seemed to be constructed of many layers of lavender material and there was a big white bow at her waist. The gown was cut low and her shoulders were bare. Her long dark hair flowed behind her as she moved. Her beard was still as black as I remembered it from all those years ago in Mrs. Greenhow’s parlor.

  If a bearded lady were all the Swan was the crowd would have quickly lost interest, but Mary did much more than simply display herself. She was a roller-skating virtuoso, and these were the days that roller-skating was so popular in the United States that on Sundays church attendance dropped. Her grace and her startling jumps and spins amazed and amused. Her stage name was based more on her stately grace than a simple play on her family name. Everyone loved her. The applause went on for a long time after she’d rolled off the floor.

  Mary was the last act. The floor was then opened to the spectators, and pandemonium followed. I could not have hoped for more than what happened next. Mary (probably Charles now) dressed as a man skated onto the floor. He mingled with the others and no one seemed to recognize Mary even though surely many Munsonians must have known it was her. I had not come to Muncie to arrest her. I had only come to confirm my suspicions, but now that I had the chance, I could not resist at least some contact. Would she recognize me?

  There was a man just sitting down to affix his skates to his boots. I quickly sat down beside him.

  “I’ve always wanted to try that,” I said.

  “Oh?” he looked up at me, and I could see some interest in his eyes when he saw the double eagle in my hand.

  “Fair deal?” I asked, pointing at his skates with the coin.

  “Fair enough,” he said and pulled the skates off his boots and gave them to me. I had probably paid ten times what they were worth.

  He got up and I, after some puzzlement, got the skates attached to my boots. I grabbed the rail and pulled myself up and then worked my way hand over hand to the opening onto the rink floor. Okay, here we go, I told myself and pushed off. How hard could it be?

  My feet flew off like startled geese, and I fell down hard on my backside. A couple of scruffy boys in plaid skating caps zoomed in, took me under the arms, and helped me to my feet.

  “You should hold onto the rail until you get the hang of it,” one of the boys told me with a satisfied smile on his face.

  “Probably good advice, son,” I said. “But that wouldn’t get me where I want to go. Let me get my balance. Okay, now give me a little push. That way.” I pointed in the direction I had last seen Charles.

  They laughed and shrugged and gave me a push that wasn’t much more than just letting me go. I rolled slowly away from them. They gave me a cheer.

  I kept my knees locked. My feet drifted apart, and I made many adjustments to my upright posture by waving my arms in opposite directions. People got out of my way.

  As I approached, Charles pushed off to my left, and I thought he had recognized me and was fleeing. I turned my head quickly and nearly fed again. Then he appeared from my right and our paths crossed. He had skated a wide circle around me. He did it again, this time spiraling in closer. There was laughter and applause.

  As I neared the center of the skating rink, his circles diminished to nothing, and he stopped in front of me, put out his arm, and stopped me with a hand on my chest.

  “Nice catch!” someone shouted.

  Up close, I could see there was a little gray in the beard, but not much. The face had filled out, and there were some deep wrinkles. The pale blue eyes were as I remembered them from that last encounter in Wilber’s Hotel. I could see Mary and then Charles and then Mary again.

  “You may not be quite ready to come all the way out here,” Charles said.

  “I came out to see you, Mary,” I said.

  Her eyes narrowed and she studied my face closely, but I don’t think she recognized me. That should not have surprised me. She had seen me up close only once and that had been a long time ago. Surely I had changed over the years. I realized that while I had wondered often about her over the years, she might have given me scarcely a thought.

  “We’ve met?”

  “John Daggett,” I said and held out my hand. “In Washington during the war.”

  She ignored my hand and moved as gracefully as a fish back a few paces, but she didn’t flee. “So, have you been looking for me all this time?”

  “Heavens, no,” I said. “I worked out the Charles and Mary business years ago. I just wanted to see you one more time. I’m nobody official in Indiana.”

  “Nobody official.” She looked me over again, and then she said suddenly, “Mr. Daggett. Wilber’s Hotel!”

  “That’s it,” I said. “What happened to you after that?”

  “Many adventures, of course,” she said
. “How about you?”

  “Oh, pretty much the same,” I said and we laughed together.

  “I was right about all of this.” She made a gesture I took to mean the skating rink and perhaps the entire skating phenomenon itself.

  “Yes,” I said. “I suppose you were.”

