Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1963

by The South Fork Rangers (v1. 1)

  “Then we’ll bind you,” declared Fenniver, and two men in grubby Hessian green, a big man and a little one, sidled their horses close to Jonah. Zack sat glumly silent while they tied his wrists in front of him and the big Hessian took the end of the cord to fasten to his saddle.

  “Now on we go,” Fenniver said. “I know this fellow’s horse for swift beyond any in these regions, and, judging by the way the poor beast blows, he has come far ahead of his friends. But they will follow anon, and ere they are at hand let’s make an end of that cozy farm that is their nest.”

  They took the road again. A party of watchful riders, each with gun ready in his free hand, led the way. Then came Fenniver, then Zack between the two Hessians, then the main body.

  “Now we put fire to your place,” the small Hessian said gutterally to Zack. “What you say to that?”

  “I say, be careful you don’t scorch your hands doing it,” Zack snorted, and Fenniver, riding just ahead, laughed.

  “Good advice, Harper,” he said over his shoulder. “We’ll mingle method with our daring. Forward at a trot, men, but ’ware any more surprises.”

  They rode from the ford, the short way to their objective. In the bright, mild afternoon, the smoke of the Harper chimney rose ahead of them. Fenniver halted his command and rode forward himself, then came back.

  “No stir there,” he reported. “I take it, Harper, that all your men rode gaily out to catch us at that other house. Forward again, brave lads. When I give the word, we ride in at them ere they can ask the reason.”

  They approached, within sight of the house. It was silent behind the open-work fringe of stakes, and Fenniver clicked his tongue as in triumph already achieved. He made a gesture, and the advance party quickened its trot to a canter. But as the foremost man came near the loosely barred main gate, a shot cracked in the quiet air, and smoke sprang from the loophole in a shutter.

  “Off the road, all!” cried Fenniver. “In among the trees!”

  “Heaven’s curse on all in there,” muttered Plum as he rode behind some sycamores. “They’re keeping watch.”

  “Aye, with finger on trigger,” said Zack. “I give you good-day, gentlemen, for some of you may never see the sun set.”

  The Tories were dismounting among the trees. At Fenniver’s directions, they formed for an approach under cover. The little Hessian stayed with Zack, holding the rope that bound Zack’s hands.

  “Ach, yah!” smiled his guard. “We see now, we see.”

  The other Tories had stolen forward through the woods, and Zack could see them no more. At the roadside he squatted and peered. The house was silent as before. No sound came from it, or from the cautiously approaching attackers. At length:

  “Up and at them!” cried Fenniver’s voice.

  With a wild deep cheer, the dismounted men rushed. Zack saw them burst into the open, farther down the road where it opened into cleared land next to the front yard.

  Instantly a clattering volley rang out from the house. A Tory fell, and another across him. The others pressed on, and Fenniver himself was in the forefront, drawn sword in hand. But then they had come against the fence, and stopped there perforce, trying to tug poles out of the ground. Tightly driven in their places, those poles resisted the effort to clear them. More shots rang out.

  Instantly two more men were down, and Fenniver was loudly ordering the others to fall back. As they retreated, yet more guns barked at them, chivvying them into a faster run.

  Then silence again. The little Hessian tugged Zack along by the tethering cord, and brought them to where Fenniver stood peering between two close-set trunks. The gaiety was all gone from Fenniver’s face and manner, and he frowned as he debated what to do.

  “And so you left a strong watch, after all,” he said to Zack.

  “Aye,” Zack fell in with the suggestion. “You’ll never take that house, sir. Best draw olf, ere my other men come up with you.”

  “If there’s a force within, then not so many came out after us,” argued Fenniver plausibly. “We’ll chance it. Take this place, then round on the others, who will be in smaller number. Ho, lads! Let the best shots of you go forward. Spread out and shoot upon those windows.”

  His men stole away to carry out the order. From various points within the thickets before the fenced house, their guns began to speak. Bullets rapped the stout timbers of the walls, the split logs of the shutters. But back came a resolute reply, gun after gun.

  “How many shot within there?” Fenniver asked the Tory in the sheepskin coat.

