Chapter Six
“ Drop your weapon, sir, or you will find yourself singing in Gabriel’s choir,” said the gun’s master, the same lad who had earlier acted as advance scout.
Jake couldn’t help but admire the young man’s spirit. He also couldn’t help but hold his arms out at a fair length, then slowly bend his knees for the ground.
“ I’ll just set my pistol down here,” he said, placing it on the long, woven carpet before him.
“ Now take a step away. Smartly if you please,” said the lad.
“ As you wish,” said Jake, who stepped with his right foot off the rug — and with his left foot pulled the cloth suddenly forward, judging that the boy was too light and the floor too polished to offer much resistance. He judged correctly — and caught the lad and his gun as they flew upward.
“ Let go of me or I’ll tell Mother!”
“ I’ll tell her myself,” said Jake, holding the squirming lad beneath his arm like a log as he fetched and extinguished the matchlock. “I admire your bravery, but you’re expressing it on the wrong side of the fight.”
“ My father will have you hung.”
“ Your father will do well not to be hung himself,” said Jake, carrying the boy forward into the front room where his mother was waiting.
“ Put my son down, sir, or I’ll shoot you through with this swivel cannon.”
The woman had turned the gun, mounted on a thick steel tripod in the middle of the front hall, to face him. She was holding a fuse stick in her hand. Jake could see from the flush in her throat that her heart was beating close to its limit.
“ Come now,” said Jake, taking another step inside. “I have no desire to hurt you, and I know that you don’t want to hurt your son.”
“ I warn you, sir, don’t test me.”
The swivel was a very light but also exceedingly deadly gun. A bit more than four feet long, it weighed near two hundred pounds, but was situated on a mount that made it relatively easy to maneuver, even for a woman. It could not be turned quickly, however, and Jake had only to take two quick side steps to get out of its line of fire. With his third, he tossed the boy toward his mother. Instinctually, she put up her arms to catch the lad, and in so doing, dropped the wooden switch she meant to use to fire the gun. Jake clamped down on it with his foot, dropped the matchlock and pulled out his pistol.
“ Please, madam, step away. This gun is loaded and I will feel very sad if I have to shoot you.”
“ Go ahead, rebel,” said the woman. “I am ready.”
It was terrible to see such bravery wasted in a Tory, and Jake shook his head. “I would not make your poor children orphans,” he said. “Into the kitchen with you now.”
Two little girls emerged from behind a chair and brought the standstill to an end. The woman gathered them to her quickly, and cursing Jake to hell, escorted her brood to the back.
Unfortunately, this was not the end of this family’s bravery. For in his rush to press his advantage, Jake had left his deflinted pistol on the threshold. As the woman made a break with her children for the backyard and freedom, her son Jamie decided he had not yet surrendered — slipping from his mother’s arm, he went back into the house and grabbed the gun, continuing inside to confront the intruder.
“ Well, you’re just the type we need fighting on our side,” Jake said, as he looked up to see the boy before him. The lad’s mother was just coming inside, and now Jake saw the brave look from before had been turned to one of deep worry. “I should like you to meet General Washington,” he told the boy as he continued to work on the cannon, wadding a piece of the carpet in the mouth so it would misfire. “He has a gun just like that one.”
“ He’s a rebel and a scoundrel,” said the boy.
“ No, no, the general is a brave man,” said Jake, picking up the lit stick. “You would like him very much, and he would like you. He likes brave lads.”
The boy steadied the gun in both hands. In truth, he might have had a good chance of hitting Jake had it been able to fire.
“ Put down the gun, Jamie,” said his mother behind him. “He said he wouldn’t hurt us.”
“ You can’t trust a rebel, Mum.”
As Jake took a step forward, he realized Mrs. Smith’s face might not only express concern for her son, but for him as well. Perhaps they might find their way to the right side and do it good service.
They certainly had the raw materials of spunk and bravery — the boy leveled the pistol and pulled the trigger at point-blank range.
“ The flint is in my pocket,” said Jake as he took it from the bewildered boy. “But this other gun is well- loaded. Take the boy and the other children into the woods, madam. The cannon will make a dreadful mess when it explodes.”
Outside, the festivities were just getting under way as the old Liberty boys marched up the road with much shouting and threats to the king’s well-being. They had mounted their vat of tar on a small cart and pulled and pushed it along with such abandon that it slipped quite easily into the moat Smith and the British villain Peters had constructed.
“ That’s what you get, Rebels,” said Peters, emerging from a nearby bush and standing over the ditch.
“ We’ll run you out,” promised one of the few men who had not fallen into the water-filled hole. “And you, Smith — we’d hoped for better from you.”
Smith’s response was cut short by a tremendous explosion from inside the house.
“ My wife and children!” yelled the Tory, running for the building.
He was no doubt surprised to find his neighbors running right behind him, echoing his concerns. Jake certainly was, as watching from the shadows he saw the men help Smith put out the flames and call for his family in the shattered ruins. Suddenly politics had ceased to matter, and the Liberty boys even held off citing this catastrophe as an example of what came from associating with the British until Smith was tearfully reunited with his family.
The reader knows that most encounters between would-be Loyalist and ardent patriots have not ended with optimistic promises to help rebuild the former’s damaged house as this one did, but Jake could not help but smile as he slipped toward the road, realizing that the British recruiter — now helping douse the flames — would find no further succor here, and would indeed end the night by being placed under arrest.
Jake could also not help but smile at the cries of the one man left in the muddy pit, Claus van Clynne.
“ Help!” called van Clynne, who could not get a good enough footing in the slippery mud to pull himself out of the waist-high water. “I can’t swim. This water is deeper than the Atlantic. A rope or a hand before I drown would be greatly appreciated.”
Not wanting to blow his cover unless absolutely necessary, Jake crept silently to the edge of the moat and made sure the Dutchman was in no immediate danger. He then trotted back toward Blom’s house, so pleased by the events of the night that he found himself wishing Johanna were just a few years older.
Chapter Seven
“ So?”
Van Clynne shot Jake a puzzled glance from the back of his horse. “So what?”
“ How’d it go?”
“ How’d what go?”
“ You left your bed in the middle of the night. I assume you had a midnight rendezvous in town.”
“ I told you, I spent the entire night sleeping outside the door to our room. Why did you bar it against
