“And you did. You got him to the Hall and you persuaded the preacher to take him on. It’s not your fault the lad ran off. You can’t blame yourself for that. You want to blame anyone, blame the preacher.”

“Preacher’s dead.”

“And we stand a good chance of ending up the same way if Clinton arrives while we’re standin’ arguing about it.”

An awkward silence fell.

Beddowes, cradling his rifle, looked at Wyatt and said, “We going home or heading out, Lieutenant? It’s your choice.”

We, Wyatt thought. Beddowes had used the word we not you. He knew then that they would follow him. All he had to do was give the order. Torn between the promise he’d given and his duty to see his men home safely, he hesitated.

Then he heard Boone murmur, “Might not come to that, Lieutenant. Take a look.”

The Rangers turned as one. Cavett was on his way back from the far end of the bay at a brisk trot, but it was not the sight of his fellow scout that had attracted Boone’s sharp eye.

It was the dog.

Wyatt felt a twist in his gut.

As the men looked on, the animal turned abruptly and retraced its path into the trees. A second later it bounded out again, only to pause and look back. The first to emerge was the boy, leading the horse by its halter. The next figure to appear, to Wyatt’s utter amazement, was Tewanias.

“I see it,” Donaldson said, his face forming into a wide grin, his soft brogue coming to the fore. “But I don’t bluidy believe it.”

Wyatt managed to find his voice. “Time to move, Jethro.”

While Boone gestured to the boat crew, Wyatt looked off beyond Tewanias and the boy to where the smaller figure of Nate Cavett was jogging towards them.

No, Wyatt realized with a jolt. Not jogging. The scout was running, running hard.

The report split the air with the force of a thunderclap. The explosion that followed as the ball smashed into the gunboat, laying waste her bow-chaser, igniting her powder keg and sending wood and metal splinters through the bodies of the navy crewmen as if they were made of butter, rolled around the bay, scattering wildfowl in all directions.

As the screaming began, the Rangers broke apart, searching for cover. A patch of grey-white smoke roiling at the edge of the trees beyond Cavett’s shoulder showed where the shot had originated.

“Militia!” Beddowes yelled, the warning superfluous.

The gun crew was already ramming a fresh round into the gun’s barrel. It was a small-calibre fieldpiece, a three-pounder Grasshopper, Wyatt guessed; British-built, designed to accompany Light Infantry and probably captured when the Americans took Ticonderoga. Capable of being drawn by a single horse or broken down and loaded on pack animals, they were easily manoeuvrable over hard terrain and thus ideal for transporting along heavily forested trails.