Conceived in Liberty Read Online Free PDF Page A

Clark Vandeer says quietly.
    â€œHe spoke of the Mohawk——”
    Ely says, simply: “Where would you go, deserting, Allen? We’re all of us used up.”
    â€œAfraid?”
    â€œI’m not afraid,” Ely said. He looked at me. His swollen feet were stretched out towards the fire, his thin hands trying to grasp the heat. His dark eyes looked at me and through me.
    Vandeer says, fretfully: “Why—why, Ely? You don’t believe any more. There’ll be no peace with Virginians hating the Boston men, with the New York brigades feared and hated. Even if we win, there’ll be no peace—only battle and more battle.”
    Ely didn’t answer. Jacob raised his dark, shaggy head. Above us, against the forest, shreds of song floated down from the New Jersey line. They were singing a plaintive Dutch melody. I lay down, closed my eyes and tried to sleep. Kenton was talking. He was explaining the thing I had heard a hundred times before, how the colonies could send an army into the New York Valleys and destroy the Six Nations. He was explaining why England would never permit the colonies to overwhelm the Indians.
    â€œThe moment we become strong,” Kenton says, “we become a nation. It’s our destiny.” More of abstract destiny. What has that to do with a defeated rabble?
    Jacob joins in, his bitter voice marking time to the nodding of his shaggy head. “Ye’re right, Kent, and the strength is here—a strength of many. Look you, we could go back to the Mohawk where they’re burnin’ and killing, so God only knows who lives an’ who’s dead—but our strength is here. The Indians depend on the British, so it’s our fight with the bastard King’s men. After we rest, only one more blow. We’ll gather strength an’ hit them—hit them——”
    I try to sleep, my coat drawn up over my face. I think of a woman; I think of little Moss Fuller with Jenny. I finger my beard and scrape the dirt from my face. The cold eats in and I turn my other side to the fire. For a moment, my eyes are open to the sky, and I see the broad stretch of stars. My hunger becomes a gnawing pain. I say to myself, sleep—don’t think.
    â€œâ€”or Six Nations—or ten nations. If this man Washington sets himself up for king with his Virginia brigades behind him?”
    â€œYou mistake the man,” Ely Jackson says.
    The stars become sparks in a morning sky, and I lie awake watching the dawn come. The fire still burns, a low smouldering fire. I have slept on and off—a long night. Why have the nights become so long now? Rolling over, closer to the fire, I realize that someone fed it during the night. Wondering who, I think that it might be Ely or Kenton or one of the others. Charley Green, who was a printer in Albany; he was alien and strange for a long time. In the beginning he had been fat and round, but his fat had gone. Edward Flagg, born out of farmers. Or Jacob and Ely, strong men and different. Someone in the night, feeding the fire and making a great sacrifice in the cold.
    I stood up; the others slept. They were curled for warmth, and they looked like bundles of rags. I remembered once, years ago, seeing a man dying of a cough, fleshless, but here were men as lean as he and living.
    I walked toward the forest for wood. The snow had a crust of ice over it, and it crunched under my feet. As the morning advanced, there was no sign of sun in the sky, only a quilted grey that might turn to snow later on.
    In front of the forest, the Jersey brigades lay, men sprawled about their fires. They had flung out sentries who slept now, all huddled over their muskets. I walked past, and the sentries didn’t move. The Jersey men were worse than we; bare feet showed and bare skin through their coats. Almost no blankets and only two tents in all the brigades. They were tight, uncomplaining men, Dutch stock, not like the