language to call the items on their feet shoes. But their weapons were in good repair, and the soldiers themselves cheery enough, as soon as Jake identified himself and his companion as patriots in search of the men's captain.
The troops were Rhode Islanders from Colonel Israel Angell’s regiment. Angell was an old acquaintance of Jake's. This information was warmly welcomed by the captain, an amiable sort found bending over a kettle a few yards away. The man had built his fire by the roadside, announcing his post with a simple stick mounted by a blue ribbon. He had a stump for his desk, and a log for his seat, but nonetheless exuded the air of one naturally born to lead.
'Can I offer you some Liberty Tea, gentlemen? I've added a few herbs I found by the roadside to the usual sassafras. I think it has quite a unique flavor.'
Jake and van Clynne exchanged a glance.
'I make it a habit never to drink Liberty Tea after the early morning hours,' blustered the Dutchman. 'I, er, it keeps me awake.'
'I'm not thirsty, thank you,' said Jake.
'You're missing a treat.' The captain poured the water and its steeped herbs into a crude tin cup and held it to his mouth. He took a sip, winced, then set it down. 'Too hot,' he said doubtfully. 'I'll have to let it cool. Now, gentlemen — your business.'
'We are messengers,' said Jake, producing a piece of blown and colored glass the Sons of Liberty had given him in New York as an identifier.
The captain fingered the clamshell-shaped glass briefly, then handed it back. 'And your destination?'
'I can say only that I am working for General Schuyler. Ordinarily, I am assigned to General Greene.'
The captain's expression, wary and soured by the tea, lightened immediately. Rhode Island's Nathanael Greene was well regarded by many in the northern army, and certainly all who came from his state. 'Have you seen the general recently?'
'No,' said Jake. 'We have been on this assignment quite a while. It is a trifle, though there have been moments of interest here and there.'
'The general's leg is better?'
'The general's leg has been injured since his youth, so I hardly think it could get better,' said Jake. He smiled, acknowledging the cleverness of the trick. The officer's extra bit of wariness was well justified in these woods.
For his part, the captain guessed from Jake's bearing if not his rough farmer's clothes that this guest was not a mere civilian pressed into service or even a disguised enlisted man, as Jake's ambiguous responses were meant to suggest. The officer was wise enough not to press the matter on the one hand, and on the other to treat the stranger with careful respect, even offering his log to sit on. Jake declined the honor.
Van Clynne accepted with a happy grunt.
'Colonel Angell is in Peekskill,' the captain told them after ordering a detail to bury the men they had left down the road. 'He spends every moment haranguing for supplies. There are shortages of everything.'
'What sort of thing does the army need?' van Clynne asked, stroking his beard.
'Anything and everything. Shoes, shirts, boots especially. Food — I believe I would give half my inheritance for a pound of salt. I have not had salt with my dinner for three months at least.'
'There is money to pay for these things, I suppose?'
'There is a shortage of funds,' admitted the captain, 'but surely not so severe that money could not be found if these items could be provided.'
More inviting words had seldom been spoken to the Dutchman, who immediately began computing how a profit might be patriotically turned.
If anything, the captain understated his troop's condition by half. Many of the soldiers marched out barefoot, with tattered clothes and not even insignias of rank or unit. There was no shortage of gunpowder, only because there was not enough of it to be issued to a soldier except for a specific duty — a surprise attack would find much of the ammunition under lock and key. Worst of all, any honest rating of the American troops would put these Rhode Islanders toward the top of the men assigned to guard the Highlands — many of the other units were either militia or as green as the sprouting hills around them.
'We had hope when Old Put came in,' said the captain, referring to Major General Israel Putnam, one of the heroes of Breed's Hill and a beloved leader of the American forces. General Washington had put him in command of the Highlands two months before. 'He has done much, but it is an awesome task. Rumor has it,' the captain added in a lower voice, 'that there is a plot afoot to destroy the iron chain stretched across the Hudson north of Peekskill.'
'Destroy it?' demanded Jake indignantly. 'How?'
'If I knew that, we wouldn't be sitting here talking about it, I assure you.'
The chain stretched across the river on a diagonal from the shore below St. Anthony's Nose to a point just above the Polpen Creek. It was the key to the defense of the Highlands and the rest of the Hudson Valley, as it kept British ships from coming north. Without it, no part of the valley — not Poughkeepsie, not Newburgh, not Kingston, not even Albany — would be safe. Indeed, were the British navy and its formidable marines able to sail blithely up the Hudson, Jake's recent mission to fool General Howe would be rendered useless. Upper New York could be taken in a hairsbreadth by a tiny fraction of the available British forces, and the vital supply link between New England and the southern colonies would be severed. Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island — all would quickly starve to death. The Revolution itself would surely follow.
'The chain itself is formidable,' said the captain, 'but our other defenses, and the men…'
Here the officer shook his head, as if his pessimism were a physical thing that had formed on his tongue, and by clamping his mouth he might change the entire situation. He smiled, tried boldly to continue, though his voice was still forlorn.
'Things are difficult for us, with such short supplies. Morale has fallen sharply; even I despair at times. The British have been recruiting men from the countryside as rangers, and it has been difficult to stop them. I have no doubt the man you killed was a recruiter.'
'Good riddance, then,' said Jake.
'Yes. But there will be more if our situation doesn't improve. Even my own men are tempted to desert.'
Jake received this sobering sentiment silently, realizing that though the situation was difficult, Angell would not have a man under him who would truly despair no matter how dire the circumstance. Van Clynne, on the other hand, took offense, and proceeded to upbraid the captain, telling him he was a soldier in the greatest army ever assembled, a fighter for Freedom, a defender of all that was holy and then some.
'Your friend sounds like a member of Congress,' the captain told Jake.
'You'll have to forgive him. He hasn't had any dinner.'
'I have only dry biscuits to offer you myself. But there is an inn not too far from here, owned by a fellow named Prisco. An agreeable sort — if you told him you are on your way to Schuyler, I daresay he'd advance you the price of a good meal.'
'We are well acquainted with Justice Prisco,' said Jake. 'In fact, that is our destination, since we hope to stay the night there.'
And more, perhaps, as Prisco's inn was the same where Claus van Clynne had fallen in love not a week before. Sweet Jane — but perhaps it is better not to burden the reader with her portrait at present.
The Dutchman, having gained an understanding of the overall need for supplies and seeing firsthand the severe effect on morale, had already resolved to assist in remedying the situation — especially as he realized a ready profit could be made. Thus he was now all the more anxious to get to the inn and see Jane — whom he would entrust to make certain contacts on his behalf with merchants further north. He mounted his horse and sat nodding and clearing his throat while Jake spent an inordinate number of seconds bidding the captain farewell.
The gray-dappled stallion Johnson had so graciously bequeathed the patriot spy was a large, well-mannered beast that accepted Jake's long legs gracefully. It was a powerful horse, and would gladly have broken into a gallop if its new master had wished. But Jake, ignoring van Clynne's continued complaints, kept the pace slow to ease the strain on his injured mare, following behind. Despite the Dutchman's shortcuts — there was not a cow path in the state he did not know, nor a route he could not cut by five minutes — night had covered them with a heavy blanket of darkness before they reached Prisco's. The innkeeper himself greeted them in the yard between the large but
