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  “Look around you, woman. Look at the squalor I live in. By Jupiter, I should have left you back on the Yadkin. Wife? Dogs and Cherokees make better companions than a bony little strumpet like you.”

  She had to guess what reaction he wanted. To fight back? To cry? To grab a broom and begin cleaning? Fight back? That had worked when she had first arrived at his place on the Tiger, the first time she had seen him when the rum brought on his rage. “Do not come in here full of kill devil and raise voice or fist at me, Seb McKidrict,” she had told him. “I clean your house, patch your drawers, and feed your dogs, but I sha’n’t bandy words to any man when rum is on his breath.” That time, Seb McKidrict had laughed, let out a rollicking, good howl that even made Marty grin before he staggered off to the corncrib and slept till he had sobered. Yet, now that she had been his wife for fourteen months, Marty realized that perhaps he had only laughed that time because she held the Deckard rifle in her arms.

  Seb McKidrict wasn’t always the fool. He had seen Marty shoot, had often bragged at her marksmanship, and had won more than his share of shillings and noggins of rum on their journey from the Yadkin to the Tiger by betting that she could split a .50-caliber ball on an axe blade and drill the targets on either side of the tool. That’s how they had met, on the Forks of the Yadkin, when her father had brought her to shoot against the best men of the backcountry, or at least those who had showed up at the settlement with their long rifles and an itch to prove their prowess. He hadn’t been drunk then, Seb McKidrict, and his eyes danced with passion that made Marty confident. She had always been confident with a Deckard rifle, but never with boys, not even her brothers or father. Seb had doffed his cap, run his fingers through that rough black beard and thick hair, and mumbled a few words that Marty had smiled at, even if she hadn’t really understood a word the big oaf said.

  That had been in the spring of 1778. Seb McKidrict had taken off for the Tiger, and Marty, duly recorded champion shooter of Oliver’s Settlement, had returned with her father and brothers to Sinclair Hollow. The next time she had seen Seb McKidrict was the following spring, when he came to the river with a proposal of marriage and mule laden with sundry items, rum, deer hides, and Spanish pesos.

  Proposal? It had been more like bartering, her father and Seb McKidrict, both well in their cups, haggling over a fair price. Once they shook on the offer, her father had sent her youngest brother to fetch the Methodist preacher, even though they were Presbyterians, and Sebastian McKidrict had taken Martha Anne Sinclair as his wife. She didn’t love him, but the way he talked she had expected a better life with him than serving as a scullery maid—when not hunting or target shooting—for a brood of hungry Yadkin River Sinclairs who had sent her mother to Glory before Margaret Sinclair had seen thirty-two winters.

  The second time Marty had stood up to her husband, he had beaten her, had almost killed her, cracking ribs, breaking her nose, and leaving her in a pool of her own blood before storming out of the cabin and heading to Milton’s Tavern. He did not show up again for more than a month.

  Such became the pattern. Seb McKidrict would return, full of kill devil, looking for an argument, and the beatings would begin. Then, he would disappear, only to reappear just when Marty had begun to think that, maybe, this time he had died. For a while, she tried to please him, thinking she had done something wrong. She didn’t know a thing about being a wife, couldn’t ask her mother who had died before Marty turned five, and the McKidrict cabin lay in the thick of the Tiger. No neighbors to speak of. No friends, except the sorry lot that Seb sometimes brought home.

  Her husband was banditti, the kind the Regulators had driven out of the Long Canes, the kind her brothers were bound to become. The plunder he had used to buy Marty from her father had been stolen, and the only time she had ever felt sorry for Seb McKidrict had been that fall, when he had stumbled home with a ball in his shoulder, sobbing that he would die without ever being loved. She had bathed the wound with rum, drained it, dug out the flattened piece of lead, and cauterized the ugly mess with Seb’s own knife. He had left a few days later, without ever thanking her. Well, he hadn’t beaten her that time.

  “What’s the matter, woman?” Seb goaded her now. “Did I wed a woman deaf and dumb?”

  She wouldn’t fight back, nor would she try to read his mind, grab the broom, start sweeping. That would just fuel his rage, for she had done just that months before, and he had broken a broomstick over her back, cursing her for stirring up dust over his breakfast.

