by Ron Carter
He started to rise when a wrenching seized his chest. His left leg buckled and he went to his hands and knees on the cement floor. He tried to rise but his left arm and leg were numb and would take no weight. Instantly a grab of white hot pain struck beneath his sternum and he tipped onto his side, writhing, reaching to grasp at his chest with his right hand as the sure knowledge flashed in his mind.
Stroke! I’m dying!
There was no panic, only the instant decision of what he must yet do. He tried to call out but the pain in his chest would not let him draw enough breath into his lungs. He tried to drag his body to the door but there was not enough strength left in his right leg and arm. He rolled back towards the desk, then gathered his right leg beneath himself and reached with his right hand to pull open the single middle drawer until it fell spilling onto the floor. He slumped back into a sitting position and quickly sorted through the confusion of small office things that scattered, and seized a paper pad and the stub of a pencil, then pulled the drawer onto his lap. Spots were dancing before his eyes as he positioned the pad on the drawer and forced the fingers of his right hand to pick up the pencil. Sweat was forming on his forehead and lip as he began to write, his useless left arm dangling. By force of iron will he moved the pencil clumsily to form one word at a time. The searing pain struck inside his chest again and he lost consciousness for one moment, shook his head, and focused his eyes once more, and finished the brief writing. His right hand relaxed and the pencil dropped onto the pad as his head tipped forward, and warm, friendly blackness came reaching for him.
At twenty minutes past nine o’clock General Hollins rapped on the office door, waited, rapped again, then opened the door to peer into the small room. He gasped, recovered, and a look of sadness crossed his face as he took two steps forward and knelt beside the body of Colonel Otis Purcell.
He was still sitting, head dropped forward, chin on his chest. The upside-down drawer was across his lap with the pad centered, the pencil lying beside it. His right hand was curled near the pencil, his left arm hanging limp, left hand on the cement floor.
Hollins gently laid the body on the floor and removed his own tunic to respectfully cover the face. Then he reached for the pad to read the few scrawled words.
Jan 2 1777. I am Otis Purcell. I am dying. I leave all my worldly possessions to Mary Flint. Signed, Colonel Otis Purcell.
South of Princeton
January 2, 1777
CHAPTER XV
The temperature had risen thirty-five degrees the previous afternoon, and in the evening, gray storm clouds had rolled in to seal the heavens. Through the night, a soft, warm rain had fallen steadily, quietly, then slowed and stopped. The storm clouds that had hung heavy through the night were thinning, and stars were showing, dull pinpoints in the swirling overcast. The snow on the ground was turning to slush, with pools of melt-water gathering in the low places as Eli stopped in a grove of maple and oak trees. Billy stopped beside him, and reached to grasp the cheek-strap of the brown gelding to hold it quiet. The silence was broken by the steady drip of countless icicles melting in the leafless tree branches all around them.
Both men were wet to the knees, and wet snow had packed and balled inside the horseshoes of the gelding. It stood beside Billy, moving its ears nervously, irritated at having been taken from a warm stall with hay and water in the middle of the night for no reason it could understand. Billy spoke to it softly and it settled. Both men listened intently for a time, but the only sounds were the dripping of the ice and the breathing of the horse as they silently picked their way north to the edge of the grove and again stopped.
The small town of Princeton lay half a mile farther north, ghostly in the light of the partially hidden quarter moon, the town lights showing behind the drawn curtains of a few scattered homes. On the near edge of town more than a hundred fires burned at spaced intervals, showing the orderly rows of the white tents of the British camp before them.
Eli spoke. “The British generals and high officers are in homes in town. Most of the soldiers are in those tents. Some captains and lieutenants are in the big ones.” He raised his arm to point. “Over there at the east end of the camp they got about two hundred horses, some tied to ropes between trees, most held inside a rope pen.” He shifted his point. “At the west end are eight wagons filled with kegs of gunpowder. They got pickets out watching both the horses and wagons.”
He paused and turned to Billy. “I think I can get to the gunpowder and set some of it off. If I do, that ought to draw enough attention to let you get to the horses at the other end of camp. Cut the ropes and lead the whole bunch running through the middle of camp and make all the noise you can. I’ll be waiting in the woods out past where the explosions will be. Pick me up and we’ll ride double down to Five Mile Run and join de Fermoy and the ones Washington sent there.”
