The Iron Chain (2 page)

Van Clynne's tone had suddenly turned from sincere to sardonic, but the Tory on horseback had no time to respond — a bullet whizzed from the nearby woods and caught him on the side, pushing him forward on his horse.

The author of the shot was none other than Jake Gibbs. The Dutchman had caught sight of him creeping into position in the woods, and endeavored to attract the strangers' attention with his prattle while Jake prepared his assault. But even the most elaborate tactical plan carries with it a flaw, and here the shortcoming was quickly apparent — Jake was armed with only one pistol, and having fired that one, was defenseless as the dead man's partner turned and confronted him with his musket at close range.

The man was so intent on pulling back the lock to shoot that he hardly noticed van Clynne still fussing behind him with his hat and bag. As he settled his aim, the Dutchman dropped the leather sack and flung one of the items it had contained — an Iroquois tomahawk — head over handle. With the sharp flap of a hawk descending for the kill, it flew directly into the Tory's head, slicing it asunder.

-Chapter Two-

Wherein, the American lines are reached and crossed.

Y
ou see now,
sir, that fashion can have its utilitarian side," said van Clynne. "My hat distracted them sufficiently for me to remove my weapon unobserved. You could not have done that with your customary tricorner."

"The only distraction that mattered was my shooting them," Jake said testily.

"Hmmph," said van Clynne. "I was ready to attack well before then, but waited for you out of courtesy. It would have been impolite to deprive you of a share of the glory."

"Uh-huh."

"I should remind you that there were two tomahawks in my bag. Frankly, I could not understand your delay in firing; I thought my tongue would rot with its praise of that villain King George."

"I was waiting for you to torture them with an explanation of your economic theories, Claus. They would have run for their lives and I wouldn't have had to waste the powder."

"Mark me, sir." Van Clynne's round face grew bright red, his cheeks puffing above the thick yet somehow scraggly beard that grew beneath his mouth and chin. His nose pinched and pointed northward, and his thick brows furrowed above his eyes. This was a sign that he intended to speak with great seriousness, as was the velocity of his finger as it rent the air. In truth, the Dutchman would declare that he always spoke with great seriousness, but as he always spoke, some pronouncements were naturally more serious than others.

"The philosophy of Adam Smith will be revered for generations to come," van Clynne declared. "You, sir, should have sympathy with his theories, as they are most fitting for a democracy, and provide the basis for the overthrow of this heinous taxation system imposed by the mother country."

"Revolutions are things of the heart, Claus, not the head. A man feels he must be free before he can explain it."

The Dutchman sniffed at the rebuke and followed his usual tactic when checked, which was to change the subject. "You fuss with those dead bodies so much I would think you an undertaker's son, rather than a druggist's."

"If I had a shovel and we were across American lines or better armed, I'd bury them properly," said Jake, standing back from the fence where he'd propped the three dead men. In truth, the tableau was a shade grotesque; if not for their gaping wounds and blood-stained clothes, the men might be sitting down to a roadside tea. He unrolled his sleeves and despite the lingering heat of the spring day pulled his coat back over his shoulders. "We'll have to send the first patrol we meet to do so. Even a thief deserves to be properly buried."

"We'd best continue on our way before we're in need of the same service," warned van Clynne from his horse.

None of the dead men carried a shred of paper indicating who they might be or what they were about. Under other circumstances, Jake might have decided to spend some time finding out. He suspected that Johnson was a British or Tory agent, waiting for other traitors; capturing their accomplices would be a good day's work. But Lieutenant Colonel Jake Gibbs, secret service agent assigned temporarily to the Northern Department of the Continental Army, had more pressing responsibilities. He was to return to Albany in six days and report to Major General Philip Schuyler, commander of the Northern Department of the Continental Army, that General Sir William Howe had no immediate plans to come north on the Hudson River.

