Rumstick led his men through the barnyard and over a rail fence at the far side, then across a field of frozen grass where a few sorry cows stood huddled off in the far corner. He moved quickly, his feet making crunching noises on the ground. That, and the similar crunching of the other men, was the only sound he could hear over the light wind.
“Lieutenant?” The voice came from his left and almost alongside and Rumstick turned his head as he walked. It was Sullivan, the farmer turned marine.
“Yeah?”
“Well, sir…are you planning on just walking across this field, like we’re doing?”
Rumstick frowned. It seemed like a stupid question. “We’re heading east. That’s the way we want to go.”
“It’s just that…walking across the field like this, it’ll be damned easy for anyone who knows anything about tracking to follow us,” Sullivan said. “And I reckon among them pine robbers, there’s like to be someone who knows that business.”
“You know about tracking?” Rumstick asked.
“Some,” Sullivan said. He paused, and then added, “Truth be told, a lot.”
“And you can lead us so they can’t follow?”
“I can lead so’s it’ll be damned hard to follow, sir,” Sullivan said. “Impossible, unless they’re very good.”
“Very well,” Rumstick said, gesturing to the spot in front of himself. “You take the lead.”
Sullivan moved to the front of the column, and at first he did not alter the direction of the march. But when they came to the edge of a plowed field, he turned sharply right, which was not at all the direction Rumstick wished to travel, and he passed the word back for the men to walk in a strict single file. They followed the edge of the field for some time, moving nearly at a jog, then Sullivan turned again and led the line down a plowed furrow in a direction that was more southeasterly, closer to the rhumb line course to Great Egg Harbor.
For some time, they continued on like that, zigging and zagging from one section of difficult ground to another. It reminded Rumstick of trying to beat a ship to windward, tack after tack, covering so much ground but making so little progress toward their goal. Still, when looked back, he had to admit there was no track to be seen, whereas when he had been leading them, they left a path in their wake as visible as a post road.
The farm was well behind them by the time Rumstick noticed a general lifting of the darkness. The fields emerging in the dawn light appeared as gray-blue stretches of open ground, with stands of trees off in the distance. He looked up. The cloud cover had not broken up in the least, but somewhere behind it the sun was rising and soon it would turn the near-black sky to a leaden wolf-gray.
“Halloa, Sullivan,” he said in a loud whisper. “Sun’s coming up. What do you reckon…keep on going or find some place to hide?”
With that Sullivan stopped and turned and the rest of the men stopped and Rumstick imagined they were as grateful as he was for the respite. Sullivan looked back over the country they had just crossed.
“Reckon they’ve found the guards by now, and they’re coming after us,” he said. “They might think we took to the road, so they’ll just follow that. Or they might try to track us, but that won’t be easy. It might be best to find a place to hide. Or it might be best to press on. I don’t know.”
Well, that was damned unhelpful, Rumstick thought, but he did not say anything, because it was not Sullivan’s job to make that decision, it was his. He considered the options and tried to reckon what Wilcox’s priorities would be.
That fellow Barnett seemed to inspire a lot of fear among these people, meaning Wilcox would not want to return to Great Egg Harbor empty-handed. Rather, he would try to hunt his escaped prisoners down. Or perhaps he would shirk all blame and head back to the Pine Barrens, but Rumstick doubted he and his men would get that lucky. Luck had not been their companion of late.
“We’ll press on,” Rumstick said. “Right for Great Egg, and less tacking and wearing. I reckon if they’re trying to follow, then we’ve thrown them off our trail. But if they’re heading straight to meet up with Barnett, then we’ve got to beat them to it.”
“Yes, sir,” Sullivan said.
“We’ll rest another couple of minutes,” Rumstick said. “Then we’ll shove off.”
Some of the men crouched on their heels, some remained standing. No one sat on the frozen ground. They would have all dearly liked a drink of water or a bite of food, but they had neither. Then, after a few moments of a largely unsatisfying break, they were up and moving again.
