Chapter 33: Rebecca

I think it was about then, shortly after I had lost my stripes again not that we got paid often or much, anyhow at about that time the captain gave me a special assignment because I was the only man available and unoccupied. He told me that clearly when he called me.

"I'd rather send 'most anybody else," he said. "I want you to promise me that you'll stay awake, stay sober and stay out of fancy women's beds until you get to Trenton."

"Yessir," I said by reflex.

"My cousin's mother just died. She's a good woman, had a lot a'troubles, and she going down to live with her aunt and uncle in Trenton. Her husband's in the damn navy. So take her down there. Since you're gettin' a late start, you'll likely have to stop around Hopewell somewhere. I suppose you might get to Princeton if the roads are good. Anyhow, she's got a rig and all her stuff's packed, I hope, should be, so go fetch her and get going."

He gave me some money for food and lodging, told me to avoid the expensive ferries if I could, and glowered at me. I went where he told me and found a stylish women about ten or fifteen years my senior with fierce grey eyes and a huge mop of hair. She was tapping her foot and looking impatient.

"It's about time, soldier," she said in greeting. "Get those boxes lashed down up on top, and let's get on the road. The captain said he'd send a man that knows the country between here and Trenton, do you?"

"Yes'm, I been there a few times," I said with a smile. "Where's your driver?"

"He quit, walked off just before you got here. Foul man. Couldn't take orders any better'n a cockrel. This is my carriage."

I roped the last box in place, tied my horse on the back of the rig, and helped the women, her name was Rebecca, into her sprung carriage which was packed half full of clothes and other belongings. She was wearing a dark violet traveling suit with big buttons and deep cuffs on her jacket and a skirt with many pleats. I guess her ruffled shirt was silk since it was kind of shiny. She also had on long gloves, short boots and a small tri-cornered hat that perched atop her mass of dark hair, kind of reddish it was, her hair I mean.

She was a firm-faced, good-looking woman with a fine body, long legs, a healthy prow, well-rounded rear and a straight back. Her ass, in fact, was admirable, full, firm and rounded out in a classic form.

We headed out of Morristown without any more talk, and I found her team well mannered and willing to keep up a reasonable pace. I let them walk every mile or so and every time I did, I heard a protest from within.

"What are you doing," she yelled. "Get moving!"

When I stopped at a roadside tavern to rest all three horses and feed both them and us, we were down out of the hills and in the Raritan valley. She ate rapidly and without conversation while I asked around about recent British raiding parties. It seemed that small bands had been out looking for dray animals here and there, probably artillery men, but it had generally been quiet. We both used the necessary and when I finished checking the harness, I primed my weapons and stashed them behind the driver's seat under an old animal-skin lap robe.

The woman saw me doing that and raised an eyebrow. "Expecting trouble?" she said.

I shook my head. "You never know. There's been some Hessians and Redcoats around, here and there, always is, stealing horses."

"Let's get going," she said as the first fat drops of rain splashed down. I was glad I had my floppy felt hat in my saddle bag. We had only gone a mile or so down the rutted road, in a real soaking rain, when I spotted a plume of dirty smoke in the distance, something large was burning. When we got closer it proved to be a good-sized barn and from the farm came a small group of riders, grenadiers from their uniforms. It was still raining lightly, but the sun in the west was making an effort to dry things and the clouds were scurrying along.

I slipped the leather cover off my weapons, put my old double-barreled pistol in my lap, and halted the rig when the officer leading this motley group of armed men raised his hand.

"Where you headed?" he asked in a flat accent.

"Down the road, to Trenton," I said.

"Nice team," he said, patting the lead horse.

"They are," I said.

"We're going to take them, all three in fact," he said, smiling up at me while his men waited in the drizzle, looking bored, their muskets strapped across their backs. "You can walk. What is it, barely thirty miles?"

"That ain't very friendly," I said. I had noticed that the farm house was also ablaze, and I could see a body sprawled by the well. "I got a lot of belongings in here, stuff you don't need."

"Who's your passenger?" the lieutenant asked, stepping down from his horse.

"Woman," I said, "going to visit her aunt. This here's her gear and her rig."

