The Roswell Women

by Statham, Frances Patton

  Then a child coughed. A baby began to cry, and Madrigal sat up, peering through the dark with her topaz eyes to make sure it was not Morrow who had awakened. It would be dangerous enough without a crying brat to spoil it all.

  She almost regretted what she'd done—making Tom agree to take the others, too. It would have been so much easier for only one person to slip past the guards. But it was too late now. She had already spoiled it.

  The time passed slowly—an hourglass stretched toward eternity. But Madrigal's only knowledge of time passing was the cramp in her foot that kept getting more painful with each minute. Then an owl hooted from a nearby tree. It was midnight.

  Quickly, Madrigal arose, grabbed the bundle from her cot, and headed toward the door. She didn't look back; for she had told the others that she would give them no more warning than the one on which Tom had decided.

  Flood, adjacent to Madrigal, grimaced at the noise her own cot made as she attempted to get up. She waited a moment longer, and on the second try, she heaved herself to her feet just as Rebecca began to edge her way around the other side of the room. The black woman carried the double bundle containing Allison's few clothes as well as her own. And tightly wrapped in a cloth was the food each had hoarded from the previous meals.

  Three women—Madrigal, Flood, and Rebecca—met outside the building. "Where's Allison?" Flood asked.

  "I thought she was right behind me," Rebecca whispered.

  "Well, we can't wait for her. She'll have to catch up with us or stay here." Madrigal's voice was emphatic.

  "I'll go back for her."

  "No, Rebecca. It's too dangerous."

  With a start, Allison opened her eyes. She realized then that she had been dozing. A sense of panic enveloped her. What if she had missed the signal and the others had already gone? She sat up and gazed around her, getting her bearings. In the filtered moonlight, she stared at Rebecca's cot. It looked empty. Groping for the shawl at the foot of her bed, she immediately stood and began to walk rapidly toward the one where Alma lay. But someone had moved a cot out of line and Allison stumbled against it. She held her breath as the woman rolled over to her other side.

  More slowly now, Allison began to move, walking in the narrow aisle like a tightrope walker, holding on to her shawl to balance herself in the dark. As she walked, she counted the number of cots, as she had done that afternoon. And then she stood before Alma's cot.

  Carefully, Allison removed the woman's hand from Morrow's body. She picked up her child and, not taking time to wrap her in the shawl, fled down the aisle away from Alma.

  The baby squirmed and grunted as she began to awaken. "No, Morrow. Please stay asleep," Allison begged, rushing toward the barrack's door.

  "Lovey Lou?" Alma's voice was faint. "Where are you, Lovey Lou?"

  Then Allison heard the woman shriek, "My baby! Somebody's stolen my baby!"

  "Oh, God, help me!" At the door, Allison could see no one. And the ground beyond looked deserted, She was too late. The others had already gone.

  "Miss Allison?"

  "Rebecca?"

  The woman stepped from the side of the building. "Yes'm. I waited for you. If we hurry, we can still catch up with Madrigal and Flood."

  The two women sped past the barricade and headed for the alley behind the Watauga Saloon , while a lantern light suddenly appeared in the barrack's window behind them. With Alma's triggering cry, the alarm was spread. Walter, the guard who had been bribed by Tom, slowly walked into the room where most of the women were now waking up.

  "All right, what's going on?" he inquired.

  "My baby has been stolen."

  In the dim light, the woman whose cot Allison had stumbled against heard Alma's hysterical voice. Now she knew who had escaped—Allison. And she had taken her baby with her. Good. But if the guards started looking for her this soon, she would have no chance at all. Quickly, the woman said, "Pay no attention to Alma. She's always cryin' out for her baby. But, you see, we buried the child along the tracks a number of days ago."

  "Yes," a voice in the dark agreed. "She's just confused. Let's all go back to sleep."

  Wolf Perkin, waiting for reassignment after guard duty on the train, had enjoyed his few days of leisure, swapping hunting stories with some of the other soldiers and drinking a few bottles of beer each night with them at the Watauga Saloon. Now it was a little past midnight and he walked alongside Beacher, who was scheduled to go on duty at the building from which Allison and the others had escaped a few minutes earlier.

