American Challenge

by Susan Martins Miller

  A moment later, the redcoats marched past the meetinghouse and onto the green. “There are a lot more redcoats than minutemen!” Colin said.

  Father nodded grimly. “Even the most hotheaded rebel wouldn’t be foolish enough to fight against such odds.”

  Colin nudged Kate and pointed out Major Pitcairn, who was quartered with Paul Revere’s neighbors. He was one of the redcoats’ leaders.

  The redcoats stopped about 150 feet from the Patriots. Major Pitcairn rode up to the minutemen, his sword drawn. “Ye rebels, disperse! Lay down your arms! Why don’t ye lay down your arms?”

  There was a flash of gunpowder, the roar of a musket. Then another and another!

  Colin leaped to his feet, setting the carriage rocking, but Kate cringed against her father’s shoulder. She couldn’t tell who had fired first. Now both sides were firing! Gunpowder smoke filled the air.

  Some minutemen scurried away, dodging redcoats’ musket balls and bayonets. Some hid behind trees and walls or headed toward nearby buildings. Others stayed where they were. The redcoats hurried after the minutemen. Bodies were falling from the musket fire! A minuteman not much older than Colin was hit in the chest with a musket ball. He crawled away, bleeding heavily. Kate knew she was going to be sick. Her father put his arm around her while she leaned out the carriage window.

  Major Pitcairn whirled his horse around. His sword flashed as he brought it down in a motion Colin knew meant to stop firing. But the redcoats didn’t stop firing! Minutemen shot from the green, from behind a stone wall, and from nearby buildings.

  Horrified, Kate watched a redcoat jam the bayonet on the end of his musket into a fallen Patriot. Her stomach lurched again.

  Major Pitcairn fell with his horse. Had the friendly officer been hit? Kate breathed a sigh of relief when the major stood. His horse had been hit, though.

  A musket ball whizzed over the carriage, and Father yanked the children out of the carriage. “Get behind the stone wall!” he ordered. He followed them, keeping hold of the horses’ reins, which wasn’t easy. The bays tried to bolt, frightened by the muskets.

  Minutemen raced to get away from the redcoats. Some fled down a road. Most crossed a swamp to reach safe land.

  Only minutes had passed when the fighting ended. Kate’s anger boiled over as the redcoats cheered. How could they cheer killing and hurting people? Their officers struggled to get the troops in order again. Only one or two redcoats had been wounded and none killed. Soon the cheerful troops set off down the road toward Concord.

  Father grabbed his black leather bag. “We’d best see if we can help any of these foolish rebels.”

  The children followed him. Already some of the wounded were being carried to nearby homes and Buckman’s Tavern. The man Kate had seen bayoneted was dead. So was the young man she’d seen crawling away. In all, eight men were dead. Kate was glad to see Larry wasn’t among them. Nor was Larry one of the ten wounded.

  Kate clung to her father’s sleeve, trying her best not to be sick again. If she truly wanted to be a healer, she knew she could not let such sights frighten her. She had often helped her father treat patients with illnesses and broken bones. She’d seen her share of blood and dying. But she had never seen violence like this.

  It’s the wounded who are important, not me, she told herself again and again. She made herself watch carefully as her father used a steel probe to find musket balls, then used a bullet extractor—shaped much like scissors—to remove them. Someday, she told herself, she might have the opportunity to do this herself. After the musket balls were removed, Dr. Milton let Colin put plasters from the medicine box on the wounds. Then Kate bound them up with strips of material she ripped from her petticoats.

  They were there for hours, first helping the wounded, then eating lunch at Buckman’s Tavern. While at lunch, they were surprised when Colin’s father and Harrison joined them, guns in their hands. They found out that Uncle Jack and Harry had been staying at a farm near Lexington since leaving Boston. The Langs had fought on Lexington Green!

  Harry looked pale. “The man next to me was killed by the redcoats. He never fired a shot. One minute he was alive and the next he was dead. You were right, Colin, when you said it’s easier to kill a man than to keep him alive.”

