Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [280]
“We’ll get him when we cross the river,” Boudet said.
Saint James and the other men who’d come with him led Boudet’s division up the river to the ford they’d used themselves that morning. Snipers harried them from the woods as they marched, and a few horsemen rode feints along their flanks. Maillart learned from the scouts that these were men of Charles Belair, the same who had broken his sleep with their raid the night before. Boudet’s troops were hot to pursue these harassers. After what they’d seen the day before they wanted blood. But Boudet and Lacroix kept them close in their ranks and marching forward.
On the north bank of the ford the enemy appeared in sufficient force to trouble them with musket fire across the river. Boudet formed his advance guard under command of Pétion, and ordered him to lead the crossing. A number of Pétion’s grenadiers were grumbling that it was always they who had to march in the van and risk the fire of ambushes. Pétion turned on them and snapped, “It is your glory to have this place of honor—now be silent and follow me.”
Indeed, Pétion was the first man into the river and the first man across. Maillart watched him with an interested respect. Pétion was a mulatto and an old Rigaudin; he’d just come out from France on the same boat that carried Rigaud and his other partisans. He looked to be quite a capable and courageous officer, though Maillart was content, for his own part, to be marching well behind the vanguard.
He joined the detachment that returned to the area of the bank where that black captain had fallen. Though the leaves where he’d lain were all soaked with his blood, the man himself was nowhere to be seen. Maillart supposed someone must have carried him off, for by the amount of blood soaking the ground, he’d have been too weak to shift on his own. Angry at his escape, a few of the soldiers kicked up the bloody leaves.
The ambushes had been swept away by the time they rejoined the main advance. Boudet and Lacroix and most of the men were eager to press on to Petite Rivière, where they hoped they might engage Dessalines. But Saint James and the others who’d deserted with him told the French generals of a large powder depot in the vicinity, and Boudet decided it would be best to capture it if possible.
With Belair’s raid, many of the men had got little sleep the night before, and marching under the full sun told on them quickly now. Soon their heavy wool uniforms were sweated through, so that all of them smelled like soggy sheep. In the mountains the trails became too steep and narrow for them to continue dragging their few cannon. Boudet called a halt to bury the artillery, that the enemy might not discover it. Despite these delays, they reached Plassac a little before noon.
A howling came from across the gorge from them—some number of black irregulars appearing on an open bend of the trail that climbed the opposite hill. Lacroix shaded his eyes to look.
“Can it be Dessalines?” he said.
Maillart accepted the spyglass Lacroix offered him and squinted into it for a moment. “I recognize no uniforms,” he said as he lowered the instrument. “These might be anyone, but—”
“If we could only come at him now . . .” Lacroix was flexing both his fists.
“Blow up the magazine,” Pétion said. “That will hurt them as much as anything, whoever they may be.”
Boudet nodded, then gave his orders. A couple of Pétion’s grenadiers laid the fuse, as the rest of the troops