War Path (5 page)

Rogers, Shoemaker, Barlow and the rest of the Provincials were no strangers to Indian-fighting and recognized a dire predicament when they saw one. Johnny Stark hadn't needed to tell them to run for cover. Instinct honed along the Great War Path took over at the first ripple of powder-smoke.

Despite their quick withdrawal from the field, the colonists had lost a few good souls at the first volley. Half a dozen men were sprawled near the wheel-rutted road. But where was Big Timber? Had he also fallen? Braving the ongoing exchange of musketry, Rogers raised his head over the rotting tree trunk and peered through a twist of branches to see if Stark's long-legged frame was lying out there among the wildflowers. His brown hair and deeply tanned features helped him blend into the concealment.

“He can't be dead,” growled Sam Oday, another of the militia. “Or we'd have heard the earth tremble for sure when he toppled.” The farmer had lived among the outlying settlements all his life and had already survived one disaster, having lost his family and been scalped and left for dead. Being on the brink of another massacre made him a mite anxious. “And then we'd all have to answer to Molly Page for his fall. I'd sooner face Atoan with a tin cup in my hand then cross the likes of her,” he added with grave humor. What little hair the Abenaki had left him, Sam Oday wanted to keep. He adjusted the black scarf that concealed his scarred scalp, perspiration beaded along his forehead and soaked into the silken covering. Oday reloaded his pistols and primed his blunderbuss. The fluted weapon could spray a lethal dose of lead shot at close range.

“He was a good five yards ahead of me,” Barlow blurted out. “Then Moses cut across my furrow and tripped me up.”

“I saved your young hide,” Shoemaker retorted. “You'd've been drilled for sure if I hadn't made you eat dirt.”

“Heed him, Mister Barlow,” Rogers spoke up. “Stay by Moses and you might live to see your twentieth year.”

“That is if Nell Dulin doesn't set her family agin' you for all your misdeeds,” Oday grimly chuckled. Unlike Cassius Fargo, hatred had not rotted his soul. The sense of loss that lurked behind his every expression was held in check by an inner strength that refused to let him break beneath the weight of a shattered heart.

“Misdeeds? Ha, I did not ‘miss' a one with pretty Nell,” Barlow laughed. But his voice had a hollow ring to it. It was the youth who had his own doubts about seeing the next dawn.

What now? Should we fight? Should we run?
The silversmith was loathe to appear weak in front of his companions. So he set aside those questions though they were on the tip of his tongue and chose instead to echo Robert Rogers's concern for the fate of the one man from whom they all seemed to draw courage. He can't be dead. It just was not possible. Not him.

“Where's S …”

The question died aborning as a single solitary defiant blast from a hunting horn rang out above the clamor of battle, summoning every man jack of them to gather. To take heart.

And to, by God … stand!

4

“
L
ook there,
mon ami,”
Captain Lucien Barbarat exclaimed from his vantage point overlooking the meadow. “Do you see? The English are withdrawing.” The French commander stood alongside Atoan on a granite outcropping halfway up a wooded rise on the eastern flank of the meadow.

The two men were an unusual pair, there in the shade of the white oaks. Atoan, the Grand Sachem, his naked torso hard as chiseled red stone; his head shaved smooth save for a topknot of black hair adorned with an eagle feather. His smooth-worn buckskin breeches were decorated with porcupine quills and trade beads. The Abenaki leaned upon a great war club, a massive two-handed weapon carved of ironwood. It was gnarled at the tip and fully a third of its length sported a row of jagged flint “teeth.”

Barbarat cut a dashing figure in his grayish white
justacorps
, the collarless coat favored by the French Marines from Fort Saint Frederick. He dabbed perspiration from his upper lip then tucked the silk kerchief back into one of his blue lace cuffs. His woolen waistcoat and breeches matched his
justacorps
in color and cut. A passing breeze ruffled the silver lace trim on the Frenchman's tricorn.

Barbarat's features were aquiline, finely etched, with a girlish mouth and delicate nose. But there was nothing soft about his gaze. His eyes belied the man's foppish appearance: look close, a killer lurked behind that pale blue stare.

