A first meal of the day didn't prove as hard to find as they'd expected, but it was clearly lunch for everyone else instead of breakfast. There were other laborers in this town lined up to receive portions of bread and stew from a group of women handing them out under the semi-watchful eyes of a foreman wrapped up in his own scarf and overcoat. The foreman was more interested in blowing on his hands and rubbing them together to warm them up than he was in watching who had showed up for work or a feed and West and Gordon had no trouble slipping into the line. They ate like starved rascals, but so did everybody on the crew. All too soon, the food was gone and the laborers were lining up to be led somewhere else.
Now what? Captain West wanted to ask, but he wasn't about to open his mouth yet. He could speak at least a bit of French, but he didn't know how amateurish it would sound coming out of his mouth.
Now we earn our keep, Gordon's eyes appeared to tell him, nodding in approval at his silence. Neither man knew where they were going, but an opportunity for surveillance was not to be missed. The line appeared to be heading in the direction behind the big stable that they hadn't been able to survey from the loft, so even if they had to put in a few hours of some sort of work, it would be worth it. If they got another meal into the bargain at the end of it, all the better. Captain Gordon had resumed his bow-legged gait and Captain West slouched along, trying to remember if that was the standard walk he'd been using when coming out of the stable. Pretending to be someone he wasn't took a surprising amount of effort.
"Sacre mer-!" West heard Gordon whisper as the work column rounded a corner of the stable, passed through the space between a couple of outbuildings.
Behind the stable, behind the outbuildings, was a sight that made West widen his eyes too. The largest tent he had ever seen was erected in the field they were facing, and it appeared to be but one tent, with a couple of others behind it. Their size, however, was not the most alarming thing. What truly gave both officers pause was what those tents were covering. Stretched out before the two captains and the other workmen was what appeared to be a boundless assortment of armaments of almost every kind – stands of rifles, boxes of bullets, stacks of cannon balls, barrels of black powder, bayonets . . . . a Satan's supper of destruction, all earmarked for the C.S.A. That was just in the first tent – who knew what the other tents might be covering? West and Gordon had all they could do not to gawk at the spectacle. None of the other laborers were gawking. The tents were apparently not their final destination.
The column of workmen was led past the display of weaponry and ammunition, which was guarded by surprisingly few uniformed soldiers, West noted, and toward a large barn rather more heavily guarded. Captain Gordon's earlier comment about 'out of the frying pan' might be all too apt, West thought, as he and Gordon tramped into the building with the rest through a doorway with Army of Tennessee soldiers stationed on either side. Into the lion's den a better metaphor perhaps? But no lion's den smelled like the enclosed space they entered into. Suddenly, West felt almost as if someone had taken the cheap cigars from his inner pocket and rammed them up his nostrils.
Are they kidding me? he thought as he saw where he and the other laborers were expected to put in their hours that afternoon.
West had never been inside a commercial tobacco factory before, but he was aghast and hard-pressed not to show it as he saw what the heavily guarded barn concealed. Not cannon, not a gun manufactory, not precious, irreplaceable medicine or food stores.
Tobacco. Lots and lots of tobacco . . . .
Cigars. They were going to be spending their afternoon making cigars.
They really have got to be kidding me!
Fortunately, the workmen were directed to take up several different positions in what was evidently one very big tobacco processing plant. He and Gordon should be able to find a spot here where they could confer without being overheard. Without speaking at all, they allowed themselves to be led through the big operation to an overstuffed row of baskets filled with uncut leaf to be unloaded. The leaves must have been grown that summer, then dried and cured, and now a ragtag assortment of vagrant workers was expected to assemble them into an end product. West didn't see any slave labor being used to do the work – that might be a good sign that they were still close enough to Union lines and the Nashville turnpike to have an escape route. Thousands of slaves had already fled to the East and the North through rocky ground and cedar trees toward freedom. It wasn't impossible for two stranded captains to do it either. But as for the weapons cache they'd just seen . . . .
What good would warning Major General Rosecrans about it do? The Union Army of the Cumberland was headed South, but they'd never be able to reach such a supply or destroy the weapons horde before the Confederates could get it moved or arm themselves with it. Unless someone else destroyed it first . . . .
West's train of thought was interrupted by the sound of a loud belch and a wheezing, hoarse cough from Captain Gordon – or rather, from whatever character he was playing. A few of the other workmen drew away from them as Gordon wheezed again, scratched under one armpit, and hocked a gob of spit onto the earthen floor of the barn. Even a Confederate soldier stationed in a corner of the barn appeared eager to keep his distance as Gordon got to work unloading baskets with his bow-legged shuffle, unnerving leer and tendency to scratch himself on full display. When West hesitated to join in the labor, Gordon fetched him a light slap on the side of the head and told him in heavily accented French patois that he was an idiot and should get to work. West pretended to be slow to understand before he complied while making some snorting sounds and itching as though he had lice and within minutes they were working along their section of the row with all the privacy they needed.
"Good to be popular, isn't it?" Gordon whispered when he was sure they couldn't be overheard. "You're doing a nice job, by the way – keep it up."
West wasn't interested in being praised for his ability to act like an offensive moron, though.
"Those weapons . . . ."
"I saw them," Gordon nodded, with a frown. "Enough of them to kill a whole lot of our boys, aren't there?"
"Not if we can find a way to take them out ourselves."
"And here I thought I'd arranged for you to play the one who was hard of hearing!" Gordon shook his head and scratched at one ear. "I could have sworn I just heard you say-"
"You did hear me say it," West whispered back. "We have to destroy that whole cache while it's all in one place. We might never have a better opportunity."
"If you view early death as an opportunity! Us and what army, Captain? In case you're forgetting, there's only two of us and rather a lot of them."
"Each one of us working alone was enough to trick Major Swallow's entire camp, right? So if the two of us work together, we've practically got them outnumbered." West's eyes narrowed and he resumed his mute idiot act for a few seconds while a C.S.A. regular patrolled nearby. Captain Gordon began hacking and sneezing and scratching again for good measure until the disgusted soldier wandered elsewhere. "Besides, there's something interesting I have to tell you about the properties of some cigars . . . ."
