The Proud and the Free by Howard Fast Read Free Book Online Page A

held that it was not right for a Jew to stand for a whole regiment, even as they held again that it was wrong for, the black man, Jim Holt, to represent the 2nd Regiment. It was Jack Maloney, who was elected from the 6th over protests that a British deserter could not be wholly trusted, who said:
    What kind of a mockery is it when we make foreigns among the foreigns themselves?
    They were elected, as was Bora Kabanka, the giant African-born Bantu of the 9th Regiment. There was Dwight Carpenter from the artillery and Abner Williams, the gentle Connecticut-born scholar from the 3rd Regiment. Sean O’Toole stood for the 4th and Jonathan Hook for the 7th. Some thought it proper to have someone stand symbolically for the 8th, but since they were hundreds of miles away, guarding Fort Pitt, and since we had heard nothing of them for so long, it was decided better to let them be apart from us, until they could come to a decision of their own.
    Before the Committee of Sergeants sat down to build an agenda and deal with it, a Commissary Committee was appointed by Billy Bowzar and myself, with Chester Rosenbank as its president, and they adjourned to his hut in the encampment of the 2nd, to begin to deal with the various and complex questions of supply.
    Most of the night had gone by now, and most of the lads of the Congress had staggered sleepily away to their hutments. Built red though the fire was, it could not drive off the cold that crept through the chinks in the logs, and our tallow wick had burned out and we had no fat to replenish it. Katy Waggoner was huddled on the floor, close to the fire, with Mathilda’s head in her lap, and as the mountain girl slept, Katy gently stroked her yellow hair and sang to her, so softly that it came as a kitten’s purr: Long is the night for sleeping childer, goblins dance in the redwat snow … In the bunks, men huddled in the straw snoring hoarsely, for our heads were heavy and thick with constant sickness; and on either side the long table the Committee of Sergeants sat and planned, their bearded faces weary and gray. Billy Bowzar had a writing pad that he tilted to catch the fire gleam, and Jack Maloney was advancing an argument for speed and precision in getting under way.
    Or you’ll find a traitor among you, mark me, said Katy Waggoner, breaking her sad song and then picking it up again.
    Angus MacGrath came in, beating the cold from his blue knuckles.
    How is it? we asked him.
    Caller, and much so. Cold and deeply so. But quiet.
    Have ye a good guard of lads?
    Twenty of the best. I took me the Gary brothers, who are tight on a scent as hellhounds, and I put me one at the Hardwick House and one at the Kemble House, and there they crouch in the snow for a whisper among the gentry. But they sleep the sleep of the just this New Year’s, even if no other time, with bellies full of wine and pudding. And if I may trouble ye, Jamie, I’d be the better for a crust of bread in me to stave off the cold.
    And wouldn’t we all, smiled Danny Connell. Just tighten yer belt and come another day – we’ll all of us be eating sufficient, or without any appetite to trouble us.
    Jamie here – and heed me, Angus, and get it into your thick head – is now President of the Guard … said Billy Bowzar seriously, his broad, flat face solemn and judicious … and it’s him we will thank for staying alive. We are a Board of Sergeants to deal with a rising up of the whole Line, so that from this moment on, we will fight a war for ourselves and for our own, and not for the God-damned officer gentry.…
    The big Scot’s jaw fell, and he rubbed his beard and looked from face to face among the twelve stolid members of the Committee.
    Well?
    Give me a chance to swallow.
    Are ye with us or agin us, Angus?
    What in hell kind of a question be that to ask a man? Do I have the look of the fause?
    True or fause, each man pledges here.
    Be damned to ye, and I