Chapter 28: Whisky

On another chill winter day as I sat near our small campfire roasting birds one of the men had brought down with his shotgun, a bedraggled young woman stumbled in with blood dripping from her nose. "Help me, please," he mumbled as she fell into my arms. I brought her near the fire. She looked more than half-frozen and wore only a torn dress and apron. She was both barefoot and hatless. The rest of my group was out hunting, I was taking my turn as guard and lookout.

"Over yonder," she chattered, pointing west, toward the hills as she fell into my arms, "Hessians."

I pulled a black coat out of my bag and gave her my pair of spare, wool stockings and then found some small boots in the pile we had accumulated, and she soon led me back to her small farm house, a half-mile or so away. Four horses were tied out front.

"My ma and my sister are hiding in the shed, least they were," she whispered although we were fifty yards away and the house resounded to shouts and laughter. I followed her through a small wood lot, and we both saw two sets of footprints leading from the lean-to toward the woods. "I think they got away," she said, smiling for the first time. "I figured them brutes would be raping both a'them by now."

"You got some whisky in there?" I asked as the noise of a German song reached us.

She nodded. "Paw used to make some. White lightning. There was a couple'a kegs left."

"Where will your ma go?"

"Nearest neighbor's 'bout a mile down the trail." She pointed.

"You want to go join them?"

"Ain't I safe with you?" she looked puzzled.

I did not answer that but saw to my weapons. I had four shots; rifle, musket and two from a smooth-bore pistol which really was not worth using unless you could touch your target. I primed the rifle, leaving my powder horn and shot pouch where I could easily reach them, loaded the musket with buck and ball, and we waited.

"Who hit you?" I asked as she wiped her nose.

"Ran into a tree," she said with a grin.

Soon the four of them stumbled out, one with a small keg under his arm. Through the cabin's window we could see that they had pulled the fire out into the room, and the cabin was starting to fill with smoke. It poured from the top of the doorway.

"Damn," I said to myself, hoping we could just let them leave. I shot the man who was relieving himself at the corner of the house, put down my rifle, said firmly, "Stay here," and ran for the woods. As I had hoped, the black-uniformed Germans saw me and came on with a roar although the one with the keg did set that down carefully before joining the attack.

I flopped behind a fallen tree just about the time the nearest man fired and then knelt to reload. The other two came on, bayonets fixed, at the dead run, yelling something. I fired my musket at about ten yards and managed to hit them both. One fell kicking, but the other stumbled, grimaced and kept coming. He fired and missed high as I rolled away, and I met him with my bayonet and lifted him off his feet before he could lunge at me, my long blade poking out his back.

I heard a rifle fire and the other German, who had been taking dead aim at me from twenty yards, fell on his face, kicking his feet in the slush. Gun smoke rose in a cloud from near the shed.