To Try Men's Souls - George Washington 1 (27 page)

He had studied the maps hour upon hour as he plotted out this night, but in that plotting he had never considered a turn of the cards that would draw him this storm of ice.

He reined in, his advance column of Virginians bunched up, moving slowly.

“What is the holdup?”

“Sir.”

He looked down, not recognizing the soldier, then a vague memory, one of the Jersey militia, the guide who had gone over the side to help haul the boat in and had nearly disappeared into the icy river.

“What is it?”

“Jacob’s Creek,” the boy announced. “Two ravines, one after the other.”

“So why the holdup?” he snapped.

The boy could not reply, just looking up at him, shivering in the cold.

“Ice, sir,” someone announced. “It’s all ice-covered now.”

Without replying Washington pushed his mount forward, into the treeline, the roadway narrowing. He could feel his mount becoming nervous, gingerly putting each foot down, the ice cracking underfoot so it still had some grip. The road turned and then turned again, following the contour of the slope downward, and in occasional flashes of moonlight he saw what made his heart sink.

The drop was steep, far too steep. Billy Lee was up by his side, his horse’s rear hooves losing grip, the animal nearly sitting down. Lee was cursing under his breath as he hung on, the animal slipping, letting out a whinny of fear as it slid for a dozen feet down the road. Lee, a superb rider, kept his seat, hung on, reins loose because if he sawed at the horse’s mouth, the animal would surely rear back and roll. He held his breath, Lee invisible in the shadows of the deep ravine. And then ever so calmly his voice echoed back out of the darkness.

“Sir, I think it best that you dismount.”

In another time he might have smiled, but not now. He ignored his servant’s advice, carefully maneuvering his mount down the ice-covered path, as he went into the deep ravine, a sharp drop of nearly fifty feet to the rushing creek, its thunderous passage outhowled by the storm, the roar all-encompassing, and his heart sank.

In the days before this march, he had been told the creek did not have a bridge, but not to worry, it was barely ankle-deep at the ford. As he came alongside Billy, who was still mounted, he could make out flashes of movement in the darkness. The creek was flooding, perhaps thigh deep. A couple of infantry pickets were looking up at him, and at the sight of their General one simply shook his head.

“Sir, it ain’t good at all. Stephen and I been here now since before dark. Ya could have skipped across this twelve hours ago, and it’s still rising.”

“Anyone beyond you?” he asked sharply.

“Yes, sir. We picketed here just at dark as ordered. The advance company came through, I’d calculate a couple hours ago at least.”

Did no news mean there were no problems and the advance company was deployed and waiting for the rest of the army to come up? Or could it be that the advance company had run into something and might not even exist anymore, the Hessians just waiting for this army to get tangled in the ravine before launching a counterattack?

“Then go across. Find them. Let them know we are crossing and report back to me.”

“If you say so, sir,” and he wondered if there was reluctance in the man’s voice.

He glared down at him, but in the shadows of the ravine, he could not distinguish any features.

Without further comment the man held his rifle up high, slid down the few feet to the creek, and splashed into it, cursing as he did so.

In the darkness he was hard to spot, but Washington could see the man struggling to maintain his footing, nearly falling over, water up to midthigh and then, gaining the other shore, lost to view.

He reined his horse around and started up the steep incline, Billy behind him, his mount so skittish that he loosened the reins, letting the animal pick its own way. His regret was that he had not actually come over here to look about a day or two ago, but to do that might have meant some Tory spotting him, reporting it, and that being taken as a sign of his intent.

At the top of the ravine troops were beginning to move down, staying off the road since it was so slippery, inching down the steep slope, again into the trees for handholds, more than one falling, a voice cursing that he had broken his ankle.

He could hear horses approaching, the creaking of wheels crushing ice. It was Hamilton with the lead battery of six-pounders.

“Over here!” Washington shouted.

Hamilton was up by his side, saluting.

“The slope ahead is impossible for horses,” Washington announced. “They’ll lose their footing on that ice and be crushed by the guns.”

