Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1961

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

  “If you’re a rebel,” said Reinhardt, “what if I took you up to Ramsour’s Mill? The King’s men are there. They’d thank me for giving you to them. You are no friend to the King’s cause?”

  Reinhardt looked hard and dangerous, but Zack faced him.

  “I’ll not take a lie into my mouth,” said Zack. “I’m a true patriot and a soldier of the army of liberty.”

  As he spoke, he tensed himself to snatch the tomahawk from his girdle. Just then the rear door opened and another man stood there.

  “This young gentleman’s all right, Mr. Reinhardt,” said a soft voice Zack knew.

  “Fesso!” he cried.

  “You know Fesso?” cried Reinhardt.

  “He knows me and I know him, sir,” said Fesso, coming into the shop. “I heard you talking, and Mr. Zack Harper says the truth, Mr. Reinhardt. He’s as strong for freedom as you or me.”

  The smith relaxed and smiled. “I had to be sure, young man. Those Tories suspect me. They might have sent you to sound me out.”

  Zack nodded his understanding. Fesso then told him of coming to the home of Adam Reep, who had sent him on to stay with Reinhardt. Fesso had been to Ramsour’s Mill, and seen that Moore had stationed two companies of his followers there, to guard a store of arms and powder.

  “I carried grain to grind for Mr. Reinhardt,” said Fesso. “They didn’t pay me any attention. I saw boxes of guns, the lids pulled off so that they could be grabbed at a word.”

  “How many guns?” asked Zack.

  “Can’t say certainly, young sir, but plenty. Some of ’em’s got stabbers on them.”

  “Stabbers?” repeated Zack. “Oh, you mean bayonets. Those are the arms Cornwallis sent. Now, how about the number of men?”

  Reinhardt told him that they had heard of fully thirteen hundred Tories. Some were harvesting the crops for storage to supply Cornwallis’ army when it came. But they could be summoned on a few hours’ notice.

  Zack went with Reinhardt to the house across the road. There Reinhardt’s chubby, good-humored wife served them dinner. Zack walked from window to window afterward, studying the surrounding country.

  “You think this is where a battle will be fought,” guessed Reinhardt. “You want the lay of the land.”

  “As much as I can make out,” Zack told him. “I should go and survey it.”

  “You need not take the risk,” said Reinhardt. “Fesso and I can tell you how things are, the streams, roads, and trees.”

  Fesso was summoned into the kitchen, and he and Reinhardt took turns describing the country around the Tory position at Ramsour’s Mill.

  Reinhardt’s shops and house made a point of reference almost midway between the South Fork and the Tuckaseege Ford Road, within a few hundred yards of where the road crossed Clark’s Creek, which ran southward to the river. At that point a wooden bridge crossed the creek and the mill was built there, with a dam above the bridge to make a pond and a race to turn the great wheel. Woods and swamps lay all about, except for the cleared slope of the hill that Zack had seen as he approached Reinhardt’s. That hill had its crest at the very edge of the Tuckaseege Ford Road, and often Tory pickets came to that crest to look down the slope as if watching for possible danger.

  “I half understand all this,” Zack said, after some hours of talking and questioning. “Had I but a map to take back to my friends, I’d have done my work well.”

  “We could make one,” offered Fesso in his soft, deep voice. “Aye, so we could,” agreed Reinhardt. “Wife, have we paper and pen and ink?”

  Mrs. Reinhardt fetched a sheet of paper, but regretfully reported that the ink stand was dried up.

  “We can use this,” said Zack, and produced a bullet from his pouch. “It is lead, and it will draw like a piece of charcoal. Even better. Which of you will make the map for me?” “Let Fesso try,” said Reinhardt. “He writes a better hand than I do, and I don’t doubt that he draws better, too.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” said Fesso, and sat himself between them at the table. Taking the bullet, he carefully sketched the South Fork as a double curving line on the paper. A smaller double line showed Clark’s Creek flowing in from northward.

  “The main road’s like this,” Fesso explained and drew it, a fairly straight line that approached both streams at an angle from the right, crossed Clark’s Creek and then the South Fork. “And here,” he added, making a black blotch at juncture of creek and road, “is where the bridge is. The mill is here, on the west side of the creek.”