He pulled open the carriage door, put his foot on the hanging step, smiled up at me and was halfway inside when there was a booming report that shook the carriage and startled the horses, and he was launched back into the mud with a smoking hole the size of my fist in his chest. He looked very surprised and very dead.

I cracked the reins and the team got going with a jump. I fired my buckshot-loaded pistol toward the group of horse soldiers, both barrels and must have stung them at least. They ducked and scattered, and then I got my musket up and shot down the one closest to getting his gun ready. He spun out of his saddle and his horse dragged him along the edge of the road for a few paces with his foot tangled in a stirrup. That left me with just my rifle loaded, so I whipped the team, ducked low and headed down the muddy road as fast as I could.

The carriage door was still open, flapping back and forth, and the woman stood in it, her hair flying, and yelled, "G'me your musket and cartridge box."

I handed the long weapon down to her and then dangled the heavy box by its strap. She grabbed it and slammed the door closed. I looked back and saw four men riding hard on the road behind us. My poor horse was doing his best to keep up, straining at the end of the tether. I wished I could cut him loose, but had to concentrate on keeping the pair in front of me at a steady gallop. I popped the whip and watched their ears rise.

I heard a shot and a ball whizzed past my ear. The next shot from behind thunked into the carriage. "Here, look down, man," the woman yelled. She was halfway out of the door, reaching the musket up toward me, her mouth black-smudged. I grabbed the gun, waited for the road to smooth out a bit, and then shot the nearest rider's horse. It stumbled and tossed the grenadier over its head as it fell.

I handed the musket back down to Rebecca and reloaded my pistol with buckshot as fast as I could with the reins in my teeth. The carriage bounced and jolted, and I wondered how she managed to load a musket in that small space. Just after she handed the gun back to me the second time, I saw a bend in the road coming up fast and yelled down to her, "We're going to stop, get ready."

Around the curve, I yelled 'Whoa' at the team, yanked the reins back, and pulled on the brake. The three Redcoats almost plowed into the back of the rig, and I shot the first one I could draw down on, saw him fall from his horse, jumped to the road, unsure where I had hit the man, and fired my pistol at the other two, stinging one bad enough so that he fell, and wounding both of the horses. I raised my rifle, took my time and shot the third man squarely in the back of the head as he started to ride away. His arms flew out as if he was going to try to fly and then he tumbled to the ground.

"Look out!" the woman yelled and there was crashing bang right beside my ear. The first man I had shot down was taking aim from the weeds, only ten steps away, and the woman's shot distracted him enough that he missed. His ball smashed into the carriage by the Rebecca's face, causing her to yelp and duck away. I ran at him with my big bayonet in my hand, and he stood to meet me, bleeding from the shoulder. I kicked him in the knee and stabbed him in the chest before he could even get his bayonet up. Killing a wounded man is generally not hard.

"Look behind you," yelled the woman. She was standing beside the carriage, reloading her pistol. Coming down the road at a fast trot was the soldier whose horse I had shot. He was limping, but his musket was in the charge position, and he looked serious. I grabbed up the empty musket of the man I had just killed and moved to meet him. The soldier hesitated, looked from the woman to me and then knelt and took aim at me from perhaps twenty yards. The woman's pistol banged, and the man fell to his side, holding his leg. Before he could recover, I was on him and left a spike bayonet planted in his chest. I twisted the musket free, planning to add it to my armory while the Redcoat kicked a time or two.

I knelt to search the soldier's body, but when I heard a scream, I turned quickly. The man I had shot with my scattergun pistol had grabbed the woman and held a small knife, a dagger, at her throat and a clawing hand on her breast. She looked at me and then closed her eyes and clamped her mouth closed. She was hiding her pistol in her skirt, but I did not know if she had reloaded it or not.

"What do you want?" I asked him, dropping the musket, raising my hands taking a couple of steps back toward the carriage. His forehead and right arm were bleeding but he held the knife steady, blade edge at the side of her neck, and his other hand slid down to Rebecca's waist dragging her fancy jacket with it.

