Brave Enemies (32 page)

“Wake up, Summers,” Gudger snarled. I skipped to keep in step and strained to hold my eyes open.

“'T
ENTION
!” G
UDGER CALLED OUT
. We all stepped aside while a horseman galloped by kicking up medals of dirt. All the way up the line men stepped aside while the horse cantered past. Once the rider reached the general at the front of the line we stopped, though it took a while for the order to run all the way back to the end of the line, and men behind kept walking, pushing the ranks ahead closer together.

I reckon the rider told Old Morgan some news, for he hollered back to Major McDowell and the senior officers to come forward. The majors and colonels went up to powwow. I guess it was something important, for they took a long time. We had to stand in the road leaning on our muskets and rifles.

“Old Morgan will march until our feet ain't nothing but stubs,” Gaither said. He dropped into the broom sedge at the side of the road. It looked so inviting to sit there in the grass.

“I never said you could fall out,” the sergeant said.

“You never said not to,” Gaither said.

“Get on your damn feet,” Gudger said.

But it was as if everybody thought of the same thing at the same time. We all stepped over into the stubble and broom sedge and flopped down as if an order had been given. All up and down the line you could hear sergeants bellowing and cursing.

“You think you are gentlemen and ladies of leisure,” Gudger roared.

Cox sat on his horse and didn't say anything. He let the sergeant fuss and curse as much as he wanted to. I reckon that was the agreement between them, that Gudger would do the fussing and shoving and Captain Cox would just give orders when it was necessary and proper.

“You all want to go home to your mamas,” Gudger said. “I've seen pussy that would make better soldiers.”

“I've seen heifers that would make a better sergeant,” T. R. muttered under his breath.

“I'll settle with you later, piss-britches,” Gudger said.

“March!” the general hollered at the front of the line.

It was painful to put weight on my feet. It felt like the soles of my feet, while I was sitting, had plumped up with blood that had to be pressed out. And my feet were blistered and sore in the rags.

“Old Morgan is running toward the Broad River,” Gaither said. “He's running away from Tarleton.”

“You don't know what the general's doing,” Gudger said. “Of course, he may ask for your advice, General Revis and General Heatherly.”

The soldiers around us laughed.

Gudger stared hard at me. Cold wires went through the middle of my bones down to my feet. I knew the sergeant wasn't finished with me. I'd still have to watch out for him. I had come to feel different about Gudger, after he told me about his wife, but I knew he wasn't finished with me yet.

My hair was all tangled up by sweat and the wind. I wished I could take another drop of laudanum. Gudger shoved my hat straight, so hard my ears rang. I was so tired I felt silly. Wherever I looked I saw black spots.

“'Tention!” was called up and down the column. The line started stepping aside, and we moved to the edge of the trace and looked back. A company of horsemen galloped toward us, and I thought for an instant it must be Tarleton, for some riders were wearing green coats with black fur hats. And then I saw that most wore white and blue coats. Their leader was a heavyset man with a square jaw and a regular cocked hat.

“'Tention!” Gudger shouted.

The riders carried sabers long as muskets, and some held lances and some wore pistols on their belts. They had gold patches on their shoulders and they rode easily, like they lived on their horses. Some had sheepskin
capes thrown over their shoulders. I saw there wasn't any way foot soldiers could stand up to dragoons.

“Them's Washington's cavalry,” Gudger said.

“General Washington?” T. R. said.

“No, you blockhead, Col. William Washington, that killed so many Tories at Hammond's Store.”

We watched the dragoons gallop past like they were lords. I felt scareder than ever. On foot we didn't have an idiot's chance. My guts were sore and sick. I was glad Colonel Washington was on our side.

I didn't count the cavalry as it went by, but I guess there were nearly a hundred horses. How clean the dragoons looked in their white britches and white-and-blue coats. Those with green coats were mounted militia riding with the cavalry, led by Major James McCall. They rode up there above the mud, while we were all covered with clay from the knees down. As the horses dashed by they splashed puddles on us and kicked up twists and pats of mud. Spots of mud stuck to my blanket and even my hands, and to the barrel of the rifle.

