Angel's Flight (10 page)

The officer, a Captain VanDam, paid his respects to Angelica.

“I owe a TenBroeck lady in distress assistance,” the young officer declared. “Rest assured I shall do all in my power to help you reach your kinfolk.”

Jack watched the performance with an ironic expression. It seemed that plans had been made to put her, Jack, and Hal aboard a smaller craft and send them up river straight to Kingston.

“Something is going on down river right now,” Jack suddenly remarked, pointing.

In the south, a huge black cloud boiled skywards.

“Hendrik Hudson!” exclaimed Vanderzee. He swiftly pulled the glass from his colorful sash and put it to his eye.

“Take a look at that, Captain VanDam.” After a moment, he passed the glass.

“I’m damnedly near sighted. What do you suppose?” Captain VanDam asked.

“It’s a powder explosion, a big one,” Jack declared. “Probably coming from that little town we sailed past.”

“Peekskill,” Vanderzee replied with a brisk nod. “I’m with you, Mr. Church. I’d say they’ve fired the armory.”

On shore, too, the ominous cloud had been noted. Only a few minutes later the decks of the Judik swarmed with men. The cargo, all those innocuous looking casks and barrels, was shifted hand to hand over the side into rowboats which came, one after another, from the shore. The busy scene reminded Angelica of a disturbed anthill.

“Captain Vanderzee,” Jack finally suggested, “I believe it would be wise to get Miss TenBroeck off. Especially,” he added, lifting his fair head, “as the wind has changed.”

Vanderzee lifted his craggy head. He sniffed the air, and then grunted agreement.

“You’re right, sir. What little wind there is has shifted south.”

Soon a flat-bottomed boat, about the same size as a Marblehead boat, was rowed along side. Angelica and more of those mysterious casks went down a ladder into it. Jack, talking soothingly, got Hal into the same harness that had been used to put the Spanish donkeys ashore. Then he worked with the sailors to swing his horse onto the deck of the smaller boat.

“The things you’ve been through, poor fellow,” Angelica sympathized, soothing the bay’s black forelock after Hal was safely secured on board beside her.

“He’s used to it, but that doesn’t make him like it. Still, the expression on his face when he’s hoisted is something to see. I always think he looks worried, but like the reasonable fellow he is, he knows that making a fuss will only make his situation worse.”

“Has he made many water journeys?”

“Oh, yes. By birth, he’s Irish, but he’s been to Canada and London.”

They were under way, the craft scraping its flat bottom over the
iron links of the submerged chain. By the steep slope of the western shore, they reached a floating dock of logs covered with planks.

Here the ragged militia hurriedly unloaded. Twilight was coming on. The top of the eastern shore still shone with a haze of redbud and brilliant new green, while they, tucked against the wall of the high western cliffs, had lost sunlight.

Angelica, wind ruffling her rumpled blue-and-white dress, stood upon a narrow lip of land. Men bustled madly, now loading the small casks onto pack animals.

She knew there was a rutted, steep trail leading up and over the cliff behind them. After a traverse of some miles, this finally dropped down to the tiny village of West Point.

“Sails! Lots of them!” someone on the wharf shouted. “They’re ‘round the Nose!”

“Damn,” Jack muttered. He turned to stare across the water.

“Oh, no!” Angelica’s heart rose into her throat at the sight of two war ships flying the British flag.

Jack was already tacking up Hal, not with any kind of haste, but with a smooth, practiced rapidity. “We’ll have to go up there,” he said, pointing to the trail. “I’m sure we’ll have plenty of company. They’ll want to get this powder away.”

All around them men loaded animals with those lethal small kegs. Some were simply shouldering powder and starting out on foot.

A few moments later, they were off, leading Hal up the steep and narrow path among the others. Out on the river, a cluster of sails darted back and forth.

A few shots came from the riverbank cannon, but the balls fell short. On the patriot side, the tallest ship and the most forward was Vanderzee’s.

Angelica jumped as a tongue of fire shot from the Judik, followed by a white puff of smoke. A sharp report echoed wildly between the facing cliffs.

“He must’ve had some four-pounders stowed somewhere,” Jack observed, gazing back at the fight now beginning on the river. “I hope he doesn’t split his sides.”

The path they followed was a series of switchbacks, a mere footpath clinging to a rearing promontory. For a moment the entire line stopped while everyone stared with horrified fascination at what was going on below.

The ships carrying the British flag were so many, and so much larger. They surged toward the rebels.

