Liberty 1784: The Second War for Independence by Robert Conroy Page B

by them, it would be worse than being captured by the British. From what they’d heard, the outlaws were little more than animals.
    Wilford fired his musket at another man and missed. A bandit jumped into the canoe and clubbed Wilford down to his knees while Faith screamed and jumped on the man’s back. Sarah pulled a knife from her waist and slashed at another man who grabbed her and tried to throw her into the water.
    Fortunately, Faith had distracted Wilford’s attacker long enough for him to pull his own knife and stab his assailant in the stomach. Aunt Rebecca helped out by clubbing another bandit with a paddle and then pushing him into the river.
    They had regained control of their own canoe, but the others were either capsized or being fought over. Micah’s canoe, of course, was controlled by him and he now turned it towards Sarah’s. The three men originally in it had been reinforced by two of the attackers from shore. With five strong paddlers, there was no way they could outrun Micah’s canoe.
    “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