If you encounter any of the rebel riffraff on the roads outside, you are to turn aside without speaking. Is that clearly understood?”
“Y-Yes, Pa,” Will muttered in a choked voice.
“Then I suggest you go to your room and read or paint until your temper cools and your reason returns.”
Will stumbled out and up the stairs, his jaw still tautly set and his fists clenched. From the upper hall came the shrill voices of Tom and John, romping with five-year-old Cathy. From the other end he could hear the colored nursemaid crooning softly to the baby.
He turned quickly into his own room. For a while he only wanted to be alone, to fight down his helpless anger and to try to grapple with this abrupt and violent upheaval that was tearing his comfortable, familiar world apart. He considered shutting his door, but that would only stir the younger boys’ curiosity and bring them storming in to see what he was doing.
The room was big and pleasant and bright with the midday sun. Its walls were hung with pictures, large and small, that had been painted by Will. Almost from the time his baby hands were big enough to hold pencil or brush he had been painting or drawing whatever caught his eye. Most of them were crude and amateurish because he had never had an art lesson in his life, yet there was something about each that revealed more than a spark of real talent.
A homemade easel by the window held an oil painting of his brother, Tom. Although still unfinished, the likeness was clear and unmistakable. Sometimes Will thought he would like to be a real artist, painting portraits for a living. The only trouble was, that career seemed too dull. What he really wanted most of all was a life of excitement and adventure in wild, far-off places.
His eyes were drawn irresistibly to the table beside his easel. Spread out beside his palette were real store-bought brushes and tubes of oil paint, the first he had ever owned and his most treasured possessions. His father had brought them from Baltimore only recently as an advance gift for his coming birthday on November 2.
Until that unforgettable day, Will had made all his own art supplies, burning twigs for charcoal and boiling up roots, bark, and berries for colors. His brushes had been clumps of pig bristle glued to sticks. He still made his own frames and stretched the canvas, lacing it with green rawhide that shrunk as it dried, pulling the surface drum-taut.
There was a whooping from the hall and his brothers came charging in, with Cathy riding piggyback on Tom’s shoulders, shrieking, “Giddy-ap, horsey! Giddy-ap!”
“Hey, Will,” John shouted, “why don’t you finish up Tom’s picture today so you can start mine? You promised.”
“Not today, Johnny. I don’t feel like painting today.”
“Paint my pitcher, Will,” Cathy squealed. “I want my pitcher, too.”
“You’re too little yet, Baby. People have to sit real still while their picture’s painted and you squirm around like a sackful of angleworms. I’ll do it when you’re older.”
His father appeared suddenly in the doorway. “You children run along and stop pestering William. He has had a bad time of it this morning and I’m sure he would like to be alone for a while. And before you make any grand plans for next week, I’ll tell you that school will take up as usual on Monday morning—right downstairs. I believe I remember enough from my teaching days to give you your lessons and see that you study them.”
When they had filed out, looking crestfallen, he came in and laid a hand on Will’s shoulder in a gesture of silent sympathy. A lump came into Will’s throat. He had a dismal feeling that some nameless thing had gone out of his life that morning, a warm and good and secure something that would never return.
“Pa,” he said suddenly, “tomorrow being Saturday, I’d like to take my paints and go off somewhere by myself, maybe up to my secret place on High Knob. No one else ever comes up there and I wouldn’t go anywhere near town.”
His father frowned a moment in thought, then nodded. “I see no reason why not, son. A day of quiet and relaxation will do you good. We may not see many more such days for a long time to come. Just remember what I said about avoiding others and doing nothing that could give the patriots an excuse for deeper hostility.”
* * * *
It was nearing noon when Will reached the little rocky glen, high on the mountain’s shoulder, that he called his secret place. Here a spring trickled out of the rocks to form a cold, clear pool whose bottom was carpeted with watercress. On three sides the glen was hemmed in by rocks and woods, but the front was open so that he could look down onto Frederick Town and off across endless miles of Maryland countryside.
He had stumbled into the hidden glen in midsummer and had immediately claimed it for his own private sanctuary. His claim was there before him, carved bold and deep on the smooth, blue-gray trunk of an ancient beech.
WILLIAM AUGUSTUS BOWLES
HIS PLACE
JULY 6, 1776
He leaned his pack and musket against a tree and looked around anxiously. His face cleared when he could find no evidence that anyone else had been there. He threw himself flat to drink from the pool, then plunged an arm in to pluck some tangy, tender watercress to garnish his lunch of cold meat and bread.
When he had eaten he sat down beside the pool with his paints and brushes on the mossy rock beside him, his empty canvas propped against another rock in front. He squeezed careful dabs of scarlet and yellow and umber onto his palette to capture the riot of autumn colors below and began to paint. As the picture began to take shape on the canvas, the weight of trouble lifted from his spirits and the quiet solitude of the glen seeped in to soothe his agitated thoughts.
Completely absorbed in his painting, Will heard no sound, sensed no presence, until directly behind him a rough voice said, “Well, would you look what’s here?”
He spun around, his eyes going wide with unbelieving dismay. A few yards away, at the edge of the glen, stood Garf Roebaum and his crony, Alvin Tomes. Both boys carried muskets and had game bags slung from their shoulders. They stood grinning, enjoying his shock.
“I told you this would be our lucky day, Garf,” Alvin snickered. “We go out to hunt varmints, and what do we stumble on but the worst of ’em all—a yellow Tory skunk.”
Chapter 3
For a moment all Will could feel was a sickening sense of loss at having his private sanctuary desecrated by these two of all possible intruders. It was ruined for him forever now. He knew that never again could he bring himself to come up here.
He stood up slowly, facing them, his fists clenched and jaw set. “Get out of here! Get out and leave me alone.”
“Now, that ain’t a polite way to talk when visitors drop in, Chief,” Garf said, his small eyes glittering with malice. “But then, Injuns never did know manners until they was taught them by their betters.”
“Hold on, Garf,” Alvin said suddenly. He pointed to the beech tree where Will had proudly carved his claim. “It looks like this here is private proppity so mebbe he’s got the right to order folks off. We wouldn’t want to stay if’n it wasn’t right and proper.”
Garf tramped over to face the sign, cocking his head to study it through narrowed eyes. Presently he worked a protruding bulge from one cheek to the other, pursed his lips and spat. A stream of brown tobacco juice struck and spattered out, filling and fouling the neatly carved letters.
“It looks like we got a bigger job cut out for us than I figured, Al. I thought all we had to do was to learn this here Tory skunk about loyalty and patriotism. Now I can see we got to learn him about manners, and on top o’ that, we got to learn him it ain’t right to go carvin’ his name on trees, claimin’ property that don’t belong to him. It’s liable to take us all afternoon to do the job proper.”
Moving with deliberate slowness he leaned his musket beside the beech and slid the game bag and powder horn from his big shoulder. Grinning with