Prelude to Glory, Vol. 7

by Ron Carter

  “Is there a salt lick anywhere nearby in the woods?”

  Byland’s eyebrows raised in question. “West. Over half a mile. Why?”

  Caleb shook his head. “Nothing. See you in the morning.”

  He returned to the barn and pulled off his boots while Tredwell turned down the wick on the lantern. For several seconds the world was blackness, and then dull moonlight filtered through cracks in the roof and walls to create a ghostly crosshatch of lines inside the barn while the men and the children settled onto their blankets, weary, unsure what tomorrow would bring.

  The first gray of approaching dawn had separated sky from earth when the single sharp crack of a distant rifle brought Tredwell awake, wondering for a moment where he was. He sat upright while the others stirred and settled, and he peered into the gray darkness trying to understand that the faint sound of a rifle shot had awakened him. Seconds passed before he realized Caleb was gone, and his rifle with him. He settled back into his blanket while scenes and memories of yesterday and the night came back. He lay still for a while, working with his thoughts, waiting for the others to awaken. With sunrise approaching he heard the door to the house close, and minutes later the barn door squeaked and groaned as it opened, and the reverend entered. For a moment he stood still, before those inside stirred and rubbed sleep-filled eyes.

  “I’ve got to tend the animals,” he said.

  The men tugged on their boots and within minutes had the indifferent Jersey cow in her stanchion, patiently grinding hay while the reverend balanced on his one-legged milking stool, buried his forehead in her flank, and began building a froth in a wooden milk bucket. The men were outside, feeding the sow in her pen when the reverend came trotting from the barn, voice raised in panic.

  “The horse is gone! Someone stole the horse!”

  It took Tredwell ten seconds to make the connections. “I don’t think it was stolen. I think Caleb Dunson took it, and he’ll be back soon.”

  “You sure?”

  “We’ll see.”

  They were shaking the straw from their blankets when the reverend’s excited voice came high and shrill from the yard. “Look here! He’s coming.”

  Caleb walked from the forest into the small clearing, leading the horse with one hand, his rifle in the other. Tied across the horse’s back was a four-point buck deer, dressed and washed. With the others following he led the horse to the barn, untied the deer, and had Tredwell help him hang it from the low rafters.

  Caleb turned to the reverend. “The liver and the heart and tongue are tied in the cavity. There ought to be enough fat and blood for the broth your wife spoke of last night, and fresh meat for the house for a time. Might want to get a pot set in your fireplace.”

  The reverend exclaimed, “Where did you . . .”

  “I found the salt lick, and the spring nearby.”

  The reverend turned on his heel and trotted to the house, calling to his wife.

  The sun was one hour high when Tredwell and those with him finished buckling their harnessed horses to the doubletree and climbed up into the wagon. Caleb raised a hand, and Tredwell waited while he walked back to enter the house. Inside Sophronia Harriman was sitting up, sipping steaming broth, while Phyllis Earl rocked slowly in one corner nursing the baby. The Harriman children all stopped to look at Caleb, while Druscilla stood beside her husband facing him.

  Caleb spoke. “We need to be leaving. Is there anything else we can do before we go?”

  There was nothing.

  He drew his coin purse from his pocket and walked to the plain pinewood table to set five coins in a stack, then turned to the reverend. “There’s ten pounds British sterling. Use it for a doctor if she needs one, and food until the Harrimans can travel.” He thrust the purse back in his pocket. “That’s about all.”

  Every eye in the kitchen was on the stacked coins. It was the first hard money any of them had seen in over two years. There were tears in Asel Harriman’s eyes. “How do I repay?”

  “Get her well, and raise that baby.” He turned to Nettie. “You’re a brave girl. Help your mother. Good luck to all of you.”

  The reverend said, “God bless you.”

