King's Mountain (5 page)

Shelby, weary from forty miles of hard riding over from his family's holdings at Shelby's Fort, rounded the bend to see a horde of people making merry under the trees, eating and laughing, while others danced and clapped in time to the music of fiddlers. I was getting ready for the horse race, for I had a fine young stud that I wanted to try against my neighbors' stock, but when I saw Shelby riding up—the grim-faced bearer of bad tidings—I handed over the reins to my oldest boy, Joseph, and bade him take my place in the race. One of the younger boys took Shelby's horse to be cooled down and watered, while Shelby himself downed a cup of water, and then I led the colonel into the house, away from the revelers.

*   *   *

The cows' bellowing echoed through the woods as the four young women had set out in a line from the fort on that still evening. They walked slowly, single-file, and not talking amongst themselves. Even if they believed that the danger was past, they would be cautious and quiet anyhow. They had been raised on the frontier, and such wariness was in their blood.

In the fort all was quiet as well. The sentries gazed over the palisades, alert for signs of trouble, and the rest of us were listening, praying that until those girls came back we would hear nothing.

The crack of distant gunfire sent me running to the parapet. I had been right. Of course I was. The Indians had not left—why should they? We were trapped in the fort, existing on a meager food supply while they had our farms, the great forest, and the rivers to sustain them. What had they to do but wait it out, and the longer they waited, the greater their triumph, for in our privation, we would grow weaker by the day.

I only hoped that I might have the satisfaction of hearing the stammered apologies from those foolhardy lasses when they came crashing through the bracken back to the safety of the fort.
Drop the buckets and run,
I thought. Surely they would not be foolish enough to do otherwise.

Run.

I could only hope that they were closer to the fort than the renegades, and that they could run fast enough to save their lives. I hauled myself up on the parapet, gun in hand, while my eyes scanned the distance, looking for some sign of those girls, or, failing that, for some enemy to aim at.

If we could set up a covering fire, it might slow down the attackers enough to enable the girls to gain the fort.

Captain Robertson and those of us up on the parapet waited for what felt like an eternity, but it was only the space of time that you could hold your breath. One girl ran headlong up the path toward the great wooden gate, but she was cut down in a hail of gunfire and arrows. As I had suspected, the Cherokee had not gone away, after all. In the night they had crept close to the fort and hidden themselves in the woods, reappearing only when the girls tried to return to the fort. I recognized the bleeding body below as the stout girl with gooseberry eyes. Who'd have thought she could have run so fast? It was her misfortune that her speed and her bravery had not been enough, and I was sorry to see her courage repaid with tragedy.

Where were the others?

For another moment I glanced at the crumpled form of the fallen girl near the walls of the fort and then I turned my gaze back to the path searching for the remainder of the party. Only one appeared.

Catherine Sherrill.

There she was, running for all she was worth. On the parapet I called out to Captain Robertson, “The Sherrill lass,” I said, pointing, but I saw that he had already caught sight of her. “The gate. Can't we chance it?”

He shook his head. “If they open it for her, the Indians can get in as well. They are practically upon us. Even if we could kill them, they could cut down as many of us before they were all dispatched.”

I could not dispute the truth of what he said, but it was a bitter choice: save the brave young woman or safeguard all those within it?

I leaned over the poles of the stockade. The wall was perhaps fourteen feet high, and too steep to climb—it had to be, to keep us safe from attacks. Around me, the men were firing blindly into the woods, trying to guess the location of the attackers from the smoke and the direction of the arrows' flight. But the trees shielded the attackers, making it difficult to bring one of them down, but we hoped to distract them so that they could not take a proper aim at the running girl.

