Chapter 56: Laura Again

At first I thought that the girl might have been twelve or so, but when she shed her layers of rags and walked out into the creek, I discovered she was a full-grown woman complete with some hair between her legs, just a small and young one with a plain, honest face. I enjoyed watching her wash herself, dunking her head beneath the icy water several times and rubbing sand from the creek bottom on her arms and legs. Then she waded ashore and stood over me, dripping water on my leg from the small, matted brush between her legs, nothing bashful about her.

"Bath wouldn't hurt you none," she said, shaking like a dog. Her hair threw off droplets, but I noticed that her small, firm breasts barely jiggled.

"Took one last year," I said, grabbing her ankle and pulling her down beside me.

"You shave las' year, too?" she asked, squirming out of my grasp and crawling off to her clothes.

"Think so," I said, running my hand over the bristles on my chin and watching her sort out a ratty shift and pull it over her head.

"Where were you headed?" I asked.

"Nowhere, away," she said, looking over my shoulder at the bodies of the two Redcoats who had been trying to rape her when I happened by. "You done me out'a two shillings" she had claimed in what I assumed was mock anger. The soldiers both were sprawling curiously in death and harbored nothing worth having on them any longer. I had a few more coins in my purse and another full cartridge box in my saddlebags plus some tobacco and a canteen half full of rum. "They promised to pay me," she claimed again with her back to me.

"You a runaway servant, that what?"

She shook her head. "Naw, jus' had to leave."

I waited while she sorted through the rags and found an enormous sweater to wear as a bodice. It almost fell off her shoulders and kept one or the other bare most of the time. I wondered if she understood how inviting that looked.

"Folks died some time back, mine did, five years or so, fever. Ma's sister took us in. When these here popped out," she cupped her small, upright breasts, "her boys started getting frisky, climbing in my bed, poking at me. So."

"So, where are you going?"

"Some town, find a job." She raked through her hair with her stubby fingers. "Lots a'towns 'round here. They was goin' to pay me, honest."

"Know a tavern in New Brunswick where..."

She held up her hand.

"Don't hold with no drinking," she said. "you should a'seen my uncle."

"Might work in the kitchen," I said. "Can you cook?"

"Some, nothing fancy."

"Come along," I said, standing, "we'll see what we can do. I got some friends around here."

She rode behind me on the horse's back, and I doubt that the big mare really noticed the girl's six or seven stone. We visited two road-side places without any luck and got to the third just about sunset. It looked familiar and as soon as we entered, I knew where I was. It was Laura's place, the luscious woman whose freedom I had won in a crooked card game. I still remembered the short time we spent in the blacksmith's loft and the loud and violent ending of that evening.

The big woman was behind the bar, looking harried, her hair a mess, when I came in with the girl. "Two beers," I said and she drew them and plunked them down without looking up. I grabbed her wrist. She pulled her hand away, reached under the counter, produced a nasty-looking little knife and then looked at me, fire in her dark eyes.

"Damn," she said, grabbing me by the ears and kissing me soundly, heaving her full breasts right up on the counter, just about flying free of her dress. I made a grab for her and she jumped back, laughing as my fingers hooked her stay strings.

We retreated to a table in the back, and Laura had one of her rather-slatternly girls bring us some food. "Want you to meet," I began, suddenly realizing I did not know the diminutive girl's name.

"Josey," the girl said, bobbing her head. "He found me downstream a ways."

"Found you?" Laura asked, taking my hand from her shoulder.

"Well, I was kind of busy with these here redcoats when he come along and made big holes in both a'them. You should'a seen it."

"I've seen him fight," the woman said, patting my thigh in a familiar way. "Moves fast for a big man, don't he?"

Josey nodded, shoveling in food as if she had not eaten that week.

"Need some kitchen help?" I asked Laura. "This girl's an orphan, looking for work.

"Can always use a worker," Laura said. "You mind bedding down with girls that have company now and then?" she asked the girl who raised an eyebrow and chewed faster, gulping cider between spoonfuls.

"Nope," she said when she could.

"Fine," Laura said, "You're hired, shilling a day, meals and part of a bed."

The small girl nodded, looking at me. "I gotta swive men in this job?"

"Not less'n you want to. The girls you'll room with, they do a man now and again, got some favorites, but we got us a full-time whore, a good one."

