Crown of Serpents (21 page)

Refining the search by adding the word sergeant in front of the name, as well as the year 1779, he whittled the hit meter down to 75. Now that’s more like it, he told himself.

Sorting through the top web site listings, he found a journal reference from General John Sullivan’s land surveyor who accompanied the expedition. Intrigued, Jake read on. The surveyor, Thomas Grant, narrated how on September 14th, a day after the Groveland Ambush where Boyd lost his life, that Sean McTavish had been severely reprimanded by General Sullivan for his and Boyd’s direct contradiction of the general’s explicit orders. Grant explained how Boyd was specifically told not to take more than four scouts with him, including an Oneida Indian scout, for the September 12th night reconnaissance mission of Little Beard’s Town on the Genesee River. Instead, for unknown reasons, Boyd took 26 riflemen.

He was also ordered not to make any contact with the enemy. But he failed in those orders too, ultimately leading to his detachment’s demise.

Having noticed four Indians in a deserted village the morning of the 13th, Boyd ordered McTavish to fire on them. McTavish killed one and scalped him, but the others escaped. The detachment gave chase and ran head-on into a 400-man English ambush by Butler’s Rangers and Brant’s Indians.

Putting up a gallant fight on a high knoll, the outnumbered Americans were eventually overrun, most being slaughtered at close range. McTavish and only three other survivors escaped the massacre after fighting through the enemy lines surrounding them. Boyd was wounded in the side. He and sergeant Michael Parker, along with their Oneida chief Honyost Thaosagwat, were taken prisoner. Honyost was killed instantly. Boyd and Parker were tortured to death the next day. The other survivors, besides McTavish, were listed as a famous Virginian marksman Timothy Murphy, a rifleman from New Hampshire John McDonald, and an unnamed Canadian. Thomas Grant, who had been surveying the swamp area below Conesus Lake at the time, remarked how he had helped the four survivors make it back to the main encampment to raise the general alarm.

Although a colorful battle reference, Jake still hadn’t a clue to what exactly McTavish’s most trusted trade tool was. Standing up to stretch out, he shed his dress coat and hung it over the chair back. He began his habitual pacing, his bulky arms folded across his chest, his face tense in thought. All thoughts of hooking up with the investigator for dinner were purged from his mind.

The light bulb then went on in his head.

He scolded himself, realizing a wealth of Sullivan-Clinton campaign resources were available to him right through the Military History Institute’s main computer database. He bent down and opened a new browser page linking to MHI’s web site. After logging onto an authorized staff-use-only section, he tapped into the main database. Sergeant Sean McTavish popped up immediately with two references, one in the 1779 campaign — but an exact match to Grant’s description — and the other a Daughters of the American Revolution mention of a McTavish from Upper Exeter, Pennsylvania. The DAR site opened up a short biography of McTavish, written in 1890:

Sean Michael McTavish, of Scottish descent, was from Upper Exeter on the Susquehanna River in the County of Luzerne, Pa., where at the age of 21 he enlisted in January, 1776, as a Private in Captain Stephen Bayard’s Company, transferred to Captain Matthew Smith’s Company the following November, and January 14, 1778, was made Sergeant in the First Pennsylvania Regiment. Of strong physique, courageous character almost to recklessness, he was endowed with the qualities of a fine marksman which would fit him in the scout detachment he joined under command of Lieutenant Thomas Boyd of nearby Washingtonville, and subsequently under command of Major Parr. He fought under General John Sullivan’s brigade at the Battle of Brandywine in September of 1777 where he obtained a new Ferguson style rifle from a British scout he dispatched and scalped. During the Sullivan-Clinton expedition of the summer of 1779, as payback for the Wyoming Valley Massacre the year before, he had been initiated, passed, and raised as a Master Mason under General John Sullivan’s traveling Freemason Military Lodge No. 19, thus joining the ranks of gentlemen Patriots of the Craft. McTavish proved a savage warrior during the Battle of Newtown and later up into Iroquois territory. He was known to have taken well over 20 scalps from Indians, Tories and Butler’s Rangers. He prayed every night to his most trusted trade tool, widely said to be his Ferguson rifle, as mentioned by the military Freemason brethren who later attended his burial at the Mountain View Cemetery in his hometown.

