War Path (9 page)

The lieutenant heard a growl, deep and guttural, from off to his left and allowing a quick look, caught sight of the mastiff which in the glare of the lanterns looked even more formidable. The Cornishman gulped and his eyes widened. He retreated a few steps, placing half a dozen of this rough lot between him and the dog. Penmerry seemed to recall that the mastiff had been the property of the commander of Fort William Henry. Evidently the animal had switched its allegiances and cast its lot with this rough bunch.

“You are welcome here, Lieutenant, come and go as you please, but from this day forth, I answer to none but God and these good friends,” Stark replied and received a chorus of “Here-here's” from the gathering.

“Tell us then,” Ephraim called out. “What word from Fort William Henry? How do our countrymen fare?”

“Yes,” said Rogers, “and were you able to approach through the French lines and give them hope?”

“I should hope you assured them that Major Ransom has assumed command and will prepare another relief attempt?” Penmerry interjected, maneuvering through the crowd. Stark's earlier remarks bordered on treason to his way of thinking. The youthful officer wrongfully assumed the presence of his uniform would curb such sentiment and keep it from spreading.

Moses Shoemaker nudged a bony elbow into the side of fair-haired Locksley Barlow. Shoemaker wrinkled his nose, indicating the perfumed scent that suddenly assailed their nostrils as Penmerry drew abreast of them.

“Blood and 'ounds,” said Shoemaker. “If you ain't the prettiest smellin' man.” A few of the men within earshot began to chuckle.

“Not to worry, Moses,” said Barlow, unable to restrain his wit. “No one will ever mistake you for a nosegay.” His remark elicited an even greater response, but the laughter soon died as Stark began his tale of what he had seen and the horrible fate that had befallen their comrades up on Lake George.

“The defenders of Fort William Henry are beyond hope,” said the long hunter. The silence that followed could have been carved with a tomahawk.

Molly's hand fluttered to her mouth; she gasped, sensing his meaning before any of the rest. Then the gravity of his pronouncement swept through the Council House.

“Speak plain, Johnny. Tell us what you saw,” she added. Her gentle voice spoke what was in all of their hearts.

“William Henry has fallen. And all its defenders murdered. Every man, woman, and child.”

Molly wasn't the only person to utter a cry of horror. Grown men, hardened frontiersman like Sam Oday who had seen death and endured torture, looked visibly shaken, some were forced to sit on whatever barrel or crate happened to be close at hand. Others began to shake their heads as if denying Stark's report would undo what he had seen.

“The garrison apparently surrendered. From the look of things, I imagine Lieutenant Colonel Monro marched them out under a flag of truce, right to their deaths.” Stark glanced around, seeing the effect and struggling to contain his own emotions once again as the image of the massacre returned to mind. “I don't know if the French had a hand in it or just stood by and watched the Abenaki set upon the column but it was plain to me that Monro and his soldiers and colonial families under his protection had no way to defend themselves. The French would not have allowed them to depart bearing their ‘smoke poles,' powder and shot.”

“Damn …” Rogers muttered.

“Yeah,” Stark added, glancing in the direction of his ambitious friend. “I don't know about you lads but this child has had all the English
protection
he can stomach.” He scrutinized his companions and then settled on the officer in the red coat. His aside was repeated through the crowd and there generally followed a consensus of agreement. Johnny focused on Penmerry. Ransom's aide shifted uncomfortably beneath that harsh scrutiny. The long hunter's stare held an edge keen as a skinning knife. “You've got your report, Lieutenant. Best you run on back to the fort and present it to Major Ransom, with my compliments.”

Penmerry looked stunned. The enormity of the disaster was just sinking in. If Fort William Henry had fallen then where would the French and Indians strike next? The answer was frighteningly apparent.

Here!

Ignoring Stark's belligerent attitude, the periwigged lieutenant straightened, turned on his heels and marched from the Council House, ignoring as best he could the glares that followed him as he retraced his route to the broad, open doorway. A minute later he had snapped an order to his escort and the men closed ranks behind him and followed the officer back toward the gloomy battlements of Fort Edward. With the English officer safely departed, Stark shifted his attention back toward his companions.

