Liberty 1784: The Second War for Independence (27 page)

Chapter 14

T
he six bedraggled men huddled together, wet and miserable and too exhausted to even strain at their bonds. Not that it would have helped. Their captors only waited for an excuse to kill them. All of them were wounded to some degree, which, in the eyes of their angry captors, entitled them to neither mercy nor pity.

Fitzroy glared at them. “What unit?”

“King’s Royal Butt-fuckers,” a man with a bandage on his forehead answered, drawing smiles from the others.

One of the British soldiers guarding them snarled and swung his musket butt, smashing it into the man’s face. Blood and teeth flew and he flopped to the ground, his jaw broken. The lack of discipline dismayed Fitzroy, but he understood it. These rebels had been murdering British soldiers, ambushing them, shooting them in the back. Americans who’d been killing soldiers in the night were objects of a deep hatred.

“How many of them are branded?” Tarleton asked. Fitzroy was taken aback. He hadn’t been aware that the young general was even present.

Guards checked and reported that five of them wore brands, identifying them as rebels who’d fought before against the king and his army. Tarleton grinned wickedly. “Well now, they doubtless know their future, don’t they?”

Fitzroy reached into a pile of their belongings and pulled out a crossbow. He examined it for a moment and handed it to Tarleton who found it amusing at first, but quickly turned angry.

“A coward’s weapon,” he said and tossed it back. He grinned wolfishly at the number of British soldiers who’d gathered around them. “I’ve changed my mind. Hanging’s too pleasant for them. Do whatever you wish,” he said. He whirled and walked away.

As Fitzroy gaped in astonishment, the surrounding soldiers roared and set about the helpless prisoners, hitting them with musket butts and stomping them with their feet. Then they began to stick them with bayonets. The Americans screamed in fear and agony while Tarleton laughed uproariously. It was over in a minute. The six prisoners had been reduced to a bloody, broken pile of almost unrecognizable flesh.

Tarleton glared at Fitzroy. “And don’t you dare tell me how this is going to affect any rebels surrendering. I don’t want them to surrender, Fitzroy. I want them to die. Every Goddamned one of them.”

Fitzroy returned his glare. “I wouldn’t treat a hog like you treated those men.”

“And I wouldn’t either,” Tarleton replied evenly. “Hogs are valuable.”

* * *

The stream was wide, but not particularly deep. Will estimated it at waist level at its deepest point. Nor was it running very quickly. Men would not be swept off their feet. It would not stop the British, not even slow them very much. What was stopping them, however, was its openness. It was about fifty yards from bank to bank and each side was heavily wooded and bordered by thick, green bushes. The handful of Iroquois paused, doubtful of whether to continue. It smelled so much of an ambush. They said they could detect the scent of white men.

A British officer came up to them and yelled something that Will couldn’t quite hear, but the intent was obvious. The Indians were to get their lazy asses across the creek and scout out possible American positions.

Will felt a twinge of sorrow for the Indians—their group now reinforced to about twenty—but his feelings passed. They were the enemy. Will had arrived the day before to observe the progress of the British army. He lay in the brush, his face smeared with grease and dirt to make him less visible. Owen Wells lay a few feet away. He commanded the small American detachment while Will was strictly there to observe, a fact that made Will just a little uncomfortable.

Owen made a slight gesture with his hand. Two Americans jumped up, shrieked, and fired their rifles at the astonished Indians. They hit one in the leg and he fell into the water, thrashing wildly. The remaining Indians recovered quickly and poured heavy but inaccurate musket fire into the woods around Will and Owen.

Another signal and two more men rose and fired at the Indians, hitting nothing. The Indians screamed their anger and surged forward through the smoke of battle. When they were in mid-stream, Owen hollered for the rest of his men to fire and a score of crossbow bolts struck the Indians, who for a moment were puzzled to see the deadly things sticking out of legs and chests.

