unnamed "sergeant," as the histories have it. Having neither a sword nor
the strength to wield one, the boy reined sharp to the left and pistoled
his man as neatly as you please. Seeing his fellow _sabreur_ drop his
weapon and clap his hand to the pistol-wound, my man hesitated just long
enough to let me in with the clumsiest of upcuts to spoil the muscles of
his sword arm. This transferred the duel to the two principals, who were
now at it, hammer and tongs. Both were good swordsmen, but of the twain
our colonel was far the cooler. So when Tarleton made to end it with a
savage thrust in tierce, Washington parried deftly and his point found
his antagonist's sword hand.
At this, Tarleton dropped his blade,--it hangs now over the
chimney-piece in Mr. Washington's town house in Charleston,--gave the
signal for flight, and the three Britons, each with a wound to nurse,
wheeled and galloped on. But in the act Tarleton snatched a pistol from
his holster and let drive at our colonel, wounding him in the knee, so
we did not come off scatheless.
This pistoling of Colonel Washington by the British commander skimmed a
little of the cream from our great and glorious victory. 'Twas no
serious hurt, but wanting it I make no doubt we should have ridden down
the flying dragoons, adding them, and their doughty colonel to boot, to
the five-hundred-odd prisoners we took.
The battle fought and won,--'twas over and done with two full hours
before noon,--Dan Morgan knew well what must befall, lacking the
swiftest after-doing on our part. With Greene near a hundred miles away,
and my Lord Cornwallis less than three hours' gallop to the southward on
Turkey Creek, the time was come for the hastiest welding of our little
army with that of the general-in-command; if, indeed, the promptest
running would take us to the upper fords of the Catawba before
Cornwallis should intervene and cut us off.
Accordingly, Jennifer and I were detailed to carry the news of the
victory to Greene's camp at Cheraw Hill; and when we rode away on the
warm trail of the flying British, we left Dan Morgan's men hard at it,
burning the heavy impedimenta of the capture, and otherwise making ready
for the swiftest of forced marches to the north.
'Twould be a thankless task to take you with us stage by stage on our
cross-country gallop to advertise General Greene of the victory at the
cow pastures. Suffice it to say that we made shift to turn the head of
the advancing British main, now in motion and hastening with all speed
to cut Dan Morgan off; that we were by turns well soaked by rain and
stream, deep mired in bogs, chased times without number by the enemy's
outriders, and hardshipped freely for food and horse provender before we
saw the camp on the Pedee. All this you may figure for yourselves, the
main point being that we came at length to the goal, weary,
mire-splashed and belted to the last buckle-hole to pinch down the
hunger pains, but sound of skin, wind and limb.
Having our news, which set the camp in a pretty furor of rejoicing, I
promise you, General Greene lost not an hour in making his dispositions.
Leaving Isaac Huger and Colonel Otho Williams in command at Cheraw, the
general sent Edward Stevens with the Virginians by way of Charlotte to
Morgan's aid, and himself took horse, with a handful of dragoons in
which Dick and I were volunteers, to ride post haste to a meeting with
Morgan at the upper fords.
Again I may pass lightly over an interval of three days spent hardily in
the saddle, coming at once to that rain-drenched thirty-first of
January, cold, raw and dismal, when we drew rein at Sherrard's Ford and
found Dan Morgan and his men safe across the Catawba with his prisoners,
and my Lord Cornwallis quite as safely flood-checked on the western bank
of the stream.
Having done our errand, Dick and I reported at once to our colonel.
'Twas of a piece with William Washington's goodness of heart to offer us
leave to rest.
"You have had weary work of it, I doubt not, gentlemen," he would say.
"Your time is your own until General Greene sets us in order for what he
has in mind to do."
I looked at Dick, and he looked at me.
"May we count upon twenty-four hours, think you, Colonel?" I asked.
"Safely, I should say."
"Then I shall ask leave of absence for Captain Jennifer and myself till
this time to-morrow," I went on. "This is our home neighborhood, as you
know, and we have a little matter of private business which may be
despatched in a day."
"Will this business take you without the lines?"
"That is as it may be, sir. I do not know the bounds of the outposting."
The colonel wrote us passes to come and go at will past the sentries,
and I drew Dick away.
"What is it, Jack?" he asked, when we were by ourselves.
"'Tis the fulfilling of my promise to you, Richard. Get your horse and
we will ride together."
"But whither?" he queried.
"To Appleby Hundred--and Mistress Margery."
