I saw all this like flashes of lightning, while I loaded and fired my weapon, almost without conscious thought to my actions, and all the while in the back of my mind I was searching the field for a man in a checkered hunting shirt, astride a white horse.
Smoke … the roar of the weapons … the smell of blood and burnt powder …
Shelby’s men, Campbell’s, and mine all came together at the edge of the summit, all of us firing as we went, pushing forward to the northeast, toward Ferguson’s tents and supply wagons. McDowell’s Burke County boys and Cleveland’s Wilkes militia were driving forward from their positions to the right and left of us, and Chronicle’s men had emerged on the opposite end of the ridge, behind the wagons. We had made a noose and now we were slowly closing it around Ferguson’s men.
Suddenly, from amidst a crowd of riflemen and mounted officers perhaps fifty yards away, I caught a glimpse of a white horse. The rider, a slight fellow in a red-checked hunting shirt, was urging the horse forward and down the slope, and four other horsemen trailed behind him, but no one had a thought to spare for them. Our quarry was the man on the white horse, and we had been searching for him for nearly an hour. Now he was on the run, and if he managed to break through our line, he would be down the hill and clattering up the trace toward Charlotte Town before we could stop him.
But we all knew who we were looking for, and as soon as he broke away from the cluster of his own troops, he headed for the steep slope on the opposite end of the ridge from where we had come up. A dozen men, mostly Burke County militiamen who were closest to his position, were aiming their weapons at the retreating form of Maj. Patrick Ferguson, as he urged his mount to take the slope at full speed.
One man might have missed his mark, but our men are hunters, sharpshooters, and Indian fighters, and their lives depend on their aim. The years of practice and experience served them well. The guns spat little bursts of flame, and the man shook with the force of the bullets as they struck him, tumbling from his horse. One booted foot caught in the stirrup, but Ferguson was past being able to free himself. The frightened animal plunged on down the hill dragging its rider, while several Redcoats chased the beast, grabbing for its reins in order to free their fallen commander. Within a few yards they had managed to stop its flight, and disentangle Ferguson’s foot from the stirrup. They carried him the rest of the way down the hill, and set him down next to the little stream that ran along the bottom of the slope.
The major lay motionless where his comrades placed him, with puddles of blood staining the checkered hunting shirt. The fatal wound was the one to his head. He twitched for a few moments, as if he were trying to get to his feet, but after a few moments he fell back and lay still.
I saw none of this, for my militia was still fighting its way across that long swath of ridge, heading for the encampment at the other end. But I heard the story so many times in the aftermath that the image etched itself into my memory, so that it became indistinguishable from things I really had seen and heard.
At the time that Ferguson was shot by McDowell’s men, a great cheer went up from those who were near enough to have witnessed it, and word quickly spread that the Tory commander was dead.
There was no time for any of us to dwell on this, though, for the battle was still raging around us. Patrick Ferguson was dead. That object of our mission had been accomplished. But we still had to end the fighting and get down off this mountain and home alive.
Battles are easier to start than they are to stop.
Another Redcoat officer, whom I took to be Ferguson’s second in command, seemed to be trying to rally his men, but they, too, had heard the shouts announcing Ferguson’s demise, and at this news, many of them were in disarray, not knowing what to do next. Some of them had thrown down their weapons—they had run out of ammunition.
Finally, the officer now in charge must have decided that it was useless to continue fighting—or perhaps he had wanted to surrender long before, but was unable to persuade the proud Major Ferguson to do so. He must have realized that he could keep going and sacrifice more of his men, but no strategy or rallying charge could change the outcome of the engagement. The officer produced a white flag and waved it in our direction, signaling the Tories’ surrender. Others, seeing his action, took out white flags of their own, and waved them at the approaching troops.
But it takes time to stop seven hundred men who have spent the past hour fighting for their lives. They cannot hear shouted orders for the echoes of gunfire still ringing in their ears. Some cannot see the white flag, because they are looking at a soldier whose weapon is pointed at them, or the smoke obscures the scene, or they are out of the line of sight of the scene of surrender. And maybe some of them knew full well that the enemy had yielded, but, with the countersign of “Buford” fresh in their minds, they decided to give the Tories what we had come to call “Tarleton’s Quarter,” which is no quarter at all.
Cries of “Buford!” and “Tarleton’s Quarter” rang out across the ridge, and the crack of gunfire went on.
The militia commanders attempted to stop the battle, shouting orders for a cease-fire, but for several long minutes, the shooting continued, and men who had laid down their arms died needlessly. Shelby even rode up between the Tory troops and our own troops in order to force them to stop fighting. He shouted for the Tories to lay down their arms, and he ordered our men to cease fire. The rest of us attempted to restore order to our own militias.
Finally the word spread, and little by little the firing faded to random shots from here and there across the ridge. I was heading down to inspect the body of Ferguson, when Major Tipton ran up and grabbed the reins of my horse. “You must come back, Colonel! He thinks you are dead, and he won’t stop shooting.”
“Who? Who won’t stop shooting?”
“Your son. Joseph.”