Eli paused and scratched at his beard for a moment. “That ought to slow the British down some. Got any better ideas?”
Billy pondered for a moment. “How many pickets at the wagons?”
“Eight.”
“Can you get past them and set off the gunpowder?”
Eli shrugged. “If I get there before it’s too light and catch them by surprise. You got the worst of it. After the powder blows, everybody’s going to be wide-awake and watching. It won’t be easy to get to the horses.”
Billy weighed his chances. “Maybe. I think they’ll be looking west, where the fire and smoke are. One thing’s certain. If we’re going to do it, we better get started.”
Eli took a deep breath. “When I go west, you go east. Keep the gelding quiet.” He paused for a moment. “If something goes wrong, will you find Mary? Tell her I surely do wish her well.”
Billy heard the urgency in Eli’s voice. “I will. You better get moving.”
Eli turned westward and was gone. Billy paused to tie the right leather bridle rein around the muzzle of the brown horse to stop any chance of a whicker or call, then turned east and threaded his way through the trees, leading the horse by the left rein.
The eastern sky was still black when Eli dropped behind a low growth of scrub oak at the west end of the sprawling British camp. He was less than one hundred yards from the nearest wagon, silhouetted by the fires two hundred yards further east, high and unreal in the night. He opened his mouth to breathe silently while he watched and listened for the pickets. One passed, then two, their boots making sucking noises in the slush and mud of the melted snow. He moved fifty yards north, facing the wagon farthest north in the line, and once again stopped to wait, watching, again counting the pickets.
Still eight. I have to get the first four to reach the wagons.
Hunched low, rifle in his left hand, tomahawk in his right, placing his feet carefully for silence, he came in fast. The first picket was turning when the flat of the tomahawk struck the crown of his head and he went down silently in a heap. Eli paused only long enough to be certain the picket was not moving, then turned towards the next one, forty yards away, near the second wagon. Eli groaned out loud as he moved away five yards and stopped, crouched low, waiting.
The second picket unslung his musket and came at a trot calling, “Robbie? What’s wrong? Robbie?”
The last thing he heard was the sound of a footstep behind him in the mucky snow before the flat of Eli’s tomahawk slammed down in the center of his hat. His knees buckled and he pitched headlong into the snow and mud less than eight feet from the first picket. Again Eli paused only long enough to be certain the men were not moving, then moved away quickly and once again dropped to the ground, waiting.
No one came in the silence, and Eli cupped his hand around his mouth and called, “Robbie? Where are you?”
Ten seconds later two pickets came charging, muskets at the ready. One stumbled over the two men on the ground and went to his knees cursing while the other one tried to stop too quickly, slipping in the snow and mud. The one on his knees started to rise, looked down, exclaimed,
“They’re both here.”
For a moment both pickets stared at the black shapes on the ground, unable to understand how they got there. Realization hit them both at once and one opened his mouth to shout an alarm just as Eli’s tomahawk arced in the dull moonlight, and the man went down. The other one frantically grabbed for the hammer on his Brown Bess musket, then threw his arm upward over his head as the tomahawk flashed downward one more time. Lights exploded in his head as the flat of the blade smashed into his hat and he went down.
Four!
Eli left the pickets where they had fallen and sprinted towards the high-walled, heavy wagon. He vaulted into the box, seized the first keg of gunpowder and swung his tomahawk with all his strength. The wooden top splintered and Eli shook all the gunpowder out, spreading it at random over other kegs and onto the wagon floor. He threw the empty keg aside and smashed the tops out of the next two, again shaking the gunpowder out all over the remaining kegs. More than one hundred yards to the south, the remaining four pickets raised their heads to stare into the darkness, puzzled at the unexplained sounds, and they started north at a trot.
Eli seized a fourth keg and knocked the bung out of it, spilled out some of the powder, then set the keg down on its side. He crouched in the wagon box, cocked his rifle, held the powder pan low to the spilled gunpowder, raised the rifle muzzle to clear the end of the wagon, and pulled the trigger.
