Chapter 25: Captain Susan

"Somewhere in those hills," Lt. Foster said, jabbing at the crude map, "in one of these thin valleys most likely, there's a company of militia. George, you go find them and see if you can persuade them to come in and join up with us. Might make up for some of the recent desertions."

He turned to me with a sneer. "And, sirrah, if you are not too busy with the girls, would you please go find the irregulars in this area, just a small bunch we're told, and see if you can bring them in." He indicated an area the size of a shilling, perhaps ten square miles on his map.

"Got any names?" I asked.

"Not a one," he said. "Give you three days then we'll take you off the payroll."

"Payroll," George guffawed, "Some payroll that is!"

"Get goin'," said the lieutenant, heading back to his tent and the bawd keeping his bedroll warm for him.

Since I had not had a woman for some time, I was surprised at his references and wondered if George on some of the other was spreading tales about me. I got my grub, ammunition and horse together, looked again at the map, and set off. By night all I was in the middle of the region to which I had been sent and did not have even the smell of any military activity by either side.

I stopped at a small inn, saw to my horse, hid my musket, and dined on meatpies and sweet ale. The tavern wench was older than my grandmother, and I was ready to find a space in the stable for my bedroll when I overheard some interesting conversation. I bought a pitcher of beer and pulled my chair around to the table behind me.

"Drink, men?" I asked, showing my best smile. The pitcher came back to me empty and I hoisted it and asked for a refill. "Heard you talking about some action," I said, "Someone counting dead Germans?"

"Who the hell are you?" asked the farmer on my right.

"Man looking to get in the fight," I said. "Want to kill me some Redcoats before they're all gone."

"Where you been?" asked another.

"Wintered in Canada, I said, "come back with a fever. I'm better now, just a shiver now and again."

Two men nodded and one said, "With 'Gomery, was ye?"

"Aye," I said, "poor fellow, walked right into it, he did." The pitcher went around again and came back empty again. This went on for some time until one admitted that a certain 'Simon' was the leader of a small pack of locals that had been out harassing the Tories and the Redcoats and Hessians, 'counting coup' he called it.

"And where might I find this Simon?" I asked. Several men looked at each other, raised eyebrows and made faces.

"You're a stranger. Can y'stay here a day?" one lean man asked.

I nodded. "If it means getting into the fight."

"Might be," he said. "You unnerstan'. Not sure we kin trust ya."

I nodded and bought some more beer with the coins of dead Brits.

About about noon the next day while I was currying my mare, a tall man walked into the stable and asked, "Who's this lookin' fer a fight?"

I stood and stuck out my hand and said my name. He ignored my hand and looked me up and down a time or two.

"You soldiered some?" he asked.

I nodded.

"Where y'from?"

"Maryland," I said. "You recruiting?"

"Not really," he said. "County won't support but a small company. We keep the peace and burn out a Tory now and again."

"Like to get back in the fight," I said.

"Saddle up," he told me. "You got a weapon?"

I fetched my Tower musket, and he examined it. Then we rode out a mile or two, and then round and about, wasting time while he tried to confuse me, and up a winding trail to a small valley with a good stream at the foot of a granite hillside. By then the sun was starting to get down behind the taller trees. We dismounted and a youngster came and took our horses. I followed the lean man whose name had yet to be spoken into a small lean-to with a pine bough roof.

"Cap'n," the man said to the narrow-shouldered person seated at a shaky table.

She looked up and put down her quill, arching her heavy eyebrows. "Barley," she said. "This the man?"

He nodded.

"Good," she said. "You can go."

He gestured at his forehead and turned on his heel. I stood and admired the woman seated before me, mid-twenties I guessed, well-built, short-hair and good jaw, long lashes and blue-gray eyes; a very interesting face, not beautiful perhaps, but interesting.

"What's your name?" she asked.

I told her and then said, "And yours?"

"Simon," she said, "Susan Simon. My father was killed at White Plains, Second New York Volunteers. Two of my brothers have been captured; don't know if they're alive. I'm the next oldest so I inherited this job."

I nodded, hoping she was going to ask me to sit down.

"You a good shot?" she asked.

"With a rifle," I said. "Just ordinary with a musket and bad as any with a pistol."

She hefted a short, big barreled weapon from the floor. "I use this," she said, "usually with buck and ball."

