Brave Enemies - A Novel Of The American Revolution

by Robert Morgan

  “If Morgan crosses the Broad again I’m going home,” Gaither said.

  It felt like the woods were full of Tarleton’s Green Dragoons, but we couldn’t see them. Every pine bush and cedar seemed like a dragoon. Every shadow seemed to hide a saber. It’s what you make up in your own mind that scares you the most. And when you don’t know where the enemy is you think he might spring out of the trees any second. It wears you out to be scared every day. In the January cold it was like the thickets were haunted. I looked across the river and expected to see horsemen appear. You couldn’t go out in the woods to do your business without fearing to see a green uniform like they said Tarleton’s dragoons wore. Every tree seemed to be hiding somebody.

  Early one morning I slipped out into the pinewoods to relieve myself. I liked to go just as the camp was waking up so nobody would notice me. If I went before anybody else was up I might be shot by a sentry. But just as they were building up fires and grinding coffee and rolling up blankets was the best time.

  I pushed my way into the thicket and hung the gray coat on a limb. Untying my pants I squatted and felt the pleasure of released pee. My water steamed on the cold ground. I must have grunted with the satisfaction. Only when I was almost finished did I see somebody watching me from the other side of a holly bush. They must have been watching me all the time.

  I thought it must be a soldier that had followed me. My pulse froze, for if they had seen me piss I was lost. I would be shot or shamed and sent off into the woods.

  But the feet beyond the holly were not in heavy boots. They were tiny black shoes, women’s shoes. I looked up through a break in the limbs and saw it was a woman watching me. It was one of the women from the wagon where they sold themselves for a shilling. Her eyes were wide with wonder, for she was just as surprised as I was. I thought she was going to scream out.

  “Hush,” I said. “Please don’t say anything.” I shook my head and stood to pull up my pants.

  “You ain’t a soldier?” she said.

  “I am a soldier,” I said, “as far as anybody knows.”

  I saw she wasn’t much older than me. Her hair was black and straight and tied back with a ribbon, and her skin was dark like she was Cherokee or Spanish. She wore a pink gown with lace on it and a blanket thrown around her shoulders.

  “Who are you?” she said, looking around to see if anybody else was coming. I figured she had gone out into the pines to relieve herself same as I had.

  I told her to be quiet and I stepped around the bush to get closer. She smelled of perfume or toilet water, and her bosoms were heavy and pushed out through the gown. I told her I’d joined the militia so they wouldn’t shoot me for a spy, and that I hoped to avenge my husband John who had been taken by the Tories.

  “Last year we worked for the Tories,” she said. “But then they marched away.”

  I told her my name was Josie and she said she was called Delores. We spoke in low voices, looking around to make sure nobody had seen us. It was good to talk to another girl.

  “What are you going to do?” she said. We moved deeper into the pine woods so nobody would see us. I told her I didn’t know what I was going to do. I had to stay with the militia until the war was over.

  “You ain’t got a husband?” she said, and grinned like she was teasing me. I told her I hadn’t seen another woman in weeks.

  “You come by the wagon sometime if you want company,” she said and grinned again. “Except you’d have to pay a shilling like everybody else. Clancy makes everybody pay.”

  “Who is Clancy?” I said.

  “He’s the man I work for,” Delores said. She pushed her hair back and tied it again with the ribbon.

  “Don’t you want to run away?” I said.

  “Where would I run to?” she said, and laughed. She said Mr. Clancy had bought her from her mama and daddy when she was fourteen. He made her stay in the wagon and they moved from one camp to another.

  “He gives me all the clothes I want,” she said.

  I asked her who the other girl was, for I’d seen two girls get out of the wagon.

  “That’s Sylvia,” Delores said. “Sylvia is his wife. He got her in Florida.”

  “You mean he sells his wife?” I said. A shiver ran through me. I felt I was seeing the world in a wild new way. I wondered if being a whore was any worse than being in the militia.

  “Clancy would sell his own—” Delores stopped, for someone was coming. We stood still and waited. I was afraid the smell of her perfume would give us away even if we didn’t make a sound.

