Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1963

by The South Fork Rangers (v1. 1)

  They drew their horses into shelter among the trees. Zack and Seth came on foot to where they could watch unseen.

  Fenniver waded with difficulty, and once stumbled and almost went under. Striving slowly, he won into the shallower current on their side and mounted with soggy boots to the bank.

  “Hai-ya!” came Seth’s warcry, and he sprang to the open at Fenniver’s very shoulder, his tomahawk raised. Zack stepped to Fenniver’s other side, his rifle ready.

  Fenniver threw his hands up above his head. Four other Rangers had also appeared. Zack caught Fenniver’s shoulder and pushed him in among the men and Fenniver stood there, dripping from his journey across the ford. He scowled at Zack unhappily.

  “Give you good day, Captain Harper,” he said dully. “It’s a bad day for me. I yield myself your prisoner. I’d hand over my sword, but I broke it across my knee when I said my farewell to Robinson Alspaye, and said it with a curse on his black soul.”

  “What’s all this jabber?” demanded Seth, his streaked and bearded face drawn into a fearsome scowl. “Are ye trying to cozen us with pretenses?”

  “Nay, I make no pretenses,” replied Fenniver, still in that heavy, expressionless tone. “I speak flat honesty, sirs. I’ve told Alspaye that I’m done forever with his vile, cowardly deeds—the savage Indians could do no worse.”

  “What ill did he hold against Benjamin Rubsie?” Zack inquired.

  “None,” snapped out Fenniver. “None in the world, save that he knew Rubsie called himself neutral and so could look to none for aid or redress—”

  “We’ll redress Rubsie’s foul wrongs,” interrupted Zack. “But you, did you truly desert Alspaye?”

  “Aye, did I, and he called me traitor and renegade, said my life was forfeit. I dared him kill me as he killed those helpless folk yonder, but he laughed in my face and took my horse and bade me begone. I heard his rascals laugh behind me as I went. Egad, ’tis a poor notion of fun they have.” He fell silent. They saw his cheeks burn, his eyes flash. “Ye’ve done right well to turn away from Alspaye and his buzzard flock,” said Seth. “Now ye’ve joined our side, tell us how to find him.”

  Fenniver shook his head. “I haven’t joined you, I am your prisoner. And I’m not one to speak a word of betrayal.” “He’s within his rights, Lieutenant Mawks,” said Zack. “Fenniver, if you surrender, do you give your parole that you’ll no longer bear arms for King George?”

  “What I’ll give parole is that I’ll no longer bear arms for Robinson Alspaye,” replied Fenniver. “As to King George, I’m yet his true man, for he’d think as ill as I do of the things Alspaye does.”

  “That’s parole enough,” Zack announced. “In any case, we know that Alspaye’s trail lies beyond the South Fork, the same way that you came to us. We’ll cross to follow it in a moment. As for you, under that parole you’ve given, you may strike oflF yonder, along the creek. Follow it to its head, and you’ll come close to Christian Mauney’s house.”

  “I know where that house is,” nodded Fenniver. “ ’Tis some dozen or fifteen miles from here.”

  “Tell Mr. Mauney what you’ve told us, and say that I ask him to entertain you for the next few days,” said Zack. “And now, sir, good-bye.”

  They shook hands, and Fenniver went tramping away.

  “And so Robinson Alspaye’s force is lessened by one,” commented Godfrey Prothero.

  “Aye, and yonder goes a good man and a brave fighter,” said Seth. “I could come to like him, but for the color of his coat. What’s your will now, Cap’n Zack?”

  “Follow me across, and on after Alspaye,” said Zack, and rode Jonah out from under the trees and into the water.

  12 Hidden Fortress

  VIOLENTLY, swiftly, flowed the river, and at the middle Jonah sank to his very chest. But he kept his footing on the hard bed and braced against the push of the current. Straight across he made his way, to a narrow sloping path upward between rocks and in among the trees beyond.

  The woods were thick where Zack sprang from the saddle, his rifle poised to send a bullet or to whirl and deal a clubbing blow with the stock. He jumped in among bushes, circled a big tree. All the while he peered and listened.

  But quiet reigned. He raced back to the waterside and beckoned for his friends to come on.