Lucien smiled with satisfaction as the British regiment broke ranks and started back the way they had come, leaving a trail of dead and dying in their wake. Below them, the Abenaki warriors and French Marines of the Regiment Le Reine held their positions but kept firing.

“As I said,” the Frenchman sniffed, “the Provincials were of no consequence, mere cowards. And the English are commanded by fools. Now is your chance. Send your men after them.” The Indians sorely outnumbered Barbarat's command and unless they pursued the departing British the redcoats would escape.

“Few of my people have fallen. I am pleased to have it so.”

“This is war, my friend. People must die in war.”

“Let your people die, Barbarat.”

“Kasak may not see things your way.”

Atoan frowned. He had cautioned his headstrong son into remaining on the wooded slope on the opposite side of the meadow. But he could sense the young warrior's reluctance to obey. Atoan glanced down at the line of warriors among the trees. Several of the braves were looking to him, awaiting his signal to carry the attack to the retreating column.

All Atoan had to do was raise the war club over his head and the warriors would charge the redcoats. The sachem knew what his men wanted, the lust of battle was upon them. It burned in his own spirit as well. But he resisted the urge. He studied the forest's edge and the timber and tall grass the English were struggling to reach. What was it? What spoke to him now and whispered caution?

“Sacre bleu,”
Barbarat blurted out. “Do you see? The Abenaki have the stomach for a fight after all.”

“Gagwi-yo!”
Atoan muttered. “What is this?” The Abenaki were streaming out of the woods on the opposite flank. Their war cries filtered through the ragged gunfire. Kasak had unleashed the braves under his command. Tomahawks, war clubs, and scalping knives glimmered in the sunlight. At the sight of such a fierce horde hurling toward them, the English column broke ranks. The retreat became a rout as men ignored their orders and fled for the line of trees at the southern edge of the meadow, where forest obscured the wheel-rutted road.

“The day is ours,” Barbarat shouted. He lifted his hat and waved it over his head. A French drummer began to play a rapid series of drumrolls. The French marines cheered and fixed bayonets and joined the attack. “Why do you delay?” Lucien protested. “Seize the moment. What are you waiting for?”

From above the din of battle, the roar of the guns and the savage war whoops sounded a single clear trumpet call, a hunter's horn, blaring its brash, clear unmistakable note of defiance. Atoan had heard it before. And remembered the day. But Captain Barbarat was already racing down the slope, his sword drawn, leading his men into the fray.

“Kasak,” Atoan shook his head. But he could not allow his son to face what was to come and not be at his side. Kasak was all he had. Atoan's headstrong son was the sachem's pride and his passion for this war. When
Tabaldak
, the Great Mystery, called Atoan by name and took him to join their ancestors, it was Kasak who must be ready to lead the People of the White Pines.

A man could face death knowing he had a son to carry on, a son to live for him.

Again the hunter's horn pierced the clamor and carried to Atoan on the hot breeze. “It's him,” said the sachem.
Stark!

Atoan, sensing danger, loosed his own shrill war cry that transfixed the warriors below. Then he raised the great and terrible war club over his head. “Join me, my brothers. Let the grass run red with the blood of the
Anglais.”

The Abenaki echoed his cry and brandishing their weapons, charged headlong into the fray. The English were ripe for the slaughter. Who would save them now from Atoan and his army of warriors? Who was there to stand against the horde?

5

J
ohnny Stark stood in the center of the road, the brass horn to his lips. He blew a single reverberating note that pierced the shadowy woodlands and called the militia to gather at his side. And they came singly and in groups, like ghosts in linsey-woolsey hunting shirts, each individual garbed as it suited him, and every man armed to the teeth, and anxious to return some of the punishment they had received.

Stark gathered them like some errant buckskin-clad knight of a bygone age, the great horn pealing out its summons, even as the demoralized English column began to retreat, as those stalwart souls of the 1st Regiment of Foot broke formation, lost their will to suffer any more losses, and dashed back the way they had come toward the safety of the woods.

Johnny squinted, furrowing his deeply-tanned brow beneath the green wool Scottish bonnet that kept his unruly mane from interfering with his aim. His hair, the color of ground ginger, betrayed him with a scattering of silver despite the fact he was fast approaching his thirtieth summer. Some of them had been hard years; he'd seen his share of dying and had lost count of the war parties he'd intercepted and driven back toward the French-controlled territory of Lake Champlain.

