A Spy Wears Two Hats

By Philip C. Jackson

Fifteen year-old Tommy Miller is determined to stop Yankee General George McClellan—even if he has to kill the cruel Union leader.

Tommy is taken captive by Union soldiers, escapes, and is recruited by Captain John Mosby to spy for the Confederacy. He agrees. He feels that is the fastest path to reach McClellan. Fearing for his life at every bend in the road, Tommy uses his innate ability as an actor to convince Union soldiers and leaders along the way that he is a Yankee.

Conquering terror-filled nights, and slogging through unrelenting icy rain downpours, Tommy changes hats as he spies for the Confederacy. He saves a fellow teenaged soldier, Roger Pinkerton,—albeit a Yankee— amidst the battle on Malvern Hill. He then moves on to alert General Lee of McClellan’s overwhelming Yankee dominance in terms of numbers of troops geared up for battle on the banks of the James River.

When Janey O’Reilly, Tommy’s girlfriend, is assaulted by passing Yankees close to home near Malvern Hill, Tommy sets out in search of the guilty party. But first he must switch hats, resuming his role as a Yankee private, before he can inflict his revenge.

After switching hats again on his way east toward Sharpesburg and Harpers Ferry as a Union private, Tommy learns that General McClellan has been ordered to step down as Commander of the Army of the Potomac—Yankee General John Pope takes over command with President Lincoln’s sudden order. As battle erupts along Antietum Creek, between Sharpsburg and South Mountain, Tommy is torn between fighting as a union soldier or his true Confederate Rebel self. The Confederacy is the choice. Tommy Miller jumps across the Antietum Creek amid flying cannon balls, takes up his weapon and fires at Yankees. He sees, hears and smells too much death. He heeds the battle cry of fellow Confederates, to go along with General Robert E. Lee.

After the battle, Tommy makes his way south toward Washington where he tries to contact President Lincoln but is rebuffed. Frustrated by Yankees unwilling to accept anything like a peace plan, he determines that a recipe for ending the War is essential. He meets with an inspired Roger Pinkerton and together they head north toward Delaware. Tommy and Roger decide that the best way to end this horrible War is to start a detective agency, like Roger’s uncle did before the War. They’ll call it The Miller Pinkerton Detective Bureau, go undercover and undermine War campaign efforts of both sides, spy where needed and end fighting among brothers and sisters—mothers and fathers

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 4, 2007
• ISBN: 9781469117546

Philip C. Jackson

For nine years , I rode race horses as a professional jockey at major race tracks throughout America. Forced to retire from race riding with the onset of Multiple Sclerosis at age thirty-two, I have been fortunate in pursuing my next love; the “not-so-physical” sport of writing. I won the New Mexico division of the Philip Morris Magazine National Essay Writing Contest in 1987. Published in American Voices, and spurred-on by the success of “Freedom Falling” therein, I have continued on the path to authorship with the completion of three novels. Since 1988 I have attended critique groups. A SPY WEARS TWO HATS is a historical-fiction young adult novel taking place in the summer of 1862.

Book preview

A SPY WEARS

TWO HATS

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Philip C. Jackson

Copyright © 2007 Philip C. Jackson.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-4257-7642-8

ISBN:      Ebook      978-1-4691-1754-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

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41531

To my grandsons

Seth, Samuel

and

Jamey

Contents

Chapter One

Pledge

Chapter Two

Escape

Chapter Three

Dark and Wet

Chapter Four

A Look At Death

Chapter Five

Bugs Alive

Chapter Six

A Dark March

Chapter Seven

Blood Soaked Earth

Chapter Eight

Fleeting Hope

Chapter Nine

Information Manipulation

Chapter Ten

Kind Virginia

Farmer Lady

Chapter Eleven

Stonewall Appears

Chapter Twelve

Past Bull Run

Chapter Thirteen

On To Henry

House Hill

Chapter Fourteen

Spring Through Sudley Springs

Chapter Fifteen

A Traitor Nearby

Chapter Sixteen

Cross Antietam Creek

Chapter Seventeen

First Hand Terror

Chapter Eighteen

Bloody Blue Trousers

Chapter Nineteen

Looking down onto Washington

Chapter Twenty

Winter Sets In;

A Plan’s Laid out

Chapter One

Pledge

I    shoulda been down

at the barn that cool morning, finishing up chores. But instead I rested on the ridge near Old Mill Creek Road, lookin’ for more damned Yankee soldiers, and hating General George McClellan. Yesterday he’d been through these parts killing many of my friends and relatives at Drewry’s Bluff. The countryside still smelled of burnt flesh. I kept hearing men cryin’ out, and heard ’em running around like crazy. Late May 1862, and the General had set his stinking boots on my property. I’ll be sixteen soon. A man. And I plan to kill me a General named McClellan.

