The Blooding

by James McGee

  Wyatt could make out the lake through the trees. Sunlight was creating bright shimmering patterns on the water. Nevertheless, he halted. Something wasn’t right. Even if the boats were shielded from his view by the lie of the land, this close to the embarkation point he should have been able to detect a sense of activity.

  But there was nothing.

  Priming their weapons, the Rangers advanced cautiously.

  Fifty paces further on, about to emerge from the trees on to the foreshore, they paused at the sound of a soft tchuk tchuk to their right. When the blackbird’s call was repeated, Wyatt breathed a sigh of relief. As his fellow Rangers lowered their weapons, a swarthy, bearded figure stepped nonchalantly into view before them.

  “Jethro,” Wyatt said calmly.

  Boone acknowledged the greeting with a nod. “Lieutenant.”

  “You had us worried. Nate with you?”

  “Aye, he’s around.”

  Wyatt indicated the gunboat which was now visible and riding the gentle swell some ten yards offshore. “Not sure she’ll carry seven hundred.”

  “Leavin’ was brought forward. Rest of ’em’ve gone.”

  “Evidently.” Wyatt looked off towards the neck of the bay but there were no other vessels in sight. A pale smudge low down on the horizon to the north could have been a disappearing square of topsail, he supposed, but it was too far away to make out specific details. It could just as easily have been a patch of scrubby headland caught by the sun.

  Boone spat tobacco on to the ground. “Colonel had no choice – militia was closing in. Order went out to pick up the pace. Column got here at sun-up. Civilians went first. They’re long gone.”

  “From where?”

  Boone frowned.

  “The militia – which direction were they coming from?”

  “Ticonderoga.” The scout pointed at a fold in the hills at the southern end of the bay. “Clinton’s leading them.”

  “Is he? When did you discover that?”

  “Yesterday. Late mornin’ or thereabouts.”

  Before the second runner set off, Wyatt thought. So they were already coming at us from two directions.

  “We’re the last, then?”

  “That we are, ’ceptin’ Stryker.”

  “Stryker’s not coming,” Wyatt said grimly.

  “You’ve seen him?” Boone asked, surprised.

  “What was left of him. He’s dead. They all are. We came on them late yesterday. Oneida scouting party caught up with them.” Wyatt frowned. “Reverend De Witt was with them.”

  “Oneida?” Boone sucked in his cheeks, considering the implications. “God damn.” The scout stared at the ground and then looked up, his head canted. “De Witt, too, you say? Any sign of the boy?”

  “Boy?” Wyatt said.

  “The Hooper lad. That’s why they were out. Boy ran off and the colonel sent Stryker to look for him. De Witt went with them – volunteered.”

  “Ah, hell,” Billy Drew said.

  “There was no boy,” a confused Donaldson said.

  “Could be the Oneida took him,” Boone muttered, as if talking to himself. “Though that ain’t likely, if’n they were scouts.”

  Wyatt shook his head. His mind was racing. “They didn’t.”

  Boone squinted at him. “You sound mighty sure of that.”

  “Scouts’re dead, too. We caught up with them. Save for one. We think he took off, heading for Ticonderoga, probably to meet up with Clinton’s militia, pass the word the column was near.”

  “Didn’t Tewanias say there were six riders?” Jem Beddowes interjected.

  “The boy was on his horse,” Boone responded speculatively. “Word is, he went looking for his dog.”

  Wyatt cast his mind back to what Tewanias had told them.

  “One rode through before.”

  Suddenly, everything seemed to fall into place. The sixth rider had to have been the boy. Somehow, the Oneida had passed him by but had then chanced upon the search party and laid their ambush.

  Which could mean …

  Boone cleared his throat, interrupting Wyatt’s train of thought. “Boat’s waitin’, Lieutenant. Crew’ll want to get underway. Didn’t have no trouble persuadin’ ’em to wait for a while, but we’ve overstayed our welcome and then some. We should leave. Colonel’s a forgivin’ man, but even he has his limitations.” Boone looked over his shoulder and made a beckoning gesture. “We’d best get Nate back here.”

  “The boy’s still out there,” Wyatt said heavily.

  “Boat ain’t going to wait.”