"I was thinking on that job," Josey said, sticking out her chin and glancing at me.

"She claims the soldiers I killed were her customers, not rapists," I said with a smile. I turned Josey's head to show Laura the bruise on the girl's cheek.

"They was goin' to poke me," the girl said. "I didn' 'zactly let 'em neither. But they did say they'd give me some money if'n I let 'em."

"Round here," Laura said, "most men understand both no and yes."

"I ain't no virgin," the girl said without looking up from her stew.

"Few is," Laura said, smiling again at me. "These days."

Laura led the girl off to the kitchen and put her to work at the buckets, washing trenchers and plates. Then she came back and sat with me. We talked about the business some, and she finally got around to saying that she had found a man.

"Ain't as big as you," she said, "but he treats me fine. He's a farmer, a tenant and does some mill work on the side, saw mill."

"How come he's not fighting, one side or the other?"

"Only got one arm," Laura said. "Claims a bear caught him at the honey when he was a boy. I've seen his stump and it's right old, hard and cured."

"Long as he makes you happy," I said.

She smiled and nodded.

"You had trouble with the Tories around here?"

She shook her head. "British mostly leave us alone, understand where they're not welcome, but them Germans, Hess'ins or whatever, they's spiteful."

"Good word for them," I said, getting ready to leave, my errand completed and my chances of getting laid minimal. I walked to the kitchen ell, yelled a goodbye to Josey who was up to her elbows in gray water and went back to my mare who had been fed and groomed. I gave the stable boy a coin and rode out, feeling right proud of myself. As usual, virtue is seldom rewarded.

I was not more than a mile down the road, heading back for the hills, when I ran into a roadblock. A skinny cedar had been dropped across the road and black uniformed men with lanterns stood on both sides of the ditches although the sun was still an hour above the horizon.

Black uniforms told me they were Germans although I could not remember the regiment name right then. I stopped and dismounted when I was ordered to do so after checking behind me to see a man with a musket waiting, smiling. The sergeant in charge pulled my bayonet, looked at it, then at me and demanded it and my belt while one of his men searched my saddle bags. Since I had both a rifle and a musket, a Tower musket, I suspected I was in some trouble, especially with all the Royal-issue cartridges I had recently acquired.

"Name?" asked the sergeant, and I told him.

"Vere are you going?"

"Trenton," I said.

"You iss a Continental, ja, soldat?"

"No, I was, Marylander, discharged," I said.

"Vas iss?"

"Out, no soldier no more," I said. "Hurt, wounded." I had enough scars and knew I could limp if I needed to.

"No," he said. "Nein." He raised his voice, "Claus!"

A big man with a dark mustache ran up, listened to the sergeant's spiel and led me off with my arm bent. He tied my hands behind me and sat me down by the small fire and then tied my feet together. I watched them stop several more travelers, wondering what or who they were looking for and then, when the sun set and darkness poured up out of the woods, they pushed the tree off the road, untied my feet, got me on my mare and led off back the way I had come, back toward Laura's crossroads.

There were six of them, mostly good-sized men, well-fed, warmly dressed, good boots. I could smell them in the dark as they walked their horses carefully along the worn road. When they came to the tavern, they stopped and the sergeant sent a man inside. He returned and reported. The only word I caught was "frau," but that seemed to be what the sergeant was interested in. They rode into the stable yard, dismounted, tied me to a stall post, and trooped into the inn leaving their animals at the rail.

The commotion that followed did not last long, and there was only one shot. But by then the customers were leaving, with or without their horses, and the Germans had the inn to themselves along with Laura, Josey, the two tavern girls and Miss Jones, the small town's one and only whore; six men and five women, thought, straining to get loose, not bad odds.

I was working hard on the knots with little success, when the back door flew open and a small figure I assumed was Josey came running out followed by a big man in his shirtsleeves. He was cursing as she ran into the stable and hid in the stall next to me. I could hear her panting, gulping for breath as the soldier tramped around looking for her and grumbling.

It did not take him long to find her, and I heard him slap her, rip her clothes and then take her, grunting with effort while she whimpered. When he finished, in just a couple of minutes, he walked past my stall, hoisting his britches, briefly outlined against the stars. I could see his teeth in the dim light. He looked like the fellow with the mustache who had tied me up.