“I’ll tell you everything on the way there,” Angus said to Mac.
Welsch and Connor were so new at being soldiers that they looked to Mac to tell them what to do. He gestured with his head that they were to get their horses and ride out.
An hour later, the four of them were heading deep into the forest of what was basically uncharted land. All of it had been traveled by people for centuries, but little of it had been mapped. To Angus and Mac, used to the wild hills of Scotland, it was glorious country, but Connor and Welsch kept looking about them apprehensively.
“What’s Wellman up to now?” Mac asked as he glanced back at the young men close behind them. They looked as though they expected a war party of Indians to jump out at any moment, or maybe a grizzly bear would attack. They’d all heard the trappers who came to the fort to sell their furs tell exciting stories about their encounters with wild animals and wilder people.
Angus dropped the English accent he used when around the soldiers and easily lapsed into his native Scots. “Betsy.”
Mac groaned. “What is it now? She get some boy with child?”
Angus laughed. “If it could be done, she’d do it. No, it seems that she’s engaged to a clergyman.”
“May the saints save us!” Mac said. “Her married to a churchman! The Lord will send down a bolt of lightning.”
“I’m more concerned that Austin will use his knife on him.” Austin’s nickname of “Jackknife” had preceded him as some of the soldiers had served under him in the French and Indian War, or the Seven Years War, as the English called it. The soldiers had seen what Austin could do with a knife to the bodies of the prisoners.
“I don’t envy the man being engaged to someone Jackknife wants.”
“Me either,” Angus said, and told Mac about the kidnapping of her fiancé. “If he’s still alive, I want to warn him of what to expect.”
“About Austin or Betsy?”
“Either. Both,” Angus said. “But if he’s in love with her, whatever I say won’t make a difference.”
“Know that from experience, do you?” Mac asked. He was teasing, but when Angus didn’t answer, he looked at him and saw that a curtain had come down over his face. Everyone knew that Angus Harcourt didn’t gossip with the other men, didn’t tell about his past, not even where he’d grown up. Mac knew that Harcourt wasn’t his name, but no amount of hinting had made Angus reveal anything private about himself.
Angus nodded toward the young men behind them. “Austin knew I’d choose those two because Betsy’s been eyeing them.”
“And they’ve been looking at her.” Mac turned in his saddle to look at the two men. T. C. Connor was tall, broad-shouldered, and handsome. He was a quiet man, watchful of everything that went on around him, and mostly kept to himself.
Naphtali Welsch wasn’t as handsome, but with his red hair and flashing blue eyes, he made everyone want to be near him. He laughed and sang rowdy songs and made the men laugh no matter what Jackknife Austin had done to them. One day the men were nursing their blistered feet after Austin had taken them on a twenty-five-mile march. They were cursing the bad food, the heat, and talking about deserting, but “Naps,” as he was called, started a game of seeing who could come up with the worst punishment for Austin. In the end, it had been T.C. who won when he made up an elaborate story that involved a plant that was found only in the far reaches of the new country. It ate people. When he finished spinning his yarn, their sore feet were forgotten and their moods had improved.
After that, the newcomers had become quite popular, Naps for his humor and T.C. for his stories—when he could be persuaded to tell one. They were rare and always involved plants of such magnificence that they left the men speechless.
“And he knew you’d choose me,” Mac said. “Now, I wonder why?” He was being facetious.
“Maybe because he hates you?”
“Aye, that he does,” Mac said with amusement. “I know more about the army than he does, and I get more respect from the men.”
“And you can throw a knife better than he can,” Angus added. “He doesn’t like anyone to best him at anything.”
“Including that little flirt that he’s decided he wants.”
“She’s more than a flirt,” Angus said.
Mac shook his head. “I don’t know why she hasn’t come up with child.”
“If she did, her father would kill the man.”
“Make him marry her, then kill him,” Mac said.
“Do either of you know where we’re going?” Naps asked from behind them.
