King's Mountain

by Sharyn McCrumb

  Campbell nodded. “Indeed, but why is such a scholar here in the wilderness?”

  “His sister Elizabeth has settled here with her husband,” I said. “So presently Mr. Doak came along here and bought land of his own to be near them. But he did not leave civilization behind altogether, for he brought his personal library of classical literature all the way down the Wilderness Road on packhorses. Preachers are scarce in these parts, so the reverend preaches at a number of settlement meeting houses, each in turn. We could not wish for a better man to deliver our valediction.”

  We joined the throng of people making their way across the open field to a stand of sycamore trees. Samuel Doak, a youthful, but solemn figure in black, stood in the shade of the trees, perfectly composed as he waited for his flock to gather round. The laughing and chatter had ceased. Even the children were quiet as they approached the sycamore. I would not have thought that a thousand people all gathered in one place could make so little noise. For a moment all I heard was the gurgle of the river tumbling over the rocks of the shoals, and the call of a bird from the nearby woods. Then the Reverend Mr. Doak raised his hands in supplication to the heavens and commenced a discourse with the Almighty.

  Many of those present bowed their heads in prayer as they listened to his oration, but as he spoke, I took a last look at my family, for none of us could know if we would be coming back or not. I hope that the men found comfort in Sam Doak’s conviction that the Lord would be with us and that He approved of our cause.

  As he prayed, he allowed as how the journey on which we were embarking would be one filled with hardship and danger, but he assured us that we would not travel alone, for God would be with us, guiding us every step of the way. He went on for a bit about the righteousness of our fight for independence, and he urged us to go forth and help those people east of the mountains who were oppressed by the Tory armies. He reminded the men that they were no strangers to battle, for they had been tested and tried by the attacks of the savages upon our settlements, and they had survived those battles and emerged victorious, as, with the Lord’s help, we would do again this time.

  Then he asked God to protect us and give us the strength and the courage to face the enemy. Then he likened our mission to the Biblical tale of the Children of Israel at war with the Midianites, and he spent a good many minutes on the scriptural details of that ancient conflict, in case the particulars of it had slipped the Lord’s mind.

  I hope my soldiers took that comparison to heart, for if they could believe that they were God’s chosen army, it would give them the strength and courage we were praying for.

  After close on to an hour of preaching and prayer, for we had no time for more, Sam Doak ended his exhortation with a battle cry straight out of the book of Judges. Citing the Bible verse from his prodigious memory, he echoed the words of Gideon: “When I blow with a trumpet, I and all that are with me, then blow ye the trumpets also on every side of all the camp and say, The sword of the Lord and of Gideon!”

  Twice more he called out those words, and, as he began a third time, his mighty voice was drowned out by a thousand men taking up that battle cry, and shouting it until the valley rang with the echoes.

  Then it was over.

  The cheers faded back into silence, and the solemnity of the occasion quenched our high spirits. The militiamen and their families turned away, retreating into their own private rituals of parting. Some of the women and children were weeping and clinging to their departing menfolk, but Catherine and I said our farewells to one another with somber restraint, for I was mindful of the example that I had to set for my men: courage and duty before all other considerations.

  “Just keep things steady here for a couple of weeks, Kate,” I said. “And at the first sign of trouble, you take the children and set out for the fort. Promise me that.”

  “Of course, I will.”

  “Good. The family is in good hands then. I’ll be back before the leaves are gone. Depend upon it.”

  She nodded, with a tremulous smile. “Set your mind at ease about us. Just keep yourself from harm.”

  Reverend Doak was moving among the crowd, clasping hands, patting shoulders, and offering comfort and encouragement to those who needed it.

  “Your faith will be your armor,” he said more than once, to those men who seemed reluctant to set out.

  We made the last preparations, saddling our mounts, and packing the provisions and gear. Some of the men had not been able to secure a horse for the journey, and they were prepared to walk along in the wake of the riders, keeping up as best they could. Others made ready to drive the cattle along behind us on the march.

  * * *

  Before the sun was much higher in the sky, the men had assembled into the separate militias, and when the command was given, we mounted our horses and rode slowly away from the meadow, following Gap Creek upstream, back toward Roan Mountain, that strange bare-topped mountain on whose summit no trees would grow. The Cherokee told tales of a monstrous wasp, which had lived upon that mountain, so big that it had carried off human beings to feed upon.

  As we ambled along at the snail’s pace required to move a thousand men and a herd of cattle along a narrow trace, I reflected on that old legend, trying to remember if some bygone Indian warrior had killed the monster, or if it had simply gone away.

  My two boys were a ways behind me when we set out, in company with some of the younger riders who were friends of theirs, and so for a while I had only the company of my own thoughts as I rode along, but presently my brother Robert trotted up alongside me, slowing his horse back to an ambling gait that made it as easy for us to converse as if we were sitting on a porch. The path along the creek was dappled with sunlight, shining through the leaves on the trees of the bordering woods. Those leaves would be red and gold by the time we made our way back this far on the return journey, but for now summer still held sway here in the valley, and there was no sign that it was coming to an end.