XLVIII
HOW WE KEPT TRYST AT APPLEBY HUNDRED
'Twas late in the afternoon of the last day of January when we set out
together, Jennifer and I, from the camp of conference at Sherrard's
Ford.
The military situation, lately so critical for us, had reached and
passed one of its many subclimaxes. Morgan's little army, with its
prisoners still safe in hand, was on its way northward to
Charlottesville in Virginia, and only the officers remained behind to
confer with General Greene.
For the others, Huger and Williams were hurrying up from Cheraw to meet
the general at Salisbury; and General Davidson, with a regiment of North
Carolina volunteers, was set to keep the fords of the Catawba.
As for the British commander's intendings, we had conflicting reports.
Two days earlier, Lord Cornwallis had burned his heavy baggage at
Ramsour's Mill, and so we had assurance that the pursuit was only
delayed. But whether, when he should break his camp at Forney's
plantation, he would go northward after Morgan and the prisoners, or
cross the river at some nearhand ford to chase our main, none of our
scouts could tell us.
We were guessing at this, Richard and I, as we jogged on together down
the river road, and were agreed that could my Lord cross the flooded
river without loss of time, his better chance would be to fall upon our
main at Salisbury or thereabouts. But as to the possibility of his
crossing, we fell apart.
"Lacking another drop of rain, we are safe for forty-eight hours yet,"
Dick would say, pointing to the brimming river rolling its brown flood
at our right as we fared on. "And with two days' start we shall have him
burning more than his camp wagons to overtake us."
"Have it so, if you will," said I, to end the argument. "But this I
know: were Dan Morgan or General Greene, or you or I, in Lord
Cornwallis's shoes, the two days would not be lost."
Jennifer laughed. "Leave the rest of us out, Sir Hannibal Ireton, and
tell what you would do," he said, mocking me.
We were at that bend in the road where Jan Howart and his Tories had
sought to waylay us in the cool gray dawn of a certain June morning when
we were galloping this same road to keep my appointment with Sir Francis
Falconnet. A huge rock makes a promontory in the stream just here, and I
pointed to a water-worn cavity in it where the flood lapped in and out
in gurgling eddies.
"You've been sharp to take me up on my forgetting of the landmarks, but
there is one I've not forgot," said I. "One day, about the time you were
getting yourself born, I was passing this way with my father and a
company of the county gentlemen. 'Twas in the Seven Years' War, and the
Cherokees were threatening us from the other side. The river was in
flood as it is now; and I mind my father saying that when you could see
that hole in the rock, Macgowan's Ford would be no more than armpit
deep."
"So?" said Richard; "then it behooves us to--" He stopped in mid
sentence, drew rein and shifted his sword hilt to the front.
"What is it?" I asked.
For reply he pointed me to a canoe half hidden in the bushes where
roadside and river-edge came together.
I laughed. "An empty pirogue. Shall we charge and run it through?"
"Hist!" said he; "that canoe was afloat a minute since. Mark the
paddle--'tis dripping yet."
As he spoke an Indian stood up in the bushes beside the pirogue, holding
out his empty hands in token of amity. We rode up and were presently
shaking hands with our old-time ally, the Catawba.
"How!" said he; "heap how! Chief Harris glad; wah! Make think have to go
to Sal'bury to find Captain Long-knife and Captain Jennif'. Heap much
glad!"
"Chief Harris?" I queried. "Who may he be?"
The Catawba drew himself up and drummed upon his breast.
"Chief Harris here," he answered, proudly. "The Great War Chief," by
which we understood he meant General Greene, "say all Catawba take
war-path 'gainst redcoat; make Uncanoola headman; give um new name.
Wah!"
At this we shook hands with him again, well pleased that our stanch ally
should have recognition at the hands of the general. Then I would ask if
he were on the way to raise his tribesmen to fight with us.
"Bimeby; no have time now; big thing over yonder," pointing across the
river. "Manitou Cornwally fool Great War Chief, mebbe, hey?"
"How is that?" said Dick; and the query elicited a bit of news to make
us prick our ears. The Catawba had been in the British camp at Forney's,
posturing again as a Cherokee friendly to the king's side. Some sudden
movement had been determined upon, though what it was to be he could not
learn. At the end of his own resources he had crossed the river in a
stolen pirogue to find and warn us.
"What say you, Dick?" I asked, when we had heard the Catawba through.
The lad was holding his lip in his hand and scowling as one who pits
duty against inclination.
