Guns of Liberty (9 page)

McQueen grabbed for his other pistol and leaped from the horse. The bay went crashing into the clearing. He darted among the afternoon shadows, choosing his steps, avoiding twigs and brittle branches, ever moving, ever searching. And the forest matched him quiet for quiet. He skirted his assailant’s hiding place, approached it from the side only to find the site abandoned.

The horse foraged in a patch of sunlight about twenty yards away. Daniel slowly turned, studied every bush, every trick of sunlight filtering through the branches overhead. It had to be Tolbert. Black must have followed him from the hilltop. But where the devil was the bastard now?

A rifle fired somewhere off to his left, back toward the wheel-rutted trail Daniel had taken to the farm. A man’s shriek of terror followed by a howl of pain reverberated in the woods, then came a most familiar guttural growl. Finally there was the sound of a galloping horse.

Daniel wasn’t the only hunter in the woods this day.

He found Gideon lying in the middle of the wagon trail, and for a moment Daniel thought the dog had been shot. But the mastiff stood as Daniel emerged from the timber, and after an initial warning snarl, the animal picked up its spoils of war and trotted toward Daniel’s outstretched hand. The mastiff squatted in front of Daniel. Gideon’s jaws were firmly clamped around a bloody swath of cloth, possibly the seat of someone’s pants, and a buckskin shot bag whose contents—gun patches and rifle balls—the dog had already emptied in the middle of the trail.

Daniel knelt and scratched the dog’s fierce head and, shoving a pistol in his belt, managed to wrest the shot bag from Gideon. He stood and examined the bag. Its rawhide fastenings and the pouch itself had been ripped apart. He lifted the buckskin flap and found what he’d been looking for on the flap’s underside. Crude letters had been burned into the hide, and Daniel read them aloud.

“H. S.” He glanced up at the fresh tracks left on the trail and said the first name that came to mind: “Henk Schraner.”

Gideon growled deep in his throat. Daniel looked at the dog but kept the pouch. “Sorry, boy. I think I ought to return this. Personally.”

I
T WAS DARK BY
the time Daniel unsaddled his horse in the barn of the Hound and Hare. He had returned with the candles and a belly full of Sister Ruth’s cooking. Her skill with pork and biscuits and honey cakes more than made up for her lack of humor. Though he had not met Sister Constance, who was infirm and resting in her bedroom—and young Sister Mercy, a mere girl, had been much too shy to engage him in much conversation—Sisters Eve, Agnes, and the irrepressible Sister Hope had been excellent company. After a little prompting, they had been only too eager to tell him all about the Schraners, how Jon Schraner, whom everybody called Papa, lost his first wife to a weak heart and a brutal winter, how three years ago he met and married Henk’s mother and gave the lad a father and a family name. The Schraners were deeply committed to the patriot cause. They sounded like good people, and Daniel hoped to avoid a confrontation with them. He was loath to fight any of them or spill innocent blood for the likes of Henk Schraner.

“This killer has a conscience,” he muttered. He gave the mare an armful of fresh hay. Riding up to the inn he’d seen several horses tethered in front, and he was curious as to their owners.

He shouldered the heavy sacks of beeswax candles and made his way out from the barn, where he paused to breathe in the cool night air and listened to the music from a concertina that drifted through the shuttered windows of the tavern. He could hear men singing a merry song whose tune, though familiar, now supported a wholly different set of decidedly patriotic lyrics, ridiculing King George’s anatomy and lauding the actions of the minutemen at Lexington and Concord.

No doubt Kate is leading them
, he thought, smiling. Her rebel’s zeal was equal of any orator in Philadelphia. And she could certainly hold her own with the likes of Sister Eve. He wondered if she knew of the arms stored by the Daughters of Phoebe.

An owl glided effortlessly overhead, soaring below the roof of the barn and on past the hog pen and the chicken house. A moment later the owl suddenly dropped like a rock and landed on the edge of the garden near the corn. Some nocturnal animal shrieked in mortal terror, the cry cut short as the owl rose into the air, clutching its feebly struggling prey in its powerful talons.

Daniel shivered. Death was a swift, indiscriminate hunter, and a man must play out his drama, never knowing which was the final act and which deed the summation of a life.

