Spies and Deserters

by Martin Ganzglass

  Adam decided to chance it. He needed solid information about this farm and others in the area. He stepped from behind a tree, carrying his musket with the fixed bayonet loosely in his hand.

  One slave, deep in the hole created by the partially torn-out tree, looked up in the act of tossing a shovel full of soil, saw him and shouted in fear. The others, seeing him walking out of the woods, retreated several steps from the fellow in the hole, looking as if they would bolt across the plowed field.

  “Good evening,” Adam said. “What is the name of this place?” They peered at him, bending forward slightly to get a better look, the more timid preferring to remain partially hidden behind the others, peeking around the shoulders of the ones in front.

  Adam laughed. “Am I so strange that you are dumbstruck?” He took his tri-corn off and scratched his head in puzzlement. They were barefoot, clothed in ragged breeches and an assortment of dirt-stained shirts, some with holes, some too long, others too short.

  “Where you cum frum?” one of the bolder ones asked. “You be talkin’ funny.”

  Adam doubted any of them had heard of Boston. “I am from far north of here where everyone has my accent.” They looked at him uncomprehendingly. “Who owns that farm?” he said gesturing with his musket to the building in the distance. His movement startled them and caused them to retreat further. “The building back there and these fields?” using his free hand to wave to the upturned clods of earth.

  “Massa DeGraw,” the bold one said. “He own us’ns too.” The others nodded in agreement. “We be goin’ back,” he said pointing to the gathering darkness. “Massa miss us, cum lookin’.” He pointed at Adam’s musket. “With dat.”

  Good to know the farmer was armed but he anticipated that anyway.

  “How many men at the house?” They looked bewildered by his question. “Who lives there?” he asked, gesturing in the direction the slaves had.

  The bold one took a step forward ahead of the group but still wary. “Massa DeGraw, heavy son, mean son, small son. Massa’s wife and liddle girls gawn away.”

  At least two other able-bodied men, maybe three if small meant fully grown but short. Probably all had muskets as well.

  “I need food - bread, potatoes, corn, oats. Can you get some for me?”

  “We’s got corn,” another slave said. “Tatoes too,” the bold one added.

  “Back dhere,” he said pointing toward their huts. Adam weighed going with them. He could not watch all of them. One of them could alert their master at the house. He would take whatever food they could spare, put it in his haversack and be gone quickly.

  The slaves undid the leather straps from the massive stump, flicked them on the oxen’s haunches and the entire party, with their shovels and pry bars on their shoulders, plodded through the plowed field, with Adam staying close to the group. He would be hidden from anyone who might venture out onto the broad porch which he could clearly see overlooked the fields. He heard the slaves muttering amongst themselves but could not distinguish their words. He was not even certain they were speaking English. Every once in a while one would look furtively over his shoulder to see if Adam was really still there or had vanished like some strange apparition.

  When they reached their shacks two of the slaves continued up the hill to bring the oxen into the barn. The house was a little further beyond. Adam warily watched them go, apprehensive but unable to control the situation. It was getting dark, and the bold one squatted down and restarted a fire in front of a windowless shack with a tattered old sack for a door. The others gathered around the fire, skewering ears of dried corn and potatoes on sticks and holding them over the flames. Adam surveyed his surroundings, thinking if he had to run, he would make for the gap between the two shacks and sprint for the distant trees. It was time for the other two slaves to return. He was nervous, but the corn and potatoes were almost done and he was hungry. The bold one offered him a piece of the Indian meal he had cooked on a flat stone. Adam put down his musket and stuffed it into his haversack as four dark figures surrounded the little group.

  “Leave your musket where it is and stand up” a gruff voice commanded. Adam did as he was told and a small man darted forward and took the musket in hand.

  “Light the lantern, Jacobus, and let us see what we have here. Never know whether our Negroes are telling the truth or jabbering nonsense.” Adam stood with his hands in the air and stared at a large, stout man who he immediately knew to be the father of the other three.

