“I hear he sleeps in a tent,” another teamster said. “Not on the ground as we do, I’ll wager.”
“You know,” Lazarus said, “he is married to a Tory. Yes, it is true,” he added although no one had contested the point. “The daughter of Thomas Flucker himself, the Royal Secretary of the Massachusetts Bay Province. I have never seen him but I hear he is a pompous strutting cock.” He waited for someone to say something and when no one did, he went on. “Now you tell me how Secretary Flucker, the King’s man in our Province, is going to let his daughter marry someone who is a not a Tory at heart.”
“Where is this leading,” one of the teamsters asked, warily.
Lazarus picked at his cold sore, grown into a deep scabby red circle at the corner of his mouth, taking his time now that he had their attention. “It is obvious to me,” he replied. “Our Colonel has taken us over the roughest terrain either to delay delivery of the cannons until it is too late to help General Washington, or to prevent them from ever reaching Cambridge. Why, for all we know, even now the British may have attacked and driven our men from the field. Or worse. The Redcoats are waiting up ahead to intercept us and take the cannons for themselves.”
Will hesitated. He wanted to say something in the Colonel’s defense. He was not accustomed to speaking up in groups and was unsure of how to present his argument. Besides, he anticipated the men would laugh at him.
“Nonsense,” a teamster bellowed from the other side of the fire. “You mean the Colonel traveled all the way to Ft. Ti, loaded up sixty cannon, brought them this far and his object is to sabotage General Washington’s effort? The cold has addled your brain, Lazarus. If he were a Loyalist, and I’m not saying he is, he never would have set foot out of Boston,” he snorted, putting another log on the fire. “You think he likes the cold any better than we do? He would rather be before a warm fire in a stone house and in a warm bed with Miss Lucy Flucker than out here with a collection of nitwits like you.”
“All I am saying,” Lazarus replied a little heatedly, “is that I would not have my daughter marry a British soldier, so why would the Royal Secretary permit his daughter to marry a true patriot? It is most peculiar and strange, I tell you.” He took a swig from his rum flask and offered it around.
“I hear that Miss Lucy is an ample woman,” a voice added from the fringe of the fire. “She would keep me warm at night. That is a fact.”
“My God, think of the sight,” said another. “When the two of them are coupling together in bed. It must be a stout four poster to hold them.” The teamster who had challenged Lazarus’ logic, stood up laughing at his own joke before telling it. “Why I might even like to fluck her myself,” he said. “Her name says it all for me. She is there to be flucked,” he chuckled. “The whole house must shake when Knox puts it to her.” The talk degenerated into more ribald comments, the men forgetting Palmer’s original accusation.
Will blushed at the image in his mind of the Colonel in bed with his wife. In Schoharie, in their small farmhouse, there had been little if any privacy. He had seen and heard his father and stepmother coupling. It hadn’t seemed very loving to him. Once he had entered the barn looking for a scythe and interrupted his father, having thrown his stepmother on the hay, her skirts hoisted up, her expressionless face turned away from her husband, and George Stoner fumbling with his pants. Will had backed away, confused and unseen. Perhaps it was different with the Colonel and his wife. He thought of making love to Elisabeth and rushed to shut out his thought as impure. She didn’t deserve his lewd fantasies. Embarrassed, he felt himself getting hard.
“This is not the bargain I made,” he heard another teamster say loudly over the jokes and laughter. “I signed on as a driver. Not to slog through deep snow chopping trees or have my arms pulled from their sockets holding on to a rope attached to a sled with a ton and a half of iron cannon at the other end,” he said angrily. “My oxen are worn out and a dead team will do me no good for the spring plowing,” another said. “I say we quit and go home and the cannons be damned.” There were cries of agreement while others shouted for more money for the work they were doing or argued about how much of their promised pay they were entitled to for coming this far but not all the way to Springfield. Finally, they decided to demand a meeting with the Colonel in the morning, before they would even hitch up their teams.
