The Turning of Anne Merrick (21 page)

Cracckkkkk.

The women flinched in unison—shoulders to ears. Anne stopped and turned. Eight puffs of smoke floated like a string of pearls above the head of the onlookers, the shots yet echoing up the river valley.

Sally pulled Anne by the apron strings. “C’mon…”

They picked their way down a sloppy path to the river and the laundrywomen working the steaming cauldrons. The children crowded around Sally, and she distributed the remaining scones among them, breaking them in two. “Share, ye wee imps,” she admonished, “or I’ll take a switch to yer hurdies.” Swinging the empty basket overhead, Sally called, “
Hoy, Bab! We spied yer man over t’ headquarters. He cuts a fine figure in his fancy coat.”

Bright as a beet, Bab stirred the wash on the boil. “Was that th’ crack of the firing squad just then?”

“Aye.” Sally nodded.

“God rest the poor lad’s soul.” Bab stepped away from the wash to make a sign of the cross. Leaning on her battledore, she closed her eyes and fanned the back of her neck with her hand. “I swan, it’s hotter than two cats fighting in a wool sock today.”

Anne and Sally sat on a tree stump to slip off their shoes and roll off their stockings. “Come wading with us,” Anne said. “It’ll do you some good.”

Bab kicked off her wooden clogs and the three of them kilted their skirts high and ran down to cool their feet. Anne pointed upriver to a gang of shirtless soldiers splashing around, who were shouting in German and tossing wood and shards of sodden canvas onto the shore.

“What are they up to?”

“Salvaging pontoons and bridge decking scattered by the storm,” Bab said, her eyes wandering warily to gaze at the opposite shore. “There’ll be no retreat. Gentleman Johnny means to build us another bridge.”

Jack squinted in the bright sunlight and watched the column of stoic Indians armed with gun and tomahawk marching into the barnyard, many of them dressed in British red coats. “What have we here?”

Ned shaded his eyes with one hand. “Those are Stockbridge Indians.”

“Mahicans so loyal to the British they were near wiped out fighting in the French War,” Isaac explained. “So few in numbers now, they live with the support of the Oneida.”

“I heard the Stockbridge fought with the Americans at Breed’s Hill, but I didn’t believe it.” Ned folded his arms across his chest, head shaking in wonder. “
Koué!
Never thought to see the day when Mahicans would take up arms against the Redcoat…”

The new influx of manpower was quickly welcomed and integrated into the four columns forming on the fallow field, more than two thousand men ready and eager to do battle. Scraps of foolscap were passed along the lines, and the militiamen pinned the counterfeit Loyalist badges to their hats with plenty of high-spirited laughter and bravado. Jack, Titus, Ned, and Isaac stood off to the side, divested of all heavy gear—traveling light with but weapons, pouch, and powder horn. Ned bounced on the balls of his feet, and Jack saw Isaac quiet his nephew with a hand to his shoulder.

The troops pulled to full attention when General Stark emerged from the barn. Mounted on a big gray gelding, back ramrod straight, he traversed up and down the ranks, his face a craggy and serious study. Rising up on his stirrups, Stark pointed west and shouted for all to hear. “There are your enemies—and they are ours, or this night Molly Stark sleeps a widow!”

“Huzzah!” Fists and rifles punched the air, and Jack bellowed his cheer, feeling as if his lungs would burst from his chest. On Stark’s signal the drummer boys beat a marching cadence, and in a thump and a clankety-clank, the first two columns were set in motion, splitting like fish from the bone into opposite directions.

On the same signal, Jack and his fellow scouts peeled off in a trot. Running along the river flats, they splashed across a small creek feeding into the Walloomsac River, and parted ways—Titus and Isaac heading toward the bridge, Jack and Ned toward the wooded ridge.

Rifles strapped across their backs, Jack and Neddy ran up and along the ridgeline to a place northeast of the German artillery redoubt. Stopping to search for a suitable tree at the edge of the woodland, Ned leapt to grab hold of a branch on an age-old sugar maple, swinging up to straddle its lowest limb. “This is the one.”

Leaning down with arm outstretched, Ned pulled Jack along, and then clambered up the ladder of limbs with the speed and agility of a squirrel. When breathless Jack caught up, he found Ned sitting comfortable on a sturdy limb, about three-quarters of the way up, his rifle laid across his lap, and without a word he pointed to the clear view of the German cannon seated behind a breastwork of
logs about two hundred yards away. Jack settled onto a limb just below Ned.

“I’ve never seen any human climb a tree with your kind of speed.”