I picked up a big ol’ rock, slammed it into the creek, hard as I could. Someday soon, that’s what I’m going to do to that killin’ General’s head, right after I shoot a rifle ball through it.

I lay on my back on gradually drying mud and waited for the sun to get higher in the sky. A half-buried rock stuck into the left side of my back. I lay there, letting it prod me, too damned mad at the Yankees to worry about a little pain.

The reflection of late morning sun glared through wounded tree limbs, falling onto the evaporating mud puddles. In the distance, I heard groaning and more gunshots. Air gathering round my head held the aroma of freshly doused campfires. I didn’t know if everything around me was real. Knew one thing – I was damned scared. Far off, a voice of a kind that could be heard far off shouted, Fall-in men. Fall-in, move out. Was I imagining the shouts? Just didn’t know.

Here, eight miles down river from Richmond lay Drewry’s Bluff, which guarded the capital and its fewer than two full infantry brigades from the Federal gunboats navigating up the James River. Drewry’s, the closest water battery, a tiny fort made of logs and rocks, had become the last Confederate stronghold on the River. This is where McClellan killed so many mere days ago. But he had been beaten off for the time being. Had to be true that if the Yankees took Drewry’s Bluff, General Margruder’s right flank would be wrecked and the Confederate cause put in severe jeopardy.

Got to thinking about how things were a long time back – maybe five or six years ago. I wasn’t nearly as big then. Didn’t have hardly any muscles neither but could fight good anyhow. In fact, if I wasn’t such a first-rate fighter, most likely would have never learned to shoot a rifle from my pa. He no doubt recognized my desire to find out how to fight well and use a gun correctly. Now, my rifle never left my side. People round here thought it part of me, like an extra arm. I could pick a squirrel off a tree limb fifty or sixty yards away. Fact I planned on pickin’ off the Yankee General from any distance. Soon as he showed up.

Big Billy Lynch, my best friend, came trottin’ up the path from town. H . . . He . . . Hey, Tommy, he stammered, I heard the Yankee General is on his way back through here to keep on killin’ folks. They say he’s gonna try again to take Richmond.

Did ya already tell my pa and Jerry at home in Hopewell?

Naw, he said, shaking that huge head of his. They wasn’t anybody ’round the place, so I come here to find you.

Yeah, I’m thinkin’ I might just as well stay here, get a good aim on the road down there, I said, pointing.

Think you can get a shot off from here?

Sure enough. I figured I could kill me a Yankee General right on the banks of the James River outside of Hopewell, Virginia, no more than a few miles from Richmond. Then the folks round here could tell all about how Tom Miller had killed the Yankee General.

Billy ambled off, back down the slope.

I pondered being reared in this valley along the James thinking that someday I could build boats to sell folks wanting to sail around the world. People could meet me at my factory in Norfolk. Pay lots of money for fancy boats of all sizes. Oh yeah, knew I could do it or maybe start a tobacco farm, a thoroughbred horse farm, or a cattle ranch. Now that I think about it, I could do most anything. But my current goal is protecting this valley of mine.

Yep, this valley belongs to me, well, me and Janey anyway. Janey O’Reilly lives on her daddy’s farm across the river in the foothills of Malvern Hill and became my official girlfriend, according to her, last month shortly after Easter and her fifteenth birthday. She is short and kind of stocky but stretching out in all the right places day-by-day. Janey seems a lot like springtime grass growing: If I stay real still, I can watch from a distance as she grows and slims down right before my eyes. We hold hands when we walk together. We kiss a lot when not walking.

Remember to close your eyes to kiss me, she says.

But, I like to see who I’m kissin’, I always reply.

I get scared, thinking someone’s watching me.

You don’t need to get scared. I’ve got hold o’ you.

Why ya always saying that, silly? I know you’re holding me. Janey laughed real loud. I knew she planned on us having a family together someday soon.

I took a kerchief out of my back pocket and wiped off the rifle barrel. Had to keep it clean to shoot straight. Knew for sure, I had to shoot straight.

*     *     *

In spite of all this fumbling around with cleaning my rifle, I heard soldiers marching along the road down below. They talked to each other without noticing if anyone was listening. Too many bluecoats for picking out an isolated face. No way for picking-off a single soldier or general from here and getting away quick. I got an idea.

Figured I could slip down the hill and make ’em think I was a Yankee. Yeah, a Yankee who hated them damned Rebs.

Don’t you move now, Johnny Reb. I twisted around surprised to find a Yankee soldier waving his rifle in my face. You are a prisoner of the Union army.

Chapter Two

Escape

"D     – d – don’t shoot

   me." I tried acting simple-minded, like a scared kid. Well, maybe not simple-minded. Probably a mistimed act, but I was truly frightened. I reckoned I stood on death’s door.

"We’re not going