Of course, Jamie said, looking wary. But theyre from the northern coast. Theyll be fishermen, Donald, not crofters.
Aye, but theyre willing to make a change, no? MacDonald gestured toward the door, and the forest beyond. Theres nothing for them left in Scotland. Theyve come here, and now they must make the best of it. A man can learn to farm, surely?
Jamie looked rather dubious, but MacDonald was in the full flush of his enthusiasm.
Ive seen many a fisher-lad and plowboy become a soldier, man, and so have you, Ill wager. Farmings no more difficult than soldiering, surely?
Jamie smiled a little at that; he had left farming at nineteen and fought as a mercenary in France for several years before returning to Scotland.
Aye, well, thats maybe true, Donald. But the thing about being a soldier is that someones tellin ye what to do, from the moment ye rise until ye fall down at night. Whos to tell these poor wee gomerels which end o the cow to milk?
That would be you, I expect, I said to him. I stretched myself, easing my back, stiff from riding, and glanced across at MacDonald. Or at least I suppose thats what youre getting at, Major?
Your charm is exceeded only by your quickness of wit, mum, said MacDonald, bowing gracefully in my direction. Aye, thats the meat of it. All your folk are Highlanders, sir, and crofters; they can speak to these newcomers in their own tongue, show them what theyll need to knowhelp them to make their way.
There are a good many other folk in the colony who have the Gaidhlig, Jamie objected. And most of them a great deal more convenient to Campbelton.
Aye, but youve vacant land that needs clearing, and they havent. Obviously feeling that he had won the argument, MacDonald sat back and took up his neglected mug of beer.
Jamie looked at me, one eyebrow raised. It was perfectly true that we had vacant land: ten thousand acres, but barely twenty of them under cultivation. It was also true that lack of labor was acute in the entire colony, but even more so in the mountains, where the land didnt lend itself to tobacco or ricethe sorts of crops suited to slave labor.
At the same time, though
The difficulty is, Donald, how to settle them. Jamie bent to turn out another ball on the hearth, and straightened, brushing back a loose strand of auburn hair behind his ear. Ive land, aye, but little else. Ye canna be loosing folk straight from Scotland into the wilderness, and expect them to claw a living out of it. I couldna even give them the shoon and suit of clothes a bondsman would have, let alone tools. And to feed them and all their wives and weans through the winter? To offer them protection? He lifted his ladle in illustration, then shook his head and dropped in another lump of lead.
Ah, protection. Well, since yeve mentioned that, let me proceed to another wee matter of interest. MacDonald leaned forward, lowering his voice confidentially, though there was no one to hear.
Ive said Im the Governors man, aye? Hes charged me to travel about, over the western part of the colony, and keep an ear to the ground. There are Regulators still unpardoned, andhe glanced warily to and fro, as though expecting one of these persons to bound out of the fireplaceyell have heard of the Committees of Safety?
A bit.
Yell not have one established yet, here in the backcountry?
Not that Ive heard of, no. Jamie had run out of lead to melt, and now stooped to scoop the new-made balls from the ashes at his feet, the warm light of the fire glowing red on the crown of his head. I sat down beside him on the settle, picking up the shot pouch from the table and holding it open for him.
Ah, said MacDonald, looking pleased. I see Ive come in good time, then.
In the wake of the civil unrest that surrounded the War of the Regulation a year before, a number of such informal citizens groups had sprung up, inspired by similar groups in the other colonies. If the Crown was no longer able to assure the safety of the colonists, they argued, then they must take the matter into their own hands.
The sheriffs could no longer be trusted to keep order; the scandals that had inspired the Regulator movement had assured that. The difficulty, of course, was that since the committees were self-appointed, there was no more reason to trust them than the sheriffs.
There were other committees, too. The Committees of Correspondence, loose associations of men who wrote letters to and fro, spreading news and rumor between the colonies. And it was out of these various committees that the seeds of rebellion would springwere germinating even now, somewhere out in the cold spring night.
As I did now and thenand much more often, nowI reckoned up the time remaining. It was nearly April of 1773 And on the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five as Longfellow so quaintly put it
Two years. But war has a long fuse, and a slow match. This one had been lit at Alamance, and the bright, hot lines of the creeping fire in North Carolina were already visiblefor those who knew to look.