Woods Runner

by Gary Paulsen

  The man removed his hat and rubbed his head. “Well, I’ve got some sickle bars that could use a honing and I ’spect Martha has some knives that need touching up.”

  “No sooner said than done. Sam, why don’t you get that sharpening wheel down and we’ll get to edging things up.”

  Samuel—who had never been called Sam in his life—went to the back of the wagon and peered into the mess. He hadn’t really looked at it before but now, as he pulled some things aside, he found a sharpening wheel, a wooden frame with a treadle and a small tin cup to drip water on the stone. When he pulled it out of the way, he found a wire-covered crate pushed under some things. It had some kind of birds in it and on closer examination he saw they were pigeons; live pigeons. How strange.

  He hadn’t even known they were there. Why were they hidden? He took the wheel down and put it by the trough, filled the tin cup and hung it by the wire over the wheel so water would drip from a small hole in the can onto the stone. He made sure the treadle worked and the wheel spun.

  The man came from the barn with three hand sickles that had the long curved blade used for harvesting wheat or other grains. Abner took one, stood by the wheel and gestured to Samuel to start pumping with his leg to get the stone spinning. Abner held the first blade against the stone as it turned, making a scraping-hissing sound, and the steel edge ground down to razor sharpness.

  Samuel was amazed at how easily the stone spun. This shouldn’t take too long. How peaceful it all seemed. He kept pumping until the sickle was done.

  Then another, and Samuel switched pumping legs.

  Legs a little tired.

  And another. He switched legs again.

  Legs a little more tired.

  Then three axes, two picks, a tomahawk, a set of rail-splitting wedges—six of them—four slaughtering and sticking knives, and four butcher knives that Martha, a short, thin woman who was all smiles, brought from the house. Then an ice chisel, two serrated hay knives, two planking adzes, one shingle froe, and, at last, an old cavalry saber that the farmer—named Micah—used for chopping corn.

  Samuel staggered over to the trough to wash. Abner put his whole head underwater and then shook like a dog. He pulled his hair back and combed his beard down and Samuel saw Micah smile at him. He saw something else there, a look of what? Recognition? As if they already knew each other?

  The meal was good, very good, though not up to what they had eaten at Caleb’s. Venison stew, piles of new potatoes, fresh bread with new butter, apple pie made with maple sugar, and fresh buttermilk cool from the spring-house on the side of the barn, in quantities to fill even Samuel. He was shy about asking for seconds, but Martha kept piling it on and he ate it gratefully. Sit-down meals were always rare in his life, even before the war—he winced at that thought, before the war; there didn’t seem to be such a thing anymore—what with his living in the woods on the hunt most of the time. But being a guest was almost unheard of and he wasn’t sure how to act.

  He needn’t have worried. As with Caleb and Ma, Micah and Martha made eating enjoyable, not something to fret over. When they were done with seconds, and thirds on the pie—even Annie ate like a wolf—they went out to sit on the porch while Micah and Abner lit up clay pipes with coals from the fireplace.

  “Food gets better every time I stop here,” Abner said, ending the mystery. “I didn’t think it was possible.”

  “She can cook.” Micah nodded, smiling. “In fact, there ain’t much she can’t do.”

  Annie and Samuel sat on the edge of the porch. The dogs were in the dirt in front of them. Annie was about to doze off but Samuel wanted to listen, so he sat drawing pictures in the dirt with a stick, the dogs watching with a kind of casual interest as the stick moved around.

  “Know anything about the happenings in New York?” Abner asked. “How it went?”

  Micah shook his head. “Not much. The English took it and a bunch of prisoners. They’ve moved in, the English. Took over houses for their own—they ain’t making a lot of friends. Course that doesn’t seem to bother them much, not making friends, the way they brought those damn Hessians into it. Hiring mad dogs.”

  “The passes I brought you working out?”

  “So far. I’m more worried about scavengers hitting us. The wild ones would kill you for a turnip. But we’re still here, ain’t we?”

