by Ron Carter
Thomas mounted the wagon box, gathered the reins, slapped them down on the big rumps of the two brown horses, and clucked the team into motion. The empty wagon rattled as it rocked and bounced over the rutted dirt road to the wheat field, where Thomas came back on the reins and crooned “hooo” to the horses. He climbed to the ground and waited while Samuel handed him the scythe. Edith took her place in the driver’s box while Esther climbed down to stand beside Thomas.
The children watched their father lay the top of the seven-foot-long scythe handle over his right shoulder, seize the hand-grip, and begin swinging the blade in a great semi-circle, right to left. They listened to the familiar pinging sound as the cutting edge sliced through the stalks, and they watched the wheat topple to the right, the direction from which the blade had come. Two minutes later Esther was on the ground, ten feet behind her father. She bent forward at the waist, gathered her left arm full of wheat stalks, deftly wrapped half a dozen stalks around the bundle and knotted them once before she carefully laid the shock on the ground away from the wagon. She moved on, gathering the next armload, setting a steady rhythm.
When Thomas was sixty feet ahead of the horses, he stopped, returned to the wagon, set his scythe in the driver’s box beside Edith, and took his place beside Esther, working to tie the loose wheat into shocks. Twenty minutes later Samuel handed him the wooden pitchfork, and Thomas began forking the shocks up to the boy, who carefully laid them in the wagon box, full heads toward the outside, then two rows of shocks down the center. He laid the bundles close, careful not to shake the wheat heads loose. At day’s end they would sweep all the loose wheat from the wagon to save it.
At the end of the field, Edith turned the wagon left, stopped the horses, and changed places with Esther while Thomas paused fifteen seconds to run the whetstone scraping down the scythe blade, twice on the top, twice on the bottom, before he once again returned to the twisting, circular cutting motion.
By nine o’clock dark spots of sweat were showing between their shoulder blades. By ten o’clock Samuel was on his knees atop the stacked wheat, nine feet from the ground, when Thomas forked up one more shock and nodded to Edith. Esther climbed into the wagon box next to Edith, who turned the wagon back toward the barn, with Thomas following on foot as the heavy load jolted and swayed out of the field.
Polly brought cold well water, and they drank, then spread great sheets of canvas on the hard-packed earth next to the barn. Thomas brought the jointed flails from the barn while the children threw the shocks down onto the canvas, and five minutes later they were swinging the flails, thrashing the shocks, knocking the wheat heads free on the canvas. The stripped shocks were cast aside to be used for animal bedding, and they began the winnowing. They used small shovels to throw the kernels high in the morning breeze, where the heavier heads fell first, and the chaff drifted away. The precious winnowed wheat was shoveled into baskets and carried into the barn to be dumped into the bin. They drank cold water once again, then took their places to go back to the field for the next load.
The wagon was half full when Samuel suddenly straightened on his knees and his arm shot up, pointing south. “Look!” he shouted.
Instantly Edith hauled the wagon to a stop while all heads jerked around to peer at Samuel, then swivel south, following his point. For five seconds they stared before they saw the flashes of red, green, and blue moving through the heavy growth of trees lining the banks of the stream.
For a moment Thomas’s blood froze in his veins. “British,” he blurted. “They’re coming to cross at the ford.”
The girls gasped and turned to him in white-faced terror. Samuel stared down from the loaded wagon, eyes on his father, lower lip trembling, on the brink of tears of outrage and fear. “They can’t have our wheat! They can’t!”
They had heard the stories at the church and at the tiny trading post at Birmingham and at Kennett Square. They knew. In New Jersey, before they marched out to New York, what the British and the Germans wanted, they took at bayonet point, and what they couldn’t use they burned to keep from the hands of the Continental Army. On their fifty-seven-mile march from Head of Elk, despite the orders of General Howe to the contrary and hangings and floggings for the offenders, the soldiers had vented their wrath at being in the purgatory of the ships for seven unbearable weeks. They had pillaged the countryside—crops in the field, the winter’s food stored in root cellars, cattle, sheep, horses, munitions—anything—and the smoke from the fires they set to destroy the surplus was a dark smudge that could be seen for miles, rising in the blue skies. The stories of what the rampaging soldiers had done to girls and women were spoken in hushed tones wherever adults met.
