The Blacksmith's Daughter: A Mystery of the American Revolution (25 page)

"Sir."
 
Betsy flared her nostrils with what she
hoped looked like indignation.
 
"Our mission is of the gravest import."

"So is ours.
 
You'll just have to wait."

"We dare not spare the time to
accompany you."

Joe pointed a finger at her.
 
"Shut up and stay quiet the way a woman
should, or I'll gag you.
 
You understand
me, Madam Triad Leader?"

Chapter Nineteen

PANELS OF LATE afternoon sun
pierced the pine copse and bathed the cabin in the clearing with pastel
yellow.
 
Joe hollered from behind a pine
tree, "Liam Duffy, are you home?"

A woman's voice rang from inside:
"He ain't home, MacCrae."

"He ain't home because he's
out killing Whigs."

"Too bad he missed your vile
hide.
 
Go away, or I'll use this here
musket to fix it so as you never sire another beast."

Joe snarled.
 
"Liam's found himself a whore!"

Musket fire from the cabin peppered
the woods.
 
Men scrambled for better
cover and returned fire.
 
One ball
smacked the tree shielding Betsy.
 
Tom
shoved her flat.
 
"Stay down!"

"How did you know the MacCraes
were rebels?" she whispered.

"This is Loyalist
territory.
 
The MacCraes look out of
place and were in a recent skirmish."

Joshua scuttled over to make sure
they were uninjured.
 
"These men
are taking a risk coming out here.
 
I'm
surprised the neighbors haven't ridden over to investigate the noise."

Betsy shivered when the obvious
answer occurred to her.
 
Joe MacCrae had
killed Liam Duffy and his neighbors in the skirmish and planned to exterminate
the rest of the family.
 
"Joshua,
we have to get out of here."

"Suggest a plan.
 
They're guarding our horses and
weapons."

A ball ricocheted and hit a man in
the thigh.
 
Joe ordered his men to stop
firing and collect kindling.
 
Cursing
low, Joshua brushed his hand over pine straw beneath him.
 
"Dry as a bone.
 
No rain here in a couple of weeks.
 
He's going to burn their house down."

"But there's a woman inside
and perhaps children with her!"
 
Visions of her own house in Augusta burning rammed a knot of horror into
Betsy's gut.
 
"That's murder!"

More shots erupted from within the
house.
 
One showered them with pine bark
and green needles, but Joshua's attention was elsewhere.
 
"Listen.
 
Crow caws.
 
Do you hear
them?"
 
He lifted his head and
cawed: three, one, two.

"Indians!"
 
Tom lifted up on elbows.
 
"Where are they?"

"In the Duffy's corn near the
road."
 
Frustration puckered
Joshua's brow.
 
"They aren't able
to help until dark.
 
Too late for the
Duffys."
 
The MacCraes had started
a fire near the house.
 
Joshua cawed
several more times, and determination tensed his lips.
 
"I told them to stay put for now."

A lobbed firebrand rolled five feet
from the house and extinguished.
 
The
pitcher had better luck with the following two brands.
 
With the left front corner of the house
smoldering, Joe announced, "Your house is afire!
 
Come out here without your weapons.
 
I promise I won't shoot you in your front yard."

An infant wailed, and people
coughed inside.
 
Flames crawled up the
left side of the house.
 
An older child
joined the baby in lamentation.
 
Tears
of helplessness and horror blurred Betsy's vision.
 
Had the Duffys chosen to burn to death?

The front door whammed open, and
they staggered out filthy and gagging: an elderly man, four women — one with a
babe in arms — and five youths.
 
The
grandfather shook his fist.
 
"You'll pay for this, MacCrae, I promise!"

***

The pain in Betsy's backside clawed
up into her shoulders, distracting her from mulling over their fate.
 
Although the MacCraes had smothered the
fire, they'd bound the Duffys and loaded them into the wagon.
 
Through early evening the party plodded
westward.
 
She couldn't stop thinking
the MacCraes meant to murder the family and loot the home.

The presence of three witnesses
hobbled such a scheme.
 
Joe had allowed
them to ride their horses but had bound their hands.
 
She suspected their lives had been spared because he
half-believed her charade about being a spy.

Close to sundown, at the deserted
intersection with the Ninety Six Road, he halted and ordered two men to escort
Betsy, Joshua, and Tom into the woods.
 
Then he and the rest of his men continued on the road with the Duffys.

Lady May plunged after the lead
horse into the murk of a pine barren on what appeared to be an old Indian
track.
 
Betsy's eyes grew accustomed to
gloom, enabling her to maintain pace and avoid getting snagged on vines and low
branches.
 
Behind her she heard the
horses of Joshua, Tom, and the second escort.

A putrid metallic odor intensified
with each second.
 
They emerged in a
small clearing.
 
She gaped.
 
Joshua whispered, "Ah, no."
 
And Tom gulped.

Torchlight threw garish shadows
over the carcasses of dead horses and bodies and severed limbs of men laid out
by half a dozen filthy men in hunting shirts.
 
Three other men, their heads just visible, heaved shovelfuls of sand out
of a mass grave, and one cupped a hand to his mouth.
 
"It's about got ready, Captain."

