Brave Enemies (36 page)

“Reload!” Colonel Pickens shouted.

I looked around and saw Captain Cox running up and down the line behind us. “Give them one more shot!” he yelled. “Damn it, fire again!”

But I couldn't find my ramrod. The big redheaded twin on my right had been shot and his brother had thrown down his rifle and was bent over him. “Jamie, are you hurt?” he cried.

Jamie's rifle lay on the ground with a ramrod tossed beside it. I guess he'd been trying to reload when he was shot. I grabbed the rod and started to reload my rifle.

“Wake up, Jamie,” the brother said, “and we'll go home and have some grits and butter.”

I poured in a charge of powder and tried to get a shot out of my bag. But it was like reaching into a bag of jelly. The balls slipped through my fingers, and when I finally did get hold of one it dropped in the grass before I could put it in the barrel. Wasn't any hope of finding it in the broom sedge. That's why some soldiers carried bullets in their mouths,
so they'd have one ready. Of course they had to wipe the spit off so it wouldn't wet the powder.

When I reached to get another shot I looked up and saw the British coming out of the smoke. They looked like a legion of ten thousand. Their bayonets stuck out like horns and fangs. They came out of the smoke like demon shadows pointing their blades at us.

Through the smoke I saw the artillerymen loading their cannons and pointing them. They worked all together like the legs of a spider, pouring in powder, ramming in a cannister of shot, touching the vent on the barrel with the match called a linstock. The cannon jumped in the air and spurted out smoke, and the shot went overhead like forty hawks swooping.

I would just have time to reload before the British line reached us. I might shoot one man just as they stuck me with their bayonets. I'd lost too much time looking for the ramrod.

“Give them another shot,” Colonel Pickens yelled, running down the line.

But all around me men started dropping back. They saw just as I did there wasn't time to reload before the bayonets reached us. A few did fire again, and I saw a British officer go down clutching his sword. But our line began to crumble and melt back. Wasn't anything could hold it firm before the coming bayonets.

I backed away a few feet and tried to get another shot in the barrel. The big redheaded brother tried to pull Jamie back in the smoke. But Jamie just stared up straight at the sky.

It was like I was in the middle of a brushfire, and there was smoke and popping trees and bursting roots all around me. I couldn't see where to go.

“Fire again, you bastards,” somebody shouted. It was Major McDowell riding by.

But our line was broken and backing away and starting to run. I looked around and didn't see anybody I knew. A boy with half his face
shot off lay on the ground. And somebody with his legs broken was trying to crawl backward. Splinters of bone came through his blood-soaked pants. Blood was so thick on his boots it looked like jelly. Snot ran out of his nose and mixed with tears and spit on his chin.

I was all confused. I couldn't think of anything and I didn't know anything. Smoke burned my eyes and nose. There wasn't anybody between me and the Tories, and their blades were coming at me. The drums kept thumping and the pipes whistling. You have no business being here, I said to myself.

“Steady on, now steady on,” the British officer said.

I finally did get the ball and patch in the barrel of the rifle. But I was walking backward from the advancing line. I wasn't going to run, but kept walking as I raised the ramrod and stuck it in the barrel.

“One more shot!” the colonel yelled. “Give them one more shot!”

There were rifles lying on the ground, and hats and shot bags. Somebody had lost a boot as he ran away. Coats were scattered in the broom sedge. An arm lay on the ground in a bloody sleeve. I didn't see Captain Cox or any of his men.

I kept walking after the others, and when I got the bullet packed down I turned to see the redcoats right where I'd stood before. Two Tories stabbed their bayonets into Jamie's body. Driving the blades into the chest, they made sideways twists, like they were cutting out the heart.

“Steady on,” the British officer yelled.

In the smoke I couldn't tell who had epaulets and who didn't. I raised my gun and somebody ran in front of me. It was Gudger. “Don't shoot at me, you idiot,” he yelled. His face was bloody and swollen. I didn't see T. R. or Gaither.