I told myself if I ever got out of this I would never go near an army or war again. I would climb into the mountains and live there in peace forever and forever. A woman had no business in such a place with so many men. And yet I felt a little pride too, that I had marched with them and camped with them. I had kept up with all of them.

W
E REACHED A LONG
open place in the woods called the Cow-pens and went on a little ways and then stopped. We could see a low running ridge to the east. “That's Thicketty Mountain,” Gudger said. The long column came to a halt.

Somebody had ridden to the Broad River and returned and they said you could see from a distance it was in flood. The brown water had spread out over fields and swamps. The middle of the river swirled like an angry animal cut loose. The flood had washed all the rafts away. They said waves leaped up like stampeding cows. The general sat on his horse
and we all stood on the road and watched him. I reckon it had been raining or snowing in the mountains to the west and the river was in terrible flood.

“Now what?” T. R. said. T. R. had been planning on running away once we crossed the Broad River. Now he saw he was in the same pickle as the rest of us.

“Be quiet,” Gudger said. But he didn't need to say it for we were all quiet, knowing that Tarleton was chasing us.

The general called his officers up to the front to talk again. I could see them pointing this way and that way and arguing. Then the officers came back down the line, and the order was given to make camp here.

“Why would we make camp at the Cowpens?” T. R. said.

All my life I'd heard of Hannah's Cowpens. It was the big open place close to Thicketty Mountain. The Green River Road ran right through it. It was a half-open meadow used for pasturing cattle. There were post oaks and hickory trees, with brush and wild peavines and undergrowth eaten back by cattle. It looked like it must at one time have been an old field cleared by Indians.

The Cowpens was a kind of meeting place too. The Hannah family had owned it, I guess, and then the Saunders family owned it after them. Parties met there to go on long hunting trips into the mountains, and coon hunters built their fires there and got drunk while their dogs bellowed in the woods. It had been a muster ground for the militias as long as anybody could remember. And there had been camp meetings held there too.

“Cowpens is where they gathered to march to Kings Mountain last October,” Gaither said.

The sun had just about sunk into the trees as we marched around the edge of the Cowpens. As we left the road to cross the open field there was a low hill ahead. Not a hill, just a rise, more like. And then there were open woods going out on either side of the road. Off to the left was Thicketty Mountain, a long-running ridge.

A few patches of snow were left on the north side of cedar bushes like white shadows. Back at the edge of the woods you could see snow in the thickets. But the grazing ground was gray grass with little clumps of broom sedge. Thawing had left the ground soft. We went right back down the road squishing and slipping in the mud. The road was red as the sky in the west.

Old Morgan led us off the road and right across the open meadow. We marched to the top of a rise that leveled out and then went higher. I didn't see any cows in the open places. I guess people had gotten their stock when they heard we were coming, or the cows had already been taken by the armies. I didn't see a beast in all the grazing land except a deer at the far end of an opening in the woods.

We came across another rise, and there was a company already setting up camp. They had fires going and a few tents up and horses tied in the trees. Somebody said they were the Georgia militia.

The Georgians had taken the higher, drier ground. The general halted the line and pointed to the rolling pasture going down to the woods and across the little branch. We were near the back of the column, and would have to take whatever ground the others didn't want. The cavalry was in front and claimed the ground by the Georgia volunteers. Colonel Howard's Continental regulars were next, and they claimed the rest of the high ground.

Captain Cox led us right down to the branch and it looked like we were going to have to sleep in the little swampy valley, but we went on across, through a line of willows and filberts, and came out in a little field all by ourselves. The North Carolina companies spread out on that ground and started to make camp. The grass was deeper there, like it hadn't been grazed on as much as the rest of the Cowpens. And there were dead peavines tangling the edge of the woods.

