Guns of Liberty (24 page)

And now the damn Highlander had turned the tables on him.

“My God, a blacksmith. Am I to be beaten by a blacksmith?” Meeks growled.

“And by a fool,” a voice said from behind him.

Meeks looked around and spied Loyal Bufkin lurching toward him. Kate’s brother was wounded: He’d been trampled by Meeks’s horsemen, his ribs were broken, and blood flecked his lips. But he was still alive and he still held his knife.

The major reached for a saddle pistol. He drew the weapon as Loyal, seeing he couldn’t reach the Englishman in time, hurled his knife. Meeks fired as the knife blade sank into his thigh. Loyal doubled over and dropped to his knees.

“Bastard!” the major howled as he drew the knife from his flesh and tossed the weapon aside. “You wretched idiot!” The world spun, and he clutched the saddle to keep from falling. Pain took his breath away, but the major endured it. He holstered one pistol and drew another.

Loyal slowly rolled over on his side, the world turning dark. He saw his mother and father walking toward him. He ran to their arms. By the time Meeks’s second shot struck him, Loyal Bufkin was beyond feeling—or caring.

Daniel wiped the grit from his eyes and staggered from the stall to the Sicilian panel wagon, where he found another brace of pistols he’d placed on a barrel of knives. With his Quakers in his belt and these heavy-bore pistols in hand, he bolted toward the front of the barn and the dust-choked doorway.

“Daniel …” Kate called to him.

He turned. He was soot-streaked and his shirt was torn, he had two weeks of beard and his thick red hair was matted with straw, but to Kate’s eyes, he was grand. There would be no other man for her.

“Don’t you be getting killed, Daniel McQueen,” she said. He hesitated as if searching for a reply. “Go on!” Kate told him. She began to reload the nearest rifle. Daniel disappeared into the billowing dust.

Daniel narrowed his eyes and stalked across the barnyard toward the still-smoking craters where the powder kegs had been buried. A horse galloped past him in blind terror. A dead raider lay sprawled in front of him.

“You’ve done me,” said Will Chaney in a pain-filled voice. “Ohhh …”

A few paces from the dead man, Chaney sat in the dirt with his wide eyes staring. His face was contorted in agony, his lips curled back from his yellow teeth as he sucked in air through his locked jaws. It was the only way he kept from screaming. Chaney’s leg was bent at an awkward angle and a white shard of bone jutted obscenely through his pants leg above the knee. Blood seeped from a nasty gash on his forehead and spattered his dust-caked coat. Beyond him a horse pawed fitfully at the dirt, belly ripped open. The animal’s rider lay sprawled in death beneath his flailing mount.

Daniel sensed movement on his right and instinctively ducked. A saber sliced the air and missed him by a hair’s breadth. He turned and fired. The swordsman staggered and fell to his knees with a belly wound. Another shot rang out. For a moment, Daniel and this next assailant stalked one another through the slowly dissipating cloud of powder smoke. Pistol fire stabbed through the cloud. Daniel emptied his second pistol at the muzzle blast and heard a groan. A Tory staggered toward him, visible now. The man dropped his pistols and flopped face forward in the dirt. Daniel tossed the heavy-bore pistols aside and drew his Quakers. The fight wasn’t over yet.

“Follow me, lads,” Padraich O’Flynn called to the two men behind him as he led them at a gallop around the corner of the barn. Since the front of the barn had proved too formidable, with exploding powder kegs and the like, the Irishman figured to try his luck on the rear of the barn. And pure luck it had been that caused him to swerve away from the open doorway that had seemed so inviting. The two men who followed him believed fervently in Padraich’s luck, for they had emerged unscathed by the explosions.

“There be a door back here?” one of the men called out.

“More than likely,” O’Flynn said, and as the rear of the barn came into view he knew for certain. “Yes, by heaven.” He glanced over his shoulder and saw with dismay that neither of his companions carried a torch. The Tories had dropped their brands and armed themselves with long-barreled pistols. A torch did little good against a man with a gun, and these two weren’t about to attack unarmed.

“Damn your eyes, we’ve nothing to burn the place with.”

O’Flynn and his men dismounted. The rear door of the barn opened onto a hog pen. O’Flynn was forced to crawl over the low fence and trek through hog wallow to reach the door. A sow and her piglets scurried to the opposite end of the pen, complaining at the invasion with a series of grunts and squeals. The smell didn’t bother the Irishman, but the two behind him wrinkled their noses in grimaces of distaste.