By now Catherine had reached the gate, and found that it was closed. Her shoulders sagged, and I swear I could see the reality register in her fear-stricken eyes. My heart sank for her, and my own despair grew. I caught my breath, willing her not to give up. She hesitated for no more than an intake of breath, and then she sped away, around the perimeter of the fort, staying close to the wall, and calling out for help when she had the wind to manage it. I watched arrows fly past her, and bury their points into the wall of the fort. Bullets struck the logs and made little clouds of wood dust where they hit. Silently, I cursed the British army that had given those guns to the Indians. At any moment one of their bullets would find its target and strike her down, making us all unwilling witnesses to her fate.

I could not bear the cruelty of it, and perhaps it was my dread of watching her die that gave me the idea. Some of the men had rushed out of the blockhouse and were standing in the open space below. I called down for them to climb up on the parapet. We had but moments to effect a desperate plan.

As they ascended the ladder, I set aside my hat, my powder horn, my weapons—anything that would weigh me down. Then I turned to them: “Lift me up over the wall, boys. And two of you hold on to my feet. Mind you get a good grip, though.”

They might have tried to reason with me if there had been time, but I outranked them, and, even though we were not a formal army here on the frontier, an officer's orders were beyond question. Or perhaps in those few moments they realized that what I proposed to do was the sum total of that young woman's chance to live.

The fact that I am tall and lean gave me an advantage in the prospect, for my reach would be long, and I hoped my shape would make me less of a target for the Cherokee marksmen lurking in the nearby woods. I scarcely had time to take a deep breath before the men hoisted me up and dangled me down over the pointed logs atop the fort. I felt myself falling and then just as abruptly I pulled up short, as the lads who had hold of my legs tightened their grip and held me fast.

I hung there headfirst, like a ham from a smokehouse rafter, with my arms outstretched but still able to reach no closer than seven feet off the ground. I spared a thought for my leggings, hoping that the deer hide would be equal to the strain of the grip of those who were keeping me aloft. If any shot or arrows were aimed at me, I would be powerless to avoid them. But, one way or another, a minute would see me to the end of it.

When Catherine Sherrill rounded the corner of the stockade wall, I called out to her above the shouts and the crack of gunfire, “Jump, Kate!”

She heard me and glanced up. Without breaking stride, she sprang into the air, reaching up as far as she could, but as I strained to reach her outstretched arm, she fell back again, a hand's breadth shy of the distance she needed to catch hold of my hand. “Circle around!” I screamed down to her. She stumbled for just an instant, and then ran on, just as a Cherokee arrow hit the wall close behind her. Apparently, so intent were they upon dispatching her that they did not spare a volley up at me. Or if they did, their aim was faulty, for I stayed unharmed.

We had perhaps a minute, if she and I succeeded in staying alive that long, before she would appear again. I needed to stretch lower to the ground to be within her reach, yet still have the force to hoist her up with me over the wall, for I did not mean to land outside the fort myself and keep her company in dying.

I called up to the men who had hold of my legs, “A little lower, boys! Now swing me side to side! Like a pendulum!”

This was our last chance, and then we would have done all we could. Now her life depended upon Providence, and on her own strength and will. Once again she rounded the corner of the fort, seeming to run at me in a blur as I dangled there swinging back and forth, a hanged man in reverse, with the blood coursing to my head. I stretched out my hands as far as they would go, and upon the low arc of my passage above her, she hurled herself upward with a great leap, and managed to grasp my wrist. I wrapped my fingers around her own slender wrists, and let the swinging motion carry us upward and toward the men at the top of the parapet leaning over to grab us.

It seemed to me that a dozen hands grabbed us both. With a collective heave, they hauled us up and over the log spikes atop the wall, where Catherine and I tumbled down together in a heap on the parapet.

It was only then that Mistress Sherrill began to weep.

The full, coordinated attack from the nearby Cherokees came later that day, and we managed to beat them back. We lost a good many brave souls in the fighting, but we had killed enough of Old Abram's war party for him to call off the siege. We watched the few surviving warriors fade back into the forest. We waited a while to make sure, and then sent out scouts. They were gone.

