Lord Dunmore's Folly

This is the fourth volume in the Forbes Road Series. A Conspiracy at the Forks of the Ohio The ten years since Wend Eckert fled Pennsylvania at the order of the Cumberland County Sheriff have been good for him and his vivacious wife Peggy. On their farm near Winchester, Virginia, Wend's gunsmithing trade has prospered and the couple have been welcomed into local society. But the year is now 1774, and everyone feels the cold shadow of growing tension with the King's Government as the British Army occupies a defiant Boston to enforce the Intolerable Acts. British Governor Lord Dunmore recognizes the signs of impending insurrection and, with a ring of henchmen which includes duplicitous merchant Richard Grenough, concocts a scheme intended to keep Virginia's colonists loyal. His men seize control of Pittsburgh and then treacherously provoke the Shawnee and Mingo tribes of the Ohio Country into a vicious war against the Virginia settlements. With the frontier in flames, Dunmore calls a militia army of border riflemen to arms, promising subjugation of the Indians and generous land grants in Ohio and Kentucky to veterans. Against his will, Eckert is dragged into the conflict and forced to march as part of an expedition against Shawnee villages along the Muskingum River. Dispatched on a secret mission, he finds he must stand in single combat against a vindictive warrior to reunite with the son he conceived years ago with Abigail Gibson, English medicine woman of the Mingo. Meanwhile Peggy becomes involved with a mysterious gentleman of highborn manners who visits Winchester and begins a seductive pursuit of her favors. Then, on a dark, blustery spring night of 1775, Wend, defying Peggy's explosive anger, rides out alone to keep the pledge he made over his father's grave and exact final vengeance on Richard Grenough. Near the Shenandoah River, Eckert confronts Grenough under startling circumstances and with an outcome neither could have predicted.