The reason he had no such plans will be familiar to those who have followed Lieutenant Colonel Gibbs's previous exploits. Gibbs and van Clynne had just succeeded in foisting themselves off on Howe as messengers from General Johnny Burgoyne, telling him Burgoyne did not wish him to proceed north. While this was directly contrary to Burgoyne's grand plan for ending the war, the American agents had managed to completely convince Sir William. As the elaborate stratagem has been described in detail elsewhere, we will skip over it here, saying only that had Jake and van Clynne failed, General Schuyler would have abandoned Albany. Indeed, he would have had little recourse but to give over the entire Hudson Valley to the British, thereby splitting the states in two, and leaving New England and the Revolution to be strangled on the vine.

While the author has grown reflective, Jake and van Clynne have mounted their horses, taken the others in tow, and continued north on the road toward White Plains. Jake has retied his hair with a spare piece of black cloth found in one of his companion's copious pockets. There was mention of a rental fee amounting to two pence per day, with interest compounded on the fortnight; the reader has fortunately missed the lieutenant-colonel's somewhat scatological retort.

Jake soon had more considerable matters to ponder. He noticed that his mare's right foreleg was giving her difficulty; she had strained herself during her panicked flight. After switching to the gray-dappled stallion so lately owned by Johnson, the two patriots moved forward at a slower pace, hoping the mare could be saved.

Van Clynne in the meantime expressed various opinions, mostly in the form of complaints, about the state of the American economy, which had become subject to wild inflation and artificial shortages, cheating honest businessmen and providing opportunity only for scoundrels. Why the Dutchman fit into the first group when he so easily and consistently made profits the second would envy was not adequately addressed by his theories, though Jake would be the last to point this out — it would only encourage van Clynne to speak at greater length

Within fifteen minutes — at about the point where the squire was running down the beaver trade — they came upon a party of American pickets, who had set up a post on a wooden bridge over a tributary of the Bronx River. The men wore tattered hunting shirts; if these had been originally cut from leather, they had long since transmuted into a thinner and foreign cloth. Their breeches were not in much better shape, well worn and in a few cases patched; in others, simply torn. Their hose was nonexistent, and it would cause a grave injustice to the language to call the items on their feet shoes. But their weapons were in good repair, and the soldiers themselves cheery enough, as soon as Jake identified himself and his companion as patriots in search of the men's captain.

The troops were Rhode Islanders from Colonel Israel Angell’s regiment. Angell was an old acquaintance of Jake's. This information was warmly welcomed by the captain, an amiable sort found bending over a kettle a few yards away. The man had built his fire by the roadside, announcing his post with a simple stick mounted by a blue ribbon. He had a stump for his desk, and a log for his seat, but nonetheless exuded the air of one naturally born to lead.

"Can I offer you some Liberty Tea, gentlemen? I've added a few herbs I found by the roadside to the usual sassafras. I think it has quite a unique flavor."

Jake and van Clynne exchanged a glance.

"I make it a habit never to drink Liberty Tea after the early morning hours," blustered the Dutchman. "I, er, it keeps me awake."

"I'm not thirsty, thank you," said Jake.

"You're missing a treat." The captain poured the water and its steeped herbs into a crude tin cup and held it to his mouth. He took a sip, winced, then set it down. "Too hot," he said doubtfully. "I'll have to let it cool. Now, gentlemen — your business."

"We are messengers," said Jake, producing a piece of blown and colored glass the Sons of Liberty had given him in New York as an identifier.

The captain fingered the clamshell-shaped glass briefly, then handed it back. "And your destination?"

"I can say only that I am working for General Schuyler. Ordinarily, I am assigned to General Greene."

The captain's expression, wary and soured by the tea, lightened immediately. Rhode Island's Nathanael Greene was well regarded by many in the northern army, and certainly all who came from his state. "Have you seen the general recently?"

"No," said Jake. "We have been on this assignment quite a while. It is a trifle, though there have been moments of interest here and there."

"The general's leg is better?"