  “Jethro’s right, Lieutenant,” Donaldson cut in. “Even if Tewanias got to the first runner, there’s militia coming up from the south and Clinton’s closing in from the east. They’re practically on our doorstep. And even if we did go back in there, where would we start looking? Grieves me to say it, but the lad’s gone.”

  Wyatt shook his head. “I made a promise. I said I’d keep him safe.”

  “And you did. You got him to the Hall and you persuaded the preacher to take him on. It’s not your fault the lad ran off. You can’t blame yourself for that. You want to blame anyone, blame the preacher.”

  “Preacher’s dead.”

  “And we stand a good chance of ending up the same way if Clinton arrives while we’re standin’ arguing about it.”

  An awkward silence fell.

  Beddowes, cradling his rifle, looked at Wyatt and said, “We going home or heading out, Lieutenant? It’s your choice.”

  We, Wyatt thought. Beddowes had used the word we not you. He knew then that they would follow him. All he had to do was give the order. Torn between the promise he’d given and his duty to see his men home safely, he hesitated.

  Then he heard Boone murmur, “Might not come to that, Lieutenant. Take a look.”

  The Rangers turned as one. Cavett was on his way back from the far end of the bay at a brisk trot, but it was not the sight of his fellow scout that had attracted Boone’s sharp eye.

  It was the dog.

  Wyatt felt a twist in his gut.

  As the men looked on, the animal turned abruptly and retraced its path into the trees. A second later it bounded out again, only to pause and look back. The first to emerge was the boy, leading the horse by its halter. The next figure to appear, to Wyatt’s utter amazement, was Tewanias.

  “I see it,” Donaldson said, his face forming into a wide grin, his soft brogue coming to the fore. “But I don’t bluidy believe it.”

  Wyatt managed to find his voice. “Time to move, Jethro.”

  While Boone gestured to the boat crew, Wyatt looked off beyond Tewanias and the boy to where the smaller figure of Nate Cavett was jogging towards them.

  No, Wyatt realized with a jolt. Not jogging. The scout was running, running hard.

  The report split the air with the force of a thunderclap. The explosion that followed as the ball smashed into the gunboat, laying waste her bow-chaser, igniting her powder keg and sending wood and metal splinters through the bodies of the navy crewmen as if they were made of butter, rolled around the bay, scattering wildfowl in all directions.

  As the screaming began, the Rangers broke apart, searching for cover. A patch of grey-white smoke roiling at the edge of the trees beyond Cavett’s shoulder showed where the shot had originated.

  “Militia!” Beddowes yelled, the warning superfluous.

  The gun crew was already ramming a fresh round into the gun’s barrel. It was a small-calibre fieldpiece, a three-pounder Grasshopper, Wyatt guessed; British-built, designed to accompany Light Infantry and probably captured when the Americans took Ticonderoga. Capable of being drawn by a single horse or broken down and loaded on pack animals, they were easily manoeuvrable over hard terrain and thus ideal for transporting along heavily forested trails.

  A volley of lighter reports rang out. Cavett stumbled and threw his arms up, thrust forward by a projectile striking his back. He did not rise. Less than two hundred yards beyond Cavett’s bo
dy, men were coming out of the woods; some in uniform, others in civilian dress. Among the leading rank were several brown-skinned figures in breech-clouts: Oneida warriors, from their feathered scalp locks.

  The cannon roared again, spitting smoke. Wyatt ducked. This time, the ball landed twenty yards short. Scattering sand and stone, it bounced several times before finally rolling to an undignified halt at the end of a long furrow, one hundred yards past its intended target.

  The gunboat was listing heavily with half its crew writhing bloodily in the scuppers. Wyatt saw that some wounded survivors were dragging themselves over the side and into the shallows while others, miraculously unscathed by the detonation, were trying to swim away. It had been a devastatingly accurate shot, and judging by the trajectory of the second ball, possibly a lucky one.

  He looked to his men. The Rangers had found shelter behind a couple of beached tree trunks whose entwined limbs formed a natural barricade. Weapons primed, they had not opened fire. The range was too great. It would have been a waste of ammunition.

