Sword of Vengeance (13 page)

Kit had reshingled it himself a couple of weeks ago. Esther had insisted on helping him. He grinned at the thought of her, hammer and nails in hand, standing at the foot of the ladder and awaiting his instructions. She was something, all right.

Kit smiled and then returned his attention to the three horses. The animals had come a long way. Their coats glistened with perspiration. Kit cradled his rifle in the crook of his arm and headed for the main house.

Premonition dogged him like a shadow. From something unnamed, he sensed a change in the wind, but for better or ill, the answer waited within.

Colonel Gain Harrelson was a slim, balding, forty-year-old officer whose features even in repose were sharp and tightly drawn. He wore civilian clothes, as did the two capable-looking lieutenants who acted as his aides. A passerby might take the travelers for frock-coated gentlemen and think no more of them. The notion that their military saddles and arms might give them away had apparently escaped the soldiers. Kit would have mentioned as much, but Colonel Harrelson was not the kind of man to accept criticism. The colonel waved a hand toward the chair opposite him, inviting Kit to join him at the table.

Penelope arrived with a platter of pork roast sandwiches. Hannah followed with a pitcher of hard cider. Esther carried the pewter tankards and made a grand show of setting one before each of the men. Penelope rolled her eyes and muttered a silent prayer that Esther wouldn’t embarrass her.

“Thank you, dear lady,” Harrelson said with a half bow.

Esther curtsied and managed a gracious smile that dissolved into an embarrassed laugh as she hurried back across the room.

The lower floor of the Hound and Hare consisted of a spacious tavern room dominated on one side by a black walnut bar and an assortment of kegs and bottled spirits. The air was redolent with the smell of tobacco smoke and roasting pork. The pale blue walls were draped with battle flags and adorned with paintings.

Indeed, the tavern was a veritable gallery of works depicting incidents from the Revolutionary War. Itinerant artisans and artists were known to stop at the inn and leave a sample of their craft or handiwork as payment for a meal and a night’s rest. Near the fireplace the shelves of an enormous walnut hutch were crammed with stoneware plates and cups of varying sizes and shapes.

“Lovely children,” Colonel Harrelson remarked, helping himself to one of the sandwiches as Penelope stopped by his table and filled his tankard. Harrelson allowed Penelope to walk out of earshot before adding, “They might have been mine.” He glanced over at Hannah, who blushed at the remark. They were old friends, having known each other since childhood.

“Gain … how you talk,” she chided.

“It’s true. Every word,” Harrelson protested. “They’d be mine save for one terrible mistake. I introduced Hannah to my closest friend, Clay Burgade—and condemned myself to bachelorhood.”

Kit’s sister continued to blush, the red in her cheeks spreading down to her throat. She leaned forward to refill Harrelson’s tankard. Her breast brushed his shoulder, and for a few brief seconds, as long as it takes to sharply inhale and slowly release one’s breath, Hannah and the colonel gazed into each other’s eyes.

Kit held his tankard out below the pitcher Hannah held suspended above the table. At last he reached up and tilted the pitcher, and dark gold cider poured from the spout. His action broke the spell of the moment. Harrelson cleared his throat and assumed once again a more military bearing.

Hannah left the pitcher on the table and hurried off to shoo her two daughters outside. Esther and Penelope had begun to quarrel; the youngest girl was determined to prove she knew every bit as much as her older sister. The argument’s net result was that both girls were banished to the garden with instructions to weed every row.

Colonel Harrelson folded his hands and studied the young man seated across from him. They were not strangers, for Gain Harrelson had been a frequent visitor to the Hound and Hare, and before moving to Washington he had entertained Hannah and Clay whenever the couple were in Philadelphia. Since his assignment to the War Office, his visits had been infrequent, and even less so with the onset of hostilities between the United States and Great Britain.

“Ahh … but I have not come to relive the past or capture a memory of what might have been,” Harrelson said.

“No?” Kit said, still suspicious. The feeling he had out in the yard lingered.

“No.” Harrelson washed a mouthful of sandwich down with cider. That was enough to take the edge off his hunger. “The war goes badly. Even Clay and his war hawks have begun to have their doubts. And the initial overtures of peace have been made.” He glanced aside at his two subordinates, who had already wolfed down one sandwich each and had each started on another. “Station yourselves outside. Allow no one to disturb us.”

