King's Mountain

by Sharyn McCrumb

  Well, it was no use even to dream about such as that, so I pretended to take this news in stride. “The major is the son of some kind of nobleman, ain’t he? Maybe he feels a little closer to the king’s level than the rest of us on account of that. And maybe he didn’t hold the rifle steady, either. From what you say, the king wasn’t impressed enough to buy any.”

  “The major would have it that King George was impressed indeed, but His Majesty may not know any more about guns than we do. Anyhow, ultimately it isn’t the king’s decision. The army has a Board of Ordnance to choose their weaponry.”

  “A what?”

  “A committee of high-ranking officials who are empowered to make decisions of that sort.”

  “People who do know about guns, then?”

  “One would hope for that to be the case,” said the doctor with a weary sigh, “but my experience with armies tells me that they are simply aristocratic and well-connected people, the sort who feel that any decision is right because they have made it, whether they know anything about the matter or not. And such people are not fond of change.”

  I nodded. “They might be afraid that one of the changes might be them.”

  He laughed. “There’s no cure for that, either. But the major jumped all the hurdles for them. And in the end they decided that Ferguson’s marvelous rifle-gun was too expensive to make, unreliable in conditions of rain and mud, and too difficult for the ordinary soldiers to use. Who knows? Perhaps they were right, but he swears his breech-loader was the better weapon. Nevertheless, when he was deemed fit to return to duty, they gave him his own special company of soldiers, equipped with the new weapon, and they shipped them off to America to join the war.”

  I looked up at the sun again. The major could come back at any moment now, and the chance might not come again to find out about his wound. “Tell me the part where he got hurt, Doctor.”

  “It was at a place called Brandywine, where they fought against the Continental Army. Major Ferguson was looking forward to the battle, because he had his own troops, all equipped with the rifle he invented. In the course of the battle, he was shot in the arm, shattering the elbow. He says that the surgeons wanted to amputate, but he refused. He spent a year in the city of New York, recovering. He saved his arm, but it healed frozen in place as you see. With great determination and more than a little courage, he learned to write and to eat with his left hand, and he was determined to continue his military career, but his superiors sent him south, perhaps because they don’t think there’s much of a war here. No one wanted a crippled officer in his command. So here he is.”

  Outside the tent someone laughed. I froze for a couple of heartbeats, and when I turned I saw Virginia Paul shadowed in the opening. “That’s about half the story,” she said. “But you don’t have time for the rest. The major is on his way here, and he’s asking for you, Doctor.”

  Uzal Johnson scrambled to his feet. “What? Is he injured?”

  She shook her head. “No. But he needs a doctor all the same. Not that you’ll be any use. But you’d better go and meet him.” As the doctor started to leave the tent, Virginia Paul called after him, “Oh, and, sir, if you need any help, please send for me, and not Sal here.”

  He looked as if he wanted to answer, but then we heard voices in the distance, and he simply nodded and hurried away.

  When he was gone, I turned in fury to Virginia Paul, “What did you tell him that for? I’m supposed to be the one helping the doctor, and you know it!”

  She turned to me with the saddest look I’d ever seen in her cold green eyes. “Fool girl! I’m doing you a kindness. You’d be wise to take it.”

  * * *

  In the end they did not call for either one of us, and the major and the men who were with him rode away again without even stopping to rest their mounts. I had waited a few minutes after the doctor left, and then I got out of the tent, and tried to see what was going on, but I didn’t see anything until they took to the road again. As soon as I saw them ride away, I went running in search of the doctor to see what the matter was, because he had not been with them when they rode out again. If there had been an ambush or if a battle was in the offing, the soldiers would be scurrying around like ants near a campfire, but everything seemed as quiet as it had before.

  The sun was low in the sky now, setting the clouds alight, and I found Uzal Johnson down at the creek at the edge of the camp, washing his hands and arms over and over in the cold stream. Virginia Paul was nowhere in sight.