  As the two approached the building, they saw a flickering lantern light and heard a woman shrieking.

  "My Lord!" Beacher said. "No wonder the trip was such hell for you if you had to put up with caterwauling like that."

  Wolf frowned and listened. He remembered hearing that same sound the afternoon on the bluff when the stuck-up blonde woman had caused such a ruckus. He'd watched her all along—the way she had held herself aloof and acted as if she was so much better than all the rest, with her black servant taking care of her. But he'd seen her back off soon enough when the other woman put up such a howl. And now it sounded as if the two women might be at each other's throats again.

  "Beacher, you're gonna have to be firm with those women. If you want me to, I'll go in with you and show you how to handle them."

  "I sure would appreciate it, Wolf. There's two things I'm scairt to death of—and one of 'em is a screaming woman."

  "What's the trouble, soldier?" Wolf asked the guard coming out with the lantern.

  "Oh, some woman in hysterics," Walter replied. "Claims somebody's made off with her baby."

  "Is it true? Is her baby missing?"

  "Naw. Poor woman. She doesn't have one. It died somewhere along the way."

  "Doesn't happen to be a woman called Alma, does it?"

  "How did you know?"

  "Because several days ago, she did have a baby and some woman was trying to take it away from her then."

  "But two of the women vouched that her baby was dead."

  "They just might be covering up for someone." Wolf remembered the escape from the train and how the other women had reacted, keeping it quiet until it was too late for him to do anything about it. Even though he had been relieved of duty, Wolf grabbed the lantern from the guard and said, "Come on, Beacher. We might as well get them all up and count them. And if anybody's missing, we'll have to sound the alarm."

  Behind the Watauga Saloon, Tom Traymore sat in an ambulance wagon and waited for Madrigal to appear. He was even more nervous than the two horses he'd borrowed from the officers' corral and hitched up to the wagon.

  Yet, he congratulated himself on his choice of transportation. It had come to him the night before when the soldiers at the saloon had laughed about the fist fight the general had gotten into with the surgeon.

  "Seems the general had requisitioned the ambulance wagon for his own transportation," the fellow beside him at the bar rail had said. "That made the surgeon madder'n a rooster havin' his favorite pullet taken away from 'im. He stormed into the general's office and demanded his ambulance back. Said he needed it to transport his patients from the riverboats to the hospital."

  "Well, what happened?" Tom had asked.

  "They fought for it."

  "Who won?"

  "The surgeon. After the general drew his gun on 'im, the doctor threatened to report the general to the president."

  Tom laughed. "Then I guess that was the end of it."

  "No. Durned if the general didn't steal it back the very next day."

  Now Tom sat in that same ambulance wagon and waited for the women to appear. To the casual observer, it wouldn't seem unusual for the ambulance to be out and about at night, especially with all the wounded soldiers coming in from the battle near Corinth.

  "Tom?"

  "Madrigal?"

  "Yes, it's me. Have any of the others gotten here yet?"

  "No, you're the first. But hush talking and climb in the back."
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  Madrigak did so, throwing her small bundle inside first and then climbing into the covered wagon with its canvas stretchers lashed to each side. Hiding behind the bundle, she kept her eyes on the alleyway.

  Soon she saw a large bulk heading their way. As the figure drew closer, Madrigal recognized Flood, dressed in her husband's clothes and with her hair hidden under a cap.

  As Flood approached the wagon, Madrigal reached out from the back and took the bundle she carried. Without a word, the large woman followed the bundle and hoisted herself to the ambulance floor, which was still stained with blood.

  Now, all three kept watch—for Allison and Rebecca. The horses neighed, and at the sight of two drunken soldiers passing in the alley, Tom clicked his teeth and began to edge slowly down the alley

  "Where're you going, soldier?"

  Tom swallowed. "I'm waiting for the hospital boat to come in."

  One of the soldiers laughed. "This ain't the dock, soldier. It's in the other direction. Here, we'll just get in the back and ride with you to the levee."

