Free Long Knife by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom Page B

lowered the pistol. “What is it, Nell?”
    She worked her lips for a moment and finally was able to say, “I wondered, do you need anything, sir? I heard you come in …”
    “No, thank you, Nell, but that’s a fine lass. Wait …” He disappeared behind the door, then reappeared. “Here, with thanks for your kindness.” He extended a silver coin to her with his bare arm.
    She shook her head. “No. I don’t want that.”
    “Of course, you do, girl.” He pressed it into her hand.
    “Are you going away?” she whispered, suddenly feeling as if she would fall apart inside.
    “Early tomorrow.” He paused and looked at her tremulous expression. He remembered what Herring, the courier, had said about her. George had been too preoccupied with his plans to pay much attention to her during his stay. Now, it was obvious that she wished to be asked in. He reached out and placed his hand against her cheek and neck; his thumb touched her small, warm ear. He had a sudden impulse to draw her into the room; she seemed pliant and soft; she seemed to be wilting against his palm. No, he told himself. He needed to think and be alone with these documents and comprehend everything. He leaned out of the doorway and kissed her forehead, then withdrew and pushed the door shut. It was a minute before he heard her blow her nose softly and then shuffle down the stairs.
    He turned away from the door then. He knelt and placed some fresh hardwood on the embers of the fire, shook his head ruefully at the thought of the many long, lonely and comfortless nights that surely must lie ahead, then stood up, went to the table, picked up his letters of instruction from Governor Henry, slapped them lightly several times against his palm while gazing toward the western window, then returned them to the table. There was no sound but the popping and rustling of the fire and the moan of wind around the corners of the house. For a moment he thought of going down to Nell’s room under the stairs and simply letting himself succumb to the affection and coziness which she seemed so eager to offer.
    Instead he dashed his naked torso with icy water from the pitcher, rubbed down, and began pacing the room, thinking of what lay ahead. He had planned every step of it over the last few months, planned and refined his plans, and knew exactly what must be done, and how. But now that it was authorized and had become more than a daring dream, the details and difficulties of it were staggering to contemplate.
    With an advance of twelve hundred pounds in depreciated Continental currency, he was to raise an army, in a commonwealth where manpower was nearly exhausted, and lead it to a place seven hundred miles deep into the hostile wilderness, and there discipline it into a swift and obedient fighting force. From there he was to lead it down still more trackless miles of rivers and wilderness, to attack a fort near the Mississippi, secure that fort and lesser ones nearby, win over or neutralize several tribes of hostile Indians, and then—then, perhaps—move north andeast to storm the British base of western operations at Detroit. That last notion he had not even revealed to Wythe and Jefferson and Mason, for fear of being thought mad. And he had only hinted at it to Patrick Henry.
    Now running the whole sequence through his mind for the first time as a clear and imminent duty instead of a grandiose reverie, he saw that somehow he had assigned himself a task that would consume every ounce of his energy and every moment of his attention for months to come.
    He was accustomed to being the man in charge of impossible tasks; he had been that through all the years of his adulthood, and having been that, he could not imagine himself as anything less. He had never had a home since leaving his father’s Virginia roof at nineteen years of age to cross the Blue Ridge Mountains; now he could anticipate more homeless years as a campaigner without any sort of domestic solace.
    Thank