Sullivan kept the lead, but he did as Rumstick wished and took a more direct route toward Great Egg Harbor. He still veered in one direction or another, keeping to ground that would help cover their tracks, but not with the same care as before, and they made much quicker time over the rolling hills and the long, flat, plowed fields.
“There’s smoke,” Sullivan said at last as they came up on the crest of a hill. Off to the east, they could see a few columns rising at an angle from unseen chimneys, the scattering of houses, and the tavern that made up the little town. Rumstick paused and turned back and looked over the countryside they had just covered.
“Sir?” Sullivan asked. “What…what are you doing, sir?”
“Looking for Wilcox and his men,” Rumstick said.
“Best not to stop on the crest of the hill, sir, where we’re easily seen against the sky,” Sullivan said.
Rumstick grunted and continued down over the hill, then stopped when he was mostly concealed behind the high ground. He turned again and looked back and Sullivan did the same. The two men ran their eyes over the land to the west.
“Don’t see anything,” Rumstick said.
“There, sir,” Sullivan said, pointing. Rumstick looked off in the direction the marine indicated. He could see men moving about, or so he thought. Not a group of men but a few scattered individuals. One was on a road that seemed to parallel the main road through the countryside, a few others were moving across the fields.
“Very well…” Rumstick said, drawing out the last syllable. “I think I see them. You sure they’re not just farmers or such? Men at work?”
“Might be, lieutenant,” Sullivan said. “But to me, they look more akin to folks spread on the march and searching. Like Wilcox spread his men out so they could look for our tracks as they make for the harbor. It’s what I’d do.”
Rumstick nodded. “Me too, I reckon. All right, it’s a foot race, now. Let’s get us back to Falmouth before they find us, or cut us off.”
They headed off again, once more increasing their pace, once more making less of an effort to cover their tracks. They knew from the columns of smoke ahead that they were close to the village, and soon they could see the tops of the roofs, the brick chimneys. And then they were on one of the roads leading into Great Egg Harbor itself. They had no oxen, no logger’s wheels, no spars, just the clothes they wore, but they had returned.
As to weapons, Ferguson and Kirby alone still had their muskets, and beyond that, there were just the four they had lifted from Wilcox’s guards. Of those, Rumstick carried one and he gave another to Sullivan and the other two went to his two steadiest men.
They came in from the west, marching in a loose column into town, a dozen men and half as many guns, making for the waterfront. Rumstick, at the head of the column, had already passed a two-story house on his left when he heard a voice call out to him from the kitchen yard.
“I say!” the voice called. “Lieutenant Rumstick? I say!”
Rumstick held up a hand and stopped and turned. The fellow in the yard was dressed in an old coat and a wool hat and armed with an ax. In front of him, a stump, and around it a scattering of kindling, fresh-cut. He chopped the ax down into the stump and left it standing there as he crossed to the low picket fence that separated the yard from the road.
“Yes?” Rumstick said. He recognized the man’s face. He could not place him, but he had to assume he was part of the Gloucester County Militia, because those people were the only ones in town he might recognize. Them and Barnett’s pine robbers.
“Lieutenant, I’m Jonathan Mitnick… Captain Jonathan Mitnick. Gloucester County Militia. We’ve met…on a few occasions.”
“Of course, captain, of course,” Rumstick said, though if he was asked to recall any of those meetings he would certainly have failed. “What’s acting around here?”
“Well…” Mitnick began, “I guess the question is more, what’s acting with you? I know you and your men were off to the Pine Barrens…” He glanced down the road as if looking for the oxen and the logs and logger’s wheels. “You have a couple of my oxen with you, in fact. Or did.” He did not sound pleased by the apparent loss of his draft animals.
“Oxen are back up the road some,” Rumstick said, nodding back the way they had come. “And we’re heading back to Falmouth.”
At that, Mitnick’s eyes went wide. “Oh, no, you mustn’t do that,” he said. “Barnett and his banditti, they’ve laid siege to the ship. Set up camp right at the end of the wharf. No one’s going on or off the ship. Locked up tight.”
Rumstick frowned. “Siege?” he said.
