The Silver Bullet

by Jim DeFelice

  Nonetheless, he was disappointed that van Clynne – who else could it be? – had not believed him and sold him out, which undoubtedly had been the true purpose of his brief conversation outside. Jake was surprised at his own misjudging of character – he had truly believed van Clynne was sincere when he said he would help him.

  With great restraint, he stayed mute in his chair, noting that Herstraw did likewise. Even the two old men took the interruption calmly – until one of the soldiers made the mistake of overturning the game board with his rifle barrel.

  The man who’d been winning came within an inch of strangling the soldier before being restrained. The other remained sitting, though his passionless expression had changed to a great smile.

  Van Clynne reacted to the commotion with casual aplomb, falling from the chair with a start. One of the soldiers’ weapons discharged, which brought the innkeeper running into the room with his pitcher of beer. It was not until the innkeeper’s wife appeared with a rolling pin in her hand and a very stern expression on her face that the scene quieted.

  There were two soldiers for every civilian in the room. They took up positions and trained their weapons as the major straightened his uniform and strode before the fireplace. Jake rose slowly from his chair, stepping over van Clynne to approach the major.

  “Sir –“ started Jake, but the major put up his hand to silence him.

  “You there,” he said to Herstraw. “What’s your name?”

  Herstraw identified himself, and was told to empty his coat pockets. He laid the contents on the table – a handkerchief, a small penknife, and a coin. The officer inspected each item carefully, pausing over the last. He then announced that Herstraw was under arrest as a spy for “His Majesty the King.”

  “You can’t arrest him,” protested van Clynne from the floor.

  Jake silenced him with a stiff kick in the side. Herstraw, with the look of a man who knows the jig is up, began walking with the soldiers out the door. The innkeeper briefly started to protest, but the soldier pushed him back in the doorway. Jake, desiring a closer look at the major’s face in case he still might recognize him, grabbed his arm and asked why Herstraw was being arrested.

  “He’s a known spy,” said the officer. “And unless you want to go and hang with him, you’ll sit back down and shut up.”

  Had he not seen Herstraw’s bag sitting on the floor, Jake might have volunteered to accompany him to jail. As it was, he didn’t move away quickly enough – a soldier caught him in the stomach with a rifle butt, sending him quickly into the chair.

  -Chapter Twenty-one-

  Wherein, the good squire van Clynne reveals that he is in love with sweet Jane, and she, a true patriot, volunteers for service in the American Cause.

  Still trying to catch his breath from the unexpected blow to the stomach, Jake reached over the chair railing and picked Herstraw’s bag up off the floor. With the exception of van Clynne, still rolling on the floor where he’d fallen, the others had gone to the door to watch the Continentals carry off their prisoner. Jake was thus free to rile through the messengers possessions without being labeled a thief.

  He was already working on the problem of reuniting the messenger with his bag and the bullet when he made an unfortunate discovery – there was nothing in the bag except tobacco.

  After feeling through the brown leaves to make sure they did not somehow hide the bullet, Jake flung them into the fireplace, sending a thick, pungent perfume through the room. He searched the empty bag once more for good measure and secret pockets, then flung it, too, into the flames.

  It wasn’t difficult to track the soldiers and their prisoner. They moved down the road guided by torches, and marched without particular haste. Jake’s progress was aided by the fact that van Clynne remained back in the inn, protesting that he had been injured greatly by both the fall and Jake’s boot. The Dutchman said he couldn’t possibly think of moving for at least an hour or two, during which time he would follow what surely would have been a physician’s best advice – drain several large helpings of ale, and receive comforting attention from sweet Jane.

  The reader will be left to imagine that burgeoning love scene while the narrative turns to Jake’s pursuit of the British spy and his American captors. Neither the main road nor the side road where the soldiers turned was populated by more than a few squirrels and some sleeping rabbits, but there was a small schoolhouse located just before a bend in the road leading to a small bridge over the creek. A church had been across the street, but having been destroyed some years before by fire, its congregation had built a new structure in a more convenient location closer to town. The ruins provided a perfect cover for Jake to watch the soldiers as they locked Herstraw in the school and then posted guard – two men in the front, one in the rear. The remaining men, along with the major, proceeded on down the road, whether toward a camp or to look for more traitors, Jake could not tell.

  Herstraw’s capture had been a remarkable piece of work, one that could only be ascribed to the workings of John Jay’s committee against conspiracies. Jake had heard that the committee had sources in every tavern and general store north of New York, but to apprehend the messenger mere minutes after he stopped at Prisco’s – surely the committee must employ the services of a soothsayer. Knowing to look for the identifier or token (obviously the coin) that would show the British that the messenger was authentic was also a clever piece of intelligence. Jake told himself he would have to congratulate Jay the next time he saw him.

  Well, not exactly, since the arrest happened to be directly against American interests. And while Jake knew John Jay well enough, he was likely to have a problem convincing the local militia major to arrange a fake escape without some letter from him. He had only six days left of Schuyler’s deadline; it could take at least that long to find Jay, whose official duties took him all through the valley.

