Chapter 24: Amanda and Priscilla

We had thought this small village was completely abandoned, but the house I ran into was still occupied. Howe's forces were making their usual hesitant advance and our job as pickets was to slow them down some more and warn of their approach. On this flank we fell back to what was left of a town, a crossroads. There had obviously been some fighting here earlier judging from the burned building and bullet gouges.

Anyhow, I slammed through the door, dashed to a window and broke the glass to poke out my musket.

"You know what glass costs?" said an angry voice behind me.

I whirled, my heart frozen, and there stood two women. At first I thought they must be sisters since they were about the same size and shape, but they turned out to be mother and daughter. They had just returned to salvage some things from their home, when the fighting crept their way again.

"Sorry," I said. "Redcoats coming." I went back to the window, listening for the drums or the bang of muskets. It was very quiet. What I did not know was that Lt. Foster decided to fall on back to the main line of Washington's army and that I somehow did not get the word. It was neither the first nor the last time that happened in this long, long war. Pretty soon it was obvious that the fighting, such as it was, had moved on north and that I was now well behind enemy lines along with the two women.

We dared not make a fire so ate some corn bread and a piece of sausage I had been carrying. I made a couple of cautious forays out to investigate and both times found riders going back and forth and ranks of men moving or sitting and waiting. Howe's army did a lot of that. Waiting I mean.

The older woman's name was Amanda and her daughter was Priscilla. They both were very handsome females and the daughter had the fresh bloom of her youth as well, all pink and white. I guessed she might have been sixteen, seventeen. Few things are more stimulating, and I was surely stimulated by their lithe bodies, flowing hair and happy dispositions.

We were talking quietly and getting acquainted when we heard the deep voices of men nearby. The mother put her finger to her lips, and I clamped my bayonet onto my musket and stood by the door, flattened against the wall. The minutes passed very slowly and soon all was quiet again.

We were about to get back to our polite chatter when the door banged open and a big Redcoat stumbled in, obviously much the worse for liquor. He smelled of rum as he stepped past me, saw the huddled women at the far wall and laughed. He put down his weapon and undid the first button of his foreflap before I turned my musket and hit him in the side of the head with the butt of my weapon. He tumbled to the pine floor, legs kicking. I heard one of the women gagging as cut his knapsack off and then quickly searched his pockets.

"He was just a straggler, a looter," I told the women. "Probably alone, but there might be more of them out there. I'll check." I eased out the door, staying low and crept toward the nearest fence. The sun was setting and all I heard was the chatter of birds and the lowing of an unhappy cow somewhere in the distance. I went back and dragged the unconscious man out of the cabin and, cut his throat hid the body behind a thick hedge alongside a untended field, kicking debris over the corpse.

The man's knapsack produced some hard bread, a piece of crusted cheese and a slab of very dry ham so we dined reasonably well. I added his musket and ammunition to my own and as darkness fell we were better armed but faced the dilemma of sleeping spaces. The cabin's beds had been stripped to their wooden frames and we had only my rolled up blanket and the dead man's thin bedroll. The boom of cannon to the north suggested that the armies were not completely finished for the day.

"We could try the Styers' house," the woman suggested and her daughter nodded agreement. "It's the big place you must have passed getting here."

"The bigger the place the more likely soldiers will break into it, especially them like the feller that came in here," I told them. "They may have already taken it over."

"I'm scared," the girl said, her hand between her plump breasts. Her mother had splashed water on her vomit and swept it out the door but the smell lingered. I was outvoted and when clouds moved in to cover the moon, we made a careful passage along fences and woodlots to the abandoned house in a copse of big trees.

It had been a very fine home at one time, but now most of the furniture was broken, a painting hung, tattered and crooked on a wall, shards of crockery lay here and there and the doors no longer bolted closed. But there were bag mattresses on the beds. The two women took one with the dead soldier's blanket while I fell into another and rolled up in my own.