"'Tis our cursed luck!" he gloomed. Then he swore it out by length and
breadth, and, when the air was cleared, let me have what was in his
mind.
"After all, 'tis like enough we should find Appleby house deserted.
Gilbert Stair will cling to Lord Cornwallis's coat-skirt as long as he
can for sheer safety's sake. At all events, our business must wait; the
country's weal comes first." Then to the Indian: "If we can make the
beasts take the water, will you ferry us across, Chief?"
The Catawba nodded, and made the nod good by setting us dry-shod on the
farther bank of the brown flood. By the time we had the horses rubbed
down and resaddled 'twas twilight in the open and night dark in the
wood; but we were on our own ground and knew every by-path through the
forest.
So, when we had sent the Indian back to carry news of us to General
Davidson at the lower ford, and to advertise him of our purpose, we
mounted to begin a scouting jaunt, keeping to the wood paths and bearing
cautiously northward toward the enemy's camp at Forney's plantation.
At times we were close upon the British sentries, with every nerve
strained tense for fight or flight; anon we would be making wide detours
through bog and fen, or beneath the black network of wet branches with
the rain-soaked leaf beds under foot to make the horses' treadings as
noiseless as a cat's.
None the less, in the fullness of time--'twas near about midnight as we
guessed it--we had our patience well rewarded. Hovering on the confines
of the camp we heard the muffled drum-tap of the reveille, and soon
there was the stir of an army making ready for the march.
"Which way will it be, north or south?" whispered Dick, when we had
dismounted to cloak the heads of the horses.
"We shall know shortly," said I; and truly, we did, being well-nigh
enveloped and ridden down by the fringe of light-horse deploying to
pioneer the way. When we had sheered off to let this skirmish cloud blow
by, Dick struck a spark into his tinder-box to have a sight of his
compass needle.
"South and by east," he announced; "that will mean Beattie's Ford, I
take it."
"Not unless they swim, horse and foot," I objected. "'Twill be
Macgowan's, more likely."
Having this uncertainty to resolve, we must hang upon the skirts of the
British advance till we could make sure, and this proved to be a most
perilous business. Yet by riding abreast of the moving main we did
resolve the uncertainty; heard the orders passed from man to man, and
later saw a small feinting detachment split off to take the road for
Beattie's, whilst the main body held on for Macgowan's; all this before
we were discovered in the gloaming of the dawn by some of Tarleton's
men.
Then, I promise you, my dears, it was neck or nothing, with the devil to
take the hindmost. Away we sped toward the near-by river, spurring our
wearied beasts as men who ride for life, with a dozen troopers so close
upon us that when I glanced over my shoulder the foremost of the redcoat
riders was having his face well bespattered with the mud from my horse's
heels.
'Twas touch and go, but happily, as I have said, the river was at hand.
We came to the high bank some hundred yards above the fording place, and
lacking Dick's example to shame me to the braver course, I fear I should
have recoiled at the brink. But when the lad sent his horse without the
missing of a bound far out over the eddying flood, I shook the reins on
the sorrel's neck, gave him the word and shut my eyes.
After all, it was nothing worse than a cold plunge, with a few pistol
bullets to spatter harmlessly around us when we came up for air.
Moreover, there were the camp-fires of Davidson's men on the farther
bank to encourage us; and so swimming and wading by turns we got across
in time to give the alarum.
As you would guess, there was a mighty stir on our side of the river
when we had splashed ashore and got our news well born. As it turned
out, General Davidson's main camp was a good half-mile back from the
river in one of the outfields of Appleby Hundred. So it chanced there
were upon the spot only brave Joe Graham and his fifty riflemen to
dispute the passage of an army.
What was done at Macgowan's Ford in the gray of the morning of February
first, 1781, has become a page in our history. But I protest that not
any of the chroniclers do even-handed justice to the little band of
patriot riflemen doing their utmost to hold a hundred-to-one
outnumbering host in check.
'Twas a fine sight, be the onlooker Whig or Tory. The Guards, led by
the fiery Irishman, O'Hara, took the water first, the men crowding
shoulder to shoulder to brace against the sweep of the current which, on
the western side of the stream, was little less than a mill-tail for
swiftness. After them came the foot and horse in solid squares, and
always with more to follow. None the less, our little handful did not
blanch; and when the Guards in midstream held straight across instead of
bearing to the right as the ford ran, a shout went up on our side and
the fifty hastened up from the ford-head as one man to face the enemy
squarely.
