by Ron Carter
Captain Charles Venables stood tall in the stirrups, hand high to give the signal. Sergeant O’Malley bawled out, “Forraard harch!” and the column began moving on the winding road like a great, creeping reptile. They had gone less than one hundred yards when O’Malley suddenly shouted, “Third Companyyyyy, halt!”
Some men stopped and some didn’t, and in an instant the regiment was a mass of startled, confused soldiers. They craned their necks to see what had happened ahead that could stop the entire column but could see no cause. Confusion turned to fear.
“We been ambushed up there?”
“Has a sniper kilt Gen’l Washington?”
“Look sharp in the trees—maybe we’re surrounded.”
O’Malley came striding. “We just got orders from Gen’l Washington. We’re to stay right here ’til he says move.”
“Why? What’s happened?”
“Didn’t say. Only that we’re to stay right here for now. So git off the road into the shade and wait.”
Disgruntled, mystified, nervous, the men divided, half moving into the woods on either side of the road, seeking shade and water, brushing away mosquitoes that rose in clouds. Caleb dropped his bedroll beneath a white pine and sat on it, musket across his knees, fighting the insects. One hour became two, then three. Canteens were running low. Some men began to gnaw at their piece of crisped sowbelly.
O’Malley sounded a warning. “Better be careful with your rations. Don’t know how long we’ll be here. Won’t be moving until orders come.”
Half an hour before noon, four men wearing colonel epaulets on their shoulders came loping sweating horses south, back down the road they had just gone up. Ten minutes later Captain Venables hauled his horse to a stop in the road and gathered the Ninth Regiment around.
“Listen close. I only want to say this once. This morning, five minutes after we started to march, a messenger from New York got to Gen’l Washington. He rode all night. Wore out two horses. He said Howe got a letter from Burgoyne about a week ago. You already heard Burgoyne’s got Fort Ti. He’s coming right on down to Albany, and the letter said he didn’t need help.”
The horse tossed its head at the mosquitoes, and Venables took the slack out of the reins as he continued. “When Howe got Burgoyne’s letter, the winds in New York Harbor were from the southwest, and the ships couldn’t make it over the big bar by Long Island. They had to wait for better winds and tides. Well, yesterday the winds shifted, coming in from the north. Howe sailed, but not up the Hudson, because Burgoyne doesn’t need him. Howe’s two hundred sixty ships sailed east, past Sandy Hook, out into the Atlantic, and haven’t been seen since. Gen’l Washington’s sure Howe’s headed down past the New Jersey Capes to the Delaware River, then up the river to Philadelphia. The minute the messenger told the Gen’l, he called a halt, and then a war council. They all agreed. We got to get back down to defend Philadelphia.”
Once again he paused to gather his thoughts. “We got the women and all the wagons at the south end of the column, so Gen’l Washington sent four officers back there to get ’em off the road so we can march past ’em. Then they’ll have to unhook all the horses and turn the wagons by hand, because the road’s too narrow to turn ’em otherwise. While all this is happening, you men stay right here and be ready to march the minute the order comes down.”
He turned to O’Malley. “You know what to do?”
“Yes, sir. How did the messenger know Howe got a letter from Burgoyne?”
“Spies,” was all Venables said before he reined his horse around and spurred it back up the road.
A torrent of talk erupted.
“All this marchin’ north for nothin’?”
“How come we didn’t wait ’til we knew what Howe was goin’ to do?”
“This here whole thing’s a great big plot by Burgoyne and Howe, and it worked!”
“How do we know those ships are headed for Philadelphia? Why not Charleston?”
O’Malley raised a hand and the talk died. “Get back in the shade. It’ll take just as many days goin’ back as it took gettin’ here, so save your strength. Don’t eat your rations until I say.”
Days and nights became a blur of the grinding routine of setting up camp in the evening, tattoo, reveille, striking camp in the morning, cursing mosquitoes, insects, the relentless sun or summer rainstorms that turned the dirt road to a river of mud, endless gathering of firewood, marching in sweat-soaked clothing, going to blankets in damp clothing, getting up in damp clothing, eating food that all tasted like boiled sawdust.
