Guns of Liberty
Authors: Kerry Newcomb
The Medal, Book One
Kerry Newcomb
For Patty, Amy Rose, and. P. J.
Prologue
April 29, 1775
“E
IGHT.
“Nine.
“Ten!”
Daniel McQueen pivoted on his left foot. His right arm came up, and when it was extended he reflexively squeezed the trigger. The dueling pistol thundered in his fist. Twenty paces away, Jacques Flambeau simultaneously turned and fired. Daniel flinched as a bullet fanned the air inches from his cheek. The gunshots were deafening within the confines of the abandoned barn. A pair of owls roosting in the weather-rotted roof beams fluttered upward through the remains of the roof and lost themselves against the sunlit Canadian sky.
Flambeau staggered backward as the 50-caliber ball struck him in the side. The French Canadian slammed against a stall gate, pulled himself erect, and stumbled toward the Highlander.
Daniel lowered his pistol as a trail of acrid-smelling powder smoke curled from the barrel to dissipate in the still air. Molten golden beams of sunlight filtered through the cracks in the barn’s battered walls and transformed motes of dust into spinning stars.
A man of thirty-four, Daniel McQueen had not only cultivated all the skills necessary for survival in the wilds, he also had an eye for pretty ladies, a thirst for strong drink, and a habit of finding trouble. This time trouble was a jealous French Canadian sea captain by the name of Jacques Flambeau. Daniel hadn’t wanted this duel. But what had begun as an afternoon’s dalliance with a pretty lass had become an ugly affair of honor between the captain and Daniel.
As echoes faded into distant thunder, Flambeau stumbled, faltered another couple of steps, and dropped his dueling pistol. The weapon thudded on the hard-packed earth. The dying man dragged his steps through straw and mud. His windburned features contorted in pain.
“
Mon Dieu
,” Flambeau gasped. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. A crimson stain spread across the front of his mustard-colored, brocaded waistcoat. “Valerie … I am killed,” the French Canadian managed to say. “Oh—to see once more—”
He groaned and sank to his knees, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he fell forward. The dead man hit hard enough to crack his nose. By then, however, of course, Flambeau was beyond pain.
Daniel glanced toward the other two men in the barn: Jacques Flambeau’s older brothers. They had tried and failed to talk Jacques out of the confrontation. Justin and Sevier Flambeau were hardened types who’d made their fortunes as voyageurs and outfitters. They feared no man alive, least of all this dark-eyed Scotsman, no matter how strapping his build.
Daniel walked across to the man he had killed. He knelt and placed his big hand upon Flambeau’s blood-soaked chest and sighed in sad resignation. “I wanted none of this,” he said, loud enough for Justin and Sevier to hear.
“Then you should not have come to this barn, monsieur,” Sevier, the eldest, replied. He hooked his thumbs in the broad leather belt circling his ample middle.
“And have your brother brand me a coward? Honor is the one possession a poor man clings to. It makes him the equal of any king.” Daniel drew back and, with his hand moist and shiny with blood, started toward the entrance to the barn. Justin Flambeau, a round-faced, muscular man a few years younger than Daniel, moved to block the duelist’s escape. Daniel did not slow his pace but continued through the barn until he and the voyageur stood a few feet apart. Daniel came from brawny stock, mountain folk who’d fought to hold their land and beliefs for hundreds of years.
“You are in my way,” Daniel said. The voyageur’s hand curled around the hilt of a long knife sheathed at his waist. Daniel noted the movement and tensed. It fell to Sevier to defuse the situation. The eldest Flambeau spoke up.
“
Mon frère
, we too know the meaning of honor,
oui
? This is not the time or the place.”
Justin reluctantly stepped aside, permitting Daniel to pass unimpeded. Daniel emerged into the sundrenched morning and found that his horse was where he had left it, the animal’s reins tied to a red oak. Opposite the animal another three horses were tethered to a wagon wheel that had been buried up to the hub in the soft earth. A gig drawn by a single mare blocked the wheel-rutted road that led from the abandoned farm to the outskirts of Montreal, with its brick two-and three-storied homes and shops that stood sun-washed and peaceful-looking along the majestic St. Lawrence River.
Valerie Rulonne sat within the gig, a carriage just large enough for two. Her face was powdered and slightly rouged, her hair immaculately coiffed, and she wore a gown of pale blue brocade appropriately laced and ruffled. Daniel would never forget the look of horror in her eyes as he walked across the overgrown farmyard where children might have once played or tended to their chores. There were no children now, only adults whose tragic escapades had bloodied the sunrise.
Valerie Rulonne was indeed surprised that Daniel had survived the duel, for Jacques Flambeau was noted as a crack shot and an expert hunter. Surprise quickly turned to black rage, and her lip curled back in a menacing and most unladylike snarl. She gave the lines a savage tug and tried to turn the gig back on the road toward town, but Daniel hurried over and caught the mare by the bridle to prevent the woman’s escape.
“How dare you, monsieur! Unhand my horse this instant.”
