A Study in Revenge

by Kieran Shields

  “For the last time—cut me loose! Before you pass out from pain and he moves in for the kill.”

  To the extent that any internal debate still waged on, it was brief. Chief Jefferson took his knife in hand and readied himself for another leap. Ten feet separated him from the rock that held Grey bound in place. He leaped. A half second later came the report of the sniper’s rifle, but the shot never stood a chance. Chief Jefferson hunched down, making himself as narrow as possible behind Grey’s rock. Two more shots rang out while the chief slashed at the length of rope that wrapped around the boulder. One bullet sailed overhead, while the other smashed into the rock and sprayed dust over the two men.

  Chief Jefferson, a bit too eager to regain cover, leaped back toward his former position without having fully cut through the last few strands of the rope. Grey had to give several forceful jerks of his body to snap the cord. He turned around so that his face was pressed to the rock as he slipped his wrists free and got his legs under him. He’d been tied in an awkward sitting position too long and wanted to get his circulation going again before he made any sudden movements.

  The shooter must have sensed the standstill and taken advantage to rush ahead to a new position twenty yards closer.

  “He’s coming,” the chief warned. “We need to do something. Do we split up?”

  “No—he has the range to cover us both even if we head in separate directions.” Grey said as he glanced behind him. There was the Knife Edge, the only trail leading off the peak that didn’t lead toward the shooter. The thin ledge, nearly a mile long and with the look of a serrated razor, was still preferable to a sniper’s bullet. A short cloud plume passed above the center of the trail. Several more clouds, low enough to scrape over the Knife Edge, were approaching.

  “Put the stone in my sack and toss it to me,” Grey ordered.

  “You want to trade it for our lives?”

  “He’s already committed murder. He won’t leave two eyewitnesses alive even after he has it. No, we’ll make an attempt across the Knife Edge. You’ve lost blood—I’ll carry the weight.”

  The chief paused but saw the sense in it. Staying low to the ground, he made his way back to the thunderstone, placed it in Grey’s satchel, and tossed it over. Grey shoved in the severed length of rope that had previously lashed him to the rock.

  “Now my pistol,” Grey said.

  “My shooting hand’s still good.”

  Grey shook his head, then glanced over his shoulder. The shooter had advanced another twenty-five yards. “He’s getting closer—no time to argue. I’ll fire off two shots as you head down the trail as fast as you can. Our best hope is to put distance behind us, and soon. If we can get out far enough, those approaching clouds will shroud our movements until we’re out of range. The gun.”

  The chief tossed the revolver to him.

  Grey assumed a prone position and fixed his sight on the shooter’s current rock. “Go!”

  Chief Jefferson rushed off in a hunched-over position. The shooter raised his rifle to aim, and Grey fired. The bullet didn’t strike the shooter’s rock, and Grey had no idea of how far he’d missed by, but his effort was enough to force the rifleman to duck. A quick glance behind showed that Chief Jefferson was making himself a hard target as he moved over the thin rock trail in a wobbly motion. Grey hoped this was due to the uneven downsloping terrain and not the man’s loss of blood. In any event, the chief wasn’t gaining distance as quickly as Grey had hoped.

  The next time the shooter raised his weapon, Grey rose up off the ground and made a show of firing without actually pulling the trigger. It was enough to cause the shooter to flinch and go for cover, buying the chief a few more precious seconds. The bluff worked only once more before the shooter decided to stay exposed and get a shot off at Grey. After the next shot of his own, Grey turned and bolted ten steps down the trail before dodging behind a granite slab. Rock fragments erupted near him. He made sure the thunderstone was secure in his satchel and the leather strap firm across his chest and over his shoulder. With a final look toward the sniper, Grey leaped from his cover and bounded down the jagged trail as fast as he dared.

