Guns of Liberty (8 page)

“One can’t be too careful,” Sister Ruth sniffed, “in these troubled times. See you do not tarry.” Like a general abandoning the field of battle to the opposing camp, she retreated from the porch and vanished into the shadowy interior of the stoutly built log house.

Sister Hope-Deferred-Maketh-the-Heart-Sick sighed as the other woman left. Then she stepped down off the porch and extended her hand to the visitor.

“You must excuse Sister Ruth. She is a widow now, but once this was her husband’s farm. She invited our community to come and live with her, though she never lets us forget who actually owns the land. Sister Ruth can be a trifle brusque. Sister Eve, our superior, manages to keep her in line.” Hope took a moment to stroke Gideon’s coat. “Go on, now,” she ordered, and the animal trotted off across the meadow.

Rabbits darted across its path, but the animal had learned from sad experience it couldn’t catch them. The mastiff continued on into the woods. Daniel marveled at the way an animal of such brute power obeyed the likes of this woman.

“I’ve come to see Sister Agnes about the beeswax candles for the inn.” He was anxious to be on his way. Something had bothered him since leaving Meeks and Tolbert at the clearing. He had a feeling of being followed. Call it a sixth sense or a premonition or merely the result of his experience in the wilderness, but whatever the source, it had never failed him.

“I will take you to her,” Sister Hope told him, and started around the corner of the house.

Daniel lingered a moment to check his back trail; he studied the forest through which he had just traveled. He saw nothing, yet felt everything, and with a tightness growing between his shoulder blades, he-wondered if the surrounding trees were as innocent as they seemed. He tried to convince himself it was merely his imagination and almost succeeded. But old habits—and the wariness the wild places bred in a man—die hard. Reluctantly he turned his back on the forest’s shadowy depths.

Henk Schraner didn’t plan on killing Daniel, but sure as God made serpents crawl, Henk intended to see Kate’s handyman sweat every time the bastard stepped outside.
Enough near misses
, Henk silently calculated,
and I suspect Mr. McQueen will seek his fortune elsewhere.
The jealous young farmer settled down behind the twin halves of a lightning-split oak, bracing the long-barreled rifle his father had made on the blackened, twisted tree trunk. He kept his vigil about a hundred yards from the front of the farmhouse.

The Daughters of Phoebe were dedicated to lives of simplicity and prayer. Time meant little here on their farm nestled among the rolling hills. Their garden was a neatly ordered plot of ground where rows of corn rose alongside tomatoes, peas, and squash.

A split-rail fence protected the garden from the wandering dairy cows that were free to roam the grassy meadowlands about the farmhouse. The farm itself was like an oasis of cleared ground in a sea of oaks and hickories, birches and elms. The surrounding forest provided the farm its privacy.

Henk, for his part, was grateful for the trees and the undergrowth. Vinces and creepers had already left a green tangle across the shattered tree trunk; the land had begun to reclaim its own. One day he wouldn’t be surprised to find the farm buried beneath loops of leafy green ropes. Henk pictured the six spinsters sitting motionless in their rockers on the front porch, their flesh covered by wind-stirred leaves.

Henk chuckled at the thought, sighed, and worked a kink out of his leg. First things first, however. Lifting a spyglass, he observed the chestnut tethered to the porch rail. It was Daniel’s gelding. His owner was inside. When he decided to emerge, Henk had a big surprise for him.

Henk dug down in his possibles pack and retrieved a cloth-wrapped chunk of bread and a length of blood sausage. He made his meal there in the quiet of the forest, arm resting on the rifle, which was loaded and primed.

He comforted himself with daydreams of a frightened Daniel McQueen, scampering down the Trenton Road for the safety of Philadelphia. Henk sighed in satisfaction. He wouldn’t even wait for Daniel’s dust to settle in the courtyard of the Hound and Hare before he came calling on the beautiful Kate Bufkin.

Henk massaged a cramp out of his right calf and settled back against the trunk. He patted the rifle and readjusted his position, easing his buttocks off a sharp stone. Already the wait had unnerved him. His thoughts drifted to the Schraner farm, not an hour’s ride from the front porch below. Papa would no doubt be furious that the cows had not been milked or the eggs gathered this morning. Let Eben or Barnabas see to such chores—and high time they did.

Anyway, Henk did not fear the old man’s wrath. Lucy Dee Schraner, Henk’s mother, a widow who had become Papa Schraner’s second wife, could be counted on to temper her husband’s anger. She had done so for the past three years of their marriage, turning a blind eye to her son’s faults and championing his every cause, no matter how vain.
Dear doting Mum
, Henk mused in the silence of the woods.
Every son should have one.

