King's Mountain (33 page)

I would keep my horse, as would the other commanders, for we could more easily be seen by our men if we were on horseback. As the other Seviers tied up their mounts with the rest, I turned to my youngest boy. “James, you will stay here with the others who are minding the horses.”

He gaped in astonishment. “But, Daddy, you said I could come!”

“And so you have, son, but this is as far as you go. When the fighting is over we'll come back for you.”

James scowled at his brother, his eyes red-rimmed now with tears of vexation. “What about Joseph? Is he staying, too?”

I glanced at Joseph, suddenly tempted to keep him safe as well, but he was two years older than James, older than I had been when I married his mother. As a father I might wish to protect him, but as his commanding officer, I could not justify it. He could shoot as well as anyone, and he was old enough to do a man's job. “No,” I said. “Joseph is eighteen. He will come with us.”

James looked as if he wanted to contest the matter further, but I was giving him a stare that brooked no argument, and Robert ruffled his hair, and said gently, “You are a soldier now, James. It is your duty to obey an officer's order without question. And mind you look after my horses particularly, nephew, for I am too tired to walk home.”

*   *   *

The sun had begun to tilt downward, the beginning of its slide toward an early autumn sunset. It was just before three o'clock then. We began our preparations for the battle. Our concerted intention was to surround that hill of Ferguson's, but, according to Chronicle and Mattocks, the thing was shaped like a washerwoman's battling stick—long and narrow—which meant that some of the militias had farther to go than others to take up their positions. We ordered the men to check their weapons yet again, for the early part of our morning journey had been through a steady rain. The old priming had to be cleared from the pan of each weapon, and new priming put in. The men examined their bullets, and many of them stuffed four or five of the bullets into their mouths, a trick learned in previous battles. Having the bullets so readily to hand made it easier to reload the weapon quickly, and some fellows even claimed that a mouthful of bullets kept them from getting thirsty, but in all the skirmishes I've ever been in, with Indian and Tory alike, I cannot say that I ever had a moment to spare to think of hunger, thirst, or relieving myself. Sometimes it is as if you are sleepwalking: you see things happening, and you are moving and firing and reloading, but it's as if you are watching it from somewhere outside yourself. Perhaps that feeling kept me from being afraid. I would only come back to feeling in my own skin when the danger was past; until then, I felt no bodily needs, not even the pain of a wound. There may have been men who did not experience battle that way, but perhaps they did not survive, while I lived through the dangers without feeling fear or pity, or even anger, and I was satisfied with my lot.

One last bit of preparation: a sign so that each man could show which side he was fighting for. There were likely to be some regular army troops in Ferguson's command, but the majority of his men were local Tory volunteers, and they would be dressed same as we were—like hunters or Indian fighters, in buckskins or homespun shirts and leggings. It would be easy enough to mistake the enemy for one of our own, or the other way around. We had heard that the Tories generally put a sprig of pine bough in their hats to mark them as Loyalists to the Crown. There was nothing out growing—no wildflower or colored autumn leaf—that would supply the many hundred men in our command, so we settled on a bit of ordinary paper, stuck into each man's hat band, as our symbol.

As an extra precaution, because we were a citizen army lacking recognizable uniforms, we agreed upon a countersign that could be called out if a man needed to identify himself to someone from another militia and prove they were on the same side. The countersign we chose was “Buford,” in memory of the Virginia commander whose men were slaughtered at the Waxhaws. Today we aimed to avenge them. Because of that, “Buford” was more than a code word: it was a battle cry. It reminded us not only of our reasons for fighting, but also of the consequences of losing.

*   *   *

Almost in silence, we formed ourselves into battle lines, mindful of our proximity to the enemy. This time there were no public prayers to consecrate the mission, as there had been for us at the outset at the Sycamore Shoals mustering, and none of the commanders made any rousing speeches, as Cleveland had done on the day after we left Quaker Meadows. Every man was now alone with his thoughts. I remember patting Joseph on the shoulder and shaking hands with my brother Robert as we walked away from the tethered horses. In hasty whispers we wished one another Godspeed, and then the preliminaries were done with, and we got on with the business at hand.