  “Good. I’ve got some more birds to leave. You still have that hutch in back of the barn?”

  “Yes.”

  “Same as before. Send one if anything big comes along. I’ll send one this evening. We saw a large detachment heading up the road today—maybe two hundred. They ought to know about it back in Philadelphia.”

  “If the hawks don’t get him. I don’t know how any of them get past the hawks.”

  “Well, there’s always that. Always some risk. But it’s better than nothing.”

  The pigeons are for carrying messages, Samuel thought. He glanced at Abner out of the corner of his eye—there was so much more to him than he’d thought at first.

  The men sat smoking in silence for a moment; then Abner said: “You said they took some prisoners. Sam’s parents weren’t military but they took them prisoners anyway.”

  “They’re doing that.” Micah nodded. “No sense to it. Just see a man working in a field and take him prisoner. Stupid. Like they think the crops are going to plant themselves.”

  “You know where they’re keeping the prisoners?”

  “Not certain. There are warehouses and an old sugar mill—you remember that three-story thing they built to mill sugar?”

  Abner nodded. “Along the waterfront.”

  “Yes. I think they might use that, along with the warehouses. There are thousands of prisoners. I don’t know how they’ll feed them, plus I s’pose plenty of them were wounded. It can’t be good for them.”

  “Well,” Abner said, knocking his pipe out on the side of the porch. This, Samuel saw, made the dogs stand up and get ready. He was amazed by them. They saw everything. “We’ll see what we can see,” Abner said. It was starting to get dark. “You mind if we sleep here tonight? We’ll be out of here early.”

  “Why would I mind? There’s new hay in the loft, makes a good bed, long as you don’t smoke.”

  And with the mules unharnessed, fed hay and put out in a pen for the night, Abner took time to put two pigeons in the hutch in back of the barn. He wrote something on a tiny piece of thin paper, tied it to a third pigeon’s leg and let him go. He and Samuel and Annie watched the bird fly away to the south.

  “He’ll roost somewhere tonight if he doesn’t get there before dark. It’s probably only forty miles in a straight flight, an hour the way they move, so he should make it. Imagine, moving through the air at forty miles an hour. Just imagine.”

  Later, lying on the new hay with the clover smell thick around him, Samuel could hear Annie breathing regularly in sleep. He teetered on the edge of it, but before it came he said to Abner, who was lying just above him on the stacked hay bales: “You and Micah aren’t what you seem to be, are you?”

  “We are,” Abner chuckled, “exactly what we seem to be—and maybe just a little bit more.”

  Civilian Intelligence

  Individuals and civilian spy networks carried out the most vital American intelligence operations of the Revolutionary War. Men and women whose daily lives and work brought them into proximity with the British military, such as farmers and merchants, fed important information to the American authorities throughout the war. Some patriots even posed as loyalists to infiltrate pro-British groups, collecting detailed facts about British military operations and defenses, supply lines and battle plans.

  CHAPTER

  16

  There was a long, shallow hill as they came into what Samuel would have called a city, and Abner stopped the mules at the top of it, still half a mile out, and studied it.

  Samuel had never even imagined such a place. Houses and other buildings everywhere, built on the land n
ext to the open water. And that water was another thing he’d never seen. “Is that it?” he asked. “That water—is that part of the ocean?”

  “That’s the Hudson River,” Abner sighed. As they’d moved from settlement to settlement, each one bigger than the last, Samuel and Annie had been asking, “Is this New York?”

  “And that’s not New York, either,” Abner said. “Not yet. We’re in New Jersey. Look there, across the river, through the fog—that’s New York. We’ll leave the wagon here and the mules and get a boat across. I know somebody who might help us.”

  Down below, on mudflats that led out to the river, Samuel saw dozens of boats pulled up to the shoreline, some large, some small, and men waiting to row them across the river. Now and then through the mist, he could make out what seemed to be a large city.