  Suddenly a man rushed in. “Redcoats are headed back this way! Concord’s men are chasin’ them! Patriots turn out!”

  Harry and Uncle Jack grabbed their guns and jumped up. “We have to go,” Uncle Jack said. “Tell your mother we’re safe, Colin. We’ll be in touch.”

  Kate’s heart sank as they ran into the tavern hallway and out the front door. If they kept fighting, would they ever see them alive again?

  Father pushed his chair back from the table. “We had best make ourselves useful, Colin.” He looked at his daughter. “I want you to stay here, Kate. We’ll bring the wounded back here, and you can help us then—but your mother would never forgive me if I didn’t do my best to keep you out of harm’s way.”

  Kate could tell from his face that there was no point arguing. Her heart racing, she watched from the tavern window as they rode away. Before long, they were back with the carriage full of wounded men. After that, Kate was too busy to be afraid.

  “Hello, Kate.”

  Kate looked up in surprise from the wound she was bandaging. The wounded man she knelt beside was Lieutenant Andrews! A musket ball had hit him in the thigh.

  Lieutenant Andrews told them a bit of what happened at Concord. The town militia had treated them politely, escorting them into town with drums and fifes. But when Major Pitcairn ordered his men to destroy a bridge, fighting started.

  When the redcoats headed back to Lexington along the tree-lined road, the minutemen and other colonials had kept up a constant fire. The redcoats had been sitting ducks in the middle of the road while the minutemen shot from behind trees, bushes, fences, and sometimes from houses.

  “We didn’t stand a chance,” Lieutenant Andrews said, gritting his teeth against the pain as Dr. Milton removed the musket ball. “Many of our soldiers have been killed or wounded.”

  So the redcoats have “won” the battle on Lexington Green, Kate thought, but the Patriots are “winning” the rest of the battle. The Patriot who had shot Lieutenant Andrews will never know that the officer had tried to help the Patriots by telling Colin and her the redcoats’ plans, Kate thought as Colin and her father moved on to another wounded man. The sound of musket fire and shouting continued while they worked.

  “There will be no turning back now,” Father said grimly late that afternoon as they were finally riding home.

  Questions ran through Kate’s mind. What would happen next? How many minutemen and redcoats would die or be maimed? What would happen between friends and families who were on opposite sides of the conflict? How would the redcoats treat Patriots in Boston? Would the Patriots be safe?

  The time Kate had dreaded for so long had come. She gripped the edge of the seat until her fingers hurt.

  “It’s a war now,” Colin said softly. “Will I have to fight?”

  Dr. Milton sighed. “Not yet. You’re still a boy. But if the war lasts another year or two, it’s very likely you’ll be called on to fight. You’ll be a man, after all.”

  Another year or two of fighting? Kate gasped at the words. Surely, it couldn’t last that long!

  “I’m not sure I’m ready.”

  Kate’s father smiled a little. “To be a man or to fight? You’ve no choice in one and little in the other.”

  Colin lifted his chin. “If I have to fight, I’ll have to carry a gun, but I want to carry a doctor’s tools, too. Maybe I can be a doctor’s helper for the army. Will you teach me all you can?”

  “Me, too, Father?” Kate looked up into her father’s face. “I can be useful.” She had learned something today: Battlefields were places of killing, but they were places of saving lives, too. “Plenty of women are healers. You’ll need all the help you can get.”

  Her
father looked down at her. Then he sighed. “I’m afraid you’re right, Kate. But I can make no promises now. I’m too weary. We need to get you home to your mother.”

  Kate leaned her head on her father’s shoulder. The months ahead would be frightening ones, she knew. But everything she had seen today convinced her even more that she wanted to play her part.

  I know I’m only a little girl, she thought sleepily, but God, please make me useful.

  As her eyes sank shut, she was certain that one way or another, God would answer her prayer.

