Johnnie Gray

Johnnie Gray is the main protagonist of the 1927 silent film ''The General. ''

He is portrayed by Buster Keaton.

Prologue
The film begins in 1861, right before the Civil War. Johnnie was the engineer in the cab of the Western and Atlantic Flyer R.R. Company's Southern locomotive, The General. He fastidiously flicks dust from the ledge of the cab window, next to his assistant. His train gracefully pulls into the sunlit trainyard in Marietta, Georgia - on time. Two young neighborhood boys idolize Johnnie and his train, shake hands with him, and imitate his motions. Crowds of people with heavy trunks disembark from the passenger cars, and some of the people wave as they depart.

A text card shows up to state that Johnnie had two loves in his life: the titular locomotive, and...

The scene changes to show his second love: his girlfriend, Annabelle Lee.

Johnnie methodically marched down the sidewalk to his girlfriend's home, trailed in a 'train' procession by two adoring boys who worship him and imitatively remove their hats as they pass other townsfolk. His girlfriend is returning from the local library- she hides behind a tree and after they've passed, she joins in step behind the three of them like the caboose on a train. They enter the white picket fence gate of a large Grecian home with Johnnie in the lead. He sidesteps a flower bed and approaches the front door on the porch.

Once he reached Annabelle's front door, Johnnie spruced himself up by polishing the tops of his shoes on the backs of his trousers legs and primps. After knocking, he turns sideways and notices Annabelle behind him on the porch. Without jumping back or becoming startled, he stares fixedly at her with great interest - with a deadpan look. She walks to the door, opens it, and invites him in. In the parlor inside the house while sitting next to her on the sofa in the foreground, he decides to be rid of the two boys on another side sofa so that he can court his girlfriend in private. He contrives to trick them to exit the room by having them mechanistically repeat his movements as they have already. He rises, dons his hat as if to leave, courteously opens the door, and then shuts it behind them as they file out. Back on the sofa next to Annabelle, he pulls out a rectangular picture from his coat pocket, and presents her with the framed photo of himself in front of his beloved General - that she appreciatively mounts upright on a table.

Two doors open simultaneously into the parlor: a son enters from the front porch, and a edgy and nervous father enters from an inside room. The son delivers the message of war to his father and both leave to enlist. Annabelle then asked if Johnnie would enlist for the war. He eventually readies himself to also leave and enlist for the Confederate South. Annabelle Lee kisses him, and as Johnnie leaves, he makes a gallant gesture with one arm upward - and falls backwards off the front porch.

To get to the recruiting office in downtown Marietta, he rushes through crowds on the street and cleverly takes a side alley so that he can be the first in line to enlist. But when he enters the store/office, he appears to lose his foremost place in line. Using the same kind of maneuver he used outside (and also with the two boys), he triumphantly sidetracks the normal route to the enlistment window by walking over two tables to regain his place. When asked at the counter window: "Your name?" and "Occupation?", he identifies himself: "Johnnie Gray...Engineer on the Western and Atlantic Railroad". But he is rejected by an elderly, white-haired superior [who later appears as a Southern general] who believes that his engineering skill would be more valuable to the South. After only being told, "We can't use you," Johnnie is unaware of the real reason for his rejection and believes the refusal is based on physical grounds. He measures his height and strength against others who are accepted, and then enters the line again. Johnnie tries to disguise his appearance by tilting his hat over his face and using a different name and occupation: "William Brown, Bartender." However, he is recognized and sent on his way home. He attempts to steal someone else's enlistment papers, but is caught by the recruiting director and literally kicked out. Spiteful and holding his bruised rear-end, he warns the white-haired gent not to blame him if they lost the war.

Annabelle's father and brother are outside standing in line and they invite him to join them in the queue, but he declines, rubs his sore backside, turns away defeated, and returns disconsolate to his faithful locomotive. They suspect the worst and they DO blame him - they believe that he is a disgraceful coward. In front of Annabelle's house, Johnnie's girlfriend asks her brother and father if Johnnie enlisted. She learns of their scornful opinion of her boyfriend: They stated, that Johnnie never even get in line.." In Annabelle's house, as her father sorts through mail from the post office (he keeps two letters and then tosses the third to the floor - in a recurring pattern), he tosses Johnnie's framed photograph away.