  “Nay, Lieutenant, I can’t count for certain,” was the reply. “We’ve seen smoke jump out at every loopholed window, aye, and at that front door, too.”

  Fenniver counted. “Three windows bear upon us from here, and the door makes four,” he summed up. “A stern rush, and we could overthrow that many.”

  “But they shoot fast and true,” argued the man in sheep-skin. “Sir, I have in mind that four are at the loopholes at once, and then while they load, another four is there ready to shoot.”

  “Eight, then,” said Fenniver, “and we number a score.” “A score of you, outside,” agreed Zack. “My friends are behind stout walls. A few minutes back, and you were twenty-four. Four of those are fallen, and I wager that not a man of mine has so much as a skinned nose.”

  “We’ll charge again,” declared Fenniver. “Make ready, my boys. Go, one of you, and tell the others to go forward at my call.”

  “You’ll lose another four as you come to that fence,” warned Zack, beginning to feel a fierce enjoyment of the situation. “That will leave you but sixteen to push on. Even if you gain the door, you’ll lose more ere you force it. Where’s that method you were mixing with your daring, Lieutenant Fenniver? You’ll lose heavily, your company will be destroyed.”

  “More loyal men are ready to join us,” Fenniver said. “Ten more are embodying, stout hearts all—”

  “But they haven’t joined you yet,” reminded Zack. “Nor will they, I hazard, when my command comes upon you and destroys you. Those stout hearts may quail.”

  “You talk trickery!” Fenniver accused.

  “He talks sense, sir,” ventured the sheepskin-clad Tory. “ ’Twill take lives if we rush that house again.”

  Fenniver glared at this subordinate, but did not speak.

  “I don’t warn you away,” Zack said, remembering how Alspaye had temporized with the Rangers to kill time. “Nay, I urge you to that charge. How many will come running back from it?”

  “ Tis sooth, sir, we’ll be caught between two fires,” seconded the sheepskinned one.

  “Silence, both of you!” Fenniver blazed.

  Again he thought, furiously frowning. Zack forebore to smile in happy hopefulness. As Alspaye had talked to let his men get away, so he himself talked to let his men draw near.

  “Time passes, Lieutenant Fenniver,” he said banteringly. “And I hear it said that a good leader is ever swift with his decisions.”

  “Another word from you and Pll have you shot,” warned Fenniver.

  The little Hessian brightened at that, but the man in sheepskin remained glum. “Sir, we boys never joined the company for such bloody trouble as this,” he persisted.

  “Aye, and ’tis well you wear that woolly coat, for you’ve a timid lamb’s heart inside it,” Fenniver snapped at him. “Did you join then for easy hours of barn-burning and horsestealing and pig-roasting? Well, today you’ll face guns, either of those Rebels or my own pistol if you shrink away.”

  “If we waited until dark—” began the fellow again.

  “My own friends will come ere that,” supplied Zack.

  “This Rebel speaks truth,” said Fenniver. “No more blathering, you faint-hearted complainer. I command here.”

  “At your orders, Lieutenant,” mumbled the man in sheepskin, plainly unhappy in saying it.

  “Attention to them, then. Have we axes?”

  “One’s tied to my saddle, yah,” spoke up t
he little Hessian.

  “Fetch it,” Fenniver directed him. “Who else brought one?”

  Three men unlashed axes from their gear and ranged themselves before Fenniver.

  “Now, you in sheepskin,” said Fenniver, “form me up the others as shooting parties. Three each to fire on those windows, swift as they can load and aim, and eke another three, the best shots of all, to shoot at the door. Strike the loopholes as best you can. That will keep those inside from looking out to try at us. Away, now! ”

  The man sped away through the trees on his errand. Soon guns began to boom, one after another.

  “Ha, Harper, you remember I have subtle tricks,” said Fenniver, more cheerfully.

  “You juggled before the Indians, and we bested you there, too.”

  “Aye, and when you and I have leisure I pray you tell me the way your cunning friend arranged his magic. But meanwhile, we’re keeping their heads down there within. Come with me, you axemen.”

