Anxious not to break the colonel’s interdiction against conversation, Billy mouthed his response: We all are.
Mel grinned his relief, took the Brown Bess off his shoulder, pointed it at the bush, and mimicked an explosion and recoil. And grinned again.
Billy smiled his approval, then swung his head smartly back into its proper position, facing the soldier immediately ahead of him and quick-stepping to the common beat. There was no drum, of course, only the rhythmic tramp of these soldier-citizens, all of whom had, mere days ago, been tending a farm, wielding an axe, or minding a country store.
Billy and Mel had kept to their boyhood pact, entering the carpentry trade together in Toronto as apprentices to Billy’s uncle and, just this past summer, going into business for themselves. But when the word went out that eight new militia regiments were being formed-one of them to be led by the Pelee Island Patriot himself-the young men had only to glance into each other’s eyes before heading up to Gideon Stanhope’s estate at the western edge of the city and signing on.
Of course, they trained and paraded only three times a week and had to be content, for the nonce, with green hunting jackets, gray trousers, and their own boots. The remainder of their time had been spent productively if mundanely in hammering and sawing at Mrs. Edwards’s rejuvenated establishment on King Street, where, by an act of divine providence, Billy had caught the eye of one of the seamstresses employed there and had fallen madly, giddily in love. Dolly had feigned indifference, for a day, then capitulated. Mel, who had been engaged for a year, pretended such romance was a routine business, but Billy knew better. So here they were, each twenty-two years old, employed, in love, and marching out to defend the country they had been born into and had subsequently decided was worthy enough to preserve for their own future.
Billy wanted to whistle his contentment but settled for a muted hum.
Back in November, it had seemed that they would see no action. Lieutenant-Colonel Stanhope, his laurels already won and displayed with daily dignity, had brought his handpicked crew of NCOs, among them Billy and Mel, to the district at the beginning of the month. They had been thence involved in intensive training sessions with the freshly embodied local regiment, intensive because their spies had informed Governor Arthur that a sizeable incursion was expected across the Detroit River on November 21, to be coordinated with a second attack somewhere along the St. Lawrence. The latter had indeed occurred, in the middle of the month, and though they had received only sporadic and incomplete reports, the raid had been repulsed and the enemy routed. “We’ve been sent to the wrong end of the province!” Mel had complained. November 21 came and went, without incident.
The tedium of the daily training sessions was soon broken, however, by a diverting exercise carried out by Colonel Stanhope, Captain Muttlebury, and the twenty-man troop of which Billy McNair was now acting sergeant. It turned out that, back in July, following the Yankee raids across the St. Clair River, the generals had decided to sequester a number of arms caches in strategic spots along the western frontier for emergency use against any large-scale invasion. One of these was a long-abandoned earthen fort beside a creek in the bush about halfway between Windsor and Sandwich. It had last seen service in the War of 1812. Sixty rifles and ten boxes of powder and shot had been secreted beneath the crumbling forward wall. However, fearing that one or more local republican sympathizers might have learned about the location, Major Sharpe, commanding officer of the 34th in the region, ordered the arms removed and brought to Fort Malden at Amherstburg. Billy had noted, from a distance, an animated discussion of the order among the officers, including several exasperated gestures from Colonel Stanhope. As a reward for his commentary, the colonel was assigned to effect the removal of the ordnance.
So it was that they found themselves sweating and grumbling on a warm Indian summer afternoon as they dug away the sod used to camouflage the crates of rifles and ammo and loaded them onto two wagons. The colonel disdained any direct involvement in the ongoing indignities after he had completed the routine task of indicating where the crates were located, referring to a sketch provided him by the major. Thereafter he sat rigidly upright and aloof on his Arabian, staring down the little creek while the breeze rippled his epaulettes. Billy had felt fiercely proud to be serving under such a man.
“You got them all?” the colonel inquired of Captain Muttlebury, casting a cursory glance at the wagons and then riding up to the earthworks for a quick inspection of the hastily repaired devastation there.
“Yes, sir,” Muttlebury replied. While he had taken no part in the actual labour except to point with his sabre to those spots along the thirty-foot embankment where the crates had been stashed, he was sweating and alarmingly pale.
“Are you well, Captain?” the colonel asked. The steel-blue eyes suggested that his concern was military, not personal.
“I’ve had the shakes since this mornin’, sir,” Muttlebury said. He was a corpulent man, bluff and friendly to a fault. And more at home behind the counter of his hardware store in Sandwich than in the saddle of a warhorse. But no one questioned his dedication to the cause or to the tasks at hand.
“Then you should have reported yourself unfit for duty,” the colonel said. “You may ride up on one of the wagons if you need to. We’ve got twelve miles or more to go before we get these rifles safely tucked inside Fort Malden.”
Billy and Mel had taken turns riding Muttlebury’s abandoned bay.
The private in front of Billy stumbled to a halt, and Billy nearly crashed into him. Behind them the column came to a staggering stop. Everyone peered anxiously ahead. The sun had risen and now sat amid a brooding mist above the forest rim to their right. No one had yet spoken. On his stout bay, once again Captain Muttlebury came plodding softly towards them along the double line of men.
“The enemy have been spotted in François Baby’s orchard two hundred yards ahead,” he said to Billy and his troop. “They’re fixing for a fight. The colonel is going to organize four squads and attack them head-on. Our company will form up on the far right. Then, after the first volley or two, we’ll veer off through the bush and outflank them. Check your powder and fix bayonets.”
Muttlebury then wheeled and galloped back to the head of the column, which had already begun to come apart as the five companies moved wordlessly forward behind their subalterns. Billy led his troop towards the right-hand side of the clearing that lay before them, with Mel at his heels. Several of the men were taking deep, rasping breaths and squinting ahead through the dissipating mist in search of the enemy. The invaders made themselves heard before they could be seen, however. A nervous, boastful shouting rose up from the leafless trees at the far side of what must have been one of Baby’s pastures. Then the first rifle shots, crackling and ineffectual. Billy tried not to look at the puffs of snow being kicked up a few yards in front of him.
The officers had dismounted. Colonel Stanhope began issuing orders in a calm, almost offhand tone. Billy knew the drill by heart. He and Mel set up their troop in three ranks, chivvying several men into position when they simply froze. At Muttlebury’s signal, the troop advanced in concert with the companies on their left. The snow underfoot was not deep, but it was heavy, thanks to alternating days of freezing and thaw.
Billy strode manfully forward, letting his fear drive him to his duty rather than stall it, and all the while conscious of his responsibility to the inadequately trained men relying on him. As they reached the halfway point across the clearing, random fire from the orchard spattered snow all about them, and ahead they could see more than a hundred blue-tunicked soldiers, the invading Yankees, dashing about the barren orchard in apparent disorder and discharging their muskets and rifles in capricious bursts. Nearby, someone gave a brief cry of startlement, then a groan, and Billy turned to see a fellow named Carter pitch forward into the snow, then roll over and clutch his belly as if his bowels were about to escape.