Mary Bordon awakened the next morning to insistent pounding on the door. Her mind, at first still cobwebbed by sleep, was confused by the rhythmic thumping sound. She lifted one ear to listen, but the sound had ceased. Just as she was about to roll over and go back to sleep, the repetitive sound began again, this time accompanied by a voice.
"Captain Bordon!" the muffled voice called "You're needed right away!"
James Bordon finally awoke as all the clatter finally penetrated his slumber. Grumbling, he quickly got up and threw his banyan on over his naked body as he went to answer the door.
Throwing the door open peevishly, he found a nervous dragoon private standing there. "Well?" he demanded. "What is it? You'd better have a very good reason for disturbing a man the morning after his wedding!"
"Begging your pardon, Captain, sir, but General Cornwallis has called a meeting that will begin in thirty minutes," the young private told him.
"All right," Bordon said wearily. "You've delivered your message. You may go."
After shutting the door a bit harder than necessary, Bordon turned to his bride, standing there in her hastily donned shift, he apologized, "I'm sorry, Mary. I'd hoped to spend the day tarrying in bed with you, but, unfortunately, my duty will interfere with that."
"It's all right, James," Mary said consolingly. "We had a wonderful wedding night and I'm very happy. We'll have plenty of other times, together."
"That's my Mary," Bordon said, smiling, as he took her into his arms to kiss her. "Ever so sensible." Remembering the night they'd shared before, he added in a husky voice, "And sensuous."
Within twenty minutes, Captain Bordon was striding purposefully toward the main building. As he began to mount the steps to the door, he met William Tavington coming out, followed closely by Wilkins.
"There you are, Bordon," Tavington said briskly," heading down the steps to meet him. "Get your gear and your horse tacked up; we'll be leaving on patrol within the hour."
The doctor had released Bordon back to full duty the day before the wedding. This would be his first time out of the fort since being injured at Camden.
"What about the meeting I was called to?" Bordon asked, trying not to let his irritation show.
"Oh, we concluded that a few minutes ago," the dragoon leader told him dismissively. "The Lord General wants us to put a stop to the partisan raids on our supply trains." Smirking in amusement, Tavington continued, "It seems as if the rebels have stolen the Lord General's extra uniforms, his diaries, and those gargantuan dogs of his." Sneering in disgust, he added, "Good riddance to the dogs; they got fed better than most of our men do."
"They've been raiding our supply trains ever since we came into the backcountry," Bordon pointed out. "The Lord General is just now noticing?"
"I suppose it makes a difference when it's his belongings that are being stolen," Tavington observed.
"No doubt," Bordon agreed with a wry grin.
Shortly after the dragoons had left the fort and were heading down the road about a half hour later, Bordon turned to Tavington and asked, "So, what's your plan for dealing with the partisan raids?"
"I've given it some thought and have decided to use their own tactics against them," Tavington said. "Instead of attacking them directly, we'll create a ruse to draw them out. Those two supply wagons you saw leaving ahead of us with just a small detachment of foot soldiers do not contain supplies, but rather more heavily armed soldiers, who will remain out of sight until they're needed."
Taking a deep breath, the dragoon continued, "The key is to make the wagons look vulnerable, so the rebels will come out and attack. We'll be following along, out of sight, and be ready to move in at the right time."
"Do you have a specific area in mind?" Bordon inquired. "I think that less travelled secondary road between Pembroke and Glenville would be a good choice. It's close enough to the main road between Pembroke and Wakefield, where Benjamin Martin's men have been seen several times in recent weeks."
"That's exactly where I was thinking of," Tavington said, smiling evilly. "Great minds do think alike."
"I hope we find those two worthless bastards who attacked Mary today," Wilkins said darkly. "We've let them live far too long. It's time for them to pay for what they did."
"Indeed," Bordon agreed. "I think today would be a fine time for them to meet their Maker…very slowly."
"You both have my leave to dispatch them both to hell in any way you see fit," Tavington told them.
The men fell silent them, each returning to their own private thoughts. For the next couple of hours, they did not speak much, and even then, stuck strictly to business.
As they came upon a particularly sharp bend in the road, Tavington held up his hand for the group to stop. He rode up to the young lieutenant in charge of the wagons, as his dragoons waited behind them.
"Remember what I told you at the fort," Tavington reminded the young officer, looking down from his horse. "Martin has been known to ride out a little ahead of his men to confront the wagon trains, saying that he'll spare the lives of the wagoners and the soldiers with them if they'll just walk away and let them simply take everything without a fight. You must stall him for several minutes until I can get my men close enough to make a charge. It's important that they get little to no warning as to our presence, as I want to take down as many of the bastards as we can before they either gather themselves together to fight back or run away before we can catch them."