“Kids!” Mac muttered, then said over his shoulder, “We’ll let you know when we get there. Until then, keep your yap shut!”
“Did you understand what he said?” Naps asked T.C.
“My guess is that he told you to be quiet and wait to find out where you’re supposed to die.”
“You’re a gloomy one.”
“I’d like to come out here by myself and take some cuttings from these plants.”
Naps groaned. “Please! No more plants. You have the things everywhere. What are you planning to do with them?”
T.C. shrugged. “I don’t know. Open a museum maybe. I’d like to learn to paint so I could record them on paper. The dried specimens lose a lot as the color disappears.”
“Don’t you want something besides plants in your bed? Something warm and feisty like that little Betsy Wellman.”
“I think that Miss Wellman is part of the reason you and I have been sent on this mission, whatever it is.”
“Betsy? But what’s she got to do with anything? You know, she and I have been talking about marriage. It would be nice to marry a colonel’s daughter.”
T.C. pulled a few leaves off a bush they passed. “Do you think that the colonel is going to let his daughter marry the son of a farmer from the north of England?”
“Are you jealous?”
“Since Miss Wellman has also talked to me about marriage, I can’t very well be jealous, now can I?”
“You!” Naps said, and his usually happy face changed. “Look here! Betsy Wellman is my girl, not yours! And if you—”
“Shut up, the both of you,” Mac growled at them. “Betsy Wellman talks about marriage to every good-looking young soldier. The only thing she wants to marry is what’s in your trousers.”
When Mac turned back around, Naps whispered, “What did he say?”
“That it was a beautiful day and he loved hearing us argue.”
Naps blinked a few times at T.C., then laughed. “You’re all right. You’re a bit too bookish for a girl like Betsy, but you’ll do. You have a girl back home?”
“Did have; don’t now,” T.C. said, and his tone told that he wasn’t going to say any more on the subject.
“Heaven help me, but they’re fighting over the tramp,” Mac said to Angus. “I think that when we stop for the night you should tell them the truth.”
“Me?” Angus asked. “What makes you think I’m qualified to tell anyone about women?”
“All right, I’ll tell you what to say and you tell them. They can understand you.”
Angus gave a bit of a smile. “That makes more sense.” For a while they rode in silence and Angus thought about what he knew of Austin and how he’d had the men waiting for him. Austin knew that Angus would take the men Betsy Wellman was after and that would get them out of her grasp for a few days.
“So we’re to find this preacher Betsy Wellman wants to marry and take him back to her? Austin won’t like that!” Mac said.
As soon as he heard the words, Angus knew what Austin was doing. “We’re going the wrong way,” he said as he turned his horse around. “We have to go to the payroll wagon.”
Mac followed Angus, but he didn’t understand what was going on. “Payroll wagon? But I thought Indians had kidnapped the boy.”
“That’s what Wellman thinks. But how did the boy get from the east of us to the west? Why didn’t we hear of it?”
; “Maybe one of Connor’s plants carried him,” Mac shouted as Angus rode ahead of them, but he wasn’t listening. He was riding hard toward a trail that he knew would take them to the far side of the fort. Once a month the heavily guarded payroll wagon came in, and it was time for it. If Betsy’s fiancé was to arrive it would make sense that he’d come in with the payroll. If the boy had been taken, it was from that wagon. Angus wasn’t sure, but he felt that he’d been sent on a wild goose chase—and it wasn’t hard to guess who had sent him and why.
He led the men hard. There were places where the trail was so narrow their horses could hardly move, but Angus didn’t slow down. He didn’t know what Austin had planned, but Angus was sure that he wasn’t going to allow someone else to marry the woman he wanted.
Angus glanced back now and then and saw that Mac was easily keeping up with him, but the two young soldiers were hanging on for dear life. They weren’t used to riding and certainly not accustomed to trails that were used mostly by animals.