Not knowing that he has been found unsuitable as a soldier because of his valued occupation, she approaches Johnnie as he is sitting uncomfortably on the crossbar of the locomotive engine to confront him - and shun him. As she twists her collar, Annabelle contemptuously rebuffs and spurns Johnnie after he has been rejected as a soldier without allowing him any opportunity to explain. She told him not to speak to her again until he was in uniform.

Johnnie sits back down dejectedly and disconsolately on the connecting, driving bar between the wheels of his huge locomotive. Unbeknowst to sad Johnnie since he is so deeply depressed, his assistant engineer has climbed up into the cab and started up the General's engine. As it begins to move forward, Johnnie's unmoving, dwarfed frame is carried along on the crossbar, brought up and down three times in a lilting series of arcs, before he suddenly realizes what is going on - a perfect image for the complex, emotional feelings he is experiencing, and the comfort he is receiving from his animated, responsive train. As the locomotive passes into the roundhouse (train shed) and he is slowly propelled inside, he solemnly expresses astonishment, sadness, and amusement. He disappears from view into the darkness. The prologue ends.

The train stop
One year later, Johnnie is still being ignored by Annabelle. Johnnie is eyed with a demeaning, humiliating look from Annabelle and her brother. In full view of Johnnie, she touches and admires the war medal pinned on the front of her brother's Confederate jacket. With intolerable disgust, she snubs Johnnie even further, regarding him as an unharmed, unpatriotic bystander. During a train stop the passengers left the train for the mid-day meal. Annabelle Lee returns un-noticed to the first baggage car of the train to retrieve an item from her trunk. In preparation for his meal, Johnnie soaps up his hands in a wash basin against the outside wall of the station's depot.

Getting back The General
Not knowing Annabelle was on board, a group of Union soldiers disguised as civilians hijacked The General. A team quickly noticed Annabelle on board and tie her up and gagged her as the train pulled away. Johnnie looks up from the soapy wash basin, astonished to see his beloved engine moving and disappearing down the tracks. Without hesitation, Johnnie valiantly takes off in pursuit, running swiftly on foot down the tracks toward the vanishing vehicle. He waves behind him to beckon other men to courageously follow after him.

In the locomotive cab after proceeding a short way down the tracks, Anderson orders the train to stop. Some of the Northerners leap off and cut the telegraph wires to prevent messages of alarm from the station from being transmitted ahead. After running after the train for a while, Johnnie stops and turns back, swinging around to the men he assumes are following him to rally them together. Unfortunately, he was completely alone and nobody came to aid him. Annoyed, he is still undaunted - Johnnie opens a nearby track-side train shed and hauls out a handcar. Up ahead, the train robbers break up a section of the track with a crowbar, making it impossible to pursue them. After pulling the handcar onto the track, Johnnie jumps on but only succeeds in moving in reverse. He jumps off, stops the car's motion, pushes it in a forward motion on the rails, jumps back on and begins wildly pumping up and down by bringing his weight down on the handle. The hijackers continue on their way, passing rapidly through the Kingston train station (where another train rests on a side track). The clumsy handcar is derailed by the broken track - Johnnie literally goes flying into the air and falls flat on his back onto the ground when the handcar jumps the tracks, tumbles down an embankment, and ends up in a river.

Not willing to give up even though the odds are against him, he spots another transportation machine to accelerate his pursuit - a wooden two-wheeled bicycle (an old-fashioned, high-wheel variety) leaning on a fence in front of a house. Johnnie leaps onto the clumsy vehicle, which he falls off of after a few hundred yards down the rough road.

