The Left Behinds and the iPhone That Saved George Washington by David Potter

Author:David Potter [Potter, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-385-39058-3
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2015-01-05T16:00:00+00:00

FORTY-FIVE

CAPTAIN POWELL FALLS OFF his horse, the other horses neigh and jump, and General Washington, in that critical moment, calculates that his army now consists of two boys and one girl.

So he does what any other sane man would do.

He bolts. He whacks his great white horse on its flank, and it takes off.

Kramm and his partner whack their horses and take off after him.

No one—I mean no one—pays the slightest bit of attention to Daniel, to Elizabeth, or to me.

This all happens, by the way, in about five, maybe six seconds. From the shot to the whacks.

“My Lord,” says Elizabeth. We rush over to Captain Powell, who’s been shot in the shoulder. Blood—a lot of it—is pouring down his chest, but he’s able to sit up.

“Go!” he says. “Leave me! Help the general! There’s a pistol in my pocket!”

“What about you?” I ask Captain Powell.

“I’ll be fine, blast it!” He winces. “Now go! Take my horse and help him!”

Daniel pats around and pulls out of the Captain’s coat a long black pistol. “One shot,” Daniel says. “It’s all we’ll have.”

“Let’s make it count,” I say, and then we catch Captain Powell’s loose horse and all of us climb on. It takes some doing, and I’m by far the most inept, but all three of us manage to get aboard. Daniel has the reins, then Elizabeth, then me, and off we go.

The road inclines upward, and it takes us ninety seconds of hard slogging through snow to reach the apex. From here we can see the farmhouse below, the stable, and three or four other smaller buildings. What we can’t see is General Washington, or any of his pursuers.

“What’ll he do?” Daniel asks. “Has he a weapon?”

“I’m betting he doesn’t,” I say. “He’s the general of an army, on a little side trip to purchase some horses. I don’t think he would have bothered arming himself. I didn’t see that he even had a sword.”

“Then what?” says Elizabeth. “He can’t just ride around through the snow. They’ll hunt him down, like they would a fox.”

“Could he try to get help?” I ask.

“From where?”

“How about your uncle?”

“Our uncle? How do you know about our uncle?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I must have heard.”

“Unless General Washington brought gold, he’ll find no help from our uncle, I can assure you. It’s going to be up to us, I’m afraid.”

A few minutes later we see that the tracks diverge.

“They separated,” Daniel says. “Like any hunter would in going after their prey. They’ll try to find him and flush him out.”

“And the general?” I say. “What would be his best strategy?”

“He needs to double back upon his own trail, if he can. Go in one direction, come back, go another. Try to confuse them, if he can. If he can’t, they will just follow the track and come at him from different directions. Two against one. If they have experience, it should be simplicity itself.”

“Should he get off his horse? Proceed on foot?”

“To what end? His feet still leave tracks.

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