Tuesday, June 29, 2021

A Plan Is Hatched...

(Source)

At first Sergent Louis Malheur had been somewhat irritated with Private Alain Gaudry. The boy was young and possessed of far more self-confidence than any man of that age should possess. Truth be told, he knew very little of the Gaudry brothers and their Abenaki companion.

By the second day of their trek north, Malheur was starting to have a grudging respect for the elder of the Gaudry brothers. They certainly knew their way around the wilderness. Though he had a rough idea of which direction to go to return to New France, he soon learned that just blundering north would have been a terrible idea. He remembered the afternoon of the first full day of the march.

"North is that way Private, why are you turning to the west?" He had inquired of the elder Gaudry.

"Little Wolf knows this area. Just ahead is a small creek which feeds into a rather large swamp. If we go straight north, we'll spend days in that swamp. By traveling a league to the west, we can avoid the swamp altogether. It saves us much time and is less dangerous." Alain had answered the Sergent.

"Less dangerous how?" Malheur had asked.

"There is a native village on the edge of the swamp, they are Abenaki but they hate les français. They have no love for les anglais as well, if we go near there, they might attack."

"Surely we have enough firepower to defeat them!" Malheur protested.

"They have traps in the swamp to snare the unwary, unlike many of the tribes, they will fight at night. Their numbers are small but they are vicious fighters. We might kill many, but we shall lose many."

Malheur thought for a moment, then nodded. "Carry on Private Gaudry, I defer to your knowledge of this area."

"It is Little Wolf's knowledge, not mine."

"Please tell your friend that I value his skill in these woods." Malheur said, smiling at the man in question as he walked over to join them.

"You are welcome Sergent, I speak your language fairly well, Jacques and Alain have taught me." Little Wolf spoke in French, oddly accented but very understandable.

Malheur blushed and said, "Forgive me for not telling you directly, but your skills are helping us a great deal."

Little Wolf nodded as if to indicate that he knew this already. After a short conversation in Abenaki, Little Wolf slipped back into the forest.

"Where is he going now?" Malheur asked Alain.

"There is a party of Mohican over the next ridge, he is keeping an eye on them. He suggests that we camp here tonight."

Malheur nodded and said, "Then let us do so. Pickets?"

"I think that wise, mon Sergent."


Guards Lieutenant Will Jefferson was staring at the ground in front of him. After a few long moments he realized that he just couldn't see what Standing Wolf was seeing. "I cannot see any difference my friend, the ground looks undisturbed to me."

Standing Wolf nodded, the Englishman still thought like a European, still saw things with a European's eye, not the eye of a Mohican warrior. "Do you trust me Blue Eyes?"

"With my life."

"Someone passed this way today, probably after the morning was well on. There isn't much wind today otherwise I wouldn't have noticed. Do you see here, where the soil is slightly compressed compared to the surrounding soil?"

Jefferson knelt down and looked closely, sure enough, now he saw it, someone had been this way, it was a partial print from a human foot wearing native footwear. It almost looked natural, but there was a line, a slight indent which was unnatural.

"A scout?"

"I think so, we are being watched."


"Alain."

Alain looked up to see his brother Jacques approaching. "What is it brother?"

"Little Wolf says they are coming. Twenty men, one of them a European, probably anglais."

Sergent Malheur had overheard the conversation, brief as it was. "The Mohicans?"

"Yes, mon Sergent. Little Wolf left a subtle clue for their trackers to find. It seems his ruse worked."

"Are you saying that he has led them here?" Malheur asked with some alarm.

"No, Sergent, the Mohicans are going to this place." Jacques sketched a rough map in the dirt. "The ridge ends here, it will take them another day to reach that spot. There is a narrow gap between there and the river, they will have to pass that way. We propose to attack them there. If you have at least fifteen men who are reliable and can shoot, we should be able to end the Mohican threat and continue on to Montréal."




Malheur looked at the rough map, "What is this here?" he said, pointing a a set of wavy lines Jacques had sketched in.

"That is the swamp we just went around. Do you see the possibilities?" Alain asked.

Malheur studied the map Jacques had drawn, he thought it might work. "Do you think Little Wolf can draw them here?" he asked, pointing at the notch in the ridge.

Alain smiled, "He already has mon Sergent. The Mohican will camp tonight to prepare themselves for battle. After all, we are merely French neophytes lost in the woods, yes?"

Malheur suddenly smiled at the thought of the men who had killed his officers and so many of his men being drawn into a trap.

"Let us head there now, the men have rested enough!"


