Chapter XII: Part 12

Never smile, my dears, and hint that I had found me a new heart of mercy since that ambush-killing of the three Cherokee peace-men in the lone valley of the western mountains. We did but give the savages a dole out of their own store of cruel cunning and ferocity. But as for these my trackers, three of them, at least, were soldiers and men of my own race. I could not do it.

"No," said I, firmly. "These followers of mine must be stopped, as you say, else there is no need of my going on. But there must be no butcher's work."

The patriarch frowned and wagged his beard again.

"A true patriot should hold himself ready to give his own life or take another's," quoth he.

"Truly; and I am most willing on both heads. But we have had enough and more than enough of midnight massacre."

Where this argument would have led us in the end, I know not, since we were both waxing warm upon it. But in the midst the little maid came running from the open door, her blue eyes wide in childish terror.

"Injun man!" was all she could say; but that was enough. At a bound I reached the door. An Indian was at my horse's head, loosing the halter, as I thought. Before he could twist to face me the point of the Ferara was at his back.

Luckily, he had the wit not to move. "No kill Uncanoola," he muttered, this without the stirring of a muscle. Then, as if he were talking to the horse: "White squaw, she send 'um word; say 'good by.'"

My point dropped as if another blade had parried the thrust.

"Mistress Margery, you mean? Do you come from her?"

"She send 'um word; say 'good by,'" he repeated.

"What else did she say?" I demanded.

"No say anyt'ing else: say 'good by.'" He turned upon me at that and I saw why he had kept his face averted. He had on the war paint of a Cherokee chief.

"Uncanoola good Chelakee now," he grinned. "Help redcoat soldier find Captain Long-knife. Wah!"

I saw his drift, and though I knew his courage well, the boldness of the thing staggered me. He, too, had penetrated to the inner lines of the British encampment at Charlotte; and when they had sought an Indian tracker to lift my trail, 'twas he who had volunteered. But now my spirits rose. With this unexpected ally we might hope to deal forcefully and yet fairly with my rear-guard.

"Where are your masters now?" I asked.

He spat upon the ground. "Catawba chief has no master," he said, proudly. "Redcoat pale-faces yonder," pointing back the way I had come. "Make fire, boil tea, sing song, heap smoke pipe."

"We must take them," said I.

He nodded. "Kill 'um all; take scalp. Wah!"

The bloodthirstiness of my two allies was appalling. But I undertook to cool the Indian's ardor, explaining that the redcoat soldiers were the Long-knife's brothers, in a way, not to be slain save in honorable battle. I am not sure whether I earned the Catawba's contempt, or his pity for my weakness; but since he was loyal to the son of his old benefactor first, and a savage afterward, he yielded the point.

So now I made him known to my patriarchal host, who all this time had been standing guard at the cabin door with the old Queen's-arm for a weapon. So we three sat on the door-stone and planned it out. When the night was far enough advanced, we would stalk the soldiers in their camp, sparing life as we could.

When all was settled, the old man gave us a supper of his humble fare, after which we went into the open again to sit out the hours of waiting. The rain had ceased, but the night was cloudy and the darkness a soft black veil to shroud the nearest objects. High overhead the autumn wind was sighing in the tree-tops, and now and again a sharper gust would bring down a pattering volley of lodged rain-drops on the fallen leaves.

Uncanoola sat apart in stoical silence, smoking his long-stemmed pipe. The old man and I talked in low tones, or rather he would tell me of his past whilst I sat and listened, holding the little maid in my arms.

After a time the child fell asleep, and I craved permission to put her in the little crib bed in the chimney corner. The flickering light of the fire fell upon her innocent face when I loosed the clasp of the tiny hands about my neck and laid her down. Again the wave of softness submerged me and I bent to leave a kiss upon the sweet unconscious lips.

Ah, my dears, you may smile again, if you will; but at that moment I had a far-off glimpse of the beatitude of fatherhood; I was no longer the hard old soldier I have drawn for you; I was but a man, hungering and thirsting for the love of a wife and trusting, clinging little children like this sweet maid.

I rose, turning my back upon the chimney corner and its holdings with a sigh. For now the time was come for action, and I must needs be a man of blood and iron again.