The whole field by then looked red in the late sun. The sky was red all across the west, with just a few light clouds stretching over. The glow from the sky made the trees coppery, both the pines and the post oaks.
The grass was red as the light from a fireplace, and we all looked bronze as Indians as we gathered sticks for fires and pine limbs to put on the ground for beds.

As I was cutting pine brush for a dry bed, I wished I was far away from there. I wished I didn't have to pretend anymore. Tears came to my eyes as I thought of the baby. I wished I was far away from Gudger. I wished I was in a warm house to protect the baby inside me. The most ordinary life seemed wonderful, compared to the army. Nothing seemed as good as just living your life in the quiet, away from the mud and noise and cursing. Ordinary life seemed almost too good to believe, with Gudger cursing and Tarleton threatening.

Most people had lived their lives in the country before the war, free to come and go and work or rest when they felt like it, with good bread to eat and a warm fire. They could sit by the fire at night in peace and rest on Sundays. Women could sew and play music on spinets. Boys and girls could flirt and write love letters and sing at Christmas. It was hard to believe we'd ever lived that way, with clean stockings and clean leather shoes. We'd slept safe in clean beds.

“What are you studying on?” Gudger said when he came up behind me.

I nearly jumped out of my coat. “Nothing, sir,” I said.

He got up close to me and whispered, “You and me has some unfinished business, girl.”

I turned away from him with the armload of pine boughs.

“You wouldn't be thinking of deserting,” Gudger hollered after me, but I ignored him and carried the pine limbs back to the campfire.

“Gudger may not live long after the battle starts,” T. R. said.

“Don't talk that way,” I said.

“I would hate for something to happen to our sergeant,” Gaither said. “Go fetch some water,” Jenkins said to me.

The spring was in the cedars not too far away. I took the wooden bucket and got some water to wash my hands and to boil grits. I listened to the wind in the pines above for a minute before I returned to the
camp. As we sat by the fire to eat and drink coffee, more companies kept arriving. There were lanterns in the woods and people yelling all around. I was glad it was dark for I needed to piss. The sky was clear and stars came out over Thicketty Mountain. It was going to be a cold night.

General Morgan had ordered that some captured cows be butchered, and even as we ate, great pieces of fresh beef were distributed among the groups. Everyone was given a piece of beef, and we roasted the slabs on sticks above the fires or fried them in pans with the grits. The fresh meat was so sweet it burned my tongue. We ate it all quickly. The rich meat made me feel a little drunk.

As soon as the beef and hominy were finished I slipped out of the circle and headed for the woods where I peed long and hard. It was a wonderful relief. The freedom to make water was one of the things I missed most. I squatted in the woods a long time, listening to the clangs and yells from the field.

I'd just gotten back to the fire when somebody else stepped into the firelight. It was a big man with stout shoulders and thick neck, and I saw it was the general himself.

“You boys better cook enough for breakfast,” he said, “for you won't have time to cook in the morning.”

We stood up and saluted him. I found I was short of breath.

“Keep your seats, boys,” the general said. His face was red in the firelight, but the scar on his cheek was almost white. He looked around the campfire and stepped closer to the flames. “Benny Tarleton is on his way and we need all of you to whip him,” he said.

In the firelight Old Morgan looked even bigger than he had on horseback. His boots were the biggest I'd ever seen, and his shoulders were wider than anybody else's. I'd heard how he used to be a teamster in the mountains of Virginia and how he was called the Old Wagoner because he drove a team for George Washington. His hands looked big enough to grip the reins of a dozen horses. It was said that when he was young he'd been a champion wrestler.

The general wore a blue coat with white buttons. He stepped closer to the fire and took the coat off.

“Look what these British blackguards did to me,” he said, and jerked his shirt out of his pants and raised it up to the back of his neck. We all stepped closer and gasped at what we saw, for his back was a mess of scars and whelks. The scars were raised like ropes and lips over the red hollowed-out places. Didn't seem to be an inch of normal skin.