Henk grinned at his own cleverness. He inhaled deeply the spring fragrance of the woods where the pungent fragrance of rotting wood vied with the heady aroma of white sweet clover borne on May breezes from nearby meadows. Buzzing bees and rustling leaves heralded a world at peace, in sharp contrast to the violence in the young man’s heart.

Sister Agnes worked the straw through a cow horn whose pointed tip had been sheared away, leaving a narrow hole that compressed the straw as it emerged. Every eight to ten inches she tied the length of straw with twine, creating a kind of tough, grassy rope that she could coil into the appropriate shape of a skep, a straw hive, for her bees.

Later she would sew the loops together to hold them in place and create a solid structure. Most interesting of all, Daniel found, was her choice of work spots, for she calmly perched upon a wooden stool ringed by half a dozen skeps whose occupants swarmed around her in a veritable tornado of wickedly buzzing life.

A young woman with round, wide eyes, she glanced up as Sister Hope called her by name and noticed the rough-looking, redheaded stranger who stood at Hope’s side.

“This is Agnes’s peaceful spot; no one bothers her here,” Sister Hope remarked.

Daniel warily watched the swirling cloud of bees and nodded. “I can understand that,” he said. It would take a braver man than he to approach the woman through the surrounding swarm. The bees not only filled the air, but landed on the woman’s burnoose and on her shoulders. Yet the young woman seemed perfectly at ease.

“Yes, Hope …” Sister Agnes said, continuing her work as she looked away. She smiled at Daniel. “You must be Kate Bufkin’s new man. Hope told us all about you.”

Daniel sensed the diminutive woman at his side stiffen with embarrassment. “Why, I didn’t think she knew ‘all.’”

“Mr. McQueen has come for the candles you promised Kate.” Sister Hope pointedly ignored their remarks.

“I am told there are no finer beeswax candles in all the colonies.”

Daniel’s compliment found favor with Sister Agnes; she positively beamed. “Sister Constance taught me the craft. Now the poor dear is ill abed.” She paused to reflect, then continued. “You’ll find the candles in the barn, yes—two large sacks of candles just inside the door.” Sister Agnes hesitated. “I could show you …”

“We’ll find them, dear.” Sister Hope waved a pudgy hand toward the tall-roofed structure erected for the livestock. The shed, like an afterthought, was attached to the back wall. Both structures were showing their age, and Daniel made a mental note that he would find time to reshingle the worst spots for these good souls.

“God bless you, good sir,” Sister Agnes called out as Sister Hope led Daniel away.

He glanced back and waved but offered no reply. Christian admonishments left him uncomfortable and at a loss for words, even more so considering the grim reason for his presence in the farm country of Pennsylvania.

Sister Hope was unaware of his inner conflict and chattered on about the founding of the farm community, and how six women of various walks of life had been called by the Holy Spirit to live communal lives of simplicity, prayer, and celibacy.

The farm itself held no greater surprise for Daniel than when he pulled open the wide, heavy barn door. Daylight streamed into the dusty interior to reveal a most unusual stockpile of supplies, especially for a place devoted to peace.

In place of hay bales and pitchforks, barrels of black gunpowder were stacked tall as a man, lethal Pennsylvania rifles, the pride of the colony’s gunsmiths, were arranged in neatly ordered racks. There were crates too of lead shot and a basket of crudely honed knives and tomahawks, their blades somewhat irregular in length and hardly razor sharp. They were wicked-looking all the same. Indeed, the barn was a veritable armory. Daniel could see the wisdom here. What British officer would suspect the Daughters of Phoebe of engaging in seditious acts?

“There—” Sister Hope pointed to the trim sacks of beeswax candles hanging from a post at the end of a row of stacked rifles. “Help yourself.” She was amused at his expression of surprise.

Daniel slowly, almost reverently, made his way among the rifles, powder, and shot. Hoisting the sacks from the peg, he then draped them both over his shoulder. By the time he had returned to the front doors he noticed a small flock of sheep drifting back toward the farmhouse from across the meadow.

The animals were flanked on either side by women in gray, one large-boned, an Amazon without headdress, the other as slight as a will-o’-the-wisp. Each of the two women held a stout, seven-foot-long crook.

Daniel stood in the barn entrance and watched as the larger of the two shepherds left the flock and hurried on toward the barn.