Will moved away from the group as they settled down for the night. All that loose talk of sex made him uncomfortable. While he was not afraid of any of them, nor had they given him any cause to be, the thought of spooning with the men tonight was repulsive. He was also petrified that he himself might get hard, having already had lewd thoughts about Elisabeth. He trudged glumly back through the snow to his sled, built his own fire and comforted himself by taking out the book the Colonel had given him. He caressed the rich leather cover and read a few short chapters in the flickering light. It was such a strange world being described, Somersetshire, England and the wealthy Magistrate Allworthy. He marveled at how much there was to read of faraway places and people he knew nothing about. Somewhat despondently he realized how little he knew and how big the world was beyond his father’s farm in upstate New York. He fell asleep. He dreamed of Johan escorting him around Boston with the British gone and the city thriving.
The next morning dawned grey and overcast, with the promise of snow later in the day. William Knox had already started the vanguard on their way when the Colonel was approached by the delegation of Massachusetts men, demanding a meeting. Knox arrived with a grim faced Nat beside him. The men formed a semicircle in front of their sleds and wagons, their teams unhitched as a visible sign of their intent not to proceed. Lazarus Palmer stepped forward as their spokesman, voicing their complaints. Will moved Big Red and the mare closer and stood between them, alternately brushing their shaggy winter coats and leaning into them for warmth.
The Colonel patiently heard them out. Nat wore a path in the snow, pacing up and down and glancing occasionally at the threatening sky, making it plain he thought they should be done with this useless talking and on their way.
“There is nought you can say, Colonel,” Lazarus concluded, “to persuade us otherwise. It is a miracle we have gotten this far. We have our families to think of and the necessity of healthy oxen for the spring planting. We need grain to sell and store for next winter. Now,” he said, his hands on his hips signifying he had made their case, “what is your offer to pay for our teamstering this far to this God-forsaken flatland between the ponds?” Or,” he paused, dangling what he believed was a clever thin reed of hope for the Colonel, “what will you pay in addition for those of us who may wish to continue on to Springfield?”
Knox seemed to ponder the question, as if calculating how many more pounds sterling he could afford to offer them. He startled them by talking not about money but about Massachusetts, their homes, and his pride in Massachusetts men standing up to the tyranny of the Crown. His deep voice rumbled out over the assembled teamsters standing sullenly before him. He recalled the resistance to the Stamp Act, the boycott of all imported British goods, not just by the people of Boston but throughout the Province, the occupation of Boston under the Intolerable Acts, the fortification of Roxbury Neck and confiscation of weapons from Boston citizens, General Gage’s closing the Boston Port and abrogation of their Massachusetts Charter, the banning of town meetings and Gage’s refusal to declare a day of Fasting and Repentance. He spoke of the suffering of the decent people of Boston with food scarce and the water turned bad, of the Redcoats destroying churches, homes and businesses, including his own bookstore, he added, using furniture for firewood and pews for horse troughs, of Catholic troops desecrating Christmas by drinking and partying, and the constant harassment of the citizenry and limitations on their liberties.
“The occupation of our homes and lands by Regulars did not come without cost,” Knox said, lowering his voice somberly. “It was five years ago this March when the brutal massacre by the King’s troops of un
armed citizens in Boston occurred.” He recounted the recent events of the past April when the Regulars marched out of Boston toward Lexington and Concord, the Redcoats’ unprovoked attack on the men assembled at the Alarm Post on the Lexington Green, the bravery of the militia at the North Bridge in Concord, the rallying of the militias from the surrounding countryside and the thirty-three mile British march back to Cambridge.
“They plundered our homes on their retreat,” Knox thundered, “stole the communion silver from our churches, bayoneted innocent travelers, set fire to buildings and incinerated women and children trapped inside. They slaughtered livestock in an orgy of savagery not seen in our land since the French and Indian War. In Menotomy, I was told innocents in Cooper’s Tavern had their heads bashed open by British rifles. Their brains splattered the tables and walls where they fell. And yet, despite this savagery, and even in the face of certain death, brave Massachusetts men defended their hearths and homes, dying on their own thresholds of multiple bayonet wounds while their loved ones watched their murders in horror from the safety of nearby woods.”