“Daniel.”

Daniel whirled around. His right hand dropped to his pistol before he realized it was Kate Bufkin who had called him by name. Even then he hesitated, suspecting that somehow his thoughts had conjured her and she was no more real than a trick of moonlight.

“I was worried,” Kate continued; her words proved she was no figment of his mind.

She moved closer to him, and he wrinkled his nose, catching the fine scent of her. She smelled of wildflowers, sweet and pure as spring itself. She was simply attired in an indigo summer dress and a cream-colored apron; her long hair was gathered beneath a lace cap.

“Did you lose your way?” Her earlier displeasure appeared to have vanished. Had she truly been worried that he was lost or that he had taken off for parts unknown?

“Only at the dinner table.” Daniel patted the candle sacks. “The good Daughters of Phoebe insisted I break bread with them. They were starved for news of the north country, of the colonies and Canada. I told them what I knew, and as they were still hungry, I lied about the rest. I fear they now believe I drove back the Ottawa singlehandedly.”

“One so brave deserves a reward,” Kate said, her blue eyes full of promise.

Now, this is more like it.
Daniel had no intention of being a gentleman, not if she offered him the opportunity to be otherwise. “What did you have in mind?” he asked, confident of her unspoken invitation.

“Come and have a glass of Madeira,” she said, knowing full well that was not what he expected to hear. Kate had planned it that way.

Daniel entered the tavern and found himself immediately engulfed in lamplight and noise. He half expected the men to cease their singing at the sight of a stranger. They noticed him, to be sure, but the ale had flowed too freely and one young man played with exuberance on his concertina and there was singing to be done and tankards to be drained and bold lies to be bandied back and forth until they rang with the clarity of truth.

“A Redcoat came to Lexington.

He came to Concord, too.

We turned him back

This Lobsterback

And left him black and blue.”

So went the song, each bold declaration building on the one before until it sounded as if the revolution were already won and the British scurrying homeward, glad to have escaped with their lives. Daniel knew only too well the fallacy of such an illusion. His own father, and his father’s father, had tasted cold British steel at Culloden when the flower of Highland manhood had died before the British muskets in a final, desperate bid for victory. No, the Scottish had experienced Britain’s tenacity firsthand. And yet, listening to these men awakened the ancient warlike stirrings of his own race. They had all been immigrants searching for freedom, and they had found it on these wild shores. Now the British had come to stamp out the fires of liberty. It was the same old war, only a new battlefield.

Daniel struggled to suppress the kinship he felt for men such as these and headed for the nearest empty table. Kate brought him the promised glass of Madeira, a playful smile on her lips as she set the bottle on the table and sat across from him.

“No one plays a finer tune then Tim Pepperidge. You could join them.” She nodded toward the good-natured rebels gathered about the fireplace. Pepperidge, the concertina player, danced a jig as he played his song, and another man, a merchant newly returned from the Caribbean, produced a hornpipe and added his talents to the merry tune. The rest appeared to be farmers, save for a soldier who had stopped at the inn for the night.

“Come dance, pretty Kate, and let your brother tend the bottles,” the soldier called out. He cut a rather dashing figure in the red and blue uniform of the Virginia Militia and approached Daniel’s table. He caught Kate by the arm and tugged her toward the music makers.

The woman gestured helplessly toward Daniel and allowed herself to be led away.

“In the morning I’ll be off for Philadelphia, and there’s a cold and lonely ride. Surely you’ve a dance or a melancholy ballad to warm a soldier on his way,” the militiaman chided.

“Cold indeed,” Kate told him. “Tomorrow will be a warm and gentle spring day, on my oath, Lieutenant Crowe.”

She perched upon the table and then, after whispering instructions to young Pepperidge, began to sing a ballad of such tender and melancholy air that it tugged the heartstrings of every man around her and tears sprang to their eyes. She sang a Scottish song, of Highland evenings and a wee bonnie lass whose lover had gone to war and never returned. Kate sang of a lass who would take her father’s pistol and sword and search the long hills for her love.

“And ere she searches still,” Kate Bufkin sang, “beneath the blue sky, among the flowers that bloom where brave men fell, she searches on and ever on.”

