Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1963

by The South Fork Rangers (v1. 1)

  “I hope the same for myself,” Zack said.

  Fenniver looked at him calculatingly. “Is it your thought, perhaps, that I asked twenty-four hours’ truce for fear of a battle just now?”

  “I haven’t said so.”

  “Nor should you think so, Captain Harper. I’ll fight anyone, anywhere, on aught like fair terms. But I’d lief pleasure myself with some quiet hours to think on these very things I’ve been telling you. And, too, I want time to get back into a mood to consider you an enemy. One shouldn’t have to battle with friends.”

  “I think you mean that,” declared Zack.

  “And I think you appreciate it.”

  They were silent for some minutes. Then Fenniver nodded to the man in the sheepskin coat, who brought his horse up on Zack’s other side. The three of them rode together from among the marshalled Tories.

  They had not far to ride before they turned a sweeping bend of the road, and saw another trio of mounted men approaching them. Again Godfrey Prothero and Seth Mawks were recognizable, with between them the stout red-clad figure of Robinson Alspaye. The two parties met and reined in facing each other.

  “Go you on, Captain Alspaye,” said Prothero.

  “Good-bye, Zack Harper,” said Fenniver.

  Zack nudged Jonah’s flank with his heel and rode toward his friends. Alspaye walked his horse past. As they came opposite each other, Zack felt the impact of Alspaye’s bitterly searching gaze, saw the set of Alspaye’s jaw, the tightness of his mouth, the tense flare of his nostrils.

  “I count on a meeting soon,” said Zack, but Alspaye did not speak.

  They went away from each other, and in a moment Godfrey was wringing Zack’s hand and Seth was clapping his shoulder with a fist as heavy as a forge hammer. Then all three rode off, and Zack glanced back but once. Alspaye was riding close to Fenniver, talking swiftly and furiously. Fenniver gestured as though in argument or explanation.

  “Rob Alspaye didn’t like them terms, not a hooter,” commented Seth. “I dared him to break ’em, said I’d make it my business to cut him open if he did. Do ’ee hark at what I say, I just hope he does break word.”

  “I don’t,” said Zack, “but we’ll keep a stern watch nevertheless, every minute of those twenty-four hours of truce.” “Aye, and for every hour thereafter,” seconded Godfrey. They came to where the other Rangers waited. Loud cheers and greetings rang all around Zack. Enoch rode at him and caught him by the shoulders in a glad grip of welcome.

  “Safe and sound once more,” said Enoch happily. “Now, what orders? We’re here to listen.”

  In as few words as possible, Zack explained about the agreement under which the defenders of the Harper Farm had capitulated, and his friends howled with joy at Grace’s cunning and the discomfiture of the Tories.

  “That was as good fortune for our kinsmen as though they had won the battle outright,” declared John Starrett. “Now they may draw breath easily, and rest from vigil and attack.” “If so be these Tories keep their signed promise,” added Cy Cole.

  “Nay, they’ll do that while we’re in the South Fork country,” said Godfrey confidently. “And ’tis spring and mild. We’ll do better camping out and scouting the enemy day and night.”

  Zack led the company away toward the ford, and drew them up beside the waters to watch toward the road. Before long, the Tory band came into view and headed into the trees upstream. Alspaye rode sternly at the head. Among his men, the big Hessian glanced toward the watching Rangers and lifted a hand as though in friendly greeting, but none of the others spared so much as a glance in the direction of the river.

  When the last Tory had vanished, Zack spoke to his own men.

  “We’ll not follow,” he said. “Come with me back along the road, but we’ll stay clear of my father’s house. When it draws to sundown, we’ll camp where we can keep watch for any treachery on Alspaye’s part. If I know him, he’ll yearn to go with torch and gun to destroy where his men are pledged against it.”

  “And I hope he tries it,” said Seth Mawks again.

  They made camp on both sides of the road, well back from the ford. Supper was scanty, for few of the men had provisions, but what had been brought was shared out. Zack posted a guard to keep watch up the South Fork, and gave the others permission to water and graze their horses, then lie down and rest.

