The Silver Bullet (7 page)

Though he spoke of him as a cousin, van Clynne couldn’t have known the ensign himself. His round face, obscured by a thick beard, was of indeterminate age, but Jake reckoned he wasn’t past fifty. There was a certain youthfulness in his voice, too, despite its constant pessimistic tone; it was quite possible that the Dutchman was only in his early forties, or perhaps even his thirties. This was much older than Jake, of course, but not nearly ancient; Dr. Franklin and many other leaders of the Revolution had marked considerably more years off the calendar. But van Clynne seemed to have acquired old age in his youth, cultivating it rather than running from it as most men do. His clothes were old-fashioned, cut fuller and looser than Jake’s even taking his girth into account. His belt was cinched with a massive buckle, ornately decorated in silver. Large buckles held his shoes tight to his feet, and despite the dust of travel, it was obvious that they had been blackened this morning, a bit of fussiness one ordinarily wouldn’t have associated with a country traveler. His stockings were a red russet – another obsolete mark, and an unusually colorful gesture for the otherwise cloudy Dutchman.

His breeches and coat were a dull brown. The sleeves were open peculiarly in a fashion worn almost exclusively in the Hudson Valley. Van Clynne’s hat was a fine beaver, well-proportioned for his head. Though the style was still popular, this particular hat looked ancient. It wasn’t that it was battered or worn; on the contrary. But the pelts themselves seemed somehow to have come from old beavers, with vague streaks of gray showing through in the light. The brim at the front was turned up slightly, affording a good line of sight to the burgher.

“
I’m not a burgher,” van Clynne said sharply.

“
I meant no offense.”

“
Next you’ll be calling me a patron.” The word spit from his mouth.

“
I just meant to ask where you came from,” said Jake contritely.

“
I haven’t asked you similar questions, have I? We have a business relationship, you and I: best to keep it that way.”

“
Fair enough.”

“
I retain the title Esquire from the British, since they are in possession of our country,” said van Clynne. “Especially since they are in possession of my piece of it.”

“
The English took your land?”

To Jake’s surprise, van Clynne didn’t answer, changing the subject instead.

“
It was a nice pistol.”

“
Which?”

The pistol you took from our friend. British, yes?”

“
I think so,” said Jake.

“
The flintlock is an intriguing invention. It was perfected by a Dutchman, you know.”

“
You’re pulling my leg, right? The Dutch haven’t invented anything in two hundred years.”

Van Clynne shot him a nasty glance and continued with his dissertation. “The only great weapon, though, is a blunderbuss. The wheel lock – do you know how many families have been saved by its invention? Ask the river Indians what they think of it.”

“
Bit of a pain to twist the spring when you’re under attack, isn’t it?” said Jake.

Jake had no need for a course on ballistics and was not inclined to listened to van Clynne’s discussion of the merits of smooth and rifled barrels. But his interest was piqued when suddenly the Dutchman began giving him an amazingly detailed description of a breech-loaded rifle.

Such a gun had been perfected only a few years before in England. Jake had seen one while he was there in school, and had not failed to be impressed by it. In fact he harbored hopes of conducting a special mission to England to retrieve one as a model for manufacture in the near future.

The gun’s key feature was a screw-threaded, ten-point plug in its breech at the top of the barrel. This allowed the ball or bullet to be placed there directly, rather than having to be rammed down the rifled barrel. Powder was wedged in behind it – you didn’t have to worry about measuring, since only the right amount fit. Back comes the plug, lock cocked, and –

“
Boom,” said van Clynne.

“
Boom,” echoed Jake. “Tell me, squire, where did you get such a weapon?”

“
Who said that I had one?”

“
You talk as if you do.”

“
No, no,” said van Clynne. “It is just an idea of mine. A fancy.”

Jake doubted that strenuously, but kept his opinion to himself. Instead, he opened a line of inquiry into another area that had lately interested him.