Streaks of red and puffs of blistering white illuminated the twilight. The roar of cannons ricocheted back and forth between the high cliffs. One little ship exploded in a cloud of slow motion splinters. Almost before these had finished falling, its broken bow slipped beneath the Hudson’s green surface.

“Get moving, you fools!” someone bellowed. It was Captain VanDam, waving his arms frantically. “We can’t be caught!”

With much stumbling and rattling of rocks, the column moved again. Everyone understood the danger, but it was almost impossible to turn away from the scene on the river.

Clods of dirt and stones rattled from above, startling some of the horses at the end of the line. There was a constant fear of being kicked.

Angelica stubbed her toes and almost fell. In this, she wasn’t alone. In the growing twilight, all the men were stumbling and cursing. Sparks flew as horseshoes struck rock.

Fearsome roars and flashes rose from the river. Finally, a rising red tide washed over them and, helplessly, everyone paused to look back.

Angelica saw ships sailing briskly toward the shore. Behind them, the sails of a two-masted ship too large to escape over the boom made a magnificent pyramid of fire.

“That’s the Judik!” Angelica’s heart thumped her ribs.

“Yes,” Jack replied. “Hurry!” he shouted to those who, gaping down at the river, blocked the trail ahead. “They’re coming!”

As they reached the top of the bluff, the tempo and size of the explosions on the river multiplied. Flames had reached the powder still stored on board the Judik.

Angelica, her sides aching from the steep climb, looked back. The Judik was the center of a whizzing, smoke-trailing fireworks display. The entire gorge glowed and rippled red as if the hills were melting into the river.

The British were painting the world—Angelica’s world—with fire and blood!

“Run!”

The time was past for formalities. Jack’s arm caught her around the waist, and he rushed her up and over the final rise. Tongues of fire danced behind.

Then, with an earsplitting roar, a sound that surpassed any she’d ever heard or imagined, the end came for Vanderzee’s ship. There was a blinding light, while the concussion staggered those who had lingered near the lip. Men and animals screamed in fear together.

Jack threw his cloak around Angelica like a wing, pressed her terror close against his chest and rolled with her to the ground. When the raging incandescence passed, they were clutching each other in a bitter twilight that tasted of gunpowder.

Chapter Nine

There was Chaos on the cliff top. Animals panicked. A man was knocked cold in the flurry.

Hal, although he had reared and let out a scream of his own at the final explosion, had halted right beside the spot where his master and Angelica had hit the ground. There he stood, his cavalry training holding, shielding them with his great body. Now, he was whinnying nervously and shaking his head from side to side as if his ears hurt.

“Angel!” Jack said, and she felt his warm fingers upon her face. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, I think so.” She wanted to be brave, but the concussion had been violent. Her ears stung and she was wondering if Vanderzee had gone down—or, in this case, up—with his ship.

A sob tore out. Jack drew her close, held her against his broad chest.

“Oh, God! The poor captain!”

“There, there, love,” he comforted.

“Come on!” A cry rang out from higher up. Jack and Angelica turned their heads.

“Hurry!” Captain VanDam shouted. “They’re ashore.”

Jack lifted her up on Hal and the straggling column began to march again, now into ever deepening darkness. What seemed like an eternity of stumbling in single file followed, as they, with muffled lanterns, marched along the narrow trail.

At last they reached an open area. Besides the welcome sensation of not being hemmed in by forest or cliff, Angelica heard the guttural splashing of a spring.

Captain VanDam ordered a stop. Men and animals drank and a guard was posted. After Jack tended Hal, he joined Angelica who, with a couple of the other women, was making a small fire.

Jack shook his head at the sight, but VanDam had given his permission. Soon everyone was gathered around, rubbing their hands, breath visible in the night air.

“Aren’t you worried about giving your position away to Indians or about the British catching up?” Jack put the question.

“We’re on what used to be hunting grounds,” one grizzled, buckskin volunteer replied. “But for the most part these days, the Indians stay a good way west. If there’s any one out there watching us, it’s outlaws. There’s quite a few bands of ‘em in these hills these days.”

“This gentleman is right,” another man put in. Dark haired and dressed in buckskin, he looked like an Indian himself. Leaning on a long rifle, he added, “Even if you don’t figure the British are after us, we ought to be careful. I know for a fact there’s a big gang of bandits up here now, holed up in the Clove, not ten miles from here.”

“Well, then, we’ll put the fire out in a few moments,” VanDam said. “This is Bear Springs, so we’re getting toward Fort Clinton and West Point Village. We’ll leave here as soon as there’s light, but the passage down is worse in some places than what we’ve just gone up. We can’t take that on until we can see. Besides, the rain was heavy a few weeks ago, and I’m afraid we’ll have trouble getting the horses through.”

