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in the woods.
    Jake slid down behind a tree and surprised the man as he ran past. The branch he had just used as a burial shovel was now changed to a death lance. Jake caught the Indian just below the waist. The man's momentum carried him nearly to Jake's fist, the stick plunging deep into his abdomen. In a quick, unconscious rage, he finished him off, crushing his skull savagely with the butt end of his pistol before the man could utter even a syllable of surprise.
    He left the body where it fell and ran to his horse.
    It is barely believable but Jake's fury increased with every yard covered. He mounted the horse, intending to circle around and head off the whites if possible. Urging the beast through the thick bramble, over fallen trees and past the shallow creek, he had no care for the noise he made. For a long while, Jake had no care for himself, only for revenge.
    But they had too good a lead on him. When he finally reached the main trail again with no trace, his horse slowed practically to a walk; its deep pants warned Jake not to push it faster.
    The trail soon took him across a main road. One way was west, quite probably the way the men had gone. The other was northeastward, most likely back toward the river.
    Back toward his mission.
    Jake paused there, listening, but all he could hear was the faint rush of the water slipping through the rocks in the nearby creek.
    His anger had delayed his mission several hours, perhaps half a day — precious time that could help save many lives, and perhaps the entire war. He'd have to make up for this by riding through the night, pushing himself still further. Revenge was a luxury that he could not indulge in.
    There had been many such deaths in the war; every loss was a tragedy to someone, every death senseless until the final goal of Freedom was achieved. That was the only way of revenge; individual retribution was but pyrrhic pleasure.
    Sadly, but with a firm resolve, Jake turned the horse's head up the road and placed his boots against its sides. The animal caught its second wind, and seemed relieved to run in this direction once more.
     

 
     
     
     
    -Chapter Four-
 
    Wherein, the honorable Claus van Clynne, Esq., is pleased to make his acquaintance with the narrative's hero, and vice versa.
     
     
    T he knife blade slit the air in front of the portly Dutchman's chest with a suddenness that caused him to catch his breath and contemplate his future in the afterlife.
    The picture was not altogether pleasing, consisting primarily of large flames and a satanic figure who looked suspiciously British. Sobered by the image, with no desire to end his career so suddenly, especially at such a small inn in a tiny hamlet in country barely tamed and shamefully less than consistently Dutch, Claus van Clynne, Esq., decided to take a pacific tack. He put up his hands and puffed his cheeks in a pose he believed both angelic and compliant. After a second he ventured a grin, fluttered his fingers and cleared his throat.
    "Well, well, my friend, I never thought it would come to this," huffed van Clynne. "A Dutchman pulling a knife on another Dutchman. What poor manners the English have led us to, eh?"
    Van Clynne frowned ever so gently at the man holding the knife, Pieter Gerk, then gave a knowing wink to Gerk's partner, William Pohl. Pohl, a timid and eminently reasonable man in van Clynne's opinion, had turned whiter than a flake of fresh snow. Most of the rest of the inn's patrons had moved toward the door, ready to make their escape. The tavern was a good twenty miles north and a trifle west of Fort George, a good distance from the lake itself; disputes here had a nasty way of proving deadly, and not just to the combatants.
    "You are a liar and a cheat, Claus van Clynne," said Gerk, punctuating his statement with a flare of the knife.
    "Everyone is entitled to his opinion," said van Clynne contritely. The squire was, after all, a gracious man who could make allowances in such cases.