  “I mean no harm,” Adam said stretching his arms out. “I have been discharged from the Army in Middlebrook and am making my way home to Boston. My regiment, the Marblehead Mariners, was disbanded,” he added, keeping as close to the truth as possible.

  The father grunted and lowered his musket. Adam noticed the other one kept his at the ready, and the son behind him used Adam’s own bayonet to prod him forward away from the fire and toward the light. The one called Jacobus, built stocky and thick like his father, raised the lantern to illuminate the way. They trudged up the slope and turned into the barn.

  “You have any papers to show you were discharged?”

  “I lost them when I slipped on a rock in a river I was crossing. They were signed by Colonel John Glover,” Adam replied with authority.

  The father grunted and motioned to Jacobus. The young man took down a coil of rope from a peg and bound it tightly around Adam’s arms, tying him up like a pig bound for market. With a quick motion he kicked Adam’s legs out from under him and continued wrapping the thick rope around an upright beam.

  “Cannot be too careful with armed Negroes,” the father said to his sons, studying Adam’s worn boots and uniform in the glow from the lantern. “You may be what you say and you may not.”

  “I am a private in the Marblehead Mariners. I have fought at Trenton and most recently when the Redcoats retreated from Philadelphia. If you are Patriots, untie me and let me continue on my way.

  “What are you planning to do with him?” the shorter son asked.

  DeGraw wagged his head from side to side as if contemplating how much a calf would bring at market. He replied in the guttural words of low Dutch.

  “There are bounties offered for deserters. We will wait until a Continental unit comes through and turn him over to them for the price. Let them decide on the truth of what he says. In the meantime, keep an eye on our slaves. No telling what ideas have gotten inside their thick heads, seeing a colored man armed and in uniform.”

  Jacobus who seemed to be the oldest, took the lantern and held it high. The light shone brightly in Adam’s eyes and he lowered his head.

  “Maybe he is a scout for Colonel Tye’s raiders. The Militia Captain warned us they had been burning farms near Brunswick. I say we beat the truth from him.”

  Adam kept his eyes down, staring at his knees. It was to his advantage he understood Dutch and the DeGraws did not know that.

  “He is not escaping this night. The militia that passed through scoured the woods and roads to our north and found nothing. I will decide tomorrow morning if we need to break a few of his bones to learn if he is who he says.”

  DeGraw turned and, followed by his sons, left Adam in the barn in total darkness. He should not have trusted the slaves. He should have followed them, taken their uncooked corn and potatoes and left immediately. Well, he thought, now he knew there were Loyalist raiding parties inland, if he ever escaped and made it that far. He fell asleep with his chin dropped down to his chest, his spine grating against a protruding knot in the wooden beam and his arms tingling from the ropes that tightly bound him. He awoke in the complete darkness that had enveloped him when the DeGraws had left, chilled by the night air. One of the oxen snuffled and the horses in their stalls stamped and moved about. Restless are you, he thought. I wish I was free to move around as you. Off in the distance, he heard an owl hoot, answered shortly by another from a different direction.

  He dozed off only to be awakened by a sharp whinny. H
e snapped his head back, banging it against the post he was tied to, still drowsy, wondering whether he had heard musket fire or dreamed it. Several more shots, followed by shattered glass, screams of men fighting, fearful shrieks and then silence. Adam heard the sound of feet running toward the barn before he saw the triangle of light approaching. Two Indians in buckskin shirts and breeches came through the open barn door, the candlelight glinting off the hatchets in their hands. They stopped short at the sight of Adam, tied to the upright. One approached him carefully, placed the lantern on the floor and squatted off to his side, studying him, while the other ran back out. If this was a band of Rebels, why had they attacked the DeGraws? Adam’s confusion was compounded by the arrival of a black man, lean and well over six feet, his face partially hidden by a broad slouch hat. He wore an evergreen uniform jacket with buff facing and on his hip, a leather holster from which protruded a brass-handled pistol.