  A shot struck fifteen feet below him on the exposed rocks leading sharply down into the southern basin. He couldn’t detect the exact spot where the bullet had landed. Whatever faint scratch it made paled beside the remnants of countless years of lightning strikes, stark gray scars that had exploded upon the face of the cliffs, leaving shattered rocks. Distracted for a moment, Grey glanced down two thousand feet below, noting the still-bleak appearance of the basin pond reflecting back the grim sky overhead. A gust of wind shifted his weight, and Grey dropped to all fours to steady himself. At least the shooter was facing the same unpredictable buffeting winds while trying to gauge each bullet’s course.

  Grey got to his feet and scrambled forward. He focused only on each step, the next landing spot, no longer paying any heed to the cliffs built of countless rough slabs and jagged rocks like massive stone fangs rising up to meet him on either side of the Knife Edge. Another minute, and several more rifle shots, passed before he managed to pull up close behind Chief Jefferson. Grey stepped to the side, down from the uppermost layer of rocks. Leaning in sharply to match the angled slope, he negotiated his way past the chief and assumed the lead. He looked back; whoever had been so intent on killing them wasn’t following across the Knife Edge to finish the job.

  “Good, he’s not coming.” Grey glanced southwest and watched an approaching cloud. “Another fifty feet on and that cloud will overtake us. As long as we keep moving, we’ll be safe.”

  He looked ahead. The Knife Edge rose and dipped as it made a general descent toward its end. It would take him an hour to get across with the chief. Along the way he knew they would need to cross sections where they had to scramble on hands and feet over loose, uneven rocks and where the trail narrowed to a few meager feet in width. Then, near the end of the Knife Edge, they would face the Chimney Peak, a steep, hand-over-hand vertical ascent that then dropped almost straight back down into a large cleft. He was glad to have brought the length of rope in his satchel; the chief’s face had gone pale from exertion and loss of blood. Even after they made it past the Chimney, a challenging descent awaited them, then days of hiking back to the edge of civilization. A weakened Chief Jefferson meant that speed would yield to caution and vigilance against the possibility of another attack. Grey had only three bullets remaining, and he hoped for a quick reunion at the base of the mountain with his old guide and that man’s rifle.

  The clouds rolled over them like a fog bank, enveloping them in a wall of cool mist. The winds seemed lighter, and the views of an impending, plunging death on either side faded from sight. There was nothing left but to walk on, gingerly and with extreme caution, across the rough, unrelenting trail.

  [ Chapter 40 ]

  THE OFFICE OF THE MAINE HISTORICAL SOCIETY, WITH ITS collections of old and irreplaceable manuscripts, seemed an unwelcome setting for cigarette smoking. Instead Lean satisfied himself with a cup of coffee that Helen Prescott had generously procured for him. They both sat before the desk of F. W. Meserve. The chief historian was now more visible than at the prior meeting with Lean. The man had undertaken the herculean task of clearing away the mountains of books and papers that typically decorated his desktop.

  Lean set his cup and saucer on a corner of Meserve’s desk and then drew out his small notebook and pencil. He felt like a schoolboy readying himself to take lecture notes that he was sure he would never bother to read over. In contrast, Meserve’s beady eyes had swelled in the telescope-like lenses of his wire-rimmed spectacles. He regarded the documents in his hands with a ravenous intensity. Lean half expected the man to begin salivating; he had the look of a Thanksgiving Day feaster who’d purposely skipped breakfast.

  “Now, what I’m going to give you is a boiled-down version of what William Willis recorded in his History of Portland from Its First Settlement. In 1774, in response to Eng
land’s draconian Stamp Act and all that, our Continental Congress adopted articles designed to keep the colonies from importing and exporting English goods. They hoped it would pressure England into abandoning its oppressive taxation policies and thereby cool the colonists’ forceful calls to defend their rights, even by war.

  “Apparently not all the members of Parliament were impressed. Some seem to have taken a dim view of the Continental Congress, whom they viewed as a bunch of bumpkins in woolen caps daring to oppose their authority. The English response was to ensure compliance by musket and bayonet, if necessary. In Portland—Falmouth, as it was then called—that response took the form of the English naval officer Captain Mowat.

