Chapter 63: Gold

The bunch we ambushed had some prisoners. We killed one before we figured out the people they were prodding along in front of them were civilians with their hands tied behind them. Lt. Foster yelled at us and in a running fight that went about two miles down this forest road, we managed to bring down the whole redcoat detail and salvage two of their captives. Two others died in the fight although I cannot say whose shots killed them.

While some men searched the dead and picked up the weapons, I untied the boy and the young woman, both of them terrified and moaning with fear. "Where are the others, my father and brother?" the boy demanded. I looked at the girl and shook my head. She led the boy away and talked to him quietly. We tossed the dead Brits into the woods and dug a pit for the others, two men and one full-grown women who, the girl explained, were the boy's father, aunt and uncle."

"He said something about a brother, didn't he?" I asked her.

"Yes, but they killed him yesterday. He's forgotten I suppose." She shook her head and then walked off to help tend our wounded.

"She explained," the boy said. "But we were loyal, all of us and my brother, he was ready to join a Tory legion and fight for his king."

"How long have you been prisoners?" I asked.

"Three days. They did awful things to Mother and Michelle, all of them"

I looked at the boy; he seemed perhaps ten, but I'm no judge of youth. Once all our men could travel and we had buried the dead, we jangled back to our camp with our additional horse and weapons.

"Should be some gold in one of them saddle bags," the girl said as she rode beside me, comfortably astride. "The Philips was rich. That's likely why we were raided."

I told Lt. Foster and then returned to ride where I could talk to the girl. She was a servant, but not bound, just a local girl whose home was in the hills.

"Jimmy said they, well he said they did awful things to you and his mother."

She nodded. "Poor woman," she said, "she just screamed and screamed when they did her, took turns on her. They made her husband watch and kept asking him where he hid his money. One a'them even did me on his horse, made me hold the animal's neck while he swived me. They was beasts, that bunch."

"So they raped you both," I said stupidly.

She nodded. "I was a virgin three days ago. Sergeant deflowered me and crowed when he did it. Waved his bloody cock in my face. They all had me, over and over that first night. I lost count."

We had emptied ten saddles so I knew the girl had been through a rough ordeal. She looked strong enough to weather it, but I did not have any words of comfort I thought appropriate. Once in camp, she made herself useful and soon was accepted as one of the small bunch of camp followers attached to Washington's army. The boy became a drummer and ammunition carrier, very proud of his uniform. I had almost forgotten about them both, when the girl found me sitting outside my tent, flaking some flints.

"Mornin'," she said as I squinted up at her. "Heard somethin' might interest you." She plopped down beside me, smelling very clean. It took me a minute to figure out who she was. "Jimmy tole me yesterday that he knows were the gold's at."

"Jimmy?" I said.

"The boy, the son, you remember." She held her hand about four feet off the ground.

"He did?" I said as the long, hot fight came back to me along with the sight of a man with his hands tied falling from his horse.

"Yep," she said. "Tole me his daddy hid it in the smokehouse, right under the firepit."

"Pretty smart," I said.

"Let's go get it," she said with a smile. "We'll be rich."

"Guess its the boy's, ain't it?" I said.

"He'll share. I'm sure he will," she said, looking like she was sorry she told me.

I got permission when I explained what the goal was. The army could use gold more than anybody just then, and Jimmy said he would give half to the government, if we would go fetch it. So off we went, Wendy and me, with three days rations and a pack horse. I had tried to get her and the boy to make a map but they disagreed so much about details that we decided to take the girl along as a guide. Lt. Foster gave me the usual lecture about behaving myself. I promised I would not touch the girl, and he laughed and turned his back.

We camped the first night near a small stream, maybe two-thirds of the way to our objective according to her guess. We built a small fire, cooked our grub and turned in early, on opposite sides of the fire. I could see her eyes glowing as I rolled into my blanket. I was almost asleep when something came crashing through the woods and sped on past our camp, a deer I suppose because right behind it came a good sized black bear, galloping on all fours and so intent on the chase that it ignored us completely.

I had jumped out of my covers and lifted my musket without thinking what I was doing, and when the woods quieted, the girl looked at me rather strangely. "Were you scared?" she said quietly, sitting up and holding her blanket to her shift-clad shoulders.

"Sure," I said. "Damn right."

"Your, ah, your, well, it was poking out something fierce. I couldn't help seeing it," she said, pointing.

I looked down and there it was, free of my shirt tail. "Sorry," I said, and pulled my shirt down and turned my back.

The girl stood, picked up her blanket and moved to my side of the fire while I put on some more dry wood. "I'd feel safer over here, I think," she said quietly.

"You sure?" I said, smiling at her. "After what you saw?"

She dropped her blanket and came into my arms. I held her for a while and then made up a bed for the both of us. It did not take us long to join our bodies. "Ah," was all she said but she said several times, louder and louder.

Her repeated Ah's became throaty Um's as our pace increased and our bodies lunged into each other. We rested after a while and listened to the forest and the slow burning fire's crackle. She kissed me and relaxed in my arms, her head on my chest.

"Rape's got nothing to do with this, does it?" I said.

She shook her head. "They were just using me, trying to hurt me. It made them feel powerful, I guess."

"How old are you?" I asked, petting her raised hip, stealing tiny kisses.

"Seventeen," she said. "Just last month."

"You'll find a man, a man to marry, when this is over, maybe before."

She sighed. "Should I tell him, 'bout being raped?"

"Not less'n he asked," I said, posing as an expert when my pool of ignorance was bottomless. I got back to what I did know and pretty soon we were tiring each other so we could sleep and not worry about anything.

In the faint light of morning, I looked at the girl sleeping beside me. "Seventeen, " I thought. "She did not need me prodding her insides." It took both pissing and pounding to get it down.

We found the house, rested and ate, then went to work in the smokehouse, digging where the fire had long burned. If there had been gold there, someone had beaten us to it and the dirt floor showed no signs of being disturbed so I figured maybe Jimmy had remembered wrong or was trying to just fool the girl. Maybe he dreamed it, I thought. We checked the corn crib, the carriage house, chicken coop, the outhouse and then the spring house. No signs of gold in any of them or of anything being buried.

We sat on the back steps of the burned home, now nothing but a few charred timbers and a chimney. "Any place else to look?" I asked as she sat holding my arm and purring.

"Over in the weeds there was some old places." She pointed, and we went and kicked stones and bricks, dug some and poked around in the foundations of old outbuildings. Nothing.

We were drawing a bucket of water from the well when the girl pointed and said, "Look!"

A half-dozen Redcoats were coming up the lane toward the burned homestead. I hustled our three horses into the stable and unlimbered my rifle, carbine and pistol. There was really no place to hide.