A Flight of Arrows (19 page)

July 1777

Buck Island, St. Lawrence River

A
s Private William Aubrey understood it, the Crown's campaign had lost one of its three vital prongs. General Burgoyne was descending south from Chambly, in Quebec, along the lake passage to the Hudson, while Brigadier General St. Leger would lead his 34th Regiment and the rest of his loyalist forces east from Oswego, joined by a detachment of the 8th, Butler's rangers, and whatever forces Joseph Brant had collected. Their initial objective was the investment of Fort Stanwix. Once that reportedly thin-garrisoned fort surrendered, they would pour into the Mohawk Valley, sweep the back-country militia before them, and converge with Burgoyne at Albany, severing New England from the rest of the rebelling colonies. But the third prong, General Howe—still in New York City—intended to focus his energies on hunting Washington's rebels in and around Philadelphia and refused to alter his plans to join Burgoyne and St. Leger.

The latter's brigade was well underway toward Oswego. They'd put in at Buck Island, near the point where the St. Lawrence broadened into Lake Ontario, for a temporary halt. It had needed a fortnight to travel upriver from Lachine with the seemingly endless series of rapids and cataracts, unnavigable to bateaux, requiring the soldiers to manhandle baggage and equipment over each portage; tedious, disheartening work, often watched by Indians lining the riverbank like spectators at a cricket match.

They were no sooner ashore at Buck Island than William, along with
Angus MacKay, Robbie, and some twenty others, were set to clearing ground for an exercise field, St. Leger being of the opinion Johnson's Greens stood in need of more drill practice.

“Aye, weel,” MacKay grumbled under his breath. “We're a step closer to home and justice done. We ken a neck or twa we'll be that glad to see in a hangman's noose. Aye, Robbie?”

The lad's reply was dutiful. “Aye, Da. That we will.”

A mile long and heavily forested, Buck Island boasted a ship-building operation. The bateaux on stocks, some of them massive transports set to ferry soldiers down the lake to Oswego, stirred memories William would rather have banished, but as he shouldered an ax and trooped away from the milling encampment and set to work grubbing brush, those memories felt more solid than the existence he was living now.

Anna, forgive me
. The words chased through his thoughts a dozen times a day. As did a plea directed at the man she called Papa. Rage and hatred had at last simmered down, letting grief and regret rise to the surface. And the burning need to know…
why?

He was awash in such thoughts when Sam appeared at his side, ax in hand. William caught his glance, then pretended he hadn't. He raised the ax to sever a pine sapling near the ground, then set about grubbing the stump, the scent of sap and crushed needles sharp in his nose. Sweat dripped down his face in the heat.

Sam worked beside him, his silence a reproach.

William wanted to say something to alleviate the strain between them since Sam's return to Lachine, which had occurred in William's absence. An Indian had come in from the wilds with Sam, a warrior whose corroboration helped him wriggle out of the desertion charges awaiting him, returning a week behind the party with which he'd been sent out. Sam had given William the tale he'd presumably told Major Gray and Sir John—one of capture and torture. He'd the wounds to prove it. Only one thing Sam confessed to him that he'd kept from their commanding
officers: he'd encountered William's brother, Two Hawks, during his misadventure.

“I didn't know him for your twin right off. He's got his head shaved as they do and a wicked scar just here.” Sam, who had just removed his shirt, sniffed it, and tossed it aside with a grimace, touched a spot above his ear. “He's darker, but in feature very like you.”

Alone in their Lachine billet, William had stared in renewed horror at the healing wounds on his friend's chest. “Do you tell me my
brother
did that to you?”

“No.” Sam pulled a freshly laundered shirt over his head.

“But they were Oneidas?” If his brother had been among those who captured Sam, might that warrior—his father—have had a hand in administering the torture? He grasped Sam's arm. “ 'Tis truth you tell me, Sam? My father and brother didn't do this to you?”

For a suspended moment, Sam searched his face, indecision warring in his eyes. “I never saw your father.”

William let go his arm. “You're not being honest with me. I don't think you have been since we came over the mountains. You disappear for hours at a time without explanation—save I've seen you talking to Indians. Now you get yourself captured by Oneidas,
happen
to meet my twin, and I'm to think it coincidence?”

Sam's indecision vanished in a thrust of his jaw. “If you're accusing me of something, William, come out with it straight.”

