Spake As a Dragon

by Larry Edward Hunt

  ‘Why am I unable to move,’ he thinks? ‘My boys! Luke, Matthew, I promised Malinda...’ He can feel something warm and wet trickling down the front of his shirt? Surely it is not blood he feels no pain. ‘Why is the world moving so slowly?’

  “Father! Father! How badly are you hurt?” Luke asks, pulling his father back against the shelter of the huge boulder.

  Sergeant Scarburg looks at the young man. His eyes blurred he cannot quite make out his features.

  “Matthew! Matthew is this you son?”

  “No, Father, it’s me Luke. Your son Luke.”

  “Luke, Luke!” Robert whispers, “bend down, I need to tell you something. Please son, it is imperative. This was told to me by my father and I need to pass it on before I die.”

  “Hush Father, conserve your strength, you’re not going to die!” Looking at the bloody hole in his father’s chest made by the bayonet, Luke thinks otherwise. “Hold this handkerchief tightly against your wound Father.” Trying to bolster his father’s spirit he continues, “Do not worry Father it is only a scratch, lie still I will get help.”

  Struggling to speak, “Wait Luke! Please! Luke closer, come closer.” Whatever he has to say is crucial. Luke realizes it too, bends down and places his ear close to his father’s mouth. The noise from the on-going battle is deafening. Luke is close enough to feel his father’s breath on his cheek.

  Barely able to hear his father’s whispers, he remarks, “Father? Father? I do not understand! Bible? Bible? I don’t have a Bible!”

  The words have no sooner left Luke’s lips when a lead mini-ball ricochets off the boulder above his head raining lead and rock fragments into Luke’ face and forehead. Blood gushes into his eyes. For a second, Luke thinks the bullet has found its mark, but a swipe with his hand indicates it is only a superficial scalp laceration.

  “Luke! Luke, is that you?” Someone screams from the direction of the field of tall grass.

  Even though he only can see a few yards into the thick, blue smoke, Luke recognizes the voice. It is the frightened voice of his younger brother Matthew.

  “Here Matt! I’m here with Father he’s hurt. I think he wants a Bible, do you have one Matthew?”

  Matt shakes his head then asks, “Is Father dying”?

  “Yes, I think so. Stay with him Matt; I’ll try to find some help.

  “No, Luke don’t leave...!”

  Luke grabs his musket, rounds the boulder, and dodging bullets runs into the thick smoke.

  Chapter Three

  THE HAWK

  About seven hundred miles southwest of the hot battle taking place in Pennsylvania it is also hot on this Thursday the 2nd of July on the Scarburg farm in Alabama. Mattie Ann and Elizabeth, Sergeant Robert Steven’s two youngest daughters are playing under the large tulip poplar at the edge of the yard. They are startled by a hoarse, screaming kee-eeeee-arr sound from a large bird circling overhead. Looking up they see nothing, the bird flew behind the branches of the tree where they are sitting. Scared and trembling Mattie Ann drops her shuck doll to the ground and the girls run toward the safety of the house.

  “Mama! Mama, there is some kind of big bird screeching at us out yonder in the yard,” she says slamming the screen door behind her. “What is it Mama?”

  “Hush child, hush don’t tell me! I don’t want to hear you say it!”

  “What? Say what Mama?”

  “Hawk! That... that was a red-tailed hawk!”

  “But Mama, it acted like it was screaming at me and Elizabeth!”

  “It probably was Mattie Ann. Sit down baby and I will explain. Your Granny Scarburg had lived with us right before she died. She told me the tale of the hawks.”

  Mattie Ann sat at the kitchen table, wide-eyed as she listens to her mother tell Granny Scarburg’s story of the hawk.

  “Granny, a full blood Cherokee Indian, named Running Doe got the story from her mother. I suppose Granny wanted to make sure she had passed it on before she died.”

  “Passed on what Mama?”

  “She said the hawk is a messenger from God or as Granny said the Great Spirit. She said He sends warning to us through the spirit of the red-tail hawk. The hawk is the messenger! Hawks warn of enemies, or foretell of tragedy. Seeing or dreaming about a hawk can be seen as a warning of danger too.”

