L Neil Smith - [North American Confederacy 06]

by The Gallatin Divergence (epub)

  The troops continued spreading out. We four hung back, crouching under a tree where we could see the side of the building. Ochskahrt had brought his cello, thonged to his saddle, and had to be discouraged from providing background music. Sure enough, just before the militia closed in, valorous General Neville sneaked out, unnoticed by the volunteers, and burrowed into a nearby thicket, where he could witness the ensuing conflict without risking his aristocratic hide.

  "Hey!” Ed shouted behind me.

  “Leggo that pistol, Eddie, there’s somethin’ I gotta do!” Lucy struggled for control of the weapon, eyes trained on the brush a hundred yards away where Neville was demonstrating his courage.

  Half-kneeling, I swiveled on my toe. “Lucy, have you lost your mind? We’re here to observe. You said so, yourself.”

  “Sometimes I say stupid things!” She broke with Ed, whirled to face me. “Nobody knows how that skunk spent his evenin’ in the bushes. I’m gonna insure he don’t enjoy none of the excitement. Now mind your elders—gimme that gun!”

  I shrugged, handed her my rifle. Crazy, but this was the first time I’d seen her without a weapon in the hundred-odd years I’d known her. Besides, she’s one of the few people I’d trust with the future existence of Clarissa—and the entire universe. Cranking back the hammer—the “cock,” a little vise with a chunk of flint in its jaws—she whipped a kerchief from around her neck, cramming it behind the frizzen. Giving us a wicked look, she hefted the gun—as long as she was tall— and pulled the trigger. At the same moment, Ed knocked the rifle aside. The cock fell with a noiseless, ineffective thump. So did Himschlag von Ochskahrt.

  “There!” Lucy slammed the rifle into my hands, glaring at my twin. “See watcha made me do? He’ll be seein’ stars for hours!”

  “You mean,” Ed observed, “you’d deprive Neville of the sight of his house being—”

  “Hold your muzzle, Eddie! Don’t spoil the surprise.” She paused, thinking. “Shucks, you’re right, darlin’—I pretty near ruint it, didn’t I?”

  “I’d say so.” Her husband sulked. “Besides, we have a theory to investigate for Ooloorie, concerning the good general. How can we do that if he’s unconscious?”

  “So we do,” admitted the old lady. “I’m sorry.”

  “I know, Lucy, but we’re not discussing your character.” Before she could snap back, he pointed at the house. “There goes David Hamilton!”

  Not being part of the electronic generation—no implant—I had no idea what they’d been arguing about.

  Shooting Neville, with or without a nonlethal weapon, seemed like a swell idea to me. Hamilton, Sheriff John’s young cousin—also no relation to the Secretary of the Treasury—had volunteered to take a stab at negotiations. Trudging toward the house with a flag of truce, he was met by Major Abraham Kirkpatrick—everybody and his bloodhound seemed to wear a military title—a family friend of the Neville “Connection” who had ridden out to join the defense.

  Hamilton—as many Hamiltons as military titles— demanded in a stage-voice that Neville quit the house and resign his commission as revenue inspector. Kirkpatrick informed him, equally as loud, that Neville was gone. He, Kirkpatrick, had been left “to capitulate for the property.” Hamilton stomped back to confer with McFarlane, then returned to the house. We knew he’d demand that six citizens he admitted to search for Neville’s credentials as a revenuer and that this demand would be refused.

  It took longer than I’d thought. I got pins and needles crouching under that tree, trying to keep one eye on the proceedings, one eye on Neville lurking in the bushes like a flasher, and a third on the unconscious Ochskahrt. At last I gave up—just wasn’t spiritual enough for three eyes—and concentrated on the house.

  Hamilton retreated from the porch, followed in short order by two petticoated women and a flock of scared-looking kids. This announced that war had been declared. Hamilton escorted the noncombatants away from ground zero. One of the bandaged horse-minders walked them in the direction of—

  “Winnie! Ed! One of them two women’s wearin’ a skinsuit!” Lucy pointed toward the road to Woodville, Presley Neville’s home, where the escort party was disappearing over a hill.

  I nodded, strode forward after them—into a sleet of gunfire.

