Chapter 16: Mona

A captain we met down there had two lovely daughters, and on several occasions he brought them into camp to entertain the visiting officers from the north. One was sweet and cooperative, charming and polite, but the other, the younger one, was a tease. That's what we called girls like that back home, cock teasers. She led men on, flirted and flounced, played with them, fanned them, flattered them, made them think it was available, showed it to them and then took it away, rejected them and turned to another man in an instant leaving the first all hot and bothered and wondering what he had done wrong. I saw this nasty behavior at several assemblies and parties during our short stay, and Lt. Foster himself dallied with her for a while before she pulled her act on him. He came back to his tent with a bone in his britches and drank himself to sleep.

Of course, I could not get near either of the beautiful, well-dressed, dark-haired girls since they were strictly for the officers' pleasure. Camp followers were supposed to be enough for us common men. However, by accident, I got my chance with the tease whether I wanted to or not. I had driven six of them, three girls in frilly dresses and three starched officers including Mr. Foster, out to a creek for a Sunday picnic. I guess it was nearly a river since it was wide enough to have an island that supported two rickty bridges that made it possible for folks walking or on horseback to cross the stream. I sat and napped while my betters ambled out to the island, arm in arm, spread their blankets and food and enjoyed themselves that afternoon. I could hear their chatter and laughter when the wind was right and I was not dozing.

Suddenly the birds were quiet and black clouds began streaming overhead. The boom of thunder echoed in the valleys. The wind shifted and turned the leaves inside out. I saw the partygoers look up at the sky and decide to go on with their games and conversations, but pretty soon it was obvious to me that the creek was rising. It must have been raining hard upstream.

I walked over to the small island, got Lt. Foster's attention and urged him to get a move on. He suggested that I got to hell, and said he was just getting somewhere with the dark haired beauty he had squired to this outing, the one that he had said was nothing but a tease, and was about to invite her for a walk in the woods she would long remember. I was tempted to warn him about girls like that but did not. I could still recall a couple of Frederick milkmaids who got my pecker up and then laughed at me and ran off, pointing at my problem.

Then the deck and rails of the old bridge on the far side of the island broke away with a loud creaking and crackling. It washed on down the stream leaving just a few poles sticking out of the muddy water. Trash was starting to gather on the timbers of the bridge on my side as I ran across again and succeeded in getting the officers and ladies moving in a frenzy of petticoats, uniform jackets, swords belts and fancy reticules. I was helping gather up the leftover food when this girl came running back from the eastern bank, skirts hoisted, long legs flashing, globular boobies bouncing, crying, "My bracelet, my bracelet. I must find it."

I looked across the rising water toward the carriage as the young woman frantically searched in the weeds and bushes. Finally I drained the last bottle and tossed it into the river, got the last basket under my arm and took her elbow. "Come on, Miss," I urged. "We've got to hurry."

"Don' touch me," she yelled, pulling away and furious. "I've lost my bracelet. I'm not leaving without it."

She was right; neither of us was leaving. With a sound like a rifle shot, the remaining bridge snapped and collapsed. The almost-frantic, dark-haired girl ignored the noise and kept right on looking for her jewelry as it started to rain buckets and torrents. I pulled her under the trees, admired what I could see of her small, young body through her now-transparent dress and got a blanket over our heads as lightening flashed and thunder boomed.

"Who are you?" she asked, shivering in her fluttering light dress as the wind whipped the leaves from the trees and flapped the blanket wildly in my grip.

"Lt. Foster's corporal," I told her, repromoting myself to what I had been a time or two. She smelled as good as she looked, clean and sweet. Her eyes were heavy-lashed and her mouth soft and inviting.

"Fine man he is, that skunk," she said, looking very determined. "Going off and leaving me like this."

"I think you left him, ma'am. He did get you across to the bank there, over by the carriage." I could no longer see whether or not the rig was still there in the sheets of driving rain. I doubted that it was. Even lieutenants have sense enough to get out of the rain.

"So," she said with a toss of her head. "I dropped my gold bracelet somewhere. My father gave it to me. He's no gentleman, your lieutenant."

She had that right, but I was not going to tell her that she did. Foster had seduced more women than I could count and bedded every girl of easy virtue we ran into from Massachusetts to Maryland. Her shoulder touched my ribs, her hip my thigh. We ducked as a sizzling bolt hit something nearby, and we heard a tree split and tumble into the rushing stream. She jumped and screeched. The creek was still rising and the water was brown and turbulent.