Daniel was in no mood for sad songs and the Madeira soured in his mouth. He felt an awkward jealousy at the way the lieutenant carried on over Kate. Daniel shoved clear of the table and made his way to the bar, where Loyal waited with a leather jack of ale. Moisture streaked Loyal’s features. He dabbed at the battered remnant of his nose with a coarse scarf he kept tucked in his waistcoat pocket.

Two men watched Daniel from the far end of the bar. They looked a few years younger than Daniel, but from their rugged features it seemed they had traveled hard country in their time. They kept their rifles handy, and though wearing homespun farm clothes, their powder horns and shot bags bore Huron markings.

Daniel nodded to them, then fixed his weary gaze on the drink before him. He slid the wineglass toward Loyal and went for the ale. It was a bitter, bracing drink.

“Why is it men always sing before going to war?” Daniel asked.

Loyal shrugged. He didn’t like to think of such things. He had seen the horror of war and smelled the stench of violence and breathed it all in until it seemed he was doomed to replay those memories over and over in his sleep. The screams of the scalped and dying ever haunted him, though now and then Loyal did have his moments of peace.

Tonight, for example, Loyal was the soul of propriety, a congenial host. Daniel had noticed when customers were about and the tavern filled with life, Kate’s brother seemed happier and more in control of himself. It wouldn’t do to have him driving off the paying guests, saber in hand and slashing at the shadows of imaginary savages.

Daniel tugged Henk’s shot pouch from his belt and dropped it on the bar in front of him. He’d have given anything to see the look on Henk’s face when Gideon came charging out of the woods like some hellhound loosed upon an unsuspecting world. Considering such a scene tempered his anger toward his assailant. Henk would rue his actions this day, no doubt every time he sat. Daniel chuckled softly and, turning, placed his back against the bar and watched Kate. Now, here was a pleasant subject. She was a rare lass with a voice and a smile to arouse desire in any man.

As if in answer to his thoughts, Kate glanced up from the circle of men and met his gaze. When their eyes locked it was as if a bridge of fire were built between them.

He tried to catch his breath. He couldn’t pull his eyes away. Indeed, in that moment, he was lost. His life had become even more complicated than before. He was being swept along by events beyond his control. A solitary man, Daniel found he could love this woman, he could walk that bridge of fire to reach a woman like Kate. Looking across the room into the depths of her blue eyes—hot as a summer sky—Daniel wondered if he’d just received an invitation to try.

Then a cold steel point dug a tiny hole in his shirt just below his ribs.

“Outside,” said one of the two men who had been standing at the bar sharing a bottle of rum.

Both men had approached him. The one with the knife was a stocky, sunburned man whose features were partly hidden beneath a thick beard the color of freshly turned earth. His companion was a few years older and carried an extra thirty pounds on his thickly muscled frame. He was clean-shaven. Above his right eye, he bore a nasty white ridge of scar tissue that trailed into his receding hairline. The two men bore a resemblance to one another in the close set of their eyes beneath their brooding brows.

“Outside,” the smaller man repeated, and pressed home his demand with the point of the knife.

Daniel shrugged, turned back to the bar, and placed his elbows to either side of his tankard. “Are you Eben or Barnabas?” he asked, playing a hunch.

“Eben,” said the man with the knife, unabashedly perplexed at the Highlander’s cool behavior.

“Then you must be Barnabas Schraner.” Daniel glanced toward the larger brother, then drained his tankard and set it on the bar top with a resounding bang. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and sighed in satisfaction.

Barnabas crossed around and stood on the other side of Daniel. He reached out and took the bloodied shot pouch in his hairy hand.

“Maybe my brother has not made himself clear.” Barnabas kept his voice low.

Loyal was staring at them and seemed concerned, though he couldn’t tell for sure if there was actually any trouble. The three men appeared to be having a friendly, private conversation.

The knife in Daniel’s side was anything but friendly. And he’d about had enough of it.

“Eben here is downright eloquent, but I see no point in following you lads out into the barnyard.”

“Why is that?” Eben kept a firm grip on the hilt of his knife. This Scotsman was certainly a cold one. Most men would have crumbled at the first kiss of steel.