  It hadn’t started all at once. Tentative, random shots were fired by the besiegers. There was a gleeful shout. Blocked from pursuing Edna, I turned to see the estate’s outhouses set on fire—an underhanded trick, but war is hell. Burnt powder and hot lead issued from the mansion in reply. Firing soon became general on both sides. This time the rebels were better equipped. Having learned a bitter lesson about cross fire from the slave quarters the previous day, the militia posted themselves wherever shelter offered around the skirts of the mansion, shielding themselves behind trees and crouching below the verge of the hill. Their officers stood toward the east, near the road that crossed the depression at the rear of the heel of Bower Hill.

  The party hadn’t been going on very long before gunfire from the house ceased. A white flag was waved from a window. I watched, helpless again and not liking it, as James McFarlane stepped from behind a tree and took a breath to order his men to cease firing.

  Bang!

  A cloud of smoke billowed from the bushes where Neville lay. McFarlane slapped both hands at his crotch, fell to the ground. When it happens for real, there isn’t anything funny at all about it. Femoral artery. He expired immediately.

  Filled with rage I didn’t have time to be surprised at, I wheeled, thumbed the hammer of the long rifle, and dropped it as the sights crossed the brush from which the treacherous shot had come. This time there wasn’t any kerchief in the way. The pan spouted flame, and the weapon bucked with recoil. Ed seized the gun, too late this time. None of us said anything. Ed gave me a complicated series of dirty looks. Lucy patted me on the back. Ochskahrt would have snored if his molecular motion hadn’t been halted. When we reached the spot where Neville had lain, there was nothing but crushed foliage and a French lend-lease military musket. Recently discharged.

  Gunfire thundered once again, echoing from the surrounding hills. The battle resumed in earnest. Individuals, wounded or terrified, screamed and cursed. I did a little screaming and cursing, myself. I watched militiamen set fire to the slave cabins from which Neville’s workers were again shooting at the intruders. As torches were thrown toward the big house, there was a shout. Kirkpatrick had decided to come out with his borrowed soldiers and surrender.

  Under the hostile gaze of the militia, the regulars from Fort Fayette—all but the one whose body had been left inside the house—were disarmed one by one, their weapons discharged and returned to them. This was a strange war. They would be allowed to go wherever they pleased. But there was a sudden struggle. Andrew McFarlane emerged from the knot of POWs, holding Kirkpatrick by the scruff of the neck. Kirkpatrick wore the bloodstained tunic of the regular soldier who had been killed. “He thought to escape in the soldiers’ midst before he was recognized!” shouted the fallen rebel leader’s brother. I remembered how Santa

  Anna had tried the same trick after losing the Battle of San Jacinto, in my history-line. It hadn’t worked then, either. “You’ll not get off that easy. Where are the rest?” Andrew McFarlane growled.

  “The rest of what?” demanded the disgruntled officer.

  “We’re told you had seventeen bluecoats here. Now, we count but eight!”

  There was muttering. Men looked around the darkening yard, swinging their rifles. The detained Major blinked. “Why, six departed this morning, I am told, Andrew McFarlane, if it’s any of your business, and one cut down in the house, murdered by your—”

  The bereaved brother backhanded Kirkpatrick. “And the other two?”

  “Gone,” whimpered the Major. “Deserted, I think.” Major Butler would later report three soldiers wounded. Two, indeed, were missing and were never heard of again. One of the rebels, in addition to McFarlane, had been killed. Meanwhile in t
he gathering darkness, angry men broke up furniture inside the house and set the place on fire. Articles of value were appropriated—the argument being that it was only fair, and with the elder McFarlane dead, who the hell was in charge to stop it? Neville’s horses were shot, which I felt bad about, and I don’t even like horses. Liquor from the cellar was brought out and distributed. Even the grain and fences shared in the general destruction. Of the dozen or so buildings on the estate, only the smokehouse was saved. Neville’s Negroes pleaded that it contained their only food. Neville had escaped. In a letter to Tench Coxe, he would later place the loss at three thousand pounds, a fortune for those times. He’d taken it out of poor farmers’ pockets, or intended to, sic semper tyrannis. By the time news came that Presley Neville and Marshal David Lenox had been captured, I was almost through feeling sick at all.

  Grimy and soot-stained, I rejoined my friends at the tree that by unspoken consent had become our base. I’d been for a long walk. Edna Janof was nowhere near Woodville or anyplace else in the state of Pennsylvania as far as I could tell. The smoke was thick, and it was dark, but before I got there, I knew from hearing “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?” that Ochskahrt was up and around again.