  “Joseph,” a voice called. It was Gudger. I put my finger to my lips. “I saw you go out into the pines,” Gudger yelled.

  I looked at the girl and shook my head. We stood very still.

  “Bring some damn wood back to the fire,” Gudger called, and then we heard him walking away, kicking leaves as he went.

  “I could run away if I had somebody to go with me,” I said.

  “Honey, I would like to run away, but I don’t know nothing but whoring,” Delores said. “Besides, Clancy would catch me and cut my face.”

  “You could run far into the mountains where he couldn’t find you,” I said.

  “Sugar, I come from the mountains. I don’t want to go back there. Ain’t nothing where I come from but rocks and rattlesnakes.”

  I had to get back to the camp or Gudger would come looking for me again. I asked Delores not to tell on me.

  “You could join Sylvia and me,” she said. “When we move to another camp you could go with us.”

  “The sergeant would hang me for a spy,” I said.

  “No man will hang you if his peter is hard and he wants you to be good to it,” Delores said, and laughed.

  “I like talking to you,” I said.

  Delores patted me on the shoulder. “Come to the wagon sometime if you need some loving,” she said, and winked.

  I hurried back to the camp, but felt the world had changed, or seemed to have changed, just because I’d talked to another woman. The world had tilted in a new way. I gathered up some dead limbs to carry back to the fire, and the camp looked different when I stepped into the open, dirtier and messier than ever, but also smaller, like it had shrunk in the night. I meant to talk to Delores again if I got a chance.

  SOMETIMES I THOUGHT I saw John by a campfire, but when I got close it was always somebody else that was tall and skinny. One evening I heard a soldier playing a flute, but when I went to look I found a bald-headed stranger with spectacles playing beside a campfire.

  Then came the evening of January 15. General Morgan had taken the main army and retreated to Burr’s Mill on Thicketty Creek, several miles to the north. He had companies guarding each of the fords on the Pacolet River, and he had left Captain Cox’s company at Grindal Shoals to see that Tarleton didn’t cross there. We were just standing around cursing and spitting and cooking grits and mush. We were low on rations and after another day or two we’d have to go foraging again. Everybody said the land between the Pacolet and the Broad River had been stripped bare. The barns were empty and the cellars and smokehouses were empty. Too many armies had gone back and forth across them. The people themselves were near starving.

  “IS IT MUSH OR IS IT SAND?” T. R. said as I stirred meal into boiling water.

  “You don’t have to eat any,” I said. We’d had several days of rain and the ground was muck and the river in spate. All our bags and blankets were wet, and we had to rub grease on our muskets and rifles to keep them from rusting. Boots were hung on sticks by the fire to dry. I tied new rags under the leather bindings on my feet. Everybody was tired of waiting, of slipping and sliding through the mud. The ground of our camp looked like a hogpen.

  “We get to the Broad River I’m going home,” T. R. said for the fiftieth time.

  “Me too,” Gaither said. “I’m tired of this foot-rot, gut-rot kind of living.”

  “This ain’t living,” T. R. said.

  “Shut up, you hei
fers,” Gudger said. “Afraid you’ll get your petticoats wet.” He gave me a quick glance.

  I saw Gaither grip the stock of his rifle like he was ready to brain Gudger. I figured it was just a matter of days, whether we fought Tarleton or not, before somebody killed the sergeant. I hoped somebody killed Gudger, and I was ashamed for hoping it. For I felt different about Gudger, after what he had told me about his wife. I wondered if he would do anything more to me. The fact that Gudger knew I was a girl made my days in the militia seem even stranger. I hadn’t found out what the penalty for pretending to be a man was, but it was probably death. I planned to leave the militia, soon as I got a chance. But now wasn’t the time, with everyone scared and angry. Besides, I still had a duty to pay the redcoats back for what they’d done to John.

  “Hey-yoo!” somebody hollered. I looked around and saw they were pointing at the river. Everybody stood up at once, and I stood up too. We were almost on the bank of the Pacolet, and everybody was looking across. The river slopped by flushed full and its banks were mud. On the other side were men in green coats on horses. They looked straight at us. I reckon they were surprised to see us. I dropped the wooden spoon and my bones felt sore with surprise. It was like you looked at the ground and saw a rattlesnake coiled at your feet.

