“Are you scared, Billy?”
The urgent whisper came from Corporal Melvin Curry, who was striding alongside his friend Billy on the snow-packed trail. The young men had been comrades in every adventure since they had first met in the schoolyard, fist-fought to a draw, shook hands, and pledged themselves to mutual protection and eternal friendship.
Anxious not to break the colonel’s interdiction against conversation, Billy mouthed his response: We all are.
Mel grinned his relief, took the Brown Bess off his shoulder, pointed it at the bush, and mimicked an explosion and recoil. And grinned again.
Billy smiled his approval, then swung his head smartly back into its proper position, facing the soldier immediately ahead of him and quick-stepping to the common beat. There was no drum, of course, only the rhythmic tramp of these soldier-citizens, all of whom had, mere days ago, been tending a farm, wielding an axe, or minding a country store.
Billy and Mel had kept to their boyhood pact, entering the carpentry trade together in Toronto as apprentices to Billy’s uncle and, just this past summer, going into business for themselves. But when the word went out that eight new militia regiments were being formed—one of them to be led by the Pelee Island Patriot himself—the young men had only to glance into each other’s eyes before heading up to Gideon Stanhope’s estate at the western edge of the city and signing on.
Of course, they trained and paraded only three times a week and had to be content, for the nonce, with green hunting jackets, gray trousers, and their own boots. The remainder of their time had been spent productively if mundanely in hammering and sawing at Mrs. Edwards’s rejuvenated establishment on King Street, where, by an act of divine providence, Billy had caught the eye of one of the seamstresses employed there and had fallen madly, giddily in love. Dolly had feigned indifference, for a day, then capitulated. Mel, who had been engaged for a year, pretended such romance was a routine business, but Billy knew better. So here they were, each twenty-two years old, employed, in love, and marching out to defend the country they had been born into and had subsequently decided was worthy enough to preserve for their own future.
Billy wanted to whistle his contentment but settled for a muted hum.
• • •
Back in November, it had seemed that they would see no action. Lieutenant-Colonel Stanhope, his laurels already won and displayed with daily dignity, had brought his handpicked crew of NCOs, among them Billy and Mel, to the district at the beginning of the month. They had been thence involved in intensive training sessions with the freshly embodied local regiment, intensive because their spies had informed Governor Arthur that a sizeable incursion was expected across the Detroit River on November 21, to be coordinated with a second attack somewhere along the St. Lawrence. The latter had indeed occurred, in the middle of the month, and though they had received only sporadic and incomplete reports, the raid had been repulsed and the enemy routed. “We’ve been sent to the wrong end of the province!” Mel had complained. November 21 came and went, without incident.
The tedium of the daily training sessions was soon broken, however, by a diverting exercise carried out by Colonel Stanhope, Captain Muttlebury, and the twenty-man troop of which Billy McNair was now acting sergeant. It turned out that, back in July, following the Yankee raids across the St. Clair River, the generals had decided to sequester a number of arms caches in strategic spots along the western frontier for emergency use against any large-scale invasion. One of these was a long-abandoned earthen fort beside a creek in the bush about halfway between Windsor and Sandwich. It had last seen service in the War of 1812. Sixty rifles and ten boxes of powder and shot had been secreted beneath the crumbling forward wall. However, fearing that one or more local republican sympathizers might have learned about the location, Major Sharpe, commanding officer of the 34th in the region, ordered the arms removed and brought to Fort Malden at Amherstburg. Billy had noted, from a distance, an animated discussion of the order among the officers, including several exasperated gestures from Colonel Stanhope. As a reward for his commentary, the colonel was assigned to effect the removal of the ordnance.
So it was that they found themselves sweating and grumbling on a warm Indian summer afternoon as they dug away the sod used to camouflage the crates of rifles and ammo and loaded them onto two wagons. The colonel disdained any direct involvement in the ongoing indignities after he had completed the routine task of indicating where the crates were located, referring to a sketch provided him by the major. Thereafter he sat rigidly upright and aloof on his Arabian, staring down the little creek while the breeze rippled his epaulettes. Billy had felt fiercely proud to be serving under such a man.