  He drew a square to represent it.

  “Where’s this house, where we now sit?” asked Zack.

  “Down here.” Fesso drew more squares, almost directly below the bridge. “This is the house, and this is the barn, and down here is the smithy. The side road comes up between the shop and the house, like this.”

  He put in details with more speed and confidence, as though he was learning the job of map making with every moment. At Zack’s bidding he also indicated the tavern and the bridle path that came down from the Tuckaseege Ford Road a mile from the mill. The smaller stream, that ran parallel to the main road and flowed into Clark’s Creek, he put in next. He indicated woods and swamp with shading lines.

  “I fear that’s the best I can do,” he said at last.

  “It’s splendid,” Zack praised him. “Now, to mark the names.”

  “Suffer me,” said Fesso, and wrote in big letters here and there. ROAD, he put in the proper place, and SOUTH FORK and MILL and INN.

  “You haven’t shown the millpond,” observed Reinhardt.

  “It’s like this, above the bridge.” Fesso carefully drew a great oval. “Now, what else?”

  “I can ask for naught else.” Zack folded the paper carefully and stowed it in the crown of his hat. “Fesso, you are as valuable a fighter for our side as I can name, and I’ll engage that General Rutherford and Colonel Dickson will say like wise. Now, tell me more about those Tories at the mill. Two companies, you said?”

  “Aye, two,” said Fesso.

  “Did you hear which companies?”

  The lines in Fesso’s wise, dark face deepened in thought. “I heard the names of the captains, yes, sir. One was a man I’d heard of, the same that took away my master and burned his house.”

  “Alspaye?” prompted Zack.

  “Aye, that’s who. And the other, his name is Captain Path—no, Broth—”

  “Prothero?” asked Zack. “Captain Godfrey Prothero?”

  “Yes, sir,” nodded Fesso.

  Reinhardt eyed Zack shrewdly. “I take it you know those two Tory captains.”

  “I know them both, and well.”

  Reinhardt got up from the table. “We’ve used up the day with this talking and map-drawing, and it’s near suppertime,” he said. “Harper, maybe you’ll stay here tonight, and ride back to your friends early tomorrow.”

  “I’ll be vastly obliged to you for a place to stay tonight,” said Zack, “but tomorrow, ere I ride back, I’ll visit Ramsour’s Mill myself.”

  “Why, we drew this map to save you the trouble.”

  “I must go there, and see and hear these Tories at close hand,” Zack insisted.

  14 Scouting in the Water

  ZACK slept that night in a cavelike cellar under the floor of the Reinhardt kitchen. The entrance was by a trap door cut in the rough planks and hinged with leather, usually hidden by a spotted oxhide spread out like a rug. Mrs. Reinhardt lent him blankets to make up a bed on the earthen floor, and also gave him a home-dipped tallow candle, a gourd of water, and a handful of corn dodgers.

  “That’s in case you have to spend a long time down there,” she told him. “Who knows? Some of those Tory hounds may come sniffing on your trail. If there is no danger tomorrow morning, we’ll open the trap and call you to breakfast.”

  Zack made himself as comfortable as he could. It was the first night of many he had spent without the starry sky visible above him. For a long time he lay awake, thinki
ng and wondering about his next problem of scouting the enemy. But at last he drowsed, then slept soundly.

  He woke to hear the clatter of the trap door lifting and sat up, looking at the square of gray light opened above him.

  “All’s well,” said Reinhardt’s voice from up in the kitchen. “Come on out.”

  Gratefully Zack scrambled into the open and went out on the back stoop to wash his hands and face in a tin pan. “I’d better go across the road and look after my horse Jonah,” he said.

  “No need for that, Fesso’s taking care of him in the little ; cedar grove past the smithy,” Reinhardt informed him. “That’s to save you showing yourself to some prowling Tory on the road. Come and eat.”

  He sat with the Reinhardts and breakfasted on hot biscuits, i pork, and fresh milk. While he munched, he studied once again the map that Fesso had drawn.