I dismounted, and followed Tipton back to the part of the ridge where the Watauga boys were situated. “Joseph?” I said. “But why should he think that I had been killed?”
“He misheard. Someone shouted that Sevier had been shot, and he thought it was you, sir.”
Something in his voice made me shiver. “Tell me, Major.”
His eyes met mine, and I could see that he wished he didn’t have to be the one to say it. “It’s Robert. He was hit in the back early on. He’s still alive, though. We’ll get the surgeon to see to him. But Joseph—”
“I’ll see to him,” I said. “Thank you, Major.”
I was running now, toward the sound of the crack of rifle fire. At the edge of the ridge, Joseph was standing with his back against a tree, caked with dirt and sweat, but apparently uninjured. He was weeping, and trying to aim his weapon between heaving sobs, and I heard him crying out, “They killed my daddy! I’ll get every one of ’em.”
“Joseph! Stop this now.”
At the sound of my voice, the boy turned toward me, and I saw streaks of tears across the dirt on his cheeks. Slowly he lowered his Deckard rifle, staring at me as if I were an apparition. “But they told me … I heard—”
“Yes. It’s your uncle Robert. You need to find him and see that a doctor tends to him. I have to see about the surrender now, so I am trusting you to do this. When I can join you, I will.”
I wanted nothing more than to turn my back on the aftermath of the battle and tend to my family, but when I accepted the job of militia commander, I had given up the right to put personal feelings ahead of duty. I told myself that if Robert was still alive, his wound could not be too serious. I would see to him as soon as I could.
Then I trotted back across the field to where the Tory army was penned in, some eight hundred of them, or what was left of that number, crowded on the last two hundred feet of the plateau, caught between the half circle of supply wagons and our own militias who surrounded their position.
Colonel Shelby and his brother Evan were standing beside the Redcoat officer who had first signaled for surrender. I dismounted and as I approached th
em, Isaac Shelby turned to look at me, and I blurted out, “By God, they have burnt off your hair!” The left side of his head was scorched and the hair singed away by the gunfire that had swirled around him.
Shelby simply nodded, and then, returning to the matter at hand, he said, “Colonel Sevier, may I present Captain DePeyster, who is the ranking officer for his troops now. Captain, I am glad to see you.”
DePeyster muttered something about not being glad to see Shelby, but he drew his sword and held it out. It was Major Evan Shelby who took it from him, and he also seized the enemy’s flag.
Sporadic shots still continued to ring out. Off to one side of me, I glimpsed a light-colored coat, and I knew it to be that of Colonel Campbell. Sure enough, he was at my side a moment later. “We must get them to stop firing,” he murmured to me. “I will see to it.”
The defeated Tories had laid down their weapons, but they were huddled together, near a pile of bodies, and now and then one of them would be hit by a bullet and fall to the ground. Campbell approached them, waving his hands to get their attention. “All you who have surrendered, sit down!” he shouted. “Then we will know that you are no longer in the fight.”
After a moment’s hesitation, the prisoners began to obey this order, and when all of them were seated on the damp ground, Campbell turned to the soldiers nearest our position—McDowell’s men and Cleveland’s, I think—and he called out, “Send up a cheer of joy and thanks for this victory. The day is ours!”
Those within earshot of Campbell took up the cry first. “Hurrah for liberty!” Then the troops farther away heard it and joined in, until the cheer echoed around us, drowning out other, more terrible sounds, like the cries of the wounded.
When the cheering had faded away, a silence fell across that plateau. Now that the battle was won, all the other thoughts that had been tamped down into the darkest corners of our minds were allowed to seep back. Who of our comrades had died in the fighting? Who was wounded? And perhaps some of our number remembered to give prayerful thanks to the Almighty for our deliverance.
For the space of a minute, exhausted as we were from the night march and the rigors of battle, we stood there lost in the silence.
And then a shot rang out.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
October 7, 1780
One single shot broke the stillness. But fired by whom? Our men had been ordered to cease firing, and they had shouted the victory cheer, signaling the end of the fighting. They knew it was over. We all looked toward the Tories who had surrendered, but they were still clumped together where Colonel Campbell had told them to sit, with their weapons stacked a few feet away. They looked as shocked as I felt.
Scarcely had these thoughts had time to form in my brain before a voice cried out, “I’m a gone man!”
I looked to the north side of the ridge, just beyond the encampment, in time to see James Williams sway in his saddle and pitch forward. One of his men ran to the horse’s side, and caught Williams as he fell. Moments later, more of his followers were easing him down from the saddle, and shoulder high they carried him up to the camp and into one of the Tories’ tents, calling out for a surgeon to attend their fallen leader.
I looked a question at Shelby, and he nodded, but neither of us spoke. James Williams. In the days before the battle he had been a nuisance, threatening the mission with his chicanery. First he had tried to take over Graham’s command, and then he had come into our camp and tried to make us march nearly to Georgia by claiming that Ferguson had gone to Ninety Six—Williams’s home territory—simply because he wanted us there to fight his personal battles against his Loyalist neighbors. Had we believed him and continued south, we would have missed Ferguson, and given him time to join forces with Tarleton. His trickery could have killed us all.