  Betsy’s River

  Adventure

  Veda Boyd Jones

  A NOTE TO READERS

  While the Lankford and Miller families are fictitious, their journey from Boston to Cincinnati mirrors the experiences of hundreds of families during the early 1800s. When the British, who were fighting against Napoleon in Europe, began kidnapping American sailors and illegally forcing them to work on British warships, President Jefferson ordered all American ports on the East Coast closed.

  As a result of this action, merchants, shipbuilders, and the businesses who provided supplies for them went out of business. Rather than go through years of unemployment, many families moved to Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and other growing cities in the interior of America to start new lives. While some of the young Americans who had been captured by the British managed to escape and some were eventually released, many others simply disappeared and their families never learned what happened to them.

  For Marshall, Morgan, Landon, and Jennifer, with love

  CONTENTS

  1. The Plan

  2. The Journey Begins

  3. Betsy’s First Chance

  4. The Stinky Cheese

  5. The Embarrassing Horse Ride

  6. A Muddy Mess

  7. Building the Flatboat

  8. Danger on the River

  9. The Graves

  10. The Deserted House

  11. Marley’s Secret

  12. The Holdup

  13. Stuck!

  14. Rising Waters

  CHAPTER 1

  The Plan

  Cincinnati!” Betsy Miller wailed to her friend Mary. “It might as well be the moon.”

  “As if someone could go there,” Mary said with a sniff.

  The two girls huddled in heavy cloaks on their favorite pier at Boston Harbor and watched the waves. A few boats bobbed on the water a mile or so out.

  “Father says a frontier town like Cincinnati could use a doctor, but I don’t think that’s the reason we’re going. I think it’s because Uncle Paul wants to go, and he’s talked Father into it. With the embargo, there isn’t much shipbuilding going on, and he needs work.”

  Betsy glanced down the wharf. The shipyard where Paul Lankford had worked was unnaturally silent. The cold sea wind whipped her hair into her eyes, and she pushed back the brown curly locks. She wrinkled her nose at the fishy smell on the brisk breeze.

  “But why Cincinnati?” Mary asked. “I thought Pittsburgh was where riverboats were built.”

  “I don’t know why. All they said was we were going as soon as arrangements were final. They’ve been planning this for months, but they just told me. And, of course, George is going.” Of all her relatives, George Lankford was her least favorite. He was only eleven, two years her junior, but he was a good foot shorter than she was, and he never let her forget that she was extremely tall for a girl.

  “How’s the weather up there?” he’d ask every time she saw him, which was frequently since their parents were close friends as well as family.

  The teasing was one thing, but he was also her exact opposite. While she was shy, he was outgoing and impatient with her reluctance to speak or act upon a situation until she had studied it. Answering the teacher’s questions in school dismayed her, but George would wave his hand to get the teacher’s attention.

  It had taken her two years to become good friends with Mary, and now she was being jerked out of a comfortable situation and thrown into a new place where she’d know no one. She’d have to make new friends. George told her it would be a great adventure. Betsy thought of it as torture.

  “Do you think you’ll see wild Indians?” Mary asked.

  “I fear we will. We’ll probably be scalped before we reach Ohio,” Betsy said with a shudder. “I don’t want to go. I don’t want to be constantly badgered by George. He delights in embarrassing me.”

  Betsy shook her head, remembering the time George had taken her lunch pail and put it on the shelf at the front of the schoolroom. He’d had to move a chair over and climb up, but she had easily reached it from her standing height. The other students had watched her face turn as red as a burning hot coal. They’d laughed, and she’d grabbed her pail and run back to her desk. She’d sat staring down at her desk while school went on around her.

  “What you ought to do is get him back. Embarrass him,” Mary suggested. “Let’s go over to my house. It’s getting colder.”

  Betsy nodded and got to her feet, but she still looked out at the water. It was probably useless—this vigil she kept of going to the pier every day to look out toward the sea. Her cousin Richard was an American sailor who had been kidnapped and forced into naval service by the British over a year ago. It was unlikely that he would be released while the Napoleonic War still raged, because the British needed good sailors like Richard. Hundreds of American young men had been impressed, as they called it. Their families had no idea where they were or if they still lived.

