Guns of Liberty (15 page)

Wiley’s companion was silently retracing the route they’d taken from Springtown, knowing Josiah Meeks expected an accurate report. The British officer was certainly not a man to disappoint.

“Al?”

“Shut up!”

“You’ve no call—”

“Shut up! I see something down there.” Dees was bone tired and in an increasingly sour mood.

Wiley glowered and continued to study the barn. He’d take orders from Meeks right enough, but heaven help Dees if he tried to lord it over his younger friend. He felt proud that he had discovered where the rebels cached their weapons and gunpowder. Obtaining such crucial information was a feather in his cap. He peered through the spyglass.

“Looks like a bunch of damn women,” he muttered to himself.

Sister Hope nearly slipped in the mud. She managed to brace herself on Gideon’s strong back and kept from setting her ample derriere smack in the middle of the mud. She rubbed the back of her neck and glanced over her shoulder.

“You and your suspicious nature,” Sister Eve complained. The big-boned farm woman stood aside as Peter Crowe and Tim Pepperidge guided the Sicilian wagon into the barn.

“My neck is never wrong,” said Sister Agnes, the beekeeper.

“What about the Huron war party that turned out to be goats in the bramble bush?”

“They were ill-tempered goats, mean as any Huron as I recall,” Agnes said defensively.

Sister Eve chuckled and held her broad hands palms up in an attitude of surrender. The levity helped to ease the tension. Every time Eve entered the barn and saw all the munitions stored there, a tightness formed in the pit of her stomach.

Eve had been called by God to form this community of women, called to live in harmony and peace, to promote the teachings of Christ through example. One of those teachings had been a doctrine of peace. Was this any way to live the doctrine? The question bothered her.

Eve followed the wagon into the barn. Eben and Barnabas had already dismounted and brought their horses out of the rain. The brothers quickly doffed their sodden hats as first Eve, then Hope, entered the lantern-lit interior. Sister Eve smiled. She recognized their nervousness. Men were frequently ill at ease in the company of the Daughters of Phoebe. Many considered it unnatural for them to have withdrawn from worldly ways to live in a closed community.

Now it seems the world has come to us
, Eve thought as she studied the wagon loaded with rifles.

“We’ll not be unloading the wagon,” Peter Crowe called out as he freed the team of mares from the singletree and took them to a couple of empty stalls at the rear of the barn. “The hour is close at hand when these rifles will arm the forces of liberty.”

“I shall rest easier when we have our barn back.” Eve sighed, eyeing the crowded stalls and central aisle.

Crowe and young Pepperidge were forced to ease past the wagon wheels. There was barely room for the two men to sidle past.

“You’ll need more than one wagon to load all this.” Sister Hope brushed the rain from her gray cloak and shook the droplets from her cowl.

“We’ll have them,” Barnabas said gruffly.

“And a continental army to receive them, mark my words,” Pepperidge enthusiastically spoke up. “With Colonel George Washington to lead us, if those dunderheads in Philadelphia will ever make up their minds.”

“Some say it’s to be John Hancock,” Eben muttered.

“Then we’re lost before we set out,” Pepperidge countered.

Another figure appeared in the doorway. It was Sister Mercy, who carried a covered basket and a steaming teapot. She lifted her doelike gaze and settled it on Tim Pepperidge, who stared in almost complete disbelief. He had always figured the Daughters of Phoebe to be a bunch of religious old spinsters and widows. Here was as fair a flower as blossomed in any garden, despite her somber gray habit.

“I brought bread and cheese and half a ham,” Mercy said. “And something to drink. I thought it would be all right.” She glanced meekly toward Sister Hope, who moved to help her, taking the basket from the girl’s slender hands.

“Well done, child,” Sister Eve commended her. Turning to the men by the Sicilian wagon, she invited them to remain. “You’ll be waiting out the rain with us.”

“Mighty kind of you,” said the militiaman Peter Crowe. He unlatched and lowered the wagon’s end gate, which when braced on its two unfolded legs provided a table on which to place the basket of food.

“’Twas indeed a long and hungry ride out here,” Eben Schraner said, trudging across the barn, his older brother at his heels. Eben scratched his bearded jowls, then smoothed back his rain-matted hair and wiped his hands on his linsey-woolsey shirt. He might be the smaller of the two brothers, but he could hold his own at any dinner table and aimed to prove it tonight.