"Yes, sir," the infantryman said. "I'm actually looking forward to see the look of surprise on his face when all my men jump out of the wagons, while yours ride into the rebels and cut them to pieces."
"As am I," Tavington agreed. Pointing to a hill to their right, he continued, "My men and I will form at the crest of that hill, where we can look down on the road ahead. There are enough trees there that we won't be immediately visible to someone glancing in that direction. We'll be watching you and your men the entire time."
"Yes, sir," the other man acknowledged.
"Wait until you see my men and I positioned at the top of the hill before proceeding on," Tavington warned.
A few minutes later, Tavington and his men had positioned themselves to charge down the hill to the road ahead at Tavington's signal. As they surveyed the road ahead of them below and the left, their attention was centered where the road intersected with a wooded area by a swampy creek. Tavington was certain this was where Martin's men would be lurking in wait if they were in the area, as it was a perfect area from which to stage an ambush for slow moving wagons just coming around from the sharp, blind bend in the road.
Tavington's instincts about using this spot to conduct the ruse soon proved to be entirely correct as he surveyed the area with his spyglass. As he watched the plodding wagons move down the road toward the wooded creek, he detected movement in the trees.
"Aha!" Tavington smirked. "The rat has taken the cheese!" Calling out to his men, he said, "Prepare to charge on my signal. Keep your sabres sheathed for now, as we don't need to give away our position prematurely."
The dragoon leader continued to watch as Benjamin Martin suddenly emerged from the trees, with his men following at a safe distance.
Too far away to hear the exchange between Martin and the lieutenant, he merely observed the gestures and body language between the two men and knew that Martin was getting ready to attack. He noted that the men in the wagons did not emerge until he saw Martin give the signal to his men to attack.
Taking that as his own signal, Tavington gestured to his men, then ordered, "Charge!"
He spurred his horse into action followed closely by Bordon and Wilkins, and the rest of the men. They were upon Martin's partisans before the rebels had a chance to properly react, as they were still stunned from the surprise appearance of all the foot soldiers from the wagons The sound of 200 sabres singing as they were unsheathed and the sunlight that reflected off them like miniature flashes of lightning inspired terror among the partisans. Many turned to run, but it was already too late.
The dragoons came up rapidly on either side of the wagons and quickly spread out to surround the partisans, with their swinging sabres cutting down men right and left. While the previously hidden infantrymen from the wagon engaged in hand-to-hand combat in the middle of the affray, the dragoons attacked from the sides and circled around back to cut off methods of escape.
Though Ben Martin, his son, and several other men managed to escape into the swamps, the dragoons' encircling manoeuvre served to herd many others together where the infantrymen were able to easily round them up as prisoners.
The skirmish was soon over, thanks to the element of surprise. Tavington had sent a detachment to round up stragglers, while the foot soldiers relieved the already captured men of their weapons.
Bordon and Wilkins rode up to inspect the prisoners, looking each man over carefully. Noting the hard expressions on both men's faces, some of the militia men squirmed in discomfort, wondering just what the two dragoons were looking for.
"Do you see them, Wilkins?" Bordon asked, as they surveyed the group from a distance.
"I'm not sure," the other man replied. "Let's get a closer look."
Remembering Mary's description of the wretched excuses for men who had attacked her, Wilkins first looked for men with red hair, as they'd be the easiest to spot. He dismissed several possibilities because they were the wrong height or had the wrong features before spying a short man standing in the back, whose flame-red hair was partially hidden by his hat. As the tall dragoon scrutinized him more closely, he noted the wart that Mary had described near his right ear.
"Bordon!" Wilkins called out in exultation. "I've got him! Over here!"
As the two dragoons quickly moved closer, Bordon pointed at the man standing next to Sam, who had a pockmarked complexion and a knife scar on his chin, and said, "Looks like we have them both."
With a toothy, feral grin that did not reach his eyes, Wilkins said, "How obliging for them to make our job easier."
Bordon gestured to two infantrymen to bring the two partisans out in front of the other prisoners. As the soldiers prodded the two forward with their muskets, Sam called out indignantly, "What do you want with us? We didn't do nothin'!"
Wilkins, who had dismounted, strode up to the small man with a misleadingly casual pace. Seconds later, the diminutive rebel was on the ground spouting blood from a broken nose, courtesy of a crushing blow from Wilkins' huge right fist, still clad in black leather riding gloves.
"Let me refresh your memory," Wilkins said severely. "That women you raped at the horse farm a few weeks ago was my sister!"
"And my wife!" Bordon rumbled, in a deceptively soft tone of voice.
"Your wife?" Sam said stupidly, as he sat on the ground, still feeling his broken nose. "Why, we killed her man that day." Pausing to snort in derision, "And she's married again, you say, with her last husband barely cold in the ground? I guess it's true what they say then about Tory women being cold bitches."