Now it was that the brown-barreled rifles began to crack and spit fire;
and I do think if we had had our other two hundred and fifty out of that
back field on the manor lands, we might at least have made the wading
redcoats hurry a little. Indeed, as it was, the van of the Guards broke
here and there, and we could hear O'Hara berating his men as only a
battle-mad Irishman can, with blarneyings and curses intermingled.
Having no firearms save our wetted pistols, Jennifer and I crouched in
cover, waiting to do what two swordsmen might when the blade's length
should bridge the fast-narrowing distance between us and the advancing
host.
'Twas in this little interval of forced inaction that we heard a most
familiar voice issuing from a clump of holly just below our covert; a
voice lifted now in fervent prayer and again in Scriptural anathema on
the foe.
"'Let God arise and let His inimies be scattered.... Let them be as the
chaff upon a threshing-floor'--"
The sharp crack of the old borderer's rifle filled the momentary pause,
and a British officer in a colonel's uniform swayed drunkenly in his
saddle and plunged headlong in the stream.
"'Let them be as the children of Amalek before the Mighty One of Israel:
make them and their princes like Oreb and Zeeb; yea, make all their
princes like as Zebah and Zalmunna.... O my God, make them like unto a
wheel, and as the stubble before the wind; like as the fire that burneth
up the wood, and as the flame that consumeth the mountains.'"
Crack! went the long-barreled piece again, and again an officer
hallooing on his floundering battalion bent to his saddle horn and
slipped into the turbid flood.
My gorge rose. This picking off of officers has always seemed to me the
savagest of war's barbarities. How Richard divined my thought and
purpose, I know not; but when I would have slipped down to Yeates's
holly bush he laid a detaining hand on my arm.
"Let be," he said; "'tis murder, if you like, but all war is that. When
old Eph's turn comes, they will kill him as relentlessly as he is
killing them."
By this time the British vanguard was storming ashore through the
shallows below the tree fringe which served as cover for Graham's men,
and the king's muskets, silent hitherto, began to roar and belch by
platoon and volley fire. Jennifer craned his neck and took a swift view
of the situation.
"By the Lord Harry!" he cried, "'tis high time Joe Graham was getting
his lads in order for a foot race. Once those fellows come ashore
they'll play hare and hounds with us to the king's taste. Keep your eye
on the nags, Jack. It may chance us to do what two men can to cover a
belated retreat."
We had tethered our horses in a thicket of scrub oak where they would be
out of bullet-reach until the enemy gained the bank. As I looked to make
sure of them, the sorrel gave a shrill neigh to welcome the pounding of
hoofs on the Appleby road. I made sure this would be General Davidson
bringing in the reserves; and so, indeed, it was; but he came too late.
O'Hara's men were already climbing the bank; and Joe Graham was rallying
his little company for flight in the face of an onset that made the tree
fringe sing with musket balls.
"'Tis our cue to run away!" Dick shouted, dragging me to my feet. "To
the horses!"
But now we were too late. Davidson's men were between us and the scrub
oak thicket, and we must wait till the column swept by.
Dick swore fervently and put his face to the foe and his back to a
tree. Whereupon I dragged him down as promptly as he had just now
dragged me up, telling him his broadsword would make but a poor shift
parrying musket-balls.
What followed after was over and done with in a dozen fluttering
heart-beats. Seeing the case was desperate, General Davidson gathered
Graham's fifty into his flying column, flogged his rear into the
retreat, and was pitched out of his saddle by a Tory rifle-bullet whilst
he was doing it. And when the way to our horses was clear of the
galloping Carolinians, and we would have run to mount and ride after
them, the swarming redcoat van was upon us.
"Up with you and out of this!" cried Jennifer, setting me the example.
"We must e'en gallop as we can. Quick, man!"
But in the gathering and the retreat our old sharpshooter under his
holly bush had been left behind; and now we heard him again, chanting
his terrible imprecations on the enemy.
Dick saw the meaning in my look, and together we pounced to drag the old
man out of hiding. When we burst down upon him, Yeates had his piece to
his face and was drawing a bead on a stout man in cocked hat and plain
regimentals whose horse was curveting and sidling in the nearer
shallows; no less a figure, in truth, than my Lord Cornwallis himself,
cheering his men on to the attack.
We had scarce made out the old hunter's target when the rifle spat fire,
the curveting charger reared in its death plunge, and the British
commander-in-chief, unhurt, as it seemed, was dragged from the
entanglement of his stirrups by his aides.