“You’re not going to leave us behind?” Hamilton replied, the distress in his voice obvious.

“No.”

As he spoke he could see Knox approaching.

He had already made his decision as he rode up the steep incline. Leave the artillery behind, and order the infantry alone to press ahead? Do that, we will run into the Hessians arrayed out in open field, undoubtedly with their artillery, and we will be torn to shreds. But if I wait to move these guns the plan of attack, already three or more hours behind will be even more behind. How much longer? Four hours, perhaps five? It will mean attacking Trenton in broad daylight, the garrison without doubt forewarned, deployed, and ready for battle. His men drenched, frozen, exhausted, the Hessians stepping out of heated barracks, well fed, in dry, warm clothes.

He drew his watch out, snapped it open, but it was so dark he could not see the face.

Knox was by his side, gazing down into the ravine and then back to his General.

“Sir,” Knox announced. “It can be done, but it will take time.”

Washington thanked God for a man like this. No questions at a moment of crisis, only the forming of a plan and a will to act on it.

“I recommend we unhitch the teams, lead them across to the opposite slope. Secure ropes to the guns, wrap the ropes around a tree, and play them out. I did it a hundred times or more with each of the guns we moved from Ticonderoga.”

The matter-of-fact way he said it gave Washington heart. Knox made it sound almost casual, an everyday thing, not an operation performed in the middle of a maddening storm, in the dark, by men barefoot on raw ice and suffering.

“Then let’s do it!” He was trying to sound firm and commanding and keep frustration out of his voice.

Knox was in his element now. He was moving guns across bad ground in bad weather. This is what had made him famous in the first place.

The horses were unhitched from the two lead guns, Hamilton ordering several men to take them across and get them up the slope on the far side. They started off, disappearing into the shadows of the ravine.

Knox was already shouting for some of the infantry of the Virginia brigade to fall out and stack muskets, while from the limber boxes of the first two guns, Hamilton and his men pulled out hundred-foot lengths of rope.

Though they worked swiftly under the guidance of the two officers, still it seemed forever before the first of the guns, barrel pointed down slope, was manhandled to the edge of the road and dropped into the ravine, two lengths of rope secured to it. Ten men on each rope coiled it around stout trees to give them control and better leverage. Knox stood behind the gun, shouting orders, the piece slowly rolling down the slope, ice cracking underneath it. Washington started to follow but realized if he did so mounted, and his horse slipped, they could easily crash into Knox and the gun.

He dismounted, tossing the reins to Billy and on foot followed down, watching the way Knox worked, the artilleryman bellowing orders for one team to play out more rope, then the other. It was hard to judge how long this was going to take. Five minutes . . . ten minutes?

Twice he nearly lost his own footing, boots sliding so that he had to reach out and grab a tree to keep balance, a shower of ice crystals cascading down on him.

“Damn it all to hell!”

It was Knox. Losing the struggle to preserve his dignity, Washington slid down to join him in a semisquat.

“We’re still fifty or so feet short of the bottom of the ravine,” Knox announced. The last of the rope had been played out. “Two more cables now!” Henry roared. “And twenty men!”

It took another five minutes for the men to get down in the gorge and, following Henry’s orders, tie the ropes to the gun, make sure the ropes were around trees, and cinch tight. Then the piece was pulled back up the slope a couple of feet to put slack onto the ropes from the team farther up the hill, Henry personally untying each of the cables.

Without bothering to look to the General, Knox turned to Hamilton. “This is how we do it!” he shouted triumphantly, raising his voice to be heard above the roar of the flooded creek.

“Hamilton, you supervise the first team at the top of the slope, secure each gun, lowering them as you just saw us do it. Second team here takes over and gets it the rest of the way down to the water’s edge.”

“Why not just splice the ropes together into one long length?” Hamilton offered.

“Rope, Colonel Hamilton. Using two teams like this, we can lower two guns at a time with four hundred-foot lengths of rope. Spliced together, we need eight hundred feet for the same job, and we can only have one gun coming down at a time.”

