King's Mountain (32 page)

Many a man would jibe at being passed over in favor of a mere youth, even had their military ranks been equal. Many a man would have insisted on his well-earned rights, which were undeniable. But fortunately for all of us, Frederick Hambright was not the sort of thin-skinned man who would put his pride above his duty. Perhaps, too, he was mindful that the preferment of Chronicle over him would end at the close of day, for after the battle the separate militias would disperse, and Campbell's appointments of expediency would no longer matter to anyone.

Would the elder colonel object to serving under Major Chronicle?

“No, sir,” said Hambright, his strong German accent barely discernible in that brief reply. “I do not object. Chronicle must lead.”

“Good man,” said Campbell. “Then you will assume the duties previously carried out by Major Chronicle, and Colonel Graham may go home to his wife.”

William Graham looked no less agitated than he had before, and, indeed, in deciding on whether to stay or go, the poor man could only choose between two wrong answers, but now the choice had been made, and he must live with it. He turned to Major Chronicle, not to offer words of advice for the coming battle, but still preoccupied with his own troubles: “I must have an escort, Major.”

“Granted,” said Chronicle. “But you must choose one yourself, Colonel Graham. I won't order any man to go with you.”

Graham looked back at the men from his militia who had come up to lend their support at the first sign of trouble. “I want David Dickey to accompany me, then.”

At the sound of his name on the colonel's lips, the young soldier looked aghast, and then scornful. “Go with you, sir? Why, I'd as lief die in the coming battle as to desert my fellows and hightail it home with you and miss the fight.”

“You must go, Dave,” said his new commander, Major Chronicle.

Dickey spit on the ground. “Naw. Y'all can shoot me right here on the spot. I ain't going with him and miss this battle.”

“You must go,” Chronicle said again. He was more forceful this time, for this was his first order as the South Fork's commander.

Dickey was silent for a moment, returning the major's stare, and then he looked away, shrugging. “Well, sir, if it is your order that I depart with Colonel Graham, then I reckon it is my duty to obey you.”

“We must hurry!” said Graham, whose thoughts now concerned only his wife.

With one last regretful look at the column of soldiers, David Dickey raised a hand in valediction, turned his horse, and rode off into the woods after Graham. In a few moments they had disappeared from sight.

William Chronicle shook his head as if to clear all thoughts of the incident from his mind. He had more weighty matters to concern him now. He turned back to Campbell. “Captain Mattocks and I have been talking about that deer camp we had last fall up on King's Mountain. If that's where Ferguson is holed up, we could surround him. He's up on a narrow, flat place, a few hundred feet above the valley, so we would have to attack uphill, but that may be a stroke of good fortune. I reckon we'd be less likely to shoot each other that way. And if we do have enough troops to encircle that ridge, Ferguson would be caught up on that plateau with nowhere to go.”

We were all silent for a moment, waiting, I suppose, to see if anyone could come up with any objection to this plan, and also in deference to Campbell, who had the final say. I looked around at the riders nearest me—Campbell, Shelby, Cleveland, McDowell, Winston—and to a man they were all smiling and nodding in agreement with Major Chronicle's suggestion.

“There are seven hundred of us in all, I judge,” Campbell said. “Would you think that to be sufficient numbers to surround that ridge?”

“Yes, sir,” said Major Chronicle. “To the best of my recollection of the place, I believe it would.” He looked to his friend Captain Mattocks for confirmation, and received a slight nod from that young man in return.

“So you are agreed then?” said Campbell, looking from one to the other. “Good. We will plan accordingly. Let's divide the militias into three groups and surround the encampment.”

It wouldn't be long now. We knew where we were going. And we knew how we would launch the attack once we arrived. Now there were only a few miles to cover, a little time for a silent prayer in the saddle, before we could accomplish what we set out to do, and then, God willing, we would go home.