"Looks like an old blunderbuss," I said.

"Terrible thing if you get close enough, and we get close; got no rifles."

I nodded.

"Sit," she said. I found a stool and pulled it up.

She put her fist to her mouth and squinted at me. "For some reason," she said, "I don't believe you, not entirely. What's your game?"

"I'm in the army," I said, made confident by her confidence and awed by her direct gaze, "Continental army. I was sent to find you, this company, and see if I can talk you into joining up with us."

She nodded and put her big weapon down. "You want George Washington to take in a female officer?"

"I doubt it," I said, trying to looked ashamed, shrugging.

"But you'd take my men?"

"We've been losing people," I said.

"So we heard."

"Think we'd do better together," I said.

"You think that?" she asked with a smile.

"No," I said, returning her smile. "I don't get paid to think."

She nodded. "They might be right, whoever's doing the thinking. But so far we've been lucky, and I believe we are doing some good, clearing our area, letting people keep their animals and their crops, get in their harvest."

"You've had a few run-ins?"

"Yep," she said, "mainly with confiscators, both German and English, horse thieves, small patrols. This is a sort of backwater. We've always had them outnumbered."

A man came bustling in, breathing hard. He ignored me. "Cap'n," he said, "Germans, lots a'them, over by the creek and heading' this way, mounted."

"How many?" the woman asked, standing and closing the ledger before her.

"Don' know," he said. "Didn' stick around to count, hoard a'them, bluecoats."

"All right," she said, "calm down and go ring the alarm bell."

"I help?" I said.

"Get your weapon," she said, "follow me and stay close. I still don't trust you."

Standing, Susan Simon was another story altogether. She was about five-foot-eight and went a good nine stone, a big, long-legged woman with muscular thighs and a full chest who filled out her man's puffy-sleeved shirt completely and stretched the material of her britches wonderfully. She wore high boots and a heavy belt, and she had not bothered to button her shirt much or maybe she could not.

She did not have to ask me twice to follow her, and the view from the back was as interesting and stimulating as that from the front. I tried to get my mind on fighting as I primed my piece, but my blood coursed into my groin nevertheless as I mentally stripped her.

The jaegers smashed past whatever sentries there were and into the small camp while the alarm bell was still tolling, and I followed the running woman to the base of the hill where a trench had been scraped out. We scrambled in, and I reared up and fired and then reloaded as the Germans dismounted.

"How many men you got?" I asked her after I rammed my ball home and noted her hardened nipples. Fights evidently excited her as they did me; I was already fully erect and the head of my root was crawling down toward my knee.

"Two dozen if they're all here," she said, looking about, her eyes narrowed. "Looks like maybe half that right now." The sporadic firing became more organized.

"I'd judge there's at least a score of Hessians out there, tough men from the look of them," I said, rising up to shoot again into a cloud of powder smoke and rearing animals.

"Duck!" she yelled and fired over my back at a blue-coated soldier who had jumped into our trench only a few yards off. Her blast almost tore him in two, splattering us both with blood and bits of flesh.

She began reloading, and I stood and saw a half-dozen men running toward me. "Hurry," I said to her, holding my fire while my heart pounded and my brain said 'flee.'

When they were five strides off, I nudged her with my foot and said, "Now!" as I fired and ducked to reload. She stood and blasted away. The screams were all around as a man jumped over the trench and quickly turned to aim at us, his foot slipping, a scowl on his mustached face. I threw a rock at him, yanked out my ram rod and shot him down. Then I looked for the rod.

"We'd better get out of here," I said loudly.

The woman nodded, pouring powder into her weapon. She stuck two fingers into her mouth and whistled shrilly, three times. Then she dumped a palmful of buckshot down her barrel, thumped the butt of her weapon on the earth and scrambled out of the trench. I was right behind her, clamping on my bayonet while I admired her lithe body and entertained ungentlemanly thoughts about her rounded hips at a very inopportune time, damning my lustful nature.

The Germans' fire thunked into tree trunks and clipped leaves and branches as we zig-zagged into the woods.

"Climb," the tall woman yelled at me as she slung her weapon over her shoulder and clambered up the rocky hill. I turned to look, saw no pursuit, got my musket on my back and followed her up the hillside on all fours. A cave mouth opened from a ledge about thirty yards up the slope, in an area bare of trees, and the woman crouched there, priming her weapon and panting, her shirt gaping open invitingly, her tight-fitting britches ripped at one knee.

