Shadowbrook (3 page)

The Cayuga fingered the wolf totem at his neck. His own gun, a musket known as a Brown Bess, was the ordinary type issued to British troops and colonial militia. No after-kick—the long guns had a vicious recoil—but impossible to aim. To have a long gun …
Ayi!
Such a thing would make him invincible.

All the Indians had tomahawks as well, and knives. So did Quent, but he also had a miniature Scottish dirk tucked into the small of his back. And his face was clean except for sweat and a stubble of red beard. The Mingo were painted for war.

Behind Quent and the braves were thirty-some soldiers of the recently formed Virginia Regiment. Like all the colonial troops they had agreed to serve for only a few months, as long as they could be spared from their farms and village shops. They were paid eight pence a day while a common laborer got three times as much. The men had enlisted because they’d been promised land somewhere along the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers after they got rid of the French.

By Quent’s reckoning it would be a cold day in hell when they started plowing that land.

The soldiers thudded along the woodland path in clumsy, ill-fitting boots. Their tricornes snagged on the low-hanging branches, and their woolen jackets and trousers were saturated with rain. Every one of the poor bastards was scratching. Except for Washington.

The young officer strode at the head of what was left of the column—they’d lost at least seven to the long dark night and the twisting, narrow forest path—pretending his braided finery didn’t stink and itch. Damned fool on a damned fool’s errand, Quent thought. Not your worry, he reminded himself. You signed on to guide and do a bit of translating, not tell a twenty-two-year-old field-commissioned lieutenant colonel with his first command that the snakes aren’t to be trusted. Least of all Tanaghrisson, the Half King. Because nothing was more
dangerous than an Iroquois who’d stopped taking orders from the Great Council and decided to go his own way.

Somewhere a kingbird chattered her dawn chorus.

Quent saw the shoulders of one of the Seneca two places ahead of him move as he tongue-clicked a response. Tanaghrisson and nine more braves were running along a parallel track. The two groups had been shadowing each other for an hour.

The kingbird chattered again, fainter this time. The Seneca replied. The other party was breaking away.

Quent felt Washington’s hand on his shoulder. He slowed and half turned. Both men were over six feet Their eyes met; Washington’s looked eager. Probably couldn’t wait to be blooded. The Virginian had come to the Ohio Country first as a surveyor, then as a messenger sent to warn off the French. That directive had been ignored. So Washington, a young man with neither training nor experience, had been ordered back by the governor of Virginia to raise a regiment, build an English fort, and roust the Canadians, by force of arms if necessary. Bloody fools, all politicians.

“Those bird calls,” Washington whispered, “that was the Mingo, wasn’t it? What’s happening?”

“We’re almost there. Tanaghrisson and his braves are taking another route. They’ll position themselves on the far side of the French encampment.”

Washington nodded, keeping his face expressionless so the older man wouldn’t know how much he’d hated having to ask This Quentin Hale made him uncomfortable. That hair, for one thing. Worn unfashionably short because, he said, it made him harder to scalp. It was a flaming red flag, a constant challenge. So too the cold, ice-blue eyes.

People knew the name Uko Nyakwai as far away as Virginia. And in Virginia, where such things were important, they said Quentin Hale’s mother had been a Devrey from New York City, and that his grandfather Will Devrey had made a fortune bringing black gold from Guinea to be sold in the slave market on Wall Street. They said the Devreys were sprung from a penniless Englishwoman, an apothecary come to New York back in the 1660s when it was New Amsterdam. They said she married a Dutch doctor, strangled him in his sleep, then hanged him covered in pitch from the town gallows, so the Dutch would believe it was the devil’s doing. Superstitious fools, most of the Dutch.

Better bloodlines on the Hale side. Gentry, from Kent originally. Now Quentin Hale’s father owned thousands of acres around the northern lakes of New York Province, a prosperous plantation called Shadowbrook.

So how had his son come to be a woodsman and sometime guide in the Ohio country rather than the landed gentleman he was born to be? God alone knew.

His legs felt heavy as millstones. Every breath was like swallowing fire. Wretched
savages, would they never slow down? And Hale, did he not need to breathe like any other white man? Never mind, word was he could nick a man’s right earlobe at a hundred paces with that long gun. Likely they would see something of that shooting this very morning. The notorious Red Bear and his long gun under the command of Lieutenant Colonel George Washington of Virginia. Jesus God Almighty, it was hard to believe.

They were toiling up a steep rise. Just enough light now so he could look back and scan the column. At first he couldn’t see Montrose, his French-speaking civilian translator. Finally spotted the rat-faced little man at the rear with a flask to his lips. Sod the blighter. No discipline. Drunk twenty hours out of twenty-four. Ah well, not as important this day, perhaps. This time we’ve not come to talk with the devilish bastards. If the Half King hadn’t sent word that he’d found their encampment, they’d have scouted us out and we’d have had to face them back at the Forks, at Great Meadows. With the fort still only half built and my few hundred ruffians against God knows how many French soldiers and their cannon.

He faced forward again, watching Hale, wondering how it was the man never seemed to look where he put his feet, but never stumbled.

Quent was conscious of the younger man’s eyes boring into the back of his head. He couldn’t remember a moment in his life when he hadn’t known when he was being watched. A useful talent in a place like Shadowbrook—vital for a woodsman in the Ohio Country.

The only sounds were the breathing of the braves up ahead, the lurching soldiers behind, and the softly stirring leaves. Then the Seneca who led the file lifted his hand. The signal passed down the line and the column halted.

The French party was bivouacked in a low-lying glen between two steep hills, a site well hidden but not easy to defend. The only guard sat on a rock beside a fire, his musket gripped between his knees while his hands were busy with a mug of drink.