He opened his arms, spreading his dark blue wool cape like the wings of a giant bird to encompass the group before him, and lowered his voice. “It was your fellow teamsters in Menotomy and Lincoln who harnessed their teams of oxen to their wagons and sleds and carried our heroic dead militia, piled high and stiff, in their homespun stockings and coats dyed with the bark of the trees of the hills where they had lived, fought and fallen, more dignified in death than a British Officer in his brilliant finery. They bore them back to their towns and villages to be buried not with the full honors they deserved, but in trenches covered with boughs and limbs to hide their bodies should the savage Red Jackets return and seek revenge even upon the deceased.”
The Colonel paused, wiping his forehead with his left hand as if to clear a memory. “A doctor friend of mine attended to an old soldier, a veteran of the French and Indian War who had fought alongside the King’s troops against our then common foe. This past April, as the British retreated from their foul deeds at Lexington, he was compelled to defend his own home in Menotomy against them. With musket, pistols and sabre. Lame and old as he was, he killed five of the Regulars before he himself was shot and bayoneted and left for dead. The doctor counted fourteen wounds on his aged frame. But he lived, his body a testament to British brutality. At the end of this, our noble endeavor, I will take you to meet this valiant patriot and we will all hoist a glass with him to his recovery.”
There was a stirring and shuffling of feet among the teamsters, pretending to move to keep warm. Their manhood had been challenged by the Colonel’s recounting of the recent bloody battles. Their complaints of hard labor paled in comparison to the sacrifices made in the face of British guns. Will could sense a change in mood. He noticed Lazarus no longer stood in front of the group but had retreated to become one of them.
“Men. At Bunker Hill, made sacred now by the blood and courage of our militia, sturdy farmers like yourselves and tradesmen too, stood united in the face of charge after charge of British Regulars and the Death Head’s Cavalry. They inflicted a grievous blow to King George’s minions before leaving the field. The militiamen who died on that Hill gave their lives for a reason. Their belief in our collective rights. We, all of us, have our birth rights as Englishmen. Foremost among them is the right, as a free born people, to be governed by the laws of our own making. This is our public liberty, our responsibility as a free people to regulate our own affairs. The tyranny of the Crown is opposed to our exercise of this freedom to govern ourselves and our right to be treated equally before the law.” Knox waved his arm toward the men in front of him. “The King’s representatives in our Province regard you, all of us, as inferior human beings, a lower order of being. They are disdainful of our history of town meetings and congregational churches, of our observance of the Sabbath, of our common liberty. To them, we are fit only to be ruled, taxed and governed as they see fit to impose their will on us.”
He turned his large frame and pointed past the flatlands to the snow-covered steep hills to the east. “Beyond those mountains lies Boston. When I left, General Washington was headquartered in Cambridge and had surrounded the Redcoats in the city below. Our lines are within musket shot of the British, who have heavily fortified Bunker Hill. These cannons, the very ones you have struggled to bring so far, will end the tyranny of the King and his Army in Boston and all of Massachusetts. We will retake the sacred soil of Bunker Hill,” he bellowed.
“You have not come so far nor will continue to struggle because I ask you to do this,” he said, lowering his voice slightly. The men strained forward to hear his words. “Nor do you do so for the pay you are promised. You are part of this noble endeavor, this noble train of artillery, for all of Massachusetts. For the citizens who live here now and in generations to come, so that those who inhabit our Province in the future will live as free men without fear of arbitrary rule by a King and Parliament across the ocean, free to speak their mind in town meeting or Church, and free to live under the laws they themselves have made.” Knox stopped and scanned the front row of teamsters. He smiled at the few he recognized.