  She smiled and skated away to one side, leaving me stranded. Our interview was apparently over, and I was painfully aware that I did not know how to get off the floor.

  I could drop to my hands and knees and crawl, I thought, but before I could put that plan into action, she came up from behind and stopped at my side and took my arm.

  “Let’s get you safely back among the spectators, Mr. Daggett,” she said. Her grip was firm, and I didn’t feel at all unsteady as she set us in motion. As we moved, I understood at last the exhilaration that had driven her to work so hard for all those years on her roller skates.

  “I don’t always just watch,” I said.

  “I’m sure you don’t.” She meant I was protesting too much, and she was right. I watched people and events, and then I wrote reports about them. We came to the railing, and I grabbed on. She let me go and smiled and waved and skated back into the thick of things.

  P. G. Nagle has had two novels published, Glorieta Pass and The Guns of Valverde, both set during the Far Western campaign of the Civil War. She has also been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Williamson Effect, Elf Fantastic, and An Armory of Swords. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

  Although emotions ran high during the conflict, there often was no reason to be uncivil to civilians, especially if they had information to reveal. The Judge Lemmik in the following story is based on a real-life spy, Judge Kimmel, who coordinated Union espionage activities around Chambersburg, which proved crucial to the North’s movements during the war.

  THE COURTSHIP OF CAPTAIN SWENK

  P. G. Nagle

  “Where d’you suppose General Lee might be going?” asked Buck McAlexander of his two companions as they strode through a thicket of cedar. A short distance to the east lay the turnpike out of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, full of Confederate soldiers marching north and stirring up a good deal of dust as they went.

  “Idiot,” said Henry Ball, pushing a branch out of his way. “That’s what we’re supposed to find out. Didn’t you hear a word the judge said?”

  “’Course I did, and I ain’t an idiot, thank you very much,” Buck replied, tossing a shank of black hair out of his eyes. “If we don’t try to guess where he’s going, how’re we going to know where to look?”

  “Got you there, Henry,” said Nathaniel Swenk, their companion and fellow scout. Apparently considering this statement the end of the discussion, Swenk returned to chewing on a blade of barley-grass and gazing over at the column on the pike in a contemplative way. Mr. Ball observed this bovine activity with an expression of distaste.

  Captain Swenk, recently returned to town after receiving honorable discharge from the United States Army, was understood to be courting, and was consequently considered by his acquaintances to be not quite in his right mind. If there had been surprise at the captain’s failure to reenlist after his two-year term of service had concluded, it had been abated by his popularity among his townfellows, and by curiosity (extending, in some reprehensible cases, to the placing of bets) as to which of the eligible ladies in the vicinity he would select for his bride. He was fairly new in Chambersburg, having moved to town early in 1861 with the announced desire of settling there permanently and starting a family. The commencement of hostilities had preempted this amiable scheme, but since his discharge it had apparently been foremost in his mind, and the little task of ascertaining General Lee’s movements seemed not to be interfering overmuch with his prosecution of it.

  “And anyway, these fellers aren’t with General Lee. They’re under D. H. Hill,” Buck declared.

  “Rodes,” said Ball, shaking his head. “Hill has a beard.”

  “Well, and so he did have a beard when he rode by.”

  “No, he had a mustache, but no beard.”

  “It was trimmed close—”

  “Hold up, boys,” Swenk interrupted.

  They came to a stop just inside the end of the grove. Before them was an open oat field, recently relieved of its crop. They gazed across it at the marching Rebels. Buck shifted from foot to foot.

  “Over to the creek,” Swenk said softly, and struck west toward the Conococheague. The trees growing along the watercourse would afford them cover until another wood could be reached.

  The three of them—Swenk, Ball, and McAlexander—had been charged with their important task by Judge Lemmik who, since the twenty-second of June, had sent messages by secret means to General Couch about the activities of the Confederate forces occupying Chambersburg. Getting this information past the net of Confederate pickets surrounding the town was impressive in itself, though Buck, being merely nineteen, had expressed the opinion that the secrecy of Lemmik’s operations robbed them of all glory.

  Kept from enlisting by the earnest entreaties of his mother, whose husband had been visiting relatives in Tennessee when the war broke out and had not been heard from since, Buck had been overjoyed to receive the judge’s invitation to act as an observer, gathering Important Information to send on to the Union army’s headquarters. It had sounded more glorious than it had so far turned out.

