Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1961

by Rifles at Ramsour's Mill (v1. 1)

  “You speak as one who reads the future,” said Zack, trying to gain time.

  Even as he said the words, he felt the cramping leather loop fall from his wrists. He kept his hands behind him, and the hilt of the knife pressed itself into his right palm. He closed his fingers tightly upon it.

  “I read the future plain, and I offer you a chance to grow, great in it,” Godfrey said.

  He had come within arm’s length now. Zack felt a moment of indecision. The time had come for him to redeem himself' for those two disgraceful slips, one when tricked by hrs; friend Enoch Gilmer, the other when captured by his enemy Alspaye. Whoever had freed and armed him had given him the opportunity to surprise and overwhelm Godfrey Prothero.

  “Give me your word that you’re with us, Zack,” Godfrey pressed him. “Then our ancient friendship will be—”

  Out shot Zack’s big left hand and clutched Godfrey by the scarf around his neck, so swiftly and powerfully as to draw that scarf tight and shut off any cry. His right hand brought forward the knife, pressing its point against Godfrey’s chest.

  “Stand silent, Godfrey,” he commanded. “I do not want to hurt you, so make no sound or motion that forces me to drive this steel into your heart.”

  6 We Flight

  “Handsomely done, Zack,” applauded Enoch Gilmer from behind the tree where Zack had been tied. “Oh, handsomely done indeed. I couldn’t have done it better myself.”

  He stepped into view. In his hands was a long rifle, leveled from his hip, straight at Godfrey’s head.

  “You can let go of his throat,” Enoch said to Zack. “I’ll fire if he so much as opens his lips or lifts a hand. Now then, reach inside his coat. I’ll engage there’s a pistol there.”

  Zack drew forth the pistol. It was the graceful silver- worked weapon that Godfrey had drawn that noon in Mr. Blythe’s schoolyard.

  “Excellent,” said Enoch. “Now I’ll take this scarf of his.”

  Still pointing the rifle with one hand, he snatched the strip of fine cloth from Godfrey’s neck.

  “Now, Captain Prothero,” he said, “you may tell us what you think of all this.”

  Godfrey opened his mouth, and instantly Enoch jammed a great wad of the scarf into it.

  “What a mouth he has!” chuckled Enoch. “There’s barely enough of this cloth left to bind around and gag him. But we: manage, thus and thus. So, and now he couldn’t raise a cry if he dared. Back him to that tree where you were hitched, Zack. Pull his arms back and around the stem.”

  Zack did so, and Enoch tied Godfrey’s wrists together behind the tree with the remainder of the cord that had served to bind Zack.

  “We’ll leave you for your friends to find, Captain Prothero,” announced Enoch.

  “Zack, I brought you a rifle, too—the best I could find in the dark as I came out through the store chamber next to their prison room. It’s leaning here behind the tree, and a powder horn and bullet pouch with it.”

  Zack shoved the captured pistol into his belt and stooped for the rifle. Then he hurried on quiet moccasins after Enoch.

  They stole past a dying fire, around which lay a dozen blanket-draped figures that snored in various keys. They skirted a clump of bushes beyond, and headed for an open field.

  “Halt!” came a sudden sharp challenge. “Who goes there?”

  Zack felt his heart turn over, but Enoch made instant reply.

  “Keep your voice down, sentry. Do you want all the rebels in North Carolina to hear you braying?”

  “Advance, one of you, and give the countersign,” the sentry ordered. Enoch’s hand on Zack’s shoulder signaled silence. Then Enoch walked forward confidently.

  “Quiet, I say,” he scolded. “Never mind countersigns now, the whole place swarms with prowling rebels. Were you not told?”

  “Told what? I was told nothing.”

  “Then hark, but keep a sharp eye to the night,” growled Enoch. “That spy we took tonight—”

  “Yes, yes, I saw him brought in,” said the sentry. “Colonel Moore ordered him hanged tomorrow.”

  “And that opened his cowardly mouth,” said Enoch, plausibly as ever. “He’s confessed what his errand was. He was scouting for a great band of murdering rebel raiders from across the Catawba, stealing close to attack us at dawn.”

  “Now heaven protect us! ” gasped the sentry.

