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When the freight train had passed, they immediately proceeded on to the next station Adairsville where they were to meet the regular down freight train.
At Adairsville they dropped the cars, and with locomotive and tender loaded with armed men, they drove forward at the highest speed possible. They knew that we were not many minutes ahead, and trusted to overhaul us before the express train could be safely passed.
Fuller and Murphy saw the obstruction of the broken rail in time, by reversing their engine, to prevent wreck, but the hindrance was for the present insuperable. Leaving all their men behind, they started for a second foot-race. Before they had gone far they met the train we had passed at Adairsville and turned it back after us.
His hearers, including Andrews, laughed, almost scornfully. "Just wait and see," returned Macgreggor. "A Southerner is as brave, and has as much brains as a Northerner." We shall see who was right in the matter. On sped the fugitive train once more, and in a few minutes it had stopped, with much bumping and rattle of brakes at the station called Adairsville.
He ran his engine fifty and a half miles two of them backing the whole freight train up to Adairsville made twelve stops, coupled to the two cars which the fugitives had dropped, and switched them off on sidings all this, in one hour and five minutes. We doubt if the victory of Manasses or Corinth were worth as much to us as the frustration of this grand coup d' etat.
At some point on the way they had taken on some fifty cross-ties, and before reaching Adairsville, they stopped on a curve, tore up the rails, and put seven cross-ties on the track no doubt intending to wreck this down freight train, which would be along in a few minutes.
I want to get that freight started south. They might wait, when they see that this is not the passenger train. Work up a full head of steam while we're here, Knight." Tom put more fuel upon the fire. The train slid into the station at Adairsville and stopped. The freight train was standing on the side-track, ready to pull out.
They pretended, for the most part, to be strangers one to another, and, to aid in the deception, they had bought railroad tickets for different places for Kingston, Adairsville, Calhoun and other stations to the northward, between Marietta and Chattanooga. Soon the train was sweeping up to the platform. It was a long one, with locomotive, tender, three baggage cars and a number of passenger cars.
Nearly all the people of the country seemed to have fled with Johnston's army; yet some few families remained, and from one of them I procured the copy of an order which Johnston had made at Adairsville, in which he recited that he had retreated as far as strategy required, and that his army must be prepared for battle at Cassville.
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