“What is the good?” returned Andrews. “The enemy’s engine will reach Dalton in a minute or two—perhaps they are there now—and they can telegraph on to Chattanooga by way of the wires on the Cleveland line. It’s a roundabout way, but it will answer their purpose just as well.”
“Then we dare not keep on to Chattanooga?” asked George, in a tone of keen regret. He had fondly pictured a triumphant run through Chattanooga, and an ultimate meeting with the forces of Mitchell somewhere to the westward, accompanied by the applause of the troops and many kind words from the General.
“Not now,” answered the leader. “We may yet burn a bridge or two, and then take to the woods. It would be folly to enter Chattanooga only to be caught.”
At last Andrews saw that he must change his plans. He had hoped, by burning a bridge, to head off the pursuing engine before now; his failure to do this, and the complication caused by the telegraph line to Cleveland, told him that he must come to a halt before reaching Chattanooga. To run into that city would be to jump deliberately into the lion’s mouth.
“Let us see if there’s time to break a rail,” suddenly said the leader. The train was stopped, within sight of a small camp of Confederate troops, and the men started to loosen one of the rails. But hardly had they begun their work when there came the hated whistling from the pursuing engine. The adventurers abandoned their attempt, leaped to their places in cab and car, and “The General” again sped onward. There were no cross-ties remaining; this form of obstruction could no longer be used. It was now raining hard; all the fates seemed to be combining against the plucky little band of Northerners.
Andrews began at last to see that the situation was growing desperate.
“There’s still one chance,” he muttered. He knew that he would soon pass a bridge, and he went on to elaborate in his mind an ingenious plan by which the structure might be burned without making delay necessary, or risking a meeting with the pursuers. He scrambled his way carefully back to the baggage car.
“Boys,” he said, “I want you to set fire to this car, and then all of you crawl into the tender.”
There was a bustle in the car at once, although no one asked a question. The men made a valiant effort to ignite what was left of the splintered walls and roof of the car. But it was hard work. The rain, combined with the wind produced by the rapid motion of the train, made it impossible to set anything on fire even by a very plentiful use of matches.
“We’ll have to get something better than matches,” growled Watson. He had just been saved from pitching out upon the roadside by the quick efforts of one of his companions, who had seized him around the waist in the nick of time. Andrews went to the forward platform of the car.