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Once they were almost overtaken by the pursuing engine, and compelled to set out again at a terrible speed. At one point at Adairsville, they narrowly escaped running into an express train.
Inasmuch as the bridge at Resaca was overtaxed, Hooker's Twentieth Corps was also diverted to cross by the fords and ferries above Resaca, in the neighborhood of Echota. On the 17th, toward evening, the head of Thomas's column, Newton's division, encountered the rear-guard of Johnston's army near Adairsville.
The passenger train was such a long one that the rear end blocked the track. Andrews tried to get the conductor to move on to Adairsville and there meet the upbound passenger train; but that official was too badly scared by the danger he had just escaped to take any more chances, and he refused to budge until the other train should arrive.
As it was, Fuller and his men, running towards Adairsville, heard the approaching train in plenty of time to stop it. Once again, scarcely fifteen minutes after deserting one locomotive, they were aboard another, the Texas. It took but a minute to explain to the engineer what had happened.
Schofield ordered the divisions of the Twenty-third Corps to cross the Connasauga at different places, and make their way by different roads eastward to the Federal road crossing of the Coosawattee, turning south after crossing that river and marching till abreast of Adairsville and some four or five miles distant from it.
The march of my own division is fixed by the memoranda of my personal diary of the campaign. It is difficult to identify the several roads, but my own line of march was the principal Cassville road leading from Field's Mills and ferry through Sonora until we reached the road running directly to Adairsville. On this last we marched to Marsteller's Mills.
When Captain Fuller reached the point where the rails had been removed, his locomotive was useless. But his blood was now up. He abandoned the engine, and ran on foot towards Adairsville, where he knew he would find a through freight train. In fact he met it after he had run about three miles, flagged it down, reversed it, and carried it back to Adairsville.
The engine, thrown into reverse, pushed back to Adairsville, with Fuller, mounted on the end box-car, controlling the train by signals. South of the station they stopped, while Fuller jumped from the train and pulled open the switch to the side-track. Murphy uncoupled the train at the engine.
He felt that a long detention at Adairsville would be dangerous, perhaps fatal. Opening the door, the boy entered the station. It comprised a cheerless waiting-room, with a stove, bench and water-cooler for furniture, and a little ticket office at one end.
They stopped a moment at Adairsville, and said Fuller, with the regular passenger train, was behind, and would wait at Kingston for the freight train, and told the conductor thereon to push ahead and meet him at that point. They passed on to Calhoun, where they met the down passenger train, due here at 4.20 P. M., and without making any stop, they proceeded on, on, and on.
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