King's Mountain

by Sharyn McCrumb

  My brother shook his head. “I’m sure he’s a daisy, Jack, but I can’t take his advice. All the rest of you will be heading out tomorrow. I don’t want to be alone and helpless down here at the enemy’s back door. I want to get home. I want to see my boys. Keziah can take care of me.”

  I looked over at the doctor. He met my gaze with a shrug and an expressionless stare. He was a Redcoat: it was no business of his what the rebels did. Or perhaps he had enough experience with headstrong patients to know that you cannot talk them out of a course of action if they are dead set upon it. After a moment’s silence, he said, “Well, I have done all I can for your brother, Colonel. I hope he makes it. Now, by your leave, I’d like to go and tend to the rest of the wounded.”

  “You’ll have a long night of it,” I said.

  He nodded. “I hope so. I hope they live long enough for me to get to them.”

  I thanked him, and he made his way back up the hill, where most of the dead and injured lay. He would have a long night, I knew, for there were perhaps a hundred men in need of his care. Our work was done, but his was just beginning.

  * * *

  By sunset, fatigue had caught up with us, although we still had much to do in the aftermath of the battle: bodies to bury, spoils of war to parcel out, prisoners to be dealt with, and wounded men to be seen to. We had done very little of any of it before darkness came. Some of the men took it at turns to stand guard in case Cornwallis had sent reinforcements to Ferguson. After the long march, a day and a half without sleep, and then the battle, we were too weary even to quit the field to make camp. As gruesome as it sounds, we simply lay down on that same ground we had fought on, and slept there amongst the dead and the dying. It felt like reliving the battle over again. Our exhaustion was our salvation, though, for even had we wanted to heed the cries of the suffering, fatigue pulled us into oblivion, for a few hours at least.

  The last thing I remember is seeing a little lantern bobbing across the field, as Uzal Johnson made his way from patient to patient amongst the dead and dying.

  Come sunup, it was quieter.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  October 8, 1780

  The morning after the battle, I awoke on the cold ground of the battlefield, roused more by hunger and sunshine than because I was rested. As I sat up, blinking through the mists at the pale morning sunshine, I heard shrill cries that sounded like women weeping. I scrambled to my feet and looked across the field, where the wounded still lay, mingled with the dead. In the distance through the swirling morning mist, I could see a crowd of people wandering along the ridge, stooping to turn over bodies for a look at their faces, and crying piteously as they went. In my half-waking state, I thought of spirits of the dead, still roaming the place where they had died, but an instant later, I was fully awake, and I knew who they were: the inhabitants of the nearby farms, who had come in search of sons and husbands who had fought in the battle. Many of those who fought here—for both armies—came from settlements within a few miles of King’s Mountain. Some had come unwillingly, for we had heard tales of the Tories forcing men into service. These people must have waited by their firesides through a long night, not knowing the fate of husband, son, or brother, and now at first light they had ventured here to learn the worst.

  As the women wandered over the battlefield, searching for a familiar face amongst the dead and dying, their screams and lamentations drowned out the cries of the wounded, and bid fair to be louder than the battle itself—or perhaps it only seemed so to me because I had less to distract me now. Some of these people set about to do what they could for the wounded, fetching water and dressing wounds. I suspect that others were there to rob the dead, out for what profit they could make from the misfortunes of others, but we had no time to spare for such concerns.

  There would be no time to recover from the march and the fighting, not with Charlotte Town and the army of Cornwallis a day’s ride away. Word was sure to reach them soon, and they might come after us to avenge Ferguson. We had to make ready to move out.

  We killed some of the Tory cattle, though there were precious few of them for so many mouths to feed, and we took whatever food we could find for our morning rations. On our journey across the mountains and down to King’s Mountain, while we were eating parched corn, half-cooked meat, and whatever else we could scavenge, the men had kept themselves going by imagining the splendid feast we would have once we took possession of the Tories’ food supply, but once we had it, we were disappointed to find that Ferguson’s army had little more to eat than we did. The Carolina border country had been picked clean by the predations of the various armies until there was almost nothing left to take. We would go hungry a while longer.