  “The Lord a mercy,” T. R. said.

  “It’s the devil himself,” said Captain Cox, who was standing a few feet behind us.

  We all knew it was Tarleton. And we now knew why we’d been so troubled and so scared. He was the officer who sat erect upon his horse and his hat and black cape made him look even taller. He watched us across the river like we were a band of filthy beggars in our muddy pants and rotting rags, cooking mush in the smoke. Tarleton and his men looked at us like they were counting hogs.

  Now the strangest thing, looking back, is that not one of us picked up a rifle and shot at Tarleton. He could have been picked off twice as far away by some of our men. But no one thought to shoot him, not even the captain. I reckon it was the surprise. It’s hard to up and shoot somebody unless you’re planning to, unless you’ve been ordered to. We just stood there addled and awed, but somebody could have finished off Bloody Tarleton right there if they had thought of it.

  Behind the green horsemen stood a troop of soldiers. Their green coats and red coats looked clean, but their pants were almost as dirty as ours.

  Next thing I knew the officer I thought was Tarleton pointed up the river and they turned and started riding that way on the far bank.

  “Who is that?” T. R. said.

  “That’s Tarleton, you idiot,” Gudger said.

  “That son of a dog,” Captain Cox said.

  Men stood around without their boots on, with pots of half-cooked grits and mush steaming over the fire. Tarleton seemed to fit what we’d heard about him, that he was bold enough to ride anywhere, that he moved fast and hated volunteers as rebels and traitors. Not a one among us wasn’t shaken by seeing the king’s colonel appear in all his glory out of the pine woods that way.

  “Follow him,” Cox yelled, “and don’t let him out of your sight.”

  Those that had boots got them, and we grabbed our rifles and blankets and pots of hominy and started walking up the river. Some ate mush as they walked, drinking it from pots like soup. Mush and grits were all we’d had for several days. I carried the pot I’d been stirring, too scared to think of eating from it. The bushes were wet but we knocked them aside and jumped over puddles and soggy places. Where there was a branch or little creek we splashed right through it. We were soon wet all over again.

  But some of us kept the dragoons in sight. High on their horses they looked clean and dignified. The soldiers behind them walked more orderly than we did. The red coats and white pants shined in the late sun. Their brass buckles sparkled in the light. I reckon we looked like a band of convicts and beggars compared to them.

  ELEVEN

  CAPTAIN COX RODE OUT in front of us. From time to time he turned and hollered back, “Don’t let them cross the river.” He’d been teaching himself to act like an officer, watching Major McDowell and General Morgan.

  We followed the captain through thickets and maple swamps. It was one swamp and bog hole and sinkhole after another. We knocked down fences or just stepped across them. We walked into a deeryard and flushed out half a dozen does. A polecat got scared and threw its stink on some boys in the front. The stink drifted for miles.

  But Tarleton and his legion kept going. They rode toward the sunset like they didn’t know we were behind them. A marksman could have picked them off one by one. The sun was going down, but we could see them green as cedar trees marching on the far shore.

  “We’re nigh to Wofford’s Iron Works,” the captain called back. “Don’t let them cross.”

  “The ford is at Wofford’s,” Gudger yelled.

  I saw buildings up ahead and smoke coming from two or three chimneys in the sunset. I could smell bread baking.

  “Take command of the ford,” the captain called out. We all hurried to the place where the road slipped down into the sandy river. Cox gathered us around it and we took our places along the bank and beside the road, all out of breath and sweaty. I hoped my gun hadn’t gotten water in the barrel. The stopper was still in my powder horn. My hands were jerking and I hadn’t noticed it. I couldn’t hold the rifle steady if I had to.

  A chill went through me when I thought of my bottle of laudanum. Had I left it in camp? I felt of my coat and found the bottle in the left pocket.

  Across the river we could see the dragoons making camp. Tarleton and his men put up tents in the pine woods and started fires. We stood beside the muddy river and watched them. Only thing you could hear were their horses shaking their bridles and whickering. Soon all you could see in the pine woods across the river were their fires.

