Chapter 20: Rafe

My luck held. I did not have to spend much time freezing in Morristown that long winter, and I already had a bout with smallpox which left a few holes in my hide but little more. Instead, Lieutenant Foster got made a captain, and our bunch became a ranger company, at least for a while. Mostly we were back at harassing the Redcoats and Germans as much as we could, shooting unwary officers, playing fox and hounds and making their lives miserable as possible on a regular basis. I even started enjoying the war again, much as I had back during the siege of Boston when we were picking off Gage's officers and bedding those nice Puritan women.

Sir William Howe, who had once promised to make New Jersey the first of the rebellious colonies to be reinstated to the empire, now had withdrawn to the far side of the meandering Raritan. His troops camped at Elizabeth, Hackensack, New Brunswick and Perth Amboy, leaving behind a landscape of looted home, burned farms and violated women. Neither the British nor their allies seemed to care any more whether the Americans were Tory or Patriot, they treated us all the same. They took what was moveable, despoiled or destroyed what was not, and ravished every woman they got their hands on, young and old alike.

When we were in Morristown, rearming or resting up, we lived in crude dugouts like the rest of the sickly and shrinking army. I never counted, but I doubt that dear old General Washington could have put 2,500 men into a battle line by February, and most of them would have been hospital cases. Thankfully, we were not there very often, and I even had a chance to see my friends down in Trenton a time or two before spring finally arrived and Washington moved his tent ot the edge of the mountains.

Early in the winter, just south of Morristown, I ran into some trouble that I was not looking for. (As you may well have noted, much of the trouble I got into in those days was of my own making.) The tavern where I stopped looked ordinary enough to me, but I was greeted with stares and mumbling in the smoky room when I ordered a tin of beer and a meat pasty. "What's the problem?" I asked the superannuated inn-keeper.

"Yer 'at," he said, pointing at the non-descript thing I had pulled down over my ears. "Where's yer cockade, then?"

When I continued to look stupid, he jerked his thumb toward the room, and I finally did notice that many of the men were wearing the red cockade that marked supporters of the King. It had become common for loyal families to put a piece of scarlet cloth on their front doors when the British or Hessians occupied their town. I had seen that first in Trenton, but I was not sure what good it did.

I shrugged it off since everyone knew opinion was divided, and my black stock should have marked me as a Continental, if a poorly dressed one, and my size tended to delay insults.

A screech drew my attention to the middle of the room where a big, bushy-haired man had grabbed a hurrying barmaid and caused her to splash four mugs of beer over herself. There was a great deal of her. She struggled and moaned as the bully pulled her down to his lap and tore open her loosely-laced dress.

"Leggo, y'bastid," she yelled, squirming in his grip as he cupped her bulging breast and pinched her bulbous nipple.

"Where Fiona?" the man demanded, trying to kiss the struggling woman's face.

"Up above, horsin' yer boy," the woman said loudly, "Lemme go!" She cuffed him and regained her feet.

I started toward them, but the man behind the bar grabbed my arm. "I wouldn't," he said, as the woman pulled free and returned to refill her beer order, the gapping front of her worn dress and tattered shift dripping with foam.

I watched her work, mouth compressed, and found that in repose, she had a fine face and a sturdy body, an altogether good looking young woman, flushed now from her struggle. She caught me looking at her and smiled briefly.

"He's the local Tory leader, that one," said the inn-keeper, "as well as the country sheriff and road supervisor, a powerful man hereabouts."

"So he gets to manhandle your girls?"

"Aye, if he wants, an' he often do," the man said, looking a bit sad about it. "Has his way, mostly."

As the hurrying waitress passed the large, central table again, the same man reached out and smacked her buttocks, twisted her around and brought her back to his lap, struggling as before. "How 'bout we go up an' do some dancin'?" he said with a broad leer.

"Not 'fore Fi gets down. There's jus' the two a'us today," the girl said, wriggling and trying to pull away without dropping her empties.

I could not resist despite what I'm sure was good advice. Temptation overcame caution, a common failing of mine.