  After that hasty and meager breakfast, we began the business of tying up the loose ends, to make ready for our departure.

  We assigned some of the men to burial detail, first to inter the fifty of our own men who had perished in the fighting. The enemy dead numbered more than two hundred, and there would not be time to properly bury them all before we needed to move out. Colonel Campbell announced that he and some of his men would stay behind to finish the task, and they would rejoin us as soon as they could finish their grisly labors.

  Some other soldiers spent the early morning hours fashioning litter poles out of stout tree limbs and blankets so that we could transport the most gravely wounded. My brother Robert had refused this means of conveyance, though, and insisted on being given his horse.

  Early in the day we had a family conclave to try once more to reason with him, for though he had insisted yesterday upon going home, I had hoped that a night to consider it might change his mind. It had not.

  “The rest of us can’t go straight home, Bob,” I told him. “If we could we’d give you an escort, but we have eight hundred prisoners to contend with. Still, it’s dangerous for you to try to make a long ride with a bullet in your back.”

  Valentine nodded. “Jack is right. Wouldn’t it be better if you stayed hereabouts for a while? That Hambright fellow lives somewhere near here. He could keep an eye on you until we could come back this way.”

  Robert looked worse than he had yesterday for despite the whiskey Joseph found for him, he had slept little the night before, and the effects of the wound were beginning to take hold. There were dark shadows under his eyes, and though he was the youngest of us, he looked a decade older.

  My sons Joseph and James had joined us on the hillside, but they knew better than to say anything in this discussion. They gnawed at their food, big-eyed and solemn, while their elders debated the fate of their uncle.

  I wished I could simply order Robert to bed rest in a nearby farmhouse, for after all he was but a captain and I was the colonel in command of our militia, but though I outranked him both in war and in the family, Robert paid little heed to me on this matter. In the face of my arguments, coupled with Joseph’s and Valentine’s, he set his jaw in a mulish scowl and said, “I’m going home, boys. Just fetch me my horse, and some of the rations and gunpowder, and I’ll be off.”

  I looked at Valentine and Joseph, hoping for more brotherly support, but they simply shrugged. Glancing nervously at me, Joseph said, “Well, Bob may be right about the Redcoats swooping in from Charlotte Town. Maybe he could get a little farther away from here, and then rest up where it’s safer.”

  Robert shook his head. “I’m going home.”

  There was no reasoning with him, and no way that the rest of us could abandon the militia to escort him home. I could tell, though, that his mind was made up, and we could argue all day without making a dent in his resolve. I thought the matter over for a few moments. “All right,” I said at last. “For the last time, I tell you that I wish you would not do this. But if you are hell-bent to get back over the mountain, then I will let James accompany you.”

  The boy brightened at the mention of his name, because he had always set a store by his Uncle Bob, who was a scant fifteen years older than he. Joseph, two years
the elder of James, opened his mouth to protest my decision, but then he closed it again. He had probably intended to argue that as the more mature of my sons, he ought to be given the responsibility of looking after Bob, but then he must have remembered his behavior in the aftermath of the battle, when he had shot at the defenseless prisoners in a fit of anger over the rumor of my death. My choice of James was not a punishment for Joseph’s rashness, but it was a consequence of it.

  I turned again to my injured brother. “Mind you, Bob, this pup of mine is only sixteen, and he’ll be little help protecting you from Redcoat soldiers if you happen to run into any, but I think you should be safe on that account. I wish I could send the surgeon along with you, but there’s only the one, and there are too many other wounded among the ranks to spare him.”

  Bob nodded. “He said himself that there’s nothing more he can do. If he tried to take the pellet out, I might die from that. I’ll take my chances on the trail. But I’d be glad of James’s company. He can round up food for us, and make a campfire, and that’s as much as I reckon I’ll need. Once we get past Quaker Meadows, it’ll be three or four days at most to make it home. We’ll make better time without an army and a herd of cattle to slow us down.” He looked over at the boys, sitting together on the slope under a stunted tree. “Do you think you can manage that, James?”