“That’s Sister Mercy with the flock. She’s a child compared to the rest of us and quiet as a church mouse. And here is Eve.” Sister Hope gestured toward the other daughter, who covered the ground with long strides, lifting her coarse gray skirt above her ankles for greater speed. Sister Eve’s auburn braids slapped her shoulders like thick ropes and her cheeks reddened as she all but ran the few remaining yards, digging her shepherd’s staff into the soft earth with every other step. Suspicion glittered in her narrowed eyes as she confronted the man. Sister Hope quickly made the introductions, hoping to defuse Sister Eve’s obvious displeasure.

But Sister Eve hardly heard the woman’s words. She gripped the crook like a quarterstaff and appeared ready to attack him.

“Good afternoon, Sister Eve. I’m hoping you’ll not crack my skull for an armful of beeswax candles,” Daniel said. “I came here as a friend.” He nervously eyed the tight grip she kept on the cudgel. He flashed his most winning smile, one he’d used without success on a she-bear north of Hudson Bay.

“Peace be with you,” Sister Eve replied, keeping a firm hold on the shepherd’s crook. It was carved of hickory wood, thick enough to crack a man’s skull and long enough to give her ample reach. “Sister Hope, you know better than to bring a stranger to the barn.”

“He is no stranger,” Hope protested.

“And do you speak for him?”

“Kate does,” Sister Hope replied.

“I speak for myself,” Daniel interjected.

Neither woman paid him any mind. Sister Eve was a formidable presence. Her voice carried the ring of authority that immediately clued Daniel as to whose word was law among the Daughters of Phoebe. After another few moments’ debate, Sister Eve returned her attention to the man in front of her.

“You have discovered our secret,” Sister Eve began. “I will not ask where your loyalties lie; truth or deceit would sound the same.” Sister Eve sighed and shook her head.

“Freedom has a high price,” Sister Hope added. “If Washington’s named our commanding general, he’ll require an army. And an army needs weapons.” She folded her arms across her ample bosom, a smug look on her face. Using the barn for an armory had been Hope’s idea. What better hiding place? Who would ever suspect this community of women of aiding and abetting a revolution? She wasn’t worried about the well-mannered Scotsman. Hope trusted her instincts.

“Come, now, Sister Eve,” Hope continued. Mr. McQueen here is Highland born. His people were fighting the English long before us. It would take a bold deceiver to go against his own history.”

“I dance to no man’s pipe.” Daniel crooked a thumb toward the barn door. “None of that concerns me.

“It will.” Sister Eve leaned forward on the shepherd’s crook, and her gaze bore into McQueen. “Comes a time, you’ll have to choose whether to make your stand among tyrants or free men.”

Daniel started to quip that perhaps the representatives meeting in Philadelphia needed an ardent rebel like Sister Eve to fan the flames of insurrection whenever things started to cool. “Sister Eve, you’re a regular firebrand, I’ll say that.” Maybe the seeds of rebellions might find fertile soil and take root in him, but not now—not with Meeks breathing down his neck.

“Indeed, if we must trust you,” Sister Eve said in a resigned tone, “we might as well feed you.” She started toward the farmhouse, her guarded attitude yielding to an innate sense of Christian hospitality.

“My thanks to you, good Sister. I don’t wish to be any trouble,” Daniel said with all the humility he could muster.

“I think, good sir, you already are,” Sister Eve retorted, cautiously good-natured.

A rifle shot cracked and a geyser of dirt erupted a yard in front of Daniel.

The two women froze, stunned that Sister Eve’s jest had proved out most accurately.

Daniel on the other hand, was a blur of motion. He’d dropped candles and was running toward his gelding, covering the distance with surprising speed for a man his size. He reached the horse and vaulted into the saddle as Sister Ruth emerged from the front door.

This time she carried a broom, a small improvement over her bowl and spoon.

“Inside!” Daniel roared at her. She gasped and did as she was told, followed by Sister Eve and Sister Hope. He spun the bay and galloped off toward the line of trees, where a filmy banner of powder smoke revealed the rifleman’s location. A second shot followed a minute after the first. But Daniel was riding low over the neck of his horse, reins in one hand and a pistol in the other. He held the flintlock outstretched like a lance and rode right into the sights of his assailant. Distance was meaningless; the forest grew larger in his vision, became more defined, oaks and hickory, a tangle of bramble and berry bushes … and at last, the lightning-blasted remains of a tree masked by a cloud of powder smoke.