  Large? Huge.

  “Wait here,” Abner said. “I’m going to go look for a friend.”

  Between the wagon and the river were many buildings, some with fenced-in pens full of oxen and horses and mules.

  Abner came back. “Very well.” With him was a man who looked a lot like him: gray hair everywhere, tobacco spit down his chin, old clothes. “Matthew here is going to take us across and bring us back. We have had enterprise with each other before and he understands the nature of our business. I told him we hope it won’t take long and that we prefer coming back in the dark, if possible, and fast. We’ll leave the wagon and mules and dogs with his boys on this side. They’ll keep them ready for us. Samuel, you may take your knife, but leave your rifle here. There are soldiers everywhere and a rifle will draw attention. Annie, you wait here with the wagon.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “He is all I’ve got.”

  “And he will be back. If this works right there will be two more people coming back with us, and the boat is not that big. We might need the room….”

  She looked at Samuel. “You come back.”

  “I will.”

  “I’m telling you, you better or else.”

  Samuel could see that she was crying and he found himself choking up but hid it. “Don’t worry.” He put his hand on her shoulder.

  The truth was he had no idea … about anything. They didn’t even know for certain if his parents were over there. He looked across the river. It was late afternoon and the sun was burning the fog off. The city was huge, with buildings standing three and four stories high, and houses spread out in a grid.

  How could they hope to find anybody in all those buildings? Looking at the city, imagining how many people must be there, made the rest of the trip seem almost easy. The woods, the forest, was nothing compared to this.

  “Away,” Matthew croaked. “We must go. Darkness comes fast on the river and we must be across when there is still light for to see. Follow.”

  Abner moved with him toward the boats and after a moment’s hesitation Samuel followed. There were about a hundred boats pulled up along the mud bank in a long line, tied to brush or small trees, and most of them looked to be on their last legs. Water-soaked, unpainted clunkers, covered with mud and filth that came down the river. Samuel was surprised—considering that Matthew looked even rougher than Abner—to find that he brought them to a beautifully maintained, painted double-ended boat about twenty feet long. There was a small cabin in the center and a short mast up over the cabin.

  The cabin itself could only take two people. Matthew said, “Get inside. What isn’t seen isn’t noted.” He grunted as he heaved the boat out of the mud and into the slow current. Then he jumped in, pulled the sail up—the canvas surprisingly clean and well tended—and stood to the tiller. There were no seats or benches except in the cabin, but a wooden bailing bucket was in the stern. As soon as the boat was moving in the soft breeze, Matthew pulled the bucket over and sat, put a chew of tobacco in the corner of his cheek, smiled through discolored teeth at Samuel and said, “Your ma and pa know you’re coming to get ’em?”

  Samuel looked sharply at Abner—he must have told Matthew the whole story. Abner smiled. “We have done a mite of business together. I told him what we were doing. You can trust him with your life, which”—he snorted—“is exactly what you’re doing.”

  Abner has a whole network, Samuel thought, to work against the British. People on farms, pigeons, and now the man with this boat. Abner was the most amazing man Samuel had ever met.

  “No,” Samuel said. “They probably think I’m dead, killed by the Indians.”

  Matthew nodded. “A fair surprise for them, then. It’s good to have surprises for your family.”

  And he tended to sailing the boat and didn’t say another word all the way across the river. It was just as well because with the lack of anything productive to think about—Samuel didn’t know where they were going, wasn’t sure what he would find, and didn’t know what he would do when he found or didn’t find his parents—his mind was taken up by the sailing.

  The boat must have been fairly heavy, yet it skimmed along over the water like a leaf. It wasn’t so terribly fast—maybe three or four miles an hour—but it seemed … graceful in some way. No, that wasn’t it. Free. The wind moved them along quietly and nobody worked to make it so—it just happened.

  The boat nudged into the bank.