Sister Mercy sliced a wedge of cheese and a slab of ham and added a slice of crusty brown bread to the plate she held. The girl gingerly stepped aside from the end gate and offered the plate to Pepperidge. He blushed, then stiffly bowed, mumbled his thanks, and headed for a stall away from the bemused scrutiny of Crowe and the Schraner brothers. Mercy went with him, drawn by that most powerful attraction of youth.

Sister Eve, being the nominal leader of the religious community, started after her young charge, to remove her from temptation. Hope restrained the larger woman. Eve frowned in anger. It didn’t last long, though, for Hope’s smile was as infectious as her hold was firm. Eve slowly exhaled, and warmth returned to her features. Though it remained unspoken, both women seemed in agreement that Mercy could not be mothered all her life. Was she not under the Good Lord’s protection? And if she chose, even in her innocence, another path from the one she now traveled here among the Daughters, then wasn’t that the will of God?

Eben Schraner hunkered down, braced himself against the wagon wheel, and began to devour his food with all the gusto of a man who hadn’t eaten in a week. He’d spent enough time on the frontier to learn to fill his belly whenever the opportunity presented itself. He’d spent a winter once in the north woods when meals were few and far between.

He wolfed down a mouthful of bread, ham and reached for his mug of tea, and came face to muzzle with Gideon. In his haste to eat, Eben had forgotten the mastiff’s presence. The dog growled and bared its fangs, one by one. Eben’s blood ran cold, and he froze, the mug of tea raised chest high.

“I think he likes you,” Sister Hope said as she helped herself to a cup of tea.

“Yeah, as what, dinner?” Eben asked hoarsely.

“Maybe he’s hungry.” Crowe could afford to be amused; the huge hound wasn’t threatening him.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Eben said. A swarm of howling mad Hurons couldn’t have budged him. Suddenly the mastiff lunged forward. Eben stifled a scream and closed his eyes. Gideon’s massive jaws snapped up the wedge of farm cheese from Eben’s plate.

Eben opened his eyes and was relieved to see he still had two hands. Gideon, with tail wagging, retreated to a stall, where he happily devoured his find.

“Gideon’s partial to cheese,” Sister Hope explained. “There’s nothing he wouldn’t do or fight for a chunk of it.”

Crowe and Barnabas, though amused by Eben’s plight, suddenly exchanged worried glances and then as one took the cheese from their plates and tossed the morsels to the beast in its stall.

Sister Hope had to turn away to keep from laughing. She walked away from the wagon and returned to the barn doors the men had shut against the rain. She opened one of the big doors a crack and peered out into the night. Her humor faded and the hairs prickled on the back of her neck. Maybe she was just getting old and frail of nerve. After all, who would be out on a night like this?

T
WO RIDERS IN THE
gloom guided their mounts by instinct along the mud-slick road toward Springtown. It was hard going, no easy feat to stay in the saddle and keep the horses from losing their footing on the treacherous, wheel-rutted surface. The rain had come and gone. A cool downpour had renewed the creeks and washed the surrounding woods and left them glistening. The moon strove to reveal itself from behind the ominous drifting clouds and cast ghostly shadows upon the road while serpentine silhouettes writhed and played among the brooding oaks. The ghostly aspects of such a summer’s night only seemed to spur the men onward.

Al Dees and Mose Wiley rode with reckless abandon. They were young, with delusions of immortality. They were eager to prove themselves to Major Josiah Meeks. They had succeeded in discovering the rebels’ hiding place where other Tory agents had failed. The hours in the rain, the rigors of a midnight ride, the discomfort and loss of sleep had all been worth it.

I want nothing more now than to see the look on the faces of O’Flynn and Chaney and Black Tolbert when I tell the major what I’ve discovered
, Dees thought to himself. He was bone tired from the ride and would have searched out a hideaway in which to sleep out the night were it not for his companion. Wiley had the constitution of an ox. He never seemed to need sleep. Dees knew that Wiley would be only too happy to continue on, present their information to the British officer, and gather all the laurels for himself. Dees was not about to let that happen.
If it weren’t for me, Wiley would have blundered into the farm and alerted the damn rebels.
So Dees had no recourse but to press on and match his indefatigable companion stride for stride.

