The razor-sharp blade severed Starnes’s thumb at the first joint and lopped off two adjoining fingers. Grunting with pain, he surrendered his hold on the black’s mane, and I thrust upward with my left elbow, lifting his arm and exposing his left side. I stabbed with all my might, and the captain’s blade sank to the hilt in the soft, yielding flesh below his ribs. Starnes’s arms opened abruptly, and it required but a shrug of the shoulders to dislodge his heavy frame from the haunches of the black. He landed awkwardly on his right leg, and I heard the crisp snap of breaking bones. I slowed the black and reined about, but I needn’t have worried. You know who was chasing me down afoot, and a quick snatch later, Erin was aboard again, this time before me where I could keep a proper grip on her.
Without delay, I booted the black toward the swampy woods to the east. Had not untold numbers of the enemy halted to scalp and loot those they had already slain and had not Starkweather and his dragoons fired a volley from the closest trees, Erin and I would probably have perished before reaching those beckoning woods. As it was, we fetched up to the captain and his men with the black enjoying but a dangerously short lead on the pursuing Shawnee.
Ten of the A.M.
Starkweather waved us through his meager line of dragoons. I made to lift a leg, but the captain had other designs. “Stay mounted, Ensign. We will provide an escort for the both of you.” At his behest, the dragoons closed up behind us, and we proceeded at double-quick time. There was no more holding of ground anywhere for the St. Clair army.
The captain, trotting at the black’s stirrup, eyed the powder-smeared Erin Green. “We must proceed with all haste, mistress. The nearest site offering any semblance of safekeeping for you is Fort Jefferson,” he estimated calmly. “Whatever happens, Ensign, do not permit your horse to be taken. If necessary, you may ride ahead.”
I understood his reasoning. The woods about us teemed with wall-eyed soldiers. Their fright was so overpowering that even out of the sight of the enemy they continued to shun every attempt to establish order. A sergeant of levies was knocked aside and trampled when he vainly tried to block the path and form a rear guard. Other officers forswore their duty, succumbing to the panic gripping the rank and file. Three from the militia hammered by on a single horse and callously left the animal to suffer when it tripped and shattered a foreleg. St. Clair’s army had become an undisciplined mob capable of any act that furthered its unmitigated desire to escape the scalp-hungry Shawnee, including setting the daughter of Molly Green afoot.
The rattling fire of muskets, the echoing war whoops of our pursuers, and the pitiful screams of those unfortunate enough to be overtaken by the redsticks, all of which carried with utmost clarity in the morning cold, assailed our ears every second. Discarded equipment, be it long gun, pistol, sword, bayonet, canteen, onion bottle, greatcoat, tricorn hat, powder horn, haversack, shot pouch, knife, hatchet, cartridge box, gray wig, unbuckled shoe, half-eaten loaf of bread, or silver snuff box, fouled the icy troughs of the pathway. Erin shivered at what she thought the wail of a terrified child, and with no potential mother in sight pleaded with me to investigate the source of that unsettling cry, but it proved impossible to disengage the black from the mass of soldiers cramming against my stirrups.
A mile and a half later, the path of retreat, angling south all the while, bisected the army’s military road, and the way eased. Out of necessity, the pace of the breathless dragoons slowed briefly to a brisk walk, and Erin asked the captain, “Did you or any of your men see what became of Annie Bower?”
A gasping Starkweather seized the black’s mane to keep his feet. “Yes, and I can state she is alive and well. She is somewhere to our front with Mr. Jacobs. She protested being separated from you, but I will not chance a female of any stripe to the butchery of the savages.”
Erin’s sigh of relief was quick in the coming. “Thank you, Captain. She is a woman worthy of your every consideration.”
The genteel Starkweather offered no response to Erin’s assertion regarding the loyalty she believed was due Annie Bower, and in the resulting silence, I inquired, “Captain, do we know anything of Bear and Ensign Young?”
“Neither man returned from carrying my message to Colonel Darke beyond the bluff,” Starkweather related. “I fear they are among the lost.”
