Walking alongside the tracks of the Western and Atlantic Railroad, they eventually passed into a more heavily wooded area and momentarily out of sight of any of the milling bluecoats.
“Stop,” McFadden said. “Let’s rest a moment.”
“Why?” Maddox asked. “We should push right on.”
McFadden shook his head. “I’m giving the men just a few minutes. Don’t want them to be winded when the time comes.”
Maddox gave a skeptical look, then simply shrugged and lit a pipe.
In truth, McFadden wanted to stop as much to give himself some time to think as to allow the men to rest for a few minutes. Though they had passed through what had obviously been a logistical area, the activities there had all involved provisions and medical care. He had not spotted anything resembling an ammunition dump, which would be the obvious target for Maddox’s infernal device. With fifteen pounds of gunpowder, the bomb would pack an explosive punch equivalent to a few rounds of artillery detonated simultaneously. Unless it were placed in such a manner as to set off large amounts of Yankee ammunition, the destruction the bomb might cause would never justify the trouble to which they were going to smuggle it into the Union lines.
As these thoughts were moving through his mind, a mounted Union officer appeared coming down the sidetrack road toward them, trailed by two other riders. They were moving at a rather slow walk, in no great hurry. As the man came closer, McFadden was disheartened to see a cautious and inquisitive look on his face.
“Why is a squad of infantry standing idle next to the railroad?” the officer demanded. “Where are you men supposed to be?”
“Our colonel sent us up to pick up more ammunition for our regiment,” McFadden said, thinking quickly. He lamented the lack of time which had prevented proper planning for this operation. He should have had a cover story prepared and memorized for exactly this kind of situation, which had been bound to happen sooner or later.
“What regiment are you?”
“13th Iowa,” McFadden replied, randomly pulling the name from his mind. He cursed himself. The least he could have done would have been to learn the name of a nearby regiment, and perhaps even the name of its commander. Surely it wouldn’t have been too difficult to do that.
The Union officer, a major, looked at McFadden with skepticism. Perhaps it had been the tone of his voice, or perhaps the major knew the whereabouts of the 13th Iowa. Whatever the cause, the man clearly sensed that something was not right.
‘What’s your name, son?”
As calmly as if he were pouring himself a drink, Maddox produced his revolver and fired a single shot at the Union major. In the quiet part of the woods, the sudden sound of a gunshot echoed like a loud clap. The bullet struck the man squarely in the throat. As a look of shocked horror crossed the major’s face, his hands instinctively grasped around his throat in an effort to staunch the loss of blood. It was no use. With every heartbeat, a stream of blood pumped out from between his fingers.
The two staff officers just behind the major were at first too surprised to do anything. Before they could respond, Pearson and one of the other soldiers raised their Springfields to their shoulders. At such close range, they couldn’t miss. Two shots brought both men down off their horses within a second of one another.
The mortally wounded major did not give in to terror. While holding his throat with his left hand, he pulled his own revolver from its holster with his right. Pointing it in the general direction of the group of disguised Confederates, he had time to fire off a single bullet before being felled by two more shots.
Pearson let out a sharp cry of pain. The bullet smacked into his belly just below the left side of his ribcage. He fell to the ground even as the Union major tumbled from his horse.
“No!” McFadden cried as he rushed to Pearson’s side. Having seen the wound when it had happened, he instantly sensed that it would be mortal. Wounds to the belly usually were, although it sometimes took a long time for the victim to die. As it was, Pearson was still alive and conscious, frantically tearing at his shirt to try and determine where he had been hit.
“Is it bad, Lieutenant?” he asked fearfully. “Is it bad?”
“You’ll be all right,” McFadden said, trying to sound reassuring.
Pearson’s teeth clenched in pain. “You’re no good at lying, McFadden.”
“Okay, it’s bad.”
“Leave me here, then. Keep going with that bomb.”
