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They sewed him up in a saddle blanket. This was his shroud; too like a
soldier's. Harold, meantime, had been tied to a tree, but was now
released for the march. Colonel Conger pushed on immediately for
Washington; the cortege was to follow. Booth's only arms were his
carbine knife, and two revolvers. They found about him bills of
exchange, Canada money, and a diary. A venerable old negro living in the
vicinity had the misfortune to possess a horse. This horse was a relic
of former generations, and showed by his protruding ribs the general
leanness of the land. He moved in an eccentric amble, and when put upon
his speed was generally run backward. To this old negro's horse was
harnessed a very shaky and absurd wagon, which rattled like approaching
dissolution, and each part of it ran without any connection or
correspondence with any other part. It had no tail-board, and its shafts
were sharp as famine; and into this mimicry of a vehicle the murderer
was to be sent to the Potomac river, while the man he had murdered was
moving in state across the mourning continent. The old negro geared up
his wagon by means of a set of fossil harness, and when it was backed to
Garrett's porch, they laid within it the discolored corpse. The corpse
was tied with ropes around the legs and made fast to the wagon sides.
Harold's legs were tied to stirrups, and he was placed in the centre of
four murderous looking cavalrymen. The two sons of Garrett were also
taken along, despite the sobs and petitions of the old folks and women,
but the rebel captain who had given Booth a lift, got off amidst the
night's agitations, and was not rearrested. So moved the cavalcade of
retribution, with death in its midst, along the road to Port Royal. When
the wagon started, Booth's wound till now scarcely dribbling, began to
run anew. It fell through the crack of the wagon, dripping upon the
axle, and spotting the road with terrible wafers. It stained the planks,
and soaked the blankets; and the old negro, at a stoppage, dabbled his
hands in it by mistake; he drew back instantly, with a shudder and
stifled expletive, "Gor-r-r, dat'll never come off in de world; it's
murderer's blood." He wrung his hands, and looked imploringly at the
officers, and shuddered again: "Gor-r-r, I wouldn't have dat on me fur
tousand, tousand dollars." The progress of the team was slow, with
frequent danger of shipwreck altogether, but toward noon the cortege
filed through Port Royal, where the citizens came out to ask the matter,
and why a man's body, covered with sombre blankets, was going by with so
great escort. They were told that it was a wounded confederate, and so
held their tongues. The little ferry, again in requisition, took them
over by squads, and they pushed from Port Conway to Bell Plain, which
they reached in the middle of the afternoon. All the way the blood
dribbled from the corpse in a slow, incessant, sanguine exudation. The
old negro was niggardly dismissed with two paper dollars. The dead man
untied and cast upon the vessel's dock, steam gotten up in a little
while, and the broad Potomac shores saw this skeleton ship flit by, as
the bloody sun threw gashes and blots of unhealthy light along the
silver surface.
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