Chapter 31: Surprised

Shortly after that adventure, I had one of my most embarrassing days of the much-too-long war. I was standing guard one early-morning moment and the next thing I knew, Jim was screaming. I awoke with my face in a cold mud puddle, wondering what had happened until I felt the pain begin to swell across the back of my skull. Obviously, I slowly figured out, someone had clubbed me while I was supposed to be guarding our camp and everyone else but Simon and I were asleep. I lifted my head and saw a hand just as Jim yelped again, twice in fact, like somebody was burning him.

The hand was Simon's. He was dead, lying face up in the mud with his chest ripped open I could see some of his ribs. I got to my knees, shook my head and then saw my friend Jim tied to a tree near a campfire. Dawn was coming on pretty fast, and the Redcoats were taking turns deviling Jim with their bayonets and brands from the fire. I squinted and tried to ignore my throbbing head. It looked like one of Jim's ears was about gone and his shoulder was bleeding.

Captain Foster, George, Matthew and two new recruits lay, tied hand and foot, near the fire and five or six Tory soldiers stood or squatted nearby, cooking breakfast and having fun. I slid back out of the view of all of them and vomited in the bushes. Then I felt some better and tried to decide what to do. I was tempted to go for help, but had no idea which way to go. I walked through the woods and found where they had picketed their horses. I counted eight, not very good odds.

I untied the horses and then poked and prodded them toward the fire I could see through the trees. At first they moved slowly and unsurely, but when we got to the tree line, I yelled and beat at the nearest pair with a stick and they ran, snorting and pawing. I followed, looking for a weapon.

The pack of horses galloped right through the camp, tearing up our tents, scattering the men and carefully avoiding the fire. I saw two of the tied-down prisoners tumbled over in the melee and hoped they were not hurt. Jim was hanging his head, still tied to the tree, but looking as if he had been killed. I grabbed the first Tory I came to and bashed him face first into a tree. He dropped like a sack of flour, but he had no weapon so I ran on, sure I could get my hands on a musket.

I stepped on one near a torn-apart tent, grabbed up a handful of cartridges scattered on the ground and loaded the weapon kneeling in the shadows while the redcoated soldiers got reorganized. The officer sent three men after the horses and another back toward where they had been picketed. He almost walked into me. I pulled him behind a tree and cut his throat with Madga's dainty knife. Now I had two muskets, and I made sure the second one was also loaded.

When I stepped out of the woods, my friends were almost at my feet, and the three enemy soldiers were barely twenty feet away, an easy shot even with an issue musket. I aimed for the middle of the body and gut shot the first man, dropped that gun, swung the second off my shoulder and hit the second in the head before the first had fallen to his knees. Then I charged at the officer, and he raised his hands and surrendered. I took his pistol and sword and then cut Captain Foster loose and gave him Madga's knife. He freed the others, and we got all the muskets loaded after we remembered Jim, who had evidently passed out, still tied to the tree.

The three men sent after the horses came running back toward the fire and straight into a volley that cut all of them down, tossing their bodies aside like bundles of sticks. I tied the officer to the bloody tree where Jim had suffered while George bandaged our friend's wounds and pronounced him well enough to travel once he was revived. Evidently what had happened was that in passing, one of the horses had brushed by him and knocked him out. His jaw and mouth were a bloody mess and his nose was certainly broken.

With Magda's knife in his hand, Captain Foster talked to the officer we had captured and found that he was not a local man, but a Virginian, who had been serving his Britannic majesty since the war's outbreak. I was all for hanging him or using him for bayonet practice, but Foster said no, and we took him back with us after we buried Simon. We left the other bodies for the birds and forest critters. Captain Foster never trusted me on guard duty again and took away my stripes.