"We best get to some higher ground," I said, pulling her deeper into the small stand of trees on the island's crest. The whole sandy islet was not more than a couple of skinny acres.

"Oh, all right," she whined, following and holding the blanket over her damp curls. Her round breasts and hard nipples were clearly defined as was the fact that she was wearing front-laced stays and had a really small waist for such rounded hips and buttocks. Her dress was made of some sort of light stuff, perhaps cotton and silk or something like that, and had a wide skirt with blue ribbons laced through it in a random pattern. It stuck to her arms and legs as well as her body. She had a fine body, a stimulating body. "Good enough to eat," as the boys said.

"Can't last much longer," I assured her. "Just a squall line."

"Well I hope not. There's a dance tonight," the girl said, lips making a thin line and jaw looking very determined if a bit shaky. The water continued to rise and the island steadily shrank. "Can't we get ashore?"

"Can you swim?" I asked.

"Of course not," she said. "The idea."

"Neither can I," I told her. "We're stuck here till the river goes down or somebody comes with a boat."

She looked at me wide-eyed, taking me in for the first time. She swallowed and twitched her nose, obviously not liking what she saw and perhaps annoyed by my smell. Bath taking was not one of the things I did on a regular basis. "Just look at what you've done to my dress," she said, and I enjoyed looking. Her nipples were poked out like rose buds and the dress stuck to her in interesting places.

The water was at our feet and still rising. I studied the trees nearby, a mix of sizes and types, even a few pines. The maple just behind us looked easiest to climb, I decided, but I felt a bit unsure about its roots.

"Reach up and grab that limb," I told the girl. She hesitated, and I lifted her at the whaleboned waist and got her started with a push on her butt as her light shoes fell off and disappeared in an eddy of muddy water. I tossed her the wet blanket and climbed up beside her on the heavy limb.

Soon the water swirled around the tree's base, and we felt it tremble. I got us up another limb higher and studied the pin oak next to the maple. It looked a lot more firmly planted, but its limbs started much higher. I wondered if we could reach it in an emergency as the maple shook when some floating debris crashed into it.

The thunder boomed again, and the girl put her arms around my neck, and I put my hand on her damp back, feeling stays rather than woman. I hope there is a special place in hell for the inventor of stays.

We cowered under our blanket and watched the island disappear. In an hour or so, the storm passed and the rain slowed and stopped. There was even a rainbow for a while, far in the east. The creek that had been fifty feet wide when we arrived now spread over several acres on both sides, and our little island was under at least a foot of water.

We put the sodden blanket aside, and I stood on our limb and looked where I had left the carriage. No one was in sight, and the road had vanished. The sun came out briefly and then began setting, turning the cloudy sky purple and red.

"Now what?" asked the rather bedraggled girl, shaking her hair and raking at it with her fingers, her fancy combs in her lap. She certainly was a pretty thing, young and fresh with a voluptuous body and lovely brown eyes under dark brows. It would not take much time with her for any man to get ideas and desires. There were many parts of her I wanted my hands on.

"I don't know," I said. "We ought to get off this island if we can. We've nothing to eat, and the river's too thick to drink right now."

"Won't it go down soon?"

"Maybe by morning. Can you sleep in a tree?"

She smiled at me. "If I have to," she said, sitting on the limb with a leg crooked, side-saddle like it was a horse.

I kept hoping that a boat, canoe or raft would get tangled in the sticks and branches piling up in front of our tree, but by the time it was dark all we had was more sticks and branches in a tangle several yards thick. I moved us one set of limbs higher where the maple divided and crowned. The girl made herself as comfortable as she could with her legs up on a limb. When she let them dangle, it gave me the stimulating picture of her rogering the tree, and I tried not to think about getting between those legs. She seemed reasonably secure, but I pulled my shirt over my head, dumped it in her lap and tied her to the tree trunk with my sleeves knotted behind her.

"Aren't you cold?" she asked, looking at me as the moon rose.

"You want to keep me warm?" I asked raising an eyebrow at her.

She shook her head, and I wedged my bottom in a Y and leaned back. I'm sure I slept some that night, but it was not long nor was it deeply. Being fifteen feet off the ground tends to keep one alert I suppose. I was surprised when dawn tinted the sky. I climbed down and relieved myself.

