the situation. A fortnight earlier Major Ferguson had captured two of
the over-mountain men of Clark's party and had sent them to the
settlement on the Watauga with a challenge in due form--or rather with
the threat to come and lay the over-mountain region waste in default of
an instant return of the pioneers to their allegiance to the king.
This challenge, so our scouts told us, had been immediately accepted.
Sevier and Shelby had embodied some two hundred men each from the
Watauga and the Holston settlements, and Colonel William Campbell, the
stout old Presbyterian Indian fighter, had joined them with as many more
Virginians.
Crossing the mountain these three troops had fallen in with other
scattered parties of the border patriots under Benjamin Cleaveland,
Major Chronicle and Colonel Williams, of South Carolina, until now, as
the scouts reported, the challenged outnumbered the challengers.
Learning this, Ferguson, who was as prudent as he was brave, thought it
best to make his stand at some point nearer the main body of the army;
and so the withdrawal from Gilbert Town had fallen into a retreat and a
pursuit.
From what Captain de Peyster has since told me, there would seem to be
little doubt that the major meant to fight when he had manoeuvered
himself into a favorable position; this in spite of Lord Cornwallis's
commands to the contrary. In his despatches he was continually urging
the need for a bold push in his quarter, and asking for Tarleton and a
sufficient number of the legion to enable him to cope with a mounted
enemy. But be this as it may, the garbled letter I had brought him
turned whatever scale there was to turn. He had now with him some eleven
hundred regulars and Tories, the latter decently well drilled; he had
every reason to expect the needed help from Cornwallis; and, on the
night of my arrival, he had word that another Tory force under Major
Gibbs would join him in a day or two, at farthest.
For his battle-ground Major Ferguson chose the top of a forest-covered
hill, the last and lowest elevation in the spur named that day King's
Mountain.
In some respects the position was all that could be desired. There was
room on the flat hilltop for an orderly disposition of the fighting
force; and the slopes in front and rear were steep enough to give an
attacking enemy a sharp climb. Moreover, there was a plentiful
outcropping of stone on the summit, scantiest on the broad or outer end
of the hill, and this was so disposed as to form a natural breastwork
for the defenders.
But there were disadvantages also, the chief of these being the heavy
wooding of the slopes to screen the advance of the assaulting party; and
while the major was busy making his dispositions for the fight, I was on
tenter-hooks for fear he would have the trees felled to belt the
breastwork with a clear space.
He did not do it, being restrained, as I afterward learned, by his
uncertainty as to whether or no the mountain men had cannon. Against
artillery posted on the neighboring hillocks the trees were his best
defense, and so he left them standing.
As you would suppose, my situation was now become most trying, and poor
Tybee's was scarcely less so. Knowing my name and circumstance, and
having, moreover, a high regard for my old field-marshal's genius, Major
Ferguson was very willing to make use of my experience. These askings
from one whom I knew for a brave and honorable gentleman let me fall
between two stools. As a patriot spy, it was my duty to turn the major's
confidence as a weapon against him. But as an officer and a gentleman I
could by no means descend to such depths of perfidy.
In this dilemma I sought to steer a middle course, saying that I must
beg exemption because my long hard ride had re-opened my old sword
wound--as indeed it had. So the major generously let me be, thus heaping
coals of fire upon my head; and I kept out of his way, consorting with
Tybee, who, like myself, must be an onlooker in the coming fray.
As for the lieutenant, he was all agog to learn more than I dared tell
him, and it irked him most nettlesomely to have a fight in prospect in
the which he was in honor bound not to take a hand. Time and again he
begged me to release him from his parole; and when I would not, he was
for fighting me a duel with his freedom for a stake.
"Consider of it, Captain Ireton," he pleaded. "For God's sake, put
yourself in my place. Here am I, in the camp of my friends, gagged and
bound by my word to you whilst your infernal plot, whatever it may be,
works out to the _coup de grâce_. Ye gods! it would have been far more
merciful had you run me through in our wrestling match last night!"
"Mayhap," said I, curtly. "'Twas but the choice between two evils.
Nevertheless, in time to come I hope you may conclude that this is the
lesser of the two."
"No, I'm damned if I shall!" he retorted, fuming like a disappointed
boy, and minding me most forcibly of my hot-headed Richard Jennifer. And
then he would repeat: "I thought you were my friend."