In one fluid motion Thomas tossed the fork up to Samuel, then vaulted into the wagon box, crowding the girls to one side. He seized the reins and swung the wagon around hard, then slapped the leathers down on the horses and shouted them to a run. With the wagon bouncing crazily behind, the heavy horses galloped to the house, where Thomas brought the startled horses to a sliding stop in the yard. The commotion brought Polly running from the kitchen, white-faced, horrified to think that someone was hurt or dead. Thomas hit the ground running to meet her.
“British! Coming up the creek road.”
Polly clapped both hands over her mouth to stand wide-eyed, mind numb. She saw the panic in his face and stood stock-still, waiting for him to speak. He put his hand to his forehead, and she watched him bring his stampeding thoughts and his fear under control. His voice was loud, firm, as he spoke.
“They haven’t come for us. They’ve come for the Continental Army, south of us on the other side of the creek. I don’t know what’s happened down there, but I believe the British mean to cross the creek and come in behind the American lines. That could be bad.”
He paused for a moment. “Someone’s got to warn them.”
Polly gasped at his meaning. “Thomas—” She bit down on the rest of her sentence and left it unuttered. She would have to take charge of the farm and the children, and she could not let them see her waver.
A faint, low rumble reached them from far to the south, and Thomas cocked his head to listen. It came again, stopped for two seconds, then picked up again like distant, ragged, ongoing thunder. Polly squinted, looking for deep purple clouds looming on the southern skyline, and there were none. She turned to Thomas, her face drawn in question.
“Cannon,” he said softly.
Her breath caught in her throat, and he cut her off.
“We’re a quarter mile from the road. I don’t know if they’ll come this far to steal, but we can’t take a chance. Polly, you and Edith get sticks and drive the sow and her pigs down to the slough. Leave them. They’ll root in the mud and stay there. Go right now and come back as fast as you can.”
Eyes alive, flashing, he turned to Esther. “Lead Chronicles out into the woods and tie her to a tree where there’s some grass and get back here.”
Taking his son by the arm, he said, “Samuel, you’re going to have to be the man of the house. Come with me.” He led the boy running into the house. “You stay here with Sarah and Damon. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
He strode to the fireplace and seized a stick of firewood, to plunge it into the glowing coals Polly had banked from the morning meal. Fifteen seconds later he drew it out, blackened, with flames licking. He shielded it with his hand as he trotted out the door and turned toward the chopping block, where wood chips lay thick on the ground. Ten seconds later he had a small pile of the chips smoking, thirty-five feet from the house where two cords of firewood and kindling were stacked. A minute later flames were rising from a dozen sticks of kindling. As fast as he could move, he grabbed rungs of firewood from the stack and piled them onto the flames. He didn’t stop until one full cord was heaped on the fire and the first wisps of smoke were seeping upward through the stack, drifting with the breeze into the blue heavens.
He ran back to the house, into the kitchen, where Samuel was hol
ding Sarah to his chest, trying to stop her crying. Thomas went to one knee beside the child and tenderly turned her to him and wrapped her in his arms. Slowly her sobbing stopped. He held her away from him, still within his arms.
“It’s all right. Don’t be afraid. Mother will be back in a few minutes, and then you’ll all go over to the woods. You can take some bread and maybe some butter and jam and a jar of milk and have a picnic for a while. Samuel will be there. And the twins. It will be all right.”
As she gazed at him, the trust in her blue eyes tore at his heart.
He turned back to Samuel. “Go to the root cellar and get a jar of fresh milk and a block of wrapped butter and some of the blueberry jam.”