  “They have set off again, Doctor,” I told him. “Did they not need you after all?”

  He sighed. “The major wanted only my opinion as the regiment’s physician. And he knew that if he was right in what he suspected, then all my skill would be useless.”

  “What’s the matter with him, then?”

  “With Major Ferguson? Nothing, thank heaven. It is poor Ensign Evans who is afflicted.”

  I shut my eyes for a moment, trying to place Ensign Evans among the scores of young officers here in the regiment. I thought he might be the jug-eared boy from an upper South Carolina farm who hunted rabbits everywhere we camped to supplement the army rations. He looked to be about the same age as me, so I couldn’t imagine what would be ailing him, if he hadn’t been wounded in an ambush.

  “Evans? What’s the matter with him?”

  “He was taken feverish this afternoon, and when I saw him, he was beginning to redden with a rash. ’Tis the smallpox, poor devil. I’ve seen it enough to have no doubt of that.”

  I shivered, remembering Virginia Paul’s parting words to me, “I’m doing you a kindness.” So she had been, for anyone would want to keep well away from a body afflicted with smallpox.

  “Couldn’t you do anything for him, sir? He’s young and strong. He could fight it. I’ve heard tell of people who lived through a bout of smallpox. Of course, they were pockmarked and fearful ugly ever after, but anyhow they did live.”

  Dr. Johnson shook his head. “We were all heartily sorry for poor Ensign Evans, but the prospect of his recovery cannot be an issue in Major Ferguson’s decision. He has a thousand men under his command, and he cannot risk losing them to pestilence for the sake of one man. The major consulted me only so that I could confirm that Evans was indeed stricken with the pox. When I agreed that this was so, he had no choice about what to do.” Dr. Johnson plunged his arms up to the elbows in the creek, and began to scrub again.

  I knew he was trying to wash away any contagion he might have got, and I was so affrighted by the thought of that, that I squatted down beside him and commenced to washing my hands as well.

  “Was Ensign Evans with them when they rode away just now?”

  “Oh, yes.” He paused for a long time, staring up at the trees, but as last he said, “Evans will not be with them when they return.”

  I let the words sink in, trying to work out what he wasn’t saying. “Are they going to kill him?” I whispered.

  The doctor turned to stare at me, and I thought he might have laughed at my foolishness if the situation weren’t so sad. “No, Sal,” he said. “Though it might be kinder if they did. One of the other officers mentioned that he had seen an abandoned cabin a few miles back along the trace, and they decided to take him there and leave him.”

  “What do you mean, leave him?”

  “They will put Ensign Evans in the cabin with a few days’ rations, which I doubt he will need, and he will die in God’s good time. A few days at most.”

  My throat felt too small to get the words out. “But, Doctor, I told you: people with the pox get well sometimes.”

  “I know they do. And let us hope that poor Evans is one of them. I would pray for such an outcome, but as a medical man I would not wager a penny on it. Once his supplies run out, he will have no water, no one to look after him, and he will be too weak to build a fire or to fend for himself. It might be more merciful to pray that for him the end comes quickly.”

  I opened my mouth to ask
whether the doctor could leave someone to tend to Ensign Evans, but my mind knew better before I even uttered the words. No one would be fool enough to stay in close quarters with a man dying of smallpox, for they would most likely follow him sweating and raving to the grave before the month was out. Oh, a wife or a mother might be fond enough to risk it, but the fellow was all but a stranger to us. No one would risk their own life on the off-chance of saving his. Would I offer to take on such a task? I knew I would not, and, if I really plumbed my heart, I reckon I was as glad as anybody here that the man with the deadly pestilence was being taken out of our midst, so that I could not catch it from him. Even if I took the pox and lived, my life as a likely looking wench would be over, and I’d surely die young from toil in the fields, for I’d be good for nothing else.