By nightfall, Malheur and the Gaudry brothers had positioned the men. If Little Wolf did his part, the Mohicans stood no chance. They would hit the ambush position shortly after sunrise.

Little Wolf played his role superbly, the Mohicans were already boasting of their coming victory. The Abenaki warrior listened to those boasts from his position nearby. These enemies were overconfident. Soon, they would be food for the creatures of the forest.



Link to all of the Chant's fiction.

28 comments:

  1. French- Fight or flee?..."Phuck it we phight"(said with a french accent)
    Way back before Napoleon, WW1, and WW2 killed off the majority of the hard core pipe hittin' manly French.
    Being Viking I have ties to Normandy. I'm torn, I have good guys and bad guys on both sides. You're doing a great job of keeping me involved no matter who is center stage.

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    1. The French got a lot of bad press in the 20th Century, especially after 1940. Mostly from people who have no knowledge of history. Which in this country means "most of us."

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    2. The French soldiers fought well. They were not supported by French politicians and French city-folk. The country French did support the fight.

      Kinda like... now. The French soldiers are very pissed (as a group) and are supported by the provincials, but the city-sitters and politicians are very unsupportive of the soldiers and the provincials.

      Ah, France. Where would you be if it wasn't for your ability to separate into self-interest groups despite the needs of the nation?

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    3. Most nations go through that. The city folk don't care until the barbarians are in THEIR neighborhood.

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    4. Almost makes a fella want to show the Barbarians the way...

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  2. Aha.......daily posting results in a cliff-hanger. Waiting with baited breath Sarge, that reminds me, time to wet a line now since the weather is a bit unsettled, the nearest lake in 2 blocks away.

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    1. I've always been a fan of the cliff hanger genre. 😉

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  3. Go ahead and string us along, Sarge
    BG

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  4. Tracking skills are amazing, and far beyond my ability. Michael Yon had a couple of excellent pieces on tracker skills in Iraq, back when he was a talented writer, not someone escaped from the asylum. Hat tip to anyone who has those skills, they are extremely valuable assets to military or LEO operations. (Assuming those in charge listen to them....)
    John Blackshoe

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    1. It requires a large knowledge of the environment (not Greta Thunberg knowledge but actual knowledge) and superior observation skills, having a feel for what's out of place is one way of describing it. Skilled trackers are worth their weight in gold!

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    2. Yon appears to have returned from the edge. His reporting on antifa and the migrant surge in central America is pretty good. His recent piece on milley is worthwhile.
      Boat Guy

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    3. I had hoped that he wasn't a lost cause. This is good news.

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    4. "Having a feel..." is a good way to put it. First you step back, and let your gaze unfocus, not looking for detail, but just gazing at the big picture. If there's been a disturbance, it will stand out, something incongruous with the natural order of things. Then you focus more closely, and find the details that tell you what the disturbance was, and who caused it. After that the pattern becomes obvious, and continuing to follow it is very simple.

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    5. A man with experience I think...

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    6. First turned loose in the forest with a gun about 5 years old. I kept coming back with game, so they kept turning me loose. just a .22 to start, but they kept getting bigger over time, and so did the game. Had a lot of mouths to feed in the house I grew up in, and not a lot of free space to stretch out in, mentally or physically, so I was more than happy to grow up as much in the woods as in that house. Wouldn't that turn today's namby pampy sons of bitches apoplectic?

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    7. Kids these days don't spend nearly enough time in the woods. As a society we're poorer for it.

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  5. You and your Muse are obviously doing well after the break. And, as others said, back to the daily cliffhangers.

    Very good, the map matches the verbal action and helps us 'see' what's going on. I like the way, if the English assault towards the French, the French can break right and left and the English will go into either the swamp or into the village of the very peeved villagers. Nice.

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    1. I promised to include more maps, so far, so good!

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  6. Le Sergeant is willing to learn. Excellent.

    Tracking is an amazing skill to me, the more do because I am so awful at reading Nature.

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  7. What's with all the Arrows in the diagram? He asks tongue in cheek. ;-)

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  8. ...And I don't know who to root for......

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    1. Something you definitely have a talent for, Sarge. Showing the details, the individual humanity on both sides of the conflict. Even though I had a vague sense of it already, I think the way you showed it in your WW2 stories really brought it home to me. Yes, war is hell, for the combatants on both sides. The instigators all too often don't really get their taste of brimstone until far too late in the conflict, though.

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    2. Most of those who fight would rather be somewhere else, I try to remind us all that the folks on the other side are also human.

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Just be polite... that's all I ask. (For Buck)
Can't be nice, go somewhere else...

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