The year was 1777. The forests of New York ran thick with fog and fear. British troops, red coats gleaming through the trees, marched cautiously along a ravine—heads on a swivel, fingers on triggers. They’d been chasing ghosts for days. Militiamen who moved like shadows. No lines. No rules. Just powder and vengeance.

Corporal James Loughton of the King’s 24th Regiment never saw the trap.

It was hidden beneath a blanket of pine needles—a wooden keg, iron-banded and soaked from the last rain. Looked like nothing more than a misplaced barrel of gunpowder, left behind in a rebel hurry. One soldier, maybe nineteen, moved to inspect it. The moment he tipped it upright, a flint snapped.

Boom.

The blast tore the forest apart. Shards of barrel and bone littered the clearing. Two men were killed instantly. Another’s leg was gone. The rest staggered, bleeding from their ears, dazed like cattle in a thunderstorm.

Hidden fifty yards away behind a downed birch, Elias Cartwright watched it all unfold. He was no soldier—just a farmer’s son with black powder on his hands and rage in his chest. His brother had been hanged by the redcoats for stealing bread. So Elias didn’t carry a musket anymore. He carried a carpenter’s bag full of powder, fuse wire, and hell.

The locals had a name for his work.

Bushnell may have built his underwater torpedoes for ships, but Elias brought that thinking to the woods. Powder traps wired to flintlocks. Kegs hidden under leaves. A rope here, a twig there. He didn’t wait for the fight—he made the enemy walk into it.

The British called it ungentlemanly. He called it war.

As the British scrambled for cover and cried out for surgeons, Elias melted back into the woods. No flag. No drum. Just pine needles and silence.

By nightfall, a second keg would be buried under the crossing at Wolf Creek. And if the redcoats marched that way, well…

The Devil’s Keg would be waiting.

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