“Fire one more time,” somebody called. It was Major McDowell, turning his horse this way and that way among the running boys. In the smoke I couldn't see anything clearly. People ran sideways all around me. Crows called somewhere up in the air, like they were riled by all the battle noise.

I raised the rifle in the smoke, trying to see epaulets. But all I could tell in the fog was the British were getting close. They all looked alike in their big hats, holding bayonets out in front of them. The drums kept throbbing and it sounded like somebody beating their own belly. It was such a scary sound, of somebody thumping on their stomach, and it was getting louder.

I squeezed the trigger, but couldn't see if anybody went down, for even more smoke blew across the field. Please, Lord, I prayed, let me live through this. Guns popped all around, but the redcoats didn't fire. They just kept coming on with their bayonets stuck out in front like ghosts marching through a wall. I saw they never did fire when they were moving. And they all fired at the same time. It was only when they started sticking in their bayonets that everyone went for their own target.

I started backing away again, and was going to run to the right as we had been told to do. But my feet caught on something and I fell right on a body lying in the broom sedge. When I tried to get up my face mashed right against the face of the dead man. His eyes stared straight up, but his skin wasn't cold. He must have just been hit. Something was running out of his mouth, and at first I thought it was blood, but then smelled tobacco juice. I was looking right into his eyes, and then I rolled away.

When I staggered to my feet, still holding the gun in one hand and the ramrod in the other, there was blood all down the front of my coat. It looked like I'd been stabbed by a bayonet, but I didn't feel any wound. I stepped over a body with the guts blown out by a cannonball. There was a boy with his leg shot off dragging himself back toward the Maryland line. “Oh Jesus,” he yelled.

There was the smell of blood in the air, like where you're butchering hogs.

I was swirling in a flood of human bodies. Was I going to be drowned, or trampled and left behind? I started running. But ahead there were bayonets pointing through the smoke. Had I gotten turned around and was running back toward the redcoats? They stood in perfect ranks with
their bayonets thrust out. I was lost in the thick smoke and couldn't think.

“Fall back to the left, to the left,” somebody yelled. Everybody started running to the right, and I saw I'd gotten turned around toward the Maryland line. I had gotten separated from McDowell's North Carolina men. I started running as hard as I could. The Continental regulars had blue uniforms with red stripes, but except for the colors they looked just like the British line. Their drummer boy was making his box thump and rattle.

Bullets whined and sang all around me. Tufts of broom sedge kicked up in front of me. It was the cannons firing. A soldier in the Maryland line was hit in the chest and fell.

Dodging zigzag, I dashed to the side like everybody else did. I ran like I was trying to miss the bullets, past a hickory tree and then a sassafras bush. I didn't see anybody I knew. I thought maybe there was cover ahead.

Just then I heard another sound, like shots fired one after another, or a drum beating louder and louder. The sound of a bugle tore the air like a scarf ripped in two. I turned and saw horses bearing down on us out of the smoke. It was the Green Dragoons. With their sabers raised high, they looked like giants on horses. With the sun bright on smoke behind them, they seemed to come out of the sky shooting shadows at us. Ba-ba-ba-boom, ba-ba-ba-boom, ba-ba-ba-boom, they sounded as they galloped closer.

Men ran in front of me and on each side of me. I jumped over bodies and hit others with my rifle and the ramrod. I looked back over my shoulder at the dragoons bearing down.

“Hie, hie!” the horsemen shouted, as if we were foxes they were riding after. They raised their sabers to chop off arms and heads. A bugle splashed out its sound. I had not reloaded the rifle and there was nothing to do but run as hard as I could.

A horse raced up beside me and the dragoon slashed the neck of the
man in front of me. The head went rolling like a ball and the neck spurted blood as the body kept running before it fell. Horses dashed on both sides of me so close I could smell them. I figured I was next. I held the rifle up to protect my neck. The taste in my mouth was bad as the smell in my pants.

But suddenly as they came, the dragoons ripped away. The bugle played again and they fell back. I ran harder than ever, thinking this was my chance. The shot pouch banged against my side. I jumped over a tuft of bushes and dashed between two black gum trees. We were past the Maryland line now, heading off toward the north, toward the pine trees.

