Mystery #3 — The Secret Message in the Drum

The year was 1765. Fort Loudoun was quiet in the early morning, but it had not been quiet for long. Just weeks before, a group of angry colonists called the Black Boys had marched right up to the fort. The king's soldiers had been seizing the settlers' rifles and trade goods, and the Black Boys were NOT happy about it. There had been shouting. There had been gunfire. Now, every soldier inside the fort walls slept with one eye open.

Twelve-year-old Samuel was the fort's drummer boy. He slept on a straw mat in the corner of the barracks with his drum beside him. Every morning before the sun came up, Samuel rolled out of bed, beat his drum, and woke the soldiers.

That Tuesday morning, Samuel was reaching for his drumsticks when something caught his eye—a square of folded paper tucked between the leather straps of his drum.

They come again before dawn tomorrow. Twenty men, from the west woods. Tell the Captain. Do not let the guards sleep.

Samuel's hands went cold. Someone at the fort was warning him that the Black Boys were coming back—tomorrow! And whoever had written the note had snuck into his sleeping area in the night to leave it. No signature. No name.

Samuel grabbed his best friend William by the shoulder and dragged him behind the powder barrels. "Will. WILL. Look at this."

William read it. His eyes got huge. "Sam. We have to go to the Captain—right now."

"Not yet. The Captain will want to know who wrote it. And if I can't tell him, he might think I made it up myself!"

"We figure out who wrote it. Before the drum call. We've got maybe twenty minutes."

The boys crept around the barracks. Samuel had three suspects in mind—three men who had been awake or moving around last night.

First they found Private James, stirring a pot of oats over the cook fire. James was a red-cheeked farm boy from Virginia with big hands and an even bigger smile.

"Private James," Samuel said, "can I ask you something? Did you put a note in my drum last night?"

James laughed out loud. "A note? Sammy, you know I can't read or write a single letter. I sign my name with an X. Ask the Sergeant—he's the one who signs my pay for me every month."

Next they found Sergeant Miller sitting at a wooden table by the officers' quarters, sipping tea from a china cup. Sergeant Miller had a bushy mustache and wore his uniform buttoned to the top. On the table in front of him sat a small glass bottle of bright red ink and a long feather quill.

The Sergeant raised an eyebrow. "A note? In your drum? Why on earth would I sneak around at night like a common thief when I could simply order you to listen to me?" He dipped his quill and wrote a loopy curly letter on the paper in front of him—bright red, with fancy swirls. "If I had a message for you, boy, it would look like this."

Samuel glanced at Sergeant Miller's handwriting. Nothing like the note. "Thank you, sir."

Next they found Doctor Hale, the fort's surgeon, scrubbing his hands in a bucket outside the apothecary cabin. Doctor Hale was a thin, quiet man with ink stains on his fingers. Samuel knew he wrote his prescriptions in plain black ink, in tiny neat letters.

Doctor Hale raised his eyebrows. "Your drum? No, lad. I was awake all night, but nowhere near the barracks. Private Murray has been feverish for two days. I sat at his bedside from dusk until dawn. Ask the Sergeant—he came in to check on Murray at midnight and at four. I never left Murray's cot."

Samuel's heart sank a little. Doctor Hale's writing sounded like it might match the note. But if he'd been stuck at a sick man's bedside all night with witnesses at midnight AND four in the morning, when could he have snuck into the drum room?

William looked worried as they walked away. "Sam, that's a problem. His handwriting might match. But his alibi is rock solid."

"I know. It means we need both things—the right handwriting AND the right chance. Come on."

Last, they found Corporal Finch coming down the ladder from the watchtower. Finch was tall, thin, and tired. Dark circles hung under his eyes. In his hand he carried a small leather notebook and a plain black ink pencil that he tucked into his coat pocket.

Corporal Finch hesitated. Just for a second. His eyes flicked down to his notebook, and then back to Samuel. "I saw nothing, drummer boy. Nothing at all. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to sleep before my next watch." He walked off quickly toward the barracks.

William grabbed Samuel's arm. "Sam. Did you see that? He looked at his notebook the SECOND we asked what he saw."

William sprinted after Finch and "accidentally" bumped into him at the barracks door. The notebook fell open on the ground. William scooped it up and handed it back, but his eyes had already seen the inside page—plain black ink, neat simple letters, just like the note.

"It matches!" William panted when he caught up. "But Sam—Doctor Hale's writing probably matches too. How do we prove which one is the writer?"

Samuel sat down on a powder barrel and spread the note on his knee. "Alright. Let's think like officers. We have TWO men whose handwriting could fit. Doctor Hale and Corporal Finch. Question one: which one had the CHANCE to hide a note in my drum last night?"

"Finch. Doctor Hale was at Murray's bedside the whole night with a witness at midnight and four."

"Question two: which one had the knowledge to WARN us about the enemy in the woods? Doctor Hale was indoors all night with a sick man. Corporal Finch was in the watchtower staring straight at the west woods for eight hours."

The Answer: Corporal Finch wrote the message. The tricky part is that Doctor Hale's handwriting probably also matched the note—but Samuel ruled him out because Doctor Hale had a rock-solid alibi: he sat beside a feverish Private Murray all night, with the Sergeant as a witness at midnight and at four in the morning. He couldn't have slipped into the drum room without being seen.

Corporal Finch, on the other hand, had three things going against him: his notebook handwriting matched the note (plain black ink, neat simple letters), he was up in the watchtower all night staring at the very woods the note warned about, and he flinched when Samuel asked him what he saw. Private James couldn't write anything but an X, and Sergeant Miller only wrote in fancy red curls.

Samuel ran straight to the Captain, note in hand. The Captain called Corporal Finch in, and this time Finch told the whole truth.

"I saw them from the tower, sir. Twenty men with muskets, coming from the west woods. But if I woke the whole fort in the middle of the night on just my word, and I was wrong, I'd look like a fool. And if I was right, some folks would call me a tattler. So I wrote the note, hid it in Samuel's drum, and figured the Captain would hear of it in the morning. I didn't need my name on it. I just needed the fort to be ready."

The Captain put his hand on Finch's shoulder. "Corporal, you care more about this fort than you care about being thanked. That's the best kind of man a captain can have." He turned to the drummer. "Samuel, sound the long call. Double the guard. Load the muskets. We'll be ready before dawn."

Sure enough, the riders came—and because of one quiet note in a boy's drum, Fort Loudoun was ready.

A bit of real history: The Black Boys were a REAL group of settlers from the Pennsylvania frontier. Their leader, a man named James Smith, had once been captured and lived with the Mohawk people before escaping. In March of 1765, his men blackened their faces with soot as a disguise and ambushed a wagon train full of weapons near Sideling Hill. Later that same year, in November of 1765, Smith and a few hundred men really did surround Fort Loudoun and shoot at it for two whole days until the British officer, Lt. Charles Grant, gave back the rifles his soldiers had taken. Samuel the drummer boy is made up—but the raid really happened, and Fort Loudoun really was there.