Chapter 40: Fire in a Barn

Again this is out of order, but all these tales take place in the months between the evacuation of New York and the remarkable triumph at Trenton. My nots, unfortunately, are a jumble, mostly undated.

After White Plains, I decided to quit the army and go home. I did not get far, and after a slight detour, the army caught up with me. I was fated to be a soldier I suppose. The detour came because of all those stories of brave knights rescuing lovely damsels in distress. I wish I had never read even one of those foolish things.

The girl's scream penetrated the woods like a stiletto. I got off my "borrowed" horse and went to investigate. What I found was a squad of Germans and a young woman. Two bodies, a white-haired man and a stout woman, farmers from the look of them, lay twisted on the ground, and the Hessians, or whatever company they were from, were in the process of tearing off the girl's clothes as they passed her from man to man in a rough circle. The cabin behind them was being ignored despite the flames that had begun showing at its door and window.

The girl screamed again and tried to break away. One of the blue-coated men tripped her and several of them laughed as she fell, exposing her bare backside. Her bodice was gone and her shift had been torn from one shoulder. Blood trickled from her nose and mouth, and she had bright scratches on her arm and breast.

There were six of them, but their muskets were neatly stacked on the far side of the barnyard. One staggered from the circle and lifted a jug to his mouth while three men pulled the girl back toward a tree by her long hair and thin arms, and another managed to rip away most of her shift. Her young breasts were high and pink-tipped, her pubic hair a tidy triangle.

My antique pistol was loaded so I primed my musket after tamping down its load of buck and ball and set my broad bayonet in place. I hurried around to get between the men and their weapons while they tied the struggling girl's arms behind the small tree. She screamed again for help, and one of the men cuffed her, slapping her face back and forth. Another started fumbling with his britches while she kicked at him.

The man holding the jug and wiping his mouth was the only one that saw me coming before I speared the first German in the back, pulled out my bayonet and lunged at the second. I ripped his belly open and then fired toward the shouting man who had dropped the jug and produced a pistol. He took the musket ball in the chest and the buckshot brought down a soldier beside him who was trying to run for the barn. I bent and dumped a man who had jumped on my back with a spike bayonet in his hand, pulled out my pistol and blew a hole in him with the muzzle touching his belly. His whole body jumped. At that range the pistol was useful.

The shot from behind surprised me and the ball tore through my flapping shirt, yanking me aside. I yelled and ran at the man kneeling among the fallen muskets and trying to quickly reload. He dropped his weapon and raised his hands just as I reached him and drove my bayonet through the base of his neck and out his back. He fell and rolled over twice, spraying blood and kicking his feet.

I stopped, breathing hard while I wiped off and sheathed my bayonet and put my hands to reloading my musket. I looked about and counted. The man I had first poked lay where I had kicked him off my blade. I turned him over with my foot and saw that he was dead, and the one I had belly shot with the old pistol soon would be. I picked up the fallen jug by the sergeant's spread-eagled body and drank deeply; raw corn whisky burnt down toward my belly. The sergeant's eyes were open, but he was not seeing anything.

A whine led me to the soldier who had taken a couple of heavy buckshot in his thigh and side. He was bleeding and moaning, trying to crawl toward the muskets and failing. I shot him in the back of the head. I reloaded and then head shot the big soldier with the bayonet wound who had blood pulsing from between his hands. Pieces of his skull scattered across the grass, and I heard the girl sob. I had almost forgotten her. Both of those wounded men would have died by sundown I told myself but actually I did not care. We had stopped taking Germans prisoner at least a month before.

I checked the other two bodies, and then cut the nearly naked young woman loose. She staggered to the well and drew up a bucket of water. I drank some more corn and then joined her, after stripping the sergeant's jacket from his body. It seemed the least bloody. It hung from her shoulders and covered her hands. She sat down, her back to the well and cried, deep and racking sobs.

I dragged the bodies one by one to the burning cabin, stripped them of anything useful and threw them into the roaring fire. The smell was awful. The six men only had five shillings and some script between them plus a bit of tobacco. I filled my ammunition box and pouch and took the sergeant's pistol and bullet mold since it was better than the one I had.

By the time I had finished by tossing their hats and muskets into the sizzling flames, the girl had stopped crying and the roof had collapsed in a shower of sparks. The wind was blowing most of the smoke and smell away so I came and sat beside her at the well after swallowing another gulp of whisky. Her bare legs were distracting.

"Those your folks?" I asked, waving at the bodies of the man and woman in the barnyard.

She shook her head. "I'm 'dentured. 'e 'eld m' paper."

I figured that out. "No kin?" I asked to be sure.

She shook her head, flopping dark blonde hair into her face. She wiped her nose and spat some blood to the side and then drank some more water. She had not bothered to button up the sergeant's coat.

"You a soldier?" she asked quietly, eyes down on her knees, hands shaking at her belly.

I nodded even though I was unsure. My intention was to stop soldiering.

"Y'acted plumb crazy out yonder," she said, looking at me for the first time that I knew about.

"Did I?"

She nodded, wide-eyed. "Never saw nothin' like it. Y'was a stabbing and yelling and a shootin' and runnin' around like you was crazy."

"I was scared," I told her, knowing that was true and feeling my stomach still quivering.

"Why'd you shoot those two?" She waved toward the barn.

"Germans," I said as though that were enough of an answer.

"Oh," she said, wrinkling her brow and shivering in the too big coat.

"Guess we ought to bury them," I said, nodding at the dead pair sprawled near us.

"There's shovels and picks in the barn. I can dig."

We picked out a place on the edge of the plowed field and dug and scraped out a ditch that was about shoulder deep. I laid the bodies in the hole as gently as I could, covered their faces and filled in the grave. By then I was awful hungry.

We ate what we found in the Hessians' knapsacks and drank water and then shared the jug of corn whisky. The sun was sinking fast and it was getting chilly. This was November if I remember right, might have been September.

The burning cabin was down to embers and ashes when we headed for the barn trying not to look at some of the things in the ruined cabin and ignoring the stink of charred flesh. She milked the cow who was happy to see her and dumped the milk in the pigs' trough while I made us a bed in the loft trying not to think about what I would have to do in the morning with what was left of the six men whose bodies I had burned.

It was pitch dark when she mounted the ladder and rolled in beside me, putting her bare feet on my legs.

"Y'want t'do it?" she said quietly, a matter-of-fact tone.

"Do what?" I said, my hand on her shoulder, feeling her shake beneath the heavy coat.

"Y'know, roger," she said. "Mr. Farns, ' e did me 'bout once a week. Jus' in 'n out, y'know. Never come in me."

"Did his missus know?" I asked inching closer so our bodies fit together for warmth. I stroked her back, patted her rump.