They hesitated at the fence line and stared down at the mud and manure.

“C’mon, lads. Don’t hang back. Hell, I’ve woke up in worse places than this.” O’Flynn reached the back door, which to no one’s surprise was bolted from the inside. The Irishman unslung a hatchet from his belt and began to hack away at the hinges.

“Go away,” Sister Eve said, her voice drifting through the oaken door.

O’Flynn stiffened at first at the sound of the voice. It took him a few seconds to realize it belonged to a woman. He grinned. It was just like Meeks had promised, a farm full of nothing more than frightened old spinsters. The Irishman peered through a crack in the slats and could make out a woman’s silhouette in the dim light. He wondered if she was pretty. No, she couldn’t possibly be. Why would a comely gal hide herself on such a farm?

“Unbolt this door, me darlin’,” the burly Irishman said. “Nary a lady has anything to fear from the likes of Paddy O’Flynn.”

“Go away and leave us in peace.”

“Open the door,” O’Flynn repeated, his tone of voice darkening. His boots sank in the mud underfoot. He was tired and ready to be done with this day’s work.

“Open the door!” he shouted, and began to hack furiously at the hinges. He slipped and dropped one knee into the muck. His hand sank into excrement as he tried to brace himself. “Damn,” he muttered, and pulled himself erect.

O’Flynn drove the hatchet into the door with such force the blade caught and held in the wood. He kicked the door and beat his fists against the wood with enough force to crack the wood. But his hands were bleeding and the door still standing when he had finished. His two companions watched from the fence, uncertain whether or not to join the Irishman.

O’Flynn slogged back a few paces, drew his pistol, and fired, blowing loose one of the hinges.

He loaded the pistol and fired again, this time missing the top hinge but shooting a hole through the door. He listened, hoping to hear a woman’s moan of pain. He added powder and ball to the flintlock and had it primed and ready to shoot in less than a minute.

“This is your last chance!” he shouted.

The blunderbuss thundered like a cannon from the confines of the barn. The blast blew a gaping hole through the door and flung Padraich O’Flynn backward, where he skidded to a lifeless stop in the mud at the far end of the hog pen. The two men by the fence glanced at one another and then, reaching a mutual, unspoken decision, returned to their horses and rode off toward the trees.

Back at the barn, Sister Eve peered through the hole in the door. “God forgive me,” she said. After adding an “Amen,” she started to reload.

Kate shot the first man who charged through the dust into the barn. He was a gruff-looking brigand of average height and solid build. He managed to hurl his torch into the piled straw in a stall to his left before he was slammed against the doorsill, rebounded, and collapsed in the yard outside. Hope was closest to the stall. She abandoned Tim Pepperidge and attacked the rapidly spreading flames with her water-soaked blanket. The blaze proved too much for her. The straw was dry and brittle, perfect fuel for the flames.

A second torch, hurled by an unseen hand, came flying through the door and landed on the steps of the Sicilian wagon. Kate dropped her rifle and ran to the water barrel. She armed herself with a soaked blanket to combat this new enemy before they were all blown to bits. Sister Hope renewed her efforts and despite her size moved with ungainly speed and finally vanquished the fire in the stall. Breathless, lungs heaving from exertion, her round cheeks beet red, she crossed the barn to the Sicilian wagon as Kate slapped out the last burning step.

“I’ll fight the fires,” Hope gasped. “Best you see to your—” A man stood in the doorway, a bemused expression on his face.

Kate saw the mixture of anger and fear in Sister Hope’s face and turned to face this new threat.

Black Tolbert first surveyed the interior to assure himself this was no trap. Then he entered and waved the women aside with the flintlock pistol he held in his left hand. In his right, a torch sent oily black smoke curling to the rafters. His once fine coat was torn, and the waistcoat, too, was in tatters. His finely chiseled features were bruised and burned. His red-rimmed eyes streamed water. The back of his coat was singed and continued to smoke, which gave him the appearance of a creature recently loosed from some hell of fire and brimstone.

“Stand clear of the wagon,” he said. His lower lip was puffed and swollen. “Move away from the wagon.” Neither woman moved. “Stand clear!”