William had backed down, at the time uncertain he wanted to know the truth.
Were
those marks of torture the work of his brother's hands? Anna claimed to have befriended his twin. What exactly had she said of this Two Hawks? Having so long suppressed the memories of that terrible night, they proved too fragmented to recall now with certainty.

If only he'd waited, learned a little more…maybe he'd never have gone north with the man clearing ground beside him now.

Bone-weary, bug-bitten, and sweat-drenched, William was returning to camp with the rest of the detail when the Mohawk found him again. Looming out of the dusk, he stepped across William's path, blocking his progress toward the beckoning aromas of cookery beyond a thicket of spruce. Above leggings and breechclout, the Mohawk wore a calico shirt belted with a colorful sash, through which was thrust a hunting knife and tomahawk. A neck sheath with a buck-horn knife hung at his chest. Slung at his shoulder was a rifle.

Last among the stragglers from the field, William halted, letting the others trudge on without him. Weary and spent, not a one looked back. He clenched the ax until the handle bit into his palm. His first encounter with Joseph Tames-His-Horse on the streets of Lachine had been curtailed once he'd realized the warrior's connection to his Oneida kin. Twice before the regiment departed the village, the Mohawk had attempted to speak to him. William had managed to elude the man each time. He'd hoped the Indian had gotten it through his lofty head that he'd no wish to deepen their acquaintance.

Apparently he hadn't.

“The King's army works you hard?” the Indian inquired. When William turned a hand palm upward, revealing its raw state, Joseph's face showed disbelief, as if he couldn't credit a man letting himself be worked like an ox. Then he shrugged. “You come to my fire now. There is food,” he added as William's stomach gave an impatient rumble.

Joseph Tames-His-Horse was one determined Indian. Worse than the mosquitoes whining round their ears.

“Look you,” William said. “I'll eat what's provided yonder if I don't fall asleep first, so say whatever you've been wanting to say to me and get it over.”

There was light enough to see the lift of the Indian's sweeping brows, the dark gaze tilted down at him. “Listen then. There was a party of scouts sent south to Fort Stanwix, most of them Mohawk. They were sent to take prisoners and learn from them how many are in that fort, how much is its strength, for when you and those with you come that way.” Joseph jerked his chin toward the trees and the encampment beyond and the ship-building site where masts bristled dark against a sky still tinged orange with sunset.

Despite hunger and exhaustion, William was suddenly interested in what this Indian was saying. “Did you go with them? Where are the prisoners? Have they talked?”

“Five prisoners we carried to that one who is over the things to do with Indians.”

Daniel Claus, British Superintendent of Indian Affairs, he meant.

“Are they still being questioned?”

“We did our own questioning. Here is what we learned: the garrison at Stanwix is strong. Much soldiers. The fort is built up—this I saw. Already they know you come and the number of your warriors.”

William frowned, uncertain whether to credit a report at stark variance with the army's intelligence—Sam's included—that Fort Stanwix was thinly manned and still under repair. But he pretended to believe the Indian. “Will this intelligence alter St. Leger's plans?”

A shrug. “If he trusts the words of captives.”

“Already they know you come and the number of your warriors.”

Fatigue fell away like a blanket discarded. “The rebels at Fort Stanwix know Johnson's regiment is coming?” He didn't need the Indian's grunt of assent to know it was so. Had word gone beyond the fort? Gone as far as Schenectady? Did Anna know he was part of the invasion force set to descend upon her?

What else Joseph Tames-His-Horse had said belatedly sank in. He'd said they know
you
come. Not
we
. “Are you no longer in this fight?”

Before Joseph could reply, a familiar growl rose behind him. “Since ye dinna seem interested in your grub, Private Breed, ye'll take first guard duty down at the boats.”

William turned as Sergeant Campbell stalked past the spruces and stood with feet planted wide, reaching out a broad hand. “Collect your arms. I'll be takin' that ax.”

“Aye sir.” Clenching his teeth as his stomach clamored in protest, William handed over the ax.

Campbell stood back, waiting for him to proceed. William cast a glance back to where Joseph Tames-His-Horse stood, wondering how the sergeant could ignore such a presence, to find naught but a spruce bough waving as if in a passing breeze.

Sam Reagan rose from the fire as William emerged from his tent, smothered in full regimentals, accoutered for sentry. Around them in the falling summer dark, men's voices murmured, laughed, quarreled as they downed the evening's rum ration. Somewhere a knife blade was being scraped against stone. A fifer struggled over a tune too broken to recognize. The faces at the near fire hung in haggard lines. Most were too tired from the work detail to do more than gripe and yawn.