  “Falmouth strictly enforced the nonimportation agreement. Needless to say, tensions ran high with those who still supported the mother country. One of those loyalists was a timber and shipbuilding man who was barred from landing the rigging and sails he’d imported for his newest ship. He called on Captain Mowat to sail to Falmouth and enforce his right to import English goods.”

  Lean took a sip of coffee and then interrupted the history recital. “Sorry, but are we going to get to Thomas Webster, or his properties, or something in this century before too long?”

  Meserve waved a finger at Lean. “Patience, my good fellow. Now, the townspeople were incensed at having a British warship in port. On top of this, late April of ’75 brought news of the Battle of Lexington, which they viewed as the commencement of war. That very day, troops marched off from here to aid Boston. The arrival of Mowat’s ship particularly agitated some of the rougher country folk from up the coast, who spoke of destroying the vessel. The inhabitants of Portland Neck knew that any attempt would have disastrous consequences. But not all the zealous patriots would listen to reason. A militia colonel called Thompson brought fifty men from Brunswick. Unbeknownst to the Falmouth townspeople, they encamped in the pines on the vacant north side of Munjoy Hill. An opportunity soon arose: They seized Captain Mowat, his surgeon, and a local loyalist pastor, who chanced to be walking upon the hill.”

  “Seems a rather fortuitous occurrence for the militia,” Helen piped in, a less-than-genuine eagerness dripping from her voice.

  Lean suspected she was merely trying to heighten the urgency that was otherwise lacking in her boss’s tale. The deputy decided to hold his tongue and hope for the best.

  Meserve nodded, the keen audience response spurring him on to greater heights of historical detail and insight. “Willis’s notes reference a letter from the pastor mentioning that Mowat had sought out a resident on India Street with whom he had business. A confrontation followed that became so heated that the captain’s surgeon recommended Mowat take a walk in order to calm himself. Munjoy Hill was mostly unoccupied in those days. Being the closest spot nearby in which they could avail themselves of peaceful natural surroundings and not risk further rancorous encounters, they elected to go walking on the hill. In hindsight it was obviously a poor selection.

  “Mowat’s ship, the Canceaux, demanded the prisoners be freed or it would lay the town in ashes. At first the militia leader refused, insisting that Providence had thrown them into his hands in a time of war and it was his duty to hold them. Although one prominent townsman suggested that Mowat be executed, the town was generally against holding the prisoners, and the militia eventually freed Captain Mowat. That’s the gist of what appears in the history. What Willis didn’t include from his original notes is a little bit of scribble on the side of the page identifying that one prominent townsman who wanted to see Captain Mowat executed: Thomas Webster.”

  Meserve stared at Lean, awaiting a reaction.

  “Interesting,” Lean offered up in a polite tone.

  “There’s more,” Meserve promised. “Before morning, six hundred militia men from the surrounding towns poured into Falmouth. The rambunctious soldiers, not being under proper command, looted loyalist houses and generally created chaos. During the mayhem a man went to the waterside at the foot of King Street and fired a musket, loaded with two balls, at the deck of the Canceaux, where Mowat was standing, which penetrated deep into her side. In the margin of Willis’s notes was scribbled the initials ‘T.W.?’

  “These aggravations prompted a demand for retribution from Mowat. He required that the man who fired at him should be given up and that the country mob dispel or he would fire upon the town. Eventually calmer heads prevailed, amends were made, and Mowat departed, without Webster. There was no further trouble in Falmouth until October of 1775. Captain Mowat again arrived at the mouth of the harbor with the Canceaux and four other ships. The townspeople assumed that Mowat merely wished to get hold of cattle and provisions, and they sent their militia out to guard the bay islands, which held stocks of cattle and hay. The next day, the wind being unfavorable, the English vessels were warped up the harbor and formed a line fronting the Neck.

