Long Knife by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom Read Free Book Online

Kaintuck. He’s quite fired with your scheme.”
    “He would be a good lad to have along.”
    “I must ask you to discourage him, though.”
    “He is eighteen now, is he not? If he doesn’t join me, I’m sure he will go to join Washington almost as soon.”
    “I can’t spare him, George.”
    “With all respect, Father, I doubt you’ll have a choice in the matter. I mean, he may go to the eastern war as Jonathan and Johnny have. Or he might join me and I can keep an eye on him, eh?”
    “As you did on your cousin Joseph last Christmas?” The question came loaded with a sarcasm unusual in John Clark’s nature. George was stung by it; he spurred his horse a few yards ahead in anger, turning his back on his father. Then he reined in and waited for him, cooling his temper.
    “I am sorry I said that, George.”
    “I’m sorry, too.”
    “But you must understand it’s a worry on your mother. Not knowing whether her own nephew is dead or a prisoner in some Shawnee town.”
    “It couldn’t be helped, Father. You know I always take every precaution. But I’m sure you don’t know what an undertakingit was to transport five hundred pounds of gunpowder through those parts. It’s remarkable that we made it at all. I’m deeply sad about Joe. But such things happen. You must understand, Father, I’m commandant of the whole Kaintuck militia, and I’ve lost many a brave man. I’ve shewed you the Kaintuck, and you saw it’s land worth defending. Joe fought, and we mightn’t’ve got the powder there had ’e not.”
    “Aye. And so now you propose an adventure a hundred times as foolhardy.”
    “No, sir. Only a hundred times as important. And with a hundred times as many men, I expect. Believe me, sir, I know exactly what I shall do every step of the way.”
    “So you’re a prophet now as well, eh?” Again that sarcasm, but followed by a sigh.
    “If to believe one can control events is to be prophetic, maybe so.”
    John Clark reined in his horse and sat looking directly at his son, obviously no longer thinking just of the next growing season. His cloak flapped against his leg in a gust of raw wind. For this inspection tour of the four-hundred-acre Clark estate, George was wearing his customary buckskins and fringed leggings and a fur hat, and to his father he looked more like a thinly clad savage than a son of the Virginia gentry. The shape of his long, muscular limbs and powerful chest were evident in the light garb. His pigtail of copper-red hair and the ringed tail of his hat hung together down his back.
    “Aren’t you cold, George?”
    “No.” The youth laughed. “You sound like Mother.”
    “Well, I don’t know why you’re not. I’m frozen clear to my fundament.” He grinned, his lips bluish, his big horsy teeth yellow. “What d’you say we go back to a fire and a toddy, son?”
    “Good enough. Listen,” he said, as they turned the horses homeward. “Here’s a story you’ll like: A white man shivers in coat and boots on a day like this, but his guide, a Delaware, is naked but comfortable. The white man inquires, ‘How can you bear it?’ The Delaware asks him, ‘Is your face cold?’ ’Yes, but I don’t mind that,’ says the white. ’So,’ the savage tells him, ’me all face.’
    “Well, Father, I suppose I’ve come to be like that: all face. I don’t mind it.”
    Laughing, they urged the horses into a canter down across the meadow and into a leafless copse, splashed through a shallow brook, jumped a stone fence, and galloped up the slope of asmall knoll where dry yellow grass waved. The sky was the color of gunmetal and the drizzle was changing to a spitting snow as the wind rose. Topping the knoll, they saw the house nestled among its outbuildings, its chimney smoke whipping away like spindrift. Cupid, a tall, skinny buck slave loosely draped in one of John Clark’s castoff blue coats, met them at the porch and took the horses to the stable.
    Inside the door George and his