Andrew just stared at him a moment, shook his head and turned back to feeding the livestock. James felt his face warm, for he wanted his brother’s approval. But devil be damned if he was going to back down from a bunch of convict soldiers to get it.

WHEN THEY weren’t harvesting one of the fields and nobody had a great need for fresh meat, James had begun going into the woods and cutting down trees to provide logs for the cabin he intended to build for himself and his sister Annie. It would be more than a mile upriver from Andrew and Petra, and fully a mile from the new cabin of cousin Frank and his family. James had gathered perhaps half enough for the job, cleaning them of branches with his sharp ax, dragging the logs up and stacking them at the place where he planned to build. He hadn’t asked Annie’s advice about the site. She would probably want to build somewhere else out of pure sisterly contrariness. He didn’t see where it mattered anyway; she would probably snare some poor unsuspecting soul and leave here before long, properly married. Let somebody else try to please Annie!

A time or two, his bay horse Walker looked off toward the timber as if he saw or smelled something. James glanced in that direction. Probably a deer, he thought, foraging at the edge of the heavy cover. When he had finished the day’s work here he would take his rifle and see about fetching some fresh venison for the table.

He didn’t see the three soldiers until too late; he was busy, using the horse to shag a log out of the woods with a thick rawhide rope he had laboriously made for himself in the evenings after the field work was done. The bay horse jerked its head around, snorting loudly, pricking its ears forward in alarm. Two soldiers were bearing down on James, spurring their horses viciously. A third—he looked like the sergeant—sat back shouting orders. One of the soldiers waved a saber that blinked a split second of reflected sunlight. James felt his pulse quicken, and he looked around desperately for something with which to defend himself. He had left his long rifle leaning against the stack of logs. All he had was the ax, its blade buried into the log he was dragging. He grabbed it, wrenching it free. He gripped the handle in both hands and brought it up to catch the saber’s savage downstroke. His wrists quivered at the impact as the sharp blade bit deeply into the hard wood. He thrust the ax upward, shoving the sword back toward the man who held it, then gave a quick twist, trying to wrest the blade from the dark brown hand. It came free from the ax handle, but the soldier retained his grip on it. He gave an angry shout and raised the saber again. The second soldier had no saber, but he held a blunderbuss.