Washington said nothing. He marveled that Knox could so quickly calculate the advantage.

“Two sets of rope, four teams——we can keep two guns moving along. Get extra lengths of rope and while two guns are being lowered, the next one in line is prepared to speed things along. Have additional teams ready as well to relieve the exhausted.”

He paused.

“Or in case something goes wrong and we lose some men.”

“God save the lower group if the upper gun breaks loose,” Hamilton said softly.

Knox did not reply.

“Gun crews move with their pieces. Once at the bottom here, they will have to manhandle them through the torrent. We must make sure the ammunition chests and the powder inside stay dry. We’ll get more men across to move the guns out of the ravine. I’ll get two more teams working the upslope on the far side; that should be easier because we can use horses for the upper part . . . then once up there, hitch ’em back up and then move like hell. Infantry stays off the road, they go down through the woods, pick anyplace but the road, cross, and reform on the far side.”

“Sirs.”

It was the lone sentry still posted at what, twelve hours earlier, had been an ankle-deep ford and a steep but still manageable road for a wagon or even an artillery piece.

“What is it?” Knox snapped.

“Uh, well, sir. Hate to tell you this, but this is just the first ravine. There’s a second one, a fork of this here creek once you get up over yonder to the top.”

“What?” Knox asked.

“Just that, sir. This here is the first of two ravines, and that second one, I think, is worse than this one.”

Washington said nothing. With all his evaluating and managing here, the man had forgotten the map exercise and briefings of the day before. For some perverse reason, this road, rather than crossing the creek once a few hundred feet farther downstream, instead descended and crossed over the main creek and rose, then descended into a small tributary branch before rising again to level ground.

“Damn all to hell!” Henry roared. He stalked to the side of the road and slammed his fist against the trunk of a tree. Washington went to his side.

“Sir, it will take an hour at the very least, perhaps two or more,” Knox hissed.

“And?”

“Sir,” he paused, his voice thick, “we can still . . .”

He fell silent.

“You’re suggesting?” Washington asked, voice pitched low so the men would not hear.

“I think you know,” Knox replied. “It will be dawn by the time we get the guns out of these ravines, if at all. One of them breaks loose, and smashes up, it will make a tangle of everything.”

He threw up his arms in a gesture of exasperation.

“Sir, I moved guns over three hundred miles, in the dead of winter, and faced worse than this. But it was not a race against dawn then, with a storm howling around us, an unknown enemy ahead, our men already exhausted, and a flooding ice-choked river at our backs.”

Silence again as Knox stood by his side.

“Go on.”

“Sir, it is not my place to go on.” Henry’s face turned up to look at
him, a momentary flash of moonlight revealing his features, drawn, exhausted. Directly behind him at the edge of the raging creek, men at the ropes looked in their direction, knowing that something was going on.

Knox was right. Everything he had said was correct. According to the plan he, his men, the artillery, should already be moving into final position around Trenton, with two other columns, one of them Gates’s. Of the middle column, he had not heard a word. Gates, he already knew, was not coming.

It would be close on to dawn before he could even hope to get the first of these guns clear of the ravines, infantry formed up . . . and Trenton would still be seven miles off. The storm howling through the trees above showed no sign of abating; if anything, it was increasing in intensity.

He stared at Knox, taking it all in. Infantry, hundreds of them, were already moving down the slope, grasping at trees to steady themselves, officers and sergeants urging them on. Men of his headquarters guards were filtering down along the side of the road, trying to stay closer to their commander, moving slowly, woodenly, more than one slipping, cursing as he crashed down.

He recognized two of the men holding on to each other, one of them staggering——the New Jersey scouts assigned to his personal guard. They passed but a few feet away, pushing on toward the creek. One hesitated for a moment, but then plunged into the torrent; he could hear the boy gasping as he did so. The two forded across and disappeared into the darkness.

He took it all in, stepped back, cupped his hands, and faced upslope.

“Billy Lee, get down here!”

No one spoke as his servant appeared out of the shadows, afoot, leading his own horse and the General’s.