McFadden almost chuckled, for he had never heard Pearson say an unselfish thing in his life. He helped Pearson get his shirt off and saw the entry wound. As he had feared, it had all the signs of a mortal wound. Most likely it had struck his left kidney, possibly severing an artery, or more than one, while it did so. He wadded up Pearson’s shirt and gently pressed it against the wound in an attempt to staunch the flow of blood.
It took a few moments before McFadden realized that Maddox was speaking to the other men.
“You!” Maddox said sharply, pointing to a specific soldier. “Run back to the hospital quick as you can and come back with a stretcher! If they ask, just tell them that the major has been hit! Act like you know what you’re doing and speak normally! They’ll not suspect you unless you give them reason!”
The man nodded, set his rifle down, and took off down the path back the way they had come.
“Take off those Yankee uniforms!” Maddox said to the rest of the men. “They’ll be here any moment, drawn by the gunfire. Head off in that direction.” He pointed to the woods to the east. “We’ll stay here with Private Pearson.”
McFadden only half heard this, intent on trying to do something for Pearson. Conceivably, they could carry him back to the Yankee hospital. But would they treat him, assuming his identity as a rebel infiltrator were discovered? Even if they did, was there anything any doctor could do for Pearson?
The rest of the men had thrown off their Yankee uniforms, revealing their gray Confederate garb beneath. As ordered by Maddox, they quickly set off at a jog into the woods to the east, being lost to sight after two or three minutes. In the meantime, Maddox was hurriedly removing the uniform coat of the Union major, which was splattered with blood.
Pearson faded into unconsciousness, but the continuing rise and fall of his chest told McFadden that he was still alive. Although it was uncommon, sometimes men survived such grievous wounds. The hope glimmered in McFadden’s heart that Pearson had a chance. Pearson had saved McFadden’s life at the Battle of East Point, so McFadden felt honor-bound to do what he could to save Pearson’s.
A few minutes later, the soldier dispatched by Maddox returned with a stretcher. Maddox gave him the same instructions he had given to the others: remove his Union uniform and flee into the woods to the east.
“What are you doing?” McFadden finally asked, distracting himself from Pearson for just a moment.
“The other men will create a diversion for us. We’ll load your man Pearson on this stretcher wearing the major’s uniform and continue north. No one will stop two Union soldiers carrying a wounded officer.”
“What?!” McFadden shouted. “You sent them away as bait?”
“It was the most logical course of action.”
“You bastard!” McFadden spat. “They’ll be killed!”
“They might be okay,” Maddox said calmly. “They will likely be taken prisoner. Some might even make it back to Atlanta.”
Anger filled McFadden. He drew his sword, intent on running Maddox through. He had taken him for a bloody-minded murderer from the moment he had met him. He had obviously not cared a damn that innocent people had been killed when he had destroyed the ship at City Point. He had even seemed to delight in the fact. Now, he had tricked nearly a dozen brave Confederate soldiers, half of them members of McFadden’s beloved Texas Brigade, to almost certain capture or death. Moreover, he was proposing to use Pearson as a human decoy rather than taking him to the nearest hospital.
As he stepped forward, Maddox surpr
ised him by showing no sign of fear. Indeed, he smiled, as though McFadden had just invited him for a drink.
“Oh, put the sword away, Lieutenant. We have more important things to worry about. We need to find a good target for this bomb.”
“You’re a damn, lying bastard who doesn’t deserve to live.”
“Why do you say that? I’m just the same as you, Lieutenant McFadden. Cleburne’s staff officers told me all about you. They say you’re a berserker in battle. That you may have killed more Yankees than any other man in the Army of Tennessee. That you refused promotion for more than a year because you thought being an officer would keep you from killing the enemy. You and I are very much alike.”
“Shut the hell up,” McFadden said.