"So I am, as man to man. But this matter concerns the welfare of a cause
to which I have sworn fealty. Take your own words back, my lad, and put
yourself in my place. Can I do less than hold you to your pledge?"
"No, I suppose not," he would say, grumpily. "Yet 'tis hard; most
devilish hard!"
"'Tis the fortune of war. Another day the shoe may be upon the other
foot."
The baggage wagons had been massed across the broad end of the hill to
eke out the stone breastwork, and the last of these arguing colloquies
took place beneath one of the wagons whither we had crept for shelter
from the rain, which was now pouring again. In the midst of our talk,
Major Ferguson dived to share our shelter, dripping like a water
spaniel.
"Ha! ye're carpet soldiers, both of ye!" he snorted, and then he began
to swear piteously at the rain.
"'Twill be worse for the enemy than for us," said Tybee. "We can at
least keep our powder dry."
"Damn the enemy!" quoth the major, cheerfully. "So the weather does not
put the creeks up and hold Tarleton and Major Gibbs back from us, 'tis a
small matter whether the rebels' powder be dry or soaked."
"You have made all your dispositions, Major?" Tybee asked.
The major nodded. "All in apple-pie order, no thanks to either of ye.
'Tis a strong position, this, eh, Captain Ireton? I'm thinking not all
the rebel banditti out of hell will drive us from it."
"'Tis good enough," I agreed; and here the talk was broken off by the
major's diving out to berate some of his Tory militiamen who were
preparing to make a night of it with a jug of their vile country liquor.
The rain continued all that Friday night and well on into the forenoon
of the Saturday. During this interval we waited with scouts out for the
upcoming of the mountain men. At noon Major Ferguson sent a final
express to Lord Cornwallis, urging the hurrying on of the
reinforcements, not knowing that his former despatch had been
intercepted, nor that Tarleton had not as yet started to the rescue. A
little later the scouts began to come in one by one with news of the
approaching riflemen.
There was but a small body of them, not above a thousand men in all, so
the spies said, and my heart misgave me. They were without cannon and
they lacked bayonets; and moreover, when all was said, they were but
militia, all untried save in border warfare with the Indians. Could they
successfully assault the fortified camp whose defenders--thanks to the
major's ingenuity--had fitted butcher-knives to the muzzles of their
guns in lieu of bayonets? Nay, rather would they have the courage to
try?
'Twas late in the afternoon before these questions were answered. The
rain had ceased, and the chill October sunlight filtered aslant through
the trees. With the clearing skies a cold wind had sprung up, and on the
hilltop the men cowered behind the rock breastwork and waited in
strained silence. At the last moment Major Ferguson sent Captain de
Peyster to me with the request that I take command of the Tory force set
apart to defend the wagon barricade--this if my weariness would permit.
I went with the captain to make my excuses in person.
"Say no more, Captain," said this generous soldier, when I began some
lame plea for further exemption; "I had forgot your sword-cut. Take
shelter for yourself, and look on whilst we skin this riffraff alive."
And so he let me off; a favor which will make me think kindly of Patrick
Ferguson so long as I shall live. For now my work was done; and had he
insisted, I should have told him flatly who and what I was--and paid the
penalty.
I had scarce rejoined Tybee at the wagons when the long roll of the
drums broke the silence of the hilltop, and a volley fire of musketry
from the rock breastwork on the right told us the battle was on. Tybee
gave me one last reproachful look and stood out to see what could be
seen, and I stood with him.
"Your friends are running," he said, when there was no reply to the
opening volley; and truly, I feared he was right. At the bottom of the
slope, scattering groups of the riflemen could be seen hastening to
right and left. But I would not admit the charge to Tybee.
"I think not," I objected, denying the apparent fact. "They have come
too far and too fast to turn back now for a single overshot volley."
"But they'll never face the fire up the hill with the bayonet to cap it
at the top," he insisted.
"That remains to be seen; we shall know presently. Ah, I thought so;
here they come!"