  “Out,” Matthew said. “And up the bank. The road into town is on the left, sugar mill down to the right a quarter mile. I’ll come back every night at midnight and wait until three in the morning for four nights. If you’re not here by then I’ll figure the worst. What do you want done with the girl if you get scragged?”

  “Can you take her?” Abner paused. “Into your family?”

  Matthew hesitated. “Well,” he said, “Emily always wanted a daughter. So be it. But we’ll bet against it.”

  And he pushed the boat back out into the current and was gone.

  Abner said, “Let’s get to it.” And he moved up the bank with Samuel following.

  At the top Samuel stopped dead. There were people everywhere, all along the road into the city and down the side road that led to the sugar mill, maybe hundreds of them, and it seemed that almost every man was wearing a red coat.

  Soldiers were wherever you looked, armed and walking next to the buildings, roughly forcing civilians to move out into the street.

  “Let’s start down toward the mill,” Abner said. “There might be somebody we can talk to, get a mite of information.”

  They hadn’t gone twenty yards when two soldiers, rifles fixed with bayonets, stopped them. “State your business,” one said.

  “I’m on the Crown’s business,” Abner answered. “From across the river. Looking to bring food to the prisoners. I was told they’re in the old sugar mill, is that so?”

  The soldiers laughed. “Aye,” said one. “There and in warehouses and churches. But don’t waste food on the rebels. You might as well feed it to hogs, for all the good it will do. They’re all marked for the box.”

  They went off laughing and Abner started walking again, heading for the sugar mill, Samuel following. What had the soldiers meant by “marked for the box”? He was so engrossed in his thoughts and in keeping up with Abner, who could walk surprisingly fast, that he almost ran full-on into his mother.

  His mother.

  Right in front of him.

  It was a thing that could not happen. Impossible. For the first moment, neither of them believed it.

  She was dumping out a bucket of slops in the gutter as he was dashing down the street after Abner. She glanced up at him and then back at the pail, just as he dodged out of her way, hurrying to keep up with Abner.

  In that instant, though, their heads jerked back to face each other. And they stood stunned, the world around them stopped.

  “Sa … Samuel?” She dropped the bucket to the ground, reaching out her hand, cracked and red and worn, to gently touch his cheek. “Are you … We thought you were … after the attack … Is it … is it really you?”

  Samuel couldn’t breat
he, couldn’t speak. “I … We …”

  And then they were holding each other, both crying, until Abner said:

  “Leave off! Dammit, leave off! People are watching. Back away!”

  They moved away from each other. She was very thin and drawn and looked so small, Samuel thought. “Father? Is he …?”

  “Down the road, in that big building. An old sugar mill, full of men, prisoners. I work in this house”—she pointed—“cleaning. I get a corner to sleep in and leftover and scrap food, which I take to your father each night. I’m a prisoner, too, but this family treats me fairly.” She stopped. “What happened to your head?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “It’s scarred—”

  “Tell us about the prisoners,” Abner cut in. “Everything you know.”

  She looked at Abner, then at Samuel. “He’s helping me,” Samuel said. “Tell him. Everything.”

  “Helping you what?”

  “We don’t have time now, Mother. Tell him what he asks.” Samuel worried they’d be caught talking and she’d have to go in. “Please.”

  “The prisoners are barely fed. Your father can hardly stand or walk.”

  “Guards,” Abner said. “How many guards?”

  “There are guards inside with the prisoners. At the door—two. But one sleeps almost all the time. The other is by the main door. The back door is nailed and boarded shut. There’s only one way out. If there was a fire—”

  “Can you get a private message to your husband? Today or early tonight?”

  She nodded. “When I bring the food. The guard goes through it and takes anything good. It’s such a small amount, you’d think he’d just let it be. But I will find a way to hide a message.”

  “Tell him to be at the front door at midnight, at the middle of the night if he hasn’t a watch. Tell him to be there hiding close by the guard. Alone. Just him, understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you slip out at midnight?” Abner was abrupt, terse. “Right here, at midnight?”