Not long now
, Wiley encouraged himself, making a mental picture of the road ahead and the village waiting less than an hour’s ride along the road. The next landmark along this desolate stretch of road was the wooden bridge across Roemer’s Creek.
Just on the other side of this rise, if my memory serves me well. I’ll tell Meeks what I’ve discovered, then find me a jack of rum and a willing wench if there be one in all that cursed village.

The horsemen cleared the forest, topped the gentle sweep of rolling landscape, rounded a barren knoll, and then followed the Springtown road as it wound down through grassland to a stand of trees half a mile ahead. These woods stretched to either side of the road like silent sentinels guarding the creek in their midst. The tired horses smelled the creek and, anticipating a chance for a drink of the rain-fed waters and perhaps a brief respite, quickened their pace.

“The bridge,” Dees shouted. He’d been as eager for the landmark as his companion. Their journey was nearing its end; Springtown seemed within reach.
Another hour at the most,
Dees decided. Nothing would stop them now.

The night’s downpour had transformed the normally tranquil creek into a rushing torrent fed by the rains and the runoff from the already saturated ground. But the flat bridge was built of sturdy timbers, and though uncovered, twin rails to either side offered security for the passerby. Wide enough for two horsemen abreast, the bridge could handle only a single wagon at a time. The road widened at either end of the bridge, providing ample room for a freight wagon to pull aside, allowing oncoming traffic to pass unencumbered. Years of travel had widened both clearings, forced back the surrounding woods, and trampled the grasses there.

A cloak-wrapped figure stood among the trees at the north end of the bridge just beyond the clearing. A solitary man, he strove to clear his mind of the turbulent thoughts and images and fears, to free himself from questions and doubts. So much had already happened this night, and more lay ahead. Daniel McQueen had lost Wiley and Dees somewhere along the road to the Daughters’ farm and had turned back rather than blunder into a bad situation and make it worse. Daniel was gambling that the two men following the panel wagon would use the same route back to Springtown. He had begun to question his decision to wait at the bridge when the moon cleared a cloudbank and illuminated the road and the approaching riders in its spectral glare. Daniel mounted the horse he’d taken from Albright’s barn. He hoped his absence from the minister’s house went unnoticed. But that was now beyond his control. He inhaled, slowly exhaled, and cleared his mind.

Daniel rode to the center of the bridge. The animal was made skittish by the flooded creek rushing below. Daniel gentled the animal with a soothing word and a stroke of his hand. Then he pulled his broad-brimmed hat lower to hide his features and tugged the “scarecrow’s” cloak he had brought from the tavern up about his broad shoulders. He drew the pistols from his belt and cocked them, held them at the ready beneath the folds of the cloak.

His “Quakers” were a familiar weight to his hands, the walnut grips smooth to the touch. They had been passed to him by a dying colonial frontiersman during Braddock’s murderous retreat during the war with the French and Hurons. The weapons were Daniel’s now and to his way of thinking had a kind of life of their own, as if they had chosen him.

No matter now; there was a bloody business at hand, and the guns of Daniel McQueen must prove themselves again.

The splash of iron-shod hooves in the puddles along the Springtown road announced the arrival of Dees and Wiley long before they reached the bridge.

The Tories slowed their mounts and cautiously approached the stranger on the bridge.

“Who the devil is it?” Dees said.

“Maybe that’s who. The devil himself,” came his companion’s hushed reply.

“Then I’ll send him packing right back to perdition.” Dees cocked his rifle. He cradled the weapon in the crook of his arm. Wiley repeated the action. Then both men walked their horses the few remaining yards to the bridge.

Wiley eyed the surrounding woods with fear and suspicion. He didn’t like any of this. His features bunched in a scowl and his hand tightened on the rifle. He was soaked to the skin and angry. He fixed his animosity on the stranger on the bridge who blocked their path and kept him that much longer on the trail.

Daniel sensed their suspicion. He’d have felt the same way, encountering a stranger on such a cheerless night. He tilted his head and allowed the moonlight to wash across his features, the better for Meeks’s henchmen to see and recognize him. Daniel felt relief that neither of the riders was Black Tolbert, else this encounter would surely have ended in violence. But if these two had lost the gun wagon’s trail there might still be a chance to avoid a fight. It was up to them.