The bowmen laid down their crossbows and picked up rifles which they fired into the now thoroughly rattled Iroquois. The Indians were courageous, but this type of fighting was something terrible and new, even for warriors who made the woods their home. They fell back to the British side of the stream, dragging their dead and wounded with them. At least a dozen Iroquois had fallen and the once clear stream was running red, while clouds of musket smoke obscured both sides.

Owen looked at Will and grinned. “That was well done, wasn’t it?”

Will admitted that it was. “Now what do we do?”

Owen looked across the stream where he could see Redcoats forming for an assault. The Indians had disappeared. “Major, I believe it’s time to run like hell.”

* * *

General Tallmadge looked at the mess that was Will Drake and sneered in mock contempt. “Drake, every time I send you out east you come back even more disreputable and filthy than before. Is this a project of yours?”

Will managed a wan grin. He had been on horseback for several days and nights. He was exhausted, hungry, and, as Tallmadge pointed out, filthy.

“I wanted to get here before the British showed up,” Will said.

“Who aren’t hurrying at all,” said General Stark.

“No sir,” said Drake. “Not only are they not hurrying, but they’ve stopped and are setting up a fortified supply depot. They are building a palisade, and buildings inside sufficient to contain a great amount of stores.”

“Which is what we suspected would happen,” said Stark with a nod to Tallmadge who smiled at the compliment to his intelligence gathering techniques.

“And they’ll do it at least once more,” Tallmadge injected. “Burgoyne has no intention of repeating what he feels are his mistakes from his Saratoga campaign. He will ensure that he has enough ammunition and food before investing Fort Washington and Liberty.”

Stark glared at Will. “Tell me, Major, are we hurting them? Killing them?”

Will took a deep breath. “To an extent, yes sir. But we are not stopping them. We have killed and wounded a number of British and Indians, but there are so many of them and so few men in Clark’s brigade who are fighting them. Is there any thought of reinforcing Clark?”

Stark seemed surprised by the question and Will wondered if he’d been impertinent. Then he decided the hell with it. He’d been there on the trail and he’d seen the fighting and the damage that a small number of men could do. “I think more men could really hurt them.”

Stark slowly shook his head. “No. We will not reinforce Clark. However tempting that might be, it would mean running the risk of fighting the major battle in the woods where we might be overwhelmed and not in the fortifications we are building. No, Major, we will stick with our original plan and fight them here, where we’ve been preparing the field for battle.”

Will was dismayed. “Sir, Clark’s men have been killing the enemy, but we’ve lost men as well.”

Stark nodded grimly. “I understand, Major. And I know from your report that the British have taken to killing the prisoners they’ve taken. Our whole army now knows what befalls them if they should be so foolish as to surrender. Any doubts our people may have had should now be totally destroyed. They, we, will all fight to the death.”

“The Indians,” Tallmadge asked, “how are they reacting to our attacks?”

Will grinned. He was on surer ground. “Brant’s Iroquois are a long ways from their homes and don’t at all like fighting our men. They don’t like the crossbows and they don’t like being ambushed every time they reach a clearing or stream. If you want my opinion, the Indians will be through as a fighting force before long and will simply fade away and be replaced by Girty’s people.”

Tallmadge grimaced, “Which means we trade one band of bloodthirsty savages for another.”

Stark rose and turned to leave. Will started to rise, but Stark waved him down. “You’ve done good work, Drake. Get yourself cleaned up and write down anything you can think of that might be important.”

When Stark was gone, Tallmadge smiled like a cat. “Will, we do have some good news.”

“Finally? Wonderful.”

“First, additional men have been coming in and in numbers sufficient to offset those ‘sunshine soldiers and summer patriots’ who decamped because they suddenly realized that the British are indeed coming. The change in numbers is not all that great, but it is an improvement. Unfortunately, many of the new men are either poorly trained or not trained at all. However, we feel they will be adequate fighters when put behind barricades and earthworks.”