When he races into the Kingston train station on foot, Johnnie tells one of the Confederate soldiers at the encampment who is guarding an army troop train sitting there on a siding: "Three men stole my General. I think they are deserters." After convincing the soldiers that he needs their assistance by waving and shouting for them to get aboard, a detachment of troops climbs up onto an open flat car behind the locomotive and its tender as he leaps into the cab of the locomotive - the Texas. He pulls the throttle when they are ready, chugging away down the tracks, but the troop car wasn't engaged or attached to the engine, and Johnnie found out too late he was ignorant again.

He pulls the train to a stop next to another train shed on the side of the tracks. Johnnie notices a stumpy, snub-nosed howitzer cannon sitting on a flatcar trolley. The spies stop the General at a water tower and load up on a fresh supply of logs and water spewing out from a water tank spout. After getting an ingenious idea in his head (to load and fire the cannon at the train ahead), Johnnie attaches the cannon to the tender on the back of his train and continues the chase with it hitched and in tow. When Captain Anderson's men see Johnnie fast in pursuit with the Texas, they make a hasty departure and leave the waterspout hanging (without turning off the water). As Johnnie passes by the same pipe in his train, he sticks his head out of the cab and is drenched through the window. Quizzical and bewildered, he glances up at the sunny, cloudless sky, holds out his palm and can't quite figure out the mystery of the water flow until he looks back.

The spies thought they were being followed by a Southern regiment. Johnnie climbs unto the top of the train roof standing heroically, he then climbs off and down to the flat car with the cannon. He loads and prepares to fire it to hit the train ahead. Without any knowledge of what he is doing, Johnnie measures out a pinch of gunpowder into the cannon, tamps it down, and then loads in a gigantic cannonball. He lights the fuse and returns to the locomotive's controls. Up ahead, the Northerners are led by a gun-waving General Anderson to climb from the tender onto the roof of the first baggage car. The cannon fires - it gives off a small puff of smoke and harmlessly discharges the cannonball (in a gentle, burping lob or arc) into the cab of his own locomotive. Johnnie looks down at the cannonball, with a cool attitude, and then rolls it off the train (where it explodes loudly in a great burst of smoke by the side of the tracks shortly afterwards). Not seeing the explosion, he checks the opening of the cannon, wondering where the blast came from.

The Union land
Eventually, he unintentionally enters the enemy's territory and ran for cover. The General went over him on a five-level bridge, and pelted logs from above. The Union released Johnnie was the only person on the train, and Johnnie ran for cover into a forest, then it started to rain.

After a period of time of searching for shelter, he noticed a house, and looked through its window. To find a dry refuge from a rain storm and to steal some food, he stealthily and unmindfully enters through the window into the dining room of the house. The window slams shut behind him, but he remains undetected. As he stuffs his pockets with food, he quickly released he had entered the Union army's headquarters by mistake.

He hides under a table to avoid detection, where he overheard the Union leaders outlining their campaign strategy to launch a surprise attack the following morning. Boots are thrust into his face and his arm is singed by the end of one of the generals' cigars as it burns a small hole in the tablecloth. Johnnie peeks out - and sees a dripping-wet Annabelle Lee brought into the room as a captive hostage of the Union.

Back to the home town
Johnnie crawls out from under the table when the Union sentries leave the room, knocks out a Union sentry standing guard in the rain, steals his uniform, renders unconscious a second sentry with his shouldered gun, stealthily enters through the bedroom window where Annabelle was being kept, tightly cups his hand over Annabelle's mouth and warns her not to scream. Although he has cautioned her to keep still, as he tiptoes carefully around the bed, he noisily tips over a table. And as he climbs out the window, it slams down on his hands. When he tries to carry her back out the window, she proves to be too heavy, and he collapses under her weight- and the window slams shut again.