  Cry? No, Seb McKidrict had never seen her cry, and never would. She had cried plenty, from the pain, from her shame, from her own misery, but never in front of him, only after he had disappeared into the forest. Besides, she had no tears left, had not shed one in six months.

  Instead, Marty McKidrict stared at her husband, not blinking, not challenging. One day, he would wind up killing her, and then she would have her revenge, if someone learned of her fate and hanged Seb McKidrict as a wife-beater and murderer.

  Silence became her protector, but Willie Duncan ended the spell.

  “Let’s go to Milton’s, Seb,” he said, sliding the chair legs across the warped planks—McKidrict’s idea of luxury since most homes had dirt floors—and standing as he dabbed his mouth with his bandanna. “I have a taste for geneva of mint.”

  “Aye.” He looked at Duncan but spoke to Marty. “This place better not smell of rot and dirt when we return, woman. A husband has a right to desire a home that is clean.”

  With a nod—anything to be rid of him—Marty turned, testing her nose gently. She yelled when his right hand clamped her shoulder, his powerful fingers digging underneath the collar bone, bruising her flesh, jerking her back to face him.

  “No one, man nor woman but especially not my wife, turns while I am speaking!” Seb shouted. He shoved her against the wall, banging her head against the logs, and she groaned, cursing her own stupidity. He had been looking for an excuse, and she had given him one. She had turned her back on him, giving him an opportunity.

  He struck her again, and the trickle from her nose became a torrent. She tried to block his next blow, but wasn’t fast enough. His right hand crushed her throat, squeezing tighter, and her brain screamed for air. Her eyes widened with the realization that this time he might just kill her.

  Willie Duncan stood beside them now, saying something she couldn’t understand, maybe pleading, pawing at Seb’s thick arms. Seb shoved him aside, releasing his grip, and Marty slipped from his grasp, trying to find the door, to run. She took a few steps before Seb’s fingers grabbed her and pulled. The muslin chemise ripped as she crashed against the table, overturned it, and fell to the floor.

  She rolled over, groaning, on her back, blinking away confusion and pain, till she saw them staring at her, Seb McKidrict holding the torn garment in his massive hands, which he carelessly let fall to the floor. The drunkenness had left Willie Duncan’s eyes, and he stared at her with a violent hunger.

  “Milton’s can wait,” Seb said dryly.

  Marty reached for the knife, still stuck in the wooden table, tried desperately to pull it out, but the handle slipped from her fingers as they dragged her away.

  Her screams woke Seb’s dogs from their slumber outside until their brays echoed her own, as if those hounds were screaming with her, or maybe they were simply laughing at her, mocking her.

  * * * * *

  Light stretched through the open cabin door when she finally awoke, warming her face. Blood had matted her hair, caked her lips and face, and she moved stiffly, grunting as the dried blood stuck to the floor and pulled her hair as she tried to sit. A spasm shot through her body, and she leaned against the wall, thinking she might retch, but the nausea passed.

  She inched up the wall, pulling herself to her feet, kicking off the remains of her ripped, blood-stained clothing, discovering other injuries. A rib had been broken, and her searching tongue found a missing tooth. After staggering to the open door, Marty made herself re
ach up, biting back the pain until she had lifted the Deckard rifle off its mounts. It felt like a cannon in her aching arms, but she pulled the firelock to half cock and sprinkled powder from a horn hanging beside the door into the rifle’s pan. She shut the pan, and stuck the stock of the rifle underneath her armpit, the curly maple cold against her skin. The Deckard was always charged and loaded, but she had learned the necessity of keeping the powder in the pan fresh.

  Only a few items had she brought with her from Sinclair Hollow, her mother’s wedding ring and the Deckard rifle. The ring was long gone. Seb had almost broken her finger prying it off to trade at Milton’s for a firkin of ale. The long rifle, though, remained her one friend, her protector. It was light, graceful, the way she had always wanted to be, with a forty-four-inch rifled barrel and crescent butt plate that fit as if that Pennsylvania German had made it especially for her. Only she didn’t know who had originally owned the long rifle. Her father had brought it home years ago, before the Regulators had chased him out of the Long Canes and the Sinclairs had settled on the Yadkin.

  After slinging the powder horn and shot pouch over her bare shoulder, she grabbed an oval-eye tomahawk and stepped into the afternoon sunlight.