Betsy was unable to block out the
stink of death, blood, and feces.
 
Her
bound wrists thwarted her attempt to reach her handkerchief.
 
She panted, and her stomach churned.

"What now, Malachi?
 
This is no place for a lady."

The MacCraes dismounted and saluted
a sun-weathered man in his thirties.
 
"Joe picked these three up on the road, Captain.
 
They was headed out of Augusta.
 
Wait 'til you hear their story."

"Cut their bonds.
 
Get them down off their horses and bring
them to me."
 
The captain walked
away, shoulders sagging.

The MacCraes marched them, unbound,
to the north end of the clearing, where the stench wasn't intense.
 
By torchlight, Betsy saw the captain's horse
picketed in the brush and could hear a brook meander.
 
He studied them.
 
"I'm Captain Ned Murray.
 
Who are you?"
 
A musket shot
sounded from about a mile distant, and the captain glared at Malachi.
 
"What the devil?"

"It's my brother, sir.
 
Cherokee stalked us while we was scouting."
 
Another musket shot echoed through the
dusk.
 
"One shot Hosea.
 
Joe spotted them again and gave chase ten
minutes ago.
 
Sounds like he finally
found them.
 
We got enough to deal with
here without worrying about savages trying to loot us."

Betsy's initial fear was for
Standing Wolf and Runs With Horses, and she flung a look of despair and grief
at Joshua and Tom.
 
Then the shots
continued, eleven of them in all, and she read in the faces of her companions
the realization of who had been on the receiving end of those shots.
 
She hung her head.
 
Every one of the MacCraes deserved to be hanged for murder.

Captain Murray's face was
granite.
 
"Good work."
 
He braced his fists on his hips.
 
"You three, I require your names."

Betsy firmed her jaw.
 
"Our names aren't as important as our
mission and the Ambrose ring."

His eyes widened, and his lips
parted in surprise.
 
"Well, I'll be
— Knight to Queen."

Damn, he'd given her a password,
and she'd no idea of the counter.
 
Better keep bluffing.
 
"Knight to
Bishop
."

Expression emptied from his
face.
 
"Give the two men food and
drink if they require it.
 
See to their
horses.
 
I must have private conversation
with this lady."

Joshua and Tom were marched
away.
 
Murray's shrewd look fixed on
Betsy.
 
"Hungry?
 
I've small beer and dried venison."

She tried to consider the needs of
the baby growing inside her, rather than murder and carnage.
 
"Yes, sir, thank you."

After handing her a flask and
satchel, he began a thoughtful pace back and forth.
 
"The skirmish occurred about one-thirty this afternoon.
 
We were sent on reconnaissance by Colonel
Clarke and ambushed by Tories.
 
They're
all Tories around here.
 
We
prevailed."
 
Well, that confirmed
why no neighbors rode over to help the Duffys.
 
They were dead.
 
"I lost
half my men and several horses."
 
He glanced toward the mass grave.
 
"Had it just been Tories dead out there, I'd have left them for
scavengers, but the men and I felt it best to bury all of them.
 
I hope the delay doesn't set us up for
retaliation."
 
He stopped pacing to
eye her.
 
"I must decide what to do
with you and your companions."

She swallowed venison.
 
"Let us go so we may continue our
mission.
 
Mr. MacCrae has already
delayed us."

"You gave me the wrong counter
awhile ago."

She tossed her head to cover her
nervousness.
 
"It was what I was
given in my last correspondence."

"Blathering, incompetent
fools," he muttered, "who never let the right hand know what the left
hand is doing."

"I appreciate your caution,
sir, however I have but three days to complete my mission.
 
You must let us go."

"With all due respect, I must
escort you to Colonel Clarke."

The last person she wanted to see
was Elijah Clarke.
 
Despairing that she
wouldn't reach Camden in time to help her husband, she flung down the food and
drink and frosted Murray with a glare.
 
"Brown's Rangers are pursuing us."
 
Murray's eyes bulged.
 
"They won't pause to chat when they find you."

"How far behind are
they?"

"When we were detained by
MacCrae, no more than four hours."

Urgency tensed his face.
 
"Thank you.
 
I shall expedite our departure.
 
There's Joe this moment, returned from dealing with those
savages."
 
He grasped his musket and
ammunition box.

She snagged his arm.
 
"It wasn't Indians that he
executed.
 
It was a family of Loyalists
for whom he had personal enmity."

"Madam, do you know what
you're saying?"

"I do, sir.
 
MacCrae and his men weren't scouting.
 
They were burning the Duffys' house.
 
My companions and I saw it with our own eyes.
 
Just a few minutes ago I counted eleven
shots, one for each Duffy.
 
They were
murdered.
 
As MacCrae's commanding
officer, I charge you with dispensing appropriate justice."

Wrath chilled his face.
 
From the complexity of emotion that
followed, she wondered whether he were more outraged at MacCrae for his
barbarism or her for exposing it.
 
He
snatched his arm away from her.
 
"Attend me."

At the mass grave, men were shoving
in horse carcasses and militiamen's bodies.
 
The battered wagon used to haul the Duffys sat off to the side.
 
Betsy shuddered at bloodstains blotching the
wood.
 
"Captain, he used that wagon
to transport the family."