A Girl Called Samson (41)

I had no appetite. The heat and the strain of my circumstances filled my belly instead. I wanted only water, and often gave my daily ration of rum to one of my messmates. I forced myself to eat to keep my strength up, but had to choke it down. The ration of bread and meat, which we sometimes drew and sometimes didn’t, depending on our position between encampments, was sufficient for my needs, but the men around me suffered constant hunger.

We watched the British pickets for several days to find a weak place in the line and then moved around them, going as far as Harlem, only eight miles from the city center. We made our observations without incident—if thirst, fatigue, and three days of lying in the bushes and another three moving without sleep could be considered unworthy of commentary—and retreated back to White Plains about a month after we’d left the Point, reporting on what we’d seen.

It wasn’t a whole lot.

The bulk of the British forces were still in the south fighting other campaigns, and the movements of those that remained behind the lines in New York were slow and sloppy, with no obvious designs for doing anything beyond surviving yet another summer.

Captain Webb said, “They’re as desperate for supplies as we are, and it’s going to get a whole lot worse come winter. The whole colony—the whole country—has been stripped bare.”

“There’s not enough farmin’ being done. Only fightin’,” Noble said, his tone bleak. He didn’t say it, not with the captain nearby, but Noble regretted his enlistment. He had a wife and two young children at home. He didn’t talk about them much. He shared almost as little as I did, but he’d asked me to write a letter for him, a letter to “my dear wife, Sarah,” where he’d mentioned his two sons, Jesse and Paul, and expressed his love for them:

I shouldn’t have come. I should have stayed with you and contributed another way. But pride and shame are powerful tools, so here I am, away from you and our sons, away from the land that needs my attention. I only pray that I can soon return, my duty done, my conscience clear.

It was a funny thing, pride. It made some men leave and some men stay. My father’s pride had made him selfish. Noble’s pride had done the opposite. Like so many others, he’d been driven by the need to do his part.

I wasn’t sure where I fit on that scale. Maybe somewhere in the middle. I wanted to do my part, to play a new part, but the need to prove myself, to conquer each task, to overcome every obstacle and to win . . . those things fueled me more than anything else.

Had it been a competition of sheer strength, I would have lost. Had we been engaged in hand-to-hand combat, day in and day out, running for our lives or taking lives, I would have fallen. But as is the case with so much in life, the tasks my detachment was charged with were more contests of endurance and determination than physical prowess. And in both, I refused to be bested.

We rejoined the other half of our company in White Plains and proceeded toward the Hudson, in the area of the Tappan Bay, not far from Tarrytown, where we made camp and awaited further instructions. To our surprise, General Paterson and Colonel Jackson were already there, tents pitched, awaiting us.

General Paterson told us that we would remain another day at the Tarrytown encampment before heading east toward the Connecticut border, along with Colonel Ebenezer Sproat, who was camped half a mile below us with detachments from the Massachusetts Second, Nat’s old regiment. I didn’t know which company Phineas was in. He’d been assigned elsewhere—the other boys too, though regiments had been reorganized and rearranged throughout the war. I hadn’t seen any of the brothers, thank Providence, but I’d seen Colonel Sproat.

The old tavernkeeper’s son from Middleborough was tall as a tree, and he stood out from the rest. He’d made a name for himself, and Captain Webb had sung his praises, but I was wary. I didn’t want to travel with his company. He’d known me—though from a distance—for too many years, and I feared he might have heard tales from home and would recognize me.

My company was grateful for the rest, but I spent the hours of my picket duty with my stomach in knots, unimpressed by the slivered moon, the soft air, and the croaking frogs. When Beebe relieved me early, stepping out from the trees, I spun, hands on my weapon, a startled cry in my throat. The guard was thin now that we were back behind our own lines, but a man was still stationed on every side.

“Don’t shoot, Robbie. It’s just me.”

“You’re early.”

“I was awake. Thought I might as well take watch if I wasn’t going to sleep.”

“It’s quiet,” I said. “Only the bullfrogs are awake.”

“You callin’ me a toad?” he quipped, rubbing at his bristly cheeks. The whole company—except for me and Jimmy—needed a shave. Captain Webb had been sheepish about our bedraggled appearance when we’d arrived in camp, but General Paterson had waved off his apologies, though his eyes had lingered on my face for a moment.

I just shook my head and let Beebe grumble. He loaded his musket, tearing the cartridge open with his teeth and priming the flash pan before closing the frizzen and pouring the rest of the powder into the barrel. He added the ball and paper and rammed it into the breech.

“You don’t look so young and bonny anymore either,” he muttered. “Your skin’s leathered, and the sun has bleached your hair. If I’m a toad, you’re a lizard.”