Everyone took a branch from the fire and by that light found a place to sleep. In smoky, chilly darkness, Angelica and Jack lay down together on some dry leaves. Tonight their cloaks would have to keep out the cold.

The ground was hard and the saddle blanket they’d rolled up for a pillow smelled pungently of Hal. Angelica adjusted her pocket so she wouldn’t lie on her mending kit.

She shivered and shook, and couldn’t seem to stop. The rush of the last few hours had sent her swirling into a whirlpool of violence. The end of the Judik still buzzed in her ears.

Jack felt her tremble. “With your permission,” he whispered, enfolding her in one brawny arm. The cold was so penetrating and she felt so forlorn that she welcomed being drawn against his big, warm body.

There was comfort at once in his closeness. “Poor Captain Vanderzee,” she whispered.

“Well, he may have escaped,” Jack comforted. “I wouldn’t rush to give a tough, old boot like him up for lost.”

Angelica, deep in a bout of shivering, didn’t answer.

“What I’m worrying about,” Jack said, “is what we’ll find as we travel. I have a feeling that this war is going to follow us all the way.”

“You mean, we may find the enemy at Kingston?” Angelica said with a shudder.

“We may come down straight into a battle. The British would love to knock your General Putnam out of West Point.”

Angelica trembled, every inch of her, in a steady quiver.

“There, there, Angel,” Jack whispered. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“I’m trying not to be, but it’s still such a long way home. And, now—now I don’t know what I’ll find.”

“We’re inside the belly of the war,” Jack said, his arm tightening around her. “So take an old soldier’s advice. From now on, just take things as they come and try not to imagine what’s ahead. Right now, you’ve got to get some sleep.”

Gently, carefully, he brushed her cheek with his lips and then settled down behind her. It took a while for her shudders to subside, but with the warmth of Jack’s arm around her, Angelica finally lost consciousness.

***

They’re out there
, Jack thought. I can smell them.

An owl hooted twice along the ridge, but was it really an owl? He doubted it.

Someone is watching, signaling. He could sense it in the pricking of the hair at the back of his neck.

They won’t come in darkness, though. Not in this terrain.

He lay still, letting the warmth of the woman in his arms soak in. Sleep, he told himself. Sleep.

My sweet American prize! It’ll be a hard day’s work to keep us both alive, but I can do it. I must.

***

“I
want your Chief!” Jack shouted.

Hal, reins loose, guided by his master’s legs alone, was walking fast in a circle. Angelica was holding on for dear life.

Jack’s blonde head was in constant motion, watching the brigands who menaced them. Both his pistols were cocked and ready.

“Easy!” Jack muttered to the horse.

He was surveying the ragged troop that encircled them with an expression of cool contempt. Some of these were half-breed backwoodsmen, wearing buckskin and moccasins, thighs bare and hair braided Indian fashion. Some of them were garden variety, Scots-Irish roughnecks.

At dawn, just as they’d set out, they’d been attacked in a narrow defile. Not by the British, but by bandits.

It was hard to tell exactly what had happened because their long column had broken up, but it seemed some of the militia had managed to escape. Others had simply taken off into the woods, abandoning their pack animals. Some of the precious gunpowder had been captured.

Angelica and Jack were swept up in the first attack, for they had been near the front of the train. Jack had unloaded his pistols into them, then, charging, he’d slashed several men with his cavalry sword.

Angelica had hung on and pressed her face against Jack’s back. There had been a couple of close calls. In one, like a nightmare, Jack’s saber had flashed and then Angelica had seen a spurting stump and a flying hand.

They tried to escape, but Jack quickly saw they were hemmed in. He’d stopped the horse and taken the time to reload, a task completed at incredible speed. When these men closed in upon them, they found themselves facing pistols—pistols that had already proclaimed the marksmanship of their owner.

“You can only get two of us!” a bandit yelled. He made a feint toward Hal. The horse knew his job for, just at the last moment, he shied out the man’s reach then resumed his steady circling.

“And one of ‘em will be you,” Jack replied, aiming. His color up, the scar across his cheek blazed.

“Hey, Bill! Back off!”

A huge man with a patch over his eye and a tricorn pulled down over his forehead suddenly leapt into the defile. “We’ve got ‘em trapped. There’s nothin’ he can do.”

The speaker’s hair was the color of dirty straw. He was wearing a jacket that had once been some rich dandy’s pride, but was now stained with dirt and blood.

“You been callin’ for the Chief?” he shouted to Jack.

“Be that you, sir?”