  “I’m going to study this country for myself today,” he told his host.

  “How, if you walk into the arms of Moore’s scoundrels?” asked Reinhardt.

  “I think I can stay clear of them. Here,” and Zack’s finger touched the map, “on the slope of the hill next your house, is the only clear ground in the neighborhood. Let me but once get across the road to the smithy and into the woods behind it. Then I can steal through that marshy cover to east- » ward, and back the way I came. Through the trees, I can reach the main road. Crossing it into the woods beyond will be my only danger, and the map shows more woods north of | the road, all the way to the millpond.”

  “So?” grunted Reinhardt. “And when you get to the millpond, what then?”

  “I’ll find my way to the mill itself. I want a close look at the guard there, and if possible, I will hear them talking.”

  Reinhardt shrugged. “Wife, this youngster has cunning along with his recklessness,” he said. “I suppose this adventure is what you came to try, woods-runner. Luck go with you.”

  Zack took his rifle and hat and the map. He looked out the windows on all sides, then emerged and crossed the road to the smithy. Behind it he found Jonah tied among sheltering cedars, eating corn while Fesso watched.

  “You are going, young sir?” asked Fesso.

  “I’m going to look at the mill, and I’ll be back. Here, I’ll leave most of what I have.”

  He tucked the map into a saddle pocket. Then he leaned his rifle against a tree, set his hat on its muzzle, and unfastened his belt. He doffed his shirt, folded it, and put it on the ground beside the gun, then stood stripped to the waist. With a thong from his pouch he bound back his hair.

  “I’ll do my scouting Indian fashion,” he said, and fastened his knife at his hip. “Now, Fesso, hark you. Are you still of a mind to help the friends of liberty?”

  “More than ever,” said Fesso.

  “Good. I’ll take your fist on that.” They shook hands solemnly. “Fesso, I’ll try to go close to the mill where the Tories are mustered. I want to bring back all possible news to give my officers. But if I do not come back by nightfall, then probably I will not come back at all.”

  “And if you do not come back, young sir?” prompted Fesso gravely.

  “Take this horse of mine and ride back along the road to Tuckaseege Ford. If any Tories chase you, I think Jonah can outrun them. Go to Joseph Dickson’s, where my comrades are waiting. Ask for Captain Martin.”

  “Captain Martin,” repeated Fesso.

  “In his company are Cy Cole and Andy Berry, who were with me when first you and I met. They’ll know you and vouch for your being of the right side. Then give Captain Martin that map you drew, and tell him all that we did here.”

  “I promise I’ll do those things,” said Fesso. “Let me wish you luck, young sir.”

  “Thanks.”

  Zack slipped off into the woods, found the branch that he remembered from his journey to Reinhardt’s, and followed it cautiously. It brought him to the side road again, and then into the bog beyond. His moccasins were clotted with mud in a few strides, but he stayed under cover and avoided the open ground at the foot of the hill. At last he came to where a great row of felled trees extended northward.

  Those would be the trunks cleared from the hill’s slope, Zack judged. On the far side the woods grew, and he moved up between the wall-like mass of logs and the living trees until he could see the main road beyond.

  Now it was up to him. He must be doubly careful—no, triply careful. He dropped to all fours and crept as close to the road as he could manage without venturing into the sunlit open. There he paused, peering sharply this way along the track, then that.

  Directly opposite grew a great tuft of leafy shoots where a tree had been cut down and had sent up sprouts from its stump. Zack poised himself on hands and drawn-up feet to spring across and into the scrub, when he heard hoofs and I dropped flat again to hide himself. He waited until threes armed horsemen trotted past, and listened while the hoofbeats died away. Then he rose again, darted across the roadij to the other side, and plunged in among the trees there.

  Gingerly he bore to leftward as he went north, moving: his muddy feet with the utmost care. He avoided twigs and leaves that might rustle and betray him. Slowly as a snail,, stealthily as a mink, he advanced. Again and again he paused1' for long minutes, straining his ears to listen for the possible:' noise of others in that belt of trees. It took more than a full hour, he judged, to come to where he could look through: foliage and see the brown water of the millpond.