  “Keep your voice down, I say. You’ll fetch them about our ears. My mate and I were ordered to slip out and find how close they had pushed. Stand ready to cover us as we go ahead, and if you hear a noise—a cry or a shot—bawl your loudest to rouse the camp.”

  “Rouse the camp?” the sentry repeated. “Is it not aroused?”

  “A picked hundred of our best men have been alerted and stand ready, but we have not alarmed the others,” said Enoch. “Now, stand you ready as we go.”

  Enoch waved for Zack, who advanced. The sentry peered at him. A round pale moon was rising above the trees to eastward.

  “Who are you two?” demanded the sentry suspiciously. “I see no pine needles in your hats, and every man in camp wears those.”

  “Would you have the rebels know us in this moonlight for King George’s men?” snapped Enoch with a fine show of scorn. “For the last time, close your mouth and open your eyes.”

  He and Zack moved swiftly past the sentry and into the open field ahead. Suddenly the sentry raised his voice behind them.

  “Wait! That fellow with you— Aye, it’s the very prisoner they brought in tonight! Halt, or I fire!”

  “Run!” cried Enoch, and he and Zack ran for their lives.

  Zack heard the roar of a rifle behind them, heard a bullet whine murderously above him. The sentry howled at the top of his lungs:

  “Corporal of the guard! To me! Rebels escaping!”

  “Pick up your feet, Zack,” yelled Enoch. “They’ll be after us! ”

  But even as he spoke, Enoch’s foot caught in a grass- covered hole and he fell sprawling on his face. Zack whirled in the middle of a leaping stride and caught Enoch’s arm, dragging him to his feet. Behind them rose a bellowing chorus of voices, and above all the yell of the sentry:

  “Rebels escaping! This way, this way!”

  Enoch sprang forward again, but stumbled and fell to one knee.

  “My cursed ankle,” he gasped. “I turned it.”

  “Come,” said Zack.

  “No, I can’t run. Leave me here, lad, and save yourself.”

  “Come,” said Zack again. He helped Enoch to stand, supported him with an arm around the waist, and helped him forward into a hobbling trot. They were almost across the field by now. Zack heard the whisper of a stream, and saw sheltering trees beyond. He fairly boosted Enoch across the little watercourse, and dragged him into the center of a clump of pine scrub.

  “Quiet,” Zack whispered in the dark shadows. “Be still as a mouse.”

  “I see them coming,” Enoch muttered.

  In the blaze of light from the moon, a line of men advanced from the direction of the camp. They carried muskets and rifles, and the voices of leaders rose here and there.

  “Across, across!” blustered one, and Zack thought it sounded like Alspaye. “In among the trees yonder, and quick’s the word. Listen for the least crackle of twigs, poke into every thicket.”

  “They’ll catch us,” said Zack between his teeth, and quickly rammed powder and ball into his rifle. “One, at least, will be sorry he came,” he said, priming the pan.

  “Hold your fire, lad,” Enoch warned. “My ankle’s sprained, but never my head.”

  As he spoke, Enoch tore a great sprig of needles from a low branch and thrust them into the upcocked brim of his hat. The line of men was close now, and to right and left of the hiding place came the rustling of explorations among the trees. One man came straight at the clump where Enoch and Zack crouched.

  “Leave this to me,” said Enoch softly, and suddenly rose and stepped into the open.

  “There, there!�
� he bawled out at the top of his lungs. “There they go!”

  “Where?” shouted back the approaching Tory.

  “I flushed them out of this nest!”

  Enoch pointed his rifle into the thick of the trees beyond and fired. The flash of the exploding powder streaked red I through the night.

  “See them yonder, how they run!” he roared. “After them, friends!”

  At that loud summons the whole line whooped and rushed past the clump of pines. Enoch stood on his one sound foot,, peering after them.

  “They’re gone,” he said under his breath. “We have some moments ere they come back. Your arm again—help me downstream while we have time.”

  “Downstream leads northward,” objected Zack, again bracing Enoch with a strong grasp around the waist. “We live to the southwest.”

  “Aye, and Godfrey Prothero knows that,” replied his friend. “He’ll set the whole camp to search for us in that region, as soon as they come back from dashing here and there.”