The old marksman sprang up in a fury of wrath. "Dad blast ye for a pair
of aim-sp'ilin'--"
A roar of musketry cut the rebuke in half, and a storm of bullets smote
through the branches overhead. A falling bough knocked my hat off, and I
stooped to recover it. When I rose, Dick was clipping the old man
tightly in his arms. Yeates's belt was cut, and a little oozing
well-spring of red was slowly soaking the fringe of his hunting-shirt.
"Ease me down, Cap'n Dick; ease me down. The old man's done for, this
time, ez I allow--spang in the innards. Ease me down and get off for
yerselves, if so be ye can, im--me--jit--"
The wagging jaw dropped and the keen old eyes went dim and sightless.
Dick's oath was more a sob than an imprecation; and now it was I who
said: "Come on--the living before the dead!" and so we made the
well-nigh hopeless dash for the horses.
How we rode free out of that hurly-burly at the ford-head you must
figure for yourselves, if you can. The men of the British vanguard were
all about us when we got to the scrub oak thicket and mounted, but no
one of them raised a hand to stay us. I have thought since that mayhap
they took us for a pair of their own Tory allies who were not above
wearing the stolen uniforms of the dead. Be that as it may, we rode away
unhindered, Dick in all the bravery of his captain's slashings, and I
in light-horse buff and blue, taking the road toward the manor house
because that was the only one open to us, and ambling leisurely till we
were beyond the sight and sound of the victors at the ford.
But once at large, we put spurs to our horses in true _ritter_ fashion;
and we had galloped half way to Appleby house before Dick said:
"Now we are well out of that, what next? We can not go to Margery with
the whole British army at our heels."
"Nay, but we shall, if only for a short half-hour," I asserted. Then, as
once before, I gave him my best bow. "For the last time, it may be, let
me play the lord of the manor. You are very welcome to my father's
demesne, Richard, and to all of its holdings."
"All?" said he, giving me a quick eye-shot as we pressed on side by
side.
"Yes, all," said I; and I meant it in good faith. He should have the
lady, too; that precious holding of the old manse without whom my
father's acres would be but a bauble to be lost or won indifferently.
"Then you do not love Madge more?" he queried, his eye kindling.
"Nay, I did not say that. But I did say the other; that you should have
the house and all its holdings."
We were cantering up the oak-sentried avenue to that door which Gilbert
Stair had once sought to keep against us with his bell-mouthed
blunderbuss. There was no sign of any living thing about the place; and
when we had no answer to our sword-hilt knockings on the door, the lad
turned upon me with a flash of anger in his eyes and his lip a-curl.
"You knew full well what you were promising, John Ireton!" he said. "She
is not here."
XLIX
IN WHICH A LAWYER HATH HIS FEE
What Richard's most natural resentment would have led to, in what new
tangle of the net of bitterness we might have been enmeshed, we were
spared the knowing. For when he said, "She is not here," two happenings
intervened to give us both other things to think of.
The first was the advent, at the far end of the oak-lined avenue, of a
troop of British light-horse, trotting leisurely; the second was the
swinging inward of the door of unwelcome, with old Anthony grinning and
bowing behind it.
Now when you have fairly surprised a fox in the open, he asks nothing
more than a hole to hide him in. There were the hunters coming up the
avenue; and here was our dodge-hole gaping before us. So, as hunted
things will, we took earth quickly; though, truly, 'twas an
ostrich-trick rather than a fox's, since we left the horses standing
without to advertise our presence to all and sundry.
It was Richard who first found the wit to realize the ostrich-play.
"The horses!--we may as well have left the town crier outside to ring
his bell and tell the redcoats we are here," he would say; and before I
knew what he would be at he had snatched the door open and was whistling
softly to the big gray.
Hearing his master's call, the gray pricked his ears and came
obediently, with the sorrel tagging at his heels. A moment later, when
the up-coming troop was hidden by a turn in the avenue, we had the pair
of them in the hall with the door shut and barred behind them.
"So far, so good," quoth Dick. Then to the old black, who had stood by,
saucer-eyed and speechless, the while: "Anthony, do you be as big a
numbskull as you were born to be, and hold these redcoat gentlemen in
palaver till we can win out at the back."
The old majordomo nodded his good-will, but now my slow wit came in
play. "We've done it now," said I. "The horses will go out as they came
in, or not at all. Had you forgotten the stair at the back?"
Judge for yourselves, my dears, if this were the time, place or crisis
for a man to fling himself upon the hall settle, grip his ribs and laugh
like any lack-wit. Yet this is what Richard Jennifer did.