An hour after sundown, he took pity on the boys and called a halt. Mac shook his head in disgust as the young men tumbled out of their saddles, sore and stiff and tired. Muttering that the young ones were weaklings, Mac gathered firewood while Angus slipped into the bushes and returned with three rabbits, which Mac put on spits over the fire.
“I’ll never be able to walk again,” Naps said. His red hair gleamed in the firelight.
“Good!” Angus said in an accent they could understand. “Maybe it’ll keep you away from Betsy Wellman.”
“Another jealous man,” Naps said, grimacing as he tried to sit down.
Angus looked at T.C., who was quiet, but his face showed that he was in just as much pain. “What about you? You think Betsy is the love of your life?”
“I like a woman who can read,” T.C. said as he held his hands out to the fire.
“Not all of us can spend our lives in a schoolroom,” Angus said in his thickest burr, his teeth held together.
“What he means,” Mac said slowly, so the young men could understand him, “is that if you want to stay alive, you’ll stay away from the colonel’s daughter.”
“But—” Naps began.
“Austin will have you killed,” Mac said.
“Like in the Bible,” T.C. said. They all looked at him, as though they hoped he’d tell one of his stories. But T.C. just shrugged. “King David wanted Bathsheba, so he sent her husband to the front of the war, where he was killed.”
When he said no more, the others were disappointed, and Angus looked at the young man hard. He’d been told that the reason Thomas Canon “T. C.” Connor had joined the army was because he’d been in love with a young woman in Williamsburg, but her father had married her off to a rich old man. T.C. had been roaming the new country since then, collecting plant specimens wherever he went. Angus didn’t know if the story was true or just gossip—and T.C. answered no question about his past.
“I think we need to get some rest,” Angus said. “I’ll take the first watch, then you.” He nodded at T.C. “Naps, then Mac, you take the last watch. At first light we’ll leave.”
“Could you tell us where we’re going?” Naps asked.
Angus hesitated, but then relented. “I think that Austin has arranged for Miss Wellman’s fiancé to be killed.”
Naps didn’t seem to hear anything but “fiancé.” “She’s engaged to someone else?”
Angus shook his head at the young man and gave Mac a glance to say that the boy would never learn. “Turn in, all of you. I’ll wake you when your time to watch comes.” He glared at Naps. “And let me tell you that your life won’t be worth much if you fall asleep on watch.”
Naps looked out into the darkness and shivered. “You don’t have to worry about me. This place scares me so much that I won’t be able to sleep at all.” Ten minutes later, he was snoring so loudly that Mac kicked him.
The next morning, before the sun was fully up, the four men rode out and Angus set a hard pace for them.
“Can this man take care of himself?” Mac asked when they stopped to rest the horses.
“No,” Angus said. “Wellman called him ‘effeminate.’ ”
“What does that mean?” Naps asked.
“Like a girl,” T.C. answered.
“Then Betsy won’t have any trouble choosing the right man,” Naps said, yet again turning everything back around to her.
Angus started to say something about the girl but didn’t. “Let’s go. I know where it’s most likely that the payroll wagon was ambushed.”
Minutes later, they were riding again, and when Angus saw smoke, he kicked his tired horse forward. “We may be too late,” he said over his shoulder.
When they were at the top of a ridge, Angus held up his hand for them to halt, and he slid off his horse to crouch down among the trees. Behind him, Mac made hand gestures to the young soldiers that they were to get down and be silent. Mac went to squat next to Angus.
Below them was what was left of the payroll wagon. It had been burned, and near it were the bodies of two soldiers.
“Where are the other guards?” Mac whispered.
“I’m not sure, but it’s my guess that Austin ordered the wagon to have only two guards.”
“An open invitation to thieves,” Mac said.
“Thieves and murder.”
“Do you think the preacher’s body is on the other side?”
“I don’t see it,” Angus said, “but I’m sure it’s nearby, and I’d lay money on it that he’s been scalped. Austin would want people to believe that the Indians did it.”
