Wild Indigo by Judith Stanton Page B

you.”
    â€œThey were in German.”
    â€œAll church business is in German.”
    â€œThey could have said aught. I may not know German, but some Englishman would.” He spit on the ground. “Everybody knows you’re a bunch of Tories.”
    Jacob hid his annoyance behind a shrug. Whigs thought Moravians were Tories, and Tories thought they were Whigs. They were neither. When the British ruled, Moravians paid them their due. Now that the Colonies had independence, Moravians paid taxes to the government in power. Threefold taxes, so they wouldn’t have to bear arms for the state. Some were drafted anyway.
    Some even fought. Jacob was sorely tempted to. Partly because he knew he would do a better job than Sim Scaife and his ilk, and the brutal war would end sooner. But more because of how he had come to love the promised freedom of this land.
    His blood raged to fight for it. Nicholas was notunlike him in that. Guilt trickled through him. What if his own secret relish for battle had somehow found expression in his older son’s intemperate nature. He dared not by word or deed set an example that would feed his son’s belligerent leanings.
    Besides, Jacob reminded himself, he did not have the choice of bearing arms. Every ounce of duty, faith, and honor in his soul bound him to stand by his community. The best that he could do was keep men like Scaife from destroying it.
    And Scaife would try. Jacob wished the man had stuck with his hardscrabble life of hunting and trapping on that precious property he had finagled out of some poor settler. The wilderness life took the edge off his spite. War honed it.
    â€œI will trade for Finney’s cow, Scaife.”
    â€œI’m here to say you won’t,” Scaife said, bracing his legs to fight, three of his men outside the circle.
    Jacob assessed him. He outweighed the Liberty Man by a good three stones, but Scaife’s meanness could make up the difference. Scaife hoisted his musket off his shoulder and feigned a move to hand it to his sergeant. Instead, he tossed it in the air, grabbed it by the bore, and swung it low like a scythe.
    Jacob saw the blow coming and stepped over the weapon. With a growl, he tackled the man, toppling him over into the dust. Scaife’s bony hands scrabbled up, his dirty broken fingernails digging into Jacob’s throat. Jacob wrestled the man’s hands to the ground and pinned them over Scaife’s head.
    â€œâ€™Twould not be a fair fight, Captain.” He shifted, letting the thin man beneath him feel his weight. Around them, the circle tightened, a wall ofMoravian men cutting off Scaife’s men from rescue or reprisal.
    Scaife’s narrow gaze darted up to the pressing crowd, as if noticing it for the first time. Jacob knew what he would see alongside his townsmen. A few Whig farmers and trappers who depended on the town for trade. A couple of suspected Loyalists, driven by need, who had taken a chance on coming to market. Whig or Tory, they had all dodged fire from every side. No one would go out of his way for Sim Scaife.
    â€œYeah. You got reinforcements.” His accusation was loud enough to provoke the crowd. No doubt, he hoped to stir them up.
    â€œI fight my own fights. Save yours for the British.”
    â€œYou gave them rooms.”
    â€œThey took the rooms. Your army gets all our wheat.”
    â€œYou gave them horses.”
    â€œThey took our horses. They took everyone’s.” Jacob lowered his voice, striving to come up with something to convince Scaife that Salem was truly neutral. “They didn’t find the best ones.”
    Scaife barked a nasty laugh. “Well, I’ll be,” he said, as if he would never have thought the neutral Moravians had wits enough to hide a horse. He squirmed under Jacob’s weight. “I give.”
    â€œGive what?” Jacob blinked, uncomprehending.
    â€œGive up!” Scaife snarled