“Now, see here—” Kit protested.

“I have already secured Kate McQueen’s permission,” the colonel interrupted. “You see, I must be able to speak freely. No one knows I have left Washington, save General Wilkinson and my superiors. With British spies skulking about, my uniform might have brought trouble to your mother and Hannah. And that is the last thing I want.”

“Agreed,” Kit replied. He watched the two lieutenants, food and drink in hand, leave by the front door, and when they were gone, Kit leaned forward on his elbows and his boyish facade faded as his eyes took on an icy glint. The time for pleasantries had passed. Kate’s absence bothered him. Where was she? It wasn’t like his mother to avoid the tavern’s visitors, even ones whose behavior was as strange as Harrelson’s. Then again, perhaps Kate had already discovered the colonel’s motives.

Now it was Kit’s turn.

“Colonel Harrelson—my sister’s already married, so I know you didn’t come to propose.”

The colonel sat back, surprised by the remark. Then he realized the meaning behind Kit’s statement of fact.

“Quite so, my young friend. To business, then, eh? And the reason I have come.” Harrelson took a sandwich off the platter and placed it on the table. “Here are the British, in Canada poised to strike our northern border. And this tankard is a second British force that we feel is preparing to strike at the underbelly of our country. We are prepared to meet the threat in the north, but our efforts in the south have been a failure. Andrew Jackson has twenty-five hundred Tennessee Volunteers stationed in Nashville. We could move those men to the coast were it not for all the Indian unrest. Alabama and Georgia are aflame. Every courier brings word of new depredations. Jackson’s men cannot move unless the Red Sticks Rebellion is crushed.”

Harrelson sat back, brought out a pipe and tobacco pouch from his coat pocket, and proceeded to fill the bowl as he continued. “The Indians are receiving rifles, probably transported out of New Orleans by British agents. But that is only part of the problem. One man, a white renegade, has organized the Choctaw and Cherokee and created a reign of terror that must be stopped. I believe you know the traitorous rascal. The Choctaw call him Chief Iron Hand.” The colonel saw he had piqued Kit’s interest.

“What makes you think I know him?” Kit asked warily,

“I’ve known of your escape from Florida for some time now, including your encounter with a man called Iron Hand O’Keefe. The very same renegade that has put himself in the middle of things, I might add.” The colonel emphasized his point by removing a Choctaw medicine pouch from his coat pocket. Harrelson placed the bag between the tankard and the sandwich. “Right in the middle,” the colonel repeated. “And we cannot worry about the British until something has been done about Chief Iron Hand O’Keefe.”

Kit looked up and met the colonel’s steady gaze. “What do you want me to do?” he asked, unwilling to commit himself.

Harrelson drew a dagger from his boot sheath. Steel glittered in the sunlight as the colonel buried the pointed blade in the tabletop, skewering the medicine pouch in the process. The implication was all too clear.

“Iron Hand O’Keefe is my friend.”

“That’s what I’m counting on. You know the man. And he probably still trusts you enough to let you get close.”

“O’Keefe saved my life.”

“And he has been responsible for over a hundred deaths—men, women, and children. Shall I read you a litany of names? Find O’Keefe and learn who is supplying his redskins with rifles. Kill him or lure him into a trap and let Jackson’s Tennesseans capture him.”

“And if I refuse to go?” Kit asked, testing the waters.

“I will see O’Keefe a prisoner or dead.” Harrelson sternly replied. He exhaled a lazy cloud of tobacco smoke. His tone grew gentle. “Son, your loyalty is commendable. But our country is in peril. We must be free to defend our southern flank. O’Keefe has made his alliance with the British. This is war. And sometimes in war a friend must be betrayed.”

Kit abruptly stood, knocking over the chair behind him. The colonel had unknowingly struck a nerve, his fatalistic remark like salt trickled on an open wound. Harrelson was taken aback. For a fleeting moment he thought Kit had been about to attack him.

Much to the officer’s relief, Kit turned away and walked across the room to stand by the soot-darkened maw of the fireplace. He leaned upon the hearth and looked up at the brace of pistols hung from iron hooks driven into the gray stones. He reached up and placed his hand upon the guns, his father’s finely balanced weapons.