A bolt of lightning strikes above them and brings down a tree next to them. The rain is coming down when a black bear appears - she frantically runs off and they become separated from each other in the dark woods. As he sits on a log, she suddenly emerges in front of him, scaring him backwards. When Annabelle Lee steps into a bear-trap in the wet forest, Johnnie extricates her ankle, but gets his own hands (and then his foot) caught in the trap. As he struggles with the contraption, she moans and rubs her injured ankle, selfishly oblivious to his pain. Afterwards, he cautions: "We had better stay here until daybreak to see where we are." She is touched by his bravery and heroism, not knowing that he had really gone to all the trouble to rescue his beloved locomotive rather than her. Johnnie acts like he was trying to rescue her the whole time.

After a nice, quiet rest," with Annabelle Lee sleeping in Johnnie's arms, he is awakened in the morning by a giant, falling pine cone which conks him on the head. He looks up, touches his bruised head, and then stirs Annabelle Lee. As he attempts to stand up, his bent leg underneath his body is numb and agonizingly painful - he pushes out his leg to straighten it. Scouting out the train station from the edge of the forest, he realizes that they have run - symmetrically - back to the railroad station. He sees his General being loaded with supplies by Northern soldiers for the impending attack. He stated that had to get back to their lines somehow and warn the others of the coming attack.

He realizes that he is still conveniently disguised in a Union soldier's uniform, but her appearance would give them away. He decides what to do without disclosing it to Annabelle. To stow her on board the General for its return trip, he steals a large gunnysack from a pile in the supply depot. As he hauls back the heavy sack, he walks backwards into a tree - with a startled look, he holds his arms high in the air, believing that he has been accosted by a sentry. After emptying the sack of an endless supply of shoes, he literally stuffs her into it, pushing her head down in order to cram her entire body into the tight-fitting sack. An additional distraction and annoyance occurs - he trips over the large pile of shoes, steps out of one of his own shoes, and must search for a replacement for his sock-covered foot.

Johnnie heaves the heavy burlap bag over his shoulder and joins a line of marching men loading his General train. He carries the bundle and stands next to the train, where the concealed Annabelle Lee surreptitiously pulls the coupling pin from between the first and second boxcar. After being given orders by an officer, he walks forward and flings the sack into the first boxcar, depositing, her where other heavy crates, bags, boxes and barrels are thrown in on top of her. He covers his eyes and looks away, wincing at the horrible pain she must be suffering. Maneuvering himself into a second line of soldiers, Johnnie hauls a heavy log to the locomotive cab and leaps in. With the log, he knocks out Union General Thatcher (leaving him unconscious on the floor), pushes another officer off the left side, and kicks the wood-carrying soldier behind him off to the right. Johnnie now repossesses his own beloved train - and gets it moving to drive it back toward the Southern lines and Atlanta.

Johnnie is pursued by two Northern trains (The Texas and behind that a supply train named the Columbia) back to the South. Johnnie jumps off the train with amazing acrobatic agility, takes a rope and lassos a track-side telegraph pole, and then attaches the rope to the top of the boxcar at the rear of his train. When the locomotive pulls away, it dislodges and pulls down the pole. He cuts the rope with an axe, leaving the pole across the tracks. These two actions cause a major disruption of the telegraph communications of the Union soldiers, and block his pursuer's path.

He hacks a window/hole through the front wall of the boxcar to get to Annabelle Lee and rescue her using an axe. But because he doesn't know where she is, he frantically stomps over everything while searching for her. After stepping on her, her head pops out of the sack and she is finally freed. She is still holding the pin she pulled from the train to separate the cars - he snatches it and tosses it away. It is an amusing struggle to maneuver her body through the small opening of the boxcar onto the tender. As he stands on the coupling links and coaxes her to climb onto his shoulders, he gets a face-full of her petticoats, and then finally manages to tip her onto the tender.

Johnnie noticed they were being pursued by Union soldiers and suggested putting in more firewood. He stops the train and starts gathering and hurling long planks of firewood from a split-rail fence closeby. Meanwhile, Annabelle shows some agility by running atop the tender and boxcar. Some of the planks hit their target in the tender, others uncooperatively fall off. As he is engaged in dis-assembling the fence and loading the wood, a well-intentioned, but inept Annabelle Lee is humorously more of a detriment than a help in aiding him. To set a trap for the Union train in pursuit, she stretches a flimsy piece of rope between two small pine saplings on either side of the tracks - presumably to stop (snare or delay) the train. Meanwhile, the chase train, the Texas, is stalled when it stops to remove the telegraph pole lying on the tracks. When Johnnie notices Annabelle's handiwork, he tugs on (and plucks at) the thin rope to test it and demonstrate how ineffectual her idea is, and then stands with his hands on his hips in a prolonged reaction shot - silently exasperated.