  Seth rode into the river first, a powerful shaggy man on a powerful shaggy horse. After him came his mountaineers, bare chested, streaked with red clay and black powder, one or two of them with bows and quivers at their saddles as well as rifles. Gaining the bank where Zack stood, they dismounted and set to combing the nearby belts of trees. The other Rangers followed.

  “Here’s the mark of Alspaye’s crowd,” announced Seth, bending above hoof marks that pointed into the pines.

  “Perhaps not far ahead of us,” said Zack. “We’ll follow. Ha, Enoch, your platoon’s over. Bid your men dismount.”

  Godfrey brought up the rear, and ordered his men off their horses.

  “We move on foot,” said Zack, “and silently as cats after mice. Seth, I honor your men for their trailing skill. They are cunning as Indians, with eyes and ears sharp for signs. Do you move out ahead, in a wide-spaced line. Enoch, follow behind, not on Seth’s heels but close enough to support. It may be that Seth will miss a close-lying Tory who’ll rise to view behind him.”

  “Then my platoon comes?” prompted Godfrey eagerly.

  “Follow well back. Your men will lead all our horses.”

  “Nay, Captain, we never came to be horse-holders,” protested one of Godfrey’s platoon.

  “Your hearts are stout, but you are the newest of the Rangers,” said Zack. “The more seasoned men to the front, you behind them. Have no fear that there won’t be fighting enough for all.”

  “Enough and to spare,” agreed Seth with relish. “Ahi, my mountain boys, come ye along. Twice a tall man’s height betwixt each two of ye, and poke into any hiding that’d hold so much as a ’possum. Where a Tory’s least apt to lurk, that’s where he’s most apt to be.”

  The mountaineers moved out, with their usual knowing caution. Zack followed behind the center of Seth’s line, at a distance of a dozen paces. When he had taken a dozen paces himself, he motioned for Enoch to follow.

  Ahead of Zack, the trail-seekers made their way among trees and bushy clumps at a stealing crouch. They rustled no leaves, and no twigs snapped beneath their careful moccasins. Even though Zack knew where they were, he found it difficult to make them out at all times. They spoke no word to communicate. Now and then a man snapped his fingers to call attention to evidence of the enemy’s passing—a hoof- print driven deep into soft ground, a broken bush where a rider had wallowed through. Plainly Alspaye had tried to move without leaving any telltale record of his going, but Seth’s men barely paused as they spied out the tracks and followed them.

  Deeper led those tracks, into thick dubious woods, and deeper. The timber here was mostly pine, interspersed with stubborn oak and hickory and thorny briars that sprouted from soft, soggy ground. The hoofprints that the Rangers spied out turned this way and that to avoid denser thickets, but led on a course roughly parallel to the South Fork. An hour went by, while Seth’s trackers pointed the way through the wilderness. Another hour. They were some six miles from the crossing of the river, and still they found no indication of how near might be the foe they sought.

  Zack moved ever behind Seth’s line of observers, sometimes lagging back to make sure that Enoch kept his men in line of advance, sometimes pressing forward to watch how the creeping, slinking mountain men pursued their tracking assignment. Over his head the boughs of tall trees masked away the sky. It was hard to see how the sun moved westward to show passage of time and direction of movement. Zack kept himself alert, glancing here and there for telltale markings, straining his ears for strange noises. He prayed that they would not blunder into an ambush or betray themselves to Alspaye’s rear riders. He wanted to achieve a sure surprise, a decisive blow before his presence was
guessed.

  Then, abruptly, the men up ahead ceased their stalking movement and swiftly bunched together. One hurried soundlessly back to Zack, finger to bearded lips and his other hand beckoning. Zack gestured to catch Enoch’s attention, then held up his palm to signal a halt. He saw Enoch’s men freeze in position, and he himself followed the scout.

  A few paces, and they both dropped to hands and knees, crawling forward like lizards. Zack saw Seth and another half-naked man lying at full length just ahead, almost against what seemeed to be a hedgelike mass of undergrowth. Seth glanced around, nodded and waved for Zack to come close.

  Zack wriggled his way to Seth’s side. Seth nodded and winked, then pointed to the dense leafage just in front of them. He wanted Zack to study it.

