The Silver Bullet

Chapter Fourteen

Convinced that the information Jake had given him about the band of Mohawks and British loyalists held the key to his wife’s whereabouts, the woodsman Leal le Couguar set out to find them.

The immense difficulties involved in traversing the wild country between Lake Champlain and the upper Mohawk Valley, not to mention the problem of confronting the group single-handedly, did not trouble him. If anything, he felt a welling confidence — the kidnappers had traveled far to elude him, but the gods had brought him a messenger to point him in their direction. For Leal interpreted Jake’s sudden appearance on the road as nothing less than divine intervention, and trusted now that his mission would end with success.

When he reached the shore, he took stock of his gear and found Jake’s discarded suit jacket. Leal had never seen such fine material sewed into a coat, and wondered why his friend had left it.

Perhaps if Jake had explained himself fully, perhaps if duty had not prevented him from telling Leal the full nature of his mission, the trapper’s logic might have taken a different turn. For though Leal was superstitious, still he was a generally practical man and did not ordinarily interpret everything he saw or heard as a supernatural sign. But as he pondered his friend’s strength and apparent wisdom, the ease with which they had talked together and the bond that had so quickly developed between them, the temptation to conclude that Jake was a personal embodiment of spirits Leal had heard about since childhood grew stronger and stronger. Blame isolation and loneliness as much as superstition; in any event, Leal pulled on Jake’s coat, content to wear it as a token of good luck and friendship — and maybe an invocation of supernatural powers.

If there were unworldly powers at work, they were not beneficent. For Leal’s arrival on shore and his contemplation of the jacket was observed by Major Christopher Manley, the agent of the Secret Department assigned to assassinate Jake.

Manley had spent the past two days following Jake’s trail. Though it had grown cold on the west shore of the lake, the agent had no doubt he would come across the American if he persevered.

Many miles north, the limp body of an old farmer lay near an empty cart, attesting to the major’s brutal manners. Before his neck had been snapped, the Frenchman had told Manley to be on the lookout for a half-breed trapper. The jacket Leal slipped on told him he had found the right man.

The woodsman would be a more difficult interview than the farmer — Manley took his pistol from his saddlebag, checked to make sure it was loaded, and then advanced on him.

Pistol is a misnomer. The gun he presented to the Minqua had the heft of a thick blunderbuss, specially adapted for Manley’s treacherous work. It contained nearly a pound of different sized balls, and its short barrel flared in a way that guaranteed the shot would spread in a deadly pattern. IT was good only for close work — a man standing directly in front of the pistol at twenty-five feet had a favorable chance of being missed by most of the rapidly spreading shot — but at close range it was more effective than an eight-pound cannon.

“ Good afternoon,” said Manley, stepping out of the trees at the top of the lake embankment just a few feet from the half-breed. “I wonder if you could tell me how you acquired your jacket. It’s quite a handsome coat.”

Leal feigned not to understand. He spoke a few words in Minqua to throw the stranger off.

“ You use a dead tongue,” responded Manley, as if he not only knew the words, but had been expecting them. “I will not stand out of your way, no matter how you express it.”

“ What is it you want?” responded Leal in English. He hoped his hard manner would hide his shock. Never had he come across a white man familiar with his words.

Manley smiled. “Perhaps I have been searching for the last remaining Minqua.”

“ I am not the last,” said Leal. “But it is rare to find someone who knows of my people.”

“ We can talk of your legends later — where did you get that coat?”

“ I bought it.”

“ Where is the man you bought it from?”

Leal did not answer. The man’s extreme height, his thin arms and legs, the odd prominence of his eyes — Leal must be forgiven if he wondered for just a moment if another spirit had taken human form and stopped him in the woods.

His amazement cost him dearly, for in the few seconds that he contemplated the possibility of unearthly spirits had involved him in their own drama, his attention lapsed. The assassin saw his opening and left forward to grab him by the neck, wrestling him to his knees with barely a struggle.

Just as Leal began to react, he felt the cold metal of Manley’s pistol poke against the bottom of his chin.

“ Did you leave him on the opposite shore?” Manley demanded, rocking the gun back and forth so it’s mouth sucked at Leal’s flesh.

“ Yes,” said the trapper.

“ Where is he headed?”

Suddenly Leal felt ashamed, as if he had betrayed his companion with his one-word answer. To his mind, he had faced a major test of courage and failed.

How hard are the ways of the woods; how difficult the code of survival. What a civilized man might interpret as simple prudence, or, at worst, expedience, Leal saw as a fatal disgrace. His only choice now was to attempt to recoup his honor by a show of strength — and desperate action. He twisted suddenly and threw his elbow into Manley’s stomach, diving for the ground as the British agent’s gun went off.

“ Two of the balls went through Leal’s left leg, burning their way through the flesh and shattering his bones. The pain was surprisingly light, though when he tried to stand up he tumbled down immediately. He crawled forward, reaching toward his gear and the tomahawk the lay six inches away.

He was just extending his fingers toward it when Manley clamped down on his hand with a boot.

“ I would have killed you anyway, Indian, but now I can take pleasure in doing so.”

Leal looked upward — not in the direction of his tormentor, but toward the trees. In that last moment of his life, he caught sight of a small squirrel chattering in a branch. He realized in that second that Meeko his wife had been killed by her captors — a possibility he had never allowed himself to consider, thought it had always been the mostly likely outcome of her trail. He realized, too, that he was on his way to meet her, in some happier existence. And so he smiled as Manley brought his knife blade down to slash the lifeblood from this throat.

The savage’s grimace so haunted the British agent that he contemplated burying him, an honor he would ordinarily never accord an enemy. In the end he decided he hadn’t the time, and contented his conscience by turning the body face down on the ground. Then he took the trapper’s canoe and pushed it out onto the water. It meant abandoning his horse, but the animal had been effectively lamed by his ride here anyway.

Why had his prey gone to the other side of the lake when Ticonderoga was only a few miles south of here? Manley reasoned that it must be because Jake was trying to intercept Herstraw. That meant there might still be a chance to catch him before he gave his superiors details about the pending invasion.

In truth, Manley agreed with Burgoyne that it did not matter much if the Americans knew exactly what they were faced with. It might even help to intimidate them — the forces they had chosen to oppose were overwhelming, and realizing that could only lead to despair. For they were, after all, facing the greatest army they world had ever known; no amount of foreknowledge could help in a wrestling match with a vastly superior opponent.

Manley’s real goal was the elimination of Jake Gibbs. If he could accomplish that before the spy delivered his intelligence, so much the better. He pushed his long, slender arms to row harder, the anticipation of his enemy’s demise a powerful and refreshing fuel.