  “We must’ve walked every danged road in the county,” Buck complained. “We know General Lee ain’t here. We should be looking out south of town.”

  “The judge said all enemy movements are important,” said Ball.

  Buck let out a guffaw. “Only enemy movement worth seeing was that crack-fine fiddle dance Jenkins’s cavalry gave last night in your barn, Henry.”

  Ball’s expression grew yet more sour. Captain Swenk, failing to notice, said, “That was a mighty fine dance, indeed. I was surprised at how many of our ladies attended. Miss Kindle is a delightful dancer, don’t you think?”

  “She wouldn’t dance with me,” Buck said. “Only had eyes for you, Cap’n.”

  “And General Jenkins’s staff were generous hosts,” added Swenk.

  “Generous with my beer,” Ball replied.

  “Didn’t they pay you for it?”

  “In Confederate scrip. Same worthless stuff they’re giving all the merchants in town.”

  “At least they didn’t just break into the shops and help themselves,” Swenk remarked.

  “Yet,” said Ball darkly, and kicked a rock off the bank into the creek. The pike was now obscured from view, but the cloud of dust was plainly visible. They were approaching the neighborhood of Ball’s house and farm, which he had only recently purchased, being, like Swenk, a newcomer to Chambersburg. The annoyance he demonstrated at the recent infestation of Confederates was understandable to his companions. His wheat and his animals had been confiscated, Rebel pickets lived in his cornfield, and his house had been taken over by General Jenkins’s staff. Mr. Ball had consequently spent a good deal of time in town of late, and was often to be found at Judge Lemmik’s when he was not tramping the roads and byways of Franklin County.

  The day—a Thursday afternoon late in June—was warm, and birds peeped in desultory tones as the three men walked northward. Captain Swenk was the only one of the trio who seemed at ease with the world. He smiled placidly as they reached a footbridge across the creek just short of where the waterway bent northeastward. The land was a blend of cultivated fields and wild, wooded areas. Mr. Ball’s farm occupied the far side of a hill across the creek; the near side was owned by a Mrs. Bannister, a widow, who was one of the ladies Captain Swenk had been courting. Her house, neatly painted white, lay just beneath the crest of the hill and was shaded by a great, ancient live oak.

  “I think,” Swenk said to his companions, “I shall stop at Widow Bannister’s awhile. You go on ahead and I’ll catch up.”

  Buck and Ball exchanged a glance of knowing disapproval. “We ar
e to share the task of counting the Rebels, are we not?” Ball said in a stiff voice. “How are we to divide the work without your presence?”

  “You two make your best count, and I’ll verify it,” Swenk replied. “That way we’ll know our information’s good.” He tipped his hat to them, smiling, and strode off across the bridge toward Bannister’s Farm.

  “We won’t see him for an hour or more,” grumbled Ball.

  “Hopeless,” Buck agreed.

  “How such a great stupid ox of a fellow ever got anywhere in the array is beyond me!”

  “Come on,” Buck said, nodding his head eastward. “Let’s go count Rebs.”

  * * *

  “Good day to you, Mrs. Bannister,” called Captain Swenk, bowing as he removed his hat, his face slightly reddened by the exertion of climbing the hill to the farmhouse.

  The widow, not a handsome woman, stood on the step of her tidy home, dressed in a gray gown, modest cap, and stiffly starched apron, and bestowed a smile more of politeness than warmth upon her visitor. “You did not come to feed this morning,” she said.

  “I beg your pardon,” the captain said humbly. “I was unavoidably detained. I hope you sent Will to do it.”

  “I do not like sending him into the cellar with the animals. One of them might kick and injure him,” the widow said, a slight frown creasing her brow.

  “He knows better than to expose himself to harm,” Swenk replied, smiling.

  “I am still not convinced this is the wisest course,” the widow complained.

  “But, ma’am, do you not wish to keep your horse and cow out of the Confederates’ hands? I assure you, they’ve snabbled up everything on four legs in the county.”

  “I do not like keeping Dobbin and Daisy underground, and in such close quarters with your mare,” she said.

  “They will neither of them suffer for it,” he assured her. “Have you—”

  “Captain Swenk!” cried the big live oak tree that shaded the house and yard.

  “Willie! Come down from there this instant!” the widow called to the tree. A rustling of leaves preceded the arrival upon the ground of a grubby ten-year-old boy who immediately flung himself upon Captain Swenk, soiling the sleeve of that gentleman’s coat.