  Robert grinned up at me. “Well, we’ve gone and done it, Jack. The die is cast. I hope you and Shelby know what you’re doing, because I don’t reckon you could stop this thing now even if you wanted to. There’s more soldiers here than John ever saw.”

  I nodded, knowing which John my brother meant: the prophet who penned the Book of Revelations. “I wish I had more soldiers than Caesar ever saw.”

  Robert squinted up through the overhanging branches at the sun, now high in the sky. “We have a long way to go, Jack. And at this pace, it’s going to take an almighty long time to get there. Why, Ferguson might die of old age and save us all the trouble of killing him.”

  I scowled at my younger brother’s levity, but, though I would not admit it, I took his jest to heart. It wasn’t the boredom of the tedious journey that concerned me—enduring hardship was our duty. I was worried, because I knew that the more slowly we proceeded, the more danger there was of our route becoming known to the enemy, and, because of that, we could be attacked somewhere along the way. Also, a slow journey was a longer one, which would mean that we would use up more food as the days passed, perhaps leaving us less than we would need when it was vital to maintain our strength for battle.

  After Bob dropped back in the ranks to talk to other riders, I turned these thoughts over in my mind for a while. Presently, I rode a bit ahead so that I could have a word with Colonel Shelby.

  “We must find a way to go faster,” I told him, after we had exchanged the usual pleasantries.

  Shelby turned partway around in his saddle, and surveyed the long line of soldiers stretching out behind us until they were obscured by the trees at the bend in the road. Behind them was the herd of cattle, not within sight of us, but occasionally we could hear their bawling echoing through the narrow valley.

  Shelby shook his head. “There are nigh on to a thousand men in this caravan, all trying to make their way down a narrow mountain trail. I don’t think you can expect them to proceed at a gallop.”

  “No,
but there ought to be a way to go at more than a crawl.” I told him my concerns about an ambush and about depleting our supplies on a protracted journey.

  Shelby listened carefully to all my explanations, then he smiled. “Let’s think on it as we go, Colonel Sevier. We’ll see how far we get by nightfall. Then, if you are still of the same mind, we can take the matter up among ourselves.”

  * * *

  The sun, now low in the sky, was obscured by shoals of gray clouds that had begun to roll in from the southwest, following behind us as surely as the bawling cattle. By the time the rain began to fall, we had reached the Doe River, with the great wall of mountains rising up in front of us. It was too close to nightfall now to attempt to cross over them, and we called a halt to the procession. My great concern was neither the fatigue of the men, nor the encroaching dark: it was the danger that the rain might ruin the powder. On the steep side of the trail, a rock overhang created a natural shelter from the elements, and as soon as I saw it, I directed the men to stow the powder there. The nights were still warm enough, and we could sleep in the sodden field beside the river and be none the worse for it, but in a week’s time our lives would depend upon the efficacy of Mary Patton’s powder, and I meant to look after it in the meantime.

  We had no tents or official military issue for our expedition. All we had was what had been brought from home. We made camp in the field beside the river, wrapped in blankets to protect us from the chill and the damp, and, after we had fed and watered the horses, we ate what rations we had brought with us: jerky and cracked corn, mostly.

  John Miller, a young man from a nearby farmstead came out to see what all the commotion was, and the soldiers dismounted and crowded around him, eager to tell him where they were going and why.

  John Miller nodded as they spoke, but he was looking at their horses, lifting one mount’s forefoot after another, and shaking his head. “You’ve got a mighty long ride ahead of you, boys, and the trail gets rocky from here on over the mountain. It’ll wear those horses’ hoofs down to a nub if you don’t get ’em shod.”

  Seeing their worried faces, he added, “I’m by way of being a blacksmith. If you’d care to come back to my place, I reckon I could do the job for you this evening.”

  The officer in charge granted permission for them to do this, and half a dozen men walked their horses down the path to Miller’s farm.

  I suppose I was as weary as anybody, but before I crawled into my bedroll, I wanted to talk to the other militia commanders about how we might go faster for the rest of the journey. I collected Shelby and McDowell, and we hunted up Colonel Campbell, who was sheltering under a tree with a group of his Virginia officers before a sputtering campfire.

  The four of us squatted there next to the fire and talked in low voices about the march.

  “Colonel Sevier thinks we are not moving fast enough,” Shelby said.

  “I was thinking that as well,” said Campbell. “Word is already spreading among the little settlements we pass by. I would not want the news to reach the Tories too far in advance of our own arrival.”

  “What can we do about it, though?” said McDowell. “Nobody is slacking or lagging behind. And that is a herd of cattle yonder, not blood horses. You cannot make them gallop down the trace.”

  I had spent most of the afternoon mulling over that very point, and Shelby was right: the cattle were the problem. That set me to thinking back to the siege of Fort Watauga in the summer of ’76, where those infernal cows bawling to be milked almost cost the life of my Catherine. I began to see them as an omen, and wondered if the bane of my existence would not be the usual black cat crossing the path of some unlucky soul, but a great oafish cow, always in my way.

  Campbell must have been thinking the same thing about what a millstone they were around the neck of the militia. “Let’s get rid of the cows, then,” he said. “They cannot go any faster, and we cannot confine ourselves to the pace they set, and so we must part company.”