The commanders had discussed our plan of attack back when we received the information from the spy Enoch Gilmer about the whereabouts of Ferguson.

As agreed, we now divided our troops into four columns, each heading for a different portion of the ridge. My Watauga men were in the far right column, behind the Burke County militia, commanded by Major McDowell. We were heading for different points on the west-southwestern end of the ridge, and when we reached the summit, my troops would be positioned between the militias of Isaac Shelby and William Campbell.

According to Major Chronicle's recollection of his deer camp on that ridge, the western slope was the gentler incline, so we should have an easier time climbing up, but if Ferguson had a grain of sense, he'd be expecting the attack to come from that quarter, so it would be the most heavily defended area.

Benjamin Cleveland headed the column bound for the northern flank of the ridge, nearest to Ferguson's encampment, and the troops of Lacey and Hawthorn went with him. So did the ragtag band of men led by that scoundrel James Williams. They had trailed us from the Cowpens, keeping a little back from the rest of the column, but nonetheless with us. The rest of us didn't pay him much mind, after his antics earlier in the week of trying to send us on a wild goose chase to Ninety Six, and of attempting to take over Hill's command. Williams was not included in the discussions with the other commanders, but, although we made our disapproval obvious, we allowed him to accompany us to King's Mountain. We needed all the soldiers we could get, even from the likes of him, and, as far as I knew, no one had ever faulted his courage or his fighting spirit. So Williams led his men to the north flank of the ridge, to occupy a position between the forces of Shelby and those of Cleveland, Lacey, and Hawthorn.

Major Chronicle and the South Fork men and Major Winston's troops headed out before the rest of us, because they were headed for the northeastern end of the ridge, both the steepest and the farthest point away from our current position. Before they set out, some of our scouts had preceded them, creeping up toward the ridge, Indian style, to remove Ferguson's first line of defense: the pickets posted around the base of the King's Mountain plateau. If all went as planned, the scouts would sneak up on the unsuspecting sentries and dispatch them with a quick knife thrust to the vitals. We aimed to get as close as possible to Ferguson's camp before he knew we were coming.

It almost worked, but one of the last pickets must have managed to spot the scouts approaching him through the underbrush, and before they could reach him, he fired off a shot. Up on the ridge, Ferguson's men heard it and were forewarned.

The drums began to rumble.

We had lost the element of surprise.

VIRGINIA SAL

The attack had come. My heart was beating in time with the drums, and in the distance I could hear the whoops and yells of the rebel soldiers coming ever nearer.

The major had been mightily pleased the day he spotted this table of a hill. When they told him that it was called “the King's Mountain,” he thought God himself was smiling down upon his mission and would deliver him and his regiment safely from the Backwater Men. In his certainty he was jubilant.

I hoped he was right. I'll allow that the major knows more about waging war than the likes of me, and, being the son of a lord, likely he is closer to Our Lord and Father as well. But I felt no joy in what he took as a sign from Providence. That feeling of summer's ending had never left me, and now I shivered even when the sun was blazing overhead.

Virginia Paul took no notice of anybody's sentiments, sharing neither the major's confidence nor my own misgivings. She glided about the new encampment, smiling her cat-in-the-cream-jug smile, and doing the officers' bidding, as if we were safely tucked in Charlotte Town, instead of camped on some godforsaken hill, with a ragtag army coming at us. Sometimes I heard her voice wafting up the hill from the little stream below, singing a queer tuneless air with words I could not make sense of.

“What do you reckon?” I'd asked her last evening, as we stared into the firelight. We knew that the rebels were coming. The major was alone in his tent, writing yet another dispatch to Lord Cornwallis, asking again for reinforcements, so we had the night and his campfire to ourselves.

