War Path Read Online Free PDF Page A

premonition that took her breath away. There was fire and noise. The screams of the wounded and dying reverberated in her mind. And there he was, her own true love, surrounded on all sides by danger. All of this, an eternity in the fraction of a second, caught in death’s glossy blank stare.
    Then the moment passed and she sat back on her heels, exhausted from the experience, heartsick, and consumed with anxiety and a portent of disaster. All she could do was call out “Johnny!” which was both a cry of alarm … and a prayer.

2
    â€œSend out small parties to scout … to see if there be any appearance or track of an enemy.”
    â€œ W here’s Stark?!” Colonel Farley shouted to his subordinates, just before some French snipers shot his lungs out. “Where’s the bloody militia?” The diminutive colonel wiped the soot from his bulbous nose and fleshy jowls with a silk kerchief. He was clearly shaken by their predicament. “Damn these Provincials. They’ve led us into a trap.” He gestured with his silver-hilted small sword; 32 inches of straight steel flicked to and fro in the haze of gunfire.
    â€œThey fled the field at the first volley,” came the reply. Farley’s second in command, Major Michael Ransom of the 1st Regiment of Foot had to shout to be heard above the din of battle. The pockmarked young officer tried not to wince as a flurry of hot lead whined about him like angry hornets. A slug found his tricorn hat and sent it sailing off along with his wig, revealing the thinning wisps of his once luxurious hair like stalks of trampled yellow grass plastered to the pale field of his scalp. Ransom scrambled over and retrieved the periwig, for it was a symbol of both his authority and station. The hat was a loss, however.
    Ransom and the men of the royal regiment, in their scarlet coats accented with buff-colored lace, their white breeches and hose, provided a handsome target for Atoan’s warriors. But to the six hundred men of the 1st Regiment of Foot, their bright uniforms were a matter of pride and had served them well on the battlefields of Europe. Nor would they permit themselves to break ranks and scatter for cover. The 1st stood its ground.
    And died, singly and in pairs.
    The field of battle was a long narrow meadow bordered on two sides by forest. A rutted road ran the length of the mile-long clearing. It had been worn into the rich sod by the continuous passage of supply wagons, cannons, and caissons and the columns of soldiers who had made the three-day trek from Fort Edward to the palisades of William Henry, on the southern tip of Lake George.
    There was hardly a patch of ground stretching two hundred miles from the bend of the Hudson River all the way to the forts of New France, north of Lake Champlain, that hadn’t been watered with a crimson rain, and contested over by the Colonials, the British or their implacable foes. Today was this meadow’s baptism of blood, yet it was just another deadly afternoon in what seemed a forever war.
    Ransom, slow panic flaring behind his pale blue eyes, sidestepped his commander’s flagrant gestures, even parried once with his own short sword to keep from being accidentally impaled. He hauled out his horse pistol and fired in the direction of the French and their savage allies while Colonel Farley continued to rant about the Provincials and how Captain Stark in particular had brought them all to ruin.
    In the few short weeks since Michael Ransom’s posting at Fort Edward, he had seen little enough to respect in the Colonial Militia. A soldier should stand his ground. There was a proper way to fight a war. British discipline and tactics had carried the king’s colors through many an engagement throughout Europe and Africa. But after all, what could one expect? The Provincials were farmers, woodsmen, tinkers, tinsmiths and common laborers, all of them volunteers, not professional soldiers