"Where are you?" came the cry while I was climbing back up to her level. "Oh Lord," she sobbed when she saw me. "I thought you'd fallen off or gone and left me." She grabbed my shoulders and I thought she was going to kiss me, but she did not. I untied her and helped her down, then turned my back to give her a bit of privacy while she squatted to take care of her bodily needs. We stood and looked at the still-swollen creek while I got back into my shirt and examined the debris accumulated on the island's northern point.

"See those boards," I said to the girl who was standing with her arms clutched to her chest and her silk-stockinged feet gripping the mud. She nodded. "Probably part of an old outhouse, corn crib or some such. We might be able to hold on to that and float to shore. It's big enough."

"You think so? Why don' you go and get some help. I'll wait here."

"Don't think it's safe," I said. "There's snakes and other animals. The creek might rise again. And there's nothing to eat."

She nodded. "I'll try," she said. She took a deep breath, and I enjoyed watching that.

I pulled the broken clapboard wall down where we could reach it, helped her get situated lying on it, made sure she had a firm grip on the edge, patted her behind to get her to move over and got a dirty look for my efforts, and then I shoved it out in the muddy stream and jumped on it myself, almost submerging my side and gulping brown water. I kicked my feet and tried to steer for the shore we had come from, but the current ran the other way and in a few minutes of bobbling progress, punctuated with squeals, we bumped into a sand ledge where the river turned. I pulled her off into knee-deep water, watched our raft spin away, and we slogged up into a muddy cornfield. As we walked through the tasseled rows, I found a couple of fairly mature ears and yanked them free. When we reached a dirt lane, we sat on a rock and gnawed our breakfast. I knew we'd both have bellyaches later, but hunger was doing its gnawing first.

I dumped out my boots and let them dry a bit while I watched the girl from the corner of my eye. I drew my big bayonet and wiped it clean in the weeds. Then I emptied out my ammunition pouch and checked to see that my purse was still tied to my belt. I wrung out my stockings and put them back on. The girl pulled off her ruined stockings and tossed them away. She had strong looking legs and thoroughbred ankles.

"What now?" she said when she finished with her corn and wiped her fingers on her wrinkled dress.

"We could play kissing games," I suggested, thinking about her legs.

She snorted and turned her back toward me.

"We walk," I said, "and find a farm house, or a tavern, a town, smith, mill or whatever we come upon."

"My pretty dress is ruined. I can't go anywhere, let anyone see me like this. Look at my hair."

"You can wear my shirt, if you want." I pushed a lock of dark hair off her forehead.

Her eyes widened and she looked at me as if she was seeing me for the first time as a man.

"No thank you," she said and stood. "Which way?"

"Away from the river," I suggested and we began. She evidently had not gone barefooot for some time because it was not long before she was limping and complaining. We took a number of short rests but seldom talked when we did. I offered to carry her but she shook her head.

The first place we came to was a small, woodcutter's shack and the sun was almost overhead by then. Hunger had returned as a problem. I left her on the rutted road ministering to her toes and went to investigate. After some hard bargaining with the bearded man who tried on my boots and admired my knife, I bought his older mule for five shillings along with a loaf of stale bread and a slab of smoked ham, maybe half a pound.

I showed the girl how to pull her dress and shift up between her knees and helped her mount the mule. Then I gave her the food, and we got going again with me leading the mule on a rope halter. Before I could say anything, she had eaten all the ham and half the bread. I took the rest of the loaf and munched on that while I considered the manners of some people's children. She just smiled at me when I glared at her and asked if I could buy her a hat.

The worn road looped to our right and came to a tavern in the woods with a ferry that was probably on the same stream we had spent the night in the middle of. I had no idea what its name was and really did not care. By then I had walked five or ten miles, and the young woman had complained steadily about how uncomfortable the elderly mule's back was.

I helped her to the ground, she yanked her arm free, tried to smooth down her be-ribboned dress, and we went into the inn, sat at a table, and ate squirrel stew and drank apple cider without a word to each other. I talked with the inn-keeper about the river at his door after seeing mud on his floor, and he said that he could ferry us across in a day or two if there was no more rain. If there was more rain, he said with a smile, we'd have to leave or swim for it. We talked a little politics, and I found that he and I agreed that we did not need a king or the king's soldiers in our land.

"Bloody lot of thieves," he said. "Dirty buggers. Many a'them's Virginians 'round these parts, damn'd shameful.

"See em regular like?" I asked.

