Faulconer gave his final orders as the sky lightened. The raiders would divide into three parties. Captain Murphy would take a dozen men to block the rails leading east, Captain Hinton would take another dozen men west, while the six remaining men, led by the Colonel, would clamber down into the tributary’s gorge and there destroy the tall contraption of trestles and rails. “Nothing can go wrong now,” Faulconer said, trying to cheer his damp and somewhat dispirited troops. “We’ve planned it properly.” In fact even the most optimistic of the raiders must have realized that the Colonel’s planning had been slipshod. Faulconer had not foreseen the possibility of drenching rain and so the powder barrels and quick-fuses had been bereft of tarpaulins. There had been no proper maps provided so that even Truslow, who had crossed these hills a score of times, was not entirely sure what bridge they now threatened. Yet despite all the doubts and difficulties they had succeeded in reaching the railroad, which had proved unguarded, and so, in the first weak light of the new day, they slid and slithered down the steep slope toward the North Branch.

They picketed the horses beside the railroad close to the bridge. Starbuck, shivering in the gray dawn, walked to the gorge’s edge to see that the trestles, which had looked so flimsy from the hilltop, were in truth massive timbers that had been stripped of their bark, coated with tar, then sunk into the earth or else braced against the huge boulders that protruded from the chasm’s slopes. The trestles were fastened to one another with metal collars, thus linked into a dense trellis structure that rose sixty feet from the stream and spanned two hundred feet across the gorge. The timbers, despite their tar coating, felt clammy, just as the wind that gusted cold from the river felt damp. The clouds were once more building, promising rain.