The caravan tried to keep well out from the riverbank where a sudden attack could overwhelm them. It meant they were visible from a ways off when the weather was clear, but it couldn’t be helped. Fortunately, this day an almost providential mist covered the river and helped hide them.
The six canoes were led by guide named Micah and two of his friends. They were scrawny and their clothes were ragged and filthy. However, their weapons were clean and in good condition, a necessity in the wilderness. Micah and friends had gathered what they referred to as “pilgrims” and, in return for payment, promised them safe passage westward to where they could trek north to American-controlled land.
Neither Faith nor Sarah quite trusted Micah and his companions. He seemed skittish and often declined to look them in the eye. Sarah and Faith still wore men’s clothes as did several of the other women traveling with them. The wilderness was not the place for traditional proprieties.
“I don’t trust him,” said Faith, echoing their concerns. They knew nothing about Micah except for the fact that he was willing to guide them for money.
“I don’t either,” said Sarah. “But I don’t think we had much of a choice. It is either go west with him or someone like him as a guide, or stay back and someday be captured.”
“He keeps staring at my breasts,” Faith added.
Aunt Rebecca snorted. “Perhaps if you kept your shirt fastened, and if your pants weren’t so tight, he wouldn’t be looking so intently.”
“Why have charms if you can’t use them?” Faith sniffed, causing Sarah to conclude that her little cousin had begun to recover from her ordeal with Braxton’s deputies, and that she wasn’t as innocent or naive as Sarah thought she was. Of course, how innocent could anyone be after suffering at the hands of Braxton and his men? Innocent perhaps, but naïve? Never.
Micah signaled with his paddle and the canoes veered closer to the shore. “Why,” Sarah asked. No one knew and Micah didn’t respond. They generally only went to ground at night, but that was a long time away.
“Maybe he sees something,” Faith said, and wondered just how and what he might see through the mist and the dense foliage.
“I won’t be happy until he sees the place where we can get off these things,” Sarah groaned. “Kneeling like this is worse than the stocks.” Not really, she thought. Nothing would ever be worse than that day.
Faith giggled. “Don’t you like paddling a canoe like a Red Indian?”
Sarah declined to respond. At least they were going with the current and not fighting it. Tom signaled another change and they followed the leading canoes still closer to the land. Ahead of them and on the far side of the wide river, the mist parted for an instant and they saw several other canoes heading the opposite direction, and what looked like armed men in them. The mist returned and covered them
“Ours or theirs?” muttered Uncle Wilford.
“I don’t wish to know,” Sarah said.
What if the men in the other canoes had been a British patrol? Strange, Sarah thought. If it was a British patrol, might they soon be paddling over to intercept the boat? Perhaps their luck had held and they really hadn’t been noticed.
A musket blast shattered the silence. It was followed by another and another and then by screams from the lead canoes. At least one had tipped over, spilling its human contents into the river. In horror, Sarah saw a man’s body floating face down and trailing blood from a gaping wound in his head.
She turned to her left, where the riverbank was close. Men were standing on it and shooting at them. Micah had betrayed them. He had led them into this trap.
More musket fire and more screams filled the air. Sarah picked up a fowling piece and shot at a man only a few yards away. He clutched his leg and fell screaming into the water. It occurred to her that there weren’t all that many attackers and that they weren’t British or Americans. She realized that they were nothing more than bandits. If they were taken by them, it would be worse than being captured by the British. From what they’d heard, the outlaws were little more than animals.
Wilford fired his musket at another man and missed. A bandit jumped into the canoe and clubbed Wilford down to his knees while Faith screamed and jumped on the man’s back. Sarah pulled a knife from her waist and slashed at another man who grabbed her and tried to throw her into the water.
Fortunately, Faith had distracted Wilford’s attacker long enough for him to pull his own knife and stab his assailant in the stomach. Aunt Rebecca helped out by clubbing another bandit with a paddle and then pushing him into the river.
They had regained control of their own canoe, but the others were either capsized or being fought over. Micah’s canoe, of course, was controlled by him and he now turned it towards Sarah’s. The three men originally in it had been reinforced by two of the attackers from shore. With five strong paddlers, there was no way they could outrun Micah’s canoe.
“Load,” Wilford yelled.
One fowling piece and one musket wouldn’t be enough, but it was all they had. Silently, they vowed to sell their lives dearly. Sarah was bitter that it was all coming to this. They would be killed, but not until they were robbed, tortured, and the three women raped. That the women were wearing men’s clothes as a disguise wouldn’t fool their new attackers any more than it had fooled their traitorous leader, Micah. She thought about putting the fowling piece into her mouth and blowing her brains out. No, she thought. She would take at least one more of them with her. Besides, if she fought hard enough, perhaps Faith or one of the others would escape. Logic said it was a fool’s thought, but she could not bring herself to die at her own hand.
The outlaws’ canoe was only yards away when both she and Wilford fired and, to their horror, missed. Micah and his cronies hollered with glee. Micah stood up unsteadily and grabbed his crotch, screaming what he was going to do to the women.
They had only gotten a little closer when a volley of gunfire swept Micah and the others off the canoe and into the river. Sarah watched incredulously as more gunfire was directed at the few remaining attackers on the shore. Those bandits promptly turned and ran.
They were safe, at least for the moment. But why and how?
* * *
Homer’s trek alone from Manhattan Island began quietly and stayed that way for several days. There were few roads leading towards Boston, merely paths at best, and he walked them carefully. He was fully aware of his vulnerability as a lone black man in a land not that far removed from being a savage frontier.
He could not carry a musket or a pistol as white farmers or city-dwellers would find him threatening. They might even take it into their heads to shoot first and ask him his business over his lifeless corpse.
No, he would stay in the shadows of the trees that lined the miserable excuses for roads and endure the additional hardship that it entailed. The few people he had seen had behaved in such a way as to reinforce his plan. Once, a woman in a field screamed when she saw his dark skin and ran back to a cabin. A few seconds later, a man with a musket emerged and aimed it at him, telling him bluntly to get the hell away from his property.
Homer had complied, of course, but wondered to himself if a rampaging Iroquois war party would have gotten the same or better treatment. He also wondered if the poor couple had ever seen a Negro before. He could always go back to New York, he thought. Nobody there would have missed him in the first place. But no, it was time to start something new, a series of thoughts that had been triggered when he pulled that poor naked and starving white man from the river.
“Hold up, nigger.”
Homer froze and cursed silently. He’d permitted himself to be lulled and now two men stood just a few feet in front of him, their muskets not quite pointed at his chest.