“The ‘Quakers’?” Harrelson asked, remembering the stories he had heard of Daniel McQueen’s exploits during the Revolution and the pistols he wryly called his “Quakers” because they brought peace whenever Daniel drew them from his belt—an everlasting peace.

Kit nodded. “Yes.” His hand lingered on the walnut grips and the black iron barrels, so cool to the touch.

“Kate has graciously invited us to stay the night,” Harrelson said. “Against her better judgment, I’m sure. She knows why I’m here. I respected her too much not to tell her. She and your father have given of themselves whenever their country called. Now I’ve come asking for her son. I have been authorized by President Madison to offer you a commission as a lieutenant.” The colonel rested his hand on Kit’s shoulder. “I’ll see to my men and have them stable the horses for tonight. Tomorrow morning I’ll start back to Washington. Come with me, lad. You are needed.”

“To help kill a friend?” Kit asked bitterly.

“To help save innocent lives,” the colonel gravely replied. He patted the younger man’s shoulder. “I don’t envy your decision, friend. But I know you’ll make the right choice.”

Colonel Harrelson started toward the front door. He walked with clipped, quick strides and held himself erect and proud. He opened the door and looked out at his men, waiting in the sunlit yard, his two lieutenants. Harrelson hoped he would leave with three.

H
E WAS LEAVING. THAT
was all there was to the decision. One moment Kit McQueen’s mind had been full of turmoil as he struggled to choose between his sense of duty to his embattled country and loyalty to his own family. And then, like a fresh gust of wind after a cloudburst, the answer came to him, the way was made clear and he knew what he had to do. But telling his mother was not going to be easy.

It was midnight, yet he could not sleep. And so, alone in the barn, he had put these sleepless hours to good use. As his father before him, Kit, too, found solace and a kind of peace among the tools of Daniel McQueen’s trade. Kit stoked the forge until he had a suitable fire. In a matter of a few hours, Kit had replenished the barn’s supply of horseshoes and nails, and replaced an iron rim on one of the carriage’s wheels. He had even repaired the latch on the barn door.

His ironwork completed, Kit shifted his attention to the grindstone. Right foot working the pedal, he set the wheel spinning. He hunkered over the grindstone and gingerly held the foot-long blade of his hunting knife to the wheel. Sparks flew from the blade, and the steel turned warm in his hands until it carried a razor-sharp edge. He shifted the blade and honed the opposite edge until he could shave the hairs from his arm with either side of the blade. So intent had he been on his work, Kit had not noticed his mother until he straightened to wipe the sweat from his features. Then he spied her, alone among the flickering shadows, a solitary woman of simple, solemn beauty.

Kate had not announced herself. She was content to wait and watch her son as in the past she had watched her husband, Daniel McQueen, laboring at his forge, lost in thought.

Like father, like son.

She had never pressed him on what had happened with the
Trenton
and how he had come to be in Florida, or for that matter, what had become of Bill Tibbs, who had been like an older brother to Kit and who had often stayed at the Hound and Hare as an invited guest. The errant second son of well-to-do Philadelphians, Tibbs had been a likable young man who shared Kit’s passion for fast horses and excitement. After Kit’s return from the sea, alone, with nothing but his weapons and the clothes on his back and a hard glint to his eyes, Kate had questioned her son only once as to the fate of his friend. Kit would only tell her that he and Tibbs had gone separate ways. But the bitterness in his tone had been impossible to miss. She sensed his anger and his hurt. Still, whatever had occurred was shrouded in secrecy, and she respected her son too much to pry.

Kate closed her eyes and pictured the tousled-haired child he had been. At ten years, Kit had been full of mischief, wild and daring, with a fearlessness that propelled him from one predicament to another. Once, he had climbed the inn’s steep roof. At twelve, Kit had come close to burning down the barn while trying to forge his very own knife.

Kate pictured the lad as he emerged from the smoke-filled barn, his cheeks streaked with soot and tears, his shirt singed. He wore the red welt on his forearm and the blisters on his knuckles like badges of honor, and he gripped in his hands the crudely formed knife he had fashioned all on his own.

Another memory overshadowed the image of the boy. She saw again the open grave, felt again the pain as Daniel McQueen’s coffin was lowered into the ground. And there was Kit, fifteen years old and too proud to cry in front of the people who had come to pay their last respects to a brave man.