“
Where did you learn to throw a hatchet like that?”

“
I will answer that question,” replied van Clynne, “if you’ll tell me where you got that potion that stood our friend up like a skittle pin.”

“
I told you, I’m searching for cures,” said Jake. He’d hoped the drug had escaped his companion’s notice, but van Clynne was proving a wily type. “This was just a little concoction I came across in my travels.”

“
And would you have any more of it, by chance?”

“
Afraid not,” replied Jake, who would have answered the same even if he had. “It isn’t easy to obtain.”

“
The wilden taught me how to throw the ax,” said the Dutchman, paying off his end of the bargain. “Wilden” was the Dutch word for Indian or native. “Mohawks specifically. It’s all a matter of balance. Would you like a demonstration?”

Jake soon found himself dismounted, standing next to van Clynne as he extolled the virtues of a straight handle and a true head.

“
Your target must be an odd number of steps away, five, seven or nine; farther than that and you add uncertainty,” said van Clynne. “You grasp the butt end of the handle exactly in the middle of your palm.” He demonstrated. “Note my legs, loose, evenly apart. My weight is on my right foot.”

“
I noticed the strain.”

A brief frown passed over van Clynne’s face. “Here, stand over there, before that tree.”

“
Why?”

“
You want a demonstration, don’t you?”

Against his better judgment, Jake walked to the front of the tree and turned to face van Clynne. He was rewarded by the swift whiz of an ax sailing head over heels in his direction.

First he ducked, barely in time. Then he flew at his assailant.

“
Wait, wait!” protested van Clynne. “I threw it to land exactly over your head. I never miss. Go and see. Go and see.”

Jake loosened his grip on van Clynne’s cravat. He turned toward the tree, where the head of the tomahawk was buried deep in the trunk. Sure enough, the handle rested a measured inch above his scalp.

“
Now I’ll give you a demonstration,” said Jake, pushing van Clynne to the spot where he had stood.

“
N-Not with an ax, I hope,” stuttered the Dutchman.

Jake had already removed his four-shot Segallas pocket pistol from his vest pocket. It was a magnificent miniature gun with four tiny barrels, each with its own separate frizzen and flash pan, so he did not have to reprime after each shot. Nor did he have to reload, blasting one tripper, then the next, flipping the barrels with a quick twist and firing the third and the fourth.

Such a beautiful gun was a rarity in America, a fine and deadly specimen. Van Clynne did not remark on it, however. In fact, the Dutchman seemed quite speechless as Jake bounced the first two bullets off each side of the hatchet head, and then, feeling a bit peevish, buried the others next to the soles of van Clynne’s shoes.

“
As long as we understand each other,” he said, nodding to van Clynne.

“
We do, sir, we do,” said the squire, bushing himself off as the color returned to his face. “You trust me, and I trust you. It is a good business arrangement.”

Thousands of years before, upper New York had been covered with a massive glacier, a huge split of ice that fitfully gave way to a puddle of cold water huge enough to be considered a sea. The remains of that Laurentide ocean stretched to Jake’s right as dusk began to come on, visible through the trees and the occasional meadow. He and van Clynne were approaching the fringes of patriot territory and could feel the boundary in the growing chill as an evening wind began kicking up from Canada.

How much colder it had been ten thousand years before, when Mother Nature began blowing her warm breath on the ice, pushing back the invading ice so she could experiment anew with life in the valley? Her soft breath left behind huge deposits of scraped-white rock, booty and symbols of the struggle. Representatives of those rocks greeted them now, gleaming in the last red rays of the day – Fort Ticonderoga, the American stronghold and key to the defense of upper New York.

The patriot victory at the fort two years before was already celebrated in song and legend. A pair of American forces had combined in the capture – one under Benedict Arnold, the other under Ethan Allen. Taken together, they had not more than two hundred men under them, but the fiercest fighting was between themselves; the fifty or so defenders of the fort were mostly old pensioners put out to pasture with what was considered, until that moment, easy duty. The Americans’ booty was not merely the fort, which protected Albany and the Hudson headwaters, but something on the order of eighty bronze cannon. Those weapons had become the backbone of the American artillery corps.