  The boy nodded, trying to temper his excitement with concern. He was being given a man’s share of responsibility, and he relished it, even though it came under circumstances he would never have wished for.

  Valentine spoke up. “One of Hambright’s men told me that there’s a Whig farm not too far from here. A fellow by the name of Finley. He told me where it was. Make for there, Bob, and don’t try to go any farther today.”

  “That’s fine, then,” said Bob. “We’ll find the Finley place. So, we’ll be off directly, boys. And we will meet up again over the mountain when you finally make it back.”

  I swallowed my doubts. “Sure we will,” I told my brother, clasping his hand. “Have a safe journey and take it slowly. We’ll get home just as soon as we can. Once we leave here, we’ll be moving slow enough, with eight hundred prisoners to slow us down, so you should be well ahead of us before long. There should be no need for you to hurry. Any pursuers Cornwallis sends will be coming after us.”

  Valentine touched my shoulder. “They’ll be needing you up the hill, Jack, so you go ahead and see to the preparations for the general decamping, and Joseph and I will get James and Robert ready to go.”

  I said my farewells and hurried up the ridge to where Major Tipton was waiting. I did not look back because I didn’t want to make too much of this parting. If I look back, I thought, I may never see Robert again.

  * * *

  The one diversion we permitted ourselves that morning as a reward for the victory was to cast lots among the commanders for the spoils of war. We did this as we ate our portion of the breakfast rations. Ben Cleveland had already received Ferguson’s fine white horse, to replace his own mount, which was killed in the battle. William Lenoir got the major’s sword with its silver handle, a beautiful weapon. Joseph McDowell got Ferguson’s china plates and an eggshell-thin coffee cup and saucer; we reckoned such fine goods were more suited to the splendor of Quaker Meadows than to our frontier cabins in the backcountry. Ferguson’s little silver whistle went to Isaac Shelby, and the major’s papers and his correspondence were given to William Campbell, who was more of a scholar than the rest of us. Ferguson’s silken sash and the sword of Captain DePeyster went to me.

  Other possessions of the defeated enemy—Tory horses, powder and shot, clothing and the like—were distributed among the rest of the men, who drew lots for them. Sharing the spoils is a custom of war as old as time; I had a fleeting thought of the Roman soldiers on Calvary, casting lots for the possessions of Jesus. I’m sure the comparison would have amused Ferguson, but it was not apt. Patrick Ferguson’s besetting sin, Pride, is of the devil, and, true to the adage, it went before a fall.

  “As much as we could use the supplies, we have to burn those baggage wagons,” Campbell was saying. “We cannot let them slow us down, and we can’t leave them for the Tories to recover, either. All agreed?”

  We nodded, but with heavy hearts, for in the backcountry we made or grew everything we had, except for salt and nails, and those we generally traded for. Passing up the enemy’s treasures was indeed a sacrifice, but it had to be done.

  “We’ll pull them across the burning campfires when we go,” said Shelby.

  “What about the prisoners?” said Cleveland. “There’s a veritable multitude of them. It’ll take us a week to hang them all.”

  There was a little silence, in which we carefully avoided looking at one another. We could settle that matter later. The sun was climbing higher in the sky, and we needed to be off.

  At last Campbell said, “We’ll herd them away like cattle, I suppose. Post guards to keep them from getting away. They’ll have to carry their own weapons, for we can’t do it for them, and we certainly cannot leave them here where other Tories might retrieve them.”

  Shelby said, “I’ll assign some men to collecting all the flints from their guns. Then they can carry them without endangering anybody. I have been looking over the captives this morning, and I find that I know some of these fellows. They fought with me at Musgrove Mill. When I saw them sitting there among the prisoners, I asked them how they came to be in Ferguson’s army, and they swore they had no choice. They had been rounded up and forced into service. I’ll vouch for them. We needn’t treat them like the others. They’ll be useful to help with the burying and perhaps do some of the guarding.”

