'What the hell are you doing, Smith!'
Stunned, Jake looked up into the face of the sergeant, who had stopped at the intersection of an old Indian path and waited for his men to pass him. 'I was just dropping these in case we were followed,' Jake explained, tossing his last handful. 'Stop wasting time. No one is following us. Now, down this path and look smart — I don't like stragglers.' 'Yes, sir,' said Jake, kicking his horse. Lewis was wrong, and in fact the group was being hotly pursued — by Captain Busch. The Tory urged his horse onward, succeeding in getting it to gallop — only to be deposited in a heap when the stallion stung its foot on one of Jake's caltrops not a quarter of a mile from the place where Lewis was bawling out his rear guard.
Cursing, Busch gathered his wits as he dusted the dirt from his clothes. He examined the horse and found the poor animal sufficiently injured that it could no longer be ridden.
Had the circumstances been different, he might have shown the poor animal more compassion. Indeed, he was a great lover of horses, and realizing that the animal's wounds would soon heal, he did not shoot him. But neither did he take the horse with him as he struck out through the woods toward a small inn where he believed he could secure — or steal, if necessary — another.
The tavern was owned by a Dutchman known to be sympathetic to the rebels, though his wife seemed a better judge of character. Not that it would matter much if they tried to stop him — Busch made sure both pistols were loaded as he ran the half mile to the house.
Chapter Thirty-one
Refreshed from breakfast, Squire van Clynne set out with new vigor, though his pace was even slower than before. The chafing of his posterior against the horse's back was so severe that he would have gladly reopened his heel for the purchase of a saddle, if only one were to be had. The country here, rolling hills and forest, had not been adequately developed, in van Clynne's opinion. It was given over entirely to apple farms, and even these appeared to have been abandoned for a considerable length of time. Thus the conveniences of modern life — like saddle shops-were not at hand.
Nonetheless, he made steady progress, prodded by the knowledge that General Putnam was empowered to issue a certificate that would compensate not only his financial losses but his efforts to the Cause as well. Indeed, an even greater plan took shape in the Dutchman's mind as he rode. He would ask — nay, he would demand — that the general appoint him to the lead of a squadron of men, bold soldiers whom he would take against these Tory scoundrels, foiling their attack on the Great Hudson River Chain and, not incidentally, recovering his salt.
And very possibly, his coins as well. His exploits would be proclaimed throughout the continent — he knew newspaper owners in every city of consequence — and General Washington would volunteer to restore his estate. The Congress would demand it, for the population would have his name on its lips: 'Claus van Clynne, the man who saved the nation. The man who saved the Great Hudson River Chain.'
The Great Hudson River Iron Chain — that had a better ring to it. An iron-willed Dutchman who saved Freedom. Why, he could hear the minstrels celebrating his victory already.
Actually, now that he listened more closely, the music sounded remarkably like 'Yankee Doodle.' Van Clynne turned his head in the direction of the song and spotted a small wooden house not far off the road. A makeshift banner fluttered on a slender twig stuck near the doorway; van Clynne concluded that the red dots on yellow background were a company marker, designed to give the unit pride as well as identity. The owners were all inside, obviously celebrating a recent victory over the British — for the song, once sung in derision of the American army, had been turned around and appropriated as the boldest curse possible against the British regulars. The young voices sang with such joy and emotion that the roof was shaking, and van Clynne suspected that though the sun had only just risen, the men had gone through their daily quotient of rum.
Providence had sent him his soldiers!
Why not enlist them now, foil this damnable plot against the chain, and present himself to Putnam as a hero instead of one more worthy citizen who had been robbed?
Any reader who thinks van Clynne would have paused to answer such a question, rhetorically or otherwise, does not recognize the true nature of the Dutchman. In a thrice, he had crossed the small stream separating him from the house and hitched his horse outside. Without bothering to knock, he walked straight inside and immediately fell in on the chorus of 'Yankee Doodle.'
There were a dozen young Connecticut continental privates crammed into the room, all in spirits jolly enough to ignore his frequent sour notes. They passed him a cup of cider and continued their song, venturing into a verse the good Dutchman had scarce heard before:
Heigh for old Cape Cod
Heigh ho Nannatasket
Do not let those Boston wags
Feel your oyster basket.
The ribald play on words — the interested reader should ponder the image contained in the last line — had a curious effect on the Dutchman, whose recent pursuit of love had made him curiously chaste. He turned red and momentarily lost his voice. Nonetheless, he soon fell back in tune as the men swung into a rousing version of 'Free America,' Dr. Joseph Warren's ingenious revision of 'The British Grenadiers.'
The accompaniment was provided by a pasty-faced man of twenty or twenty-one, who worked his fiddle with such fervor that his face blotched with red dots and smears of exertion. Every man kept beat with his shoe, and one or two blew tin whistles instead of singing.
Van Clynne was moved by the evident patriotism and spirit of this group; Fate could not have provided him with a better troop to win his fortune back.
'Gentlemen, gentlemen,' said van Clynne, moving to the center of the room as the song ended. 'Please, listen to me a moment. Who is the commanding officer here?'
'There's the colonel, sir, John Chandler,' said one able young man, a great strapping lad barely out of his teens, if that. 'He's up at headquarters, though.' 'In this cottage, who is in charge?' 'Well, there's no one in charge exactly, sir. We're all equals, being free men of Connecticut.' Van Clynne nodded his approval; these were men inoculated with the spirit of Democracy from the very cradle.
'Excellent, excellent. Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?' asked van Clynne with great flourish, determined to commit every detail of this entire episode to memory, so as to provide a careful account for future chroniclers.
'Private Martin, at your service,' said the young man, who promptly stuck out his hand and shook van Clynne's.
'My name is Claus van Clynne, gentlemen. I am a special agent assigned in the service of His Excellency General Washington.' It was not a great exaggeration, surely, if one follows the logic that Jake Gibbs was Washington's man, and van Clynne his coequal assistant. “As well as a roving member of the Committees of Correspondence, Safety, and Ale Tasting.' Ever mindful of his audience, the Dutchman was well aware that these young men would respond most fully to the last. 'My rank as a hereditary commissioner of the New Netherlands authority as vested under the Treaty of Amsterdam is the equivalent of captain-general, triple-cluster.'
The privates were somewhat stupefied by the speech-making, and while looking for any excuse for action — they had been confined here for some time — did not know precisely what to make of their visitor.
'Begging your pardon, sir,' said Martin, seeing he had been designated their spokesman. 'With all respect and honor, we've heard of lieutenant generals and major generals and even general generals, but never captain- generals. Where exactly does that fit in?'
'Captain-general, triple-cluster,' van Clynne corrected. 'Unclustered, it would correlate precisely between my brother generals, the lieutenant and major. But the clusters are indeed multipliers, as I'm sure you recall from your school days. If we turn to the table of threes…'
The reader by now is familiar with the sort of logic and tactics of persuasion the Dutchman habitually calls