In the late afternoon of the fourth day, west of the Passaic River, Caleb picked up an ax and with three other men from Third Company walked past the fringes of camp into the forest in the unending quest for firewood. Two of the men were bearded, dressed in buckskin leggings and hunting shirts. The third wore a soiled linen shirt, homespun trousers, dirty knee-length white stockings, and battered, square-toed shoes. Ten yards into the trees Caleb stopped before a tangle of brittle, wind-felled pines that had been toppled by a great storm in a time long forgotten. Without a word he began swinging the ax, scattering the branches while the others gathered them.
The buzz came without warning. From the corner of his eye Caleb caught the flash of movement near the ground, next to the gnarled roots of the fallen tree, then the ringing yell as the man in the linen shirt dropped his load and jerked erect, right hand clamped on his left wrist.
“It got me, it got me,” he shouted as he staggered backward in white-faced panic.
The other two dropped their loads and were on him in an instant, while Caleb searched the ground, trying to understand what had happened. It wasn’t until the buzz came again that he could distinguish the coiled rattler from the leaves and spots of sunlight, and he drew backward violently at the sight of the ugly, triangle shaped head and wide=set, serpent eyes. Shaking, he stepped forward and swung the ax with all his strength, once, twice, three times, and the buzzing slowed and died. When he was sure, he turned toward the three men behind.
The two in buckskin had the third one sitting on the ground, battling to hold him as he fought, shrieking, “Help me, help me, I’m going to die, I’m going to die!”
In one fluid motion, the man on his right drew his belt knife, grasped the struck arm, slit the sleeve past the elbow, and rammed the knife point deep into one of the purple marks left by the fangs of the dead snake. Clean red blood gushed. With the other man straining to hold the writhing victim still, he jerked the knife out and thrust it into the other fang mark, then dropped the knife to the ground as he lowered his mouth to the dripping cuts and sucked. He turned and spat the blood onto the soft, spongy forest floor, then sucked again and again and again. The other man tore the linen shirtsleeve from the right arm, wrapped it above the elbow of the left arm, knotted it, jammed a stick through it, and twisted the stick hard.
Wiping the blood from his mouth and chin, the nearest man turned to Caleb. “Get the surgeon!” he barked.
Caleb dropped the ax, spun, dodged through the trees back to the campsite, and sprinted south. O’Malley appeared to his right, and Caleb slowed long enough to gasp, “Where’s the surgeon?”
O’Malley pointed. “What’s happened?”
Caleb hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Back there in the woods. Snakebite. What’s the surgeon’s name?”
“Waldron,” O’Malley exclaimed as he broke into a sprint toward the woods, while Caleb continued his headlong run, dodging around startled men. He recognized Fifth Company as he sprinted through and slowed to call to the nearest officer, “Waldron. Surgeon. Where is he?”
“Up front. Who’s hurt?”
Caleb ran on without answering, watching for men with gold epaulets on their shoulders. Two minutes later he slowed near an evening cook fire with five officers gathered nearby. Sweat running, he stopped, fighting to control his panting enough to speak.
“Regimental surgeon. Waldron. Is he here?”
Corpulent, balding
, lipless, a major narrowed his eyes at Caleb.
“I’m Major Waldron.”
Caleb pointed. “Back there. Third Company. Snakebite.”
Waldron turned on his heel, ran to his tent, snatched up his satchel, and came puffing back. Without a word Caleb pivoted and led out at a run, Waldron grunting to keep up. He was wheezing when Caleb approached the cook fire of Company Three and slowed. Most of the men were gathered in a circle that opened, and Caleb led Waldron into the center. O’Malley and the two men in frontier buckskin were kneeling in front of the stricken man, who was seated on a log.
Without a word Waldron pushed his way to the man while O’Malley and the others drew back to let him kneel. Breathing hard from his run, he stared into the man’s eyes for a moment before he spoke.
“Can you understand me?”
“Yes.”
He grasped the arm above the tourniquet. “Can you feel this?”
“Yes.”