"I'll take it all," he said, "horses, rig and this here woman. But first, I'm gonna take care a'you." He spun the woman to the ground, put his foot on her leg and shrugged his musket from his back. Rebecca's short-barreled pistol was almost touching his belly when she fired, and a long spear of flame flared between his legs. The man screamed, lurched back, dropped his weapon, clutched his groin and fell on his face, howling and rolling about, his britches afire. I tore his throat out with my blade bayonet and kicked his body off into the ditch alongside the road. He was still smoking around the middle.

I helped Rebecca to her feet and went to check on the other bodies, leaving her staring at her handiwork. None had anything worth taking, so I gathered up the weapons, caught two of the horses and tied them on beside my lathered mount.

When I finished those chores, I found the woman standing by the ditch at the roadside, wiping her mouth, spatters of vomit on the hem of her wide skirt. "I didn't have time to get a ball into that damn pistol," she said quietly.

"We should go back and check on the farm that was burning," I said. "It won't take long and the horses need a rest and some water."

She nodded and got into her carriage with my help. Her arm was trembling. "You did fine," I said to her. "We both did fine." I did not have to tell her that she saved my hide, but I went on and said a quiet thank you. She looked at me strangely.

When we reached the spread-eagled body of the officer she had shot, I had to scare off a flock of black birds to search him and it was worth doing. I tossed his heavy purse to her and gave her his fine sword as well. I added his heavy pistol to my collection and put his fancy, gold snuff box and signet ring in my pocket. In the farmyard we found a boy of twelve or so standing over the dead man.

"That's my Pa," she said, wiping tears away. "He stayed but the res' of us run off when we seen 'em comin'." His house and barn had both burned to the ground, just smoking hulks with a few charred timbers standing along with the stone chimney. "Ma an' the girls is still back in the woods."

"Want me to help bury him?" I asked.

He shook his head. "We'll do it. They'll want'a see him, clean him up an' all."

I gave him the two extra horses, told him they might have a bit of buckshot in them, and then gave him the officer's pistol. The woman handed him the purse I had given her. We watered our horses and got back on the road as the sun was setting.

I stopped at the first big tavern we came to and saw to the horses while the woman ordered us a meal. She seemed to have recovered well enough from the day's excitement and was once more her bossy self, firmly in command, chin firm and pugnacious.

We ate in relative silence, good food and plenty of it. She drank sack and I drank beer. We both drank a lot. Toward the end of the meal, she sat back, raised an eyebrow and said, "They only have one room, in the back."

"I plan to sleep in the barn, the stable," I told her. "I got strict orders from your cousin."

She smiled at me. "Did you?" she said. She had a fine, seldom-used smile and good teeth. Her silky jacket had lost its buttons so I could see her lacy shirt, stretched tight between her upright nipples and frilled down the deep-trenched middle. She did not seem to be wearing stays or anything like that.

I ate some more cobbler and drank some more beer, feeling the usual stir in my groin.

"It's a pretty big bed," she said, her eyes smiling. "I looked."

I kept quiet, thinking here was a woman who had killed one man, shot two others and watched me kill a few more, and she was talking about taking me to bed like it was hardly worth discussing.

"The captain, your cousin, gave me orders, Ma'am," I said. "Strict orders."

"My name's Rebecca, and I don't give a small damn what Johnny Foster said. Never have, the foul fornicator."

I smiled and licked my lips, just thinking about bedding her was stimulating.

"We're both full grown. No reason you should go sleep in the hay with the rodents. Just give me your word, and, well, just forget about it. No need your captain should know." She returned my smile and her cold eyes crinkled again. Her dark, auburn hair tumbled around her shoulders.

Upstairs she spent some time trying to get the vomit, mud, blood stains off her dress, standing at the wash basin in her light shift and fancy shirt, shivering in the cold air leaking through the ill-fitting window. I tried to ignore her and stripped down to my long-tailed shirt, sitting on the side of the big bed, feeling gallons of blood filling the thick, eager member hanging between my legs and growing fatter. Finally she said, "It's ruined. I might as well throw it away."

She tossed her skirt on a chair, took off her frilly shirt, yanked a wide comb from her hair and shook her head, tossing heavy curls in all directions, and slid under the quilt. "Good night," she said, looking at the ceiling. "That was an interesting day."