  “Mama, what did the hawk say that me and Lizzie saw?”

  “No baby girl, they don’t say anything. Once you hear the hawk’s screeching it is a warning that something is going to happen. You must watch carefully to see the direction the hawk flies. Danger or death will come from that direction.”

  “What was my hawk’s warning?”

  “Baby girl, I don’t know. Go back and watch, if he is trying to talk to you he will come back. Watch which way he flies as he leaves, the direction will tell you.”

  Later while playing Mattie Ann is startled by the shrill cry: kee-eeeee-arr. She looks up her hawk is back. Around and around the beautiful red-tailed bird soars screeching its mournful cry, Lizzie is scared and begins to cry. Mattie Ann stands watching, mesmerized by the flapping of the hawk’s wings and the hypnotic sound it constantly emits; finally, it flies off and does not return.

  She runs back into the house.

  “Mama! Mama, it flew off. What does that mean?”

  “Which way? Which way did it fly?”

  “North! North Mama, it flew off toward the north.”

  Malinda grabs the tail of her beautifully embroidered apron her mother had given her when she married Robert, places it to her eyes as the tears begin to flow.

  “Mama! What’s the matter, why are you crying? What did the hawk mean?”

  “North my baby north is the direction of your father and the boys.”

  Chapter Four

  SCARBURG MILL

  The Yankee’s bayonet hole in Roberts’s chest hurts. It hurts something awful. Sweat runs down his face in beads. The sweat drips into his eyes, but he does not have the strength to wipe it away. He lays his head against the stone boulder – it is cool, it feels good on his face. The dampness smell of moss and rotten wood envelops his nostrils. The scent reminds him of the caves behind his house that overlook Hog Creek.

  He is alone bleeding to death abandoned by his son’s Luke and Matthew. He wishes he did not have to die forsaken; although, hundreds of his fellow soldiers are suffering and dying within earshot he still feels neglected and forgotten.

  He drifts in and out of consciousness. When awake, he is living a nightmare, a terrifying nightmare; the battle, a terrible battle is still raging in all its fury. When unconscious, which is a blessing, his mind lets him dream of home and his family. Especially Malinda, he can almost feel the soft blonde curls, which cascade down around her shoulders. He can smell the soft scent of the lilac water on the nape of her neck. Please he thinks let this dream continue.

  It seems as though it has been a million years since he and Malinda Ingram married. Robert’s mind drifts to thoughts of his father Thomas, and his grandparents John and Celia Scarburg, the ones he called Pappy John and Mammy Celia. As the oldest son, and following the custom of primogeniture, Robert inherited his father’s property. Now he is beginning to think he is going to inherit something else - a shallow unmarked grave like all the thousands of other dead on this war strewn battlefield.

  Pappy John’s ‘farm’ as they referred to it, was slightly over one section of rich South Carolina bottomland, bordering on Rayburn’s Branch of the Saluda River. One section may not sound like much, but in that region of the Carolinas six hundred and forty acres was a tad more than a ‘farm.’ John had saved up a small sum of money when he and Celia left their home in Virginia to become pioneers in the un-settled frontier of South Carolina.

  The first few years he spent building Celia the beautiful Scarlett Plantation. To be officially called a plantation, a farm must have as a minimum, three slaves. John and Celia had never owned slaves nor indentured servants. Calling Scarlett a plantation was in name on
ly, they never referred to it as a Plantation it was simply – Scarlett.

  Scarlett had been finished in 1768, ten years after their marriage. It had been rumored, before the completion of the house, that Celia suffered a miscarriage and the infant girl died, perhaps the unborn child was named Scarlett? However, there had never been a girl child in the Scarburg family named Scarlett.

  Pappy’s wife Celia could trace her ancestors back to the beginning of the United States; in fact, one of her grandfathers was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Within Celia’s family was a story, never proven, that her grandfather had two wives, the first died only a week or two after marriage. Records of this union were destroyed during the Revolution and her name was never known, was she Scarlett? No one ever knew the answer for sure. The name Scarlett was a mystery known only to John and Celia.

