Chapter 8

As soon as it got dark enough, about midnight, David and I slipped out of the tavern to do what we could to shake up the morale of the Redsticks. We went out a back door because we did not want to be noticed by the majority of the Indians. Our plan was to kill as many of the Redsticks as possible without letting the others know that anything was going on.

We had our usual weapons: the crossbow, the war club, and the Bowie knife. We crouched very close to the ground to make it very difficult to see us and to silhouette the sentries against the sky. There was a sliver of moon showing, so the light was perfect for our purposes. The Redsticks could not have chosen a better day for their attack from our point of view.

The important point of our plan was to kill a Redstick before he could make a noise. As soon as the first shout was sounded, David and I planned to run as fast as we could back inside the tavern.

We quickly identified four of the Redsticks who were cooperating with us by standing tall against the skyline. I sent David after the two on the right, and I went after the two on the left. The only thing that would slow us down was our attempt to recover our bolts from the corpses. Hopefully, the leaf-blade shape was going to make it possible to simply pull the bolt from the wound. If we were lucky, the point would not snag on a bone.

We would leave the bolt if we had to, but I hoped that would not be necessary. The idea was to give the impression that we had made all of the kills with a Bowie knife, and that would be certain to impress the Indians with our fighting prowess. Besides, we only had a limited number of the bolts, so it was important to recover as many as we could.

I crawled around until I was in front of my first target. My crossbow was already cocked and loaded, so all I had to do was to aim and fire. I tried to line my shot up even with the middle of his chest and offset slightly to the left to keep from striking the breast bone. The point of the bolt was lying in the crossbow slot with the edges of the point parallel to the ground. The idea was that it would find it easier to get between the ribs if it struck with that orientation.

A bolt did not tend to rotate or spin while it was in the air, at least not at this short range, so I figured that I would get my wish if everything else went according to plan. I fired when I had a steady aim, and the only noise made by the Indian was a grunt as his chest was hit by the bolt. That was perfect!

The Indian fell on his back so that he did not damage the bolt when he hit the ground. There was enough of the bolt’s shaft sticking out of the wound for me to grab hold of it and pull firmly. The cross pin kept the point attached to the shaft, and the head came out with the rest of the bolt. I figured that it was a lucky bolt, so I wiped off the blood and reloaded it into my cocked crossbow. It was possible to cock the crossbow while you were lying on the ground if you were strong enough, and both David and I were that strong. The only bad part of cocking the crossbow this way was that it did take longer than when you were standing. Fortunately, speed was not of the essence on this mission.

I had not heard anything from David’s direction, so I figured that he was having the same kind of luck that I was having. I moved on to my next target. I was able to follow the same routine and also eliminated this sentry with his only noise being a grunt as the bolt hit him. I recovered my bolt and headed back to the rear door of the tavern as David and I had agreed to do.

I guess that I should have been embarrassed because David was there waiting on me. He said that he had killed both of his assigned sentries, so I wondered if that meant that he was more skillful than me. In any case, I was very proud of him.

We discussed in whispers what next to do. We did not know when the next group of sentries was due, and we did not want to be spotted when the relief finally showed up. We decided, to quote Falstaff from Shakespeare, that discretion was the better part of valor and returned to our family inside the tavern.

I explained to everybody what we had done, and I laid it on pretty thick about how well David had done his part of the mission. I wanted him to get all of the credit that he deserved. David and I could not contain our curiosity, so we went to a back window to watch the changing of the guard when it finally happened.

We spotted five Indians approaching from around the side of the building, and one of them acted very disgusted when he did not see any of the sentries back there standing in their assigned positions. He marched very indignantly over to where the sentry was supposed to be and tripped over his body lying on the ground. By the way, this was one of David’s kills.

The Indian jumped to his feet before any of the others could help him up, and he turned and kicked the corpse lying on the ground. It was obvious that he thought that the sentry was sleeping on the job. The kick produced no result, so the leader bent over to examine the man who was lying there. He quickly discovered that the man was dead, and he soon found the wound in his chest by feeling around. This caused considerable surprise, and he appeared to order his men to start watching immediately to see if there were any attackers around.

They left the corpse where it was with a sentry standing beside it. They moved on to the second sentry site and found the same situation. This began to upset everybody. A sentry was left with the body and the three men moved on to the next position. The same thing happened, and a sentry was left with the body.

The leader of the group scurried off around to the front of the tavern and showed up a few minutes later with four more men. He left a second man at each sentry post and went back to the front of the tavern. We did not see him again, but the sentries that we could see seemed to be very unhappy over the whole thing.

David and I discussed whether or not we should attack the new sentries, but decided against it. It was too much of a chance to take and simply not worth the risk. We had made our point, and we decided to settle for that. Besides, we were both tired and needed some sleep, so we called it a night.

Every man, including those in the militia, had at least one long gun with him, and Bob had a supply of guns and ammunition stored in his cellar. All of the wives knew how to reload the muzzle loaders, so that was their job. They were to keep a loaded rifle or musket ready for the husbands to use as soon as their current weapon had been fired.

I had enough shooters to be able to put two at every window, along with their wives to do the reloading. The extra men were assigned to work the front of the tavern because that was where most of the Indians were currently located.

I stationed two militiamen at each of the four sides of the tavern, and that left David and Ephraim to be the mobile reserve. I was the overall commander and planned to wander around as it seemed appropriate. David and Ephraim were to follow me around until they were assigned a specific defense position.

Apparently, my little bit of psychological warfare did some good because we saw four able-bodied warriors leave the next morning as soon as they found out about what had happened to the sentries the night before. All of the Indians had gathered at the front of the tavern, and I counted 19 common warriors and three leaders. The Redsticks had lost four men by desertion and four men to death, and the fighting had not even started in earnest. We outnumbered the Indians and were the ones with ranged weapons, so we were confident of victory.

This was too good a chance to miss, so I ordered everyone at the front of the tavern to try to kill the three leaders. All of the men with guns got ready and fired a volley upon my command. I did order the militiamen to hold off because I did not want to chance wasting a bolt, but we had plenty of powder and shot, so I was comfortable with using that.