When the newly appointed leader of Graham's militia had taken his officers and rejoined his men, no doubt to explain to them what had transpired, Joseph McDowell, who happened to be riding alongside me at that point, leaned over and said in confidential tones, “After seeing what just transpired, I expect you must think William Graham a coward, Colonel Sevier. He is devoted to his wife, and indeed I hope that heaven will spare her to be with him for many more years, but, for those of us who know him, Graham's courage is not in doubt. He was at Thicketty Fort with my brother's troops, and he acquitted himself well. I don't know, though, that we won't be better off in the end by having Major Chronicle take over his command, since he has camped at the very spot where Ferguson is now dug in. It may be that Graham's leaving is a blessing in disguise.”

I thought that the leaving of Joseph McDowell's brother had been another such blessing in disguise for us, but I was not so uncivil as to say so. I smiled my thanks and rode on, content for the moment to commune with my thoughts.

“Look!” someone called out. “It has stopped raining.”

We had been too preoccupied to notice, but now the sudden appearance of blue sky and autumn sunshine seemed like an omen, a celestial blessing upon our mission. At least, I hoped it was.

*   *   *

I kept thinking that in a few more bends in the trail, the site of Ferguson's encampment would be before us: King's Mountain, whose name Major Ferguson had reportedly taken for his own omen of good fortune. Major Chronicle and his South Fork men had moved to the head of the column, and we were proceeding under his direction. But though I looked upward to the left and right of us, scanning what horizon I could see, there was no peak rising above the level of the surrounding terrain.

“Where is it?” I said to no one in particular. “I can't see a mountain.”

“It's just a long ridge,” said Joseph McDowell. “I've been in these parts before. After the mountains you're accustomed to, this one won't look like much.”

I nodded. Anyone from the Watauga settlement would scoff at hearing this little ridge being called a mountain, for compared to the mighty Roan, from which you can look down upon the clouds, it was a sorry excuse for one.

“Even if you could see it from here,” McDowell was saying, “that little bump on the landscape is more molehill than mountain. The long low ridge is perhaps three miles long, and oriented northeast to southwest. But it is thickly forested, like the mountains you are accustomed to.”

I considered the terrain in the light of my years of wilderness fighting. From McDowell's description, the thing sounded like a giant razorback hog asleep between two valleys. So Ferguson was ensconced on a narrow little summit, was he? And he thought he was safe? Well, it didn't look like it would turn out to be much of a climb for mountain soldiers. A couple of minutes would probably see you to the top of it. And I would thank Providence for every single one of the trees growing along the entire length and height of the ridge. We would ascend that sorry little mountain, wherever it was, Indian style, darting from tree to tree, protected from enemy fire, while the Tories were on a flat open space above with nowhere to run to. I hoped Major Ferguson liked his choice of battlefield as well as I did, and I could not resist remarking to Major McDowell: “Well, if the hill you describe is the king's
mountain,
then I reckon the king's
ocean
must be a millpond.”

Joseph McDowell smiled, but before he could reply, we noticed a commotion going on ahead of us. No one made much noise, for Chronicle reckoned we were now about two miles from the site of his old hunting camp, close enough to the enemy's position to worry about being detected, but we saw that one lone rider, who had been heading down from the mountain, had been surrounded by men of the South Fork militia, and though the horseman had tried mightily to elude them, one of the men had grabbed the reins, and several others managed to pull the struggling rider out of the saddle.

“He looks about the age of my James,” I said, trying to peer around the riders in front of me to see what was happening. I said to McDowell, “So it isn't Ferguson, nor even one of his officers. Still, if he has been up on the ridge he probably knows something worth hearing. I think we should find out what it is.”

I wouldn't horn in on the capture, for Chronicle's men were all local to this area, and chances were good that they knew the prisoner and could get more out of him than a stranger. But if they did get him to part with any information, I wanted to be privy to it. I saw that Shelby and Winston had the same thought, for they, too, were approaching the head of the column. Frederick Hambright and several of the South Fork men had taken the captured boy to the edge of the trail, and, judging by the sullen and tearful look on the face of the prisoner, they were not taking no for an answer.

After a few minutes, Chronicle's hunting companion, Captain Mattocks left the group around the prisoner and came to tell us what they had learned.