Lacking the Catawba to guide us, I doubt if either the old man or I could have found my rearguard's bivouac near the trail I had left. But Uncanoola led us straight through the pitchy darkness; and when we were come upon the three soldiers we found them all asleep around the handful of camp-fire.

'Twould have been murder outright to kill them thus; and now I think the old patriarch forgot his wrongs and was as merciful as I. But not so the Catawba. He had armed himself with a stout war-club, and before I was free to stop him he had knocked two of the three sleepers senseless, and would have battered out their brains but for the old man's intervention.

As for the officer, I had flung myself upon him in the rush and was having a pretty handful of him. But though he was broad in the shoulders, and as agile as a cat, he was taken at a sleeping man's disadvantage, and so I presently had the better of him.

"Enough, man! 'tis as good as a feast!" he cried, when I had him fast pinioned; and thereupon I let him have breath and freedom to sit up. In the act he had his first good sight of me, as I had mine of him. 'Twas Tybee and no other.

"Gad! my Captain," he said, feeling his throat. "If you have a grip like that for your friends, I'm damned glad I'm not your enemy."

"But you are," I rejoined, rather shamefacedly, yet thankful to the finger-tips that I had not consented to a massacre. "I am for the Congress and the Commonwealth, Lieutenant, and you are my prisoner. May I trouble you for the despatches you carry?"

He looked up at me with a queer grimace on his boyish face.

"The devil! but you're a cool hand, Captain Ireton! Whatever you were in that coil at Appleby, you've led the spy's long suit this time. And I'm not sure whether I like you any the worse for it, if so be you must be a rebel." And with that, he gave me the sealed packet and asked what I would do with him.

His query set me thinking. As for the two stunned troopers, I meant to turn them over to the old man for safe keeping; but I was loath to make it harder than need be for this good-natured youngster. So I put him upon his honor.

"Do you know what this packet contains?" I asked.

He laughed. "My Lord did not honor me with his confidence. I was to follow you in to Major Ferguson's camp, deliver the despatches, and vanish."

"Good; then you need tell no lies. When the Indian has fetched my horse, I shall ride to Ferguson's camp, and you may ride with me. I shall ask no more than this; that you do not fight again till you are exchanged; and that you will not tell Major Ferguson whose prisoner you are. Do you accept the terms?"

"Gad! I'd be a fool not to. But what's in the wind, Captain? Surely you can tell me, now that I am safely out of the running."

"You will know in a day or two; and in the meantime ignorance is your best safety. You can tell Major Ferguson that you were waylaid on the road by a party of the enemy, and that you were paroled and fell in with me."

He looked a little rueful, as a good soldier would, but was disposed to make the best of a bad bargain.

"Here's my hand on it," he said; and a little later we had dragged the two troopers to the cabin, where the old man became surety for their safe keeping, and were feeling our way cautiously westward at the heels of the Catawba who had taken his directions from our patriarch.

We pressed forward in silence through the shadowy labyrinth of the wood for a time, but at the crossing of a small runlet where we would stop to let the horses drink, Tybee burst out a-laughing.

"'Tis as good as a play," he said. "Three several times I've had to change my mind about you, Captain Ireton, and I'm not cock-sure I have your measure yet. But I'll say this: if you've strung my Lord successfully, you'll be the first to do it and come off alive in the end."

"The end is not yet, my good friend; and I may not come off better than the others," I rejoined. And with that we fared on again till we could see the camp-fires of Ferguson's little army twinkling between the tree trunks.

XXXVIII

IN WHICH WE FIND THE GUN-MAKER

As you may be sure, Major Patrick Ferguson was far too good a soldier to leave his camp unguarded on any side, and whilst we were yet a far cannon-shot from the glimmering fires a sentry's challenge halted us.

To the man's "Halt! Who goes there?" I gave the word "Friends," salving my conscience for the needful lie as I might.

"Advance, friends, and give the countersign."

I confessed my ignorance of the night-word, saying that we were a paroled prisoner and a bearer of despatches, and asking that we be taken to Major Ferguson's headquarters. There was some little cautious demurring on the part of the sentry, but finally he passed the word for the guard-captain and we were escorted to the tent of the field commander.