Will yawned. He would kill for a cup of real coffee. Or maybe a long nap. “Good.”

“Additionally, Daniel Boone and some other fighters will be coming from the south. Stark has called for their help.”

“They’re coming?” Daniel Boone was a legend for his fighting in Kentucky, while some of the other southern fighters like Sevier, Campbell, and Shelby had helped destroy a British force at King’s Mountain.

“We are confident they will obey Stark’s summons,” Tallmadge said smugly. “Boone has about a hundred riflemen, and, while it’s impossible to estimate what the others will bring to the table, any number will be helpful.”

“Wonderful. When will they arrive?”

“And there’s the rub, Will. Boone will be here in a week or so, but we have no idea when or where the others will come. There’s the nagging feeling that they might not arrive until after the battle. Stark sent messengers to find them, but God only knows when or whether they will. I also don’t know specifically what Stark is ordering them to do and whether they will obey his orders. ’Tis a sad state of affairs.”

Will groaned. “I almost wish you hadn’t built up my hopes and told me.”

“It seemed like the decent thing to do, sharing my confusion and my misery, that is. Now, why don’t you take a bath and go find your woman. And in that order, for God’s sake.”

* * *

Captain Peter Danforth cheered with the others as the last of the sailing barges made it to the relative safety of Mackinac Island and under the guns of the recently completed limestone fort that crowned the hill overlooking them. The crew of the tail end barge waved happily back. The journey had been an unqualified success and Danforth, who still heartily disliked Benedict Arnold, had been impressed by the turncoat’s ability to coordinate the efforts of the little fleet. Arnold was unquestionably qualified as a leader. Too bad Danforth couldn’t bring himself to like or trust the man.

Impressive, too, had been the sailing qualities of the barges. They had performed well as their untrained crews learned to sail them without sinking them. As a result, forty-eight of the fifty boats that comprised the hodge-podge fleet had arrived at the fort that controlled the Straits of Mackinac far more quickly than anyone had thought possible. One had sunk, the result of bad construction, and one had simply disappeared during a sudden squall. Still, forty-eight out of fifty was an impressive performance.

“Halfway there, eh Danforth?”

Danforth nodded. Captain Thomas Rudyard was the second in command of the garrison of Fort Mackinac. Like Danforth, he bemoaned the fact that they were both stuck in this military backwater while real glory was to be had in Europe. Rudyard reminded Danforth of his friend Fitzroy in that the man had no money to speak of and would need glory on the battlefield in order to rise above his current rank. Rudyard, however, was likely already too old for promotion. He was almost forty and took out his frustrations by getting drunk each evening after his duties were completed.

Still, Rudyard was a likeable sort of sot. “Halfway there, Thomas, although far less than halfway home.”

“I can hardly wait,” said Rudyard. “I hate this place.”

Danforth was sympathetic. Only at Mackinac for a couple of days, he found it beyond boring. Other than staring at the trees, which never moved, or the vast lakes, which sometimes did, there was absolutely nothing to do. Even the Indians seemed relatively docile and unthreatening and unwilling to repeat their warfare against the British only a few decades past. That last Indian war, under the loose leadership of Pontiac, had resulted in the massacre of the British garrison of Fort Michilimackinac, whose ruins were barely visible across the straits. The old fort had been abandoned as indefensible and the new one built on the island.

The French had maintained a presence in the lakes for almost two centuries before surrendering control to the British. Danforth wondered how their soldiers had coped with being out of contact with civilization and Europe for years on end. He wondered if some of the French soldiers in the garrison had gone mad, and then wondered the same about the British garrison. He couldn’t imagine anyone actually liking it in the wilderness.

But then, some people did live there. A village of sorts had grown up along the shore and beneath the fort. It included the usual shabby taverns and these featured local women working as prostitutes. Some of those of partial French ancestry looked attractive enough and Danforth commented on it.