King's Mountain

by Sharyn McCrumb

Stifling a yawn, Colonel Lacey stood up and stretched. “I thank you for your hospitality, gentlemen,” he said, removing the blindfold from around his neck and handing it back to Campbell with a flourish. “I will head back now. I should reach our encampment by midmorning, and we will set out for the Cowpens at once. I know that my fellow commander Colonel Hill will be glad to see me. I borrowed his horse to make this journey.”

  VIRGINIA SAL

  We were up around Gilbert Town when he got word from some of the spies that there was an army of Backwater Men coming out of the hills, a-hunting us. I was there in his tent when the word came, but of course I had to look busy with the mending and act like I didn’t hear nothing. I stole a glance at the major when no one was looking, and he seemed more surprised than scared. He curled his lip, and jerked his head up, like a horse on a tight rein, and he said, “Are they coming, by God? After I warned them to stay out of this?”

  The rough-looking fellow who brought the news just nodded, and said, “You riled them up with that letter you wrote to Colonel Shelby.”

  The major smiled then, but it was a cold smile, without a spark of pleasure in it that I could see. “I am glad to hear it. I can make good use of this little invasion of theirs.” He looked over at DePeyster, who had sat supper with him, while they talked about plans for the coming days. “Let us draw up a proclamation, DePeyster. If the frontier rabble is headed this way, we ought to warn the Carolina gentlefolk of their impending arrival. Write as I dictate.”

  He rattled off a string of words about how the lowland gentry ought to band together to fight off the frontier savages from over the mountains. He and Captain DePeyster laughed right smart when he said that the rabble would “piss upon them forever” if the plantation folk didn’t stop them. I didn’t laugh, though, especially when the major said he wanted fair copies made of the notice to be posted at stores and inns around the settlements. I thought those Backwater Men were likely to get hold of one of those notices, and it wouldn’t sweeten their tempers any to read what he said about them. If they were already headed this way with blood in their eyes, I didn’t see any point in stirring them up any more. I said as much to the major, after Captain DePeyster left and Elias Powell had scuttled away for the night.

  “I know some of those mountain folk,” I told him. “They’re not long on forgiveness.”

  But he had been drinking with the captain, and now he was too far into his cups to feel fear or prudence. He only laughed and said, “Let them come. If they want a fight, they shall have one. Here and now is as good a time as any.”

  “Reckon there’ll be a battle?” I said, for I didn’t much like the sound of being caught up in that.

  “Oh, don’t fasht yourself,” he said, and I knew that to be one of his words from over the water that he used when the whiskey or some ghost of a memory took him back. He meant I wasn’t to worry overmuch. “Tomorrow we shall begin to head back east again toward Charlotte Town. We ought to be able to get word to Lord Cornwallis before the Backwater Men can find us. So let them chase us. They will find themselves caught between Tarleton’s dragoons and my good marksmen.”

  I shivered. “You’ve seen a deal of battles, haven’t you?”

  He smiled again. “A fair few. Not as many as you might suppose, given my score of years in the king’s service.”

  “You were wounded, though,” I said, touching the sleeve of his pinioned arm. “How?”

  “That was some of your rebels’ doing, my girl. A proper battle up in Pennsylvania, that was, not these little hole and corner skirmishes they have ’round here.” He reached for me, and I knew he would rather use me to forget than to dwell on past sorrows, but battles were uppermost in my mind then, and I wanted to know, so, trusting the drink to keep him tame, I asked again.

  He sighed, and I suppose he could easily have brushed it aside, but just then the dead white face of Virginia Paul appeared in the opening of the tent, and she said, “Yes, tell us about Brandywine.”

  She scooted inside, and curled up next to me, giving him a challenging stare, as if she dared him to summon up the memory. I don’t suppose the son of a lord was afreerd of a servant girl, but the look he gave her is the one horses get before they bolt from a sudden fright.

  He stared into the little candle flame then, and I don’t think many heartbeats passed before the drink and the silence made him forget we were there. He spoke slowly at first, unfolding the memory, and I knew better than to make a sound, for that would have broken the spell.