  Zack did so. With his nose no more than inches away he could see that the growth was unnaturally thick, almost unbelievably thick. No light showed through from beyond. Indeed, Zack could barely see into it. He squirmed forward until his face thrust in among the leaves.

  An instant later he fairly yanked his face out again, and his brow and cheeks and nose tingled. He stared at Seth, who grinned at him like a bear that has made a joke. For the first time, Zack saw scratches on Seth’s face where his red beard did not cover it. Zack nodded silently, as if to admit that the joke was on him. He put a gingerly hand into that matted mass of leaves, and felt the close-woven thorny stems just within.

  Seth clicked his tongue for attention, and showed Zack his own hands, the thick fingers crossed and laced. He meant i that the briars were deliberately arranged and woven. Again Zack nodded, to signify that he understood, and with the utmost care drew some of the broad outer leaves apart.

  He saw the tangled briars more plainly, and deep within them a stout stake, its end sharpened as though by slanting blows of a hatchet. It pointed outward, and next to it was another pointed stake, and next to that another. A whole row of sharpened poles were set deep in the thorny fabric, braced with logs laid along the ground behind them. If a man or horse tried to charge through the thorns, he would be impaled on those stakes like a beetle on pins.

  Again Seth clicked his tongue. He pointed into the press of growth, then brought his hands together with the fingers slanted and touching in the shape of a gabled roof. That was j the Indian sign for a lodge or a house, beyond the leaves and stakes and thorns. Seth touched his red-bearded cheek, then Zack’s shirt. Redcoat that meant.

  A fort of the redcoats—Alspaye’s den!

  Zack dragged himself away from that thick, sharp-fanged hedge, and Seth moved backward with him. They crept feet first around opposite sides of a broad sycamore and sat up behind it, looking at each other.

  “We must scout all the way around,” whispered Zack softly.

  “Two of my men already doing that/5 whispered Seth in reply.

  One of Seth5s party joined them, and Zack whispered again, to order this man back to inform Enoch and Godfrey of what had been found. Then Zack and Seth waited in silence.

  The two who had gone to scout the perimeter of the Tory fortress returned at length, so furtively that they almost reached the sheltering sycamore without being seen by Zack and Seth. The four crouched together, and held a muttered conference.

  The two scouts told how they had circled the Tory stronghold, one to right and one to left. They had crept like foxes, had come together on the far side, then had returned, each the way he had come. At Zack’s order, each traced with his knife point on the ground the course of his investigating tour. The two courses came together in a rough circle. All the way along each man’s path the great hedgelike barrier was solid, except at the very back. There, the scouts said, was an entrance—a gap in the fabric of growing trunks and bushes, twined briars and planted stakes. Two massive rough gates were set across. Beyond the gates could be seen a low square blockhouse of stout logs, pierced with loopholes. This stood in the center of a stretch of open, trampled ground, on which horses were standing. The whole outer defense of leafage and stakes was perhaps a hundred yards across.

  Seth heard all this, and crept out to investigate again. Back he came, scowling.

  “I’ll engage that a couple of good men with axes could chop through the hedge/5 he said, “but they’d be heard and they’d have bullets about ’em—in ’em, too. Then even if the way was cut, that ramping pack of thieves in the blockhouse could shoot us as we got in and at ’em. And the same at that double gate.”

  Enoch came stealing to the sycamore, and Zack informed him of how Alspaye’s defenses were arranged. Enoch’s and Seth’s men were ordered to form an open-order circle around the hedge, each man to seek cover and keep in touch with his neighbors on either hand while he watched for any possible sign from the enemy. Seth moved back to carry the news to Godfrey, who left three of his men with the horses and joined the others of his platoon into the circling formation.

  The movement was executed and completed in skilful silence. Enoch and Godfrey held posts of command on opposite sides of the ring of men, while Zack and Seth prowled to where they could look through the two stout gates into the inner yard where the blockhouse stood.

  “We’ve got Alspaye forted up, right enough, but how’ll we get at him?” wondered Seth plaintively. “I’ll lay ye he’s got almost as many men in yonder as we’ve got out here, or near to.”