  But Zack himself sat by a small fire for long hours after sundown, consulting with Godfrey, Enoch and Seth about how they would wage war when the promised truce was at an end. And each of the four officers commanded a watch during the night, with the succession of patrols mustered against any stealthy advance by Alspaye.

  The Tories did not appear again, however, that night or during the whole of the following day. Whether for daunted prudence, glum acceptance of the truce agreement, or the necessity of making new plans of his own, Robinson Alspaye did not venture toward the Rangers or the Harper farm.

  11 The Track of the Enemy

  THEN began a season of reconnoitering expeditions, ma- neuverings and light skirmishings between the South Fork Rangers and Alspaye’s guerrillas.

  Now that they could not shelter at the barricaded Harper farm, the Rangers camped in the open. They did not lie down at the same place for two nights in succession, though they had several favorite resting places, with convenient wood and water and natural protection of trees or rocks. Zack divided each of his platoons into two squads and kept one squad in the field at all times, scouting for news of Alspaye’s activities.

  Particularly enthusiastic and effective were the men from the mountains. With the coming of warm spring weather, the Rangers changed their furs and buckskins for shirts and pantaloons of home-woven linen, and various patriot homesteads were glad to supply these. But when Seth Mawks’ men were on duty, more than often they stripped to the waist and prowled the woods and fields like Indians. Several of them had even strung bows of winter-seasoned ash and hickory, with arrows made of hardwood shoots. These they winged with goose feathers and pointed with sharply honed bits of old iron.

  “Arrows is quieter than guns, and don’t burn up no powder,” declared Seth. “Fact, by zooks! Us ridge runners, we larnt bow-shooting when we was youngins at home amongst redskins. Let me have a clear bowshot at that Alspaye slink at a hundred yards, and I’ll lay ye I make him jump and hoot.”

  The Tories were hard to find, and for a while seemed to be adventuring well to the west, among settlements mostly friendly to them. But rumors drifted through the land of a stronghold, massively built and cunningly hidden, in the deepest part of the woods on the South Fork. It was reported to be among thickly grown trees and soggy swamps, not far from the head of Beaver Dam Creek, where several farmers loyal to King George made up a sort of community and could be counted on for supply and support of Alspaye’s band. Zack kept his men from careless probing into those woods.

  “We’ll not strike in until it’s time,” he said, “and when we strike we’ll strike home hard.”

  The Rangers needed bread and meat. The mountain archers felled both deer and turkey with their arrows, and the surplus venison was dried and smoked over campfires. John Starrett, Cy Cole and Andy Berry visited the ruins of the Starrett farm and brought back several horseloads of corn from a crib that had escaped the fire. The Rangers had no mill to grind meal, but they parched the corn Indian fashion, and sometimes stirred up the kernels with molasses or honey to make a hearty, tasty dish.

  The weeks went by, and news trickled in from the main field of conflict in eastern Carolina.

  As Sergeant Wales had declared, Cornwallis’s seeming victory at Guilford Court House had turned out to be no victory at all. Other South Fork militiamen, returning at the end of their brief tours of duty, told how the British had actually made a swift retreat from the battlefield on which they had briefly camped. They had been loaded down with wounded comrades, and suffered for lack of food, medicines, shoes and ammunition. Greene, who had seemed the loser in that fight, had rallied his
forces and moved in pursuit. Only a determinedly swift march by Cornwallis, with a difficult crossing of a flooded stream, had kept the Americans from striking the British rear guard. After that, Cornwallis reached Wilmington, something like two hundred miles away on the North Carolina coast, where he could entrench himself and get supplies from a British fleet. And instead of pursuing to the outskirts of Wilmington and spending time, powder and blood in a siege, Greene had taken his forces into South Carolina, where he was joined with Sumter, Pickens and Marion. This increased American army threatened the British garrisons left here and there by Cornwallis.

  “By heaven, a redcoat is never so terrible when attacked as when he’s attacking,” said Enoch, hearing the latest news of Greene’s movements. “Now General Nat does in South Carolina what we do here—he holds the British there from bringing help to Cornwallis. Godfrey, you were in those parts last year. What forts will Greene find?”