  Tewanias and the boy had been less than a hundred paces away when they’d left the woods. Now they too were running, trying to make up the ground, the dog leading the way. Somehow, the boy had retained hold of his horse, which, thrown into panic by the cannonfire, was whinnying in terror. As Wyatt looked on, the animal gave a desperate lunge and broke from the boy’s grip, galloping off along the shore.

  There was another boom. The top of the gunboat’s mast and yard crumpled like matchwood. The gunner’s aim was improving.

  Wyatt slipped Tewanias’s musket off his shoulder. As the Mohawk and the boy ran in behind the primitive defensive wall, Wyatt tossed Tewanias his weapon, only noticing at the last minute that the Mohawk already had a long gun strapped across his back: a carbine. As Tewanias took the catch, Wyatt saw the wound in the Indian’s side.

  “Get behind us, Matthew!” Wyatt urged. “Keep your head down!”

  The enemy troops were still beyond rifle range but advancing quickly, using the width of the shoreline, knowing that with the gunboat’s bow-chaser out of action they had little to fear from the handful of men opposing them.

  A roar came from the direction of the boat. Wyatt’s first thought was that another powder keg had gone up, but then he saw an eruption of smoke by the starboard gunwale. Somehow, one of the crew had managed to aim and fire the stern-mounted swivel-gun.

  A close-quarter weapon devised to repel boarders, when loaded with grapeshot the swivel-gun was a man-killer. Even when fired from a distance it was capable of inflicting appalling damage.

  The front line of attackers folded as the spread of musket balls ripped into them, the air misting with blood. Then the Grasshopper fired a fourth time and the gunboat was struck again. Strakes of decking flicked through the air, spearing into both the dead and the living with the force of crossbow bolts. Wyatt and his men ducked. As the smoke from the swivel-gun cleared, Wyatt saw that the muzzle was pointing impotently towards the water. The body of the crewman who’d fired it was draped, bleeding and lifeless, across the upended barrel. The vessel’s mast and spar were now lying in a confused mess across the thwarts.

  Wyatt looked for the militia cannon. The gun crew was holding off, possibly for fear of hitting its own men. Boone, crouched down next to him, squinted round the end of the trunks. “Bastards.”

  Wyatt glanced again towards the ruined gunboat. The men who’d gone overboard were clawing their way on to the stony beach. He turned back. The boy was crouched down next to Tewanias and had his arms clamped around the dog’s neck. Having lost one animal to flight, he wasn’t going to lose another.

  It was Wyatt’s turn to peer round the barricade. A few more yards and the militia would be within range of the Rangers’ long guns. It struck him that he could no longer see the Indians. He looked towards the wood. Indians did not employ European tactics when they went into battle. They didn’t advance in serried ranks; they used whatever natural cover was available. It was what made them such valuable allies and fighters. The Oneida, Wyatt knew, would be advancing through the trees; before long the Rangers would be outflanked.

  In his mind’s eye he pictured the aftermath of the attack on Stryker’s men. De Witt had taken his own life rather than face the brutality of the knife. Wyatt knew that if the Oneida arrived first, there would be no restraining them. Tewanias, he saw, was also looking towards the forest, sensing what was to come.

  “Make a run for it?” Jem Beddowes suggested.

  Back into the woods? Wyatt thought. Where the Oneida could be waiting in force?

  If it was just the Rangers and Boone, it would have been a strategy worth considering, but they had a twelve-year-old boy to consider. Oneida warriors weren’t known for their discrimination and tender feelings. Keeping low, he crawled to the Mohawk’s side and eyed the wound. “How bad?”

  The look Tewanias gave him verged on the contemptuous. “I am not dead yet.”

  Wyatt smiled and then his expression hardened. He gripped the Mohawk’s arm. “I want you to take the boy.”

  The Mohawk chief said nothing, but Wyatt could see the significance of his request taking shape behind the dark eyes.

  “We’ll hold them off, give you time to get away.” Wyatt removed his hand and turned. “You gave us quite a scare, lad. You hurt?”

  The boy shook his head.

  “Good. You’re to go with Tewanias. He’ll look after you.”

  “They’re coming, Lieutenant!” Donaldson announced.

  Wyatt turned to Tewanias. “I need you to do this. We’ll follow if we can, but you keep him safe. Promise me?”