“Yep. I’m Chief M’Bain.”

“Well, Mr. M’Bain,” Jack replied, “I’m wanting to ask terms of you, if you’re in charge of this irregular army.”

M’Bain let loose a kind of mirthless sound that apparently passed for a chuckle. The sound made Angelica’s blood run cold.

“A sense of humor, by God,” M’Bain replied. “But I don’t give terms.”

Jack’s pistol pointed at him. “You should.”

Then his arm suddenly jerked around. Angelica started in terror as the pistol discharged next to her with a black powder flash and boom.

A pistol behind them boomed, too, almost at the same time. This ball went wild. Harmless to Jack and Angelica, it was not so to their attackers, one of whom howled and grabbed his calf with both hands. The ruffian Jack had shot came diving, dead as a duck, to land at their feet.

From all sides men leapt. Hal reared and slashed at them with his hooves. Angelica gripped the horse with her knees as she clung to Jack’s waist with every shred of her strength.

Above all the commotion, they heard a roar of “Hold!”

It was the chief, holding up his hands. His men obeyed.

The face that turned to them cracked in a fierce, black-toothed grin. “My mistake. Thought you was one of them damned pitiful Quakers, sir,” M’Bain said. “Quite a shot from horseback, and with that thar little pistol. You must be a military man.”

Jack grinned back. The undischarged pistol in his left hand remained ready.

“Captain Church, at your service, Chief M’Bain,” he said, as politely as if introducing himself to a gentleman. “We can pay you a good ransom, sir. It can be easily arranged, but my cousin here must arrive at her uncle’s house unharmed.”

“You cain’t get all of us—” some lout began to shout again.

“But you’ll be next!” Jack declared, turning to point his gun at the speaker.

The arrogance of the move, Angelica sensed, was calculated. “Hey! Leave the talkin’ to me!” M’Bain roared.

Quite unafraid, the one-eyed hooligan came ambling down the defile. “In the days before the war,” he remarked, squinting at Angelica, “there was certain sea captains who’d’ve given me a pretty penny for a lass like that one there.”

“Well, I can see you’re a man with an eye for profit, Chief
M
m
’Bain,” Jack replied smoothly. “But with the war, I’d imagine the risk of taking her down the river is pretty high. It’s not only safer but surer money to deliver my cousin to her home unharmed.”

“Hmm.” M’Bain rewarded this speech with a long considering stare. A mercenary glow had begun to brighten his remaining, watery eye. “You haven’t talked about yourself, captain. Ain’t you worth a ransom too?”

“I can take care of myself, chief,” Jack replied. This remark was met by some scattered hollow laughter.

“You know, I thought when I saw that dour suit, you was gonna be one of those prissy sticks who’d squeal for mercy, but you’re a cool one,” M’Bain observed.

Angelica clung to Jack, acutely aware of the men surrounding them. They were covered with brands and scars, those silently speaking rewards of past felonies.

“Well, she ain’t yer cousin, that’s for sure,” a new voice shouted,
and a huge man pushed through the throng.

Angelica gasped. It was a notorious villain, Davy Bell, a man who had been whipped out of Kingston only a few years ago.

“She’s the niece of Mynheer TenBroeck of Kingston, chief. Bleed the Dutch bastard white if he wants his precious girl back. But let me take her there,” Davy added, grinning.

“Well, well,” M’Bain mused. “You bin foolin’ with me, captain? A TenBroeck gal! Good ransom indeed.”

“I’ll fight him for her, rough and tumble,” cried Bell. “I claim vengeance on him, for Tom and Royal and for Neddy, whose hand he’s taken. This fancy tosh is good with a pistol and a saber, sure, but how good is he fist to fist?”

“I took your friends in battle and they died like men,” came Jack’s nerveless reply. “I don’t see any cause for crying vengeance over what’s done in a fair fight, but I can whip you, sir, at any contest you name.” He directed his next remark to M’Bain. “Shall we make it a wager, chief?”

“Jack!” Angelica gasped again.

What on God’s earth was he doing?

“Your word, M’Bain,” Jack cried, throwing back his hatless golden head. “No harm comes to this lady if she brings you a fat ransom, and if I whip this soldier of yours.”

There was a heart-pounding pause.

“Sure,” said M’Bain in an offhand tone. “Why not?”

To Angelica’s utter dismay, Jack turned and handed her the pistol. “If I fail,” he said, his eyes cold, “use it.”

“I know how,” she said, gazing into his face, now hard and battle-fierce.

“Good. Kill yourself or one of them. It’ll be your choice, but with these animals, I recommend the Roman way.”