  He led them away. Only one guard stayed with Zack, a pug-faced fellow with a bandaged arm. Zack watched along the road and listened to the gunfire.

  He saw Fenniver and the three with axes run into the open and at the fence. No defending shots greeted them. At Fenniver’s wide-armed gesture, the party chopped furiously at several poles close together. Within moments those poles were brought dov/n and pulled away, leaving a gap full six feet wide. Then Fenniver waved his sword, and there was another cheer as the Tories rushed.

  Zack’s heart sank as he saw them gain the gap in the fence and push through. But as they bunched closely for a moment, there came a concerted crash of gunfire from the house, four guns together. Loud cries answered it. The charge faltered, even as it came into the dooryard. Another volley, with a gun at every loophole, and Zack saw men falling. The others whirled and ran, fighting each other to be first through the gap again.

  Fenniver tried to hold them to their charge, as Alspaye had tried at Starrett’s. He fairly danced in fury, roaring for them to come back. Another shot rang out from the house, and Fenniver’s handsome cocked hat sailed from his head and away, like a leaf in a high wind. Then Fenniver ran, too, as swiftly as any. Whoops and jeers burst from the defenders of the house.

  The pug-faced Tory cursed unhappily. There was movement in the woods, and Fenniver fetched his men back to where Zack waited under guard. Roundly Fenniver scolded and rated the band for breaking and running so close to the house.

  “Another moment and we’d have broken in upon them!” he cried bitterly.

  “By your leave, sir, I wonder about that,” quavered Plum, stooping to tie a rag around a gashlike wound in his calf. “That door looked solid as a rock to me, and even had we forced it open they might have shot us like partridges on the threshold.”

  “Lead us again, Lieutenant,” urged the man in sheepskin, rage mastering his earlier timidity. “My heart went cold mad when they scorned us in our flight.” He looked at Zack. “How soon will those rascals of yours come hither?”

  “Your Lieutenant has said he’d have me shot if I spoke,” reminded Zack, in calm good humor.

  “Speak now, if you can tell us aught for our good,” Fenniver bade him roughly.

  “For your good, say you? Well, you lost three more in that rush, and have come away again. Now you have but seventeen left for another assault. Since you inquire of me, I would guess that each rush you make will but nibble away more men, until the last of you is down or fled back to your hiding-hole.”

  “We flee no more!” declared the big Hessian, and the others jabbered approval. Plainly the Tory partisans had stiffened their fighting spirit.

  Fenniver raked Zack with calculating eyes. At last he said: “You’re a mocker and a derider, but there is truth in your words. We need policy, cunning method, to get at them.”

  “Aye, and so you do,” agreed Zack, smiling. “Here’s no victory for you to pull out of your hat.”

  “My hat,” echoed Fenniver and lifted his hand to his bare head. “ ’Tis shot away. Ah, Harper, how if I took you out there with me? How if we walked right up to that house, yourself in front of me to shield me?”

  “Why, ’twould be the untimely end of us both,” said Zack promptly.

  “You would give me to think that your own folk would fire on you?”

  “They’d not know that ’twas I they fired on.”

  “How, not know?” cried Fenniver, mystified. “But they’d know you by your fur cap, your hunting shirt, your great hulking size—”

  “I’ll tell you what they would think,” offered Zack. “They would remember your trickeries, they would believe you had captured my clothes and then had dressed the tallest of your men, to deceive them. Seeing you beside or behind me—and they know you too, Lieutenant Fenniver, they had a long evening to hear and see you and wonder at your pleasant illusions—they’d scent some subtle device of yours to win close. And you’ve seen how true their guns strike to the mark. One would knock me down, and a second reap you like a beard of wheat, ere you could look to see from what loophole had fired the first.”

  Fenniver shook his head, like a teacher disappointed by an impudent scholar. “You speak as one who’d be taken to value his life at but a shilling’s purchase.”

  “In the cause of American liberty, I value my life at less than that,” Zack told him flatly. “Sir, I’ve seen Death so close ere this that I could count his grinning teeth. He’s no pleasant companion, but again he’s no novelty. I think that’s how a soldier must reckon his chances.”