I marked the encampment as I could in passing through it. The little army was three-fourths made up of Tory militia; and there was drinking and song-singing and a plentiful lack of discipline around the camp-fires of these auxiliaries. But a different air was abroad in the camp of the regulars; you would see a soldierly alertness on the part of the men, and there was no roistering in that quarter.

Major Ferguson's tent was on a hillock some distance back from the stream, and thither we were conducted; we, I say, meaning Tybee and myself, for Uncanoola had disappeared like a whiff of smoke at our challenging on the sentry line.

Late as it was, the major was up and hard at work. His tent table, transformed for the time into a mechanic's work-bench, was littered with gun-barrels and tools and screws and odd-shaped pieces of mechanism--the disjointed parts of that breech-loading musket of which the ingenious Scotchman was the inventor.

Being deep in the creative trance when we came upon him, the major gave us but an absent-minded greeting, listening with the outward ear only when Tybee reported his mission, and his capture and parole.

"From my Lord, ye say? I hope ye left him well," was all the answer the Lieutenant got, the inventor fitting away at his gun-puzzle the while.

Tybee made proper rejoinder and stood aside to give me room. I drew a sealed inclosure from my pocket and laid it on the work-bench table.

"I also have the honor to come from my Lord Cornwallis, bringing despatches"--so far I got in my cut-and-dried speech, and then my tongue clave to the roof of my mouth and I could no more finish the sentence than could a man suddenly nipped in a vise. Instead of the carefully doctored original, I had given the major the duplicate despatch taken from Tybee.

Ah, my dears, that was a moment for swift thought and still swifter action; and 'tis the Ireton genius to be slow and sure and no wise "gleg at the uptak'," as a Scot would say. Yet for this once my good angel gave me a prompting and the wit to use it. In that clock-tick of benumbing despair when the success of the hazardous venture, and much more that I wist not of, hung suspended by a hair over the abyss of failure, I minded me of a boyish trick wherewith I used to fright the timid blacks in the old days at Appleby Hundred. So whilst the major was reaching for the packet--nay, when he had it in his hand--I started back with a warning cry, giving that imitation of the ominous _skir-r-r_ of a rattlesnake which had more than once got me a cuffing from my father.

In any crisis less tremendous I should have roared a-laughing to see the doughty major and my good friend the lieutenant vie with each other in their skippings to escape the unseen enemy. But it was no laughing moment for me. At a flash my sword was out and I was hacking hither and yon at the imaginary foe. In the hurly-burly I contrived to sprawl all across the work-bench table, and the packet which would have killed my plot--and, belike, the plotter as well--was secured and quickly juggled into hiding.

"Damme! see now what you've done; you've spilt my breech-charger all about the place!" rasped the major, when all was over. And then: "Who the devil are ye, anyway; and what do ye want wi' me?"

I clicked my heels, saluted, and gave him the express from my Lord--the right one, this time. He tore off the wrapping, swore a hearty soldier oath when he read the fore part of the letter and clapped his leg joyfully, like the brave gentleman that he was, when he came to the _postscriptum_.

"Ye're a fine fellow, Captain; ye've brought me good news," he said; then he bade an aide call Captain de Peyster, his second in command, and in the same breath gave Tybee and me in charge to an ensign for our billeting for the night.

You will conceive that I was overjoyed at this seemingly safe and easy planting of the petard which was to blow my Lord Cornwallis's plans into the air; and in anticipation I saw the tide-turning battle and heard the huzzas of the mountaineer victors. But 'tis a good old saw that cautions against hallooing before you are out of the wood. Captain de Peyster was come, and Tybee and I were taking our leave of the major, when there was a sudden commotion among the guards without, and a little man in black, his wig awry and his clothing torn by the rough man-handling of the sentries, burst into the tent.

"Seize him! seize him! he is a rebel spy!" he shrieked, pointing at me.

As you would guess, all talk paused at this dramatic interruption, and all eyes were turned upon me. Had the little viper been content to rest his charge upon the simple accusation, I know not what might have happened. But when he got his breath he burst out in a tirade of the foulest abuse, cursing me up one side and down the other, and ending in a gibbering fit of rage that left him pallid and foaming at the lips--and gave me my cue.

