Robert Conroy - Liberty - 1784

“Load,” Wilford yelled.

One fowling piece and one musket wouldn’t be enough, but it was all they had. Silently, they vowed to sell their lives dearly. Sarah was bitter that it was all coming to this. They would be killed, but not until they were robbed, tortured, and the three women raped. That the women were wearing men’s clothes as a disguise wouldn’t fool their new attackers any more than it had fooled their traitorous leader, Micah. She thought about putting the fowling piece into her mouth and blowing her brains out. No, she thought. She would take at least one more of them with her. Besides, if she fought hard enough, perhaps Faith or one of the others would escape. Logic said it was a fool’s thought, but she could not bring herself to die at her own hand.

The outlaws’ canoe was only yards away when both she and Wilford fired and, to their horror, missed. Micah and his cronies hollered with glee. Micah stood up unsteadily and grabbed his crotch, screaming what he was going to do to the women.

They had only gotten a little closer when a volley of gunfire swept Micah and the others off the canoe and into the river. Sarah watched incredulously as more gunfire was directed at the few remaining attackers on the shore. Those bandits promptly turned and ran.

They were safe, at least for the moment. But why and how?

* * *

Homer’s trek alone from Manhattan Island began quietly and stayed that way for several days. There were few roads leading towards Boston, merely paths at best, and he walked them carefully. He was fully aware of his vulnerability as a lone black man in a land not that far removed from being a savage frontier.

He could not carry a musket or a pistol as white farmers or city-dwellers would find him threatening. They might even take it into their heads to shoot first and ask him his business over his lifeless corpse.

No, he would stay in the shadows of the trees that lined the miserable excuses for roads and endure the additional hardship that it entailed. The few people he had seen had behaved in such a way as to reinforce his plan. Once, a woman in a field screamed when she saw his dark skin and ran back to a cabin. A few seconds later, a man with a musket emerged and aimed it at him, telling him bluntly to get the hell away from his property.

Homer had complied, of course, but wondered to himself if a rampaging Iroquois war party would have gotten the same or better treatment. He also wondered if the poor couple had ever seen a Negro before. He could always go back to New York, he thought. Nobody there would have missed him in the first place. But no, it was time to start something new, a series of thoughts that had been triggered when he pulled that poor naked and starving white man from the river.

“Hold up, nigger.”

Homer froze and cursed silently. He’d permitted himself to be lulled and now two men stood just a few feet in front of him, their muskets not quite pointed at his chest.

“Damn, Abel, look what we got. Another fucking escaped slave.”

“I do think you’re right, Joshua.”

“So what do you think we should do with him?”

“I am not a slave,” Homer answered with a trace of indignation. “I am a free black man, and I’m on my way to Boston to find work.”

“Bullshit,” said Joshua. “You’re a fucking escaped slave and we’re going to arrange for you to go back south to your master.”

Homer was incredulous. “Don’t you know that slavery’s been abolished by the British?”

Joshua laughed. He was clearly the pair’s leader. “Nigger, you might just be surprised to know that a lot of people down south are simply ignoring that announcement. And you should know that there are a lot of other places like those owned by Spain and France where slavery still exists.”

This can’t be happening, Homer thought. He had to do something. “I have money. Let me buy my way out of this.”

Abel shook his head. “Amazing. Not only we get a slave to sell, but he has money as well to help pay us for our inconvenience. He ain’t armed so I think I’ll just take it. You keep him covered, Josh.”

Abel stepped forward and reached for Homer. For an instant, he was between Homer and Joshua. Homer shifted his left arm and the knife he had strapped above his wrist slipped into his palm. He rammed it into Abel’s heart and stepped to his left, pulling out the other knife that was below his right elbow. This one he threw at an astonished Joshua, taking him in the throat. He quickly grabbed the musket from Joshua who was clutching at his throat while blood gushed down his shirt.

Homer laughed. As he’d thought, it had never occurred to the fool that a Negro would fight back.

Homer dragged the two bodies a few yards into the forest. If he was lucky, the animals would turn them into unrecognizable slabs of meat and piles of bones in a very short while.

In the meantime, he had some decisions to make. First, he would no longer travel unarmed. He selected the better of the two muskets and threw the other away. He also took their gunpowder and bullets and, surprise, had found some money on their bodies, which he added to his own purse.

Where to go was the next decision. He decided that Boston was not a good idea, if the presence of Joshua and Abel was any indication of the welcome a black man would receive. No, he thought, he would head north, far north. He would go to Canada. Even though it was British-controlled, it might be safer for him than in the colonies.

If, he thought ruefully, anywhere would be safe for a black man.

The trip south from Fort Washington to the Ohio River had been fruitless. From prior experience, Will had known that gathering intelligence was often like that. For every valuable piece of information you found, you wasted time chasing a hundred useless ones.

Will was now convinced that there was no significant British presence on the Ohio River. Of course, he and his men couldn’t check every canoe and flatboat for the odd spy or scout, but there was no army to threaten Fort Washington or the various villages collectively known as Liberty. Hell, he decided, there probably wasn’t even a company of Redcoats between him and Tarleton’s headquarters at Fort Pitt.

“See that, Major,” said Sergeant Barley, pointing in the direction of the opposite shore.

Will was still not quite comfortable with his new rank. A few months ago he’d been a prisoner. Now, he was a major in the American Army. Tallmadge had bestowed the rank on him just before they departed. Will didn’t really care what rank he held. He just wanted to stay free and stop the British.

He followed Barley’s gesture and saw a line of canoes in the shadows of the other side. With the mist on the river, they could easily have missed them.

Will thought quickly. A handful of canoes could not contain an army, but they were coming from the direction of Fort Pitt. Thus, they might be spies or scouts for the British. If nothing else, they would be civilians who had knowledge of what was going on closer on to Pitt. With their information, perhaps it wouldn’t be necessary to get any nearer to Pitt and Tarleton’s soldiers.

Barley read his mind. “And it would be a helluva lot easier paddling with the current than against it, sir.”

No argument there. Paddling upstream was brutal. Even though they were strong and in shape, and that now included Will, their arms and shoulders ached with the effort of arguing with the strong currents of the Ohio River.

“We’ll let them pass and turn into their rear,” Will said.

Their unexpected presence in the other canoes rear might frighten them, or even cause them to shoot, in which case his men would shoot back. He decided it was a chance worth taking. Innocence or guilt could be proven later.