  I’d be haunted in my sleep, though, for many a night to come, thinking about that poor dying man shut up alone in a dark little cabin, with maybe a few days’ rations and a jug of stale water, knowing what was to come, and having to face it friendless and alone. I wondered if they would leave him his weapon, for he might choose a quicker death than the one the pox would give him—but, no, I reckoned they wouldn’t. Guns are more valuable than young soldiers. They can always get themselves another farm boy to shoot it.

  “I wonder how he came to get the pox?”

  Dr. Johnson shook his head. “Nobody knows the answer to that, girl. Perhaps it floats about in the air. Some get it and others don’t. The will of Providence, I suppose. Anyhow, I shall have to inspect all the men before we break camp tomorrow, and every day thereafter for a week, to make sure that no one else has been stricken with it.”

  I could not sleep that night for thinking about that poor boy left to die in a solitary cabin with only his sword and a sackful of victuals to comfort him, but when I said as much to Virginia Paul, she only shrugged and said, “There’s worse things than dying.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  September 1780

  A day or so thereafter I set out to secure the most crucial item in our campaign against Ferguson: the powder to blow him to hell.

  We were fortunate here in the Watauga region: we had a powder mill. The making of black powder is arduous and dangerous work, not a job I would wish for, but in these perilous times I could think of no greater blessing than to have such an operation within a day’s ride. Like John Adair, who kept the settlement’s treasury and had lent us the money for the campaign, the proprietor of the powder mill was an Irishman, one John Patton, who had come over from Ulster as a lad, and settled first in the Pennsylvania colony. Patton’s great good fortune here lay in his choice of a wife, for he had married another Pennsylvania settler, an Englishwoman named Mary McKeehan, whose father owned a mill, and had passed on to his daughter the trade of powder-making. Thus provided with a better livelihood than most of the neighboring farmers, John and Mary Patton had set up a powder mill of their own in the village of Carlisle, where they prospered and began their family. They might have stayed there forever, but for the fact that the war in the colonies arrived in Pennsylvania some years before we felt the blast of it here in the Carolina backcountry.

  I’d had occasion to hear their history from the Pattons themselves, for like most of the other men in the Watauga settlement, I called on them regularly to purchase black powder, mostly for hunting, but sometimes in preparation for another attack on our lives. No one ever grudged them a penny of what they earned selling black powder. Our lives depended on their skill at their trade.

  Often I passed the time of day with Mistress Mary Patton when I came to buy a new supply from them, for it was she who had the tending of the saltpeter kettles, supervising the workers, while her husband, John, managed the crops in their fields. She always seemed glad of the company, for the necessary stench of her powder-making would discourage many casual visitors. I suppose she had grown used to the foul smell herself over the years, but, between the smoke-filled air and the reek of dung, few people cared to linger long in her society.

  Because of the prospect of war, the Pattons had received little enough from the sale of their mill in Carlisle, for, distaste and danger aside, not many folk were anxious to take on such an enterprise with the threat of a British occupation looming. Nevertheless, the Pattons were determined to go, and so they accepted a meager offer, cut their losses, and headed down the great wagon road with their daughters to start anew. Another of our neighbors, Andrew Taylor, himself a transplanted Pennsylvanian, had urged the couple to come westward on the Wilderness Road to the Watauga settlements. Taylor had eased the way for them by helping them to construct a new mill on the small stream situated next to Taylor’s own holdings. Because of the mill, that stream soon became known as Powder Branch. I expect that Taylor meant his generosity to be Christian charity to the Pattons, for he had known them during his time in the militia back in Pennsylvania. But his benevolent gesture was an even greater kindness to the rest of us here in the backcountry, for the establishment of the powder mill meant that we were not dependent upon shipments from away to keep us supplied with the ammunition we needed to hunt and to defend ourselves.

  When the Pattons arrived here in the Watauga settlement and made ready to set up their operation, in addition to a grateful and welcoming community, they found another bit of good fortune awaiting them here, for they soon discovered an abundant source of saltpeter less disagreeable than the usual ways of obtaining it. The big powder mills back east import the saltpeter they need to manufacture black powder, but a man-and-wife mill operating on the frontier has not the luxury of obtaining that crucial ingredient ready-made. Obtaining and preparing the saltpeter was the most unpleasant part of the process, and I’ve often wondered that anyone would willingly embark upon the operation of such an enterprise, necessary though it was for the survival of all of us.