  Again he threw himself flat and crawled forward. A great clump of cattails grew at the very brink, and to this he made his way. At last he reached a place from which he could see,; but first he turned, raised himself on an elbow, and stared back along the way he had come. There would be no stupid: carelessness this time to betray him into enemy hands. He had learned much since the first time he had scouted Moore’s camp and Alspaye had sneaked up on him.

  He made sure that he was alone and unobserved, and then gingerly parted the cattail stems in front of him and looked through.

  The pond was formed by damming Clark’s Creek below,, and it filled a broad natural hollow to make a pleasant expanse of water some eighty yards across by fully three hundred long. The current moved slowly to southward in the bright June sunlight, and Zack turned to look in that direction. He saw the square, gable-roofed mill on the far side, with a broad wooden wheel turning creakily in the water. Below the wheel was the bridge that crossed at the main road.

  And around the mill moved men, ten or a dozen of them. Several walked back and forth with shouldered guns, as though on guard duty. Others lounged easily in a group. Plainly the mill was heavily garrisoned.

  What had Fesso said—two companies? That meant as many as two hundred men, surely no fewer than a hundred. And where was Moore’s main force? That was something for Zack to find out. But how?

  Lying among the reeds, he gazed across the pond. A matted mass of leaves floated by. He watched it, idly, then with sudden inspiration. Those leaves would follow the current right down to the mill race. If they had eyes and ears . . .

  “I’ll give them eyes and ears,” said Zack under his breath.

  He rose on his hands and knees, as though to throw himself into the water. But already the floating clump was well beyond him. He would have to make another.

  Back he crept along the shore, to a spot where ragweed and coarse grass grew. With his knife he reaped a big armful, stem by stem. Then he stole upstream with it to some willows at the very edge of the pond, and began to cut branches.

  He laid those branches side by side in a quiet shallow, and upon them strewed the weeds, making a little raft. He cut more branches and wove the whole lightly together into a matlike fabric, as long as himself. Then he sheathed his knife and slid into the pond like an otter. It was pleasantly cool. He ducked and came up under the floating mass. A careful shove; on the bottom with his feet, and he glided out on the openi surface of the pond, the leafage above him.

  He let the current carry him and his little ra
ft out to the center, then floated headfirst down the stream. He relaxed! under the shelter of the green leaves, turned on his back, and! lay there. Slowly, slowly, he drifted toward the mill.

  It took a long time, a maddeningly long time. Again and again Zack asked himself if he had been an utter fool to attempt this approach by water. Each time he answered in his nervous heart that, if so, it was too late to be wise now. He was out there in the open water, with only a few wet leaves to hide him. Closer he drifted, with his raft for a screen. Closer. He lifted his head a trifle to bring an ear above the surface, and he heard voices.

  “See yonder to that little floating haycock, boys!” cried one.

  “Just the length of a man,” added another.

  “The length of a skulking rebel, or Pm no judge,” put in a third. “Let’s try these new rifles Lord Cornwallis sent us. See who can hit closest to the center.”

  Zack’s heart sank as though it wanted to dive to the bottom of the pond.

  “Let Micah Suggs shoot first, he brags of his keen eye.”

  “I’ll even do so. Watch, you enviers.”

  A gun boomed. A bullet plopped in the water just beside Zack’s elbow. Laughter from the direction of the mill.

  “Micah missed—a rebel would have gone untouched. I’ll do better than that.”

  “I’ll wager my hat against yours you don’t.”

  “Done, Micah.”

  Another shot rang out. The bullet rustled the twisted leaves above Zack’s very nose.

  “Micah, your hat is mine. Now let Hank try—”

  “Cease that firing, you fools!” broke in a voice of stern authority.

  Embarrassed murmurs. “Why, Captain,” said the one called Micah, “we but thought we’d practice our shooting.”

  “The King’s powder is none so plentiful that we can bang it away at floating trash,” said the stern one. “The next man who fires without leave shall chop firewood for both companies. I’ll not speak of this again.”

  Zack knew whose orders saved him from further bombardment. Godfrey Prothero was at the mill, sure enough.