He grabs her by the hand and they rush back to The General 's locomotive when they see the approaching Texas locomotive. He kneels and offers her his open outstretched palm to assist her climb into the locomotive cab, but she ignores him and leaps up without assistance. After being needlessly chivalrous, Johnnie ignores the steps and scrambles headfirst through the window of the cab. In one economical motion, his maneuver jerks the throttle of the locomotive to set it into motion.

When the pursuit train plows directly into the rope between the two trees, it actually delays the locomotive's chase, although not in the way Annabelle had intended. The Texas uproots the trees and catches them in the train's wheels along the sides, and the soldiers riding on the outside of the engine are lashed to it. The train must stop to dislodge the pine trees from the train's revolving wheels and disengage the immobilized, struggling Union soldiers.

Desperately short on firewood for fuel to stoke the fire, Johnnie turns and notices Annabelle Lee when she comes across a very large piece of wood with an ugly knothole in it. Nonchalantly, she rejects the unpleasing, defective log and tosses it overboard. (Anderson orders soldiers to crawl forward to the cowcatcher of their train.) To be domestic, she also tidies up the floor of the locomotive cab by sweeping away woodchips with a broom. Johnnie glares at her, grabs the broom from her and tosses it aside, suggesting to her - by pantomime - to stoke the fire instead. To comply, she picks up what she judges to be a more acceptable piece of wood - a short, pencil-thin stick. She carefully lays it inside the boiler fire. To add irony to the situation, he mimics her gestures, picks up an even smaller toothpick-sized piece of wood, hands it to her, and lets her toss it into the fire. With almost savage fury and exasperation, he half-playfully grabs for her by the neck, throttles and shakes her violently for a second (feigning strangling his dream girl), and then swiftly plants a small, loving kiss on her lips. A long-shot of the Union pursuit train, the Texas, speeding and catching up to the General.

The Texas overtakes the General and one of the soldiers on the cowcatcher couples it to the boxcar at the rear of Johnnie's train - just as the camera pans ahead to show that Johnnie is disconnecting the baggage car from the rest of the train! The General pulls away and leaves a bigger gap between them.

The baggage car in front of The Texas is now an impediment - it is sent down a side track after the Union soldiers throw a switch. As they are making the adjustment to get rid of the loose car and are backing up onto the main track, the Union supply train (the Columbia) collides with them from behind - crunching its cowcatcher. The officers on the flatcar are sent reeling. As they stand up, they are again tumbled to the floor when the train jerks into motion.

Up ahead, Johnnie stops his train and gets off, throws a switch to send the two pursuit trains off onto a sidetrack, and sabotages the tracks by twisting them (with the chain hanging off the back of the tender) and permanently bending them into a switched position. Annabelle Lee, left to her own devices in the locomotive, is signaled to pull the throttle. The chain snaps and the General takes off without him, and she doesn't know how to stop it. He chases after it on foot - taking a short-cut overland down a steep, curving hill to get in front of it so he can board, but finds that Annabelle has again maneuvered the throttle and reversed the engine - it now backs up - so he instantly reverses himself and scrambles back up his steep short-cut. At the top of the hill, he jumps back on the front of the train, now moving in reverse.