The rifle crack echoed in the darkness as the powder flared in the pan. The flash caught the gunpowder spilled in the wagon box and ignited it. The orange flame blossomed and hissed, and instantly Eli leaped from the wagon box, sprinting eastward hard for sixty feet before he dived headlong into the mud and rolled into a ball with his hands over his ears and his back to the wagon.
Inside the wagon box, the fire spread quickly through the spilled powder and reached the keg with the bung knocked out, and the hissing flame burned into the open hole. The keg exploded and ruptured four others clustered around it, and they exploded, and all the others blew. Flame and splintered wood were blasted three hundred feet into the air, lighting the night sky for miles. The wagon box was shattered, the axles splintered, the spokes blown out of the six-foot wheels, the hubs thrown outward sixty feet. Eli felt the sharp jolt as the concussion wave struck him in the back and rolled over him. The four pickets running towards the wagon were knocked sliding backwards thirty feet in the mud, stunned, disoriented. Tents at the near end of the camp were thrown down, and those at the far end of the camp were set flapping as the wave passed, into the open countryside. Windows in Princeton rattled, and seconds later lights came on in town.
Eli rolled onto his feet and watched as the remaining four pickets, all on the west side of the wagons, rose dripping from the mud, and came trotting north towards the scattered, burning wreckage, trying to force their numb minds to work. Eli, on the east side of the line of wagons, waited until he counted four pickets moving north, then spun on his heel and sprinted south to the last wagon. Once again he leaped into the wagon box and smashed three kegs and scattered the gunpowder over everything, then knocked out the bung of a fourth one and set it down. He quickly filled the pan of his rifle from the spilled powder, slapped it shut, cocked the hammer without loading either powder or ball in the barrel, lowered the pan to the heaped gunpowder, and pulled the trigger. The powder in the pan flared and ignited the gunpowder on the wagon floor. The moment it caught Eli leaped over the side and once again sprinted, this time eighty feet to the west, towards the trees and brush, and dived. He rolled into a ball, hands over his ears, back to the wagon.
At the east end of camp Billy crouched in a shallow ditch eighty yards from the rope pen holding one hundred eighty horses. To the right of the rope pen, twenty-two horses owned by the officers were tied to a rope line stretched between two trees. Billy held a firm hand on the cheek-strap of the bridle on the brown horse, and watched the pickets, black silhouettes against the glow of the campfires farther west. The British horses were settled, standing still, knees locked, dozing in the unseasonable warmth that had turned the ground inside the pen to a morass of mud and horse droppings six inches deep. He counted the pickets once more—ten of them—and cast an anxious glance at the moon, white in the black of night.
Where is he? Did they catch him? Catch Eli in the dark? Not likely. Then where is he?
The great flaming mushroom leaped into the sky at the far end of camp and Billy gasped, wide-eyed. The brown gelding jerked back against Billy’s hold on the cheek-strap, ears pricked, eyes white-rimmed with fear, feet stuttering in the soft snow and mud. Billy caught the reins just below the bit and pulled hard, talking low to the horse, when the shock wave came rolling past.
The horses in the rope pen reared back away from the fireball in the heavens, and when the concussion wave hit them, they turned to run. They hit the rope, and the pickets shouted and waved their arms to hold them inside the enclosure. Slowly the herd backed away, milling, snorting, prancing in their fear while the pickets continued to wave and talk to them, trying to settle them.
Billy untied the muzzle of the brown and swung up into the saddle, musket held across his thighs.
One more. Come on, Eli. One more.
He heard the bits and pieces of splintered wagon and powder kegs begin to rain down on the camp, and he saw the British soldiers come boiling out of their tents, stunned, half dressed, peering west at the glow of the burning remains of the wagon. The officers burst from their tents to stare dumbstruck.
One more. I’ve got to have—
The second blast lighted the dark heavens almost two hundred yards south of the first one, and instantly the terrified horses in the rope pen reared back away from the great mushroom of flame and turned, snorting, whickering, prancing, ears working back and forth. The pickets closed in against the pen, screaming at the horses, waving their arms to keep them from running through the rope, and the horses turned around, heading west.