  Betsy felt powerless to help Richard, but going to the harbor made her feel closer to the older cousin who had always been kind to her and who had taught her to play the violin. Her gaze swept the harbor one final time; then she turned away from the water.

  The girls trudged to Mary’s one-story frame house and sat by the fireplace with their hands and feet stretched out toward the warming flames. Betsy had suggested they meet at the pier since it was where the girls had spent many hours talking in the summer, confiding in each other and watching the ships. It seemed fitting that she break the news of the move there where they could be alone.

  Now she heard the clatter of dishes as Mrs. Stover worked in the kitchen. In one corner of the big room, Mary’s younger brothers argued over some wooden blocks. The baby cooed in a cradle near the fire. Mary rocked the cradle with her foot as they talked. “What did you mean about getting even with George?” Betsy asked.

  “I don’t know. Do things to him like he’s doing to you.”

  “It’s not possible to embarrass George Lankford. Besides, he’s not short for his age; I’m just tall for mine.” At five-foot-nine, she towered over everyone in the school. Only one eighth-grade boy came close, and he was a half inch shorter. Her mother told her that she was having her growth spurt early and the others would catch up, but that wasn’t much solace now.

  “You wouldn’t tease him about his height. You’d have to pick something that bothers him.”

  Something that bothers him. That will take some thinking.

  “You could play all kinds of tricks on him on the trip,” Mary said. “But you have to promise to write and tell me all about them.”

  “Promise,” Betsy said, looking down at her hands. This had possibilities, but something kept niggling at her mind, resisting the plan. “This wouldn’t be the Christian thing to do, would it, Mary? Pastor would say it was wrong.”

  “Isn’t what George is doing to you wrong?” Mary argued. “If he does unto others as he wants them to do unto him, then he wants to be teased.”

  “I suppose you’re right, although that seems a little backward. Still, I ought to teach him a lesson so he’ll stop this. Mother says if you do something over and over, it gets to be the normal thing for you to do, even if it’s something bad. If I don’t stop George from teasing, he’ll be doing it to everybody.”

  “Exactly.”

  But what could she do to him? Betsy pondered while she walked home in the shivering cold. A cloud blanketed the
sun, and the late Saturday afternoon seemed dismal, matching her mood.

  She opened her front door to be met by none other than the object of her thoughts.

  “Hey, Betsy,” George called with his head tilted back and his hands cupped around his mouth. “How’s the weather up there?”

  She ignored him. After all, what reply could she give that wouldn’t call even more attention to herself? As it was, the grown-ups in the parlor were all staring at her. Her parents, George’s folks, and Richard’s mother and father had stopped talking.

  “Betsy, I’m glad you’re back,” her mother said. “We’re discussing the move.” Betsy had always wondered how her petite mother had married such a tall man. Betsy’s father, Dr. Thomas Miller, measured in at six feet three inches, and she figured she must have taken after him. He was an awesome figure of a man—one who commanded respect.

  He now spoke in a deep baritone voice. “We’ve booked passage on the schooner Columbia from Boston Harbor and up the Delaware River to Philadelphia. We’ll depart Wednesday, March 4. At Philadelphia we’ll ship our belongings on freight wagons to Pittsburgh. Then we’ll take the stagecoach.”

  George’s father continued their itinerary. “We’ll work together to build a large flatboat at Pittsburgh. I’ve heard there are many swindlers who sell boats that use inferior wood or who don’t caulk the joints correctly. We’ll be using that wood to build our houses, and we want the best.” His recitation sounded as if it were his side of a discussion that had been held earlier.

  “We may be in Pittsburgh several weeks while we build the boat,” Father continued. “Then we’ll float down the Ohio River to Cincinnati. That shouldn’t take but a couple of weeks, since it’s all downstream. By the time we get there, school will not be in session, but Mother will help you with lessons, and you can start again in the fall in a new school.”