“You got them all?” the colonel inquired of Captain Muttlebury, casting a cursory glance at the wagons and then riding up to the earthworks for a quick inspection of the hastily repaired devastation there.
“Yes, sir,” Muttlebury replied. While he had taken no part in the actual labour except to point with his sabre to those spots along the thirty-foot embankment where the crates had been stashed, he was sweating and alarmingly pale.
“Are you well, Captain?” the colonel asked. The steel-blue eyes suggested that his concern was military, not personal.
“I’ve had the shakes since this mornin’, sir,” Muttlebury said. He was a corpulent man, bluff and friendly to a fault. And more at home behind the counter of his hardware store in Sandwich than in the saddle of a warhorse. But no one questioned his dedication to the cause or to the tasks at hand.
“Then you should have reported yourself unfit for duty,” the colonel said. “You may ride up on one of the wagons if you need to. We’ve got twelve miles or more to go before we get these rifles safely tucked inside Fort Malden.”
Billy and Mel had taken turns riding Muttlebury’s abandoned bay.
• • •
The private in front of Billy stumbled to a halt, and Billy nearly crashed into him. Behind them the column came to a staggering stop. Everyone peered anxiously ahead. The sun had risen and now sat amid a brooding mist above the forest rim to their right. No one had yet spoken. On his stout bay, once again Captain Muttlebury came plodding softly towards them along the double line of men.
“The enemy have been spotted in François Baby’s orchard two hundred yards ahead,” he said to Billy and his troop. “They’re fixing for a fight. The colonel is going to organize four squads and attack them head-on. Our company will form up on the far right. Then, after the first volley or two, we’ll veer off through the bush and outflank them. Check your powder and fix bayonets.”
Muttlebury then wheeled and galloped back to the head of the column, which had already begun to come apart as the five companies moved wordlessly forward behind their subalterns. Billy led his troop towards the right-hand side of the clearing that lay before them, with Mel at his heels. Several of the men were taking deep, rasping breaths and squinting ahead through the dissipating mist in search of the enemy. The invaders made themselves heard before they could be seen, however. A nervous, boastful shouting rose up from the leafless trees at the far side of what must have been one of Baby’s pastures. Then the first rifle shots, crackling and ineffectual. Billy tried not to look at the puffs of snow being kicked up a few yards in front of him.
The officers had dismounted. Colonel Stanhope began issuing orders in a calm, almost offhand tone. Billy knew the drill by heart. He and Mel set up their troop in three ranks, chivvying several men into position when they simply froze. At Muttlebury’s signal, the troop advanced in concert with the companies on their left. The snow underfoot was not deep, but it was heavy, thanks to alternating days of freezing and thaw.
Billy strode manfully forward, letting his fear drive him to his duty rather than stall it, and all the while conscious of his responsibility to the inadequately trained men relying on him. As they reached the halfway point across the clearing, random fire from the orchard spattered snow all about them, and ahead they could see more t
han a hundred blue-tunicked soldiers, the invading Yankees, dashing about the barren orchard in apparent disorder and discharging their muskets and rifles in capricious bursts. Nearby, someone gave a brief cry of startlement, then a groan, and Billy turned to see a fellow named Carter pitch forward into the snow, then roll over and clutch his belly as if his bowels were about to escape.
“Positions!” Muttlebury cried, his voice suddenly falsetto with fear.
Billy, in the first rank with his Brown Bess already primed and loaded, waited for the order to fire. The man behind him swore and dropped against him.
“Fire!” Muttlebury squeaked.