"Um, Ma'am," I said. "I still think that I should..."

"Get in the bed and go to sleep," she said, clearly exasperated. She sighed and faced the log wall.

I rolled in, turned my back to her, and tried to sleep. I kept seeing her shoot the man who was ready to kill me, holding that big pistol out with both hands, rock steady. He had been kneeling, and I could look right down the bore of his musket. I saw her raise the pistol to the highwayman with the dagger and set fire to his cods. By damn, I thought, it took some nerve for her to do that when he had his foot on her and her pistol was not loaded. It made my old root tremble. I was about to turn over and say something to her when she put her hand on my raised shoulder and gripped it hard.

"Please," she said, "turn over and hold me. Just for a minute."

She cried in my arms for a while, shivering as if she was cold. "He looked right down at me after I shot him," she moaned. "Looked right at me, and he was burning."

"You saved my life," I said, patting her back, feeling her damp face on my chest. She squirmed closer, her legs in among mine, and sniffed a couple of times, her shift all rumpled up between us.

"I'd never shot anything before today, never," she said, "not even a rabbit."

"Hard to believe. You fired four times and got three good hits, one a kill, and a near miss. Much better'n I did."

"Oh," she said, and I knew I should not have said kill. "I had to shoot that man that was coming into the carriage. He..."

"That was good shooting, by anybody." I patted her broad back and felt my pole starting to rise.

"I've shot at targets," she said, sniffing again and snuggling closer, taking a deep breath, relaxing, "with a musket too. My husband..."

She had stopped weeping so I took my arm off her back and drew away. She grabbed me.

"Don't," she said. She wiggled up my body and kissed me, hard and long, opening her cracked lips and sliding her tongue into my mouth, caressing mine. "Come," she said, crawling atop me, "It will help us forget." She mounted my thighs and got both her knees outside my hips, my overheated genitals stirring in her hands.

"No, Rebecca, honest, I can't. The captain'll kill me."

"To hell with him. You owe me. Remember, I saved your life. I may just swive you to death anyway." She laughed kind of weakly and arched up on her extended arms, the heels of her hands on my chest, lifting her groin above mine and looking down between us where my erect pole stood waiting, her hair falling in my face.

The logic was so powerful and I was so hard, that I did not argue any more, but eased her shift a bit higher and took the base of my big, leaping cock in my hand and rammed it up into her as she lowered herself on me. Fights almost always did that to me, got me aroused and kept me from sleeping. Now I was sliding my blood-hot phallus into the captain's handsome, panting cousin, slowly deeper, spreading her easily, and she was soon humping me like a tu'penny hussy, urging me to more effort as if she had another customer waiting. She seemed to like being on top and in control. She certainly set the pace, and it was wearing as I banged away within her, striving for more depth.

"Oh lord," she moaned, bucking like a wild thing as I tried to hold her hips, "now do it, please, do it, more, more, more," She bounced against my belly, ground on my pubic bone and got her knees up by my ribs, heaving her shivering body onto me over and over, her hands on my chest or shoulders, clawing at my scars, my nipples, her feet kicking me steadily, alternately left and right and her firm breasts rubbing across my face, rigid nipples in and out of my lips.

My hands raised gooseflesh on her bottom and then slid outside her bunched shift to cup her full breasts as she rose on my spear. She drooled on me, and I swived on and on, harder and harder as she sucked in air, deeper and deeper until she squealed and shuddered above me, shaking her head from side to side and lifting her chin, biting her lower lip. Her climax seemed to go on forever, her body rigid, arms outstretched as if she was flying, and then I came, pumping fiercely deep within her while she began to subside and soon lay, panting and mewling, on my chest, her head on my shoulder, her mouth at my neck, soft hair everywhere, fluids gushing between us as if I was pumping them out of her.

"Damn," she said, "that was wonderful. I haven't done that for a long time, maybe ten years." She raked back her hair and raised up to kiss me and slide her tongue in to tangle with mine, her full breasts crushed on me. "And you were goin' to just lie there and sleep, you selfish bastard. What a waste. You've got what women want, m'lad, and a lot of it."