The Railroad War by Jesse Taylor Croft

force of
     fifty thousand men. I aim to extract our troops from that siege during the next twenty-four hours. And that means I don’t
     have time to thrash out areas of responsibility with you.” And then, before Captain Hottel had a chance to reply, the general
     began moving toward the door as he placed his hat on his head. “Major,” he said to Noah, “would you take care of Captain Hottel
     for me? See that he is fed and housed—and otherwise taken care of?”
    “Yes, sir,” Noah said, forcing himself to speak evenly. This is all I need today! he thought. Even though Father has good
     words for him.
    “I’d hoped that the general could find time to stay for at least a few minutes,” Captain Hottel said. But Johnston only smiled
     blandly and continued on his way.
    “I’ll take care of the fighting while the two of you take care of the moving,” he said. As he stood at the door, he turned
     and caught Noah’s eyes.
“Major,”
he continued, “you have my full authority to do everything in your power to make life as easy and comfortable for the
captain
as you can. I’m sure, I need hardly add, that you will both be of great help to one another.”
    When he finished that, he looked meaningfully at Noah. Then he winked.
    “Yes, sir,” Noah said.
    One thing Johnston meant, he knew, was that Noah was to use his rank to insure his authority over Hottel—no matter what Hottel’s
     orders from Richmond were.
    Then Noah turned to Captain Hottel. “Well, Captain,” he said, “since, as you say, you’re ready to get down to business, what
     spark of reason do you have in mind to illuminate this swamp of darkness and confusion?”
    Captain Hottel smiled blandly. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”
    “What I mean is that we’re up to our knees in trouble,” Noah said. “And I was wondering if you had any immediate ideas about
     how to help pull us out. I have thirty thousand men, with all their baggage and equipment, and I have eighteen locomotives
     and maybe a hundred and thirty cars, give or take twenty, to move them with on worn-out rails and roadbed. So you would be
     a large help to me if you could come up with a way through that. Can you?”
    “Not immediately. No,” Hottel said, looking pensive. “Not immediately. But…” And then he paused.
    “But I’m surprised that you have so little rolling stock,” Hottel went on.
    “Are you aware, Captain, that there’s a war on?”
    Captain Hottel just smiled at the rebuke. “Are
you
aware, Major,” he said after a moment, “that, according to my records there are well over fifty workable locomotives in northern
     Mississipi and a like number of cars—perhaps two or three hundred of them?”
    “I’ve seen the inventories,” Noah said. “But I can’t use what’s on paper.”
    The captain shrugged. “There are a
minimum
of fifty locomotives.” He gave Noah a self-satisfied look. “In other words, there may be even more.”
    “Like I said, I can’t use paper machines.”
    “Why haven’t you looked for them?” Hottel asked.
    “Because I’ve been on the job for only ten days, there’s a war on, and I have other things to do,” Noah said, barely holding
     on to his patience. Captain Hottel rubbed Noah the wrong way, John Ballard’s endorsement of him notwithstanding.
    “But they are all still out there,” Hottel said, “in northern Mississippi. And they’re waiting to be used.”
    “But they’re completely worthless if I don’t have them. You must know that.” He looked at Hottel. “God only knows where they
     are, and God only knows how we could go about getting them.”
    “Still, it does make you pause to think, doesn’t it?” Captain Hottel said with a smile. “Working locomotives and railroad
     cars—the very things that the Confederacy needs more than anything else right now—have been sitting nearby under your very
     nose. Wouldn’t you love to have them?”
    “Sure,” Noah answered. “They’d