Ned began swinging his legs. “My Oneida name—Sharontakawas—it means ‘tree shaker.’ On a hunt, I was always the one chosen to climb up to scout from on high.”

“Tree Shaker.” Jack laughed. “After today, they will call you ‘Widow Maker.’”

Ned grinned. “That’s a good name, too.”

Neither Jack nor Ned suffered any qualms applying their hands and eyes to a battle tactic decried by the British as uncivilized and barbaric. Charged with nervous energy, they both reviewed the condition of their weapons, and arranged their shooting accoutrements.

When compared to a British smoothbore Brown Bess, Jack’s rifle seemed ill suited for the battlefield. Lacking a bayonet, its rifle barrel took twice as long to load, making it a senseless weapon for use in European-style warfare. But the range and accuracy of an American rifle made it the perfect sharpshooter’s weapon. In the hands of a marksman shooting from under cover at a distance, the rifle wrought pinpoint damage, and this woodsman’s skill was an advantage the rebels were learning to exploit.

To make for quicker loading and improve their rate of fire, both Jack and Ned had prepared a bullet block. Nothing more than a paddle of wood augered through with a dozen holes matching the caliber of the weapon, each hole fitted with a lead ball wrapped in a greased patch of fabric. In the heat of battle, the board could be handily positioned over the bore, the bullet more quickly rammed down the tight-fitting grooved barrel to the breech. Their bullet blocks were attached to sturdy shoulder straps crossing over chest, nestled alongside powder horns filled to the brim with perfectly dry gunpowder.

Jack followed Ned’s example, and wore his priming horn fashioned from the pointed tip of a deer antler on a stout thong around his neck. The hollowed-out antler contained the fine-grained gunpowder granules to be tapped into the frizzen on the flintlock to catch the spark
when flint struck steel to charge the shot. A shooter had to carefully control the prime—not enough would result in a misfire; too much could severely damage one’s weapon and person.

Jack studied the redoubt through his spyglass, counting heads. “We have seven gunners to dispatch.” He passed the glass to Ned.

Ned peered through, one eye asquint. “Hmmm… those blue coats aren’t as easy to mark as the red on a day like today.”

From their vantage point, they had a good view of the overall encampment, renewing Jack’s admiration for Stark’s daring strategy to divide his force and completely surround the enemy. He fingered the paper pinned to his hat and only hoped the subterfuge would fool the Brunswicker pickets into allowing the militiamen to gain their positions according to the battle plan.

He and Ned set their flintlocks at half cock and settled in to wait for the rebel forces to encircle the enemy, sharing what was left of their pemmican and a few stale wheat cakes—not a bad breakfast when washed down with a gulp of peachy from Jack’s flask.

Their backbones were instantly stiffened by cracklings of sporadic gunfire coming from the west. Standing to peer out beyond their cover of branches, Jack could see flashes and puffs of smoke coming from gunfire in the clearing around the bridge to the east.

“They’ve begun.”

Within the cannon redoubt, the German gunners lurched to their feet to peer over the breastwork. Another volley of shot sent them scrambling to ready their cannon.

Ned and Jack regained solid seats on their tree limbs and brought rifles to full cock and stocks to shoulders, settling on their targets. Jack looked up, the mottled pattern of shadow and sunlight coming through the maple leaves dancing across Ned’s brown face. “The sergeant using the quadrant is in my sights,” he said.

Ned nodded. “I have a clear shot at the gunner with the ram.”

In a unison crack and boom of rifle fire, the man with the quadrant and the man with the ram dropped from sight. The Germans were rattled for a moment, confused by the direction of the attack.
Discipline willed out, and the artillery commander quickly reorganized his crew into a more defensive posture, working low behind the cover of the breastwork. At the same time, Jack and Ned reloaded.

“Keep your eye on those red puffballs they have on the tops of their hats,” Jack advised.

Ned pulled the trigger, and dispatched the crew commander. “Four left,” he said, pouring a measure of powder down the smoking barrel of his rifle.

Jack pulled his trigger. “Three.”

As Jack and Ned concentrated on the time-consuming process of reloading their weapons—swiping the barrels clean, pouring powder, ramming patch and ball, charging the frizzen pan—the Germans whisked off their hats and shaded their eyes from the sun, using what they knew to be but a minute or two at the most to try to locate their far-off assailants. One man shouted and pointed to the telltale smoke trail floating away from the sugar maple. The artillerymen ducked low and swiveled the cannon around, taking aim at the revealed position.