  Goodie.

  11

  Mingling at Mingo

  WEDNESDAY, JULY 23, 1794

  Drizzle had been sifting through the trees.

  “Here lies the body of Captain James McFarlane,” Reverend Clark had intoned. I’ve always hated funerals. His words still rang in my mind. “Of Washington County, Pennsylvania, who departed this life on the seventeenth of July, 1794, at the age of forty-three years

  Hundreds of grim buckskinned figures had congregated about the freshly dug grave, we four among them, huddling in a cold rain timed just right for the ceremony. Even while I thought about it now, the log walls of the church steamed as the building warmed with crowded bodies.

  “He served during the war,” Clark had continued, “with undaunted courage in defense of American independence, against the lawless and despotic encroachments of Great Britain. He fell at last by the hands of an unprincipled villain—” bitter muttering followed this last. I noted a satisfied look from Benjamin Parkinson, who’d been trying to convince the clergy the rebellion was a righteous struggle. “—in the support of... er, what he supposed to be the rights of his country, much lamented by a numerous and respectable circle of acquaintance.” This hesitancy pleased Parkinson less. The minister had finished, gratified at having negotiated a tightrope.

  There was still granite powder in the deeply incised letters, the earth fresh on the excavation itself, when we met a few days later. The guys in charge of the Rebellion were just plain crazy for meetings. You couldn’t blame them: frontier life was nothing if not dull, democracy a brand new toy. By the time they tired of playing with it—at least in my universe—they’d be stuck and wouldn’t know how to get rid of the damned mess “Vox populi, vox dei” always creates.

  At the Mingo Creek Presbyterian Church, almost a week after Bower Creek, the first order of business was an angry letter from John Neville’s little boy, Presley, offered to the secretary by its recipient, the carrot-topped Parkinson, chairman of the Democratic Society. Ed and I squeezed into the tiny building and slumped in the back, out of sight in the shadows. Lucy would be outside somewhere—this being men’s territory, no dogs or women allowed—listening in via her husband’s suit. After a week camping in the rainy woods, we were dirty, tired of playing around with democracy or anything else. I kept having lascivious thoughts about hot showers. Even my stasis-tube at Gary’s seemed like a nice thing to go home to.

  Of the thousands ultimately involved, not more than half a dozen rebels came from the good-sized German population of southwestern Pennsylvania. Scrunched beside us in the rustic church, Ochskahrt kept his mouth shut, pretending to be one of them. Accustomed to civilized comforts, he was as miserable in these surroundings as the rest of us put together and still hadn’t forgiven Lucy for shooting him.

  Presley’s letter, brought by some townies, had been preceded by a July 19th notice in the Pittsburgh Gazette, disavowing various notes—the equivalent of stopping payment on a check—lost in the destruction of Bower Hill. It made the rebels hopping mad; they were being called vandals and thieves instead of frustrated citizens attempting a redress of grievances. Parkinson hadn’t read the letter, but he advised the group that Presley was a decent sort who ought to be heard out.

  Craig Ritchie read the letter. Neville and the marshal had bugged out to Philadelphia—despite promises to those who’d captured them to stick around. The younger Neville defended Major Kirkpatrick’s “intrepid” resistance at Bower Hill (i.e., he hadn’t surrendered until he thought of it), boasting that though the insurgents might bum his own Woodviile as they had his father’s place, he had enough property beyond the poor farmers’ reach to get by. A sour look on his freckled face, Parkinson accepted the letter back from Ritchie, stuffed it into his waistband.

  “You all know the truth of what has been done,” Parkinson said to the crowd, an aromatic lot: you haven’t lived until you’ve spent several hours in a small heated room full of dampened woolens and muddy leather. At least another two hundred were sardined outside around the front door and windows, listening. “We who did it wish to know whether it was right or wrong, and whether we are to be supported in the matter or left to ourselves.”

  With that, he threw himself into a straight-backed chair at the rough plank table near the pulpit-end of the room. He stretched out long legs in high-topped boots before him, folding his arms across his chest.

  His friend, James Marshall, shook his head. “The question is not as to what has been done, Mr. Parkinson, but what is to be done in future.”

  Parkinson conceded with an ill-humored nod. There were murmurings of agreement throughout the room.