  Another grandfather of Robert’s wife Malinda, Jacob Damascus Ingram, although not a landowner like the Scarburgs, had amassed a sizeable amount of money too. Jacob and his wife Margaret moved from Virginia with Jacob’s father and Margaret’s parents. They all settled on the western side of Mink Creek, another tributary of the Saluda River, in the early 1760s, a mere mile and one-half east of Scarlett. It did not take very long after arrival in this back-woods country for the Scarburgs and Ingrams to become close friends. Robert Scarburg and Malinda Ingram would grow up together, fall in love and later marry.

  In 1769, with the comforts of life having been established John began working on two of his life’s dreams – he wanted to build and operate a gristmill and he had a vision to construct the first Masonic Lodge in that part of South Carolina. Mink Creek was the perfect place for such a mill. The creek might only be a creek, as it was officially described, but the water was clean, cold and ran full and deep both summer and winter. To many they would call it a river, but it was here also that he decided to build and pursue his second dream. Being a fervent Master Mason of the Masonic Order of Free and Accepted Masons he also began work on the first Masonic Hall in that part of South Carolina. The lodge would become known as Masonic Lodge Number One. Years later Masonic members would be proud as they remembered a group of Masons, dressed as Mohawk Indians, who left their meeting Lodge at the Green Dragon tavern in Boston to dump the British tea into the harbor. Patriots up and down the thirteen colonies still referred to this act as the Boston Tea Party. Paul Revere, John Hancock and Sam Adams were all honored members of this Boston Masonic Lodge.

  Between Masonic Lodge Number One and Scarburg Mill, and at the urging and kind benevolence of Jacob Ingram the local Quaker Friends in the community constructed a beautiful Meetinghouse, which they called the House of the Lord. It was painted a brilliant white, with stained glass windows, sitting atop the bell tower, and its golden toned bells, was a magnificent steeple topped with a large, six-foot cross; it seemed to reach into the heavens. Its construction was a few years before their fight with England, and at that time everyone still owed allegiance to the King; on meeting day the bells chimed all to attend the services; however, the break with King George III in the War of Independence silenced the bells, they were never to ring again.

  Their Lodge was not given an official name – it was known simply as ‘The King’s Masonic House Number One.’ On the day of the monthly meetings throughout the surrounding community Masonic members would say, “Come brethren get ready, it’s time to go to The King’s House.” Thus on Thursday night once a month Freemasons from across the area would meet at old Number One for the performance of their ritualistic conferment of the Entered Apprentice, Fellowcraft and Master Mason degrees during the initiation of new members. Even after the Revolutionary War it was still referred to as The King’s Masonic House.

  Not only was the mill a place for the locals to get their corn and wheat ground into cornmeal and flour, it became a favorite meeting place known simply as Scarburg Mill. John’s gristmill thrived. In fact, a small community sprang up around the Mill including a tavern, the Masonic lodge and the House of the Lord. As time passed, the settlement itself became known as Scarlett Town and later simply as Scarlettsville.

  Daily, men would come to trade horses and mules within the confines of the Mill’s expansive yard. Others would swap tobacco for jugs of homemade whiskey; still others would sometimes get into heated arguments over the plight of the budding colonies of America and the King of England. Some old timers would sit quietly on a bench under the shade of a huge oak tree and whittle on a piece of soft, cedar wood and reminisce of past adventures of their youth. These exploits were sometimes true, but mostly they were fanciful tales that brought smiles to their attentive listeners.

  In the summer of 1775, a vicious thunderstorm, accompanied by strong winds and lightning blew in out of the west. A number of violent tornados struck the area one hurled its raging force upon John and Celia’s home of love. The tornado only destroyed the barn and a couple of out building; however, a bolt of lightning struck one of the lovely old oaks in the front yard. The resulting fire consumed the beloved Scarlett’s main house, burning it to the ground. All that remained of John and Celia’s dream house was the four red brick fireplaces, two on either end of the once stately home. The year ’75 could have been remembered as one of the most-dreadful years of John and Celia’s marriage had it not been for the birth of their first son Thomas, a son who years later would become the father of Robert Steven. A son and daughter had been born years earlier, but neither lived long after birth. They named the infants John Junior and Celia Jane. Six months earlier, John’s brother Charles had left to join the Patriot forces of General George Washington. The disturbing fact was no word had been heard from him since he departed.