  “That was the last time they used my weapon,” he said, as if that mattered more than his arm. “My beautiful breech-loader that could shoot farther and truer than any they had ever seen. They balked at the cost, of course—as if it wouldn’t be worth more than those ancient Brown Besses they insisted on keeping! Tradition can be a prison as well as a fortress.

  “But at least they gave me a thousand of my rifles, and the troops to use them. I thought I could show them. Why, I might have won this war for them, if I were not hamstrung by honor.

  “There I was, the day before the battle was to begin, and I had gone off alone into the woods to practice my aim. I had not begun shooting yet, I recall, for that would have warned anyone else away. But I stood there, holding my namesake rifle, and suddenly, perhaps fifty yards away, the branches parted and a Continental officer rode into the clearing. He was as clear as a paper target in the dark blue of his uniform, astride a strapping gray that shone in the pale sunshine. And I remember thinking, Now here is a proper target! and I raised the weapon to the ready and drew a bead on the man. I could have felled him like a stag in the space of a heartbeat.

  “But he looked back at me. Now I think if he had shown fear, or turned to flee, or reached for a weapon of his own, I would have taken the shot with the next breath I drew. But he only looked at me. And rebel that he was, there was bearing in his stance—so does a lord look at a chimney sweep. His lip curled, and in my head I heard all the words implicit in that stare. That the battle would not begin for yet another day … that I was a craven assassin to be thus concealed in the wood, instead of taking the field with honor like a gentleman … that he had no fear of the likes of me.… We held that stare between us for a long moment, and then he simply turned and rode away, showing his back to me, daring me to be such a coward as to shoot him thus. And I lowered my weapon and let him pass, thinking we would meet upon the field tomorrow.

  “I never saw him, though, when there was a chance to remedy my clemency. I fell before the battle ended, with a musket ball shattering my elbow, and so I only glimpsed the man on the gray from far afield, as I lay there bleeding. It was the rebels’ commander. Washington. And I might have ended their hopes for sovereignty there and then, if I had taken the shot. That was the last time I ever saw my rifles. I heard they were stored in a warehouse. God knows what became of them. Sometimes I think I am cursed.”

  I heard the bitterness in his voice. He looked down at his useless right arm, as if he wished it gone entirely.

  “They wanted to cut it off, but I forbade it. What use is a one-armed soldier? So they sent me back to New York to recuperate, and they did what they could for the wound, which was mainly to bind it in place so that it stuck fast in this bent position. Well, I kept the limb.”

  As always, his arm was bent at the elbow and drawn up against his breast, quite useless. Had it been me, I would have left the army, I think, but Patrick Ferguson was not one to be dictated to, even by fate.

  “I stayed there a year, and I taught myself to write and to wield a sword left-handed, and to use that remaining good arm for everything. I told them I was fit to command in the field again, but nobody wanted me in the northern command, so I was banished south to this godforsaken place to recruit Loyalists for the cause, while Banastre Tarleton piles up the military honors with his dragoons. I will show them, though; by God, I will. I will defeat these Backwater Men, and prove that there’s more to commanding a regiment than having two good arms. Go
d will give me a sign, so that I will know that victory is nigh.”

  He was mumbling by now, and his Scots burr thickened. He downed the last dram of his whiskey, and his eyes fluttered shut.

  Virginia Paul touched my arm, and inclined her head toward the opening of the tent. I followed her out into the cold night air, and we slipped away, leaving the major to his dreams of past and future glory.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  October 6, 1780

  By the time Edward Lacey had said his farewells and ridden away, the sky had lightened to that purple hue that signals the coming of daybreak. The night air was still cold, and I thought longingly of my feather bed back in my house over the mountain, and of Catherine, burrowed down under a pile of quilts, waiting for me to come home. No one would be getting any more sleep tonight. It was time to assemble the men chosen to go forward, and to make our way south to the rich Tory’s cow pens. We reckoned we had twenty miles or so to go before we reached it, but we would travel faster now without so many foot soldiers to slow us down. We reckoned to be there before nightfall.