  Small, dark, and of a nervous disposition, local state’s attorney David Bradford rose from a pew facing the table and began to pace. The little man wasn’t a dollar better off than any of his neighbors, but his flamboyant clothing was imported, clean, and pressed. I grinned to myself. He reminded me of somebody’s pet Siamese fighting fish: frilly, colorful, being swirled along in perilous, muddy water but eager to face whatever the currents confronted him with.

  “Speaking for no one but myself,” he stated, “my conscience sustains what has been done. I applaud those patriots now being characterized as rioters, and demand that it be put to vote whether those here present likewise offer their approval and will pledge themselves to support those who destroyed the house of the Inspector.” An invitation to employ the ceramics for their intended purpose or abandon them, it was met with dead silence.

  Marshall made throat-clearing noises. “The honorable George Robinson, Pittsburgh’s chief burgess, is among us, invited by David Hamilton. Also Colonel William Semple, Mr. Peter Audrain, Mr. Josiah Tanne-hill, and Mr. William H. Beaumont. Before applying ourselves to this measure, might we not request of their spokesman, Mr. Hugh Henry Brackenridge, that he enlighten us as to views in Pittsburgh and his own opinions of the matter?”

  The chair thought that was a swell idea. In Pittsburgh, popular opinion favored the “malcontents.” Everybody knew it, including the city-father types whose interests lay with the federal government. A faint derisive hissing filled the room as attorney Brackenridge levered his bulk to vertical. Forced into delivering himself of an opinion, he resembled a trapped animal. I didn’t know him well enough to realize this was normal with a man in the habit of playing both sides of the game at once. He glanced right and left, the eyes of the audience both attracting and repulsing him, then waddled into the aisle, advancing toward the chair.

  At the head of the room, the rebellion leaders scowled.

  He began. “Colonel Edward Cook—rather, ought I to address you as ‘Mr. Chairman.’ Young Mr. Craig Ritchie likewise, ‘Mr. Secretary.’ Mr. James Marshall—” Bitter sarcasm was in the lawyer’s voice “— my kindly in
terlocutor. Also prosecutor David Bradford, and the good John Canon, of Canonsburg. I know you all as staid, comparatively conservative citizens, friends of order and good government who surprise me and my fellow Pittsburghers with your presence here.”

  Ed’s suppressed laughter exploded in a snort: “He surprises himself! He got the invitation Monday and was so scared of the Rebellion he tore it up and threw it in the bottom of a closet. But then he pieced it back together like a jigsaw and told Presley, who urged him to come and persuade these ‘leading citizens’ along as witness—” A rough-clad unshaven citizen in front of us turned and glared. Ed shut up.

  “I’m reminded—” Brackenridge hesitated as if in thought. “—of the Irishman, who, confessing to his priest a horrid mass of iniquities, was asked whether he could remember no good act as a set-off to so much wickedness.” There was a murmur, not quite angry. These people wanted answers, not anecdotes. I thought he was an idiot not to see it. “The Irishman hesitated, seeming to recollect: ‘Stay,’ said he. ‘I once killed an exciseman!’” He waited for laughter. What he got was anechoic nothingness. He shook his head, as if trying to wake up from a bad dream.

  “Would I could paint,” he tried again, “a portrait of the haste with which John Neville’s son-in-law, Major Isaac Craig, tore the paper down by which the new excise office in Pittsburgh was labeled—the one opened to replace the house of the Inspector, and which is now, in anticipation of your demands, shut up. It is as if the Major had heard that story of the Irishman.”

  More nothing. The wooden floor creaked beneath his bulk. “Very well, then—” It came out in a squeak. He started again, two octaves lower. “I would venture to enter more seriously on the question put by Mr. Parkinson, whether those concerned in the destruction of the house were right or wrong in doing so.”

  He got his reaction, a general mutter of “About time!”

  Brackenridge raised a fatty hand. “My colleagues and I can give no vote, as Mr. Bradford here demands. We were not sent to vote on any proposition, but to deliver an account of what has taken place in the town, to satisfy you, and show it is unnecessary for any force to come from the country to put down that excise office.” Three or four cheers arose, subdued and shortlived. “But, although we are not authorized to vote, we are at liberty, as any fellow-citizens identified with the welfare of the country, to give our advice—”