  Caleb walked out the door and climbed into the wagon bed, wondering how God was going to bless him when there was an open question that God even existed. Tredwell raised the horses to a trot back to the road and turned west, with the warm spring sun on their backs and shoulders. For a very long time they rode in silence, working with their own anger and thoughts and recollections of the Harriman family, put off their farm with only a wagon with a cracked axle and a spavined horse and what few things they could hurriedly throw into the wagon box before the sheriff forced them off the only land and home they had known for twenty years. A woman beginning labor to deliver a child. Wide-eyed, terrified, barefooted children dressed in faded, worn hand-me-downs, who did not understand a sheriff and two armed deputies forcing them out onto the road, with no place to go and no way to get food without begging. The men rode in silence while outrage smoldered.

  For three days they made camp late in the evening, broke camp with the morning star still high in the northeastern sky, and pushed the horses as hard as they dared down the dusty, rutted road that soon became little more than a trace in the high grass of fall. And they looked in silence at the two families that passed them, traveling east, with everything the sheriff had allowed them wrapped in blankets on their backs or loaded in an old worn wagon drawn by oxen. The men and women and children said little as they passed, and their eyes and faces were alive with fear.

  On the fourth day, with the late afternoon sun in their faces, the four men from Springfield sat a little straighter and peered ahead. Caleb turned in question to Tredwell, who pointed and said, “You can see Springfield from that rise just ahead. Beyond, there’s a line you can see in the forest. That’s the Connecticut River. We’re nearly home.”

  They crested the low hill, and the village, less than eight miles from the southern border of Massachusetts, stood small in the broad, shallow valley spread before them. Random clearings broke the gently rolling red and gold carpet of forest, where men and women had worked to cut timber, root out stumps, and clear the ground of hard Massachusetts rock to build homes and barns and plow and plant and raise their children. As the wagon descended the incline to the level valley floor and rolled on toward the hamlet, Caleb watched the faces of the men with him. They sat tall, peering intently at each farm and each person they passed. This was their valley, and the harvest was upon them; habit required them to know who had succeeded with their crops and who was failing in the battle for survival.

  They were still three-quarters of a mile from Springfield when Tredwell came back on the reins and the horses stopped the wagon at a place where a trail wound through the trees toward a clearing and a cabin, visible one-quarter mile north. Ezekiel Ottoman dropped to the ground, and Hosea Abrams handed him his bedroll. Ottoman looked up at them and spoke to Thomas Marsing.

  “Let me know what the sheriff does about your farm.”

  Marsing nodded but said nothing. Ottoman turned to Tredwell.

  “I want to know about those two oxen.”

  “I’ll see you at church tomorrow.”

  Ottoman bobbed his head, raised a hand in farewell, and strode rapidly north, anxious and fearful about his crop of wheat and oats. They watched him for a moment before Tredwell put the wagon in motion and rolled on toward the small scatter of buildings they called a town. A steepled church built of heavy planking painted white stood near the road and dominated all else. East of it was an ancient building of weather-blackened logs and mud chinking with traps and pelts hanging from nails on the outside walls and a badly carved sign above the door: WALLER TRADING. West of the church was a long, low log building with grass growing from sod on the roof and a sign above the plank door reading SHERIFF. Inside was the sheriff’s office, a long room that served for holding court, and at the rear, a smaller room with barred w
indows that was used for a jail. Scattered about the village were a dozen log homes connected by dirt roads. At the north edge of town, away from the homes, were several large buildings, among them two with signs declaring them to be a federal foundry for casting brass cannon and an armory where thirteen hundred barrels of gunpowder, seven thousand muskets, and two hundred tons of shot and shell were stored for use by the Massachusetts militia and the Continental Army.

  As they reached the east end of town, Tredwell stiffened, and Caleb heard the quiet “Oh-oh!” Instantly the others came to their knees to peer ahead, and Caleb saw their faces drop and their eyes narrow. It was an afternoon in harvest time, a time when people should have been harvesting their fields, not gathering in town. Yet, beyond the church, in front of the sod-covered building, were three wagons with horses standing hip-shot while half a dozen men clustered near the door, voices raised in anger, fists clenched. Among the six, three carried ax handles, two carried pitchforks. Before them, backed against the door, were three men, two with muskets, the other white-faced as he shouted back at those confronting him.

