"Never Call Retreat" - читать интересную книгу автора (INGRICH NEWT G, Forstchen William R)

11:30 P.M

McDougal, damn it, are we finally ready to move?" "Yes, Major, I think so." "It's general now, McDougal. Remember that." "Yes, your worship," McDougal said with a grin while shifting a wad of tobacco and spitting.

Former major, now general, Cruickshank muttered a curse under his breath. A job that should have taken only three or four hours had consumed a day and a half. The pontoons and bridging material had been laboriously hauled through the streets of Baltimore to the rail yard. Then there had been the nightmare of maneuvering each wagon carrying a thirty-foot-long boat up onto a flatcar. Easy enough when talking about it, but bloody chaos when turned into a reality. Each flatcar had to be backed up individually to a loading ramp, mules unhooked, then the cumbersome wagon pushed by several dozen men from the ramp onto the car. Several of them had slipped, the clearance of wagon wheel width and rail car width being only a few inches to either side, and one of the boats had been staved in when it.tumbled off the car.

Once loaded, the wheels had to be chocked, cables hooked to secure the wagon in place, the single car then pulled away from the ramp and sidetracked, another flatcar hooked to a locomotive and backed into place.

Meanwhile cantankerous mules had to be forced aboard boxcars or open-sided cattle cars, kicking and braying. After hours of waiting in the heat, men then had to go into those same cars, lead the mules out to feed and water them, then lead them back in again.

If the full Baltimore and Ohio crew had been around, he knew the job would have gone off without a hitch; instead, he was primarily reliant on his own men and a hundred or so workers who had shown up just after dark, when word circulated around that each man would be given five dollars, in silver, at the end of each day's work.

That alone burned him. His boys were getting a few dollars a month in worthless Confederate scrip and that issue alone had triggered more than a few fistfights with the civilians.

McDougal, who had agreed to stay on as yard boss for twenty dollars a day, silver, watched as the first of the locomotives began to inch forward.

Jeb Stuart was aboard that train. An extra car hooked on to the end, an open cattle car now carrying half a dozen horses and the "cavalier" himself, sitting astride the siding of the car, hat off and waving a salute to Cruickshank as they passed.

"Damn show-off," Cruickshank muttered.

"He's off to war and you ain't," McDougal said. "Count yourself lucky."

"I'm stuck here now, McDougal," Cruickshank said. "I'd rather be going with my pontoons. Get the hell out of this place."

"Oh, you'll have grand fun these next few days," McDougal said cheerfully. "I figure you'll have to help organize two hundred trains or more. A snap if you know what you are doing."

"I don't, and you do," Cruickshank said coldly, looking over at McDougal. "And by God, you better do it right." McDougal smiled.

"But, of course, Major… I mean, General. Of course."