  But even as Seth spoke, Andy Berry came to join them, with heartening news. Farther up the South Fork, Adam Reep had heard of the Tory depredations, had mustered his company and now had followed the Rangers into the woods to where they surrounded Alspaye’s hedged fortress. Seth and Zack slipped away to where Reep waited, and shook his hand with grins of welcome.

  “I’ve fetched thirty-two as stout lads as ever touched trigger,” Reep informed them. “Men of my own company, and several new volunteers. Aye, and Reuben Sloan—you know him, Zack, the ironmaster—is also on his way hither, with what may solve the matter for us.”

  “How will he solve it?” asked Zack.

  “You’ll recollect that he cast a cannon or so at his foundry, just too late to bring along for that fight at King’s Mountain?” reminded Reep. “Well, he and his furnacemen have loaded one cannon upon a big wagon, with good store of powder and some round lead balls of proper size, and even now they’re clearing a way with axes to drag it to us here.”

  Seth smote one great hand upon the other. “Hiya/” he exulted. “That’ll do their business, Cap’n Zack. We can fetch that big gun round, slam a heavy shot through both the gates, and another into the logs of their blockhouse.”

  Reep’s company was organized in two platoons, and at Zack’s word these two forces were mustered at opposite points behind the ring of Rangers, to be kept ready for use whenever needed. Every man was eager to begin the attack, but Zack told his lieutenants to forbid any firing unless the Tories emerged.

  “We must wait for that cannon,” he told Adam Reep.

  “It may not get here till tomorrow morning, maybe not then,” Reep objected. “I say that they must chop out a road for the wagon.”

  “We can afford to wait,” said Zack. “You fetched provisions with you, I think? Let them be shared out. We’ll hold our places and our watch, and strike when best the time suits us.”

  But it was not to be. Before another hour had gone, a patrol of Alspaye’s men mounted inside the hedge and started to open the double gate to ride out. A Ranger fired, wounding the leader. Back pulled the patrol, and within moments more shots were being exchanged through the hedge.

  Zack groaned and clenched his fists in near despair. But even as he cried out against this bad luck, he realized that it was his own faulty planning that had brought it on. The Tories would never have idled in their fastness for more than a few hours; he should have prepared for their coming into the open, with orders to let them through and then overwhelm them without warning.

  “It’s done,” he said to Reep. “Ah, yonder comes Seth Mawks. Where’s Enoch? Where’s Godfrey? Send after them, we must pass the wo
rd on how to prosper with this siege.”

  His lieutenants gathered to hear his directions. The men in the surrounding ring must use their fire judiciously, Zack said. He wanted to convince Alspaye of a solid line hemming in the fortress. Zack urged that no more powder be burnt than necessary, but let any movement or noise inside the hedge be saluted with a shot. Then the beleaguered party would not know which way to launch a sortie or probing movement.

  “And we cannot sleep this night,” Zack warned. “It’s then that those Tory rascals will seek to prowl out and do us a mischief. Seth, distribute those mountain hunters of yours all the way around. They’re prime watchers and listeners in the dark.”

  “Aye, Cap’n, and that’s well thought,” replied Seth. “But I’ve a notion of how to scorch that nest of snakes out where we can deal with their business. Some of us mountain boys fetched along bows and arrows, and we could send an arrow pointed with fire, Injun fashion, to set that blockhouse blazing.”

  “It might work,” said Adam Reep. “But who’s this, coming from outside?”

  A trio of figures moved among the trees from the direction where Zack had gathered the horses under guard. Zack recognized one of them, a man of Godfrey Prothero’s platoon by the name of Laban Rutledge.

  “Why have you left your post?” Zack called to him. “Your place is with the horses. If they were to stampede—”

  “One of us stayed with the horses,” said Rutledge. “We two felt we must come to you. We captured a creeping Tory, he was trying to take one of the horses and ride away.”

  The three came within plain sight. Two of them were armed Rangers. The third was a cowering, unhappy man of a small plump figure, dressed in a dirty red cavalry jacket and an untidy cocked hat.

  “ ’Tis one of Alspaye’s band, right enough,” said Adam Reep.

  “And I know him well,” seconded Enoch Gilmer. “Good day to you, Deevor Plum, and how did you slip out of that blockhouse yonder?”