At the word the forest-covered steep at our end of the hill sprang alive
with dun-clad figures darting upward from tree to tree. Volley after
volley thundered down upon them as they climbed, but not once did the
dodging charge up the slope pause or falter. Unlike all other irregulars
I had ever seen, whose idea of a battle is to let off the piece and run,
these mountain men held their fire like veterans, closing in upon the
hilltop steadily and in a grim silence broken only by the shouting
encouragements of the leaders--this until their circling line was
completed.
Then suddenly from all sides of the beleaguered camp arose a yell to
shake the stoutest courage, and with that the wood-covered slopes began
to spit fire, not in volleys, but here and there in irregular snappings
and cracklings as the sure-shot riflemen saw a mark to pull trigger on.
The effect of this fine-bead target practice--for it was naught
else--was most terrific. All along the breastwork, front and rear,
crouching men sprang up at the rifle crackings to fling their arms all
abroad and to fall writhing and wrestling in the death throe. At our end
of the hill, where the rock barrier was thinnest, the slaughter was
appalling; and above the din of the firearms we could hear the bellowed
commands of the sturdy old Indian fighter, Benjamin Cleaveland, urging
his men up to still closer quarters. "A little nearer, my brave boys; a
little nearer and we have them! Press on up to the rocks. They'll be as
good a breastwork from our side as from theirs!"
You will read in the histories that the Tory helpers of Ferguson fought
as men with halters round their necks; and so, indeed, a-many of them
did. But though they were most pitiless enemies of ours, I bear them
witness that they did fight well and bravely, and not as men who fight
for fear's sake.
And they were most bravely officered. Major Ferguson, boldly conspicuous
in a white linen hunting-shirt drawn on over his uniform, was here and
there and everywhere, and always in the place where the bullets flew
thickest. His left hand had been hurt at the first patriot gun fire, but
it still held the silver whistle to his lips, and the shrill skirling of
the little pipe was the loyalist rallying signal. Captain de Peyster,
too, did ample justice to the uniform he wore; and when Campbell's
Virginians gained the summit at the far end of the hilltop, 'twas de
Peyster who led the bayonet charge that forced the patriot riflemen
some little way down the slope.
But these are digressions. No man sees more of a battle than that little
circle of which he is the center; and the fighting was hot enough at the
wagon barricade to keep both Tybee and me from knowing at the time what
was going on beyond our narrow range of sight or hearing. You must
picture, therefore, for yourselves, a very devils' pandemonium let loose
upon the little hilltop so soon as the mountain men gained their vantage
ground at the fronting of the rock breastwork; cries; frantic shouts of
"God save the king!" yells fierce and wordless; men in red and men in
homespun rushing madly hither and yon in a vain attempt to repel a front
and rear attack at the same instant. 'Twas a hell set free, with no
quarter asked or given, and where we stood, the Tory defenders of the
wagon barrier were presently dropping around us in heaps and windrows of
dead and dying, like men suddenly plague-smitten.
In such a time of asking you must not think we stood aloof and looked on
coldly. At the first fire Tybee stripped off his coat and fell to work
with the wounded, and I quickly followed his lead, praying that now my
work was done, some one of the flying missiles would find its mark in me
and let me die a soldier's death.
So it was that I saw little more of the battle detail, and of that
fierce frenzy-time I have memory pictures only of the dead and dying;
of the torn and wounded and bleeding men with whom we wrought, striving
as we might to stanch the ebbing life-tide or to ease the dying gently
down into the valley of shadows.
And as for my prayer, it went all unanswered. Once when I had a dying
Tory's head pillowed on my knee I saw a rifleman thrust his weapon
between the wheel-spokes of the outer wagon and draw a bead on me. I
heard the crack of the Deckard, the _zip_ of the bullet singing at my
ear, and the man's angry oath at his missing of me. Once again a
rifle-ball passed through my hair at the braiding of the queue and I
felt the hot touch of it on my scalp like a breath of flame. Another
time a mountaineer leaped the rock barrier to beat me down with the butt
of his rifle--and in the very act Tybee rose up and throttled him. I saw
the grapple, sprang to my feet and whipped out my sword.
"Stop!" I commanded; "you have broken your parole, Lieutenant!"
The freed borderer glared from one to the other of us. "Loonies!" he
yelled; "I'll slaughter the both of ye!" And so he would have done, I
make no doubt, had we not laid hold of him together and heaved him back
over the breastwork.
