The Whiskey Rebel

Joan Maycott

Spring 1791

Mrs. Brackenridge insisted that I spend the night in her house, and in the morning I made my way back, not to the hunting cabin but to my own. I’d not told anyone of my plans to do this because I knew they would attempt to convince me of its imprudence. There was first the practical matter of my cabin’s condition. Much of it had been destroyed in the fire; Skye had told me as much. I found the walls scorched, and such furnishings as had been saved were blackened. The curtains, table linens, our clothes and papers-including my novel, but Skye had prepared me for this too-were all gone. The place stank of fire and dampness, but it was where Andrew and I had lived, and I would not leave it until I must.

The other principal objection to my returning was that I no longer had any right to the cabin, though I did have permission from its owner, Mr. Brackenridge, to stay there as long as I liked. It would not be long. I did not wish to remain, and doing so would be unwise. I understood, almost as soon as I’d understood anything, that Tindall had pursued us because he wished to deprive Andrew, Skye, and Dalton of the means of making whiskey. I also knew that there were more than a few wealthy farmers in the region who would be willing to buy our leases, with our equipment and instruction on the new method of distilling. For now, Hugh Henry Brackenridge held the ground rents to our lands. He assured me he would do his best to sell them to the highest bidder and to do so for no more than a 5-percent commission, though, if he wished to cheat us, we could do nothing to prevent it. It was a gamble, but I never doubted that he was worthy, and circumstances would prove me correct.

Thus it was that things settled into relative calm. Tindall, for the time being, would not risk harming us. His efforts to have me jailed, and his cowardly retreat, would make any attempt on the well-being of me or my friends far too suspicious. He might hope to evade the law, but he would not risk an all-out uprising from the populace. When Mr. Brackenridge sold our ground-rent lease and I received my share of the whiskey revenues, I might hope to return east, perhaps to my childhood home. It seemed a respectable way to engage my widowhood.

Yet I could not do those things. Jericho had said it changes you when you kill a man, and that was part of it. I had killed. I had faced Tindall both in physical combat and in a legal duel, and I had bested him both times. What else, then, could I do if I set myself to it? I was an unassuming woman and, men often said, a pretty one. My appearance led men, civilized men, to trust me, defer to me, and, often enough, overlook me. If I embraced these truths, if I used them, I could accomplish a great deal. What I wished to accomplish was revenge. Not pointless, hollow, bloody revenge, but revenge that would destroy those who had made a tragedy of my life and would, at the same time, redeem me and my friends.

The outlines of my plan were clear to me, but to proceed I would need the assistance of men like Skye and Dalton and at least some of Dalton ’s whiskey boys. If I were to have them, they must trust me, even be in awe of me, the way his soldiers and officers were in awe of General Washington. If I were to effect that, I would have to do something bold.

When she came into the dairy barn to milk the half-dozen cows, I was waiting for her. Dawn had only just struck bright and cloudless, filling the grounds with sweet possibility. I’d had to trek through the forest at night to meet her, but I’d carried my rifle and walked noiselessly in soft moccasins. My legs never tired, and though I made certain to watch every footfall, my mind wandered over what I would now do.

The door opened to the east, and when she came in she was nothing but a large silhouette, the skirts of her plain dress undulating in the breeze. But she did not see me, and so closed the door and reached for the milking stool. She’d healed well since I last saw her, but there were still red welts on her face and hardened scabs, and in some places the flesh had settled into a vaguely pale scarring.

She had just set down the stool and begun to talk to the first cow when she saw me. “Lord, Mrs. Maycott, what you doing in the dairy barn?” It all came out in a single breath.

I had not precisely been hiding, but standing in the shadows in the corner. I now walked forward, and it seemed to me that I was stepping through a door. I was about to become someone else. Here. Now. Under these circumstances. I must be a woman others follow. I must take command and make events unfold to my liking.

I looked at the woman. “What is your name?”

“Oh, Lord, grief done disordered your mind. You don’t remember old Lactilla?”

“Of course I remember you.” I took her hand. “I want to know your name.”

It seemed to me that, all at once, this woman who had been rendered property, the plaything of a cruel master, understood everything. Not only what I was asking, but what I was doing and why. An understanding passed between us, two women shaped and blasted by a world who cared nothing for us but as playthings for its amusement. “I’m Ruth,” she said, in a quiet voice.

“Do you know what I hate most about slavery, Ruth?” I asked.

“You gots to choose just one thing?”

“What I hate most is how we allow it to not signify. We tell ourselves we have produced this great experiment in republican government. We have launched a new era of human liberty, the culmination of two thousand years of the republican dream and centuries of philosophical ponderings. It has all led up to this glorious moment, this glorious nation, an exemplar of the greatest potential of the human soul. But never you mind about those Africans held in bondage. They don’t signify. That is what I hate most.”

“It’s worth despising, but I’d place it something down on the list. For me, I’d rather reckon my baby which was took away. And with it I’d number getting shot in the face with fowling piece.” She smiled, and I could see a scar where a piece of bird shot had grazed her lip.

“At some point,” I said, “those things-the philosophical and practical-must come together.”

She studied my face with a mixture of horror and understanding. “Is that point now?”

“Tonight it is,” I told her.

She sighed and brushed off her skirts, as though my words rained down dust of disobedience and she wished not to be tainted. “What you mean to do?”

“I’m not certain, but I must do something, mustn’t I? Everything begins with someone who either does something or does nothing, and I won’t be the person who does nothing.”

She shook her head. “You ain’t go

The depth of her concern surprised me. “Would it trouble you?”

She rose to her feet and walked to the barn door. Then she walked back. “It simple for you. Tindall’s a devil, that true. You want to kill him because he deserve to die. That true too. But you kill him, most likely the slaves get sold off.”

I understood the fear of change, but here I thought it madness. “Ruth, are things so good here that you fear to find yourself elsewhere?”

“Things here are bad,” she said, “but they always worse somewhere else.”

I nodded. “I have no intention of committing murder.” It was not entirely true. I could not say precisely what I intended to do to Tindall. Murder was certainly one possibility.

“All right. What you need?”

“I need everyone out of the house tonight. I want it free of servants and slaves.”

“All right. I get that done for you.”

I waited in the dairy barn the rest of the day. Ruth, who had been mocked with the name Lactilla for decades, brought me an afternoon di