  "I wouldn't advise that if I was you."

  "And why not? We got just as much right as anybody to hitch a ride."

  "The general wouldn't take kindly to you crowding him out," Tom whispered in a confidential tone.

  "You mean the general's stolen it back from the surgeon?"

  "Yeah, but you don’t have to go telling everybody about it."

  The two laughed and then stumbled on down the alleyway. Listening to the exchange, Madrigal had held her breath. It had been a close call. Deciding they couldn't wait any longer, Madrigal crawled toward the driver's perch. "Tom, we might as well as go now. The other two must not be comin'."

  Tom was of the same opinion. He snapped the reins and urged the horses into action, leaving the alleyway just as a breathless Allison and Rebcca stopped and hid in a doorway to avoid the two drunken soldiers making their way down the garbage-filled street.

  Chapter 21

  The Nashville Basin, situated in the heart of Tennessee, is bordered by the Highland Rim, a large upland plateau with steep hills that finally drop into the basin on three sides.

  Turnpike roads, built in the 1800s, lead out of the city in all directions, following the old Indian traces to Natchez, Corinth, and other towns along the Mississippi River.

  On the plateau itself, prosperous farms with cotton and tobacco crops sprinkle the area, but as the land sprawls to the east, the farms become smaller and less prosperous.

  Tom Traymore, in the dead of night, hurried the horses along one of the pike roads toward the east and his own farm, which was a little west of Lebanon.

  Once they had left the city, Madrigal came to sit beside him."Where're we goin', Tom?" she asked.

  "Me and my pa have a farm several days away from here. That's where I'm headed."

  "You don’t think they'll be lookin' for you?"

  "I doubt anybody will be concerned about me since my time in the army is almost up. And even if they did decide to come after me, they probably couldn't find the farm since it's so far off the main road."

  Madrigal tugged at her lip as she thought hard. An isolated farm wasn't where she intended to spend the rest of her life.

  "I feel homesick already," Tom continued. "It's the smell of red cedars that I remember. And the limestone caverns I used to explore as a boy. Why, I remember one time I was tracking a lynx, and I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life. Outside of joining the army, that is."

  "And what was that?"

  "I followed the cat into one of the caves. You see this mark on my arm?"

  "I noticed it once before," Madrigal whispered. "That night at the creek."

  "But you never said anything about it."

  "I…my mind was on other things." Madrigal turned her head to make sure Flood and the other two had not overheard her.

  Tom reached over and touched Madrigal's hand. "I'll never forget that night, Madrigal. In fact, my mind hasn't been on much else since then."

  Madrigal rolled her eyes at Tom's confession. It was a pity the night swim had meant so little to her.

  In the back of the ambulance wagon, Flood, Rebecca, and Allison sat upright. With Morrow at her breast, Allison felt the first contentment in days.

  "Looks like Morrow doesn't miss Alma at all," Rebecca said, hearing a satisfied burp coming from the baby.

  "But I'm so sorry for Alma. Tonight she must feel that she's lost two babies." Allison replied.

  "I wouldn't waste a split second worryin' over it, Allison. Alma was the one who almost caused you to get caught. Have you thought of that?"

  "Still…"

  "Flood's right, Miss Allison. And I got a feelin' we haven't heard the last of it."

  "You think someone might be trying to catch up with us?" Allison took Morrow from her shoulder, wrapped the shawl around her, and placed her on her lap.

  "You never can tell," Flood said. "I'll feel a whole lot safer once we get off this main road."

  "I haven't even thanked you properly for coming back to look for us. If it hadn't been for you, Flood, Rebecca and I probably wouldn't have made it."

  "Well, I knew what danger you were both in. And Rebecca most of all, if it happened she was out by herself after curfew. Without you to vouch for her, I could just see her locked up as a runaway and then sold to some disreputable fellow, like that Marcus Stagg."