“That’s right,” Mitnick said. “We thought…well, we knew Barnett sent some men off to take you and your men here prisoner. Rumor was he was going to use you as hostages, make Captain Biddlecomb trade the ship for you. Or hang the lot of you, right at the end of the wharf. To tell the truth, most of us thought you were prisoners already. That’s why I was so surprised to see you come marching down the road.”
“Is that a fact?” Rumstick said. “Well, we’re not prisoners, not yet. And now we’re going back to our ship.”
“Listen, sir, Barnett had fifty men or more there at the camp.” He looked over Rumstick’s column. “And it looks like you got but half a dozen muskets. Of course, I have no say over what you do, but I would not recommend marching right into Barnett’s arms. You’d be doing him the biggest favor you could do.”
Rumstick frowned, not sure exactly what he should say or do with this information. “Very well, if this Barnett’s invaded your town, why don’t you and the militia drive him out? You got as many men as him, don’t you?”
“Close on as many,” Mitnick agreed. “But the thing of it is, Colonel Somers, he commands the militia. I don’t have much say over what the militia does, any more than I have say over what you do.”
I hope you at least have some say over what your wife does, you sorry bastard, Rumstick thought but he kept that to himself.
“So why doesn’t Colonel Somers do something about these pine robbers?” Rumstick asked instead.
“Well…reckon you’d have to ask him,” Mitnick said, and Rumstick could hear the mix of humiliation and anger in the reply. He had hit a sore spot here, he could tell, a matter of disagreement between the men.
“I would like to ask him,” Rumstick said. “I would like that very much indeed. So, let us do this. Me and my men, we’ll just slip into your barn, out of sight. And you can bring us some food and some drink, if you’d be so kind. And while we break our fast, you can go and fetch Colonel Somers and we’ll all discuss this situation like the gentlemen we are.”
Mitnick was not just willing to help, but eager to do so, and soon Rumstick and his men found themselves once again sprawled out on a stack of hay, eight hours after they had freed themselves from the barn in which Wilcox had been holding them. Their circumstances were much more amenable this time, however, with their hands not bound and not being under threat of death. They had jugs of beer and loaves of fresh, soft bread, and a ham and a cold roast, which they went at eagerly. Once those things had been consumed, leaving only a scattering of crumbs and two well-cleaned bones, they laid down and soon were fast asleep.
Rumstick meant to stay awake until Somers arrived, though in truth, he had no notion of how long that might be. He knew very little of the colonel, save that he was an amiable cove who was not much given to decisive action of any kind. He did not know if Mitnick would find him on a farm half a mile away or out on a fishing boat three miles off shore.
So, given that he did not know how long he might expect to wait, Rumstick figured it would do no harm to just recline onto the straw and rest his eyes for a moment. He could feel the fatigue behind them.
He woke in the twilight of the barn with someone shaking him. He had no notion of how long he had been asleep, and there was not much that might tell him the answer. He could see the gray November light through the cracks between the boards, so he knew it was still daytime, anyway.
Captain Mitnick was leaning over him, shaking his shoulder. Rumstick made a grunting noise to indicate he was awake and that Mitnick could stop shaking him. He sat up, then stood and brushed the straw off of himself. Colonel Somers was standing to Mitnick’s left. The older man looked tired, and worried.
“Ah, Lieutenant Rumstick!” Somers said. “It’s good to see you, good indeed. We had feared the worst, you know. That bastard Barnett, he’s a great savage, and he has a damned lot of men under his command.”
“You’ll get no argument from me,” Rumstick said. “But what’s to be done about it? Why is he suffered to just decide who comes and goes on the wharf?”
“Ah, well…” Somers began. He glanced over at Mitnick for help, but it was clear that Mitnick was going to offer no assistance. “He has a damned lot of men, like I said. More than I have under my command. They’re banditti. Pine robbers. Not family men, like the militia here. Those men, they’re not the sort anyone here’s too eager to tangle with.”
“Most men are not too eager to go into battle,” Rumstick said. “That’s why their officers give them orders. And lead them.” He looked from Mitnick to Somers. Neither man responded, or looked terribly comfortable with this line of discussion.