It was pink pre-dawn when someone shook my shoulder. "You awake?" Amanda asked. "There's noises outside."

I lay still and listened, aware of my usual morning arousal. I heard the clink of horse gear and the clank of what was probably some soldier's dangling pans along with a few low-voiced commands. I went to the nearest window and looked down on a column of Redcoats moving along the dusty road. A few had stopped to draw water at the well, but none seemed interested in the dark house where the front door hung from a single hinge. I returned to my bed, hoping to get some more sleep. Amanda lay under my blanket, smiling up at me.

"What are you doing?" I whispered, trying to ignore the large, hard thing trembling between my legs.

"Well," she sighed, "I saw something that interested me so I had to find out about it." She sat up, revealing her bare, jutting breasts and reached for me. "Come," she said, and she turned back my blanket and invited me to lie beside her.

I pulled off my shirt to match her nakedness, lay down and took her in my arms. We were soon fully joined, both trying to do it as quietly as we could and enjoying the release it gave us from the death-filled real world just outside our walls. She wrapped her arms and legs around me and ground into me until she sighed deeply, quivered and shook, relaxing and spent.

"Oh my," she whispered as we lay side by side, drawing deep and surging gasps, "that was wonderful. You take my breath, you do."

I petted her soft, downy body and nuzzled her throat, unable to speak, trembling with eagerness to plow her again.

"I've got to get back to my own bed," she said. "She'll wake soon and miss me." The woman found her shift and tip-toed away, and I lay wanting more and trying to sleep with a pole tenting up my blanket.

We breakfasted on what little was left in my larder and decided to get out of the area and away from the sporadic fighting that we could hear all around us from time to time.

"We need a horse or two," I told them as we heard a cavalry company clatter past. They decided they could not wait for one to be delivered to them, and we headed for the woods and then followed a creek downstream. By midday we were hungry and tired as well as unsure of our location. The woman's clothes were torn in several places, and they both had tucked up their skirts to make better time.

As we rounded a bend in the creek, I saw a horse drinking in the stream and waved the women behind me to stop and get down. I put down my musket and cautiously neared the animal. Its rider appeared from behind a tree, buttoning his britches. We saw each other at about the same time. He dashed to his mount and drew a sword at just about the time I yelled, "Don't." He turned toward me with a wild swing, and I ducked under his blade and stabbed him in the stomach and lifted, slicing him open with my big blade. He fell to his knees and then to his face, blubbering as his guts rolled out into his hands. I dragged his body back in the woods, took his fat purse and quickly got the women up on his saddle.

We did a hurried mile or two downstream with me trotting alongside the docile animal before we stopped. I rummaged through the saddle bags, found a map and some other papers on one side and a loaf of bread and some sausage on the other. We ate and tried to figure out where we were and how to get to the uncle's home where the women had taken refuge.

With the help of a farmer, who got us going in the right direction, we did arrive at the uncle's by nightfall and were welcomed with relief and praise as well as some fine corn liquor. I made my bed in the loft above the stable and fell asleep almost immediately. The brief fight flitted through my mind, but fatigue won the day and I sank into the darkness.

The girl crept in beside me an hour or two later. It was still and dark when her soft hand on my face awoke me. "Amanda?" I said hopefully.

"No," she purred, "Priscilla. I heard you two enjoying yourselves this morning when you thought I was sound asleep. Now it's my turn. Mother's snoring and Uncle Jep took in enough corn to last him the night so..."

"I'm tired, girl. We had a hard day."

She wriggled closer. "This doesn't feel so tired," she said. She released me, turned to her stomach and drew up her knees, lifting her rump in invitation. It would not have been polite to refuse. She shook her head, sucked in her breath and squealed with delight as our bodies heaved in unison. Up and back, up and back we lunged until she sighed and shook and after a while, when we were both satisfied, we fell apart, panting. Then she lay beside me, her leg over mine, her hand on my chest, her lips at my ear. "What happened?" she sighed. "I've never done that."