Chapter 35: Nancy

Captain Foster believed my lies, patted my back and made me a corporal again. I got out of Morristown as fast as I could and back to staging ambushes. It became slow work as a winter storm and extra cold weather blanketed the countryside. We spilt up, went to seek whatever shelter we could find and promised to get back to work the next time the creeks were flowing. I headed for Trenton, despite the long cold ride, since I knew I would find a warm welcome in one or another bed there and might even get to see Rebecca again. I never got past Princeton.

My horse and I were making good time and looking for a barn roof to get under as night fell when the clatter of hoofbeats drew my attention. I slowed and stood in the stirrups. A group of riders was coming down the road toward me, and a hundred yards or so in front of them rode what was obviously a woman judging from the wide, flapping shirt. She was whipping her horse something awful. Squinting, I figured out the men behind her were Redcoats, about a half dozen of them, and turned to ride near the fleeing woman, kicking my tired horse to some extra effort. Around a sharp bend on the poorly maintained road, she yanked her mount around and cleared a fence off to the right, and I followed her over and lost sight of her in the dark woods. "Over here," she called as the Redcoats clattered past, hallooing and laughing.

I found her behind a big chestnut tree, panting astride her lathered horse.

"Who the hell are you?" she asked.

I told her and asked her what was going on. As usual, I was not wearing anything that looked much like a uniform except for a black neckcloth.

She looked at me as if I was daft. "What do you think?" she said, and spat into the weeds.

"Well, I didn't think y'all were racing," I said.

"It was something like that. They'll be back. Be quiet."

Sure enough, in a few minutes men were riding along the road and fenceline, calling out, " Nancy, Nancy, come on out."

"We din't mean to scare you," one man yelled and then he laughed.

"Shit," another said, "Lets go get a beer. She ain't the only split tail around."

The girl put her finger to her lips as our horses bobbed their heads together, getting a sniff of each other.

We sat quietly for another ten minutes or so, listening. Then the girl said, "Why don' you go take a look." I dismounted and did as she suggested, my musket in my hand. The moon was just coming up and the snow-covered fields made it hard to hide anything. I could not see any horsemen and went back and to tell her that.

She was gone. I searched around for a few minutes, pulled my coat collar up and got back to looking for a place to get in out of the cold, wondering about the girl.

The first farmhouse I came to was well off the road to the left, down in some bottom land, but there were lights in the windows and smoke coming from the chimney. I rode to the barn, unsaddled my tired beast and then went to the door to ask for permission to feed my horse and sleep in the loft.

"You again," the girl said when she eased open the front door. "You follow me?"

I shook my head. "Just wanted to get in out of the cold, me and the horse."

She nodded, pulled me in by the arm and closed the door quickly. "Damn cold," she said. "I'm Nancy S ... This here's my daddy." She dropped a heavy piece of wood into slots to bar the door. The man sat in wooden chair near the fire, staring straight ahead, attending to something within himself.

"He hit his head, can't talk, but he's all right; he understands I think."

"Mind if I tend my horse?" I asked.

She pulled on a coat, opened the narrow back door and went to the barn with me, helped to get my horse settled and blanket covered and then stopped me before reopening the barn door. "We're loyal, Tories I suppose you'd say, not that we rave and carry on about it. Them Redcoats was here wanting to swive me 'cause I made a mistake a week or two ago and bedded one a'them. Shows how dumb I am."

"You mean he brought his friends?"

She nodded. "They was planning to stay till Monday, but I got away."

I waited.

"You can sleep out here or in the house; don't matter to me. You're a soldier, ain't you, Continental?"

I nodded in the dark and then said, "Yes."

"They might be back, you know," she said.

"Awful cold tonight." I turned up my collar.

"They got cocks for brains," she said with a small laugh.

I had my pistol in the back of my belt and my rifle in my hand. I went back and got my musket and followed her to the small house. She fed me, corn mush and fat pork, some cider and good bread. I watched her get her silent father into bed and spent the time cleaning my weapons and getting them all loaded. She had a nice looking old rifle on the wall above the fireplace.

"That thing work?" I asked when she returned from her father's narrow bed on the other side of the house's center divider, a big hutch. I pointed at the rifle.

"Not sure," she said, closing the shutters and locking them. I took it down, dusted it off some, put in a new flint, cocked the rusty thing and pulled the trigger. It seemed to work so I cleaned out the touch hole, loaded it with one of my balls, almost the right size with a double patch. Now we had four weapons ready if we had visitors.

"I'm going to bed," she said, blowing out the candles. "You can bunk near the fire." She handed me an old quilt and smiled. I couldn't tell if she was fifteen or thirty-five. She was very plain and not very big, but she certainly was a woman.