“The rifle! BINGO!” Jake laughed, his eyes glued to the biography. A grin was now pasted across his face.

After surviving the Groveland Ambush at the end of the campaign, he found the mutilated body of his close friend and commander, Lt. Thomas Boyd, the next day. Grief-stricken with mental illness and demoted in rank for not following orders, McTavish was sent back home to Upper Exeter shortly after the internment of Boyd’s body. Having no offspring and never recovering mentally from a state of severe battle distress, he died several years later at the age of 30.

“Damn,” Jake whispered, his smile wiped clean, knowing exactly the mental anguish McTavish had experienced on the battlefield.

He looked up and sighed, then deliberately switched his mind back to the trade tool riddle. Finding that one hidden reference jolted him back to exhilaration. It was a military working tool. Shaking his head, he realized he had known the answer all along but just didn’t make the connection. After all, he had even referred to the modern assault rifle as a tool of the professional warrior to his own troops in the field.

With that important clue to go on, he now had a jump-start on tracking down where McTavish’s rifle might have ended up. It would prove the most challenging part of his investigation, something he now actually looked forward to. He wasted no time.

Knowing that most Continental troops at the time brought their own weapons with them to battle and subsequently returned home with them, Jake figured that’s where he’d start searching for the McTavish rifle — his hometown. At about two o’clock in the afternoon, he started making phone inquiries.

The first call he placed was to the Luzerne County Historical Society down in Pennsylvania. He had known them to be an exceptional organization in preserving the history of the Wyoming Valley during colonial times, so he gambled that they might give him a good lead. He explained he was a history researcher with the Army looking into the McTavish Revolutionary War records. An archivist on duty said she too was familiar with the Daughters of the American Revolution reference on McTavish, but could offer no more help other than what Jake had already discovered himself. Just before hanging up though, she mentioned offhand there was a wonderful 97-year-old man named Raymond Gellers who was the Town of Exeter historian and genealogist. He was considered a local expert in matters pertaining to the Revolutionary War. But she said he was very hard to get a hold of. Jake thanked her and wrote his number down.

He immediately tried calling the man but the number rang without any response or follow-up answering service. For the next hour and a half, his attempts proved fruitless. The number just rang and rang. His other research into McTavish’s rifle also failed to provide any tangible results. The search for the rifle seemed to hit a hard end before it even got off the ground. Packing up his equipment and feeling a bit dejected, Jake headed out of the building after thanking the commander for his time. Just before starting his truck up, he figured he’d give Gellers one last chance before hitting the road back home. He pulled out his phone and dialed.

“Raymond here,” said a crusty old voice on the other end of the line.

Jake sat up. “Mr. Gellers?”

“Yes.”

“This is Major R.J. Tununda with the Army Military History Institute out of Carlisle and I’m conducting some research on a Revolutionary War soldier from your hometown.”

“Lemme guess, Sean Michael McTavish, right?”

“Yes. How did—?”

“His rifle, right?”

“Yes, but—”

“Can’t believe that rifle has generated so much interest lately,” said Gellers. “It sat unnoticed for years and all of a sudden, well, have you got something to write with, son?”

“Yep,” said Jake, wondering if Nero was already on the same path.

“It’s a truly amazing story,” Gellers started. “It’s a rare custom-made, rapid-fire breech loading rifle designed by a British Major named Patrick Ferguson. Came out in 1776 and was a hit with the British light infantry and marksmen because they were accurate out to 250 yards. You see the rifle could be loaded without a ramrod and then fired. It lessened the chances of blowing their cover. Four to six shots per minute was the rate.”

“Sounds like one hell of a breakthrough compared to regular muskets back then,” Jake remarked.

“Sure was. McTavish picked up the rifle at Brandywine during a skirmish.”

“I’m curious as to what became of his rifle when he came back home,” asked Jake, scribbling furiously on his notepad. “Did he bring it back with him?”

“Sure did. It remained in the McTavish family for generations as an heirloom after he died, but during the Great Depression a family member gave it to the bank for partial payment on a debt. It had been stored in a Wilkes-Barre bank vault ever since and was basically all but forgotten, that is until 1996 when the bank’s board of trustees bequeathed the rifle to our local library as one of its prized holdings.”