  “Three strong ones, at Camden, Ninety Six and Georgetown,” replied Godfrey, “and several smaller ones close to Charleston. There are many troops in those garrisons, but I apprehend they are not good troops—My Lord Cornwallis fetched his best marchers and fighters on the campaign here. And General Greene can nibble off those garrisons, one by one, outnumbering each in turn.”

  The Rangers also heard that Alspaye had gained several new followers in the west, but the news of Cornwallis’s withdrawal to Wilmington and Greene’s feats in South Carolina seemed to make Alspaye furtive and withdrawn during April and on into May. That encouraged the patriots of the South Fork. Six more volunteers offered their services to the ranks of the Rangers, and Zack organized these as a third platoon under Godfrey Prothero. From the farms to the north came word that settlers who upheld the struggle for American freedom were forming a militia company of their own, ready to take the field at a word’s notice, and that Adam Reep, a good hunter and woodsman and a stout patriot, would be its captain.

  By July, more news came. The Catawba frontier heard that Cornwallis was in Virginia, and that he had been joined by more British troops that had been under the command of the traitor Benedict Arnold. These and other reenforcements gave Cornwallis an army of more than 7,000 men, as many as he had led before the battle of King’s Mountain 5 but from farther north Americans were on the move to fight him, and their chieftain was George Washington himself. Cornwallis headed eastward into the great Virginia peninsula between the broad streams of the York and the James, relaxing his threat to the interior. Meanwhile, Greene had overcome fort after fort in South Carolina, pushing the enemy there toward Charleston on the coast.

  These events had their result along the South Fork. Several of the most earnest adherents to the British cause were stampeded into joining Alspaye’s band; but others, who earlier had expressed mild approval of the old flag and the old government, now seemed to change their minds.

  Jubilantly Enoch Gilmer brought to the Ranger camp on the slope of Crowder’s Mountain the tale of Benjamin Rubsie, once a highly influential Tory sympathizer and a helper of Alspaye. Rubsie had invited to his home at the head of Indian Creek six other landowners whose politics had been similar to his. These men, said Enoch, had signed a document which bound them henceforth to neutrality in the conflict, and provided that they would neither bear arms nor furnish supplies to the forces of Tory or patriot.

  “Here’s a shrewd blow to Alspaye and those who still hold with him,” commented Godfrey as they gathered to hear Enoch’s report. “Seven farms where Alspaye had once counted on food and entertainment and such necessaries j where he counted, too, on hearing report of where we were. Now few homes indeed are left where he will be made welcome.”

  “And I’ll venture that others who once called themselves loyal to England will now turn neutral in their turn,” elaborated Zack.

  “Wagh!” snorted Seth, sharpening his knife on a bit of oiled stone. “I’d give a pretty to know how that Alspaye and his weasels will take this news.”

  How Alspaye took the news was revealed two days later, on the hot Monday morning of July 16.

  The Rangers had camped the night before near Beaver Dam Creek, and Zack’s sentries outside the camp stopped a dark-faced boy on a clattering horse and fetched him to Zack. Wide eyed, trembling, the boy said he was a servant on Benjamin Rubsie’s farm, and that he had seen the house afire in the dawn and heard guns booming.

  “Something awful happening,” he stammered.

  “We’ll see,” said Zack, and raised his voice. “Mount, all of you. Gilmer’s platoon to the fore. Move apace, but keep an eye out for ambushes.”

  It was but a few miles across fields to where Indian Creek flowed into the South Fork. Drawing near the Rubsie farm, the Rangers saw flames rising above the black remains of house, barn and sheds, a scatter of dead cows and horses and, as they rode in, a crouching woman dissolved in tears among the ruins.

  She was Mrs. Rubsie. Brokenly she told what had happened. Raiders had rushed in the gray dawn. Guns had volleyed, torches had been set to buildings. Her husband and her son had run into the yard, and at a thundered command had been shot down. Alspaye had sat his horse and proclaimed that there would be no more changing of sides. In signing the neutrality agreement, he had said, Benjamin Rubsie had become a deserter from his sworn loyalty, a worse crime by warfare’s rules than that of a frankly dens dared enemy. While his men loaded their horses with loot, Alspaye had told the grief-stricken widow that nobody of either side would shed a tear or lift a hand because of what had happened. Then he had ridden off, assuring her as he went that he had spared her life only that she might carry word of how he would treat all who abandoned the Tory cause.