Waldron raised the forearm to study the cuts, still open, with the black blood caked and clotted and a trickle of bright red still dripping. He turned back to Caleb.
“When did this happen?”
“Maybe ten or twelve minutes ago.”
“Who did the cutting?”
Caleb pointed, and Waldron turned to the two men. “When?”
“Right after it happened.”
“The tourniquet?”
“Same time as the cut.”
Waldron jerked open his satchel, drew out a bottle, pulled the cork, soaked a rag, and washed away the blood. Carefully he looked above the cuts, past the elbow, then above the tourniquet, searching for gray or blue lines creeping upward. There were none. He reached into the armpit, found the nodule he was looking for, and pressed.
“That hurt?”
“A little. Not much.”
He put two fingers in the man’s left hand. “Squeeze as hard as you can.”
The man’s hand closed and he bore down.
Waldron nodded and the man released his fingers.
“Feel light-headed? Like you’re going to pass out?”
“No.”
“Well,” Waldron said, “I’m afraid you’re going to live. We keep up this marching up and down through these woods, you might wish you hadn’t, but that’s between you and the Almighty. I’ll stay around for a while to be sure, and then we’ll put a stitch or two in those cuts to close ’em.”
He turned to the two bearded frontiersmen. “For whatever it means to you, I think you saved his life.”
Embarrassed, the men let their eyes drop for a moment and said nothing.
As an afterthought Waldron asked, “Where’s the snake?”
Caleb spoke up. “Dead.”
“They usually don’t strike like that unless you corner them, sometimes accidentally. How’d it happen?”
“Gathering wood. The snake was under a tree we were working on.”
“Figures. Watch next time.” He stopped and for a moment studied Caleb. “Do I remember you? That scar on your cheek?”
“You looked at it three weeks ago.”
“A fight—something about a fight?”
Caleb shook his head. “No fight to speak of.”
“Didn’t someone else stitch that cut?”
“Yes.”
Waldron reached to pinch his lower lip for a moment in thought. “Well, son, you stay away from snakes and fights. They’re no good.”
Half an hour later Waldron washed the arm again, gave the man a long pull from a bottle of brandy, set a sixty caliber musketball between his teeth, and put two stitches in each of the cuts. He smeared thick carbolic salve over it all, wrapped it in clean sheeting, and looked the man in the eye.
“You start feeling faint or funny, send for me. That young man knows where to find me. Get to your bedroll, and stay there ’til I get back in the morning to change the bandage.” He closed his satchel and stood, muttering, “I’m getting too old and fat to be running around like this.” He turned on his heel and started back north when the man called after him.
“Thank you.”
Waldron waved a hand without turning and was gone.
O’Malley led the wounded man to his bedroll and sat him down. “I’ll send supper. Where’s your canteen?”
He walked back to the cooking kettle and called to Caleb, “Where’s the ax?”
Caleb thought for a moment. “In the woods. I dropped it.”
“We still got to have wood. Go get the ax, and fill this while you’re out there.” He handed him the canteen, then gave hand signals to the two bearded men in buckskin.
“Finish gettin’ in the firewood.”
The three of them walked back into the woods, the two frontiersmen striding out, Caleb walking gingerly behind, hearing every sound, eyes cast to the ground for everything that moved. A grasshopper took flight clicking, and Caleb jumped. Twigs crunched underfoot, and he flinched. He was seeing coiled rattlesnakes near every tree, under every bush, beside every rock, and hearing the deadly buzz of the rattles in every sound of the forest. The frontiersmen smiled in understanding and waited while he found the ax, then once again began knocking the dead branches from the tangle of wind-felled trees.
Half an hour later firewood was stacked by the evening cook fire, and Caleb tracked down Sergeant O’Malley.
“Know where I can get some paper and a pencil?”
“For what?”
“Write the snake story while it’s still fresh.”
“You a writer?”
“Worked for a printer. Once in a while wrote articles for his newspaper.”
“In Boston?”
“Yes.”
“You another Ben Franklin?”
Caleb grinned. “No, there’s only one of him.”