“What are you saying?” Rumstick demanded. “Are you telling me you and your men are too craven to fight?”
“Well, that’s a damned thing to say!” Somers spluttered, and this time Mitnick, too, would not remain silent.
“I must protest, lieutenant,” he said, clearly angry, eyebrows at a steep angle, face flushing. “I won’t stand for being accused of cowardice, not by you or any man. The militiamen, us, we’ll willingly lay down our lives for our country. Right now every man is on alert, sleeping on their arms, ready to turn out at a moment’s notice. But we won’t throw our lives away. We have wives and children, like the colonel said.”
“That’s right, Lieutenant,” Somers said. “If we die just to play the hero, we leave our wives and daughters at the mercy of those bastards from the Pine Barrens. I don’t even want to think about what would happen. And that’s not a chance we’re willing to take just to protect your damned ship, which we never asked to come here in the first place.”
“Very well,” Rumstick said, his voice calm, neutral. He had made a mistake and he could see that, and now he had to fix it. He wished Isaac Biddlecomb was there. Isaac was very good at this sort of thing, bending men to his will without infuriating them. Rumstick was not so talented in that department. He was more blunt, less diplomatic, and he had a number of impressive scars as a result.
“I see we have a problem here,” Rumstick continued. “A mutual problem. But the men onboard Falmouth, they’re a force to be reckoned with. Experienced fighting men, and disciplined, and Captain Biddlecomb has a knack for seeing himself out of corners like this. If we can make a plan with them…”
“Maybe you didn’t hear correctly,” Somers said. “Barnett has the wharf under siege. No one goes out to the ship, no one comes off. And he’s collected up every boat for miles. Skiffs, fishing boats, all of them. There is no way to get word to Falmouth.”
Rumstick frowned but he was not sure what to say to that, and no hint of a solution seemed to present itself.
“I don’t see how there’s anything more to discuss here, Lieutenant,” Somers said, breaking the silence. “We have a stand-off. Stalemate. Barnett’s set up camp but he hasn’t actually committed any violence, or done much of anything. If he does something that warrants action on the part of the militia, well, we’ll be there with guns blazing. Until then, we watch and we wait.” He nodded his farewell to Rumstick and Mitnick, then turned and headed for the door.
Rumstick and the militia captain stood silent, watching him leave. Once he was gone, Mitnick said, “I’m sorry, lieutenant, but I’m afraid Colonel Somers has the right of it. Barnett and his banditti, they’re too much for the militia. Maybe if we could get Captain Biddlecomb and the men on Falmouth to join in…but there’s no chance of getting word to them. All we can do is wait and see what Barnett is planning.”
“I see,” Rumstick said. “You said the militia were on alert? Sleeping with their arms, ready to turn out?”
“They are,” Mitnick said. “We’re not insensible to the danger here. We’re ready to defend ourselves.”
Rumstick nodded. “And your militia, do you have an armory of some sort? Muskets and powder and ball you could issue?”
“Yes…” Mitnick said, not trying to hide the suspicion in his voice.
“I’m just asking because, well, it’s pretty clear me and my men aren’t going to rejoin Falmouth anytime soon,” Rumstick explained. “So as long as we’re on this side of the wharf, we should be ready to stand with the militia, in case something bad happens. We can add a dozen fighting men, experienced men, to your ranks, and that would certainly help. But not all my men are armed.”
“Yes, yes, that would indeed be a help,” Mitnick agreed. He considered the suggestion a moment more, and then said, “I suppose, as captain of militia, I could issue the weapons. No need to bother the colonel with this…” He did not sound any more eager that Rumstick was to ask for Somers’s permission.
“Best to just go ahead and do it, I think, and quick,” Rumstick agreed. “If Barnett gets it in his head, he might send men to break into the armory and help themselves to the firelocks and such that are there. Better to put them in our hands before that happens.”
“That’s a good point, lieutenant, a damned good point,” Mitnick said. And he was right. It was a good point. And more importantly, it played right into the plan that was just starting to form in Rumstick’s mind.