Tory Daughter
Copyright© 2014 by Bill Offutt
Chapter 36
Philip, one of his older brothers and two of his friends arrived at Pirate's Luck shortly after dawn on Sunday morning, all four of them armed with long guns. Bess stirred up a stack of griddle cakes that they wolfed down with the help of a jar of blackberry jelly and a comb of dark honey.
Maguire and Jamison arrived about an hour later in the lawyer's rig. Neither of them brought a weapon so Anne gave the big blacksmith a scorched pitchfork that had survived the fire and handed Mr. Maguire the shotgun she had recently purchased.
They sat on the stoop of the back porch, telling stories and trying not to worry their hostess, until they heard the sound of hoofbeats and the baying of hounds. They trotted out to site of the rude seedbed where the stable had once stood and spaced themselves a yard or so apart. Anne trailed after them, her old blunderbuss fully loaded with buckshot, more worried than angry
First came a rider dragging a dead animal, what was left of a red fox and then came the hounds, dozens of them yelping and baying. The rider swung aside with a curse, and Philip's brother fired a blast of salt in front of the pack's leaders and they turned down hill, over and under the rail fence, barking wildly. The well-dressed riders were right behind the dogs, yahooing and hooraying, jumping the low fence near the house and heading right for the tobacco seedlings, ignoring the dogs, whipping their long-legged mounts.
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