  She must look foolish, she thought, naked except for shoes, bloodied and bruised like some disfigured ogre, carrying a long rifle and tomahawk. Marty didn’t care. She scanned the yard. No horses, no dogs, and, most importantly, no sign of either Seb or Willie Duncan. Most likely they wouldn’t be back, not for another month or more, if that, but she wouldn’t be caught unprepared, just in case.

  The sun felt good, but not cleansing, as she crossed the yard and found the path in the woods. At first, she moved with a purpose, despite the broken rib, but soon she slowed, suddenly exhausted, her muscles cramping, head spinning. For the last 200 yards, she needed to use the rifle as a crutch, moving warily past the rhododendron hells and blackberry brambles until she finally reached the pool along the cascading creek.

  A woodpecker’s nervous beating answered a hawk’s shrill cry, and then she leaned the Deckard against a granite boulder, set the powder horn, pouch, and tomahawk on the ground nearby, and slipped into the chilling water.

  She blacked out momentarily, but soon found the water soothing, relaxing, even warming. Marty bathed her face, soaked her black, tangled hair, and rested her head against a wet rock, just where the rays of sunlight crept around the menagerie of limbs and leaves and warmed her face.

  Cupping her hands, Marty drank gingerly and remembered. Once, when she had first arrived, she had killed an eight-point buck at this pool, dressed it, and carted the meat back to the house, but now she could never bring herself to kill any animal, even for venison, at this place. It was her sanctuary, hallowed ground.

  Briefly she cried—her first tears in months—but the ducts suddenly blocked. She wanted to escape, to get away from the clutches of Seb McKidrict, but she had no place to run. This country was as foreign to her as the revolution the King’s army and so-called Patriots were fighting, far, far from the frontier.

  One day, though, she’d have to run, or let Seb kill her—or kill him.

  A squirrel scurried down a pine across the creek, considered her for a minute, then stood on its hind legs and began gnawing on an acorn. It stopped instantly when the hawk cried again, studied Marty as if she had made the noise, then bolted up the pine and leaped from limb to limb until it had disappeared.

  Silence descended, and a cloud blocked the sun. She heard nothing now but the rushing creek, and she found herself marveling at how easy it would be to slip into the deepest part of the pool. How far, Marty wondered, would the Tiger carry her from perdition?

  Chapter Three

  Loyalists called Major Patrick Ferguson “Bulldog”—and with good reason. Stuart Brodie had never seen anyone so driven; the major had more fortitude than Brodie himself. He drilled his volunteers relentlessly, teaching them how to maintain formation, load, fire, and fight with bayonet, shrieking commands by a pair of silver whistles that dangled from rawhide thongs around his neck. In the blazing heat of a sultry Carolina summer, the settlers-turned-soldiers—even Brodie—cursed those whistles, yet they never showed Ferguson, Inspector of Militia in the Southern Provinces, any disrespect.

  Which amazed Brodie. Backcountry folk were not used to any sort of regimen, especially military discipline. He expected his fellow soldiers to desert, half figured he would run out one night, but no one left. Those white men around him even seemed eager to learn how to fight properly. Maybe they found strength in numbers, or maybe they wanted to be loyal to Major Ferguson, if not the Crown. The Loyalists respected Ferguson, admired him. So did Brodie. The Bulldog asked nothing of his men that he would not do himself, and, one-handed or not, he often did what he asked better than his troops.

  “We are the western flank of Lord Cornwallis’s army,” Ferguson told them. “If we fail, the King fails. Cornwallis, Sir Clinton, even King George, I dare say, think of this militia as a band of ruffians. But I know better. I believe in you, that you will do your duty.” Every night in camp, Ferguson gave some variation of that speech to his exhausted legion. It worked without fail.

  They drilled, and they marched over Indian trails, through thickets, fighting the brambles and heat while searching for rebels. Only those brigands proved elusive. They fought like Indians, hitting from ambush, then disappearing. It had to discourage the Bulldog—certainly it discouraged Brodie and his fellow soldiers, and not only because they hadn’t caught up with their enemy. No, the way Brodie figured it, if they finally fought a battle, they wouldn’t have to drill so much.

  * * * * *

  Muscles aching, Brodie sat near the picketed horses and mules, studying the rifle he had been trying to master in the months since joining Ferguson’s army. It had a rifled barrel, in .65 caliber, and loaded from the breech rather than the muzzle. A trained soldier could fire four shots per minute while marching, Ferguson said, and consistently hit a target 200 yards distant. So far, Brodie had managed to fire, consistently, only three times a minute. Hitting his target, well, that had never been troublesome.

