Prosper in the Ranks: A Novel of the Revolutionary War by Lawrence Bonney

Author:Lawrence Bonney [Bonney, Lawrence]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-07-27T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Prosper slowly drifted back to consciousness as a pair of strong hands shook him from the deep yet entirely too short sleep which had overtaken him where he had sat at the table. Uncomprehendingly, he stared dumbly at Lockhart, who had awakened him, and whose voice he heard as if from the far end of a long tunnel.

“Up and at ‘em, lad! They’ve come!”

He stood to his feet and almost fell over as the whole world seemed to rock back and forth. The fact that he felt no headache or nausea after such a night of drinking he knew from experience to be a bad sign, for it meant that he was still drunk. He was slow in grasping reality, but soon he was able to string his words together into a sentence.

“Who’s come?..... What is it, then?”

In the incoherence of his half-asleep, half-drunken state, he even stupidly thought for just a moment that perhaps his own regiment had learned of their whereabouts and sent somebody to collect them.

“Your friends have followed you across, Prosper. Get ready!”

“Friends?”

“The Tories, you fool! The greencoats!”

Bewilderment washed over him as he struggled to understand the dilemma to which he had just awakened, still not fully believing the words which were being spoken to him. And then, all of the sudden, it dawned on him. The Tories were coming, and they were coming for him. He could find no words.

“Oh...Oh, good God!”

There were several empty bottles adorning the table and Prosper dodged a ripe puddle of vomit as he scrambled to wake his companions. Docherty and Beckenhaupt were still dead to the world, their faces glued to the table in front of them, and Prosper pushed and shook them until they were awake. Both of them struggled to understand what was happening, until the realization set in, and then they were quiet as tombs. That which all three of them knew and feared, they couldn’t say and had the good sense not to say, but it was a palpable fear which hovered between the three of them. The man whose gold they had stolen had come for them, and if he had come so far and so daringly, it was because he meant to find them. Prosper admonished himself silently for being so foolish as to think that a man would let a small fortune just slip through his fingers.

“A whole battalion, our man said, some four-hundred. They must have followed you lads across,” Lockhart said in a joking tone, but Prosper searched the captain’s face for any sign that he might know why the King’s men had come to fight. His thoughts returned to the note from Jansen that they had carried with them across the Hudson. If Lockhart knew about the gold, he certainly didn’t show it, Prosper thought. In any case, it made little difference if he did. It was the least of their troubles at the moment. The Tories had come across, and now they would have to fight them if they wanted to make it back to the relative safety of the regiment.

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