Sharyn Mccrumb_Elizabeth MacPherson_07 by MacPherson's Lament Page A

circumstances—and perhaps that was the worst sign of all. Surely the end was near.
    Gabriel Hawks might have run, too. He was thinking about it as the train headed westward into Piedmont, North Carolina. He could follow the New River north and be back in Giles County before June. But then the navy’s paymaster James Semple had made him a lieutenant, and he felt he ought to set an example for the rest. Bridgeford laughed at him, of course, but then they made him a lieutenant, too, so there they were, in ragged, ill-fitting uniforms scrounged from somewhere by Mr. Semple. They hoped they wore deserters’ coats, not the leavings of dead men. Still, they were officers.
    â€œThe rise in pay delights me,” Bridgeford drawled. “Now it will only take us three months to save up our wages for a pound of butter.”
    â€œThat is, if they pay us at all.”
    â€œTrue, Hawks. And well noted. But, hell, we may as well stick it out a while,” Bridgeford said, laughing. “Maybe Johnston can whip Sherman in Carolina. Maybe the damned Texans will march across the Mississippi and win the war for us yet. Then we’ll be fixed for life.”
    â€œYou think they will?” Hawks had asked him, feeling a shiver of hope.
    â€œNo,” said Bridgeford. “But look out there.” He pointed to the rolling vista of cornstalks, brown and broken behind crumbling fences. “It’s the same everywhere, Hawks.”
    It
was
the same everywhere. Hawks knew that. The Yankees’ General Sheridan had laid waste to most of Virginia. The Richmond paper had quoted a message that Sheridan sent to Lincoln: “If a crow were to fly across the Shenandoah Valley, he would have to take his rations with him.”
    â€œAnd I’ve no family left,” Bridgeford went on. “I’ve grown accustomed to being hungry. What does it matter if we go or stay?”
    So they had stayed, and when the train rumbled into Greensboro with only two hundred and fifty men aboard, Hawks and Bridgeford were still among that number. Some of the men joked that they’d just keep on riding the train to Mexico; they had been traveling on it for more than a week already. After a few days’ wait in Greensboro, the train ride began again;but this time the government officials were not aboard.
    Word had it that Joe Johnston was going to surrender his army, too. They’d all heard reports of what he’d told the government officials. One of the orderlies could tell it off by heart: “ ‘I shall expect to retain no man beyond the byroad or cow-path that leads to his home. My small force is melting away like snow before the sun, and I am hopeless of recruiting it.’ ” The Confederacy had fallen with Robert E. Lee; only the politicians seemed ignorant of that fact. It was at last decided that Johnston would surrender his army, but political leaders would continue to retreat, perhaps to continue the fighting farther south, or failing that, to set up a government in exile in Mexico or in Europe.
    On April 16 the presidential party disbanded to go their separate ways, some on horseback, some in wagons and ambulances, all heading south, and all with a few soldiers for escort. There was word that Stoneman’s cavalry was combing the area in search of Jefferson Davis, and the officials believed that a scattering of several groups of fugitives would increase the president’s chances of getting away. The train continued on as before, as an added decoy for the Union pursuers, now escorted by a mounted guard of Admiral Semmes’s forces to fend off the enemy cavalry. Their protection was morethan a decoy for the opposition. The train in itself was well worth defending, for in one of its cars was the contents of the Confederate treasury: silver coin and gold bullion transported from Richmond with the evacuation of the government.
    The tattered caravans wended their way south, following muddy