  “And what do we have here?” he said in a nasal sharp accent, looking down at Adam.

  “I am Private Adam Cooper of the Marblehead Mariners.” Adam gambled that the raiders were Tories. “I deserted from the Army at Middlebrook and am making my way home,” he answered in a firm voice.

  “Are you an enlisted slave?” the man asked with an edge to his question. “I have heard the Rebel ranks are filled with them, sent by their masters who are fraid to serve.”

  “I was born free,” Adam said slowly for emphasis and with pride. “I have no master.”

  Your accent tells me you are from Boston.”

  “Marblehead is north of Boston.”

  The man was pleased with himself. “Some of the Loyalist Associators I have fought alongside are from that city.” He turned as several of his men came into the barn. To Adam’s surprise, they were all colored. “Put those saddles and bridles on the wagons, and anythin’ else worth takin’, hitch up the oxen and drive them up to the house. There are barrels from the cellar to be loaded. Be quick about it. We must be gone before light.”

  “Are you not going to release me?”

  “Tell me first how you came to be tied up.”

  “I followed the DeGraws’slaves to their huts for food and the old man and his sons captured me.” Adam decided not to reveal he understood Dutch. Save that for later. “And you are?” he said gesturing with his chin toward the man.

  “Why I am Colonel Tye, the man wealthy Rebel farmers fear all across Monmouth County.” He leaned back on his heels, his hand on his chin, contemplating whether Adam was worth bothering with. “You will come with us. I will decide what to do with you later.” He motioned to one of the Indians who hacked at the knot with his tomahawk, uncoiled the rope and tossed it into one of the wagons. “Do I have your word you will not try to escape?”

  “You have my word,” Adam said, standing and flexing his arms and rolling his shoulders to get the blood flowing.

  “Good. ‘Cause if you attempt it, you will see I am not a man who allows anyone second chances.”

  The scene at the house was one of quiet efficiency. The DeGraws’ seven slaves were in a line passing barrels of foodstuffs from the cellar to the wagons. One of Tye’s raiders was saddling the horses. A few men emerged from the house carrying packs made of blankets and linens bulging with loot. Adam, standing to the side on the porch, counted two of DeGraw’s sons lying in pools of their own blood at the far end beneath the window. He wondered whether DeGraw and the other son had escaped. Pigs squealed and sheep bleated as they were thrown trussed, none too gently, into the second wagon among the bushels of potatoes, cabbages, oats and sheaves of hay.

  On command from Tye, one of his men raised the glass on a lantern and lit a torch of straw. Methodically he used it to set fire first to the curtains and then a pile of cloth on the floor. Another ran with a flaming bundle of sticks to the barn and ignited the loose hay and straw within. With the flames beginning to lick at the wooden structures, sending eye-burning clouds of smoke into the night sky, Tye on horseback led the raiders down a narrow cattle track, through a field and into the woods. Adam rode on the wagon seat next to a thickset dark-skinned black man, with heavy-lidded eyes that gave him a perpetual angry, surly look. His round face was topped by a slouch hat that would have better fit a man with a larger head. DeGraw’s slaves were in the back, holding on to the sideboards, looking back at the fiery destruction of their deceased master’s farm, moaning and uttering soft sounds of distress.

  These poor dumb souls do not even realize they are now free, Adam thought, although he had no idea what Tye intended to do with them. Probably turn them over to the British to be part of work brigades, repairing roads and redoubts. Hard work but certainly no harder than being slave field hands for the Dutchman.

  The sky was beginning to lighten when Adam saw the circular shape of a Dutch Reformed Church looming ahead. The little tower on the top was tilted at an angle, some of the shutters were hanging askew and the windows on the front were devoid of glass. Clearly, it had been abandoned. As they got closer, the two Indians emerged from the shadow of the building and signaled to them, before disappearing in the damp morning mist beyond the stone structure. The raiders, who had been bringing up the rear trotted up, dismounted and without any order fanned out as pickets.