  Saltpeter is distilled from the excrement of livestock in the barns and pastures, and if that supply should not prove sufficient to the task, even the night soil of human beings would be put to use. The thought of having to deal with such a foul substance gives me pause, but the Pattons must have been used to it, I suppose, and indeed life on the frontier was not easy for any of us. Someone had to do it, and it had the virtue of being a profitable enterprise and a product for which there would always be a market.

  At least, here in the Carolina mountains, the Pattons were spared the indignity of having to collect their raw material from the waste matter of people and livestock, for at the base of the nearby mountains that towered over Powder Branch, there were caves. Countless generations of wild beasts and roosting bats had used those caves as a refuge, and over the years these feral inhabitants had carpeted the cave floor with their foul droppings. The Pattons were able to collect this rich source of nitrate from the caves, not a pleasant task, perhaps, but certainly better than the alternatives.

  * * *

  There was no mistaking the location of the powder mill. As my horse followed the trace along Buffalo Creek, I could see plumes of gray smoke unfurling in the distance, making a haze over the forest in an otherwise cloudless sunny day. Not long after I saw the smoke, my senses were assaulted by the reek of boiling excrement in the open kettles. The powder-making operation was going full force that morning.

  I tied my horse to a sapling at the edge of the open field where the powder-making operation took place. He would have been reluctant to carry me farther in any case, for he had no love of the smell of the place, either, but even worse were the half-dozen sod-covered pyramids of burning timber set a few yards apart across the field. The flames were kept contained within the earthen covering—unless something went wrong—but plumes of smoke arose from the vent hole at the top of each stack, and a horse does not need to see fire to know it is there. My mount rolled his eyes and edged backward as far as the rein would permit him. I patted his neck and spoke a few calming words to soothe him, and then I headed for the wooden hut near the creek, where Mary Patton sat, keeping watch over the timber pyres from th
e open doorway. If ever the flames broke through the earthen covering, she or one of the workers would have to rush to the pyre and repair the damage.

  As I crossed the field, giving the pyres a wide berth, she caught sight of me and waved a greeting, but she did not get up. Mary Patton was a slender, sturdy woman nearing her thirtieth year, ruddy of face, and weather-beaten, for she worked with fire and noxious materials, and she spent most of her days out in the elements. Her brown hair was tied up in a kerchief to keep it out of harm’s way while she worked, and sweat beaded in the furrows on her wide forehead. When I got close enough to bid her good day, I saw that she cradled an infant to her breast, swaddled in a cotton shawl.

  “A fine-looking child,” I said, though I could see little but the tip of its nose. “My congratulations to you.”

  She shrugged. “’Tis another lass, this one, and we’ve three of them already.” She nodded in the direction of the creek where three little girls, the eldest no more than seven, were playing at the water’s edge. “If they don’t bring husbands into the business, I suppose they’ll learn the craft from me, as I did from me own father.”

  “You don’t allow them near the fires yet, surely?”

  “No. That will keep until they are older.”

  I looked out across the field to the little stream, to watch the three copper-haired Patton daughters, too absorbed in their game to notice their elders. I had expected to see them laughing and splashing one another, as my own young ones did at play, but the Patton daughters were as solemn as owls. Each of them was holding a corner of a large white cloth, stained with red streaks, and they were dipping it into the creek and pulling it out again. After a moment, the oldest girl turned back to look for her mother. Finally catching sight of me watching them, she pointed her finger at me and uttered a low moan. Her sisters, stair steps to her in age, let the wet cloth fall upon the rocks, and joined the eldest in pointing and moaning in my direction. Their utter solemnity rendered the scene chilling, rather than charming.