As if impervious to his threats, the two women stood their ground, their blankets in hand. Black Tolbert raised the pistol and pointed it directly at Sister Hope. “Move!” They remained motionless. Over by the stall to the left of Tolbert and near the wagon, Pepperidge tried to reach for one of his pistols, but the movement sent waves of searing pain shooting through him and he groaned.

Tolbert heard him and shifted his aim. “Very well, then. If you are not afraid to die, are you willing to be the death of your young friend?” Tolbert trained his pistol on the wounded man.

“No!” Sister Hope said, and charged forward, catching everyone off guard. She lashed out with her sodden blanket and knocked the pistol aside. Kate made a hopeless dash for the rifles. Tolbert was momentarily knocked off balance, for Sister Hope outweighed him by eighty pounds. He stumbled back against the barn wall. He recovered enough to club Sister Hope with the shaft of his torch, singeing the woman’s gray habit as he struck her again and knocked her to the ground. It was the worst thing he could have done.

“You cursed old bitch!” He spat and contemptuously shoved Hope aside with a brutal kick.

Kate was halfway to the rifles when she heard a deep-chested growl and caught a blur of brown fur and bared fangs as Gideon came from the rear of the barn and launched himself upon the foolish man who had harmed Sister Hope.

Tolbert tried to protect himself. Panicked, he fired at the enraged animal and missed. He tried to club Gideon with the torch, but the mastiff dodged the flames and dove into the man. His massive jaws clamped around Tolbert’s arm. Bone crunched as the mastiff hauled him to the ground. Tolbert shrieked for his life. But the only one who could have helped him was still dazed from the blow she had suffered.

Gideon dragged the man around the floor of the barn and shook him. Then, like any good hunting beast after crippling its prey, the mastiff switched its hold and went for the throat.

Tolbert’s scream came to an abrupt end.

Using a strip of cloth torn from his shirt, Josiah Meeks finished tying a tourniquet around his leg above the knife wound. At last, with the bleeding stanched, the Englishman was able to redirect his attention to the barn. Like diaphanous brown veils lifted by a summer’s breeze, the dust and smoke cloud dissipated slowly. The barn with its hidden cache of weapons was intact. Worse, the remnants of his command, those who weren’t wounded or dead, rode off at a gallop toward the safety of the woods.

To make matters worse still, Daniel McQueen was standing in the center of Josiah Meeks’s ruined plans. He looked as if he were waiting—Yes, the damned blacksmith was waiting for him.

“Now it’s my turn, is it?” Meeks said, steeling himself against the pain. He laughed and swung his mount around, held his steed to a contemptuous trot. He calmly rode away from the farm as if unwilling to demean himself by dueling with a man of such humble station as Daniel.

“Josiah Meeks!”

The major never looked back.

Daniel started to run after him. He was several yards along the wagon trail before common sense took hold. It had to end today, it had to be done with; the major was too dangerous a threat to be allowed to live. There would fresh horses in the barn.
My God, the barn!
He quickly shoved Meeks to the back of his mind and retraced his path across the barnyard.

Kate met him at the doorway with a roan gelding that she had just saddled. Daniel was taken aback at the sight: Kate’s dress was torn, and there was blood on the hem and her cheek was smudged with charcoal, but she was alive.

“Some of us are hurt, but none of us too seriously,” Kate said,

“Thank God,” Daniel replied.

“And Gideon,” Hope added, emerging from the shadows. Pepperidge was there, walking along between Sister Eve and Sister Hope. The mastiff, its muzzle caked with crimson, loped along behind the Daughter of Phoebe.

“This is Sister Eve’s horse. She claims he can run,” Kate said. “I have never known her to lie.”

“Perhaps I should stay here until the Schraners arrive,” Daniel said.

“And allow the man who caused all this to escape?” Kate said, astonished. She looked around at the carnage. Her own brother lay dead out in the meadow. She held the reins out to the man she loved.

He took them.

T
HIS SIXTEENTH OF JUNE
was an uncomfortably cool, rainy night in Philadelphia. The townspeople had every reason to avoid the glistening streets and keep vigils by the light of warm kitchen fires surrounded by friends and family to debate the merits of this day’s auspicious events. And indeed, those townspeople with loyalist leanings remained behind their closed doors. They weren’t missed. Despite the inclement weather, the city streets were alive this night with patriots who were abuzz over the announcement that the Continental Congress had finally proclaimed General Washington commander-in-chief of the army.