  “You’re right again,” said Zack, “and here’s to give them a wrong lead.”

  From his belt he took Godfrey’s elegant pistol and, facing to southward, pitched it as far as his arm could send it. He heard it strike on the back of the little run.

  “Good, good,” Enoch praised him. “They’ll find it and follow it south. You’re catching wisdom from me, Zack.”

  They walked northward, Enoch leaning on Zack’s shoulder and supported by Zack’s arm. They came to the shore of Indian Creek, and Zack hoisted Enoch bodily and waded across. On the far shore they paused and listened. Voices called aloud to each other, back along the way they had come.

  “By now they’ve lost us entirely,” said Enoch. “Sit down here in the shadows. I’ve time to tell my part of tonight’s story.”

  He did so, in brief sentences, pausing now and then to peer and listen.

  When Zack had been led out to undergo that final questioning by Godfrey, Enoch had sawed swiftly through the inner wall of the prison chamber, singing at the top of his voice about Barney O’Lynn to drown the noise. Making a hole through which he could crawl, he squeezed through and paused in the next chamber to let the sentry walk past the open door. Then, picking up a knife and two rifles with their powder horns and bullet pouches, he ventured out to follow Zack and his captor.

  “I stole right up behind that tree they lashed you to,” he said, “and cutting you free was no trick. You played your own part nobly and well.”

  “I still have that knife you gave me,” said Zack. “Now to make a good employment of it.”

  He felt around among nearby saplings. He found one as thick as his wrist and examined its length with his fingers to find where it forked. Then he put all the strength of his young arms into whittling it in two above the roots, and in lopping off the upper branches above the fork. Finally he trimmed off the twigs and tested it for spring and sturdiness. It was about five feet long.

  “Here,” and he handed the staff to Enoch. “You’ll not admire the work for smoothness, but ’twill serve you as a crutch.”

  Enoch took the rough support joyfully. “Thanks and thanks!” he cried. “Now, why did I not think of making a crutch? Come, we’ll tarry no longer.”

  Zack carried both rifles, while Enoch, with the crutch under his arm, stumped bravely away.

  “We can count on a friend not too far from here,” he said. “Say five miles, and it’s not too far past midnight as I judge.”

  “What friend, Enoch?”

  “You may not know him, but I’ve hunted with him in these parts. He’s Adam Reep, who lives this side of the South Fork, near Ramsour’s Mill beyond. I’ve judged him for a true friend to freedom.”

  They traveled in the moonlight, slowly but steadily, for half an hour or so, then paused for the laboring Enoch to rest. Several such determined surges of stumping, crutch-propped progress covered considerable ground, but Enoch was forced to rest for long periods between.

  “Had we not best camp and see your friend Reep tomorrow?” asked Zack as they sat beside the trail, but Enoch shook his head vigorously in the moonlight.

  “We’re leaving a plain trail with my one stamping foot and this crutch you whittled me,” he said. “Dawn will be early, and at the first peep of the sun those Tory friends of King George and Godfrey Prothero will be after us, belike on horseback. We’d best be hidden, and safely hidden, by then.”

  They followed a woodland trail to where it joined a broader road, marked by the ruts of cart wheels. Enoch grunted in satisfaction.

  “This is the road that goes across Reep’s Ford to Sherrill’s on the Catawba,” he told Zack. “Bear with me, boy, and we’ll be under cover soon.”

  But it was many hours before they came to a field at one side of the tree-fringed road. The eastern sky was pale with the promise of the early June dawn as they looked beyond the field to a low ridge, and under the ridge’s shoulder spotted a small cabin. Enoch clicked his tongue in happy triumph.

  “There’s where we’re headed,” he vowed, and, fagged though he was, hobbled swiftly forward.

  Zack kept at his elbow, supporting him. As they approached the little dwelling of clay-plastered logs, they saw I a light inside the front window. The door swung open, and out on the stoop of big flat stones came a square-built figure.

  “I know that big box of a body,” announced Enoch. “Good morrow, Adam Reep! ” he called loudly.