  Caleb looked at Tredwell in question, and Tredwell said, “The one against the door talking—the fat one with the beaver hat—is the sheriff. Name’s Brewster. Gerhard Brewster.” Tredwell raised the horses to a lope for the last hundred yards and pulled them to a halt in a cloud of dust behind the other three wagons while the gathering at the door turned to look. All four men dropped from the wagon and walked toward those clustered in front of the building.

  “What’s going on?” Tredwell demanded.

  A man wearing the sweated, loose shirt and woolen trousers of a farmer shook his fist at the sheriff and pointed. “They got Banes! He’s in there in jail! Debtors prison for sixty days. He’s got forty acres of wheat and barley to get in, and they got him in jail!”

  Tredwell started and turned to the sheriff. “You held court?”

  “Now, Nathan,” the sheriff started, “you know—”

  Tredwell’s voice was rising as he cut him off. “Answer! You held court?”

  “Of course we held court. David Banes had his chance. He couldn’t pay. The judge ordered him held in debtors prison for sixty days. Nothing I could do about it.”

  “What did Banes owe?”

  “Uh . . . seventeen dollars, as I recall. Tried to pay with worthless paper, but Mullins wouldn’t take it because he has to pay his bank in coin. Judge Devereaux read the law. Mullins is within his rights to demand coin, and if you can’t pay, you go to debtors prison. Now, that’s the law!”

  “For seventeen dollars? During harvest?”

  “Take that up with the judge.”

  “Where’s Mullins?”

  “Away.”

  “Away where?”

  “That’s not my business.”

  “What about Banes’s wife? Abby? And his four kids? Where are they?”

  “Out harvesting, last I heard.”

  One of the men behind Tredwell stepped forward, shaking an ax handle, voice choked with rage. “Let him out! Let him get his harvest in so’s he can pay!”

  The sheriff stood his ground, and his deputies with the muskets took one step forward. “You know I can’t do that. The judge gave me an order.”

  A man with a pitchfork stepped forward, followed by two others with ax handles. His voice was loud, but steady.

  “I’ll sign for Banes’s payment.”

  Brewster shook his head. “That’s for the judge to decide. Not me. You know that.”

  The second man with a pitchfork stepped forward, the three wooden tines leveled forward, and his voice was even, devoid of emotion.

  “Let him out or we’ll take him out.”

  In an instant what had been a hot argument had become a deadly confrontation. Sheriff Brewster did not move, and the two deputies eared back the big hammers on their muskets and lowered the muzzles. For three seconds the men, armed with pitchforks and ax handles, opposed by cocked .75-caliber muskets, stood still, facing each other, waiting for someone to make the move that would set off the killing.

  Caleb’s voice came from behind. “How much to get him released?”

  Brewster’s head swiveled. “Who’s talking?”

  Caleb stepped forward. “How much?”

  “You’ll have to ask the judge. You people don’t seem to understand. I’m only the sheriff. I don’t decide things. The judge does.”

  “You better decide this one, or someone’s going to get killed. Did you say seventeen dollars?”

  Brewster glanced at the ax handles and the tines of the pitchforks, less than five feet from his own belly and those of the deputies. “Well, it seems to me the judge can’t take it too poorly if the seventeen dollars was paid. No sense in holding a man if he’s paid. And there’s costs.”

  “How much for costs?”

  “I’d have to go figure it.”

  Caleb drew two silver coins from his purse. “Here’s twenty dollars in British sterling. That’s the seventeen, and three dollars costs. Looks to me like you better think hard before you say no. It will be interesting to tell a judge that three or four men died while you had an offer of twenty dollars to avoid it. Remember. There’s witnesses.”