"'Tis the little madman of Queensborough," I said, coolly, explaining to the bluff major. "His mania takes the form of a curious hatred for me, though I know not why. Two days since, he was put in arrest by my Lord's authority for threatening my life and that of his master's daughter. Now, it would seem, he has broken jail and followed me hither."

"A lunatic, eh? He looks it, every inch," said the major; and the blackguard lawyer, hearing my counter accusation, was doing his best to give it a savor of likelihood by fighting frantically with the two soldiers who had followed him into the tent.

"Out wi' him!" commanded the major. "We've no time to foolish away wi' a Bedlamite. Take him away and peg him out, and gi' him a dash o' water to cool his head."

Pengarvin fought like a fury, and his venomous rage defeated all his attempts to say calmly the words which might have got him a hearing. So he was haled away, spitting and struggling like a trapped wildcat; and when we were rid of him the major bade us good night again.

Tybee held his peace like a good fellow till we had rolled us in our blankets before one of the camp-fires. But just as I was dropping asleep he broke out with, "I would you might tell me what piece of rebel villainy this is that I've been a winking accomplice to."

I laughed. "'Tis a thing to make Major Ferguson rejoice, as you saw. And surely, it can be no great villainy to give a man what he's thirsting for. Bide your time, Lieutenant, and you shall see the outcome."

XXXIX

THE THUNDER OF THE CAPTAINS AND THE SHOUTING

The camp was astir early the next morning, and it soon became noised about that we were to fall back, but only so far as might be needful to find a strong position. From this it was evident that a battle was imminent, though as yet there were no signs of the approach of the patriots.

From the camp talk we, Tybee and I, gleaned some better information of 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.

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.

'Twas a silly thing to do, you will say, and much beneath the dignity of a grown man who cared not a bodle for his life, and not greatly for the manner of its losing. I grant you this; and yet it was that same bull-bellow of soldier profanity that saved my life. Whilst I was in the storm of it, cursing the lawyer by every shouted epithet I could lay tongue to, a miracle was wrought and Richard Jennifer and Ephraim Yeates pushed their way through the ever-thickening ring of onlookers; the latter to range himself beside me with his brown-barreled rifle in the hollow of his arm, and my dear lad to fling himself upon me in a bear's hug of joyous recognition and greeting.

"Score one for me, Jack!" he cried. "We were fair at t'other end of the mountain, and 'twas I told Eph there was only one man in the two Carolinas who could swear the match of that." Then he whirled upon my judges. "What is this, gentlemen?--a court martial? Captain Ireton is my friend, and as true a patriot as ever drew breath. What is your charge?"

Colonel Sevier, in whose command Richard and the old borderer had fought in the hilltop battle, undertook to explain. I stood self-confessed as the bearer of despatches from Lord Cornwallis to Major Ferguson, he said, and I had claimed that the orders had been so altered as to delay the major's retreat and so to bring on the battle. But they had just found Lord Cornwallis's letter in my pocket, still sealed and undelivered. And the tenor of it was precisely opposite to that of an order calculated to delay the major's march, as Mr. Jennifer could see if he would read it.

While Sevier was talking, the old borderer was fumbling in the breast of his hunting-shirt, and now he produced a packet of papers tied about with red tape.

"'Pears to me like you Injun-killers from t'other side o' the mounting is in a mighty hot sweat to hang somebody," he said, as coolly as if he were addressing a mob of underlings. "Here's a mess o' billy-doos with Lord Cornwallis's name to 'em that I found 'mongst Major Ferguson's leavings. If you'll look 'em over, maybe you'll find out, immejitly _if_ not sooner, that Cap'n John here is telling ye the plumb truth."

The papers were examined hastily, and presently John Sevier lighted upon the despatch I had carried and delivered. Thereat the colonels put their heads together; and then my case was re-opened, with Sevier as spokesman.

"We have a letter here which appears to be the original order to Ferguson, Captain Ireton. Can you repeat from memory the _postscriptum_ which you say was added to it?"

I gave the gist of my old patriarch's addendum as well as I could; and thereupon suspicion fled away and my late judges would vie with one another in hearty frontier hand-grasps and apologies, whilst the throng that ringed us in forgot caution and weariness and gave me a cheer to wake the echoes.

'Twas while this burst of gratulation was abuzz that Ephraim Yeates raised a cry of his own.