In a visually difficult and intriguing sight gag involving three moving trains, it appears that there will be a cataclysmic collision - the General is converging rapidly toward the two charging pursuit trains. But they don't collide - just a few feet before the broken switch point, Johnnie brakes his train. The two Union trains just miss the General coming at them in reverse - they both shoot up an unfinished, dead-end inclined ramp on the side track at the switchpoint and the second Union train (the Columbia) rams into The Texas. Soldiers suspended on the cowcatcher on the first train hang on for dear life above thin air at the end of the track. The Texas reverses itself on the inclined track, bumping the train behind it and upending the officers on the flatcar. Johnnie again takes off in the General - the bent tracks delay the Union chase and give the General some time to escape. The Northerners gather around the bent rail at the switchpoint and contemplate what to do. As the General rolls along, Johnnie removes the lantern from the front of the locomotive.

The Rock River Bridge
Johnnie guides his train to rest in the sagging center of the Rock River Bridge - a high trestle-bridge spanning a wide river. He scrambles onto the bridge, while Annabelle stands high atop the tender, tossing down logs. He constructs a pyre of firewood logs on the tracks behind his train to cut off the Northern pursuit. One log she tosses down is so small that he throws it back at her. In the meantime, General Parker's Union troops (the ones that had passed Johnnie earlier) approach on horseback and on foot.

Maneuvering from trestle to trestle, Johnnie splashes the wood pyre with kerosene fuel from the locomotive's head-lamp. As he stands on the far side of the pyre, Annabelle Lee inadvertently knocks over a burning kindling timber (the ignitor was resting on the edge of the tender) onto the pyre before he is ready, and flames blaze and leap up immediately. The burning woodpile and wall of fire trap him, separating him from the train's tender and Annabelle. With dubious judgment, she decides to set the train in motion - at exactly the same moment that he makes a desperate, calculated leap over the flames to reach the train. Instead of landing on the tender, he plunges through the trestle bridge and splashes into the water below. After swimming to the bank of the river, he climbs up and reboards the locomotive cab that Annabelle has ably put in reverse. Fortunately, the Union forces are still delayed at the switchpoint where Johnnie bent the rails.

Although they have crossed Southern lines and Johnnie waves at a track-side Confederate soldier, he is fired at because he has forgotten to remove his disguise - Union soldier's clothing. With Annabelle's quick-thinking advise to change his clothing, he dons the gray Confederate uniform he found in the cab (the one that Northern spy Captain Anderson used to disguise himself). Johnnie is finally properly outfitted with a Southern Army uniform.

Soon, they reach a small town that is the site of the Divisional Headquarters of the Southern encampment. He sounds the alarm - white steam bellows from the train in short spurts. From the top of the back of the tender, Johnnie raises his arm and alerts the Southern troops - everyone scurries. Johnnie runs to the headquarters building and gestures to the white-haired Confederate general that there is an impending Union advance.

Johnnie proposes an ambush at the bridge for the Union train and army that he has lured there. As the troops are ordered out, he and Annabelle help outfit the senile, white-haired general with his hat, gloves and sword and assist him to mount his horse. The Southern troops and other generals on horseback, a horse-drawn cannon, foot-soldiers, and other military equipment create clouds of dust as they charge down the road to the burning Rock River Bridge. Women and children are cheering from the sidelines. Everyone ignores the heroes who have warned them, and they are almost run down by the hurrying forces - Johnnie attempts to protect the two of them from being trampled.

When Annabelle Lee sees her wounded father (seated behind a white picket fence) and is reunited with him, Johnnie is left standing alone in the middle of the dusty street. As the dust settles, he looks all the way around, realizing that no one else is coming. He puts his hands in his pockets - and then notices a discarded, unwieldy, damaged sword lying in the dirt. Determined to be a soldier, Johnnie heroically straps on and trips/falls over the weapon, following after the procession of troops and taking his place in the Confederate ranks.

After the Northerners finally fixed the twisted track, General Parker's Union army, on foot, and the two Union pursuit locomotives (with their cargos of munitions and troops) all converge at the merrily-blazing bridge. The Texas 's engineer hesitates to go further, until Parker on horseback boldly and sternly orders Captain Anderson and The Texas to cross the slightly-damaged bridge.