  Brewster wiped at a dry mouth. “No sense in pushing this further.” He took the twenty dollars and turned. “I’ll go let him out.”

  “I’ll need a receipt.”

  The sheriff’s eyebrows raised. “Made out to who?”

  “Make it out to Banes and give it to him.”

  The sheriff shrugged and disappeared into the office. Five minutes later the door opened, and David Banes walked out, blinking in the bright sunlight, holding a receipt in his hand. He was round-shouldered, bearded, and balding. He walked to Tredwell and stopped.

  “Who paid?”

  Tredwell pointed. “Him. Caleb Dunson.”

  Banes stared for a moment. “I know you?”

  “No, sir.”

  Suspicion was plain on Bane’s face. “Why did you pay?”

  “We’ll talk about it later.” Caleb turned to Tredwell. “Any other reason to stay here? The sooner we leave, the better.”

  Tredwell raised a hand and everyone fell silent. “Let’s get back to our farms. We learned some things in Boston. This man came back with us to see what’s happening. We’ll hold a meeting on Monday. After dark. At the church. Tell everyone you see.”

  Sheriff Brewster raised a hand and stepped forward, jowls quivering as he spoke. “Look here, Tredwell, you stir up trouble, and I’ll have to come get you.”

  Tredwell turned, feet spread, and his voice purred. “You go tell that to Bernard Mullins. Him coming with court judgments right at harvest time so we can’t harvest and get the money to pay him. Judge Devereaux lettin’ him do it. You out here with those court papers in your hand saying you have to do what the judge says. Where was you and Devereaux and Mullins when the rest of us was away in the war? You was here getting things arranged to take our farms and our property.”

  Tredwell paused and for a moment Brewster blustered, then quieted, and Tredwell concluded.

  “Seems like the courts and the law are whatever Mullins and Devereaux say they are. And that isn’t right. The law is for everybody, and we’re part of everybody, so we’re goin’ to see to it the law does what’s right. Tell Mullins that. And Devereaux.” He paused for one moment. “No, never mind. We’ll tell ’em.”

  Tredwell turned on his heel and walked back to the wagon where his three companions were standing. The other men stood for several seconds, talking among themselves, then walked back to their wagons to leave the sheriff fuming at the door to his office. Behind, David Banes called to Caleb, “I’m obliged, mister.” Caleb nodded in acknowledgment then climbed up to take his place in the wagon beside Marsing.

  For the first quarter mile Caleb sat with his back to the side of the wagon, knees drawn up, caught up in deep thought about what had come very close to a killing. A merchant named Mullins had somehow
come into control of a judge and a sheriff? He was out to ruin some poverty-stricken farmers by foreclosing on debts right at harvest time—to stop them from gathering the crops that might give them enough money to pay?

  He felt the stirrings of a sense of injustice and of anger rise within him. This is why Tredwell had driven an old wagon from Springfield to Boston—five days each way—to try to find someone—anyone—who might help find a way out of the sick quagmire without bloodshed. And bloodshed was surely coming if Tredwell and his people failed.

  Americans killing Americans.

  With the setting sun full in their faces, Caleb spoke to Tredwell. “Who is Mullins?”

  “A merchant. Speculator. From Philadelphia, I think.”

  “How many people owe him?”

  “From around here, maybe fifteen, twenty. From other places, who knows? I know he has claims in courts clear up to Northampton and as far east as Worcester. From what I’ve seen, he’s loaned his money mostly to farmers. I think he’s after land.”

  “You owe him?”

  “Yes.” Tredwell paused. “When he came here he said he wanted to help. He’d work with us. We could pay with crops. Then when we took his loans, him and maybe a dozen others like him—rich men—got the legislature in Boston to change the law so that we had to pay in money. We could of done it, but then they said we couldn’t pay in Massachusetts paper money or even Continental money. We had to pay in hard coin. There’s not enough hard coin in the state of Massachusetts to pay what’s owed. So now all us farmers is losing everything we own, and it’s all legal.”