  I nodded. “They were an encumbrance today, on relatively level terrain. Tomorrow when we begin the steep climb to Carver’s Gap, they will become an obstacle. Perhaps that herd could make the treacherous ascent, but not with any speed.”

  “But we need the cows,” said McDowell. “We can’t feed an advancing army on parched corn and then expect them to walk a few hundred miles and fight a battle. We’d be defeating ourselves.”

  We were silent for a few minutes, turning over the problem in our minds. Finally, Colonel Shelby said, “No. I cannot see any way around it. We have to slaughter the cattle.”

  “All of them?” McDowell frowned as a raindrop fell from a leaf and coursed down his cheek. “How would we ever carry all that meat? How would having to transport the carcasses of five hundred rotting cows help us any?”

  “Then let’s not kill them all,” I said. “Choose a few of the men to drive some of the cattle right back to the settlement. By now a few of them may be willing to volunteer to turn back. Then we can butcher the rest of the beeves and cook the meat to take with us. If that enables us to move faster, we may get most of the way to our destination before it becomes inedible.”

  No one said anything for a few moments, until Colonel Shelby broke the silence with a quiet, “Are we all agreed then, gentlemen?”

  We all nodded our assent.

  McDowell said, “I suppose it must be done, but I hope that in slaughtering our food supply, we are not doing the enemy’s work for him.”

  Shelby shrugged. “The faster we move, the less time we’ll have to be hungry.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  September 26, 1780

  The day dawned clear, and at first light each of us told our troops what the order of the day would be: dividing the herd; slaughtering the cattle we would keep; and boiling the meat. Only a few of the men would be occupied in performing those tasks. The rest would be set to practice military drill, a step toward learning how to function as a united fighting force. Colonel Campbell was the most experienced among us in such formal military matters, and we deferred to his judgment about what would best serve the needs of our army. We were anticipating a battle upon a flat field, and we needed to be more prepared for such an engagement than Buford’s troops had been.

  After the herd was divided, and more than half of the cows sent lurching and bawling away back up the trace toward home, we turned to the task at hand. The troops spent the whole of that morning beside the river, dispatching the cattle, and preparing the meat. Although butchering the herd had been my idea, a way to speed up the march, this very action had cost us half a day in which we made no progress. I hoped that the sacrifice was worth the time it cost, and that the outcome would justify the decision.

  Perhaps I should have thought of sending a message back to Catherine with the men who were driving the cattle home to the Watauga settlement, but there was much to be done in camp that morning, and by the time I could spare a thought for home and family, the riders had disappeared back up the trace in the wake of the stumbling cattle. There was little I could have told her, anyhow. We had scarcely begun.

  Finally, a little past midday, the meat was cooked and stowed away for transport, and we gave orders for the men to mount up and head out. They would not be on horseback much of the way, however, for we were following an old buffalo trail called Bright’s Trace that would take us through the woods and then up into Carver’s Gap, through which we would ascend the steep slopes, ridge by ridge, until we had crossed over the crest of the mountains. For much of the climb, we would have to lead our mounts and go single file along the path.

  As we followed the Bright’s Trace higher and higher into the mountains, we left summer behind in the valley below, where the wildwood was still cloaked with green leaves, and the warm sun gilded the fields. We took our leave of that summer country as we climbed into the very clouds that had showered rain on us the night before. Now the air burned cold as we breathed it into our lungs, and the sun was obscured in a wet mist. We
threaded our way upward through sparse pines and past boulders lodged on the slopes from spring rock falls.

  We halted our march again a few hours later in the gap that led across the mountain. A few miles away, though we could not see it from the gap, stood the high knob of Roan Mountain, whose summit is a great treeless meadow, and once the abode of that great monster wasp of Cherokee lore. I put no stock in fanciful tales of monsters, and of course we saw no sign of such a creature hovering over the mountain when we finally reached that high gap, but we marveled all the same, for having left the late-summer fields of the valley below, we found ourselves ankle-deep in an early snow.

  The air was clear now, and looking out from the height of the gap, we could see the Yellow Mountains spread out before us, ridge after ridge of red and gold, resplendent against the cope of heaven. Somewhere to the west of us was home, the settlement we had left behind a day ago. How strange to see that green valley nestled in the curve of the river, and yet not be able to go back there. I was almost glad when the gray clouds folded back over us, blocking the scene from my view.

  “Perhaps this is what it would be like to be dead,” I mused aloud, thinking of the vista below us. “You can look down from heaven and see the place you came from, but you cannot return.”

  We called a halt to the march so that men and horses could rest, and we broke out our midday rations to fortify us for the rest of the day’s journey. But first the other colonels called for more drilling by the soldiers, and so they trampled down the snow marching and doing close order drill, practicing so that the officers’ commands would become second nature to the regulars.

  Again we took roll to make sure that no one had become lost or left behind along the way, but this time something was amiss.

  As an officer from each militia took a tally of the men, all was well, until Major Tipton took the head count of those under my command. When he had finished the roll, he blinked and straightaway took it again, and finally, when he was sure, he reported to me.