  Closing his eyes and pulling himself to his feet, Brodie worked the rifle. He turned the trigger guard clockwise, lowered the barrel slightly, and dropped a ball inside the opening. Next, he grabbed the powder horn and pretended to pour in a charge, returned the trigger guard to close the plug, and let out a short breath. Prime, cock, fire, he told himself.

  “When you can do this blindfolded,” Captain Abraham DePeyster had told him, “I will consider you a soldier of the Crown.”

  Brodie’s eyes opened, and his face flushed. A dozen or more weary Loyalists stared at him, and Brodie sat down.

  He couldn’t understand why the major had given him his invention. That crippled right arm prevented Ferguson from using the rifle himself, but why give it to a freedman, a man he didn’t even know? Why not Captain DePeyster? Why not any of the other soldiers, most of them armed with Brown Bess muskets or their own fowling pieces?

  After cleaning the weapon, Brodie stretched out to rest, but, as soon as he had closed his eyes, a shadow crossed his face and he looked up to see DePeyster towering above him.

  DePeyster was part of Ferguson’s corps of American Volunteers, mostly New Jersey and New York settlers who had served with the major since December. These were Ferguson’s right hand, maybe not trained in England but more professional, better disciplined than the Carolina Loyalists.

  “The major desires an interview with you,” the captain said, and was gone.

  * * * * *

  He found Ferguson shirtless in his tent, being attended by Dr. Uzal Johnson, another one of the American Volunteers. The young surgeon from New Jersey pulled a leech off the major’s crippled arm and stuck it in a dark jar.

  “Brodie!” Ferguson exclaimed, and sat on the cot, dismissing the doctor while pulling on a shirt. “How well do you know this country?”

  They were camped on the Enoree Rive
r at Musgrove’s Mill, not far from the North Carolina border. “’Tis not unfamiliar to me, this country.” He had fished the Enoree often, set traps upstream and down, and traded with the Catawbas not too distant.

  “I need someone to scout, to report back to me when the rebels are in close proximity.”

  “They are close now, Major.”

  Ferguson slipped his arm into a sling and gave Brodie a hard stare.

  “I can feel them,” Brodie explained. “Smell them.”

  With a snort, Ferguson shook his head. “Negro superstitions,” he said impatiently.

  “Backcountry experience,” Brodie shot back, adding softly, “sir. In this country I have resided since ’Sixty-Eight, Major,” he went on, “and I know more than a little of the men we pursue. They are also chasing you, and our army is too big to go unnoticed.”

  “But they will not fight,” Ferguson said. “They are nothing more than cowards, and their cause is lost, after Charles Town and Camden. Nonetheless, I desire to employ your services as a scout. Find out just how close the banditti are, learn their strength and location, and report back to me.” His tone lost its severity. “How is my rifle?”

  “I’m learning, sir.”

  “Good.” Ferguson poured himself a drink, and did not offer Brodie the whiskey. “You can leave at first light. Is there anything else?”

  He shuffled his feet. Since he had joined the militia, he had heard the stories about Ferguson, camp gossip, maybe, but some of the soldiers who had been with Ferguson up north swore it was true. Brodie had always been curious. “Well, Major, I was wondering. . . .”

  Ferguson drained the whiskey, and set the glass down. “Aye?”

  “Is it true?”

  The laugh proved infectious, and Ferguson poured another drink and collapsed on his bed. He must have been asked that question scores of times. “I cannot say,” he said. “Mayhap, mayhap not. ’Twas at Brandywine in September of ’Seventy-Seven, and I lay alongside the woods with my men, holding my rifle . . . your rifle . . . when two of the enemy appeared, one in a hussar dress, the other in green and blue on a fine stone horse of bay color, wearing a high cocked hat. I ordered their deaths, had my best three shots take aim, but I found no honor in that, no glory, and the order sickened me, so I belayed it. Instead, I advanced toward the rebel in the cocked hat . . . by then, the Frenchman had departed . . . and called at him to surrender. He disregarded my invitation, gave me a look of contempt, and turned back toward the rebel lines. I could have shot him, killed him, put three balls in his back before he reached safety, but he was such a brave man, I spared his life.”