The Whiskey Rebel

“It’s been but a game,” Whippo called out. “You and I being enemies, Saunders-I never felt it. If you knew who we were, and the wrongs we’ve suffered from Hamilton and Duer, you would join with us. We know you’re no aristocrat like those fellows. The violence that’s been done today is our fault. I’ll own it. You come out now, and we’ll talk. We’ll parley. We’ll lay down our weapons.” He squatted to the earth and set his gun upon the hard ground.

I watched him with such intensity that I did not at first see Lavien pull his hand out of the bag. Only when he held his object against his little torch did I see it and understand. It was a ball of cast iron, as shiny as silver, a bit larger than an orange, with a pair of decorative horns molded onto it, as though it were a bull or a devil. From between the horns rose a wick.

It took me a moment to recognize the object, for I had not seen one since the war. It would appear that Lavien had thought to bring with him a grenade.

He held the wick to his torch and let it burn. And then he held it in his hand. My eyes must have registered concern because he looked at the wick and then at the men, to tell me he dared not toss it too soon.

That wick seemed to me the slowest ever made. It felt as though we waited for long minutes, though it could only have been a few seconds. I lived in fear that the men would see us and come ru

It burned with a fiery glow and a faint hiss, and when it seemed to me that Lavien had waited too long already, he tossed the metal ball so that it landed just before the fire, bounced slightly, and came to rest within the little blaze. I knew not if I should be more impressed with his aim or his cleverness. Had the ball landed before them, they should have seen it and fled. Instead, the three men looked at the fire, certain they had seen something move, yet unable to find any sign of aught new upon the scene. The one-eyed man squatted down and peered into the blaze, bringing his face in very close.

Then came the flash.

The grenade burst in terrible cry of fire and heat and screaming metal. It sent out a rain of fire and dirt and broken branches. Leaves and wet lumps of snow fell from the skies. Birds took flight. Unseen animal feet scurried. I turned away and threw myself to the ground, though Lavien did not move or turn away. He must have known, to the inch, the grenade’s range. When I turned back, Lavien was already standing.

“Give me the pistols,” he said.

I did so, and he walked toward the clearing. Two of the men were dead, beyond any doubt. One body was entirely without its head, another nearly torn in two, missing an arm not to be seen anywhere. The dirt had turned a mottled black, and little mounds of snow were spotted pink with blood.

Astonishingly, Isaac Whippo was still alive. The grenade must have blasted away from him, for he sat upright, holding one arm, dangling and clearly broken, in the other. His face was wet with blood, and one eye was injured and closed, perhaps ruined. I had mocked this man, sought to belittle and humiliate him, and now he rocked back and forth, slowly, deliberately, like an old man with his pipe.

“He might yet live,” I said softly.

“No,” said Lavien. “He won’t.” He raised his pistol and fired it into Whippo’s head.

I turned away, though I saw the flash of the powder and the smoke of the barrel. When I turned back, Whippo’s body lay upon the ground, folded and still. A staggering revulsion coursed through me, for what I had seen and for Lavien, this little fount of heartless violence.

Lavien stepped to me and took me by the shoulders. He made me face him, made me look into his dark eyes, small and hot. “Understand me,” he said in a low voice. “I have now murdered a wounded man. That’s how important this is. It isn’t about money or pride or power. It is about the future of the most audacious experiment in human liberty ever attempted. I do not want this government to do what I have just done. I take it on myself.”

I swallowed. “You Jews have a fine history of taking sins upon yourself.”

He looked in the general direction of the road. “You’re a fu

Ethan Saunders

It was growing dark, but that would not matter, could not matter. We would ride through the night, at a slow crawl if need be, if that would get us to Philadelphia before the trading began. We rode swiftly, clinging to every last second of daylight, and with the violence behind us, the violence I would not permit myself to think of, it did indeed seem as though we could get there before dawn. The roads were good, and there was no sign of rain or snow. We would arrive in time and Hamilton could perform whatever magic was required to calm the City Tavern crowd. It was too late to prevent some damage in New York, but he could send agents there, as well as to the other trading cities, who would buy at Treasury’s direction to stanch the bleeding.

I thought of what we would do, not what we had done. I had no wish to recollect the whiskey men torn apart by Lavien’s grenade, or Isaac Whippo executed, or charming Joan Maycott, who had engineered death and plotted to ruin a nation. I tried not to think of these things, and for the most part I succeeded. I thought mostly of the cold and discomfort and the growing dark. After sunset, as our pace slowed, we took turns holding a torch to light our way.

We rode on in silence, the cold bludgeoning us, numbing us. Our arms ached from holding the reins, from holding the torch. Our legs and backs were stiff and wretched. The skin on the insides of my thighs burned and itched. Onward we rode. I did not take out my watch. I would not. I would ride in the dark as fast as I could, and that would be enough. Knowing that I made good time or ill would not matter to me.

I don’t know that I fell asleep. Not precisely. My mind, however, went elsewhere as we made our way in that slow, deliberate, careful pace. It was black of night, no end conceivable, as though we were to ride in the cold, barren darkness forever. And then, toward the east, I saw the first rouging of the sky.

We had not spoken in hours. Now Lavien turned back to look at me. “We shall be at Hamilton’s office before seven o’clock. We’ve done it, Saunders. We’ve done all that men could do, and that will have to be enough.”

We rode on, picking up the pace with the rising of the sun. In ten minutes, we were trotting. Five minutes after that, we were in a full gallop. The road showed signs of a nearby town, spotted now with farmers’ shacks and outbuildings and a tavern where I wished, dearly wished, we might stop for tea and warm punch and the freshly baked bread that perfumed the air. It was an abstract wish, for what I truly wanted was to complete my task, to take my news to Hamilton and then rest. To eat my fill of food and drink and then lie down and let sleep overtake me and not wake for a day or more. Next I would find Cynthia. And then, with no urgency upon me, with the schemers on the run, wallowing in the filth of their own ruined plots, I would track them down one by one and make certain they knew justice.

We rode hard, leaning forward in our saddles, no longer troubled by pain or fatigue or cold. The chill wind and the beating of the hooves drummed in my ears, but I felt gleeful and giddy. I turned to Lavien. I said, “You know, in the midst of all this madness-”

That was as much as I said, because all went wild and the sky twisted from the top to the side, and the ground corkscrewed around to meet my face in a slap of cold earth that came hard and fast, making my teeth rattle. The blood trickled from my mouth, my nose. I felt the most dreadful of pains, those that come from a blow to the head.