  They all looked at him, the ring of Tory faces. Some scowled angrily, some were blank, one or two thoughtful. But Fenniver smiled in downright friendly admiration.

  “Egad, Captain Harper, you oblige me to say that I hear you with the utmost respect,” he said at last. “You speak bold words, and I cannot doubt but that they come from a bold heart, a heart worthy of a better cause.”

  “Better cause than my country’s freedom I cannot imagine,” said Zack.

  “Well, but we still have our work to do,” said Fenniver. “My men are stern to try your friends again. Now, lads, if one or two fire here to hold their attention at these front loopholes, while the rest circle and come at the house from behind—”

  “Friends, friends!” interrupted Deevor Plum suddenly. “See yonder to that Rebel stronghold!”

  They all looked along the road.

  Beyond the fence, the front door of the Harper house was opening. A rectangle of darkness showed, then a figure came into view within it.

  “A woman, yah,” said the big Hessian.

  That figure was slender and straight, in a green dress with a full skirt, with a brown cloak caught around the shoulders, with hair that gleamed like ripe wheat in the sunlight.

  “Grace,” said Zack under his breath.

  She came into the yard. Above her head she lifted a white cloth, and waved it at arm’s length, first to this side and then to that.

  9 Two Flags of Truce

  THE big Hessian caught his breath and lifted his long heavy musket. But a quick sweep of Fenniver’s forearm struck up the muzzle.

  “Would you fire upon women, you knave?” Fenniver barked. “Gad’s my life, think you thus to serve King George of England? And she shows a flag of truce, she seeks to make terms with us.”

  “Send us a woman for terms?” Deevor Plum wondered.

  “Aye, they trust your commander for a true gentleman,” Fenniver told him. “See, she comes forth from the yard, she’s at the road itself. I’ll go out and speak to her.”

  “Beware of a trick, sir,” cautioned the pug-faced Tory. “They may wish to draw you in range and shoot you down.”

  “Never that, if they send a white flag,” said Zack.

  “So do I judge,” approved Fenniver. “Yet we’ll just fetch Captain Harper along with us, in case someone inside there feels an itch to his trigger finger. Bring him along, Plum, and you too, you big German. Keep him betwixt you. If they fire from the house, let your first b
ullet drive into Harper’s skull.”

  “Yah,” approved the big Hessian, grinning like a mastiff.

  “Come, then.”

  Fenniver stepped into the open, his right hand lifted high to show no weapon in it. At a nudge from Plum’s gun butt, Zack followed into the road. His two guards moved with him, and they advanced behind Fenniver.

  Grace stood still in the road, waiting for them to come close. At sight of Zack, her blue eyes grew wide and her mouth quivered.

  “Have they caught you, then?” she cried out.

  “I stumbled into their hands like a silly fool,” confessed Zack ruefully.

  “Nay, Miss Prothero, ’twas none so bad as he tells,” put in Fenniver, bowing to her. “He was so zealous to come to your rescue, he let himself be taken. But you’ve come with that napkin for flag, and if you surrender to us you do well.”

  “Where’s your Captain Alspaye?” Grace asked.

  “Alas, he’s elsewhere on detaining business,” said Fenniver. “I command in his stead.”

  “We want the best of terms if we surrender,” she announced.

  “The best of terms, ma’am?” repeated Fenniver. “What terms?”

  “The men of our garrison will yield up the arms in their hands,” she said formally, “and will swear to fight you no more, if on your part you set them free without harm.”

  “Why, that can easily be agreed,” said Fenniver briskly. “Come you out, then, and we’ll march in.”

  “Pve said but what we engage and promise,” went on Grace. “There remains the matter of your promises. If we cease to fight, and the men who defended here give their sworn word to bear no further hand in this warfare—”

  “Good, good!” cried Fenniver. “If they swear to that, we spare them their lives, every one. My word on it, Miss Prothero.”

  “And further,” she elaborated, “if our garrison thus swears to keep the peace, then on your part do you agree and vow that no plunder will be wrought here, no burning of house or barn.”

  Deevor Plum groaned softly, as in protest.