  “Have any thoughts of jumpin’ off during the night?” Tye asked walking up to the wagon.

  “I gave you my word.”

  “That you did. Good thing you abided by it. Nero here is very good with a knife. Cut up his former master nice and slow. It gave the bastard time to think of his sins before dyin’.” He nodded at the round-faced driver who hopped to the ground, in the process revealing a bone handled hunting knife stuck in his waistband.

  “Come with me,” Tye ordered. Adam followed him into the circular Church. There were no pews, the altar was missing and the interior was empty except for a long table in the center and a few simple wooden chairs. “We will wait here,” Tye said, pulling up a chair and gesturing for Adam to do the same. Although it promised to be a sunny spring day, the stone walls still retained the damp night coldness. Adam raised his collar to ward off the chill.

  Tye removed his slouch hat, openly appraising him. Adam held his stare. The Colonel, if that was his official rank, which he doubted, was light skinned, his face clean-shaven with pock marks here and there but not so many as to be disfiguring. His nose was narrower than Adam’s, although too broad when matched to his sharp cheekbones and thin lips. His black curly hair was neatly cropped. In the daylight, Adam could see that Tye’s uniform was neat, well cared-for but worn. Tye’s grey eyes flickered with amusement as if he enjoyed Adam being bold enough to judge him back.

  “Why did you desert?” he asked bluntly. Adam decided to tell the truth, or as much of it as he could safely relate. He told of his first meeting with Sarah Pence, his anger over her mother serving like a brood mare for their master on the plantation, Sarah’s service as a slave cook and the Reverend raising her purchase price, after promising to let her buy her freedom for much less.

  “You must have created a scene,” Tye said throwing his head back and laughing deeply. “You, a Negro Private in front of Gen’ral Washington’s headquarters, demandin’ that His Excellency, the plantation slave owner, free his cook, who you say is owned by a Reveren’.” He studied Adam again, more closely, as if he seeing him in a new light.

  “Last night, we freed that Dutchman’s slaves. I am bringin’ this war to every Rebel slave-holder in Monmouth County and beyond.”

  “And what will become of DeGraw’s slaves?” Adam asked.

  Tye was about to answer when Nero entered the Church, and pointed over his shoulder.

  “Later,” he said, pushing his chair back. “My guests have arrived.”

  Adam followed him outside and made himself unobtrusive by remaining in the shadow of the angular wall on the west side. A troop of about twenty cavalry, smartly attired in bright redcoats with dark horsehair helmets, had dismounted in the cleared area before the church. Th
ey were accompanied by a band of foot soldiers, Loyalist militia armed with Brown Bess muskets, most likely provided by the British, Adam thought. From the look of some of them who could be brothers, he guessed many were the sons of farmers from the area.

  Tye whistled softly and his men drove the wagons from behind the church. Without hesitating, Tye led two cavalry officers over to the wagons and stood aside as they counted the barrels and bushels of food and the pigs and sheep. DeGraw’s seven slaves stood in a pathetic group, with no possessions but the clothes on their backs, thin and shivering in the morning chill. The two officers barely looked at them and took more interest in DeGraw’s horses, examining their teeth and remarking on their age, before following the Colonel into the Church. Adam peered through the slats of a broken shutter. One officer pulled a pouch from his jacket, counted out gold coins and placed them on the table. Tye talked quietly with both of them. Outside, the mounted troopers, followed by the two wagons with the liberated slaves perched on the sideboards, and the foot militia bringing up the rear, led the way down an overgrown path and toward a road that ran north before it disappeared into a wooded area.

  Tye’s band remained at the abandoned church until mid-morning. When they left, Adam rode in front of Nero seated in a saddle too small for the two of them. He held on to the horse’s mane as they threaded their way on deer trails and narrow pathways, surrounded by a forest so dense in places he could barely see the sky. Colonel Tye was in the lead but Adam suspected the two Indians preceded him as scouts, although he never caught a glimpse of them until they arrived at a snug clearing.