  By the time Campbell, Cleveland, Winston, McDowell, Shelby, and I had finished culling the weak and weary from the ranks of our militias, we had about seven hundred men to make the last leg of our long journey. I was torn between wanting it all to be over and hoping for one more day so that we could all get some rest before we had to fight.

  We were just finishing our morning rations, and getting ready to douse the campfires when the sentries called out that there were riders coming into camp. Ferguson has brought the fight to us, I thought, and the same idea must have pervaded the camp, for every man I saw was reaching for his rifle, and getting ready to make a stand against the enemy. No shots were fired, though, for before we could take any action, the message was relayed from sentries to officers across the field: The riders were our allies, come to join us in our pursuit of Ferguson.

  While Major Tipton and my brother Valentine were keeping the men in order, I hurried away to join the other commanders and see if the newcomers had brought news as well as reinforcements. I found Joseph McDowell on his way to Campbell’s encampment. “Who are these new arrivals?” I asked him. “Have you heard?”

  “One of the sentries said he thought it might be Clarke.”

  We soon learned that it wasn’t Clarke himself, but some thirty of his men who had come to join us led by Colonel Graham, along with another two dozen troops under the command of Major William Chronicle, another Catawba Valley patriot.

  “Well, that will swell the ranks,” said Shelby, who had ridden up to see what was going on. “I feel better about leaving some of my ailing men now that we have fresh troops to replace them.”

  “Let your sick ones give their powder and their horses, if they have them, to the able-bodied men that are going with you,” I said. “We need supplies and mounts as much as we need soldiers.”

  The march was delayed long enough for us to confer with Major Chronicle, and to let him know that we were meeting Hill and Lacey at the Cowpens this evening. Chronicle agreed to this plan, and ordered his men to join the rest of the militias. At last we were ready to resume the journey. The men who were well enough to fight, but who had no horses, were left behind under the command of a Wilkes County officer, Maj. Joseph Herndon. He was to bring these foot soldiers along in our wake, making as good a progress as they could.

  The scouts rode out ahead of us to make sure that we didn’t stumble into an ambush, and I saw Enoch Gilmer setting out on foot, with his hat pulled down over his ears, and a rolling gait that made him look like the rustic simpleton he was pretending to be. I hoped his disguise would serve him well, and would bring us news of Ferguson’s whereabouts.

  We had gone only a few miles when one of the scouts came galloping back up the trace, and headed for the clump of officers riding together. “Tories up ahead, sirs!” he called out. “A passel of ’em.”

  Shelby and I both looked at Campbell. It was hard to defer decisions to him when I was used to command myself, but so far I had no complaints about his judgment. He had not made any choices that I wouldn’t have made myself.

  “Is it Ferguson?” he said to the scout.

  The fellow—one of Chronicle’s men—shook his head. “Just locals as far as I can tell. But there’s more’n a hundred, mounted and armed.”

  “Probably on their way to join up with Ferguson,” said Shelby.

  “How far from here?” said Campbell, still speaking to the scout.

  The rider considered it. “Couple of miles, but down a different road. They look to be heading northeast, not south.”

  “Thank you, soldier,” said Campbell. “You’re dismissed. Ride on out again, and keep us apprised.” When the scout was out of earshot, Campbell turned to us. “Well, gentlemen, is anybody spoiling for a fight?”

  Shelby shook his head. “I reckon I am,” he said, “but not at that price.”

  “It isn’t Ferguson,” I said. “We could attack them and win, but it would cost us powder and shot, and, above all, time. And if we stopped to fight them, word might get to Ferguson about our whereabouts, and we don’t want to meet him until we have the South Carolina militias with us. At least, that’s what I think. You asked for our opinion, Colonel Campbell. Well, there’s mine.”

  William Campbell smiled. “Colonel Shelby, are you of the same mind?”

  “I am, sir. Shall we ask the other commanders? I’d wager they’ll tell you the same.”

