The Cravat
Wellington Writers, USA:, 1757 - Allegheny Mountains
Screams pierced the heavy autumn air, disturbing the scent of freshly fallen leaves wrapping the Allegheny foothills. The woeful cries made Thomas shiver as he struggled to crawl under an ancient rotting log. Moisture from orange shards of wasted hemlock fiber seeped through his coarse wool hunting shirt, fortifying goose bumps created by fear. All the while, the searing fire of a smithy’s forge burned in his right thigh.
He had run wildly through the smoke of ambush, blasting a load of buckshot at a blue-clad French marine who jumped at him with his tomahawk. He knew not if his aim was true, only that John Marsh to his right and Henery Kuhns to his left crumpled into dying heaps from the same volley that ripped a ball through the flesh of his leg. The hot pain had not slowed his flight.
Now he lay on his back, hiding for life, empty fowling gun wedged tightly against his body. He tilted his head to look at the deerskin leggings covering his breeches. Halfway down his right thigh beside the hamstring, a soot-singed oblong gash was slowly pooling with blood. He wiggled the toes on his right foot, looking for movement through the moccasin’s layer of elk hide. Of course they move, he thought. Just ran a hundred yards.