  Chapter Five

  1781

  One thousand seven hundred eighty-one, what a year! Scarlett had been rebuilt and was even more beautiful than it had been before the war. The Revolutionary War had been raging for over five years, but still more years remained before the newly formed United States of America could conclusively declare herself independent from the chains of King George III of Great Britain.

  The British military in the Carolinas was beginning to realize the band of rabble calling themselves Patriots, were never going to stop fighting. The countryside of both North and South Carolina did indeed foster some settlers loyal to the King of England, but their numbers, now referred to as Loyalist, were becoming fewer and fewer.

  What bothered the British the most was this low-class bunch of commoners, some even brazenly referring to themselves as ‘Americans,’ would not stand up and fight like gentlemen. They would hide in the trees and bushes and shoot at them like cowards. Also, bothersome to the leaders of the Kings Army: the scum called Patriots had a propensity to shoot the British officers from their horses first. To punish this band of low-life peasants, the British began a new tactic.

  In late March of this year, a week or so before Easter, a large group of British Redcoats captured the Whig governor of South Carolina, along with thirty of his staff. The British, under the command of Colonel David Wilcox, were transporting their group of prisoners to British General Horace Manly’s headquarters in Greenville, South Carolina to stand trial for ‘Treason Against the British Crown.’ Fortunately or unfortunately as the case may be, their route would take them down the road past Scarburg Mill.

  The British Colonel did not realize ‘B’ Company of the 3rd South Carolina Ranger Regiment was camped at Scarburg Mill. The Mill was a good place to stop and give rest to the saddle-weary cavalrymen. However, from upcountry South Carolina, word rapidly spreads to the Ranger commander, Captain John Coker, of the capture of the Governor and his staff. Captain Coker was also informed of the Governor’s impending arrival, along with his Redcoat captors, at Scarburg Mill within a day or so.

  Captain Coker and his men had been escorting two large wagons from Dahlonega, Georgia to General Washington’s command at Philadelphia. The wagons were so heavy laden each needed to be pulled by a team of six mules. The wagon wheels cut a deep r
ut into the dirt as they traversed the sorry excuse for what were called roads of northern Georgia into South Carolina. The journey, thus far, was exhausting to both the mule teams and the cavalrymen whose mission it was to protect the valuable cargo they carried. Captain Coker and his men have been enjoying a short reprieve from their past week’s vigilance of constant guard duty. They are enjoying the food, rest and ‘medicinal spirits’ from the tavern before resuming their journey northward; however, the cargo in the wagons was too important to leave un-guarded. Even during the night Captain Coker has his men walking guard around the wagons with muskets loaded and ready to fire.

  Learning of the British advancement Captain Coker called his Lieutenants together, a decision was made and a plan fashioned to ambush Colonel Wilcox as he approached the Mill. They envision a surprise attack to catch the Tories off-guard. The cavalry believe they could inflict great damage upon the Redcoats and possibly free the Whig hostages.

  The Captain sent riders to the surrounding Patriot neighbors requesting they grab their muskets and assemble at the Mill to help fight the Redcoats. Jacob Ingram heard the beat of hooves on his long drive leading up to the big house at Ingram Hill – he ran from the barn knowing the rider was bearing important news. Jacob listened intently to every word as Captain Coker’s envoy told of the impending fight. The dispatch rider had hardly disappeared from sight when Jacob, grabbing his musket mounted his fastest horse and quickly rode to join the Patriot side in their fight against the British.

  On Friday the 13th of April 1781, Colonel Wilcox dressed splendidly in his gold buttoned, red British coat with gold-fringed epaulettes, a white waistcoat, white lapels, and black boots that reached the knees of his white britches. His head topped with a black, gold trimmed, tricorne hat covers his stylish white, powdered wig tied neatly in the back with a black ribbon. Behind his white, high-stepping horse walked the despondent Governor and the rest of the Whig captives. The pompous British Colonel Wilcox is walking into a trap set by the Patriots and the men of the 3rd South Carolina Rangers.