  Even Seth Mawks looked drawn and shocked at this story, and muttered gutterally in an Indian tongue, as if he cursed.

  “Madam, Robinson Alspaye was wrong when he thought nobody would take note or seek vengeance,” said Zack, trying to comfort the frantic woman. “See, we’ve a spare horse, and here’s your faithful young servant who got away to bring us the tale. Ride, both of you, to the home of Christian Mauney, ever a true and brave friend of liberty and kind to those in sorrow and need. As for us, the South Fork Rangers, we can do naught to bring back the lives Alspaye has taken here—”

  “Nay, zooks, but we can send Alspaye to the place he’s long overdue!” burst out Seth Mawks with a great roar. “Hark ’ee, ma’am, I’m no fine gentleman, I don’t know how to talk mannerly nor yet how to comfort kindly; but I’ll swear ye true, I’ll not rest till I’ve paid this black debt for ye, and so say all my mates here with me! ”

  Two other mountain men had ranged across the fields toward the river, and swiftly picked up the tracks of Alspaye’s departing marauders. Zack saw Mrs. Rubsie and her servant off to westward on the road to Mauney’s, then he fairly barked out new orders.

  “Seth, go ahead, and take with you your three best trailers,” he directed. “Carry us forward on Alspaye’s path. Enoch, do you choose out three others—your best shots and coolest heads—and ride through the trees, staying to the right of Seth’s party. Godfrey, do you likewise, with three men at the left. We others will press close behind. If Alspaye should pause to give battle—”

  “Pray heaven he does!” broke Godfrey, cantering leftward to carry out Zack’s command.

  Grimly the Rangers followed the track of their foe. That track led into the woods that here cloaked the South Fork on both sides. The sharp eyes and the seasoned skill of Seth’s advance party sought it out among thickets and pools and clumps of brush. The hoofmarks pointed downstream from Indian Creek, past a stretch where the water ran swiftly over rocky shoals and a high, bare bluff stood like a sentinel on the opposite bank. Below this, Seth spied out the trail to the very side of the South Fork. Zack halted his main body and came to where Seth and his trio of trackers stood dismounted at the brink. All four mountaineers were stripped to the waist, with tomahawks and knives in their belts. Seth had bound back his shock of red hair with a buckskin thong and in it had stuck a t
urkey feather, Indian fashion. Indian fashion, too, were the marks like war paint on his face above the beard—red streaks of wet clay, black streaks of dampened gunpowder.

  “Looks to be a ford here, not a good one but crossable,” said Seth, pointing. “Ye can see how they rode in here, Cap’n. The water comes along right swift, and we’ll mayhap cross slow. ’Twould be a prime champeen place for them Tory skunks to lay in them woods yonder across and fire on us.”

  “But we must cross,” said Zack. “I’ll go first, and on the far bank I’ll signal if it’s safe to follow me.”

  “Hold hard, Cap’n, we can’t let ye be the first to draw fire,” Seth argued.

  “Nay, a captain can’t send his men into danger while he lags back,” said Zack, and urged Jonah toward the crossing.

  But even as he did so, Seth’s big hand caught a lock of Jonah’s mane to halt him. With his other hand, Seth pointed across the river.

  A figure had appeared there, a red-coated man on foot.

  “A ho, ’tis Alspaye himself,” sniffed one of the mountaineers, and lifted his rifle.

  “Hold your fire,” Zack ordered him quickly. “See to him, what’s he seeking to do?”

  The man in red gazed down into the water. He seemed to stand wearily for a moment. Then he shrugged his shoulders and stepped off the bank. A few wading paces and he was in the swift current up to his waist.

  “That’s not Alspaye, it looks like Edmund Fenniver,” said William Gilmer at Zack’s side. “Alspaye’s twice as thick through the body.”

  “Silence, all,” bade Zack. “Draw away to left and right, keep hidden. If this is some trick of theirs, we’ll smell it out ere we show ourselves.”