“Now we may not have been the first folks out here,” said Stark. “But we've watered this land with our own blood, buried good friends and loved ones, and earned the right to stay. No one, not General Montcalm, not Atoan and the whole Abenaki nation is gonna drive us out.”

Rogers nodded and gestured to the people gathered in the Council House. “We all feel the same way, is that a fact?”

The crowd voiced their agreement in a ragged but enthusiastic chorus of accord. “But what'll we do, Johnny?” a burly young farmer's son called out. Half a dozen other men chimed in.

Stark waved the crowd to silence. “I'm glad you asked that, Danny Dulin, because me and Rogers have a plan. We've talked on it before. And it involves every man.…” (He felt her eyes bore into him like a pair of hot pokers.)

“And every woman … here.”

10

“
O
w, that hurts, Molly” said Stark rubbing his shoulder after she punched him in the arm.

Molly planted her hands on her hips and glared at him in the front room of the cabin he had built on a knoll overlooking the star-strewn surface of the Hudson River. It was a humble yet comfortable place, nestled between two pastures, one belonging to Uncle Ephraim Page, the other to scarred, kindly Sam Oday, who was a good neighbor and eager to offer a helping hand to any man who approached his door. Over these many months, Molly had worn a footpath across the field from her uncle's farmhouse. Her behavior might have caused some to speculate about the pair, but Aunt Charity loudly defended the girl she had raised since childhood. Molly was both an innocent flower yet wise enough to pick proper company for herself. And Johnny Stark was a man of principle. No lass need fear his intentions—of that she was certain. The “innocent flower” punched him again.

“Blood and 'ounds, lass, what's come over you?”

“That's for running off on your lonesome and scaring me half to death thinking your scalp was dangling from some Abenaki's war belt.”

“Blast it all, but you're a fractious woman,” Stark bemoaned.

“And this is for returning safe and whole, alive and in one piece,” she added, drawing close. She stood on tiptoes and her arms went around his thick neck and she brought her lips to his. And after she kissed him once, she kissed him again, then eased back a few inches to study his noble, if slightly crooked, features that she found so appealing.

Molly glanced down for a second; she could see the kiss had the desired effect. Stark's cheeks flushed. He looked speechless and a bit mooneyed. Good, that was perfect. After all, they were alone in the cabin and anything could happen and no one the wiser, well almost no one, if you didn't count the couple of hundred townsfolk who probably spied her crossing the field by lantern light, carrying a basket of food for the one she cared about more than any other.

“Bless my soul, Miss Molly, I must remember not to get myself killed more often.” He ruefully rubbed his biceps deciding that a bruised shoulder was a small price to pay for the sweet wine of her kisses.

“You do that, Johnny Stark,” she replied.

He grinned and glanced around at the simply furnished interior of the place. It was a fitting home for a man who spent most of his time outdoors, sporting only a hand-hewn table, a pair of ladder-backed chairs and a stout bed with a chest at the foot. A smaller table served as a night-stand and supported a porcelain pitcher and bowl for washing. Molly had added some niceties in his absence, calico curtains framed the windows, a quilt draped across the foot of the feather mattress on his overlarge bed.

He filled the washbasin from the china pitcher and dunked his face to wash the residue of powder smoke from his features, splashed the back of his neck and straightened. Droplets of water glistened in his shaggy brown mane. His gaze was drawn to the moonlit river and the steep bank of the opposite shore. After the gathering in the Council House, after he had spoken his piece and left the debate for others to hammer out the details of his plan, Stark had slipped off into the night and headed for his cabin. Half an hour later Molly arrived with food and drink. He didn't hesitate to wolf down a chunk of bread soaked in meat drippings and folded around a slab of smoked ham.

“The hour is late. But I reckon half the settlement knows you're in here. Wonder what folks will be saying?”

“They'll say that Johnny Stark can track like a wild Indian and knows the forest better than the critters that call it home,” she replied “… but the man's nothing but a fool if he doesn't marry Molly Stark.” She was not a woman to mince words. But damn if he didn't look pale all of a sudden. “Courage, Johnny, courage. You swoon and Robert Rogers will never let you live it down.” Molly knew that would get to him. Rogers liked to think he was the better man, that he could outrun, outfight, and best any wild Indian at his own game. Molly knew better.