“Now men. You good Massachusetts men,” he said with affection. “Let us complete the trek which together we have set out to accomplish, and with the help of Divine Providence, fulfill the mission upon which the fate of our fellow citizens depends.” He waved as if in farewell, walked to a nearby tree, untied his horse and rode off without another word. 1
Will estimated the Colonel had spoken uninterrupted for more than an hour. He had never heard a speech like it. Before this, he had only attended sermons. The Colonel’s oration was awe-inspiring. Some day, he would like to be able lead men like that. To marshal thoughts and put words together in such a way as to make men want to follow him in some noble endeavor. The teamsters disbanded, with calls to quickly hitch up the horses and oxen and get moving. There were cries of “Follow the Colonel” and “On to Boston.” Not a single one abandoned the caravan.
Nat approached Will. “Tis is a later start than we wanted. A good thing they are eager to push on. The Colonel’s brother scouted ahead late yesterday afternoon. The next slope up to Blandford is the steepest by far. Then, from the summit is a dangerous precipitous hill, almost straight down with few open places between the trees. It will be a tough and trying slog.” He patted Will on the shoulder. “The Colonel wants you to be the first of the heavy cannons to make the descent.”
Will smiled back. “In case it becomes a runaway, I do not crush the others ahead of me,” he said knowingly. He saw the look of concern on his friend’s face. “Do not fret, Nat. The team will hold,” he said confidently.
“I will be there with a crew and extra drag chains.” Nat replied. “It is dangerously steep, Will. Be careful.”
A fine white snow began to fall, whipped by strong gusts from the west. Will sat exposed on the sled seat. He turned his body away from the steady bone chilling wind, so that his left side and back were soon coated in white and only his right arm and shoulder were clear of the fast falling snow. When the train halted at the beginning of the incline, he was thankful to climb down from his frozen perch. He ploughed the way into the woods, sinking in deep soft drifts around the trees. He swept the snow away around the trunk with a lopped off branch so as to have a secure footing. Eagerly and with youthful energy he swung the axe rhythmically, his blade biting into the soft pine and passing through the reddish core before the Continental on the other side had reached the middle.
As they proceeded up the long slope toward the summit of Blandford, the evergreens gave way to a hardwood forest of tall red oaks and shorter twenty-foot-high bear oaks, ash and beeches. The deep snow concealed dense thickets of barberry and other thorny bushes. When they went off the road to cut more trees, the brambles impeded their progress, and their efforts at chopping were made more laborious by the harder wood. They broke out the block and tackle midway up. With the s
now whipped almost horizontally by the strong wind, Nat attached the ropes to the sled’s front cross bar. Men emerged from the snowy greyness to join others in hauling on the ropes. Finally, with humans and horses pulling, Will’s sled with its ponderous fortification gun crawled up to the summit.
Will had expected some sort of village at the top. The place had a name, he reasoned. Instead, Blandford was a plateau, sparsely covered with snow-laden trees, stunted and buffeted by even stronger winds, and with not a barn, building or shelter to be found. Big heavy flakes fell, rapidly obscuring the path carved by the sleds and wagons that had preceded them. All Will could see before him was a long steep decline, the bottom of which was somewhere far below lost in the thick swirling flakes. Nat leaned on the sled and stared down the slope.
“Nothing for it, Will, but to do as we have done since leaving Great Barrington.
We will chop down more trees, attach them and the drag chains and make the descent.”
“The snow seems wetter,” Will said encouragingly. “It should pack up on the chains and logs and slow us down.” Nat moved off through the falling snow with chains and block and tackle slung over his shoulders. Will took his axe from underneath his seat and trudged off toward a nearby bear oak, his head and shoulders hunched down into the wind.
The rest of the afternoon and into the early darkness of the evening was a blur of a hellish five-mile descent in a snowstorm. Will’s shoulders ached from swinging the axe, his forearms burned from pulling on the reins, his thigh muscles were knotted from lifting his knees high in walking through drifts, his legs below the knees and especially his ankles and toes were so numb as to be beyond feeling. He held the icy reins in his chapped hands. The blood from his split fingers and knuckles froze in thin red streaks, like dyed strands of wool.
Cannons for the Cause Page 9