"Let go a'her, y'jackass," I said, stalking toward the table crowded with eight or nine men, all of whom looked up in surprise.

The red-faced man stood, dumping the woman toward the dirty floor. She scrambled away, and I stepped up to face him, our noses two inches apart.

"Who the hell're you to tell me wha' t'do, y'scum?" he demanded, spraying spittle in my face. He probably outweighed me a stone or two but I had a couple of inches on him.

I smiled, wiped my face and said, "Nobody important, just a man with some manners."

"He's a bleedin' rebel," someone at the table said behind me. "Take him, Rafe."

"Don't want no trouble," I told the man quietly. His small eyes were bloodshot and rheumy.

"Bet y'don't," he said, pulling a long pistol from the back of his belt. We were so close together he could not really point the thing at me, and it was easy to grab his arm and twist his wrist until he dropped the gun to the table.

"Let's go outside, Rafe," I suggested, putting on my best smile and squeezing his wrist before I let him go.

"Shit-kicker," he sprayed in my direction as I turned away. I heard him pick up the weapon, pivoted back and hit him in the face, bringing a spray of blood from his mouth and nose. I grabbed the top of the pistol, holding the flint back and smashed his gun hand down to the table top, likely breaking a knuckle or two. Someone jumped on my back, and I shrugged him off and backed up a step, yanking my blade bayonet from my belt.

"One at a time," I said. "Outside."

I turned my back again and walked toward the door, listening attentively and watching the tavern girl's face for clues of what was going on behind me. Despite doing dumb and show-off things like that, I managed to survive almost intact.

Outside, in a cold drizzle, I waited near the road. Rafe and three of his comrades soon appeared, the big man wiping blood from his face and looking very unhappy. He was probably forty or so, a wide man, well-muscled and obviously angry. He wore knee-high boots and a leather waistcoat.

"I'm goin' to kill you, y'bloody coward," he said, looking at me from the tops of his eyes. "Ain't you got a gun?"

"Nope," I lied, "what's wrong with fists?"

"Give the man a pistol," Rafe said, and the skinny fellow beside him produced one and handled it toward me. I shook my head and did not take it. He tossed it, and I let it fall in the mud.

"I don't want to duel anybody," I said, and Rafe nodded and smiled. The three men with him rushed at me. I decided not to pull my blade, hit the first one in the face, kicked the second in the cods and then took on the third, the biggest of the group, while the others got sorted out from a pile in the muddy entranceway. The dark-haired man was puffing and swinging wildly at me, and I hit him low in the belly with a good left, at the forehead with a right that shocked my elbow and then clubbed the back of his neck with both fists. He sank, blubbering, to his knees. The man I'd smacked in the face, scrambled up and I knocked him down again while the fellow I had kicked was still writhing and holding his belly, crying in pain.

"How about you, Rafe?" I asked, rubbing my knuckles. By then a few more people had come out of the ordinary and spread out to watch the fun.

"Get up," he said to his followers. "We'll be back," he yelled as they helped each other to their horses. and rode off, glaring back at me. I guess he did not like the idea of there being a lot of witnesses; some men are like that.

As I went back in the tavern to finish my meal a small girl, Fiona I assumed, was coming down the stairs arm in arm with a lanky young man who appeared very pleased with himself.

"Where's Rafe?" the boy asked the room.

"Ask the big man yonder," someone said, pointing at me with a spoon.

The boy, perhaps all of eighteen, stalked across the room and stood before me, feet planted and legs wide spread, fists on hips. "Where's my father?" he demanded.

"Left," I said. "Didn't care for the company here."

The boy put his hand on the butt of the pistol stuck in the front of his tan britches, and I said, "Don't"

He pulled the gun out anyhow, and I yanked out my wide blade, grabbed his gun hand, bent his wrist sideways and pricked his chin, holding the point of the huge blade at his Adam's apple.

"I did say don't," I told him, twisting the pistol out of his hand and sliding it across the bar. "Now get along." I kicked him in the butt and he left, mumbling.