Heart a-race, Jack pulled weapon to shoulder and peered along his sights, methodically moving the barrel from spot to spot, searching for a good target. A plume of smoke wiggled up from the redoubt, and Ned gave Jack’s shirttail a yank as he scrambled down the tree. “Move!” he shouted.

They leapt from limb to limb, catching clothing on branches, scraping skin on rough bark. The boom of the three-pounder was followed by the unmistakable whirr of a heavy iron ball hurtling with unimaginable speed through the air. The ball hit the mark dead-on in a crash and crack of wood, shaking the two men out to tumble and roll onto the ground like ripe fruit in a shower of wood shards, branches, and leaves.

Ned did not waste a second. Leaping to his feet, he scrambled back up the damaged tree. Jack gave his head a shake to resettle his brains and followed after.

Shouts and heavy musket fire resounded from the opposite direction. Stark’s two columns charged across the bridge. The dragoon
squadrons holding the redoubt on the high ground beneath the cannon were forming to withstand a mighty rebel assault.

With admirable German tenacity, the three remaining gunners heaved their gun around toward this new threat, swabbing the steaming muzzle and ramming powder charge and muslin bags filled with deadly grapeshot with machinelike precision. Not bothering with instruments, they simply pointed the muzzle at the charging mass of patriot soldiers.

His face a study in calm and steady deliberation, Ned took aim and dropped the gunner holding the linstock—the long rod wrapped with the slow match fuse used to light the charge.

“Neddy!”

Like jugglers at the fair, Jack tossed up his loaded rifle at the same time the spent weapon was dropped down. With a calm grace, Ned cocked the gun, pulled quick aim, and picked off a courageous gunner just as he lunged forward to pluck the smoking linstock from the hands of his fallen comrade. The sole surviving artilleryman cast a panicked glance toward the maple tree, and hurled himself over the breastwork, abandoning the cannon.

“Done!” Jack shouted. They scrambled down the tree, finished reloading, and ran to join the chaos at the foot of the hill.

Gunfire rang out fast and furious. The encampment was shrouded in smoke, and the field was littered with blue-coated humps of fallen soldiers.

“Jack Hampton!” Titus shouted from behind a choice cluster of tree stumps and rubble, waving his hat. “Over here!”

Jack and Ned ran in a crouch, dodging around the fallen. With musket fire whizzing overhead, they slid in to join their fellows.

“What took you so long?” Titus said with a grin, ramming a load down the barrel of his rifle.

“Damn Germans managed to shake us out of our perch.” Rolling over to lie on his stomach, Jack waited for a blue jacket to move into his sights and he fired.

A rifle was best used from a position of cover, where the shooter
could maintain protection while reloading. Jack and his fellow scouts quickly spent the ammunition on their bullet boards, and were forced to resort to fumbling with individual patches and lead balls.

Assaulted from every direction, the Brunswickers’ steady fire began to slow, and then, after a few sporadic pops and flares, the German line went quiet.

Jack rolled to lean back against their cover. He drew a deep breath, and coughed, lungs burning from breathing in acrid sulfur smoke. His shirt stuck to his skin with a glue of sweat, dust, and dirt, and his rifle was blazing hot in his hands. Mouth equally gummy, he longed for a drink from his flask to wash away the coppery taste of blood in his mouth where he’d bitten his tongue in the fall from the tree. “Sounds like they’ve run out of either powder or ammunition.”

“Or both,” said Titus. “If our fellows have taken their ammunition wagons as planned.”

“Good.” Isaac wiped the sweat from his face on his sleeve and laid his rifle aside. “My gun is useless—fouled.”

“Mine, too.” Ned strapped his rifle across his back and unhooked the tomahawk from his belt.

In the sudden quiet Jack became aware of the ringing in his ears. “You think they’ll surrender?”

Isaac tugged his battle club free. “I wouldn’t.”

Jack and Titus followed suit. Armed with tomahawks and razor-sharp knives slipped inside knee garters, they coiled into a crouch, ready for anything.

A breeze swept across the field, lifting the heavy gun smoke. As if on this signal, three sharp blasts of a whistle accompanied by orders shouted in a guttural tongue snapped all rebel eyes to the redoubt. With a barbaric battle cry that Jack imagined must have once sent a chill up the spine of Roman centurions ages ago, the besieged Brunswickers charged down from their defensive position in a whirl and fury, bright sabers upraised, bayonets honed and shining glorious in the sunshine. These hardened faces looked determined to cut a way through the rebel lines. The Patriot militiamen sprang forward and met the enemy with a flash of musket fire and a clank of edged steel.