  “The true object of Mowat’s visit was made clear when he sent a letter ashore informing them he’d been sent to ‘execute a just punishment on the town of Falmouth’ and allowed them two hours to remove themselves from the scene of danger. The vessels had orders from the English admiral in Boston to destroy any towns north of there in a state of rebellion. For some reason Mowat skipped over four or five other possible targets, singling out Falmouth for retribution. On the receipt of Mowat’s letter, a committee went to parley with him in hopes of averting the destruction. Mowat consented to postpone his orders the next morning, on condition that the town surrender its four pieces of cannon, small arms, and ammunition. Without hesitation the townspeople rejected the idea. But in order to gain time for the removal of the women and children, they promised a definite reply the next morning.”

  Lean found himself tilting forward a bit. He still wasn’t sure that the various mentions of Old Tom Webster were worth his visit today, but he found himself being pulled into the story of Portland’s history. He knew the outcome well enough from his schoolboy days, but the details were no longer strong in his memory.

  “The town’s committee visited the ship, and Mowat greeted them with kind words, even shedding tears at the repetition of his orders. But they couldn’t delay the action for long. Mowat ordered the committee back to shore with only thirty minutes to escape the coming bombardment. At half past nine, all five vessels commenced firing. Cannonballs, bombs, incendiary shells, grapeshot, and musket balls all rained down on Falmouth without break until six that evening.

  “In the meantime, English landing parties came ashore and set fire to various buildings. The confusion in the streets was terrible, people screaming and endeavoring to escape, children separated from their parents and not knowing where to go for safety. The inhabitants were so occupied in getting their families away, and the militia so scattered, that little resistance was made. The first landing party proceeded to Mr. Webster’s house on India Street.”

  “The site of his earlier argument with a town resident over some unknown bit of business.” Lean allowed himself a little smile. The meaning of it all was still unclear, but at least the threads of the story were starting to pull together.

  “Precisely,” Meserve said. “I think it rather peculiar that the landing party should make for this same locale as its first order of business. Webster had fled, and they searched through the house along with his attached shop, a sort of apothecary, then burned it all to the ground.

  “Most of the old wooden town was soon just a sheet of flame. In the end three hundred families were left destitute. Over four hundred buildings were razed, including the new courthouse, the church, the customhouse, a fire engine, together with almost every store and warehouse in town. Only one hundred dwelling houses were left standing, many of which were damaged by balls and the bursting of bombs. When the first parish meetinghouse was taken down fifty years later, they found that the ceiling still held unexploded balls.

  “The elegant and thriving town of Falmouth was ruined, with the naked chimneys of demolished buildings left standing as monuments
of the attack. Still, this town did not lack a fighting spirit. What was left became a harbor for privateers, and it later received a special commendation from the General Court for raising two thousand men for the Continental Army.”

  “Certainly an interesting tale,” Lean said as he stirred in his seat, readying the process by which he planned to extricate himself from today’s history lesson.

  Meserve forged ahead. “After the destruction of the Neck in ’75, little effort was made to rebuild the wasted area until the war was over. Only a few houses were rebuilt prior to 1783, when news of peace was finally received. The people had a mad day of rejoicing, firing cannon incessantly from morning to night, and ended in accidentally killing one man by the bursting of a cannon.”

  Lean rose and stretched but still didn’t succeed in slowing Meserve’s speech.

  “Another man, named Clough, who hadn’t long since arrived in Falmouth, was killed during some manner of mischief a short way below the corner of Congress and Oak streets. And here again we see a suspicious side note made by the author in reference to that reported death: ‘T.W. questioned by magistrate.’ I suppose Willis could never confirm the facts about Thomas Webster, and that’s why they weren’t included in his final history. But it certainly raises an eyebrow, doesn’t it?” Meserve smiled as he finished his presentation.

  Lean sat down again. That last bit was not expected. In addition to some sort of running feud with a newly arrived British naval commander, Old Tom Webster may also have been involved in the death of another new arrival to the town after the war.

  Helen nodded. “A fascinating story, don’t you think, Archie? And now, over a century later, we have mysterious goings-on at two properties owned by this little-known man whom Willis suspected of playing such a conspicuous role in the bombardment of Falmouth.” She looked sideways at Lean, whose mouth was tense and contorted.

  “Is something the matter?” she asked.