  On the other hand, three men amounted to an almost pitiful small defense, and Jake decided it would be most expedient to proceed on his own. He soon found himself back at the tavern, asking Prisco where the old outhouse had been located.

  “The old outhouse?”

  Some will jump to the wrong conclusions regarding Jake’s next actions, which involved his taking a shovel and a lantern to the site and mucking around in the dirt. But in actual fact, he was working on sound scientific principles. Jake was seeking saltpeter, a critical ingredient of the explosive powder he needed to turn disabling sleep powder into a proper slumber bomb.

  The black gunpowder in his saddlebag already contained about seventy-five percent of the nitrate-rich ingredient; he needed a bit more to make sure the sleeping substance would disperse quickly and as evenly as possible. Ideally, Jake would have used a much finer exploding powder and constructed the bomb casing with a half shell of wood instead of newspaper, but one made do on the battlefield.

  His laboratory was the inn’s kitchen, where the innkeeper, his wife, niece, and the two old gentlemen stood in the doorway, ready to run if something went wrong. Van Clynne, in his typically close-mouthed way, had informed them of the entire nature of the mission during Jake’s absence. He justified this leak on the grounds that the innkeeper’s wife was Dutch; their loyalties therefore were beyond question.

  Considerably more reassuring was Prisco’s revelation that he served on the local committee of correspondence. HE presented some letters and a small wax seal as further evidence: Jake ignored the letters and nodded at the stamp, even though he had no idea what it might really signify. The fact that he was a justice of the peace meant that at least his neighbors trusted him, and Jake would have to do the same.

  Do you recognize the soldiers?” Jake asked as he worked. “Are they from the garrison at White Plains?”

  “No sire, though I’d daresay there are so many troops coming and going from the towns around here that I wouldn’t know them all. They’re not the militia, I’ll tell you that.”

  “I could see from their uniforms. The
y’re brand new.” Jake turned the image of the man who hit him back through his mind’s eye. Not only was the material fresh, but his coat buttons were very fine and shiny; that was rare in patriot camps. Perhaps Washington had finally prevailed upon Congress to appropriate proper sums for the army’s support.

  While the others took Jake’s warning about the volatility of his bombs ingredients to heart, van Clynne stood directly in front of him at the table. The fact that the Dutchman had no idea how the contraption worked did not keep him from offering advice.

  “I would put more gunpowder in.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “For a bigger explosion.”

  “A bigger explosion would throw the ingredients all over the place,” said Jake, sorely tempted to toss a little of the sleeping dust in van Clynne’s direction to make sure it worked properly. “And it might cause more damage than I wish. The trick is to have them mix at the proper moment, but not completely scatter. Trust me, I’ve been making these things since I was ten.”

  When finished, the bomb was about the size of a small fruit pie, with a crude fuse soaked with the potassium nitrate. It wasn’t particularly elegant, and was considerably more clumsy than the small exploding balls he’d used as a lad on his mother’s cat, but it would work well enough.

  As long as they could find a convenient way to get in front of the guards. It was too awkward to throw from any distance.

  “Dress it up as an apple pie,” van Clynne suggested, “and present it to them on a silver platter.”

  “Actually, if we put it in a picnic basket and left it in front of them, it might work. But we’d need to divert their attention somehow.”

  “Simple,” said van Clynne, reaching to a side table where the innkeeper’s pitcher of beer was sitting, “all we need is a beautiful damsel to bring it to them.”

  “And where are we going to get one?”

  “Well, we have one readymade – Jane is not only beautiful, but brave and of fine Dutch stock, as I predicted.”

  Jake’s breath caught in his chest.

  The woman was no doubt most kind and sweet and generous. He would grant without argument that she had the courage of a dozen lions. Undoubtedly she had a full bushel of other fine assets. But Jake, not merely an expert on female beauty, but rather a liberal partaker of it, could find no way of conceding that she had even a shred of this quality, which was so critical to their plan.

  How to say that, though? He was too much a gentleman to insult a lady. Certainly, there was no way to comment directly on her physical charms or lack thereof without directly violating the most sacred rules of conduct.

  “But ...”

  “But what?” van Clynne inquired.

  “Well,” said Jake. “I’m not sure.”

  “True, in the dark, it will be difficult to appreciate the extent of her beauty,” allowed the Dutchman. “But what man would not go weak-kneed as soon as he saw her, even in the shadows? And that would give her the time to leave the basket and then run off, wouldn’t it?”

  “It will be very dark,” Jake conceded. HE glanced over in Jane’s direction, hoping to see that she had fainted with fright at the prospect.

  “If things are as you said, sire, I will gladly help. I would willingly risk my life for the sake of our country’s liberty.”

  She stepped forward and rolled up her sleeves in determination, as if the job were in the bucket of water at her feet.

  The bucket of water at her feet – she didn’t see it, and tumbled forward across the room. As quick as a bee darting into a ripe tulip, van Clynne caught her in midair. He held her for just a moment in a pose at once tender and exceedingly comical; Jake didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  What arguments could he suggest? What impediments to true love admit?

  Hell, if the guards ran from fright, that would work, too.

  “Let’s go then,” he said. “Before they decide to hang our friend.”