The colorless dawn was warming to a faint pink. A few soldiers staggered out of the bark-covered lean-tos that had sheltered them from the rain and made their way toward the fire.

A small girl stepped into the clearing. She had her back to Quent; his impression was of someone little more than a child. Young to be a whore, but what else could she be?

Quent heard Washington’s sharply indrawn breath. Hard to blame him. Sweet Jesus God Almighty. Were French troops such lechers they had to bring a whore along with a search party? That’s what this was, of course. A sortie to discover exactly what the Americans were doing at Great Meadows.

A man appeared and moved through the camp. The few others who were awake stepped out of his path. He was of medium height, slim and dark, wearing buckskins much like Quent’s own. He kept one hand on the long rifle slung over his shoulder. His hair was tied back with a leather thong, and a jagged scar pulled the left side of his face into an unnatural grimace. Even in the half light and from a distance of fifty feet, he was unmistakable.

Washington leaned into Quent. “That’s Cormac Shea, isn’t it?” His voice was hoarse with disbelief.

“Yes.”

Good God. The two fiercest woodsmen in North America, each a legendary shot, on opposite sides of a battle in which he was in command. Washington’s throat closed, a huge lump of fear choking off what wind the long trek had left him. He tried to swallow, but he had no spit. Everyone knew it was Quentin Hale who’d held the knife that had marked Cormac Shea for life. The young lieutenant colonel put his lips close to Quent’s ear. “I’ve never heard of Shea operating this far south. He’s supposed to be in Canada.”

“Looks as if he isn’t.”

“Why would a
coureur de bois
such as Shea be with—”

Quent held up his hand for silence, all the while keeping his eyes on the man with the scar.

Cormac Shea was a Canadian, but no French patriot. His mother was a Potawatomi squaw; his father, an Irishman who deserted the English Army, took to the north woods, and lived by trapping and trading—until he was dismembered and eaten alive by Huron who resented his selling guns to their Mohawk enemies. Despite Shea’s pale skin and his Christian name, he was the scourge of French Canada. He had taken a public vow to drive every white man from the north country.

So why, Quent asked himself, was he traveling with a party of French soldiers? And dancing attendance on a white whore?

Shea had claimed a couple of mugs of drink at the fire and carried them to where the girl stood. She turned to take hers. Quent craned his neck to see her better. Someone sneezed somewhere to his right and a flight of tiny birds lifted from the forest canopy and flew off, chattering in outrage.

For long seconds the still, damp air quivered with the sound. Then the French soldiers began shouting warnings and running for their weapons. Shea knocked the mug out of the girl’s hand and shoved her roughly into her shelter and out of the line of fire. At the same time he managed to start ramming powder down the barrel of his long gun.

Quent grinned. He figured he was three, maybe four seconds ahead in the loading process.

The guard had leapt up from his rock. He flung aside his mug and raised his musket to his shoulder.

Washington jumped to his feet. Quent wasted precious seconds of loading time to reach up and yank him back to the ground. The musket ball whizzed over their heads and crashed harmlessly into the forest. Meanwhile Cormac Shea had finished loading his rifle and lifted it to his shoulder. But he hadn’t loosed a shot.

Quent sucked in his cheeks and whistled the throaty, three-note whoop of the northern loon. Then he sighted and fired at a French soldier on the opposite side of the clearing whose finger was just then tightening on the trigger of his musket. The man fell, jerked once, then was still.

Another musket ball hurtled out of the glen. Once more Washington jumped to his feet. This time he managed to shout, “Fire!” before Quent pulled him back down. The Virginia Regiment loosed its first volley of musket balls into the hollow.

A Brown Bess had no sight, and the Virginians were badly and inadequately trained. Still, they had the advantage of the high ground. A number of French soldiers fell. “Tell them to aim low or they’ll overshoot, wound rather than kill,” Quent murmured. “But don’t stand up. You can holler lying down, can’t you?”

Washington was quivering with excitement. Even his words shook. “Yes, yes, but, but—”

“No buts. Do it.”

“Fire!” Washington yelled a second time, remaining on his belly. “Aim low!” he added, but not before another round of musket balls had peppered the hollow.

On the clifftop where the Virginians were positioned the sound was deafening. Quent knew it had to be a hundred times worse down below, booming between the pair of hills. A haze of thick and acrid smoke had formed over the glen. He could just make out a number of French soldiers running in the opposite direction from the musket fire. Futile. Tanaghrisson and his braves blocked the only other exit from the valley.

Quent squinted into the smoke but didn’t find what he was looking for. Christ. He whistled the loon’s cry. Nothing. He tried again. Seconds later he heard the three-note reply and breathed easier.

Four, maybe five minutes had passed since the first shot was fired. A dozen French bodies were writhing on the ground. The word was passed that the Americans had lost one man and had three wounded.

A cry echoed from the hollow below. “We have for you information only! Will you give quarter?” The English words were heavily accented.

“Yes!” Washington shouted back. “Hold your fire and we’ll hold ours.” He waited a moment, stood up, then looked at Hale still lying on the ground, sighting into the French camp. “I’m going down there. I want you to come.”

“I’d suggest a number of your soldiers as well, Colonel. To claim your prisoners. Be about twenty of them, I reckon.”

“Yes, of course.”

“And Montrose to translate.”

Washington looked over his shoulder. “That’s hardly possible. He’s some considerable distance to our rear. Sodden with nun.”

“Lucky bastard,” Quent said as he got up.

Eight members of the Virginia Regiment accompanied them into the valley. Holding their weapons at the ready, the ten men slithered sideways down the steep hill. By the time they reached level ground they could smell the blood and the loosened bowels of terror. Washington had to raise his voice to be heard above the moans of the wounded. “I am Lieutenant Colonel George Washington of Virginia. Who is in charge here?”

“
C’est moi.
Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville.”