These are but incidents, points of contact where the fray touched us two
at the wagon barricade. I pass them by with the mention, as I have
passed by the sterner horrors of that furious killing-time. These last
are too large for my poor pen. As we could gather in the din and
tumult, the mountain men rushed again and again to the attack, and as
often the brave major, or De Peyster, led the bayonet charges that
pushed them back. Yet in the end the unerring bullet outpressed the
bayonet; there came a time when flesh and blood could no longer endure
the death-dealing cross-fire from front and rear.
I saw the end was near when the major ordered the final charge, and
Captain de Peyster formed his line and led it forward at a double-quick.
The mountaineers held more than half the hilltop now, and this forlorn
hope was to try to drive them down the farther slopes. On it went, and I
could see the men pitch and tumble out of the line until at
bayonet-reach of the riflemen there were less than a dozen afoot and fit
to make the push.
De Peyster fought his way back to the wagons, gasping and bloody. Some
of the Tories crowding around us raised a white flag. The major, sorely
wounded now and all but disabled, swore a great oath and rode rough-shod
into the ruck of cowering militiamen to pull down the flag. Again the
white token of surrender was raised, and again the major rode in to beat
it down with his sword. At this Captain de Peyster put in his word.
"'Tis no use, Major; there is no more fight left in us! Five minutes
more of this and we'll be shot down to a man!"
Ferguson's reply was a raging oath broad enough to cover all the enemy
and his own beaten remnant as well; and then, before a hand could be
lifted to stay him, he had wheeled his horse and was galloping straight
for the patriot line at the farther extremity of the hilltop.
What he meant to do will never be known till that great day when all
secrets shall be revealed. For that furious oath was this brave
gentleman's last word to us or to any. A dozen bounds, it may be, the
good charger carried him; then the storm of rifle-bullets beat him from
the saddle. And so died one of the gallantest officers that ever did an
unworthy king's work on the field of battle.
I would I might forget the terrible scene which followed this killing of
the British commander. 'Twas little to our credit, but I may not pass it
over in silence. De Peyster quickly sent a man to the front with a white
flag, and the answer was a murderous volley which killed the flag-bearer
and many others. Again the flag was raised on a rifle-barrel, and once
more the answer was a storm of the leaden death poured into the
panic-stricken crowd huddled like sheep at the wagons.
"God!" said de Peyster; and with that he began to beat his men into line
with the flat of his sword in a frenzy of desperation, being minded, as
he afterward told me, to give them the poor chance to die a-fighting.
[Illustration]
I saw not what followed upon this last despairing effort, for now Tybee
was down and I was kneeling beside him to search for the wound. But when
I looked again, the crackling crashes of the rifle-firing had ceased.
A stout, gray-headed man, whom I afterward knew as Isaac Shelby's
father, was riding up from the patriot line to receive Captain de
Peyster's sword, and the battle was ended.
XL
VAE VICTIS
If my hand were not sure enough to draw you some speaking picture of
this our epoch-marking battle of King's Mountain, it falters still more
on coming to the task of setting forth the tragic horrors of the
dreadful after-night. Wherefore I pray you will hold me excused, my
dears, if I hasten over the events tripping upon the heels of the
victory, touching upon them only as they touch upon my tale.
But as for the stage-setting of the after-scene you may hold in your
mind's eye the stony hilltop strewn with the dead and dying; the huddle
of cowed prisoners at the wagon barricade; the mountaineers, mad with
the victor's frenzy, swarming to surround us. 'Twas a clipping from
Chaos and Night gone blood-crazed till Sevier and Isaac Shelby brought
somewhat of order out of it; and then came the reckoning.
Of the seven hundred-odd prisoners the greater number were Tories, many
of them red-handed from scenes of rapine in which their present captors
had suffered the loss of all that men hold dear. So you will not wonder
that there were knives and rifles shaken aloft, and fierce and vengeful
counsels in which it was proposed to put the captives one and all to the
cord and tree.
But now again Sevier and Shelby, seconded by the fiery Presbyterian,
William Campbell, flung themselves into the breach, pleading for delay
and a fair trial for such as were blood guilty. And so the dismal night,
made chill and comfortless by the cold wind and most doleful by the
groans and cries of the wounded, wore away, and the dawn of the Sunday
found us lying as we were in the bloody shambles of the hilltop.