In the chaotic bedlam, Billy shouted and kicked the frightened brown gelding in the flanks and it bolted out of the shallow ditch and into a high run straight at the rope pen. At that moment the second concussion wave slammed into the horse herd. Their hooves dug into the wet muck and they turned once more, confused, terrified, and started for the east side of the rope enclosure at a run. The frantic pickets shouted and waved their arms, then fired their muskets into the air to turn them. In the face of the blasting muskets and the muzzle flame, the leaders set their front legs stiff and dropped their hindquarters to stop, and those coming behind plowed into them, then slowed. Slipping, stumbling, the herd turned to the right and ran along the rope with those behind following.
None of the pickets saw Billy racing in from behind. Hunched low over the neck of the racing brown, he swept past them, moving the same direction as the horses in the enclosure. The herd hit the rope on the west side of the pen, sliding, slipping, trying to stop, and began to pile up. Billy hauled the brown to a sliding halt and leaned from his saddle with his belt knife in his hand. In one stroke he cut the taut rope circling the tree trunk and the herd came streaming through the opening. Shouting, Billy slammed into the leaders and broke through to the front, and the herd fell in behind him, strung out, following as the brown raced west. There was no time to get to the twenty-two horses tethered nearby, and Billy didn’t try. He glanced over his shoulder once and the one hundred eighty horses were there, running behind, following his lead. He spurred the brown to a stampede gait, straight down the thirty-foot-wide gap that divided the two rows of military tents, the herd thundering right behind.
The British soldiers standing between the tent rows staring west at the fires and the great clouds of smoke felt the ground shudder, heard the pounding of hooves from behind, and turned to see the wild-eyed horses stampeding straight at them. They tried to dive to one side; some made it, others did not. The horses behind the leaders could not see ahead and they stampeded to the right or left only to get tangled in the tents and the tie-down ropes, and they w
ent down head over heels, ripping the tents from their pegs. They tore past the two big command tents with mud flying, and half a dozen horses plowed into the canvas sides, jerking the pegs and tie-down ropes out of the ground in their blind run. The great tents collapsed in on themselves, covering the officers and the horses in one great terrified, writhing mass.
Billy’s brown gelding held the pace, legs driving, neck outstretched, ears laid back, and forelock flying while Billy shouted with all his strength as he crouched low in the saddle and gave the horse free rein, kicking it in the flanks at every stride with the wind whistling in his ears. They flashed past the tents and the campfire at the center of the camp, and then they were three-quarters of the way through. Then the last tents whipped past and they were running free towards the shadowy light of the burning wreckage of the two wagons, with the six remaining wagons between. Billy straightened in the saddle to take the slack out of the reins and brought the brown horse under control.
The pickets near the burning hulks of the two wagons swung around at the sound of the oncoming herd and stood still, baffled by the sight of more than half the horse herd streaming west in the night. They saw a mounted rider leading, but in the darkness could not identify who—friend or foe—and they watched the horses run thundering between the six wagons, out into the open field beyond, where they began to scatter. None of the pickets raised a musket as they watched the animals disappear in the darkness.
Billy pulled the brown down to a controlled run, angling west, standing tall while he peered into the black tree line.
Where is he? Where is he? He’s got to be here!
Fifty yards to his left a dark shape broke running from the trees and Billy held his breath for a moment until he saw the arm waving. He turned towards the oncoming figure and then hauled back solid on the reins and brought the brown to a stiff-legged, sliding halt, mushy snow and mud flying. Billy kicked his left foot free of the stirrup as Eli tossed his rifle to him. Eli jammed his left foot into the stirrup and swung up behind Billy, and Billy raised the brown to a controlled run, turning southwest to stay out of the trees. He held the pace for three minutes, feeling the steady reach and gather of the brown’s legs as it ran, then came back on the reins and brought it to a stop. The horse stood spraddle-legged, mud-splattered, sides heaving from its run. Eli slid to the ground and ran five paces away from the gasping of the winded horse, where he turned his head and closed his eyes to listen for two full minutes. Billy stood tall in the stirrups, eyes searching to the north for any pinpoints of light that could be the British following with lanterns. There was no sound of pursuit, and no lights followed.