Having finally removed the Union major’s uniform, Maddox stood up. Looking into his dark and empty eyes, McFadden suddenly saw deeper into the man, as if he were opening a door and briefly allowing McFadden to see inside. The man standing before him was a killer, not a warrior. The killing of other human beings was the entirety of his purpose in life. McFadden had killed more men than he cared to remember, but for him killing was either a duty or a desperate attempt to smother his own rage. Maddox was very different. He was a man who killed for the sheer pleasure of killing. In short, a demon.
Although he was brandishing his sword and Maddox had made no move toward either of his own weapons, McFadden felt fear. Although he was a seasoned combat veteran, he sensed instinctively that Maddox could kill him in a hundred different ways so quickly that McFadden would not even realize he was being attacked before he was dead. If that happened, Maddox would just light his pipe once again and continue the mission on his own, feeling no more remorse about killing McFadden than he would have felt after ringing a chicken’s neck.
“You and I have been given an assignment by General Cleburne,” Maddox said. “Are you going to help me or not?”
McFadden hesitated. He did not want to have anything more to do with Maddox, but abandoning the mission would mean breaking his word to Cleburne.
Maddox sensed his mental disarray. “McFadden, what do you have to live for? They tell me that you have no family. They tell me that your woman was killed by the Yankee bombardment. The Confederacy is what you live for now. That and revenge.”
McFadden wanted to tell Maddox that he hated the Confederacy, that he hated slavery, that he hated secession, that he hated the war. He wanted to say that he didn’t want revenge, that he simply wanted to forget everything that had happened over the past few years and somehow find a way to go home. However, what Maddox was saying was undeniable. McFadden realized that he was irretrievably trapped. He remembered the conversation he had observed between Cleburne and McPherson out between the front lines and realized that Cleburne was trapped, too.
His mind spun again. Maddox was right. McFadden was with the Confederacy, right or wrong. He had laid his cards down on the table the moment he had joined the Southern army. He had killed dozens of Northern soldiers, he had taken George Thomas prisoner, he had saved Atlanta by warning Cleburne of Grant’s approach. It was far too late for him to go back now. Whatever future his life held, and however long he lived, he had to live for the Confederacy.
Maddox’s eyes arched up inquisitively. “Are you going to help me or not?” he asked again.
McFadden didn’t respond with words, but slowly sheathed his sword.
Maddox smiled. “Good. I didn’t want to have to kill you.”
Without any further exchange of words, McFadden and Maddox propped Pearson’s unconscious body up, took off the private’s uniform coat he had been wearing and replaced it with the coat of the major. They were just placing his body on the stretcher when a squad of Union infantry trotted up at the double quick.
“Dear God!” a sergeant said, looking at the bodies strewn about. “What happened here?”
“Rebels!” Maddox responded quickly, the tension in his voice so convincing that McFadden almost believed him. “Must be some sort of raiding party. They took off that way!” He pointed into the eastern woods.
“How many?”
“Six or seven, maybe? If you can flush them out, we’ll get the major to the hospital.”
The sergeant nodded sharply, then barked orders to his men, who quickly spread out into a skirmish line and vanished into the trees.
“Listen,” Maddox said in a vaguely menacing tone as soon as the Yankees were out of earshot. “We’ll take your man on this stretcher northwest toward the bridge. That will be where the bigger supply depots are located. Nobody is going to stop two men carrying a wounded officer on a stretcher.”
“Makes sense,” McFadden responded. No matter how he felt about what was going on, he was committed to it.
“Very well. Let’s go.”
*****
September 29, Morning
Johnston couldn’t gallop. In fact, he couldn’t even canter, so thick were the trees. At times he was able to kick Fleetfoot into a trot, but for most of his ride westward he was limited to walking his horse. His inability to go faster was extremely frustrating. He was desperate to return to his headquarters as quickly as possible.
