Read Online The Silver Bullet by Jim DeFelice - Free Book Online Page A

the loud crash and muffled moan the intruder emitted as Jake caught the man from behind, cupping his hand over his mouth to keep him from screaming out.
    Pardon – her mouth. There was no mistaking that once he touched the smoothness of her face, Jake, seeing she was unarmed, turned her gently toward him with his left hand, which held the pistol. He was mildly surprised and somewhat pleased to see defiance, not fear, in her eyes.
    When he let go, reaching down to pick up her fallen basket of early blueberries, she leveled a blow at his head.
    He ducked and upended the girl, grabbing her around the middle.
    “ Let me down!” she screamed, kicking and punching. “My father will shoot you if you hurt me.”
    “ I meant no harm,” said Jake, setting her down gingerly – her muscles were nearly as strong as her spirit. “I thought you were coming to attack us.”
    “ Who are you, riding through the woods at night?” she demanded. “Another soldier from the fort, or some damned Tory?”
    “ Johanna! Johanna Blom!” shouted van Clynne, arriving late to the commotion. He explained in very excited Dutch that Jake was a friend and meant no harm.
    Jake’s passing knowledge of the language allowed him to add that, had he known their assailant was this pretty, he surely would have surrendered without a fight. The remark prompted Mistress Johanna to attempt another punch, though its intended victim noted that this one was grabbed more easily than the others.
    Apologies offered if not wholly accepted, Jake and van Clynne were escorted to the Blom house. Fifty years before, the two-story clapboard affair – as van Clynne explained in his flourishing style – had been an estimable stopping point for travelers. New roads, more dependable boats along the lake, and the failure of the local beaver population had conspired to cause its decline. Blom still let rooms from time to time, and his taproom remained popular with the male population of the small hamlet up the road a quarter of a mile, especially those seeking to avoid their wives.
    Jake and his guide were soon sitting in front of the hearth, the fire stoked against the late spring chill, a mug of nut-brown porter in hand. The fire glowed and reflected off the hard-scrubbed floor, turning the whole room a bright yellow.
    The porter was round and pleasing in the mouth, Jake had to admit. Even better was Mistress Johanna, who lost none of her spark indoors. As van Clynne and Blom fell into a long debate about the decline in the quality of ale yeasts – a crucial ingredient in the beer – she took up a station to Jake’s left in front of the fireplace. Johanna propped a long iron poker across her lap, though the fire was not in need of much attention at the moment.
    “ That’s quite a stick you have,” joked Jake.
    “ In case you attack me again, I want to be prepared.”
    “ I’m already in your power.”
    Johanna shot an embarrassed glance toward her father. He was deep in conversation – surely the decline in yeasts went back fifty years, and had to do with the shift of the Atlantic currents.
    Though pretty, Jake had already concluded she was too young for more than the mildest flirting, and he merely nodded and sipped his beer as the girl walked slowly back to the kitchen, hesitating enough to let him know she wouldn’t mind being followed.
    Meanwhile, van Clynne and Blom had changed not only their topic of conversation but their style of talking, low whispers replacing loud boasts.
    “ You’ve stopped by just in time, Claus,” said Blom. “We have a little adventure planned this evening, around midnight.”
    “ A party?”
    “ You might say, though the guest of honor won’t take much pleasure in it. The Smiths have been hosting a British agent, who’s trying to recruit the countryside to desert to the king.”
    “ Found no takers, I hope.”
    “ None. But we can’t have that sort of thing going on in the neighborhood. We’re going to tar and feather