  “Well, since you all put me in command, I needn’t ask them,” said Campbell. “As it happens, I agree with you. I think we would be wasting precious time if we allowed ourselves to be distracted by these local Tories. And every minute that passes increases the chances that Cornwallis will send Tarleton’s dragoons to the aid of Major Ferguson. We will fare better if we can catch him before that can happen. I say we ride on, and avoid the temptation of a lesser skirmish. Are we agreed, then?”

  We nodded, and rode on for a while in silence. Making a decision is easier than living with it. Sometimes you don’t find out until later whether or not you made the right choice, but I had to believe that we did act wisely, for second-guessing yourself only saps your courage and makes you slow to act. You decide, and you move on, and the devil take the hindmost.

  The march went on without incident, although a few miles farther along, a scout again reported the presence of enemy troops in the area, but again we refused to be led into temptation, and we plodded on into South Carolina under gradually darkening skies and an insistent wind that turned over the leaves of the trees.

  “It’s going to rain,” said Cleveland, who was riding beside me at the time. “My knee is aching, and that’s always a sure sign that the weather is changing. Besides, the leaves are showing their undersides. Never fails.”

  I nodded. “We’re on the move, though. Maybe the storm isn’t going our way.”

  Cleveland looked up at the sky, an unbroken blanket of clouds stretching as far as we could see. “No matter which way we go, that storm will be there.”

  Chronicle’s men knew the area well enough to guide us, and by late afternoon we heard the bawling of cattle, and we saw a wide green meadow ringed by trees and stock pens with cornfields stretching away to the river. We had reached the field of cow pens, belonging to Hiram Saunders, the wealthy Tory that Lacey had spoken of, but when we arrived neither the farm workers nor the owner himself was anywhere to be seen. Perhaps they had been warned that a large enemy force was approaching the land, and they had made themselves scarce. Better to lose a few of their cattle than to risk being harmed. We met with no resistance, and we set up camp in the great field without incident.

  Once we had determined that the area was undefended and therefore safe for an encampment, we settled down on the grass to rest and to await the arrival of Lacey’s militia. The men were hungry as well as tired, though. For most of a week we had lived on parched corn and whatever we could scavenge from the farms and forests along the way
, so straightaway Campbell ordered some men to shoot a few of the cows so that we could have one good meal before we had to continue the journey. We also sent others to forage in the cornfield to get food for the horses.

  Within the hour, the men had built campfires, and the wind carried the smell of roasting beef across the field. Just at twilight, Edward Lacey appeared with his militia and the troops of Colonel Hill, and trailing them at a remove of a couple of hundred yards were the men under the command of James Williams, the scoundrel who had tried to send us all the way to Ninety Six for his own benefit.

  I had left my horse to graze near the river, and Isaac Shelby and I were stretching our legs by walking around the field, not so much inspecting the troops as encouraging them and assuring them that our quest would soon be over, for it was important to keep up their spirits. When we saw our reinforcements arrive, Shelby and I began to walk toward Campbell’s campsite where all the commanders would soon confer, but we proceeded at a leisurely pace, because we had things to talk about between ourselves.

  “We are now in the state of South Carolina,” Shelby observed.

  “I know it,” I said. “Mighty warm here for October.”

  “Mighty warm,” Shelby agreed. “And you also know that James Williams claims to have a commission from Governor Rutledge making him a general.”

  “Yes. He waves that paper around like a boy with a toy flag. What of it?”

  Shelby waited a few moments before he answered. Finally he said, “Well, if Williams is a South Carolina general, and we are now in South Carolina, then according to military protocol, that means James Williams is entitled to be the commanding officer of this expedition, does it not?”

  I turned the problem over in my mind, determined to find another solution. According to military protocol, that was indeed the correct answer, but to my mind it was by no means the right one. Choosing my words carefully, I said, “I think military protocol is beside the point, Shelby. We are not enlisted in the Continental Army. Our militias are made up of men who serve of their own free will, and because they trust the leader they have agreed to follow. If my men were ordered to follow that scoundrel Williams, I reckon they would all turn around and start for home, and I can’t say that I would blame them!”