Hauling the small partisan to his feet by the scruff of his neck, Wilkins growled, "Get up you miserable son of a bitch!" Turning to Bordon, he said, "Your turn."
Bordon punched him in the mouth, coldly satisfied by the crunching sound of several breaking teeth.
Harry, seeing the handwriting on the wall, tried to edge away while the two angry dragoons vented their revenge on his hapless friend. He didn't get far before he ran right into the six feet six inches of James Wilkins.
"Where do you think you're going?" the tall dragoon said frigidly, as he dragged Harry back to where Sam sprawled on the ground with Bordon still standing over him,
"I never touched your sister!" Harry gabbled in a desperate voice. "It was all Sam! It was his idea and he's the one who did it! You ask your sister! She'll tell you!"
"You fucking liar!" Wilkins roared. "My sister told me that if we'd not come to the farm that day when we did, you'd have raped her, too."
"Cowards, both of them," Bordon sneered contemptuously. "First, they're not man enough to stick to fighting men." Turning to the other prisoners, he asked rhetorically, "I ask you, what kind of a man fights an enemy by raping his women? That's not much of a man in my book."
"Then this cowardly chickenshit can't even own up to his part in it," Wilkins spat. "What kind of man doesn't take responsibility for his own actions?"
"Not much of a man at all, I'd say," Bordon replied grimly.
Tavington, who was seated atop his horse a short distance away watching the proceedings, made a motion with his hand that they should get on with what they planned to do.
"Let's get on with it, gentlemen," Tavington said in an almost bored done of voice. "We have other things to do today." The dragoon leader wanted to get the prisoners back to the fort before dark, so it was time for his two captains to take their revenge, rather than just talk about it.
Spying two trees about the right size, Bordon pointed and told two of the foot soldiers. "Bind them to those trees, facing forward."
"Yes, sir, right away." The foot soldier had assumed they were going to flog these men, so he was puzzled by the order to have them face forward, but knew it wasn't his place to comment. The two partisans were quickly lashed to the trees, with arms pulled behind them.
"I suppose this will have to do," Bordon told Wilkins, holding up his riding crop. I should have thought to bring a cat o'nine tails with me."
"We're not going to spend much time flogging them, so it'll do just fine," Wilkins replied, swinging his own crop across Sam's face, where it split his lip open. "Just a few good whacks." Swinging again, he left a large welt on the side of Harry's cheek, "See, this works just fine."
Both men forcefully swung the crops at the two men several times, leaving the rebels' faces a bloody mess. Indignant mutterings were heard among the other prisoners as this went on, but no one spoke up loudly, for fear of the same thing happening to them. Most of the men had no idea why Sam and Harry had been singled out for such treatment.
A few minutes later, Bordon and Wilkins exchanged glances. Stepping back from the two rebels, who now hung moaning against their bindings, Bordon said to Wilkins, "Let's do it."
After a nod from the tall dragoon, Bordon told the infantry man standing by, "Take down their breeches, soldier."
The young soldier gave a double-take, but did as the captain had ordered then stepped back, not wanting to see what would happen next.
"Sabre practice?" Wilkins asked Bordon.
"Sabre practice," Bordon agreed.
As both men took their places in front of the bound prisoners, Sam cried out, "This isn't right! For the love of God, have mercy?"
"And you think what you did to my sister was right?" Wilkins demanded. "Did either of you show her any mercy?"
Without further ado, both men unsheathed their sabres with a menacing metallic ring and swung, each neatly severing the offending bits of anatomy from the two partisans.
As Sam and Harry began screaming in agony at the loss of their genitalia, the muttering among the prisoners turned into a loud buzz. All the rumours they'd heard about the brutality of the Green Dragoons had apparently been true. And the sight of William Tavington sitting impassively on his horse, watching the actions of his two captains without emotion, only served to further fuel the indignation.
"Let's finish it," Wilkins told Bordon.
Nodding, Bordon agreed, then plunged his sabre deep into Sam's chest with no further ado, while Wilkins did the same with Harry.
Pausing only to wipe their sabres halfway clean on the dead men's clothing before sheathing them, the two dragoon captains returned to their horses and mounted, feeling utterly spent from what they'd had to do to avenge Mary.
The dead men were left bound to the tree, breeches down, to serve as a warning to Martin and the rest of his militia.
Raising his arm to signal the group, Tavington said, "Move out".
As the dragoons herded the remaining prisoners behind the wagons that had begun rumbling back the way they had come, flies had already begun to gather on the two corpses left behind.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
The line "a crushing blow from Wilkins' huge right fist" was inspired by a similar line in the sixties-era song, "Big Bad John". Like Jim Wilkins, Big Bad John stood six foot six (and weighed 245).
Historical note: The cat o'nine tails whip was so named because the end had nine tails, which served to inflict more damage than a single tailed whip would during flogging.