"The general's leg has been injured since his youth, so I hardly think it could get better," said Jake. He smiled, acknowledging the cleverness of the trick. The officer's extra bit of wariness was well justified in these woods.

For his part, the captain guessed from Jake's bearing if not his rough farmer's clothes that this guest was not a mere civilian pressed into service or even a disguised enlisted man, as Jake's ambiguous responses were meant to suggest. The officer was wise enough not to press the matter on the one hand, and on the other to treat the stranger with careful respect, even offering his log to sit on. Jake declined the honor.

Van Clynne accepted with a happy grunt.

"Colonel Angell is in Peekskill," the captain told them after ordering a detail to bury the men they had left down the road. "He spends every moment haranguing for supplies. There are shortages of everything."

"What sort of thing does the army need?" van Clynne asked, stroking his beard.

"Anything and everything. Shoes, shirts, boots especially. Food — I believe I would give half my inheritance for a pound of salt. I have not had salt with my dinner for three months at least."

"There is money to pay for these things, I suppose?"

"There is a shortage of funds," admitted the captain, "but surely not so severe that money could not be found if these items could be provided."

More inviting words had seldom been spoken to the Dutchman, who immediately began computing how a profit might be patriotically turned.

If anything, the captain understated his troop's condition by half. Many of the soldiers marched out barefoot, with tattered clothes and not even insignias of rank or unit. There was no shortage of gunpowder, only because there was not enough of it to be issued to a soldier except for a specific duty — a surprise attack would find much of the ammunition under lock and key. Worst of all, any honest rating of the American troops would put these Rhode Islanders toward the top of the men assigned to guard the Highlands — many of the other units were either militia or as green as the sprouting hills around them.

"We had hope when Old Put came in," said the captain, referring to Major General Israel Putnam, one of the heroes of Breed's Hill and a beloved leader of the American forces. General Washington had put him in command of the Highlands two months before. "He has done much, but it is an awesome task. Rumor has it," the captain added in a lower voice, "that there is a plot afoot to destroy the iron chain stretched across the Hudson north of Peekskill."

"Destroy it?" demanded Jake indignantly. "How?"

"If I knew that, we wouldn't be sitting here talking about it, I assure you."

The chain stretched across the river on a diagonal from the shore below St. Anthony's Nose to a point just above the Polpen Creek. It was the key to the defense of the Highlands and the rest of the Hudson Valley, as it kept British ships from coming north. Without it, no part of the valley — not Poughkeepsie, not Newburgh, not Kingston, not even Albany — would be safe. Indeed, were the British navy and its formidable marines able to sail blithely up the Hudson, Jake's recent mission to fool General Howe would be rendered useless. Upper New York could be taken in a hairsbreadth by a tiny fraction of the available British forces, and the vital supply link between New England and the southern colonies would be severed. Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island — all would quickly starve to death. The Revolution itself would surely follow.

"The chain itself is formidable," said the captain, "but our other defenses, and the men ..."

Here the officer shook his head, as if his pessimism were a physical thing that had formed on his tongue, and by clamping his mouth he might change the entire situation. He smiled, tried boldly to continue, though his voice was still forlorn.

"Things are difficult for us, with such short supplies. Morale has fallen sharply; even I despair at times. The British have been recruiting men from the countryside as rangers, and it has been difficult to stop them. I have no doubt the man you killed was a recruiter."

"Good riddance, then," said Jake.

"Yes. But there will be more if our situation doesn't improve. Even my own men are tempted to desert."

Jake received this sobering sentiment silently, realizing that though the situation was difficult, Angell would not have a man under him who would truly despair no matter how dire the circumstance. Van Clynne, on the other hand, took offense, and proceeded to upbraid the captain, telling him he was a soldier in the greatest army ever assembled, a fighter for Freedom, a defender of all that was holy and then some.

"Your friend sounds like a member of Congress," the captain told Jake.

"You'll have to forgive him. He hasn't had any dinner."