King's Mountain (38 page)

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 words 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.”

Joseph McDowell smiled. “Oh, yes, indeed. Two magistrates with jurisdiction in North Carolina? I should say we're spoiled for choice there. I am a magistrate myself, and Cleveland. Shelby? Sevier?”

We nodded. Lawyers may be sparse in the backcountry yet, but we do have laws and we ordinary citizens enforce them.

After we passed through Gilbert Town, we had made camp Wednesday evening on the land of Colonel John Walker, some five miles northeast of town, less than a mile from Cane Creek. We stayed there through Thursday as well, for the wounded needed a respite and the rest of us were by no means in fighting trim, either. Hard travel and meager rations were taking their toll.

“We have magistrates aplenty among us,” said Joseph McDowell. “More of the militia officers than you can shake a stick at, in fact. Since you are asking about this, is it in your mind to have a trial, Campbell?”

William Campbell's craggy face looked haggard, and, though he was my age exactly—five years shy of forty—there were dark circles under his eyes and faint lines about his mouth. The cares of command and the privations of the journey were outweighing the joy of victory in his countenance. He had been reading the book of North Carolina law by the flickering light of the campfire. At McDowell's question about a trial, Campbell sighed. “Yes, a trial. I think we must, gentlemen. Despite my general orders, the tormenting of the prisoners goes on, and this grim news of the hangings at Ninety Six will only enrage them more. Colonel Cleveland was right. We must mete out justice to the guilty ones. Not to the ordinary soldiers, mind you, for some of them were forced to fight. But among us we know who the scoundrels are—the men who use the war as an excuse to pillage, the murderers, the house burners who make war on helpless women and children. Yes, I think we can hold them to account for their crimes.”

We fell silent for a moment. No one objected, some of us because we knew this step to be inevitable and the rest because they wanted their enemies to be punished.

McDowell spoke up again. “There's a place about ten miles up from Gilbert Town, on Robertson's Creek. We fought the battle of Cane Creek not far from there, and it's on our way. We could make it there by nightfall, and make camp. Bickerstaff's Old Fields. There used to be a plantation house there, but it's long gone. I think it would serve. It's secluded. Some of the Bickerstaffs still live nearby, though. They're Tories.”

“I believe someone of that name was among the wounded Tories,” said Shelby.

“Yes,” said McDowell. “He died, though, before we left the field. I don't suppose his kinfolk will be glad to see us camping on their land, but that's their hard luck.”

Again, no one had any alternatives to suggest. McDowell knew the area better than any of us, for it was perhaps a day's ride from Quaker Meadows. A day's ride, that is, if you didn't have to herd eight hundred prisoners on foot as you went. This pace was especially hard on the wounded men, for each day of green corn and jolting travel weakened them further.

The night before, as we camped in Gilbert Town, we had talked about billeting our wounded men in homes around Gilbert Town, but there was so little food and so much unrest in the area, that we decided against it. They would be better off taking their chances on the trail with us.

We reached Bickerstaff's Old Fields at dusk, and camped within sight of two stark redbrick chimneys, all that remained of the plantation house that had once stood there. I wondered if it had fallen victim to the running battles that had crisscrossed the area in recent years, and, if so, whether one of our militias had torched the place.