Yet even though we had shunned him and left him out of the commanders’ meetings, he had stayed on. With his hundred followers, Williams had taken his place in the assault on the ridge, midway between the troops of Shelby and Cleveland, and I reckon he had fought as bravely as anyone. The victory was his, too.
He had lived through the battle, seen the surrender, shouted the cheer of victory—and then some unseen marksman had shot him out of the saddle.
I heard Campbell shout out orders for the men to fire into the crowd of Tory soldiers, and most of them were happy to oblige. They fired shot after shot at the helpless prisoners, and perhaps two score of their number fell wounded or dying into the wet leaves.
All this took only a minute or two, and by then Shelby came to the fore again, demanding that the shooting be stopped. The prisoners were still an arm’s length away from their weapons, and he ordered them to stand up and move away from their guns. They did so, and in another minute or two, the crackle of gunfire ceased, thanks to Shelby’s insistence, added to the fact that the Tories were obviously disarmed and defenseless. The battle was over. To shoot an unarmed enemy now would be not war, but murder.
Benjamin Cleveland stumped across the plateau and joined us. “They shot my horse, the blackguards!” he wheezed. “Roebuck. Finest horse in the county. Now how am I supposed to get home?”
I looked at him—red-faced, and wheezing, and three hundred pounds if he was an ounce—and indeed I could not imagine him getting much farther than the bottom of this hill on foot. But before we could pursue the subject of his dead mount, Shelby said, “At least you’re unharmed yourself, Colonel Cleveland. My brother was shot—he’s down there by the stream now, waiting for the surgeon.”
I had just seen Major Evan Shelby, so I knew that it was the youngest brother, Moses, who had been wounded. I nodded. “My brother was shot as well. Not Valentine. Robert. When we get everything settled down here, I need to see to him. I lost two or three good men—John Browne, Michael Mahoney, and William Steele—and a few others are wounded.”
“We must find a good surgeon to tend the wounded.”
“Who else did we lose?”
“We have appointed some men to number the dead, so we shall know more when they have finished their accounting. From what I can tell, perhaps fifty of our men killed in all,” said Shelby. “A goodly number wounded. Poor Major Chronicle, whose hunting camp this was, died leading his men to the summit. His old hunting companion Captain Mattocks was killed as well.”
“Brave fellows,” I said. “Theirs was the hardest climb.”
Shelby nodded. “And nearest to the encampment. Lieutenant Colonel Hambright, who assumed command after Chronicle fell, is wounded in the thigh, but he is a tough old rooster, and he bids fair to recover.”
“I hear that we also lost the spy Enoch Gilmer,” said Cleveland.
We were silent for a moment, remembering the larking about of just a few hours ago, when my officers had hauled him out of a Tory farmhouse, pretending that they were going to hang him. How strange are the ways of Providence that in those carefree moments, Gilmer had only hours left to live.
* * *
A cry went up from the tent where the South Carolina boys had carried James Williams. A young man, who looked about the age of my James, pushed his way through the tent flap, his face streaked with tears. “It’s bad,” he said. “He’s hurt real bad.”
The men who had followed Williams into battle in spite of everything began to weep openly. He had the loyalty of his followers, and that was a testimonial to his life as much as anything. In this battle, at least, he had been trustworthy and brave.
I looked at Shelby and Cleveland. “Williams was shot after the enemy had surrendered their weapons. They were all sitting there together in front of us.”
“A stray bullet from one of the soldiers who was still shooting?” Shelby said this in a toneless voice, his face carefully blank.
We were thinking the same thing: someone—perhaps one of Hill’s men—had not forgiven or forgotten the attempt of Colonel Williams to assume command. Perhaps someone had hoped that Williams would be killed in the battle, and when that did not happen, he had taken advanta
ge of the confusion and the continuing gunfire to deliver his own form of retribution. James Williams was shot by one of our own men—there was not a doubt in my mind about that.
After an awkward moment of silence, Ben Cleveland spoke up, his face alight with eagerness. “It was them foragers, boys!” he declared. “Didn’t you see them? Down at the bottom of the ridge, a party of Tory foragers rode up just as the battle was ending. I expect Ferguson had sent them out earlier in the day for supplies. They returned too late to aid their side in the fighting, but one of them got off a shot at a likely target on horseback, and it happened to be Williams who was hit. Then they faded away again into the woods. Didn’t you see them?”
Shelby and I shook our heads. And neither did you, I thought. But Cleveland’s hopeful theory was both plausible and unverifiable, and I found myself trying to conjure up an image of those Tory foragers in my mind’s eye.
“It must have happened that way,” Shelby said solemnly.
Yes, I thought, when we tell the story of the shooting of James Williams, we must say it happened that way, because the truth would tarnish our victory. A troublesome officer shot by some resentful compatriot would make a sorry footnote to this glorious day.
“Foragers,” I said. “If he dies, it will be a tragic end to a fine soldier.” In that event, we would speak well of him, and praise his valor, and mourn his loss—in public and in print, that is—but I confess I would like him better dead.
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