I heard what the captain said but refused to accept his unfounded notion that the indomitable Bear Watkins had fallen at the hands of the Shawnee. For if I believed Bear dead, then Andy Young had most likely gone to meet our maker with him. It was imperative that Andy Young survive. With Cyrus Paine, Dyson Barch, and Court Starnes all shaking the hand of Satan, the ensign was Paw’s last, solitary, wishful hope of avoiding the condemnation sure to befall every civilian contractor with the total defeat of St. Clair’s forces. Andy Young, an officer of merit and solid reputation, was now the lone remaining individual who could swear from firsthand knowledge in court that Paw had not participated in the thievery and duplicity wrought on the army by William Duer and his henchmen.
Erin Green’s poking elbow interrupted my personal ruminating. “There’s Mr. Jacobs and Annie,” she exclaimed, aiming a finger ahead and to the fringe of the crowded roadway.
Tap Jacobs had the resigned look of a man following the dictates of a female out of necessity, not choice. His smile when he spotted Erin and me aboard the black was one of deliverance as well as outright happiness. He tugged Annie Bower none too gently into the roadway, cursing those who didn’t jump sprightly aside. They fell in beside us on the opposite shoulder of the black from Starkweather. “Damn glad you’re here, young’un. They’s both yours now.”
Indignation twisted Annie Bower’s haggard face. “Stop flappin’ yer mouth, yuh ol’ fart,” she snapped, extending Erin a wooden canteen. “I ain’t never been someone the likes of you has the least say about.”
A passing soldier bumped the harlot. She stumbled but somehow regained her balance, avoiding a fall. I swung down from the black. If Annie Bower were knocked from her feet, she would be trampled, as had the levy sergeant earlier. Before she could object, I grabbed her about the waist and boosted her up behind Erin.
Starkweather did object, and quite vehemently. “Ensign, I ordered you to remain mounted with the mistress!”
“If she walks, I walk, Captain,” Erin Green threatened, her voice trembling with anger. “No woman in danger receives less consideration than me.”
The captain’s handsome features slowly darkened. He swallowed hard and said, “I stand corrected, mistress. She may ride.”
Another occasion, I might have taken some delight in Starkweather’s discomfort, but more important matters intervened. A hubbub farther along the road preceded a parting of the fleeing throng of soldiers that yielded prominence to General St. Clair and the officers escorting him. The general, wincing with the pervasive hurt of his gout, was seated on a scrawny packhorse, an animal of far less stature and dependability than the black. “Push straight through with your horse, the women, and Mr. Jacobs, Ensign,” Starkweather barked. “The two of you are to inform Fort Jefferson of the morning’s events without delay. Understood?”
The captain’s thinking was clear as the cloudless sky. The battle was lost, and the army’s pell-mell retreat would continue unchecked for hours. And once the enemy was outrun, victuals of any kind as well as human comfort, particularly that warm and pleasurable, would be scarce as ripe apples in winter, and routed, despairing soldiers had been known to forcibly pilfer whatever essentials were available, females, attached or unattached, notwithstanding. Thus, any man truly loving Erin Green would want her behind the walls of the nearest stockade at the earliest possible moment, and carrying the alarm to Fort Jefferson provided a legitimate excuse to so situate her.
Rival or not, I trusted Starkweather as a commanding officer and took him at his word. I seized the black’s reins and angled sharply into the mass of soldiers crowding past the general’s contingent along the left side of the road. The gunfire and whooping b
ehind us slackened suddenly, as if after a chase of four miles the Shawnee were growing tired of uncontested killing and scalping. Yet not a fleeing soldier other than the captain and his dragoons heeded the shouts of the general and his officers to halt.
Starkweather’s arrival occupied the general and his staff for a brief half minute and we slipped by their position before any of his subordinates thought to commandeer for their poorly mounted leader the huge black horse carrying but two women. And soon as we regained the middle of the road, I urged the black into a near trot, as great a pace as Tap and I could sustain afoot.
One of the P.M.
