Free The Golden Flask by Jim DeFelice Page B

please. If it's not too dangerous for you, it won't be for me. We are a pair; you have said so yourself many times."
    The keeper sighed. In truth, he had never refused his daughter the slightest favor since his wife had died. This was nothing more than a quick midnight ride, and perhaps it would quench her thirst for adventure.
    "All right. Come along."
    Jake scowled, but decided against objecting. He wanted to leave as quickly as possible, and did not want to risk his guide changing his mind.
    And really, how much trouble could a young woman be, even one who insisted on wearing breeches?

 
 
 
    Chapter Ten
 
    Wherein, the river is not quite reached.
 
    T he innkeeper and his daughter were most efficient guides, taking Jake across a succession of open mead ows and close woods in the moonlight as easily as if they were riding down city streets. The keeper, who inside had appeared anything but athletic, proved to be a considerable horseman, and his skills had obviously been passed on to his daughter.
    The willingness of ordinary folk to do extraordinary things in the name of Freedom continually amazed Jake. Many times he had been helped, even saved, by some farmer or housewife, who under other circum stances might have lived the most undisturbed life since Methuselah.
    While he was more than happy to take advantage of their assistance, the spy also felt some obligation to repay their kindness. In this case, it seemed to him he could do that by informing Alison of the hard dangers of soldiering, in case she should run away and try to join the army. But every remark he made as they rode was answered by some optimistic comment. She loved the mud; she could exist for weeks on gruel; the damp earth invigorated her when she slept. She was three times as tricky as any boy, and able to hold her own should it come to that.
    Jake could hear her father sighing beneath his breath; evidently these arguments had been made before.
    Finally, she capped her retorts by declaring that if she couldn't join the line and march, then certainly she would become a spy such as her new friend, who was obviously not subject to the deprivations he was boast ing so strongly of.
    "I wonder, have you ever met Abigail Adams?" Jake asked, huffing a moment as he muscled his horse over a hedge.
    Alison cleared the obstruction without the slightest exertion, and answered that she had not.
    "You would like her. She is a Boston lady with ideas as bold as yours and wit twice as sharp."
    "Then we shall have a pleasant time shooting redcoats together," retorted the girl.
    The trio passed over a large creek and found a wide road. They traveled along it briefly, then crossed back into a cultivated cornfield and found an old path through a fallow field. The moon, missing only the slightest sliver, illuminated their way so completely they left the torches the innkeeper had prepared unlit.
    The keeper had stuck an old, rusty sword in his sad dle scabbard. Alison had been allowed to wield the blunderbuss. She rode with it across her saddle, half- cocked. Her father had made her take the precaution of securing the lock mechanism with a twig that pre vented accidental firing; he claimed that it was faulty and given to slipping. Twig or no twig, Jake made sure to stay out of the line of fire.
    Jake's ribs had long since given up complaining about the jostling they were taking, settling for a long and constant groan nagging at the back of his chest. The horse Eagleheart had sold him was a strong beast, powerfully winded, but far from the smoothest plat form to ride on. Jake soon began to believe the horse understood English: while she would fight the hard pulls of his arms and legs, she moved quickly to the right and left when directed to do so by voice only. And when he said "whoa," the horse stopped short before he could pull the reins.
    "Aye, trouble ahead," said the keeper, who had spot ted the figures by the bridgehead the same moment Jake had. "Don't think they'd be