“Go find Cap’n Venables. He keeps the records. Maybe he can spare some paper and a pencil.”
With evening mess behind them, Caleb wrapped his hands and waited for Dorman, who spoke.
“I heard about the snake. Were you there?”
“Yes.”
“That could have been bad.”
“It was.”
Dorman glanced at Caleb’s wrapped hands. “Let’s get started.”
Dusk had settled before Dorman lowered his hands. Caleb was sweating, breathing hard, wiping with his shirt.
“It’s coming. Soon we take the next step.”
“What’s that?”
“You try to hit me. Head, chest, anywhere.”
Caleb stopped wiping the sweat. “Hit? Your head?”
Dorman smiled in the deepening gloom. “Don’t worry about it.” He turned to go when Caleb called to him.
“Wait. I’ll walk with you. I got to find Captain Venables.”
Dorman’s eyebrows peaked. “Venables? What for?”
“To ask for some paper and a pencil.”
“A letter home?”
“No. I want to write the snake story while it’s all in my head.”
Dorman exclaimed, “You a writer?”
“Worked for a printer. I wrote a few things once in a while. Might send the story back to him.”
Dorman shrugged. “I got some paper and a pencil in my things.”
In full darkness the sound of tattoo came echoing. In the silence of a tired camp, Caleb sat near the banked coals of the supper fire, a pad of paper on his knee and a piece of lead that would serve as a pencil in his hand. He closed his eyes to capture the sick terror of stumbling into the snake, then searched for the right words. Thoughtfully he began to write.
“The buzz and the strike and the shriek of the terrified man came in the same fleck of time, and sick fear came flooding inside of me. It wasn’t until the buzz came the second time that I saw the coils and the dead eyes of the rattler ready to strike again. I don’t remember swinging the ax. I only remember the snake dead, cut in three pieces, and the two men behind me frantically working . . .”
It was close to midnight before O’Malley came, gruff, demandin
g. “What are you doing?”
“Just finishing some writing.”
“The snake story?”
“Yes.”
“You get onto your blankets. We don’t need tired men. Things go wrong when men are too tired. You get to sleep. Move!”
Notes
The messenger who came with news concerning the loss of Fort Ticonderoga and the defeat and scattering of the American forces in the ensuing battle was described earlier. See volume 4, The Hand of Providence, chapters XVIII and XXI.
For a visual description of the route of the American army as described herein, see the map in Mackesy, The War for America, p. 91.
Having loaded his army onto the two hundred sixty British ships on July 9, 1777, General Howe was obliged to wait for favorable winds until July 23, at which time he sailed out into the Atlantic. Thus began one of the strangest and most confusing odysseys between two armies in the history of warfare, with General Washington utterly baffled by the unbelievable route General Howe followed, as we shall see. Mackesy, The War for America, p. 126; Leckie, George Washington’s War, pp. 346–47; Higginbotham, The War of American Independence, pp. 181–83.
Caleb Dunson, a fictional character, worked for a printer in Boston. See volume 1, Our Sacred Honor, chapter XXV.
The Delaware River, New Jersey
July 29, 1777
CHAPTER IV
* * *
Mounted on his dappled gray mare, General Washington stood full height in the stirrups and shaded his eyes to peer south from the high crest of one of the lush, rolling hills of southern New Jersey. “There,” he said, pointing. “We’ll camp there tonight.”
Beside him his aides raised their hands to block out the stifling July sun, studying the silvery thin line that meandered in the distance, west to east. They said nothing as they spurred their horses to follow their leader down toward the great Delaware River and Pennsylvania on the far side. Each man struggled with the one concern that had ridden him heavy since Washington had ordered the entire column around for a forced march from the Ramapo Mountains and the Hudson River, far to the north. It had dogged the men day and night, made them edgy, surly.
The stand-or-fall, do-or-die question was: could the two hundred sixty British ships carrying more than fifteen thousand troops with horses, food, and munitions, move out of New York Harbor, south along the New Jersey capes, west into the Delaware River, then back north to Philadelphia, in less time than General Washington could march his column from just south of Stony Point on the Hudson River to the same place?