Up and down the front rank of the five companies the initial volley rang, splitting the air with its calamitous impact. Billy’s rank dropped to one knee and, seconds later, the second rank let loose, dropped to one knee, and shuddered as the third rank followed suit. Billy’s ears had stopped hearing anything, and he could see nothing but the thick roil of exploded gunpowder. When it was lifted gently upward by the morning breeze, he was able to appraise the effect of this classic military gambit. Enemy bodies lay prone upon the ground or draped in ghastly silhouette against the apple trees, while others writhed and spun madly in the snow, flailing their arms as if beating off enraged bees. Their whooping bravado had been displaced by moans and curses.
One of their officers, however, had already begun rallying his remaining troops, and the air once again shook with a ragged but deadly counterfire. It took twenty seconds for crack British troops to reload, but these fresh militia recruits were months away from that level of proficiency. It was during such an interval that real danger lay. Reloading infantrymen in close rank were certain prey for the American marksmen. Half a dozen toppled before Billy’s rank was able to repeat its initial volley. Seasoned British regulars would just keep up the sequence of volleys until they died where they stood, but there was a good chance that these raw volunteers would simply break and run.
Billy could not stay long enough to find out, for he was already following Captain Muttlebury on the flanking manoeuvre ordered by the colonel and frantically calling on A-Troop to do the same. Mel, he was pleased to see, brought up the rear, and was hollering words of encouragement to the fellows they had worked beside for almost a month, whom they knew by name, and whose lives they valued as much as their own. Colonel Stanhope had trained the trainers well.
The going through the scrub brush to the east of Baby’s fields was much less comfortable than travelling the road had been. The slush among the evergreens and rotting stumps had frozen overnight, and the men hobbled over it as if over a rocky beach, with the added risk of pratfalling on a hidden ice patch. To their left they could hear the singular blast of their comrades’ volleys interspersed with the motley, sputtering snap of Yankee sharpshooters. Just ahead of Billy, Muttlebury was huffing like a spent draft horse as his big-bellied figure slipped and skidded.
Five minutes later they again emerged into the clearing, but this time they were fully east of the orchard. The firing between the opposing forces had not ceased, the air was blue and acrid with smoke, and there were more bodies on the ground, on both sides. All Billy could see for certain was that the panic and confusion seemed to be limited to the Patriots, not because of the helter-skelter dashing about of individuals—that was the trademark of these freebooters—but because of the desperate cries and peremptory discipline of their officers. He saw one of them grab a fellow about to turn tail and fling him back into line with one powerful thrust of his right arm. The left was dangling helplessly at his side. The regular, timed fusillade from the companies across the clearing was indication enough that the incomparable colonel had succeeded in molding his apprentice soldiers into an effective fighting unit.
Captain Muttlebury now ordered his men to form a single rank at the edge of the bush. They had not yet been seen. Less than a minute later, they loosed a killing volley of enfilading fire upon the surprised and hapless occupants of the orchard. The effect was immediate. All those capable of doing so broke and scampered towards several outbuildings to the north of them. Many had no legs to flee with.
“After them!” boomed the stentorian voice of Colonel Stanhope, and the four companies at his side charged across the clearing with bayonets fixed and a local variant of the redcoat’s ululation.
Muttlebury was about to follow suit, particularly because his unit was already closer to the routed men than the colonel’s, but the order never came. Billy was tugging at his left sleeve and pointing towards the northeast corner of the orchard, where it was almost contiguous with the spruce and cedar woods they themselves were sheltering in.
“Who’s that?” Muttlebury wondered, spotting a Yankee through a screen of boughs waving an arm and hissing out some kind of command.
“I think it’s one of their generals, sir,” Billy said. “I been watchin’ him. He seems to have been hit in the left arm.”
“Why don’t he skedaddle with the others?”
“I think he’s organizin’ a retreat through the bush somewhere.”
“Then we better get after him. If he’s the CO, he may be carrying papers we’ll want to have a gander at before he burns ’em.”
“Yessir. Shall I send Corporal Cox to inform the colonel of our intention?”
“Yes, yes, we oughta do that.”