Then, the pursuit train confidently moves forward onto the now-feeble, burned-through bridge. When the train is half-way across, the bridge weakens, sways, and then gives way. The belly of the train droops and falls downwards through the burning portion of the bridge as it opens wide under its weight. Both the train and collapsing bridge plunge into the river, a mass of hurtling metal, exhaling/hissing smokestack steam, burning bridge logs, spraying water and a geyser of belching smoke.

General Parker's stunned, bewildered face reveals his disbelief, annoyance and frustration that he was wrong as he looks on at the painful doom of the ruined, fallen train. As the Union general turns back to his men, his officers stare back accusingly.

The final fight
The Union General slowly draws his sword, and petulantly waves it to order his men to proceed with the attack. By this time, the gray-coated Southern troops have approached the bridge on the opposite bank. The Confederate general orders his men to fire. The Union cavalry retreats back from Rock River.

On the frontlines of the battleground, Johnnie is completely inept - he fights more with his sword than with the opponent. He parodies the swordsmanship of the aged Confederate general - he brandishes his own sword-hilt (without the blade!), and pokes another general in the backside when he sheathes his sword back into its scabbard. With exaggerated, authoritative bravado, he mimics the general's orders to the men with his sword. One by one, as the three members of a Confederate cannon-firing crew fall to Union sniper fire, Johnnie finds himself the sole survivor of the cannoneers. Adding to his good fortune, his fly-away sword blade (minus handle) accidentally and fortuitously soars through the air when he gestures with it, spearing the Union sniper in the back.

Always unlucky with cannons, when Johnnie mans the cannon and jerks on the rope to fire it, the cannon muzzle points into the air and the cannonball is shot almost straight upwards - he worriedly looks to the sky, fearing it will come down on him. The projectile misses the enemy, but luckily comes down just behind a wooden dam on a river - the force unleashes a tremendous burst of water that floods and washes away the remaining Union forces on the front line. Another few cannon blasts force the immobilized Union trains to be abandoned and the footsoldiers to retreat. (The firing at the rear of the supply train repeats the accidental firing from the day earlier.) Johnnie seizes the Confederate flag from a falling, flag-bearing comrade before it hits the ground, and runs up on a rock to pose and wave it - however, he finds himself positioned on the arched back of a uniformed general. He is capsized, toppled backwards, and scolded for his presumptuous, glory-seeking mistake.

Epilogue
After outmaneuvering them at every turn, Johnnie is finally a hero of the day for his prowess - successful in recovering both his train and the heart of his girl. Johnnie comes marching home next to the general's horse, along with the triumphant cavalry. Yet he is still ignored on the main street of the divisional headquarters and wanders out of their exulted path. At the tracks, he stumbles and sits on the back of the tender of his own locomotive. He inspects it and is reunited with his beloved machine. In the cab, in a pantomime of discovery, he finds a slightly-dazed Union General Thatcher slowly coming to consciousness. He assists the general, but takes him at gunpoint as his prisoner to the Confederate commanders - along the way, he brushes dust off the leader's uniform. He swaggers and swings his arms as he delivers Thatcher for surrender. When the Union general ceremoniously gives up his sword, the pistol in Johnnie's hand suddenly and accidentally pops with excitement.

After General Thatcher is led away and as Johnnie inspects Thatcher's tendered sword, the Southern general notices Johnnie's tattered Confederate uniform and tells him to take it off. Johnnie felt dismayed thinking that he was punished for aiding in the war, but instead, he was being rewarded by the general's aide with a new officer's uniform, and with Thatcher's sword, therefore making him an official soldier. Aside from that he also won Annabelle's adoration and lead her to the General where he sat with her on the connecting cross-bar between two wheels on the side of his locomotive. As an long parade of soldiers pass by from the tented encampment, the new Lieutenant must distractedly salute each of them with one hand and interrupt his spooning of his girlfriend. Indomitable as always, he scrutinizesthe problem, and then meets the challenge with a clever solution - he ingenuously re-positions and adjusts himself so he could continue spending time with Annabelle and salute the soldiers at the same time.