  Tewanias continued to hold Wyatt’s gaze. A second passed, then two. Finally, he nodded.

  The boy stared at Wyatt. “Aren’t you coming?”

  Wyatt smiled. “We’ll be along, lad. Right now, our job is to slow the buggers down. You do as Tewanias says. You and Tam, you stay with him, no matter what. He says run, you run. He says hide, you hide. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good lad.”

  “Best make it quick,” Donaldson warned, cocking his rifle.

  “Two hundred and seventy yards, Lieutenant,” Boone said. The scout spat out the remains of his tobacco plug, raised himself up, rested the length of his rifle on the top trunk and tucked the weapon into his shoulder. “Fish in a Goddamned barrel.”

  The Mohawk slipped the Oneida’s carbine from his shoulder and handed it to Wyatt, keeping possession of his own gun. The message was obvious: You’ll need all the help you can get.

  “All right, boys.” Wyatt said, placing the carbine to one side in readiness. “Pick your targets.” To Tewanias, he said, “Run when I say. They’ll be in range for us, but you’ll be out of range for them.”

  “Unless the buggers have got rifles as well,” Billy Drew muttered.

  “Not helpful, Billy,” Donaldson said sternly.

  The Rangers, as skirmishers, all carried rifles which, although they took longer to load, were more accurate than muskets; useful for shooting at specific targets from a distance, namely enemy officers. Regular troops were issued with muskets, including those on the Continental side, but militia used their own weapons, which because they were used for hunting, tended to have grooved bores.

  “Time to find out,” Wyatt said. He flicked a glance at Tewanias who, along with the boy, was crouched low, ready to move. “Set?”

  The Mohawk reached out, laid his hand on the Ranger’s shoulder. “O:nen ki’ wahi’, Wy-att.”

  Wyatt smiled ruefully. Words seemed inadequate.

  As Tewanias took the boy’s arm, Wyatt turned back and raised his weapon. “Aim for the uniforms – they’re more likely to be the officers. Pick your targets. Take your first shots from me.”

  Steadying his breathing, Wyatt signalled that he was ready and the four Rangers and the scout rose as one. Sighting on a blue uniform, Wyatt exhaled slowly, paused, and fired.

  The cue taken, four rifles cr
acked alongside him. As the smoke dissipated, five distant figures were left sprawling.

  “Now,” Wyatt said.

  But Tewanias had anticipated the order and even before the reports had died away, he and the boy and the dog were moving.

  When he’d led Jonah out from the trees and seen the boat and the figures of Wyatt and his men, the boy’s heart had lifted in the belief that he had at last reached safety and that rescue was to hand. But that feeling had been dashed by the boom of the cannon and the arrival of the enemy soldiers. Now, as he ran from the threat of the smoke and the guns, his mind was in turmoil. He had no idea where he was running to. The only comforting thought was that Tewanias was with him. So long as that held true, he would be safe.

  As he followed the Mohawk chief across the curve of foreshore towards the furthest trees, he wondered how long it would be before he saw Wyatt again. When he looked back at the puffs of smoke and heard the rifle shots, a small voice inside his head told him it might not be for some time.

  Perhaps never.

  After the first volley, Wyatt gave the instruction to fire at will.

  Jem Beddowes, having already reloaded, rose to one knee and fired again. “Six down.”

  “Soon get through the rest of ’em,” Boone said, ducking back. His grin was cut short as he bit the end from a fresh cartridge and sprinkled the priming powder into the pan.

  Another rifle cracked.

  “Seven,” Donaldson said.

  Billy Drew and Wyatt fired together.

  “Shot,” Billy Drew said, as two hundred paces in front of them two more uniforms went down.

  Wyatt did not respond. Dropping back, he began to reload, his actions calm and precise.

  A cry came from the woods to his right; the Oneida, drawing closer.

  Wyatt knew it wouldn’t be long before they were overwhelmed. The Rangers’ rate of fire was such that for every twelve seconds it took to reload, the enemy advanced another fifty yards. Even with five of them firing as fast as they were able, there weren’t that many seconds left. Not that many yards either. And by now they were well within range of the enemy’s muskets.