The gates of Fort Watauga swung open, and, family by family, we all filed out, cradling our wounded, and keeping our children as close as we could, still watching for shadows in the dark woods. The battle was over … but not the war.

Three years after that day, Sarah, my loyal wife of nearly twenty years, died after a lingering illness, following the birth of our tenth child.

The following summer I married Catherine Sherrill.

*   *   *

It was the celebration of that occasion that Isaac Shelby had happened upon when he rode up to Plum Grove that afternoon with his news of yet another enemy sent to try us.

We lingered outside long enough to collect tankards of applejack, and then I led Shelby inside the house, and settled him in our little parlor. We talked for a bit of inconsequential matters—the harvest, the children—while he finished his drink and cooled down from the long ride.

“You know Sam Phillips, I think? A kinsman of mine.”

I nodded. “I have heard talk of him recently. Was he not captured by the Tories down in South Carolina?”

“He was. We had all feared the worst for him, for you know how brutal they are with their prisoners. They are neck and neck with the Indians for savagery. But Sam arrived at our place on the Holston a day ago, not much the worse for wear for his ten-day journey, and bearing a message.”

“They let him go?” I had not thought to hear that, for those loyal to the king are overly fond of using the rope on those that they deem traitors.

“They did—but only because they wanted him to bring that message to us. And I came to you, because we must decide how best to answer it.”

I stared. “A message—from whom, exactly?”

“Ferguson.”

We knew of him. Maj. Patrick Ferguson was a Scotsman, regular British army, and recently he had been sent down from the war in the northern colonies, charged with the task of persuading more southern citizens to side with the Crown. His methods tended more toward ruthless coercion than sweet persuasion.

For much of the summer, Isaac Shelby had been away to the south of here, leading a company of militia and joining other Whig commanders in the fighting against the British and their homegrown Tory soldiers. The British would bring the war up into North Carolina, and so they had asked for troops to defend the border. My brother Valentine was one of our Backcountry soldiers who went south like Shelby to fight.

I had elected to stay at home with my own troops, in case the Indians should stage another attack. We had not forgotten the bitter siege of Fort Watauga four years before, and many of us believed that the British were trying to forge a treaty with the Cherokee; distraction here would keep the Backcountry militias from helping those opposing their armies farther east.

While my troops stayed north, waiting on word from the Backcountry soldiers, news reached us that Ferguson himself had led a troop of Tories out of South Carolina, on raids near Gilbert Town and farther north to steal cattle and supplies for his regiment, and to harry the landowners who favored independence. At the time, I'd thought ruefully that if Ferguson tried to apply that tactic to the likes of us here on the frontier, the major's efforts would have the opposite effect.

I looked wonderingly at Colonel Shelby. “Ferguson has sent us a message?”

“Yes. He demands that the ‘officers west of the mountains' cease their opposition to the king's forces. And he says that if we do not comply, he will bring his army here and lay waste to our lands.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Does he now? I wonder what he thinks of his chances.”

Shelby permitted himself a tight smile. “From what transpired this summer, I think Ferguson might have a time of it up here.”

“You led the Tories into a trap, and managed to dispatch two hundred of them. And what were your losses?” I knew the answer, roughly, but I was underscoring my point, that we would not be easy pickings for Ferguson's Tory soldiers. Back in the early summer, when Colonel McDowell of Quaker Meadows had asked for help from the militia commanders over the mountains, Shelby and James Robertson joined their forces to those of McDowell, and routed the Tories at Thicketty Fort and later at Musgrove Mill.

“Including wounded? Eleven men.” Shelby drained the last of his applejack. “I'm happy to fight the Tories again if they haven't yet learned their lesson about our backcountry fighters, but I'd rather keep the war well away from our territory, for even if they lose, they are like locusts for taking crops and livestock to feed their troops. We should have ended it after Musgrove Mill, when we had them on the run. Robertson and I thought we ought to march straight down into South Carolina, to their main camp at Ninety Six and finish the job, but we were held back.”