  Rebecca shuddered. She'd been free all her life, with the papers to prove it. Still, that didn't give her liberty to go where she wanted to go or when she wanted to go—by herself. The color of her skin had decreed that her freedom was limited—set between sunrise and sunset. And even worse, she'd lost her papers. If she'd been caught that night while waiting for Miss Allison, neither heaven nor Mr. Lincoln's proclamation could have helped her. If she hadn't been returned to the barracks with the other Roswell women, then she would more than likely have wound up in a place equally as bad. And it could still happen. Their escape was not assured.

  Rebecca had good cause to be anxious. Almost directly behind them, Wolf Perkin was tracking their progress. He had already discovered the two discarded Saterlee litters, the canvas stretchers thrown from the ambulance wagon. It wouldn't be long now before he caught up with them, even though they'd had a good head start.

  Riding on horseback, with a hound at his side, Wolf felt exhilarated, like old times—tracking his prey. The recent rain was making it easier, for the mud in the road revealed newly made ruts of a wagon pulled by two animals. The hoof marks indicated that the animals were shoeless and broken down—like the nags turned in at the post by the officers in line for replacements. The man who had taken them would have done better raiding the corral at the levee, where the new shipment of horses had just been unloaded.

  Wolf had gotten the name of the soldier, too. He had forced it from Walter with a promise that he would not be reported, in exchange for his information. Of course, he'd covered up his part in it, while implicating one of the guards who'd come in on the deportation train. Wolf could have told which one, even before Walter opened his mouth. He'd seen how Tom Traymore had completely lost his head over that Madrigal O'Laney.

  Wolf, kneeling in the road to pick up a baby's shoe that the dog had found, got back in the saddle and, whistling to the hound, began to gallop again, following the telltale trail of the wagon prints east.

  Farther into the night, the wagon traveled, until it reached the road to Fort Donelson, where numerous wagon and caisson tracks had already made patterns in the mud. On purpose, Tom blended the ambulance wagon wheel tracks into those already made, coming and going. Then he left the wagon for a while to cut some limbs from a nearby tree. Once he'd returned, he had Madrigal take over the reins of the horses while he traveled behind the wagon, using the branches of the tree to obliterate the marks of the wheels until Madrigal pulled the vehicle into the woods beyond and stopped.

  Now, it was time to attend to the wagon itself, disguising the vehicle's military ap
pearance; for they would be traveling in areas where people would look askance at an ambulance so far from the river and the fighting area. Tom took his knife and cut out the medical insignia painted on the canvas, then stuffed the opening with rags borrowed from Flood.

  After giving the horses a rest, Tom took the wagon over rough terrain, staying clear of the roads—threading his way between trees, with the swish of smaller saplings caught under the wagon and the thud of rocks hurled against the wheels, providing a percussive rhythm to the journey. At last, when he could go no farther because of the density of the forest, Tom pulled out into a clearing until he came to a small path, little better than the forest route.

  Twenty minutes behind them, Wolf stopped at the road to the fort where the wagon wheels that he had followed all the way from Nashville suddenly disappeared. Disappointed at first, he began to wonder if he had followed the wrong vehicle. But then he took out the baby shoe from his saddle, let the hound sniff it, and then watched as the dog disappeared into the wooded area beyond.

  Wolf's laugh was triumphant. Tom Traymore had used an old Indian ploy, but it was not going to work this time. Within a few hours, they would all be caught, and he, Wolf Perkin, would finally get the promotion that had been denied him.

  He whistled for the dog, which bounded out of the woods and returned to Wolf. Now that he knew where the wagon was headed, he decided he could do with some help. He wheeled his horse around and raced toward the fort, demanding entrance from the night guard, who had been dozing while on duty.

  Within minutes, Wolf rode out of the fort. With him this time were four cavalrymen, with their horses headed toward the woods off the road, with the hound barking and bounding ahead of them, stopping to sniff along the way and then following a zigzag pattern eastward.

  The horses attached to the ambulance wagon were winded. Foam and lather drifted from them into the night breeze. They needed water; they needed rest. Tom knew they could travel no farther for the remainder of the night.

  Toward the east, the thin moon had disappeared. A rim of light was barely perceptible on the horizon—a dull foreplay for the anticipated brilliance of the sun that would burst through the cedars at any moment.