She grabbed for the whip at her side and lashed her former lover unmercifully on his shoulders and raised forearms. Daniel endured her blows in silence. He stepped closer to her and with a well-timed move wrested the whip from her grasp and threw it to the ground. Then, with his right hand still moist and crimson, he held her and smeared the blood of Jacques Flambeau across her powdered face. Valerie struggled to free herself from him. Daniel released his hold as she doubled over and retched, spewing her hastily eaten breakfast over her gown and her buttoned shoes.
“Miserable bastard.”
Daniel ran his clean hand through his unruly red mane and windburned features and winced as the welts on his forearms rubbed against the tattered remnants of his shirtsleeve. He gingerly examined his flesh wounds. She’d peeled his arms and shoulders well enough. Now they each had something to remember the other by.
“His blood is on my hands and your heart, lass. Time will tell which is easier to wash clean,” Daniel told her. He retrieved the whip and tossed it onto the floor of the gig as Valerie buried her face in her hands and sobbed out of anger, sorrow, and frustration. Daniel left her to her grief. He was anxious to quit this place before someone else attempted to peel his hide or put a bullet in him.
Sevier and Justin watched him from the remains of the doorway of the dilapidated structure. Clouds scudding across the face of the sun placed the brothers in shadow while Daniel remained in sunlight. They watched him without speaking, but their sullen, brooding faces betrayed their thoughts. Both men were loath to allow their brother’s killer to simply ride away. And yet they were bound by a strict code of conduct to allow just that. However, once the Scotsman reached the city, he was fair game. They knew it and so did Daniel McQueen.
Mounting his bay gelding, he rounded the carriage and pointed his horse toward Montreal. He slapped his tricorn hat against the rump of his gelding and the animal broke into a brisk gallop, carrying its rider past the overgrown pasture, the remnants of a fire-gutted farmhouse, and on into the city.
Time had little meaning in Lower Montreal: The traffic of hard men and loose women among the bawdy houses and taverns and brothels rarely let up, day or night. Ships rode at anchor alongside sturdy piers. Wagonloads of pelts were drawn up to overflowing warehouses. Voyageurs invaded these darkened streets to blow off steam in wanton celebration. Rivermen and seafarers called Lower Montreal their home for as long as they lingered in port and coins jingled in their pockets. It was a place of few questions: A man was whomever he claimed to be and from wherever he chose to be. Lower Montreal was a good place to hide. Everyone was passing through and bound for hard times, adventure, perhaps even riches in the wild Americas.
Daniel Christopher McQueen struggled to sleep in his room above the Cock’s Crow Tavern. He had drunk himself into a stupor and still saw Jacques Flambeau’s face—so totally surprised when confronted with his own mortality. Daniel was still dressed in the same boots, black breeches, and torn linsey-woolsey white shirt he’d worn at the barn. He sat in bed with his long legs outstretched upon the covers and a couple of down pillows tucked behind him. He stared sullenly at the empty bottle at the foot of the bed, blaming it for his lack of sleep. He hadn’t even been able to work up a decent case of dizziness to blot out the face of the man he had killed.
“The damn fool,” Daniel muttered to the silent room. “I aimed for his shoulder. Not my fault he stepped in front of my bullet.” His voice was filled with suppressed anger.
This excursion into Canada had proved disastrous. Henchmen from the Hudson Bay Company had robbed his traps, destroyed his equipment, and been his ruin. Now this damn duel. At least his food and lodgings were paid for here at the Cock’s Crow. But he had no illusions. The generosity of the man he was waiting for always carried a high price.
Still, Daniel had no place else in the city to go, and he was curious. So, for now, the Cock’s Crow would do. The bedroom’s furnishings were austere, consisting of a bed, an end table built of maple, and a single high-backed chair near the door. A white china pitcher and a basin, both chipped, had been left on the end table. Music played on fife and concertina drifted up through the floorboards along with the rowdy noises of the customers below.
Daniel listened to the gravelly voices raised in a voyageur’s song but found no joy in the revelry. He had no desire to join them, not tonight with a man’s death and the high cost of honor weighing upon his conscience.
The rasp of a sliding wooden latch alerted him. The devil is at the door, he mused grimly, and lifted a brace of pistols from the end table. These were balanced weapons, of plain, simple Pennsylvanian construction, rifled and deadly accurate despite their shortened barrels. He called them his “Quakers” because the guns could be counted on to keep the peace, turning his enemies into “friends.”
The oaken door creaked on its iron hinges and swung back to reveal a tall, spare figure feebly outlined against the dimly lit hall. He was draped in a deep brown cloak that swept to the floor, and his features were shadowed by a flat-brimmed hat that he tilted back from his forehead as he entered the room. He was not a handsome man: His features were sharply drawn and dominated by a beakish nose. A patch covered his left eye. His cheeks were sunken, his neck scrawny. The man’s long arms ended in broad bony hands.
Daniel knew him in an instant, for their paths had crossed and recrossed since the French and Indian War.
“Major Josiah Meeks.” Daniel kept his pistols trained on the British officer, a fact that did not escape Meeks’s attention. “You were just a powder flash away from losing your other eye.”