“So, can I stop down and inspect it? Say, tomorrow morning? Would you happen to know what time the library opens?”

“Wait a minute there, son. You haven’t heard the news?” asked Gellers in a surprised tone of voice.

“No. Heard what?”

“I thought that’s what you were calling about. To write an article or something about what just happened. Well, it was stolen today. Matter of fact, just a few hours ago. My son, who’s a deputy sheriff, just told me about it.”

“What?” Jake stammered. “You’re kidding me!”

“Nope. Some young man took it right out from under the nose of the head librarian. He set her up to retrieve a reference item, and then snatched it off the wall mount. It’s a very small library you know and she was the only one there. Then he disappeared. She didn’t even notice the rifle gone for a full twenty minutes.”

“Any idea who took it?” asked Jake in a quiet voice. He thought to himself that everything’s lost. That scumbag Nero beat him to it.

“Oh yeah, sure. They got a good description of the suspect and his car. He was driving one of them new sport’s cars. Don’t know what they’re called, but it was on a security camera from the gas station across the street. That’s what my son, the sheriff, said. We know his car was from Pennsylvania because the colors on the plates matched. And there’s also a partially readable bumper sticker. An A and two Bs, then some other letters we can’t make out. He was probably with some antiquities crime ring from Philadelphia, my son thinks. That rifle is worth a lot of money.”

“Can I get your son’s phone number to get a description of the man and the vehicle?”

“Certainly,” said Gellers. “But you know if you wanted to see a picture, he posted it on the police web site already. We don’t waste any time down here in dealing with criminals. The web has proven to be a great community crime fighting tool.”

“Really? This thief’s picture is already posted on web?”

“Yes sir.”

After getting the web site address and thanking the historian for all his help, Jake immediately popped open his laptop, fired it up, logged onto the web site and found the crime report. The static security video frame of the car appeared at the top with the suspect getting in.

Jake’s jaw dropped open.

“No f-ing way!” The car was a white Mini Cooper with a red stripe down the middle. He knew that car all too well. Behind it, was the suspect, quite visible from the torso up. He was wearing a long overcoat, baseball hat, and sunglasses, but his oversized head and thin mustache gave him away. Jake’s heart raced, rage welled deep inside his chest.

The man in the image was undoubtedly his boss, Dr. Steven Ashland.

“That dirty son-of-a-bitch!” And to top off his anger, Jake realized the connection with the bumper sticker of ABB that Gellers had mentioned. It would be a bumper sticker reading ABB2004, short for
Anybody But Bush in 2004
. Jake had questioned him about it not long ago in the parking lot at MHI. It was Ashland’s protest against the president way back in the 2004 election, a sticker he had refused to take off even after President George W. Bush had won. And even after Obama’s presidential win.

Jake squeezed his fist.

He grabbed his cell phone. Dialing MHI he asked for the director. Luckily, he was in.

“Dr. Jacobson? This is Major Tununda. How are you, sir?”

“Very well Jake. Yourself?” replied the deep commanding voice of the director.

“Fine sir.”

A retired Army major general with 30-years of service, Dr. Paul Jacobson was not only the senior executive of the institution, but also an award-winning author of several books on military history. What had turned Jake on to MHI, and what Jacobson was most famous for, was his investigation and discovery of Adolf Hitler’s personal gold and diamond studded mahogany cigar humidor.

It was during an MHI oral history interview from a dying U.S. Army WWII vet that Jacobson had learned of the famed humidor. Supposedly looted by an American soldier when his 3rd Infantry unit arrived first at Hitler’s Eagles Nest retreat at Berchtesgaden in 1945, the humidor was later smuggled back to the states inside a secret compartment of a Sherman tank.

But it was never recovered.

After several years of intense field research by Jacobson, he finally located the tank outside of a Veterans of Foreign War post in Jonesboro, Georgia. Sure enough, over sixty years later, hidden where the soldier said it was, they found their prize. It was a story that astounded Jake when he first viewed it on the History Channel and caused him to seek out the man responsible for it. Soon a mentorship developed and subsequently a job offer to MHI.