Mac didn’t let his face show his shock at what Angus was saying. “Something like this could cause a war. The payroll is from the government. Do you think Austin would risk that just for a common girl like Betsy?”
“I think he likes to win whatever he wants and he’ll use whatever methods he can,” Angus said. “I’ll take Welsch and go that way, you take Connor and come in from the south. Be careful and make as little noise as possible. The killers have probably taken the money and run, but maybe they’re still around. Take no chances.”
Mac nodded, then went back to tell the men, who were standing behind them rubbing their sore legs.
Angus went down the hill quietly, concealing his body in the bushes that grew along the way. Twice, Welsch skidded on the loose gravel, and both times Angus scowled at him.
When they reached the bottom of the hill, Angus motioned for Welsch to stay there and wait, and he looked relieved. Angus stealthily made his way around the burned wagon, glancing quickly at the two men on the ground to see if they were dead. His guess was that they’d been there for at least a day and a half, and he hoped he was wrong about the boy. Maybe the robbers took the payroll, killed the guards, and kidnapped the boy. If that was so then they were in the wrong place. By now the boy—if he was still alive—was many miles to the west, just as Wellman had said.
Angus hid behind some trees and looked about him. If the men had been dead for over a day, then the wagon had only recently been set on fire. That meant that someone had been there since the murders.
When he saw or heard no one, Angus stepped out of hiding and began to look around the wagon. There were faint footprints leading south, where he knew there was a river.
Quietly, his moccasins making no sound, Angus went back to Welsch, who was still sitting under the trees and waiting. “No one’s here but I don’t trust this place,” he said softly. “Get the others and I’ll meet you over there. See that big oak tree?”
“I don’t know an oak from a daisy,” Welsch said.
“Ask Connor. Go there and wait for me, and stay out of sight.”
“Gladly,” Welsch said as he stood up on his stiff legs.
It was thirty minutes before Angus met the other men in the shade of the oak tree.
Mac handed him a hardtack biscuit. “See anything?”
“Someone got away. There were four men who attacked the wagon, and they wer
e all white. Indians walk lighter. There’s a bloody place where a wounded man lay for a while and it’s possible they thought he was dead.”
“Maybe he dragged himself off into the bushes.”
“I think so. You two ready to go?” Angus asked Welsch and Connor.
They nodded and minutes later the four of them were on horseback again, with Angus in the front. He was leaning over the saddle so far the other men didn’t see why he wasn’t unseated. He was looking at the ground, following the trail the wounded man had left behind.
“He’s going to the river,” Angus told them, and put his finger to his lips for them to remain silent. He dismounted, took his horse’s reins, and began to walk over the rocky path. In the distance, they could hear the water rushing.
In the next minute, Angus stepped out of the bushes, and what he saw so astounded him that he just stood there and stared. Curious, the other three moved to stand beside him.
Sitting on a big rock beside a small river was a tall blond young man. His face and shoulders were hideously covered with blood and he looked to be sewing his scalp back together.
Angus tied his horse to a bush and went to the man. “Need any help with that?”
“No. I’m fine,” he said, glancing at the other men who were close behind Angus. “I meant to go on and try to get to the fort, but my head wouldn’t stop bleeding and the blood got in my eyes so bad I couldn’t see.”
With every stitch the young man made, the others winced. His fingers were long and moved easily as he held the ridges of his scalp together and sewed.
“Have you done that often, lad?” Mac asked.
“Not to myself,” the man said with a bit of a grin, but since his face was so bloody he looked more horrible than pleasant.
“So what happened?” Angus asked as he sat down across from the young man. “And who are you?”
“Matthew Aldredge.” He held out his hand to shake, but it was covered with blood. “Sorry. I’ll clean up when this is done.”
“I could—” Angus began.
“No!” Matthew said. “Really. I’d rather do it myself. Did you see the wagon?”