I stayed awake for awhile with my feet up toward the fire, enjoying the warmth. Maybe around two, with the moon almost across the sky, I pulled off my boots and rolled in, fully dressed. About the time I dropped off there was a knock at the front door and plaintive voice calling, "Nancy, oh Nancy."

I stood with my pistol in my hand as she roused herself, struggled into a homespun dress and headed for the door, barefoot. I got on my boots and let myself out the back and walked around the house. Just one horse was breathing steam out there in the cold so I went in the front door and found the girl talking to a tall, thin Redcoat. I am not sure she was happy to see me.

The boy spun around and I put the muzzle of my double-barrelled pistol in his face. "He the one, sister?" I said gruffly.

She girl nodded, trying not to smile.

"You planning on marrying her, boy?" I asked, putting my pistol in my belt and pulling out my broad bladed bayonet and pushing its point up under his chin. It looked like he might have shaved once a week whether he need to or not. I likely looked pretty mean with a three-day beard and not much sleep.

"No sir," he said, voice shaking, "we never talked about that."

"You bring them skunks out here today?"

"Didn't mean to. I got to bragging, likkered up, you know, and they jollied me into it. Followed me up the road."

"No excuse, is it?" I asked, squinting at him.

"No sir," he said, looking back and forth from Nancy to me.

"You want I should cut off his ballocks, sister?" I said calmly.

"Maybe jus' one," she said.

I thought the boy was going to faint. "Please," he said. "I came to say I was sorry."

"He did, brother," the girl said, a hand covering her mouth. "I'll forgive him."

"More'n I'd do," I said, sheathing my blade.

"Go on, Jim," she said.

"I'm that sorry," he said, looking mournful and twisting his hat in his hands.

"Go on, get out," she said, putting a hand on his shoulder and rising to her toes to kiss him briefly.

He smiled and left with barely a "Good night, sir," to me.

Nancy fell into my open arms, and I held her face to my chest to muffle her laughs. She sounded awful young. After we heard him ride away, I bent and kissed her about as briefly as she had pecked the Redcoat.

"You've got a quick wit," I said, patting her butt.

"You couldn' see his face when you stepped in behind him. I thought he was gonna faint."

"He seemed like a decent kind, for a Redcoat," I said.

"He is, I think. He's New Jersey militia really, from down south."

"Thought he didn't sound Brit."

"You'd make a good brother," she said.

"I'd rather be your lover tonight, what's left of it."

"Would you," she said, pulling her loose-woven dress over her head.

"Um," I said, "got chilled out there."

"Come on," she said, "I'll warm you. You're too damn big for my bed."

She knelt on my quilt with her back to the fire and watched me strip down to my shirt. I knelt facing her, admiring her sturdy body and lifted her shift over her head. She smiled while I slid my hands from her shoulders to her hard, upright breasts and bent to kiss her. The banked fire sizzled behind her.

She grabbed the bottom of my shirt and I raised my hands and she skinned it off.

"Oh damn," she said, making a face and reaching out to touch the wound on my shoulder and then several of the others. She traced a whip mark and felt a bit of a long scar. "You are the hairiest mess I've ever seen. What have you been doing. Looks like you rolled in a briar patch or something."

I inched forward and grasped her buttocks, pulling her up on my lap, sliding her open portal toward my battering ram. "I been killing Germans and Redcoats, by the dozen, the score, the hundred," I said.

"Ah," she moaned as my upright prod entered her, and I began to push it deeper with my back and belly muscles.

We lowered ourselves to the floor, wrapped the quilt around us, and I rolled over and pulled her atop me, throbbing deeper within her.

"Damn," she moaned, shaking from side to side on my belly, "You sure are big all over." She raised herself up with her hands on my stomach, squeezing me between her knees as her body responded to my heaving within her. I swived her and she rode me until we both were satisfied, and she collapsed on my sweaty body, her face turned on my chest, her tongue moving from wound to scar, panting. My prod stayed busy within her, and I petted her muscular back.

"I never was on top before," she said quietly. "You go on like a well digger, awful deep. I ain't done this much."

I kissed her hair and rested, stroking her back, still wondering about her age.

"Times I have done it, the boy yanked out his thing soon as he come, yelping like he done something grand."

"Um," I said. "You got to stay away from boys."

"Uh huh," she said as I pushed her over and rose between her legs. She raised her knees and I began again, bending my body on outstretched arms and keeping all my weight off of her except where we were joined. I braced my toes on the wall and increased the pace of our heaving to about a steady marching rate. She writhed and heaved, wrapping her legs around me and lifting her rump from the quilt to meet my thrusts, mouth gaping. When we got down to the short rows in my plowing, her breathing became just brief gasps. It sounded like she was only exhaling.