Jake and his guide were admiring the stone walls from a distance because they had made a strategic decision to avoid the fort and surrounding settlements. People there, officers especially, had a tendency to ask questions and look at papers, and even if there were all in order – as van Clynne assured Jake they were – still, such matters were best not continually put to the test.

“
Can we hire a boat north of here?” Jake asked as van Clynne directed him to take a left at the next fork in the road. Even though they’d made remarkable time, he wanted to go faster still, and a boat would shorten the journey.

Van Clynne held off answering as a wagon approached. He nodded at the man driving it as if he knew him and continued on.

“
We’re not taking a boat,” he said. “Too many warships of both sides on the lake.”

Last fall the British had come as far south as Crown Point, about fifteen miles north on Lake Champlain. They were halted by caution, the approaching winter, and an American flotilla. Jake was unsure of the exact status of hostilities on the water, but as his traveling companion seemed extremely well-informed, he followed along without comment.

The Dutchman knew not only every highway and byway here, but also the deer paths and spring streams. They splashed up one of the latter as night came on, avoiding a small village whose population, according to van Clynne, consisted entirely of very nosy housewives. Their immediate destination was a house two miles farther on. It was owned by a Dutchman whose formula for brown porter was unrivaled in the state, according to van Clynne, who began proclaiming the virtues of its brewer as they pushed through the dark woods.

As the lane narrowed, Jake’s sixth sense of danger detection began to assert itself. He didn’t fear a double cross from his companion riding ten yards behind him so much as another ambush, this one more easily accomplished in the blackness. Placing a pistol in his left hand, Jake reined his horse carefully with the other. His eyes scanned for movement and his ears tuned to the specific frequency of human footfalls.

It was just such a sound thirty yards to his right that caught his attention. When he heard the second step he leaped off his horse and sped silently through the woods, gun in hand.

Van Clynne jabbered on, not even aware Jake had dismounted. His first notice of the ambush came with the loud crash and muffled moan the intruder emitted as Jake caught the man from behind, cupping his hand over his mouth to keep him from screaming out.

Pardon – her mouth. There was no mistaking that once he touched the smoothness of her face, Jake, seeing she was unarmed, turned her gently toward him with his left hand, which held the pistol. He was mildly surprised and somewhat pleased to see defiance, not fear, in her eyes.

When he let go, reaching down to pick up her fallen basket of early blueberries, she leveled a blow at his head.

He ducked and upended the girl, grabbing her around the middle.

“
Let me down!” she screamed, kicking and punching. “My father will shoot you if you hurt me.”

“
I meant no harm,” said Jake, setting her down gingerly – her muscles were nearly as strong as her spirit. “I thought you were coming to attack us.”

“
Who are you, riding through the woods at night?” she demanded. “Another soldier from the fort, or some damned Tory?”

“
Johanna! Johanna Blom!” shouted van Clynne, arriving late to the commotion. He explained in very excited Dutch that Jake was a friend and meant no harm.

Jake’s passing knowledge of the language allowed him to add that, had he known their assailant was this pretty, he surely would have surrendered without a fight. The remark prompted Mistress Johanna to attempt another punch, though its intended victim noted that this one was grabbed more easily than the others.

Apologies offered if not wholly accepted, Jake and van Clynne were escorted to the Blom house. Fifty years before, the two-story clapboard affair – as van Clynne explained in his flourishing style – had been an estimable stopping point for travelers. New roads, more dependable boats along the lake, and the failure of the local beaver population had conspired to cause its decline. Blom still let rooms from time to time, and his taproom remained popular with the male population of the small hamlet up the road a quarter of a mile, especially those seeking to avoid their wives.