Fire – A Shorty

Sour black smoke bellowed into the air and carried harshly into the canopy of the rugged deciduous woods beyond the homestead’s clearing. The frontier cabin popped and crackled from the heat, interior flames not yet visibly escaping. A bird call from beyond the clearing.

Jean-Pierre D’Aagault wiped his hands off with a handkerchief as the home burned behind him. The owner’s voices silenced from asphyxiation after being locked in were just a momentary embellishment. Vive la France.

The Frenchman and his twelve-man posse were finishing up their mission for the crown, the second of the day, the eighth of the week. A compatriot casually fired a salvo of Mohawk arrows into the front door. Another couple into the window sill, with intended precision, knowing the outrage it will cause when found. Others picking around the homestead garden, picking out lunch.

Jean-Pierre thought about his family walking away from the growing blaze. This was for New France. They would be something here. This new start would fix his family tree for the next generations. Blood on his hands meant food in his children’s. The British were just expendable to this cause. Everyone was.

He took his side piece tomahawk and lobbed it into the wagon’s side quarter panel. His eye caught just above his splintered target to see a little dolly in the wagon.

Jean-Pierre didn’t recall seeing a little girl in the carnage. Did someone get away?

“Philippe, did you see a girl?”

“Non, pourquoi?” answered Philippe.

Jean-Pierre held the doll up with a stern face. Some of the nearby compatriots caught his glance. Another bird call from beyond the clearing. Jean-Pierre recognized the call, angry that he hadn’t connected it earlier, he crouched low and unshouldered his musket.

“Capitaine D’Agault! Capitaine!” one of the younger compatriots of the irregulars ran from the woods, broke the now quiet scene, screaming frantically and waving his arms. Difficult to see from Jean-Pierre’s angle, but it looked like he had blood pouring from his face. Picking up on the precarious situation, Victor Clavel, known as L’Ancien, a French gruff veteran of the frontier and right-hand man to D’Agault – took an arrow from his quiver and set it to sail into the young man’s chest, silencing him. He was giving up their position in dramatic flair, not to mention he didn’t much like the boy since making him a fool in cards two nights ago. It wasn’t the first time he made such a decision, but it would be his last.

The rest of the compatriots lowered and listened, forming a perimeter around the front clearing. Each one quietly checked their muskets and powder. They’re here. Zut.

This band of irregulars didn’t need the escaped girl to give them away. While she was rescued, the Mohawk war band had been in pursuit with the intent to kill. Not only was the British bounty lucrative, but the French were also playing games and causing scandal with their legacy by staging their attacks as if they were Mohawk. That in itself was enough.

The Frenchmen thought they were clever, but they would pay for their work. The flames began to break through the roof of the frontier home.

Silently, with only the sound of the whistling arrows and fleshy thuds, the first five compatriots were felled. Capitaine Jean-Pierre D’Agault shouted a command, but it was too late. Eyes set on the tree line, they didn’t see the four Mohawk warriors who had been stealthily working through the long grass for the past thirty minutes to position the ambush. In the chaos, before the Frenchmen could react to the assailants, it was indeed over before a musket shot was fired.

The little British colonial girl would be brought to safety and placed with a new family. The Mohawks would be paid handsomely for their bravery. The French would pay dearly for their trouble in the region, but not without drawing blood.

This was the frontier in the New World. Brutal and rugged. Competitive and dangerous. Old versus new. Life’s formative measures spawn the seeds of progress at the expense of another’s life. The war was not yet ready to begin, but it was coming soon enough. The land was too small for all the competitors – in the end, the blood of the rising French and Indian War and the subsequent Seven Years’ War, would pave the way for American independence from all royal crowns.