Samuel bobbed his head and disappeared into the bright September sunlight, to return in three minutes, breathing hard. Thomas got the woven reed shopping basket and placed the milk and butter and jam inside, then raised his head, listening. A moment later a breathless Esther burst into the kitchen.
“Chronicles is tied. Mother and Edith are coming. What’s the fire?”
Thomas raised a hand to silence her as he listened to the running steps, and then the two women were in the kitchen, both wide-eyed. “The sow and pigs are at the slough. There’s a fire!”
Thomas bobbed his head. “I set it. If they mean to come here to steal, they’ll see the smoke from the road and maybe they’ll think someone has already been here and set fire to the place.”
Polly raised an alarmed hand. “But the wood—”
“I can cut more wood. Now, Esther, get a loaf of bread and some cups for the shopping basket and take it out to the wagon. You’re going to have a picnic in the woods. Edith, take Sarah outside with her. Samuel, you go along to help. Polly, wrap Damon. I’ll bring his crib.”
With the children outside waiting and Polly wrapping Damon in a blanket, Thomas reached to the pegs above the door and lowered his long Pennsylvania rifle, then the powder horn and leather shot pouch. He turned to Polly, who froze at the sight of the rifle. The unspoken question was plain on her face. You’re going to join the war?
He spoke quickly. “Edith will drive the wagon with the load on it. Esther can ride on top to watch Samuel and Sarah. You ride beside Esther, with Damon. Go west into the woods and hide. I’ll leave the rifle with you. If they come into the yard, don’t show yourself. Let them do what they will with the house and barn. Stay hidden with the children and the horses.”
He stopped, and she saw the awful fear in his eyes. “Polly, if they find you, and they come for you and the girls, use the rifle. Pick the officer in charge and tell them if they come close you’ll kill him. If they don’t stop, shoot him dead. Do you understand?”
She was beyond words. She nodded.
“Can you do it?”
Tears brimmed in her eyes, and she nodded again.
Thomas swallowed hard. “Polly . . .” He couldn’t finish. For one brief moment he wrapped her and the baby within his arms and held them close before he led them out into the yard and helped them all to their places on the wagon. He quickly ran back to the kitchen to return with Damon’s crib and toss it up to Samuel.
Edith called, “Won’t you need one of the horses to ride?”
“No. I’ll swim the creek and get one from the neighbors. Now go.”
He watched the wagon move out of the yard and swing left, away from the Brandywine, toward the woods, a quarter of a mile distant. Samuel raised a hand to wave, and Thomas waved back to the boy. Then he turned and ran to the road, which paralleled the creek, and stopped for a moment, fighting to hold his breath while he listened. The faint rumble of the approaching army reached him, and then he heard the unmistakable rattle of drums from far off. Ten seconds later he heard the tramp of thirty thousand marching feet, and heavy wheels moving closer each minute.
He crossed the road and was ten feet from the Brandywine when the first musketball came whistling high above his head, followed instantly by the unmistakable cracking report of a British Brown Bess musket fired from more than two hundred yards to the south, too far for accuracy.
It flashed in his mind—Patrol. I didn’t think of a patrol—and then came a shouted command.
“’ere, you blasted rebel! Stop! Or we’ll shoot you dead!”
He plunged into the stand of willows at the stream’s edge and hit the water running, splashing on until it reached above his waist, and then he was swimming strong. He heard three more musket shots and saw water leap high ahead of him as one of the heavy, .75-caliber musketballs tore into the stream. He sucked his lungs full of air and dove, swimming blindly toward the far shore, feeling the current move him downstream, toward the oncoming British. He came up for air once and then he was in the willows on the east bank, legs churning, driving as he plowed through them. Two more shots cracked out before he made the tree line east of the creek and dodged through the oak and maple to the road beyond. He heard angry shouts from the patrol in the trees on the opposite bank as he sprinted to the far side of the road and turned south, running, dodging through the low trees and foliage. He held the pace for more than half a mile, glancing west across the creek to see flashes of the red, green, and blue uniforms marching north. With sweat dripping, he bolted into the dooryard of the Tredwell place and, breathing hard, pounded on the kitchen door. Lucy Tredwell opened the door a crack, wide enough only to peer out with one eye.