Rogers was brave enough, but he was an ambitious man, unlike Stark, who cared little for the trappings of authority. Rank had only recently begun to matter, when he'd seen lesser men lead so poorly. Playing second fiddle to some English martinet had nearly cost the lives of too many neighbors and friends.

“Robert Rogers has a lean and hungry look alright,” Stark chuckled. “But let him play his game out and take what glory he can. He does not lack for courage and will stand his ground when the musket balls fly. And we shall need fighting men in the days ahead.” He looked down and all but lost himself in the twin pools of her eyes.

“There you go again.
Fighting men
. This is my war, too. And I won't help win it sitting around with Aunt Charity, making quilts or spinning yarn.”

“I wanted to talk to you about that,” Stark began. He was bone tired and not sure he was up to the coming confrontation. And when her expression became tight-lipped and her eyes narrowed into slits, he was certain.

“Don't even think it.” She crossed to her rifle leaning against the hearth. His rifle,
Abraham
, had been hung above the rough-hewn mantle. She picked up
Isaac
and cradled the finely-balanced weapon in her hands. “This is my country. And I will fight for it.”

“And the devil take the one who tries to stop you.”

She nodded. “Bet on it.” Molly walked across the room toward the front door and took up her lantern. She tossed her head like a colt, gave her red curls an enticing flick. “You never know how useful someone like me can be.” The saucy young woman stepped across the threshold and vanished into the night.

“Heaven help the poor bloke who finds out,” said Stark.

He walked to the door and stepped outside to watch the lantern bob to and fro as Molly made her away across the meadow toward Ephraim's house, a two-story, ramshackle farmhouse with a barn twice as large as Stark's cabin. He could still taste her kiss. It helped. He had seen things these past few days that had marked him. But being with her made it all bearable and gave him hope.

Stark would have asked for her hand if he only had something to offer but a tiny cabin on a windswept knoll overlooking the Hudson. Molly deserved better. Indeed, she deserved the best.

A great black shape bestirred itself and climbed out from underneath the cabin steps. Duchess padded around the steps and quickly approached her new master for a scratch behind the ears, her broad, deeply-seamed brindle head wore a forlorn look.

“It's your war, too,” he added.

The beast seemed satisfied.

11

C
harity and Ephraim Page were sound asleep in the front room of the two-story farmhouse Ephraim had built with the help of John Stark, Robert Rogers, and many of the townsmen and Green Mountain lads. The pair were incorrigible, forsaking their warm beds to wait up for Molly, and dozing on either side of the stone hearth. The glare of a whale-oil lamp washed across Ephraim's bearded features where he sat slumped in his wing-backed chair, a worn leather-covered Bible in his firmly clasped hands. His white beard fluttered as he snored, it rippled like drifting snow across the field of his bony chest.

Aunt Charity, eyes closed and her head lolling to one side, a shawl about her shoulders, had never known anything but the lot of a pioneer's life, and that was all she wanted out of life. She was the kind of person born to set down roots in the wilderness, keep a home together, and endure. The rustic life suited her, but once settled she had no desire to see what lay beyond the hills or seek some river's source. Charity Page was rooted in the soil of this land now and nothing would bestir her. She intended to keep this house and their farmland safe, make this wilderness into a home, and neither the French nor some implacable savage like the Great Atoan, was going to drive her out. It was this woman's quiet strength that her niece found so endearing.

Molly set her rifle against the wall next to the door and stepped quietly into the room, taking care not to disturb the woman in the ladder-backed rocking chair. She quickly assessed the situation; her aunt and uncle had no doubt chosen to await her arrival back home from Johnny Stark's. No doubt the news of the calamity that had befallen their kinsmen on the shores of Lake George had caused many a family to burn the late-night oil. Indeed, she had noticed a telltale glow seeping between the shuttered windows of houses and cabins throughout the settlement and had witnessed patrols march from the fort to take up watchful positions on the outskirts of the settlement. They would at least provide some warning should hostiles approach.