Valley Forge: George Washington and the Crucible of Victory by William R. Forstchen, Newt Gingrich, Albert S. Hanser Read Free Book Online Page B

looked east for a few seconds, into the eye of the wind, then back to the men on the road.
    “I reckon it is. And if it ain’t, it sure as hell is some high ranker. Figure it to be near on to three hundred yards, Dan. But dammit this wind’s gonna make it a tricky shot.”
    “It’s not Burgoyne, but the commanding general is worth the try,” Dan announced.
    “Colonel Morgan!” Major Clark hissed. “Damn it all, sir. Do you see how many light infantry they have down there! And those mounted riflemen. For God’s sake, don’t. We’re supposed to scout and report!”
    “You write your reports, while I do me some shooting,” Morgan replied with a grin. “And maybe, just maybe, you can report that Howe has gone to hell and I sent him there.”
    He slipped his rifle up over a fallen log, found the point of balance, and squinted down the four-foot length of the barrel.
    “God help us,” Clark sighed. He snapped his notebook shut and slipped it into his haversack.
    “You boys get ready for some fun. Dan’s gonna shoot himself a general,” Moses cackled. The other riflemen strained to look up from their hiding place. They were already placing wagers on the shot, betting their wads of Continental money.
    Dan sighted in on the officer in the center of the group, took a deep breath, and exhaled half of it. His finger lightly touched the trigger, and his gaze shifted to the tufts of grass in the pasture before him. He watched as they bent over with the wind, judging the distance and time the ball would be in flight, and shifted his aim a dozen feet to the left of his target, elevating the muzzle to half again the height of the man.
    A surge of wind eddied around him, moaning through the forest; the treetops swayed. Muttering a curse, he withdrew his finger, exhaled, and could hear Clark sigh with relief.
    “Thank God…”
    The horsemen moved again along the road that dropped down behind the orchard. Morgan raised his rifle again, judged the wind, the movement of the target, and the bullet’s destination. Just a few seconds , he prayed, hold this wind back, just a few seconds …
    The prayer went unanswered as another gust swept across the fields and through the trees. The target disappeared from view behind the barn, the road farther on turning south was concealed as well by the orchard.
    The shot was lost.
    “You lucky bastard,” he whispered. “You don’t know how close it was.”
    Clark exhaled with a grunt.
    “Let’s just settle back and watch them for a while, Colonel. It’s swarming with light infantry and Jaegers down there. They’ll be on us like flies to manure if they know we are here.”
    Morgan nodded, his attention focused back on the farmyard.
    And then he saw it. The farmer stepped away from the officer and headed toward the road. The officer came up behind him, pistol drawn, and hit the man across the back of the head, causing him to drop to his feet.
    “You see that!” Morgan exclaimed. “You see what that bastard did to that farmer?”
    Morgan snapped his rifle back up, not even bothering to rest it on a log, and sighted in. The range to the farmyard was about two hundred and twenty, maybe two hundred and forty yards, the wind from the left was dropping off…
    “Colonel Morgan, please,…” Clark exclaimed.
    Morgan squeezed the trigger.
    The familiar recoil slapped his shoulder; it felt much like a caress to Dan. The muzzle of his rifle leapt up slightly as the .45-caliber ball cracked out and arced upward. The greased patch that had encased the ball fluttered to the ground a dozen yards out into the pasture. A puff of smoke swirled up around him, whipped away by the wind, but not before more than a dozen watchful skirmishers in red uniforms and the blue and green of the Jaegers had spotted it.
    The report of his rifle thundered across the field and echoed around Zebulon Miller’s farmyard as the bullet shattered Lieutenant Peterson’s right arm—the arm that had been holding the