He hadn’t needed the arrival of couriers from Cheatham to tell him that something had gone wrong on the left flank. There had been the sudden crash of artillery and heavy musketry, indicating a sudden outburst of fighting. As he had not given Cheatham any orders but to hold his ground, Johnston assumed that Grant must have launched a powerful attack on the left. This had caught the Confederate commander, who was expecting his opponent to follow the same strategy as the previous day, by surprise.
Johnston had been waiting with General Stewart on the right, ready to spring the ambush he had planned for the moment when McPherson and the Army of the Tennessee resumed their attack on his right. During the night, General Clayton’s division had quietly and carefully taken up a position in the thick woods just to the north and east of the main line of Stewart’s corps. From there, they would be perfectly placed to crash into the left flank of McPherson’s divisions the moment they moved forward to attack the Confederate line. Stopped in their tracks by Stewart’s corps and then struck in their flank by Clayton’s division, the Army of the Tennessee might be shattered.
What Johnston had not expected was such aggressiveness on the part of the Army of the Cumberland. Having beaten off some half-hearted attacks the previous day, Cheatham had told Johnston that he envisioned no difficulty maintaining his position this day as well. In fact, he had shown no hesitation in dispatching Clayton’s division to the right flank to serve as the ambush force. It now appeared that this might have been a mistake, potentially a fatal mistake.
Johnston reined in a few yards from the farmhouse door and dropped quickly from his saddle. He jogged inside and saw Mackall and half a dozen other staff officers huddled over a map. Two couriers who Johnston recognized as being from Cheatham’s staff stood nearby, having just arrived with news.
“What is happening on the left?” Johnston asked loudly, storming inside.
Mackall scarcely looked up from the table. “They caught us flat-footed, I’m afraid. Just before dawn, a whole Yankee corps crashed into the left flank of Stevenson’s division. They folded like a house of cards, it seems.”
“Surely Stevenson left a brigade in reserve!” Johnston protested.
Mackall nodded quickly. “Palmer’s Tennessee Brigade. They had just launched a counter attack when these couriers left Cheatham to report to us. No word on the results.”
Johnston shook his head. One brigade could not hope to stop an entire enemy corps. At best, they might slow it down long enough for the rest of Stevenson’s division to reform. How much time the counter attack might buy was anyone’s guess. Johnston didn’t think it would be more than an hour at most.
Mackall leaned forward. “Sir, begging the general’s pardon, but perhaps we should recall Clayton’s division to the left flank? If the Yankees continue to drive forward, they will event
ually roll up the entire line.”
He considered this. The attacking enemy corps were driving from west to east. Unless the Confederate dispositions were changed radically and quickly, the Union forces would be able to concentrate all their combat power against only a small portion of the Confederate forces at a time. If they continued to push forward, the entire Southern army would be routed.
The scenario that Johnston had most feared was now on the verge of becoming reality. Grant seemed poised to win a decisive tactical victory over the Army of Tennessee. If he succeeded, he could wreck the Confederate army as an effective fighting force, at least for a few weeks. If that happened, the fall of Atlanta was mere days away.
“Dispatch an immediate message to General Cheatham,” Johnston said determinedly. “He is to refuse his line at a right angle to its current position, facing to the west, with the point of connection with Stewart’s corps serving as the hinge. General Palmer’s brigade will fight a delaying action to give the rest of the corps time to fall back.”
Mackall and the other staff officers were hurriedly taking all this down. Johnston’s orders would pull back Cheatham’s corps like a door swinging on its hinges, transforming the position of the Army of Tennessee from a straight line facing north to a right angle, with one half of the army facing west and the other half facing north. The line facing west would be completely unfortified and expected to withstand an assault by many times their number.
“And Clayton’s division?” Mackall asked.
An icy grip seized Johnston’s heart. Pulling Clayton’s division back from its ambush position and sending it to reinforce the left would be the reasonable thing to do. Johnston had always been a reasonable general, cautious and never rash. Even his great attack at Peachtree Creek had only been undertaken after very careful consideration and preparation, with all possible contingencies having been taken into account beforehand.
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