  “All right,” said Campbell. “And the wounded prisoners? What of them?”

  “We can’t take them,” I said. “There’s only one surgeon still alive, and he’ll have his hands full looking after our own injured men.”

  Campbell nodded. “They’d be better off not having to go with us anyhow. Let’s take them with us off the ridge, and then leave them at some nearby farm. Some local Tory ought to think it is his duty to take them in. I suppose Cornwallis’s men can go and collect them when they get here. Perhaps that will slow them down in their pursuit of us.”

  McDowell turned to Campbell. “And I believe you said that you are remaining to oversee the burial detail?”

  Campbell nodded. “I am. We’ll do as much as we can, but we daren’t stay long enough to make a proper job of it. You see that hillock yonder, about eighty yards down from Ferguson’s headquarters? My men will dig a trench there, and we’ll put the bodies in together with blankets over them. Some of the prisoners can dig the trench for their own dead. It won’t be churchyard proper, but Cornwallis may already be heading this way, and the living must take precedence over the dead.”

  “And what of Major Ferguson?” I asked.

  “He is buried already,” said Campbell. “His orderly, a local man named Powell, said he spoke to you yesterday about burying his commander, and this morning I gave him leave and a few prisoners to help him. They wrapped him in the hide of one of the beeves we killed, and laid him to rest along with that unfortunate young woman who was caught in the crossfire.” He paused for a moment, and looked out across the field, which was still strewn with the bodies of the dead and the mortally wounded. He sighed and wiped his forehead.

  Cleveland understood the gesture, and smiled. “Winning a battle is a deal easier than cleaning up after one, isn’t it, Colonel?”

  * * *

  When we reached Gilbert Town on Wednesday, the eleventh, in order to give ourselves a rest from guarding the prisoners, we put some of them in a pen there in the town. Ferguson, when he had occupied Gilbert Town earlier in the summer, had used this same pen to imprison some Whigs, and we felt that this small act of retribution was well deserved.

  The news of our victory at King’s Mountain had preceded us, and many of the inhabitants of Gilbert Town came out to meet us with cheers and wor
ds of praise. A hunk of bread would have gone down a good deal better than empty words, but we thanked them for their good wishes. Others, who had been sure of a Tory victory, were frightened and sullen to see us coming in triumph from the battlefield. Some of them had friends and kinsmen among our prisoners.

  The townspeople came bearing news as well. A recently paroled soldier, newly arrived from imprisonment in South Carolina, approached Shelby, whom he remembered from a previous sojourn, with more grim tidings: “I was lucky to be let go, sir,” the fellow said, leaning against Shelby’s horse as if to prop himself up, and indeed he looked gaunt enough to warrant it. “I’m glad to hear that you’uns whupped Ferguson there at the King’s Mountain. I wish you could do away with the whole boiling of them while you’re about it. A few days back, the scoundrels done hanged eleven of our men down at Ninety Six, sir.”

  Shelby received this news tight-lipped, and with the briefest of thanks. The paroled soldier’s story was overheard by a number of those nearby, and they in turn spread the tale like fleas among their fellows. The rest of us heard it and the rumblings occasioned by it before we had progressed another half mile along the road, and we steered our mounts up alongside Campbell to consider what must be done.

  Nearing Bickerstaff’s Old Fields, Cleveland nodded with grim satisfaction. “I told you so, gentlemen. We must do something to even the score, before they take it out on the prisoners themselves.”

  Colonel Campbell sighed. It was evident that he wished there were some other way to bring peace to the militias, but he could see that nothing would answer but a show of retribution. “We are in North Carolina, whose laws I am not fully conversant with,” he said. “Can someone get a copy of the state statutes. I wish to determine how we may legally conduct a trial.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “Two magistrates may summon a jury, and forthwith try and, if found guilty, execute persons…” Campbell looked up from the statute in question in his compendium of North Carolina laws. “Well, that settles it, I think.”