With the earliest morning light the burial parties were at work; and
since the stony battle-ground would not lend itself for the trenching,
the graves were dug in the vales below. Captain de Peyster begged hard
for leave to bury the brave Ferguson on the spot where he fell, but
'twas impossible; and now, I am told, the stout old Scotsman lies side
by side with our Major Will Chronicle, of Mecklenburg, who fell just
before the ending of the battle.
The dead buried and the wounded cared for in some rough and ready
fashion, preparations were made in all haste for a speedy withdrawal
from the neighborhood of the battle-field. Rumor had it that Tarleton
with his invincible legion was within a few hours' march; and the
mountain men, sodden weary with the toils of the flying advance and the
hard-fought conflict, were in no fettle to cope with a fresh foe.
As yet I had not made myself known to the patriot commanders, having my
hands and heart full with the care of poor Tybee, who was grievously
hurt, and being in a measure indifferent to what should befall me.
But now as we were about to march I was dragged before the committee of
colonels and put to the question.
"Your uniform is a strange one to us, sir," said Isaac Shelby, looking
me up and down with that heavy-lidded right eye of his. "Explain your
rank and standing, if you please."
I told my story simply, and, as I thought, effectively; and had only
black looks for my pains.
"'Tis a strange tale, surely, sir,--too strange to be believable," quoth
Shelby. "You are a traitor, Captain Ireton--of the kind we need not
cumber ourselves with on a march."
"Who says that word of me?" I demanded, caring not much for that to
which his threat pointed, but something for my good name.
Shelby turned and beckoned to a man in the group behind him. "Stand out,
John Whittlesey," he directed; and I found myself face to face with that
rifleman of Colonel Davie's party who had been so fierce to hang me at
the fording of the Catawba.
This man gave his testimony briefly, telling but the bare truth. A week
earlier I had passed in Davie's camp for a true-blue patriot, this
though I was wearing a ragged British uniform at the moment. As for the
witness himself, he had misdoubted me all along, but the colonel had
trusted me and had sent me on some secret mission, the inwardness of
which he, John Whittlesey, had been unable to come at, though he
confessed that he had tried to worm it out of me before parting company
with me on the road to Charlotte.
I looked from one to another of my judges.
"If this be all, gentlemen, the man does but confirm my story," I said.
"It is not all," said Shelby. "Mr. Pengarvin, stand forth."
There was another stir in the backgrounding group and the pettifogger
edged his way into the circle, keeping well out of hand-reach of me. How
he had made shift to escape from Ferguson's men, to change sides, and to
turn up thus serenely in the ranks of the over-mountain men, I know not
to this day, nor ever shall know.
"Tell these gentlemen what you have told me," said Shelby, briefly; and
the factor, cool and collected now, rehearsed the undeniable facts: how
in Charlotte I had figured as a member of Lord Cornwallis's military
family; how I had carried my malignancy to the patriot cause to the
length of throwing a stanch friend to the commonwealth, to wit, one Owen
Pengarvin, into the common jail; how, as Lord Cornwallis's trusted
aide-de-camp, I had been sent with an express to Major Ferguson. Also,
he suggested that if I should be searched some proof of my duplicity
might be found upon me.
At this William Campbell nodded to two of his Virginians, and I was
searched forthwith, and that none too gently. In the breast pocket of my
hussar jacket they found that accursed duplicate despatch; the one I had
taken from Tybee and which had so nearly proved my undoing in the
interview with Major Ferguson.
Isaac Shelby opened and read the accusing letter and passed it around
among his colleagues.
"I shall not ask you why this was undelivered, sir," he said to me,
sternly. "'Tis enough that it was found upon your person, and it
sufficiently proves the truth of this gentleman's accusation. Have you
aught further to say, Captain Ireton?--aught that may excuse us for not
leaving you behind us in a halter?"
Do you wonder, my dears, that I lost my head when I saw how completely
the toils of this little black-clothed fiend had closed around me?
Twice, nay, thrice I tried to speak calmly as the crisis demanded. Then
mad rage ran away with me, and I burst out in yelling curses so hot they
would surely dry the ink in the pen were I to seek to set them down
here.