Cox was clearly unhappy about being left out of the chase but was soon on his way over to the advancing body of militia, and Billy’s unit was trotting, with bayonets at the ready, along the edge of the bush towards that point where they had spotted the Yankee officer in action. When they approached the place—cautiously, for an ambush was a distinct possibility—they saw its attraction for those fleeing soldiers with enough presence of mind not to dash blindly for the dubious cover of Baby’s flammable barns. Just inside a line of cedars, a small creek meandered and then curved away into thick forest. The creek was iced over, and the dozen or so sets of bootprints upon its crusty surface suggested it was firm enough to hold a pack of frightened fugitives.
“They’ve scuttled up the crick!” Muttlebury declared. “They’ll leave us a trail a sick cat could follow.”
“It seems to twist and bend a bit, sir. Don’t you think we better be extra careful as we go?” Billy said.
“Yes, yes. We oughta be careful.”
“Whenever we come to a bend,” Billy said, “Mel an’ me’ll scout on ahead to make sure the coast is clear.”
“Good idea!” Mel cried, then realized he should have waited for his captain to speak first. But merchant Muttlebury had not noticed.
“The corporal and me useta go huntin’ together,” Billy explained. “We can tell what a creature is thinkin’ just from the tracks it leaves.”
“Good idea, good idea,” Muttlebury said, and so the unit proceeded, twenty strong with two outriders, in pursuit of the routed enemy and possibly a bigger prize.
• • •
Another hour found the pursuing troop somewhat less enthusiastic than they had been at the outset. The fourteen men they were trailing had stuck to the interminable winding of the creek and, so Sergeant McNair informed his charges, were retreating southwards in a steady, organized fashion. Each time they approached a sharp bend, Billy and Mel slipped into the woods on the inner curve and moved stealthily forward until they came to the next straightaway in the streambed, where they made sure all fourteen sets of boot-prints were safely visible in the middle of the creek before stepping out into the open and signalling the all clear.
“Just like old times!” Mel exulted.
“Yeah, ain’t it, though?” Billy said, as they waited for the captain and the others to trudge up to them. “But this fella leadin’ the retreat is no fool. He knows he’ll haveta leave this easy path sooner or later if he’s goin’ to make a break for the river and home.”
“But this crick’s runnin’ away from the river, ain’t it?”
“Right. We’re goin’ upstream, which is puzzlin’ to me.”
The next bend lay a hundred yards ahead of them, and as they approached it, Billy could see plainly that the tracks had veered away to the right—to the west and towards the river. The Yankees had apparently decided to make a break for the shoreline. No doubt a ship or several boats had been placed along the Detroit at strategic intervals, just in case the liberators should encounter the unthinkable: opposition from the ordinary serfs of Queen Victoria’s fiefdom.
“They’ve headed west into the bush!” Billy shouted back to his captain against the rapidly building northwest wind.
“We’ve gotta pick up our pace, then,” Muttlebury puffed, struggling to maintain his dignity while clutching his rebellious belly.
“They could’ve left a picket just inside the bush over there to slow us down,” Corporal Curry suggested, remembering the lectures on withdrawal tactics that the colonel had delivered with such passion back in Toronto and repeated after their arrival here.
Muttlebury tried to take this in, blinking into the slanting sunlight with watery eyes. “What’s best to do?” he said at last, unconcerned that a commissioned officer was asking the advice of a junior not yet permitted in his mess.
“The safest way, sir, is to send a volley at that spot where the tracks disappear,” Billy said.
“Yes, the safest way,” Muttlebury said, and nodded at his sergeant.
A half-minute later the squad was positioned in rank and Muttlebury was poised to bring his sword down to ignite the volley, when they saw the cedar boughs at the point of target waver. Muttlebury swung his sword, the forest was rocked by the thunderous discharge of twenty muskets, and the cedar boughs shattered before them. Several agonizing cries assured Billy’s troop that a suicide picket had indeed been set up to ambush and stall the pursuit. Apparently they had made the fatal error of choosing to wait until the enemy had come within easy killing range before firing upon them.
Death of a Patriot Page 2
