frowned. Such hats were common among English-bred colonists; surely their creases conformed to some irregularity within the skull. His opinion of the stranger dropped appreciably, though he was careful not to share it.
“ Thank you, sir, for your assistance,” said van Clynne gracefully. “I am obliged.”
“ No problem. Always pleased to help a fellow traveler.”
“ Yes, yes.” Van Clynne harrumphed in the direction of the pocket pistol which Jake still held in his hand.
“ I think not,” Jake replied, understanding that van Clynne wanted it.
“ Thieves come in all shapes and sizes these days,” grumbled the Dutchman. “The whole world is going to hell.”
“ I didn’t say I was keeping it. Just that I wouldn’t give it to you.” He carefully uncocked the miniature lock and unscrewed the barrel to remove the bullet. “Buy me a drink?”
“ Buy you a drink?”
“ I did save your life.”
“ Yes, well, perhaps he would have missed.”
Jake tapped the belly in front of him but said nothing, motioning to the chair instead and calling over the innkeeper for two ales.
“ On me,” said Jake. “You’re a trader?”
Van Clynne made a face immediately. “A trader, sir, is a man only shortly removed from the lowest form of life scuttling about the forest floor. I am a merchant, a freelance proprietor, a good man of business and a man of standing in the world, I daresay.”
“ I see.”
“ I deal in commodities and services. At present, I am going north to arrange for the purchase of some good Canadian wood, as well as some other odds and ends. I have many interests. Upon occasion I even consent to handle a few odd furs, although as I have said, it is mostly a matter of charity, vainglorious charity.”
“ You are going to Canada?”
“ I may.” Van Clynne eyes his drink cautiously, but then lifted the tankard and drained off a good portion.
“ You have the papers that will take you past the patrols?”
“ I have the right to come and go as I please,” said van Clynne haughtily. “I am a businessman. I have rights of passage from both Carleton and Philip Schuyler.”
“ I’m going that way myself. Perhaps you can guide me.”
“ Guide? The road is well-marked.”
“ I’ve never been over it.”
“ Hmmph.” Van Clynne finished off the rest of the ale, then pushed the tankard forward for a refill. “Twenty crowns,” he said after the girl had taken it off to the kitchen.
“ For?”
“ Twenty crowns to take you across the British lines with me. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“ Perhaps.”
“ Ha! You don’t have the proper papers and are afraid of being apprehended — most likely by the patriots, who would tar and feather your for breakfast.”
Van Clynne quieted as the girl approached with his refill cup. He waited until she had left before speaking again.
“ You’re a Tory, aren’t you?” said the Dutchman under his breath.
“ Actually, I’m on a business trip, as you are,” said Jake smoothly. “My family is in the apothecary trade, and we are looking to buy rattlesnake essence from the Indians to the north. I have the requisite papers.”
“ I quite mistook you, sir,” said van Clynne, rolling his eyeball up and down like a periscope surveying the countryside from the safety of a walled fortress wall. “It will cost thirty crowns to take you north with a story like that. Plus expenses. No paper money, please.”
“ It’s not such a bad story,” said Jake.
“ Ha!” Van Clynne’s laugh momentarily filled the inn before he returned his voice to its strategic softness. “I should like to hear it told at Ticonderoga. The first thing I would do, if I were you, would be to lose that hat. Get something sensible like mine. Beavers are meant to be round.
“ Ten crowns,” said Jake.
“ Thirty-five.”
“ You’re moving in the wrong direction.”
“ I’m Dutch.”
“ I’ll give you fifteen when we reach Montreal.”
“ Five now, and twenty at Crown Point.”
The price for a canoe ride from Albany to Crown Point — before the war — was about five New York pounds, just a bit over what van Clynne was asking for a shorter journey that would not include the amenities or expenses of transportation. The reader may draw his or her own conclusion as to how hard a bargain the Dutchman was driving.
“ Twenty in total,” said Jake. “At Montreal. I have a friend there who will lend me the money. I’ve barely enough shillings now for the trip.”
Van Clynne’s eye once more slipped into periscope mode. A frown came to his face, and he stuck out his hand to seal the deal.
“ I can spot them a mile away,” he said after they had each had a sip of beer. “That’s your black stallion with the fancy bags out there, isn’t it? I saw it on the way in and said to myself, now there’s a Tory.”
Jake smiled but said nothing. The rattlesnake story — which had some vague elements of truth to it, since his family was in the apothecary business — was indeed pathetic, but it was supposed to be. This Dutchman was perfect, completely of a type most useful to a man in Jake’s profession. The more you puffed up their pride and let them think they were brilliant, the more they played the cooperative fool. Van Clynne was just the person to help him avoid notice as he crossed the border.
“ This beer — the brewer is not Dutch, I daresay,” grumbled van Clynne. “There was a time when every wife knew how to make ale, and every wife’s ale was nectar to the angels. Now — pfffff. Taste this. Taste it.”
“ You’ve finished your whole tankard already.”
“ Due to thirst only. I would not have another. No, no, under no circumstances, though my thirst does remain quite strong, sir, now that you mention it.”
“ I didn’t mention it. And I’m not going to buy you one.”
Van Clynne frowned, realizing there was more to this Mr. Gibbs than his silly hat or lame story foretold. Still, twenty crowns was twenty crowns, especially in British currency.
“ I suppose your friends will be waiting for us outside,” said Jake, draining his cup and rising to resume the journey. He was anxious to get moving.
“ I doubt it,” said van Clynne. “I know these fellows well. They’re cowards. Must be in the next county by now.”
But Jake proved to be the better judge of character. Pieter Gerk, armed with a fresh knife, accosted them halfway between the door and the paddock where the horses were tied. His sidekick Pohl was conspicuously absent.
Jake ducked just in time. Pohl missed and flew through the air spectacularly, though he was in no position to admire the trajectory. Jake reached up and knocked the man’s foot as he passed, altering his path enough to change what would have been a four-point landing into a one-point crash, that point being his head.
But Pohl was a robust man, with an extremely thick skull. Somewhat to Jake’s surprise, he managed not only to get up, but to punch him in the stomach when he approached. Jake fell back and pulled a small black pouch from under his belt where it had been secreted. As Pohl charged blindly toward him, he stepped aside and clamped his hand with the bag’s contents on Pohl’s nose.
This miscreant stood straight upright, temporarily paralyzed by scorpion powder. A flick of Jake’s wrist sent him in a heap to the dust.
In the meantime, van Clynne had stirred himself, knocking Gerk back against the tree and once again separating him from his knife. If the Dutchman was portly, he was spry for his size; his frame held a good deal of