  I’d thought Tarleton would make some kind of fight at the ford, maybe try to dash across the river. We’d heard he never paused but plunged headlong into a fight. I thought we would exchange shots across the river. I watched the shadows in the pines and broom sedge on the far bank and felt this awful confusion. I wanted to fight and I didn’t want to fight. But my spirits were low anyway.

  After it was dark we moved into a field upriver and made camp. The ground was wet and already beginning to freeze. T. R. and Gaither and I made us a fire of poplar sticks and pretty soon there were dozens of fires all up and down our side of the river.

  Some had eaten their grits or mush on the way up the river. But I’d carried the pot all the way without touching the grits. The grits now had set into a kind of jelly as they cooled and a crust had dried on the top. I put the pot over the new fire, and pretty soon you could smell the grits frying at the edges and starting to parch. I ate them with a knife like they were some kind of bread. When the wind changed I could smell the soldiers that had run into the polecat. It was a stink like burned paint, and I feared it would turn my stomach. But then the wind changed again.

  I WAS HARDLY AWAKE the next morning. I was still dreaming about marching up the river and catching a glimpse of John. It seemed we’d been marching for days, following trees that moved like soldiers. The cedar trees and swamp pines moved, and I thought I saw John in the distance. I tried to call out but couldn’t say anything. I wanted to say I was sorry we had fussed. We weren’t ever going to catch up with the evergreens. Thorns on the holly bushes stuck out like little bayonets, and briars thrust out their points in my face.

  “Wake up, you lazy rascals!” It was Gudger. I pulled the blanket from my head. It wasn’t even daylight and the fires had died down to coals. The stars had gone but there wasn’t any light yet.

  “Get up, slugs,” the sergeant said.

  “Tarleton has crossed the river,” Captain Cox shouted. “He has crossed downstream.”

  Everybody in the camp stirred and stood up.

  “Not five miles down the river,” Captain Cox hollered. “They left their campfires burning to fool us.”

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p; I grabbed my rifle and blanket and mush pot and was already marching before I knew it. One second we were sleeping and dreaming and the next we were on our way. Tarleton was on our side of the river and he was after us. We must have left half our things on the ground. We left a few tents and stockings drying on sticks. But I don’t reckon anybody left their rifles or their boots.

  My belly felt awful. With the blanket over my shoulders and the rifle under my arm, I reached into the coat pocket with my left hand and got the little bottle. I had to pull the cork with my teeth, and, holding the stopper between my fingers, I took a sip. The laudanum trickled into my belly while we marched.

  “Give me a sip of that,” T. R. said.

  “Ain’t for younguns,” I said.

  Cox led us away from the river, up this road through the pine woods. It ran north toward Thicketty Creek where Morgan and the rest of the army were camped.

  There is nothing as confusing as a march before daylight. You can’t see where you’re going, and your legs are walking while you’re still dreaming. Everything swirls around, trees and clouds, the ground rising and falling. We were rushing and I couldn’t see anything, like we were marching in an endless tunnel.

  I thought Tarleton’s Greens might jump out of the pines any instant and cut us down with their sabers.

  “Goddamn Cox,” T. R. muttered behind me.

  “Cox is going to get us butchered,” Gaither said.

  “Shut up, you pups,” Gudger snarled.

  The mud of the road was frozen, like a crust of leather that cracked here and there. The frost on the grass was clean, but where we walked the ruts soon got muddy.

  “Halt!” the captain called.

  I saw we had come to a field where the big army was camped. There were the rest of McDowell’s North Carolina volunteers and Col. John Howard’s Delaware and Maryland regulars. It was a sight to see, all the blue uniforms on the officers and the sparkling bayonets. They had already assembled, and when they started marching up the Green River Road we fell in behind McDowell’s men. General Morgan rode out ahead on his big white horse, his face red in the morning air. He had a bad scar on his cheek that twisted his face sideways. It was daylight by now and we could see him riding way out ahead. We seemed to get faster with each step.