He searched the grassy sward but failed to spy Colonel Farley among the English troops; he suspected the diminutive officer might well have fallen. But he recognized Michael Ransom and gave the major credit for courage, as he tried to restore the will to fight in his brave lads, as he tried to force them through the strength of his own character not to turn and run but leave the field as they entered, in formation, and with dignity. But these men of Lincolnshire and Northumberland, Bristol, Torquay, and the Chiltern Hills had gorged themselves on dignity this day and found it bitter to the taste. More than half the reinforcements Farley and Ransom had paraded into the trap now littered the meadow with their lifeless forms. The will to live superceded Ransom's appeal.

Corporal Artemus Felker, the last standing drummer, on orders from the major, followed The Retreat with The Call, a series of pronounced drumrolls to inspire the lads to close ranks and maintain the column. Midway through his
ratta-tap-tap
, a flurry of musket balls splintered the drum's wooden case, one lodged in Felker's thigh. The drummer howled, stumbled forward, then crumpled over his instrument, further shattering the case and rupturing the hide head. Sergeant Strode materialized out of the acrid haze, rushed to the fallen man's side, caught his comrade by the upper arm and dragged him to his feet.

“My drum,” Felker said through clenched teeth. He was a man of average height, average build, sharp-nosed, with close-set eyes.

“Bloody hell, she's done for Artie,” Strode gruffly admonished, supporting his friend's weight. “Here come the damn French and they'll be playing final reveille over our bones if we tarry.”

“Wait,” Felker retorted and leaning down, retrieved a scrap of casing emblazoned with the cross of St. George, a symbol of the regimental colors. “Now, get me out of here, you lovely bastard.”

The French and their Abenaki allies broke from concealment and' charged the remnants of the column. And there was nothing Ransom could do to stem the rout. The column buckled, broke apart and dissolved before his eyes. The soldiers nearly knocked him off his feet as they rushed past. The major took a look at the approaching horde and joined the footrace.

He heard the sound of the hunting horn peal above the clamor, saw the long-hunter's towering figure commanding the center of the wheel-rutted path, where the road cut through the forest and the white oaks parted to permit the passage of the regiment. Ransom scowled. So the wretch had not fled after all, or at least had halted his progress to amuse himself with the regiment's slaughter.

If it is the last thing I ever do, I shall confront the coward
, the major promised himself.
And make him pay for his dishonor
. The men of his command were being cut to ribbons, but the way the woods were closer now, Stark was closer, there in the middle of the path framed by the forest's edge where the trees and underbrush became more pronounced.

Perhaps some of them would survive to warn Fort Edward, Ransom considered. That was preeminent, warn Fort Edward, regroup, reinforce the ranks, and return to relieve the English defenders of William Henry in due time. He was the last to flee and purposefully slowed so none of his troops would see him bound past like a frightened rabbit. Real or imagined he could sense his pursuers gaining on him. An English major was a prime target, sweet prey for both the Abenaki and the French.

Before the major's eyes, men stumbled and fell to the ground to right and left. With every hurried step Ransom expected to feel a lead ball rip through his vitals and leave him mortally wounded for Atoan and his bloodthirsty heathens to have their way with him. He'd heard dark and grisly tales of torture and death endured at the hands of the Abenaki, the Hurons, the Iroquois and did not relish such a fate.

His wig blew away, Ransom never even so much as slowed to glance over his shoulder, nor did he consider retrieving it this time. He could replace the periwig, but not the head it crowned. He gasped for breath, almost tripped over his own feet, vaulted a dying comrade at arms, and focused on the big man directly before him, not twenty yards away. He ran headlong toward the long hunter, determined to confront Stark and charge him with cowardice and drag him back to Fort Edwards to answer for his misdeeds.

Drawing up a few yards from the big colonial, Ransom gulped air, then began to harangue Stark for his conduct and that of the Provincials. He had barely begun when to his astonishment Stark dropped the hunter's horn and let it dangle at his side while in the same motion he brought up Old Abraham and leveled the long rifle directly at the major. Ransom balked, his mouth dropped open, he stammered a protest that Johnny Stark cut short as he squeezed the trigger.