"Stop that there black-legged imp o' the law!" he shouted, pushing his way out of the circle. "He's the one that ought to hang!"

There was a rush for the wagon barricade, a clatter of horse-hoofs on the hillside below, and Yeates's rifle went to his face. But the bullet flew wide, and the black-garbed figure clinging to the horse's mane was soon out of sight among the trees.

"Ez I allow, ye'd better look out for that yaller-skinned little varmint, Cap'n John," quoth the old man, carefully wiping his rifle preparatory to reloading it. "He's rank pizen, he is, and ye'll have to break his neck sooner 'r later. I 'lowed to save ye the trouble, but old Bess got mighty foul yestiddy, with all the shootings and goings on, and I hain't got no lead-brush to clean her out."

Now that I was fully exonerated I was free to go and come as I chose; nay, more, I was urged to cast in my lot with the over-mountain partizans. As to this, I took counsel with Richard Jennifer whilst the colonels were setting their commands in order for the march and loading the prisoners with the captured guns and ammunition.

"What is to the fore, Dick?" I asked; "more fighting?"

The lad shook his head. "Never another blow, I fear, Jack. These fellows crossed the mountain to whip Ferguson. Having done it they will go home."

I could not forego a hearty curse upon this worst of all militia weaknesses, the disposition to disperse as soon as ever a battle was fought.

"'Tis nigh on to a crime," said I. "This victory, smartly followed up, might well be the turning of the tide for us."

But the lad would not admit the qualifying condition. "'Twill be no less as it is," he declared. "Mark you, Jack; 'twill put new life into the cause and nerve every man of ours afresh. And as for the redcoats, if my Lord Cornwallis gets the news of it in a lump, as he should, Gates will have plenty of time to set himself in motion, slow as he is."

'Twas then I had an inspiration, and I thought upon it for a moment.

"What are your plans, Richard?"

He shook his head. "I have none worth the name."

"Then you are not committed to Colonel Sevier for a term of service?"

"No; nor to Cleaveland, nor McDowell, nor any. We heard there was to be fighting hereaway,--Ephraim Yeates and I,--and we came as volunteers."

"Good! then I have a thought which may stand for what it is worth. To make the most of this victory over Major Ferguson, Gates should be apprised at once and by a sure tongue; and his Lordship should have the news quickly, too, and in a lump, as you say. Let us take horse and ride post, we two; you to Gates at Hillsborough, and I to Charlotte."

"I had thought of my part of that," he said in a muse. Then he came alive to the risk I should run. "But you can't well go back to Cornwallis now, Jack: 'tis playing with death. There will be other news-carriers--there are sure to be; and a single breath to whisper what you have done will hang you higher than Haman."

I shrugged at this. "'Tis but a war hazard."

He looked at me curiously. I saw a shrewd question in his eyes and set instant action as a barrier in the way of its asking.

"Let us find Colonel Sevier and beg us the loan of a pair of horses," said I; and so we were kept from coming upon the dangerous ground of pointed questions and evasive answers.

Somewhat to my surprise, both Sevier and Shelby fell in at once with our project, commending it heartily; and I learned from the lips of that courtliest of frontiersmen, "Nolichucky Jack," the real reason for the proposed hurried return of the over-mountain men. The Cherokees, never to be trusted, had, as it seemed, procured war supplies from the British posts to the southward, and were even now on the verge of an uprising. By forced marches these hardy borderers hoped to reach their homes in time to defend them. Otherwise, as both commanders assured us, they would take the field with Gates.

"We have done what we could, Captain Ireton, and not altogether what we would," said Sevier in the summing-up. "It remains now for General Gates to drive home the wedge we have entered." Then he looked me full in the eyes and asked if I thought Horatio Gates would be the man to beetle that wedge well into the log.

I made haste to say that I knew little of the general; that I was but a prejudiced witness at best, since my father had known and misliked the man in Braddock's ill-fated campaign against the French in '55. But Richard spoke his mind more freely.

"'Tis not in the man at this pass, Colonel Sevier," he would say; "not after Camden. I know our Carolinians as well as any, and they will never stand a second time under a defeated leader. If General Washington would send us some one else; or, best of all, if he would but come himself--"