"Now and again," he said and changed the subject to women. He asked me about the girl at the table. "Bra' young 'un," he called her. "Kind that'll sharpen yer appetite." I said I was rescuing her from the flood, doing a good deed. When I gave him a crown, he gave me a wink.

The sun was still in the process of setting when I ushered the girl up the creaking steps to our room and dropped the latch behind us. She sat on the edge of the bed and felt the corn shuck mattress while I opened the single, glassless window and enjoyed the smell of clean air and the sight of fluffy, pink clouds.

"Where are you going to sleep?" she asked sweetly.

"Wrong question," I said. "This here's my bed. I paid for it. Where are you going to lay your pretty head? I 'spect there's room in the stall with the mule, out back there, if he don't mind. Don't reckon anybody'd bother you much."

She jumped to her feet and spun to face me, fists at her side. "How dare you," she squealed and then she saw my grin. "Oh, you were just funning me, weren't you, teasing?"

Noises from below got the attention of both of us, and we stopped to listen. From the small, shuttered window I could see three horses tethered out front, and from below we heard curses. I cracked open the door a bit.

"Woodsman said he was headed this way," said a man clearly. "Had a woman with 'im."

"Ain't seed no rebel sojers," the inn-keeper claimed.

"Who's up there?" asked the voice.

"Jus' a ole man an' his wife," was the answer.

"Go see," said the commanding voice, and we heard the clump of boots on the stairs. I pushed the trembling girl back to a corner and drew my bayonet. I listened as best I could and decided two men were headed our way. I heard one knock on the door across the narrow hall and then came a single blow at our door.

"Who's there?" I called, trying to sound sleepy.

"Open up, shitkicker," was the answer.

"Wait a minute, just a minute," I called, and then I snapped my fingers, got the girl's attention and pointed at the window. She did not hesitate, but moved where I indicated and stood facing the door. She was obviously frightened, and I did not feel so wonderful myself. She looked very tasty framed in the widow's soft light.

I opened the door with my knife at my thigh, bent down a bit and faced the green-clad ranger. The young Tory looked past me at the woman, smiled, brushed me aside and stepped into the room. I closed the door, put my foot against it and hit him behind the ear as hard as I could with the hilt of the big knife in my fist. It hurt like hell. He grunted, crumpled to his knees. I hit him in the head again and he dropped his saber and fell on his face. I pulled his pistol from his belt and checked to see that it was loaded and primed.

"What's goin' on," came a call from the other side of the closed door.

I dragged the inert soldier to the side and then yanked the door open.

"Where John?" the man in the doorway said. He was carrying a short rifle of some sort and looked puzzled, his head and eyes went from left to right. I grabbed his uncocked weapon, pulled him into the room, twisted him around with my hand clamped over his mouth and knifed him in the middle of the back lifting him off his feet. He went limp and I eased him to the floor and pulled out the bloody blade, feeling it grate against his ribs.

"My God," gasped the woman, "My God." She held her hands to her mouth as if she was going to vomit. Her eyes were wide and staring at my dripping bayonet. I took a step toward her, but then we heard more stomping on the stairs, and I turned just as the young officer jumped over the bleeding body in the doorway and lunged at me with his saber, yelling something. I ducked down to one knee as the blade whistled over my head and pulled the trigger. The half-inch ball went in the base of his throat and came out the back of his head, spraying blood and brains on the ceiling and door frame. He fell on his back atop the cavalryman's body, arms spread wide, knees bent.

I stepped over the two corpses and went to the top of the staircase. "Any more a'them?" I yelled down.

"Nope," came the reply, "jus' three, Tarleton's boys I reckon."

"Wanna come help me?" I asked and he plodded up the steps, took the officer's feet and dragged him down to the tavern, head thumping off each step as they went, clunk, clunk, clunk. I wrestled the bloody man I had stabbed to the top of the steps and pushed. He rolled down, turning over twice, head over heels, spraying gore, landing on his face with his head at an odd angle.

The boy I had hit in the ear was recovering, up on all fours, moaning and shaking his head, so I pulled him to his feet and led him down the stairs with his empty pistol jammed in his ribs. The inn-keeper and I yanked off their boots, searched the bodies and then he hauled the officer's corpse and I had my prisoner drag his lifeless companion to the river. We made bloody trails along the way on the muddy ground. We rolled the bodies into the fast-moving, light-brown water and watched them bob, roll over and then disappear.