  Van Clynne was stationed in the old church ruins with two muskets borrowed from the innkeeper, Jake’s pistol and the Segallas. If the bomb failed to go off, he would raise enough of a ruckus to make it seem as if an entire regiment of Loyalist rangers were coming up the road. Van Clynne was not to hurt anyone, however – these were patriots, after all.

  Jake, meanwhile, would sneak up on the soldier in the rear of the building, grabbing him from behind and administering a handful of sleeping powder when the bomb went off. Besides a reserve of the powder in his snuffbox, his only weapons were the knife tucked into his boot and the other strapped to his coat; he was counting on the youth’s inexperience to make him an easy target.

  A patch of brambles covered the last thirty yards from the woods to the rear of the building. It was slow work getting through them and Jake was only two-thirds of the way when he heard a commotion from the front. Something had gone wrong – Jane was not supposed to arrive for at least five more minutes.

  He dove through the brambles, but it was too late to grab the soldier. The Continental didn’t even hear Jake’s curses – he ran to the front of the building and was immediately cut down by gunfire.

  This wasn’t van Clynne either – a squad of redcoats had seized control of the jail and nearby road. Having made short work of the guards, they brought up a wagon. Jake watched from behind the building as Herstraw was taken and placed in the back.

  He ducked into the brambles and snuck back down the road as two British soldiers did a quick sweep behind the building. Finding nothing, they joined the others marching double-time down the road.

  Who had alerted them? And wasn’t it odd that the wagon had come from the direction the patriots had taken earlier, the same direction they were not going in?

  Jake, extremely good at geometry, did not like the way the angles added up on this rectangle. He slipped quietly back up the road, grabbing Jane as she was walking toward the building.

  “I heard the gunshots,” she said. “What’s going on?”

  Signaling for her to keep quiet, he led her around to the ruins of the church, where they met van Clynne, who’d displayed the eminent good sense in remaining hidden throughout the brouhaha.

  “Now that you’re here, we can take these insolent –“

  “Ssssshhhhhh! Jake insisted. They crouched behind the stones of the foundation, waiting silently. In less than a minute a horse and rider rode up, went past the schoolhouse about a hundred yards, and then returned.

  “All clear!” called the man on horseback.

  Jake had to put his hand out to keep van Clynne from rising. “He’s not talking to us.”

  “Who then?”

  The question was answered by the bodies of the dead soldiers, rising from the dust as if Judgment Day had come.

  “Hurry now,” said the man on horseback to these newly created ghosts. He threw a bundle down from his mount, and the men quickly exchanged their blue coats for red.

  Jake had to clamp his hand back over van Clynne’s mouth to stifle a curse. It was now clear how the Americans had known where to find the British messenger, and what identifier to look for – they weren’t Americans.

  The man on the horse was the fellow who didn’t have the time to talk to me outside the inn,” said van Clynne when the men had gone.

  “He’s the baker in town,” added Jane. “He’s been stopping by the inn every night for the past three days. I must tell my uncle that he’s a traitor. They’ll tar and feather the damn bastard.”

  “Sweet Jane,” protested van Clynne, “such words should not touch your lips.”

  “You can’t move against him now, or they may realize we know about their operation,” Jake warned. “You’ll have to wait until he gives himself away somehow.”

  “We’ll watch the bastard,” said Jane. “And then we’ll crush him.”

  “Now, now, sweet Jane,” said van Clynne, patting her arm gently. “You should really control your emotions. Such words should never come from so beautiful a mouth as yours.
”

  “The British killed my parents. I hate all Tories.”

  “Just so, just so. But a sweet thing like you – no hate should come from your lips. No vile words. Why just speaking those syllables has turned the air around you rancid.”

  “Damn,” said Jake, jumping up and grabbing the picnic basket. “That’s the fuse on the sleeping bomb!”

  -Chapter Twenty-two-

  Wherein, the chase is joined, with much excitement and not a little sleeping.

  Jake caught the smoldering cord just as the nascent flame reached for the fuse and its black powder charge. His fingers were singed, but otherwise he was uninjured.

  Such could not be said of van Clynne or Jane. The pair bore no physical wounds, but the blows they had lately suffered were deeper than any inflicted by a 24-pounder. Cupid had loaded his muzzle with heart-shaped grapeshot, and scored bulls-eyes on both. The results were horrible to see – moon-shaped irises wide open in the starlight, slack jaws, and knees quivering and threatening to buckle. Such a bad case of love sickness had not been seen on the American continent since Pocahontas saved Captain Smith from being the guest of honor at a settler’s roast.

  While unexpected, this development was not without potential benefits – Jake suggested that, van Clynne having kept his end of the bargain, he was no free to pursue other matters.

  “I wouldn’t dream of leaving you until our mission is accomplished,” protested the Dutchman as they returned to the inn for their horses. “You can’t overpower these redcoats by yourself.”

  “I don’t intend on overpowering them,” answered Jake, who wasn’t quite sure yet what he did intend, but was confident he would think of something.

  “I know every Dutch man and woman from here to the tip of Long Island. I’m related to half of them, and the other half are as good as relatives.”