I couldn't tell where we were going, but everybody seemed to be running in the same direction. Men jumped over each other and shoved each other. They cursed and dodged each other. I didn't see anybody I knew. It looked like we were running back to where we'd camped the night before.

Just then I saw why the dragoons had turned back. Out of a little dip behind the hill came Colonel Washington's cavalry galloping toward us and past us. They had a bugle too, and their hooves rumbled loud as the Greens' horses had. Their white-and-blue coats shone in the sun, and they had their sabers out and flashing as they rode past us. “Whoo-ee!” they yelled, and galloped around us flinging up dirt and grass.

But we didn't slow down, for we didn't know what else might be coming after us. I just wanted to get away, from the bullets and smoke, and the bayonet blades. I wanted to get away where the air was cool enough to breathe. As I ran the air got cleaner and I breathed deeper, but then I saw an officer ahead pointing back toward the redcoats. And there was a boom behind us like the sky had cracked open. It sounded like everybody on the field was shooting their muskets at once. The air itself burst open, and it felt like my ears broke, or my head. There was a sick feeling behind my eyes, and all over me. Flocks of bullets groaned around me and above me, like passenger pigeons whistling through the air. Somebody in front of me stumbled and I jumped right over him.

A big tall man ran out in front of us and yelled, “Turn back and reload!” He pointed back toward the field, but we ran right past him. If I stopped or even slowed down the men behind me would trample me. The tall man screamed and waved his arms. I couldn't look back.

Something hit me from behind. I reckon it was the barrel of a musket that struck me in the middle of the back. The lick almost knocked me down. I dodged around an oak tree and ducked under the limbs of another.

Behind us the firing went on, pop pop pop, and one cannon roared and then another. I heard screams of men that got hit, and shouts of officers and soldiers. I couldn't see where I was going and just followed those in front of me. We ran through scattered trees and around a farther ridge. Lt. Joseph Hughes of the South Carolina militia jumped out in front of us waving his hat. He had blood on his face.

“You damn cowards!” he yelled. “Stop and fight or we'll all be lost.” His face glowed with fury. All I could think of was how sweet it would be to reach the quiet woods where nobody was shooting at me and no bayonets were pointing at me. I wanted to reach the swamp and thicket and hide there. It was hard to remember meadows and quiet streams where people weren't shooting and stabbing each other.

Lieutenant Hughes darted around us and in front of us. “Tarleton will ride you down and chop you to pieces,” he shouted. “Your only hope is to turn and fight. Remember the Waxhaws.”

Beyond the foot of the hill was a little gully, and beyond that stood a clump of pine trees. The pines grew in a kind of island in the field. The trees were thicker at the north end of the Cowpens, but this little stand of pines stood out from the other woods.

Lieutenant Hughes caught up with us again. He ran out in front and stopped by the pine trees. “Don't be fools,” he shouted. “You've got to reload and make a stand.”

But even as he yelled a few boys broke away and dashed into the trees.
I guess some of them had their horses tied in the thickets. Others must have kept running till they reached the swamps.

“The Tories will come after us and kill us and burn our houses,” the lieutenant shouted. “We've got to reload and stand by the Continentals up there on the hill.”

As we rounded the clump of pines we all stopped. I don't know what came over us. It was a mystery, like everything else that day. Lieutenant Hughes hollered at us and pointed back toward the line. As soon as we got behind the pines the terrible panic went out of us. It all happened at once. We saw there was no use to run.

“Though we haven't got bayonets, we'll ram our rifles up their arses,” the officer shouted.

The lieutenant came staggering up all out of breath, and Colonel Pickens rode up too. But we'd already stopped. There must have been several hundred of us, all out of breath and some of us were bleeding. Everybody was dirty and had powder and soot on their faces.

“Reload and go back to the line,” Hughes said.

“Our brothers from Maryland and Virginia are taking all the fire,” Colonel Pickens said. “We must go back and do our part.”

We could hear the pop pop pop pop of muskets, and from time to time the roar of a volley and the boom boom of the two cannons. Crows in the white pines cursed at us.