In three hours of constant travel, we crossed ten miles of the rough-rutted military road with nary a break to rest and gather our wind. Even in the raw cold, Tap and I were sweating and huffing. Tap feigned resentment of any aid from Annie Bower, but when his canteen ran dry, he greedily gulped water as did I from the discarded vessels she had collected and stashed in the folds of her shawl.
The road grew less cluttered with soldiers each mile, and hardly another soul was about by the time we fetched up to the first sizable stream and halted to fill our canteens and blow the black. I helped Erin down but held the black shy of the bank for fear he might drink too much too fast and founder.
Erin bent low over the water, first cracking the ice and assuaging her thirst, then attempting to scour the powder residue from her lips and chin without benefit of soap. For all her earnest splashing and rubbing, she succeeded mainly in spreading the black stains to her cheeks. Though Tap’s eyes were twinkling and leaping, the protective glare of the ever-vigilant Annie Bower stifled his amusement, and he glumly helped the harlot fill the canteens.
I let the black drink a few swallows and kept watch while Tap divided the venison jerk from his haversack into four equal servings. “T’ain’t much, but it’ll get us down the road a fair piece if’n we chew slow, and no one takes to bein’ hoggish,” he opined with a sly, skeptical glance at Annie Bower.
The harlot refused to be baited, and I was beginning to believe Tap and his funning had finally met their match. Paying no attention whatsoever to the old scout, Annie inquired, “It’s fifteen more miles to the fort, ain’t it not, Ensign Downer?”
I nodded, never surprised by how little Annie Bower missed of what went on around her. “You women are in for a mean ride. We must push straight through as the captain ordered. The First Americans may be at the fort, an’ St. Clair’s badly in need of relief to save what he can of his army and help with the wounded.”
“Yep, he be,” Tap chimed in. “An’ not knowin’ if’n the Injuns have truly quit the chase, we can’t chance a fire along the way. So it’s the fort or freeze yer toes tonight, ladies.”
Erin Green rose from the creek bank. “Come Annie, I’ll give you a hand up. I believe these gentlemen are in a hurry.”
The harlot giggled. “Yes, an’ it’s a goodly thing. A certain ugly ol’ jasper can’t hardly spout off a-tall when his feet’s a-shufflin’ right smartly, can he now?”
Tap was still fuming over being outjested miles later.
Four of the P.M.
The old scout and I trotted at either shoulder of the black, our eyes on the flanking woods more than the ruts and stumps of the road. There was no talking, no sounds except the pumping of lung, the squeak of leather, the jingle of bridle chains, and the pound of hoof and boot. As the miles fell away, we encountered a few individual soldiers traveling our direction. One sported a brow that had been crushed by the blow of a hatchet. The almost sightless levy refused any assistance from us, claiming his skull hurt too much for him to stand the jar of a moving horse. He finally accepted a canteen of water, after which he seated himself at the base of a big oak tree and waved good-bye as we left him to his own devices. His bravery wrung tears from both our women.
At what I calculated half the distance to Fort Jefferson, undisguised movement to our front heralded the approach of a mounted officer leading a twenty-man detachment of First Americans. Those marching regulars in their standard-issue uniforms toting muskets whose polished barrels winked in the late-afternoon sun were mighty uplifting to tired and beaten hearts, and we gladly relinquished the road to them.
The mounted officer in the fore raised a gloved arm, and the detachment halted behind him. His gaze roamed over Tap, Erin, Annie, and the black before fixing on my dragoon helmet. “Lieutenant Jeffrey Rodgers,” he announced, touching two fingers to his tricorn. “We’re bound forward, young man. Are you attached to a military unit?”
I promptly knuckled my forehead. “Yes, sir, I’m an ensign, First Volunteer Dragoons, Captain Miles Starkweather commanding.”
The lieutenant reined his horse a step closer. “Stragglers reported to Major Hamtramack an hour ago that General St. Clair has been defeated and his forces put to flight. Is this true?” he asked, voice held deliberately low.
“Yes, sir, every word,” Tap interjected, “an’ the general’s in dire need of relief. Where be the rest of your regiment?” the old scout demanded.