Beside me, Virginia Paul kept humming her strange little tune for so long that I thought she had not heard me, but at last she said, “Well, girl, I told you what I thought a long time ago, did I not? I gave you the good and the bad, depending on how you take it.”

I harked back to the talks we'd had over the summer, mostly while we were washing the major's linen in a forest stream
. You'll never pass a day of winter cold or hungry … You and the major will be together forever …
I looked up at her then, and she was no longer smiling.

“I won't see another winter, will I?” I whispered.

“You made your choice a good while back. You chose him.…”

I opened my mouth to say that I repented of it, but the words stuck in my throat. He would never have stayed with me, but I had chosen him, and what was there for me if I left him now?
A life of toil on a clay dirt farm, with a brute of a husband, and never quite enough to eat? Old at thirty, dead at forty, forgotten a week after my burying. Worth living for?
I fingered the green glass beads around my neck, and shook my head.

She answered me as if I had spoken my thoughts aloud. “So you know,” she said. “Yes. I told you once: there are worse things than dying.”

*   *   *

Now, in what had been a peaceful afternoon, the drums were rumbling and the rebels were upon us. I caught sight of the major, but he had no time for me. Elias Powell held the white horse while the major, clad in his checkered hunting shirt, hoisted himself in the saddle, always a painful thing to watch on account of his useless arm. He put the silver whistle to his lips, and rode off toward the red-coated regulars.

I looked around me, trying to block out the noises, so that I could think on what to do next. The piddling hill had become an ants' nest of activity, with the regulars and the local Tories scurrying first one way and then another, trying to hear the officers' commands over the din of the drums and the echoing yells from below.

Suddenly Virginia Paul was beside me, wrapped in her black shawl, but as serene and unruffled as ever. I wondered if she were deaf or mad to ignore the chaos about us, but her eerie calm made me turn to her for help. Grabbing her arm, I said, “What must I do? Tell me!”

She made to answer me, but then she shook her head.

“What will you do, then?”

Virginia Paul shrugged. “Oh, I'm away down the hill in a moment. There'll be no more work for us here, Sal. It is done, and you are free.”

“But should I hide, or take up a musket, or run with you?”

She made no answer, but she embraced me quickly, humming in my ear her strange sad song. She hurried away toward the southeastern slope of the King's Mountain. I watched her disappear over the brow of the hill, and then I heard the roar of the guns and the answering volleys from below, and the soldiers were enveloped in the smoke from the guns, and I stood alone.

My courage failed me then, and when I saw the first of the rebels scrambling up to gain the hill, I turned to run. I felt a sharp pain in my breast—no worse than the sting of a wasp, and then—nothing.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

3:00
P.M.
October 7, 1780

As we advanced toward the slopes of the mountain, we heard the roll of drums continuing to echo from the heights, and then the shrill sound of a whistle, blown in long blasts and then short ones, as if signals were being given. We had no time to consider any of this, though. With the enemy alerted to our presence, we had no time to spare.

Somewhere off to my left, I heard Shelby shout out, “Let every man be his own officer! Do not wait for orders, but…”

Then I raised my rifle and aimed it in the direction of the summit.

The attack began.

On the edge of the ridge above us, a line of troops with scarlet coats banded in green appeared. I was right about Ferguson's defense: knowing that this was the lowest and most vulnerable side of the encampment, he had positioned his best men nearby in readiness. From the look of their uniforms, these men were regular army, and likely better trained than the local recruits. We could see them at the summit, standing out clear and bright from the surrounding greenery and silhouetted against the blue sky. Near them rode a boyish-looking Redcoat officer, waving a sword. It was not Ferguson, though, for this man wore no hunting shirt, only his green-trimmed scarlet uniform. The soldiers he commanded would be carrying regulation Brown Bess muskets, fitted with bayonets. Perhaps these soldiers had come south with Ferguson himself. Certainly, these were the troops that he would value most highly, for they were entrusted with the initial defense of his position.

We were not expected to get past them.