I got my breath, sheathed my bayonet and loaded my musket. The whole fight probably had not lasted five minutes, and we heard a bit of desultory firing back where it had begun and then silence.

"They seldom take prisoners, I'd guess."

She nodded. "Except women."

"Yes, that's true," I said, feeling a shudder pass through me.

"Now what?" she said, sitting back on her thick haunches and buttoning her shirt.

"What do your people do, just scatter?" I asked.

She nodded and clamped her lips together. "We go to earth, vanish if we can."

"And you think half of your outfit missed that little action?"

"Something like that," she said.

"Looks like somebody betrayed you."

"Might be you," she said. "I know everybody else."

"There was talk about you in the tavern last night," I told her.

She nodded and took a deep breath. "Look," she said, pointing.

Several men in blue uniforms were coming out of the woods near the base of our hill along with one man in regular, farmers' clothes, a straw hat low on his forehead. They stopped and the one evidently in charge shaded his eyes and looked up in our general direction. I saw sunlight glint from glass lenses.

"Simon," he yelled, "Susan Simon, ve know you iss up dere. Dey are all kaput, dead, tot, all uf dem. Ve know your hiding places."

The woman looked at me, and we backed up a bit toward the shallow cave which was little more than a depression in the irregular hillside.

"Ve can vait, ja," he yelled. "You can starf up dere, verhungeren." I saw him turn to the men with him and point. I sheltered her with my body when the firing began, but they were able to hit nothing but stones and soon gave it up. The woman looked at me strangely when I let her up.

Several small stones rolled down the hill from above us, clattered past to our hiding place. The man below laughed. A large stone bounced down the hill and then several more, but the ridge above sheltered us if just barely. It also made it difficult to see what was going on.

I rammed my charge again, returned my rod to its place and checked my priming.

"Too long a shot," the young woman said.

"Maybe not," I told her, "Fifty, sixty yards or so; might get lucky."

I waited for the next bunch of stones and small boulders to tumble by, slid on my belly to the edge of our shelf and drew down on the men clumped together on the edge of the treeline and looking up the hill. I braced my weapon, aimed high and squeezed. Then I scrambled back just into time to miss a half dozen more good sized rocks bouncing past us.

"You hit him?" the woman asked.

"Not sure," I said, reloading and checking that I had a good, round ball before I pushed it in the muzzle.

"Simon," the same voice cried. "Susan Simon, don' be a torich, a fool."

"Go to hell," the woman yelled, and then she smiled at me.

A small avalanche of stones bounced down the hill followed by some scrambling sounds. I lay on my back, inched out so I could see up the rise and found myself looking at a man's boots and bottom as he was being lowered on a rope toward us. I inched back, smiled at the woman, and said, "Your shot, I think, madam. Step out quickly and you'll find him right above you, about ten yards, just to your right."

She cocked her weapon, stepped fearlessly to the edge of our hiding place, put the gun to her shoulder and fired. The boom echoed off the hills and a bloody body with a severed rope hit our shelf and then spun off to rumble down the hillside, one arm flopping loosely.

Another volley of fire from below chipped stones about us, but that was the end of the Germans' attempt to dislodge us for a while. We sat back in the shade; I put my arm about Captain Simon's shoulder, and she leaned her head back on mine as we sat against the rock wall, legs outstretched, hers nearly as long as mine. We watched the sun slide out of sight and dark cover the earth below us, trying to calm our breathing, discarding plan after plan in our minds, now breathing in rhythm.

"Now what?" I whispered to her.

"Um?" she said, her hand on my leg.

"Think they're still out there?"

"One or two, maybe," she said.

"Shall we go find out?"

"Kick one of those big rocks over the edge," she suggested.

"Moon will be up soon," I said as I pushed the biggest stone until it disappeared and we could hear it bounce and clatter down the hill. There seemed to be no response.

"Do it again," she said, and then, "No, wait. I hear something. Listen." She grabbed my arm.

Someone was climbing the hill, maybe more than one person. We could hear the labored breathing and the occasional smattering of small stones as well as the crunching of brush. Whoever it was, he or they were pretty close. I put my bayonet back on my musket and the woman cocked her weapon. We lay on our bellies, hoping to silhouette our attackers against the star-filled sky.