Lieutenant Rodgers frowned. “For your information, Major Hamtramack decided that his best recourse in light of this stunning news was to proceed back to Fort Jefferson with the regiment, thereby securing the nearest point of refuge. My detachment is to reconnoiter the road as far forward as necessary to learn the truth of the general’s plight. And I intend to carry out the major’s orders.”
“Well, you do that, Lieutenant,” Tap said with a mildness that belied the sudden redness spotting his cheeks. “You won’t learn anything yuh don’t now already know, an’ your detachment be too small to offer any real help to the general, but you’ll be doing your duty, by God. Meanwhile, we’ll carry out our captain’s orders and report to Fort Jefferson with these here two women. That is, if’n you don’t mind?”
Lieutenant Rodgers obviously minded very much, but his singular devotion to duty won out. He ignored the red-cheeked Tap and addressed me instead. “Ensign, please carry your confirming news to Major Hamtramack as soon as possible. I will brook no further delays,” he said sternly, turning in the saddle. His arm lifted, and he shouted, “Detail, forward . . . march!”
Annie Bower smiled down at Tap. “Why, yuh old scapegrace, yer almost lovable when a lady least expects it.”
Seven of the P.M.
We forded the creek above Fort Jefferson from the northwest by the light of the quarter moon ascending the eastern sky. Ahead, the evening fires of the First Americans glowed brightly on the wooden palisades of the garrison. Ahead, too, at the far edge of the eastern meadow, hidden by trees and darkness, was the Green cabin, the ultimate destination of our two female riders.
The black stepped from the creek, and Erin said softly but urgently, “Ethan, I must get down. If I don’t, I’m afraid I’ll never walk again.”
I halted the black with a tug on the bridle and helped her dismount, stirred as always by the mere touching of any part of her. Her first few steps were indeed wobbly, and I gladly lent her a supporting arm. The faint scent of rosewater hung about her.
“How ’bout you, Mistress Bower,” Tap intoned. “Would you care to dismount?”
“No, yuh big tease,” Annie retorted, “these skinny stems of mine are too old to cramp. I’ll play the queen till the game’s up, yuh don’t mind.”
My exhaustion faded, and my pulse quickened. With Annie lingering in the saddle and a tired Tap trudging at the black’s hindquarters, I envisioned a few minutes alone at the head of that huge animal with Erin. Here at last was an opportunity to speak alone with her, an opening to express how I felt about her before she went off to care for her mother and my duty as a dragoon took me who knew where for how long. Whether it was the right time or the wrong time didn’t matter. I had to find out if I had any chance with her. Not knowing was a fate worse than death.
Trouble was, I had no forewarning what a sensation our emergence from the shadowy woods along the creek would cause. Annie Bower was recognized the instant we c
ould be seen by firelight, and numerous infantrymen abandoned their evening meal to welcome her with much shouting and hooting. Sentries flew upon the scene to investigate the swelling commotion, and their arrival dispelled any opportunity I might have had to speak privately with Erin Green.
“Halt and identify yourselves!” a hefty, bespectacled sergeant of the guard commanded.
Cursing my lousy luck, I set my feet and knuckled my forehead. “Ensign Downer, First Dragoons,” I proclaimed over the clamoring infantrymen.
“And your business, sir?” the sergeant continued, staring boldly at Erin beside me.
“We’re fresh from the battlefield and have vital details of General St. Clair’s defeat we must share with Major Hamtramack,” I said matter-of-factly.
My statement as to the origin of our travel and the fate of General St. Clair’s forces tore the sergeant’s eyes from Erin and ignited a near riot. The sergeant immediately dispatched a messenger to the fort and waved hurriedly for me to follow him. Curious infantrymen pushed in from all sides, yelling wild questions. The hefty sergeant screamed the loudest though, and his detail surrounded us, butts of their muskets poised and ready.
We gained the road leading to the gates of the fort, and the crowd grew so large we couldn’t proceed. The sergeant grabbed my sleeve. “We’ll never get through with the horse and everybody. Leave the others an’ come with me. My men will stay with them.”
Blood at Dawn Page 33
