Free The Golden Flask by Jim DeFelice

have been told to be on the lookout for deserters."
    "But I'm not one.”
    The keeper gingerly reached beneath Jake's shirt, re moving the gun and knife from his belt. He also took a small, water-tight pouch that contained some papers, Franklin's pass among them.
    The keeper thumbed through the documents so quickly that it was obvious he had not paused to read them. Nonetheless, he proclaimed that he had proof Jake was a deserter.
    "The committee of safety is meeting a short distance away in the morning," said the man. "You can beg their mercy, though I doubt it will do you much good."
    "I wonder," said Jake, turning sideways to his right as if to address both father and son at the same time, "if I might sit at one of your tables?" He put his left arm out slowly, pointing to the side, all the while watching the lad. "If I am to wait for the committee, then I cannot stand all night."
    "Well —" started the father. The rest of his sentence was cut off by the loud crash of the blunderbuss dis charging.
    Into the ceiling. Jake had thrown himself into the boy, taking care to push the gun upwards first. The thick brass of the barrel flamed hot as ten balls exploded from its mouth; fortunately, they found their home in the thick ceiling beams, adding a decorative circular pattern to what had been simple if stout pine timbers.
    And the boy...
    "You're a girl," said Jake, rising. His push into her had proven the matter beyond doubt.
    "I'm as strong as any boy my age," she replied, bolt ing up after him. "And I'll get you, Tory bastard."
    She tried to make up for mishandling the gun by wrestling the intruder to the ground. Jake picked her up in his arms, twirled her around the room as she flailed, and, as gently as possible, tossed her at her fa ther. The pair collapsed backward into the fireplace, sending a spray of dust and embers into the room. Jake picked up the blunderbuss from the floor where it fell, stomped on the cinders to keep them from starting a fire on the chestnut floorboards.
    "What will you do with us now, Sir Tory?" demanded the keeper indignantly after retrieving himself from the fire.
    "I'm not a Tory," said Jake. As the man had proved himself a stout if less than fully effective champion of the Cause, the spy decided to trust him. He reached into his sock and pulled out the paper with Washington's signature. "Few deserters carry a warrant from the commander-in-chief," he said.
    The keeper grabbed his daughter as she was about to fly into Jake. "Read these for me," he said, adding in an apologetic voice, "the light here is too dim for me."
    Which, of course, wasn't true; though Jake thought it more polite not to mention that fact, especially as it had possibly saved his life a moment ago, the keeper deciding to bluff rather than actually discovering the evidence against him.
    The girl could read very well, and she was soon nodding at her father, telling him in an awed voice that the man they had tried to arrest could charge "whatsoever honest amount he deems appropriate" and was "to be regarded with respect" as dictated by His Excellency, General Washington.
    "A hundred apologies, sir. A thousand, indeed. Paul Brown, at your service. Ask for anything. This is a patriot house. Stout patriots, as the neighbors will attest. Let me get you something to eat and drink. You must be tired after our — our discussion as it were."
    "It has been a long day," allowed Jake, replacing the pass in its hiding place.
    The keeper showed him to a seat at a table near the fireplace and presented him with a wooden bowl of baked beans and a full pewter tankard of very hard cider.
    "Those beans are our best," said Brown, who was now hospitable to a fault, fussing over each bite Jake took. "Alison learned the recipe from her mother, God rest her soul. Daughter takes after her, lucky for me."
    "Your wife dressed as a boy?"
    "I am close to the river here, sir, and not far from the British for all that," said Brown. "With a fifteen- year-old