“That there's John Ponder, sirs,” said Mattocks, nodding toward the prisoner. “Ponders are thick on the ground hereabouts, but Colonel Hambright recognized this particular one, and said that since this lad's older brother is an infamous Tory scoundrel, he figured this one was just as bad.”

“Did he tell you anything?” said Shelby.

“Oh, he is a goose laying golden eggs, sirs. We searched his pockets, first thing. Why, he was headed for Charlotte Town, carrying a dispatch from Major Ferguson to Lord Cornwallis himself.”

“I suppose Ferguson is asking for reinforcements and supplies,” I said. “I would, in his place.”

“Well, it's too late for him to get any,” said Mattocks. “But yesterday our spy Joseph Kerr said he didn't think any were being sent. There's a rumor abroad that Bloody Ban Tarleton is ailing, and cannot leave Charlotte Town.”

“Probably choked on his own venom,” said McDowell.

Major McDowell's bitterness toward Tarleton meant that he was thinking of the battle in the Waxhaws back in May, when Tarleton's dragoons caught up with the retreating forces under Abraham Buford of Virginia, and cut them to pieces. It was not so much the defeat that rankled—our side had lost its share of battles before and since—but Banastre Tarleton's refusal to give quarter to those who tried to surrender was an act of barbarism that shocked even those of us who were Indian fighters. Those who did survive said that while the wounded lay helpless on the ground, crying out for water, Tarleton's dragoons crisscrossed the field, running their bayonets through the bodies of the fallen. Their testimony had spread throughout the southern militias, and the shock and outrage at this tale of savagery had spurred us on to greater efforts against the enemy.

“I wish Banastre Tarleton was up on that hill,” said McDowell, “but for the fact that his presence might tip the odds against us.”

“Well, it's good to know that he isn't there,” I said. “Our numbers should be about even without him.”

I turned back to Captain Mattocks. “So Tarleton is still at headquarters. Did General Cornwallis send anyone else to reinforce Ferguson?”

“Ponder says not. He even reckons some of the men Ferguson had to begin with have begun to slip away.”

McDowell and I exchanged glances. “Heard we were coming,” he muttered.

“There was one other thing,” said Captain Mattocks. “Major Chronicle wanted us to pass this information on to all the men. The Ponder boy told us what Ferguson is wearing so that we'll be able to pick him out in the battle.”

“Isn't he in the regulation uniform?” asked McDowell. “I should think that a Redcoat would be easy enough to spot.”

“So it would,” said Mattocks, “only Major Ferguson has put on a long red-checkered hunting shirt over the top of his uniform. You need to look for a man on horseback wearing that red-and-white-checked hunting shirt. That's your target.” Mattocks touched a finger to his hat by way of valediction. “By your leave, sirs, I'm going off now to tell the other commanders.” Barely pausing long enough to hear our thanks, Captain Mattocks headed for the back of the column to deliver his message.

Joseph McDowell was looking up at the beginning of a forested ridge stretching out before us. “Less than a mile, by my reckoning,” he said. “It won't be long now.”

I glanced up at the sky. The storm had well and truly passed on, and the sky was still the deep blue of the best autumn days, with the warm afternoon sun beaming down on us as we rode. There was nothing now to keep us from completing our mission: we had information on the enemy's position and strength; a sound plan of attack from local men who knew the terrain; and clement weather in which to do battle.

The hour was at hand.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

October 7, 1780

When we were still half a mile from the treeless plateau where Ferguson had made his camp, our procession halted. Horses would do us no good in the ascent of a steep and rocky hillside, and they had earned a rest, anyhow. We ordered the men to tether them a little away from the trace. There was little else to leave behind, for we had made the last leg of the journey without provisions. We had only our weapons and the powder and shot to fire them. Ferguson, we had heard, traveled with a score of baggage wagons. A few miles back I had wondered aloud what he kept in them, and solemnly Isaac Shelby replied, “Why, enough provisions to last him the rest of his life.” Owing to my utter exhaustion, we were another hundred yards farther along before the ominous meaning of his words struck me.