“I heard shooting,” she exclaimed. “Who’s shooting?”
Gasping for air, Thomas panted, “Mrs. Tredwell, the British are marching north on the far side of the creek. They intend crossing at Trimble’s and coming right past your farm. Tell your husband. I need a horse to go on south and tell General Washington.”
Lucy’s face blanched white, and her words came high, hysterical. “The British! We’ll all be killed! Killed, I tell you.”
“Where’s Henry?”
“In the wheat with Phillip. Oh, may the Almighty have mercy!”
“I’m taking your horse. I’ll tell Henry. You get ready to leave the house.”
Three minutes later Thomas led Henry Tredwell’s saddled sorrel mare out of the barn, swung up, and kicked her to a gallop. He reined in three hundred yards south of the house to shout across the fence at Henry and his son in the wheat field, “The British are coming past your farm within half an hour. Clear out. I need your horse to go tell General Washington.”
For three full seconds Henry stood transfixed, then waved Thomas on as he frantically barked orders to Phillip and leaped to the wagon box. Thomas reined the prancing horse around and once again raised her to a run, bent low over her neck, holding her back to save enough for the long ride.
Notes
Thomas Cheyney was a resident of the Brandywine Creek area, whose activities in riding to warn General Washington of approaching British troops on September 11, 1777, are accurately described. See Freeman, Washington, p. 51; Leckie, George Washington’s War, p. 351.
The British looted and burned many farms on their march from Head of Elk westward. See Leckie, George Washington’s War, p. 349.
The American lines, east of Brandywine Creek, Pennsylvania
September 11, 1777
CHAPTER XI
* * *
Sergeant Randolph O’Malley, New York Ninth Regiment, Third Company, raised his head above the earthen and timber breastworks and for a long time studied the shadowy movements deep in the emerald green of the oak and maple trees eight hundred yards to the west, across the Brandywine Creek. He wiped a dirty, rough sleeve across his sweated eyes and concentrated, squinting against the bright sunlight of a rare Pennsylvania September morning. The breeze came warm from the south, up the creek, moving the leaves beneath a cloudless sky, touching the tense, perspiring faces of the eleven thousand soldiers of the Continental Army as they crouched in the trenches.
The southern end of the American lines was anchored by the commands of Generals Armstrong and Greene at Chad’s Ford, with General Washington among them, waiting, impat
ient. To the north, upstream two miles, the commands of Generals Sullivan and Stephen held the center of the line, and a little behind and north of them, Lord Stirling’s command was entrenched well over a mile from the winding Brandywine. Altogether the Continentals were spread five miles, north to south.
Howe had spent the entire summer campaign playing a deadly game of cat and mouse, watching, waiting for Washington to make the mistake that would allow the British general to crush the Americans. And now the Continentals were dug in across the creek, out in the open, in plain sight, army to army, face to face. Clearly they were inviting him and his redcoated regulars, and the blue- and green-coated Hessians to come across, rank upon rank, drums pounding, brass band blaring, their big Brown Bess muskets thrust forward with the sun glinting off their long, polished bayonets—to come across the creek and get them. If they could.
For the American soldiers, the hated waiting was over. The bragging, the bravado, the campfire heroics were forgotten, stripped away by the stark reality of the killing and being killed that was coming. In the face of such a struggle, ordinary things seemed strange, detached, unreal. Men with frayed nerves started, flinched at the voices and the sounds of everyday camp life, as though somehow they were hearing them for the first time. Raw recruits, untrained and untried, avoided the eyes of others, paralyzed by fears that ate at their minds, their hearts, driving them to the fringes of abstraction.