  “Who’s that?” came back a ringing, good-humored voice, 1 and Adam Reep strode down from the stoop toward them. Zack saw that he wore a coarse shirt of checked home-woven linen, with loose pantaloons and deerskin moccasins. His shaggy bare head was tawny in the first light of day, and he carried a wooden pail.

  “Enoch Gilmer, as I live!” said Adam Reep heartily. “Who’s your friend, Enoch?”

  “This is Zack Harper, from down at the Point of the South Fork. And the two of us are in sore trouble, Adam.”

  Reep pointed at Enoch’s crutch. “You’re wounded?”

  “Only lamed by my own clumsiness. You know of those Tory campers on Indian Creek? They’re after us, Adam, thirsting for our blood as though ’twas the only right drink in North Carolina.”

  “After you? The Tories?” Reep’s smile stretched even wider across his face. “But they’re not after me.”

  “Sure now, friend Adam, you’re on the right side,” argued Enoch. “Your father, Jacob, was my friend and my father’s friend. And he was born in Germany, not England.” Persuasively Enoch leaned forward, supporting himself on his crutch. “You have no reason to side with England’s King against us.”

  “Hmmm,” Reep answered. “It’s in my mind that George of England is also George of Hanover. He’s the son of a German, even as I am.”

  “We’ll be crawling along, Zack,” Enoch groaned. “Adam here takes part against us.”

  But Reep chuckled deeply. “Howbeit,” he went on, with a fine burlesque of weighty discourse, “my father left Germany so that no son of his need serve a German ruler in a German army. Let that dispose of any loyalty to King George, and come in, the two of you.”

  “I’ll come in, truly,” said Enoch. “I don’t know that this stick is a good enough horse to carry me another score of paces.”

  7 Home Again

  Enoch spoke the truth. He had been going on sheer stubborn will, but now he seemed able to get no farther than the massive stone stoop of the cabin. There he sat down, and sighed wearily. In the early light his face was pale with fatigue.

  “Here I’ll rest,” he announced. “If I don’t get the moccasin off this howling left foot of mine, it must be peeled off with a knife, like the skin of a fat rabbit.”

  Crossing his leg over his knee, he plucked the moccasin away. His foot and ankle were swollen, and looked bruised and black. He winced as Zack felt the injury with careful fingers.

  “No bone broken, I thank heaven,” Zack decided. “Mr. Reep, have you any tallow to rub on this swelling?”

 
“I’ve bear fat, and I’ll tell my wife to fetch breakfast out here for the three of us,” replied Reep. He mounted the stoop and pushed the door open. “Hello, my dear! We’ve early visitors today. What can you feed them?”

  “Hot hoecakes and bacon,” called back a woman’s merry voice.

  “Good enough for a king,” said Zack, hungry at once.

  “Nay, better than that,” amended Enoch. “Good enough for a patriot.”

  Reep fetched the bear fat, and carefully rubbed it into the blackened swelling himself. Then out came Adam Reep’s wife, a tall woman with braids of dark hair and a round, pleasant face. She was laden with plates and mugs, and set these down to go back and bring out knives and spoons.

  “And I’ll fetch a cloak for Enoch,” she offered, returning to the house yet again. She appeared with a great hooded cape of home-woven wool.

  “That’s a ladylike garment for me to wear,” observed Enoch, biting into his hoecake.

  “Yet wear it,” Mrs. Reep insisted. “A man who is tired and hurt might catch cold sitting on that stone, even in this warm weather.”

  She flung it over Enoch’s shoulders, and held out a blue- checked handkerchief. “And here’s to bind up your hurt foot,” she said.

  But Enoch was leaning forward to listen. “Hark!” he said suddenly. “I hear the sound of hoofs—riders, and several of them, coming this way.”

  “The Tories,” said Reep at once. “You must fly.”

  “Not a step can I go, nor shall I,” announced Enoch, and pointed to a little haystack standing beside the house. “Zack, carry our muskets yonder to hiding. As for me, I’ll continue eating my breakfast, nor shall the fiercest Tory in the Caro- linas stop me.”

  Zack raced for the haystack. “But how—” Mrs. Reep began as Zack burrowed into the hay.

  “Trust Enoch,” her husband bade her. “He can trick the birds from the trees, or the fish up on the dry land. All we need do is say nothing that will betray him.”