The Master of Appleby Part 50

I went with the captain to make my excuses in person.

"Say no more, Captain," said this generous soldier, when I began some lame plea for further exemption; "I had forgot your sword-cut. Take shelter for yourself, and look on whilst we skin this riffraff alive."

And so he let me off; a favor which will make me think kindly of Patrick Ferguson so long as I shall live. For now my work was done; and had he insisted, I should have told him flatly who and what I was--and paid the penalty.

I had scarce rejoined Tybee at the wagons when the long roll of the drums broke the silence of the hilltop, and a volley fire of musketry from the rock breastwork on the right told us the battle was on. Tybee gave me one last reproachful look and stood out to see what could be seen, and I stood with him.

"Your friends are running," he said, when there was no reply to the opening volley; and truly, I feared he was right. At the bottom of the slope, scattering groups of the riflemen could be seen hastening to right and left. But I would not admit the charge to Tybee.

"I think not," I objected, denying the apparent fact. "They have come too far and too fast to turn back now for a single overshot volley."

"But they'll never face the fire up the hill with the bayonet to cap it at the top," he insisted.

"That remains to be seen; we shall know presently. Ah, I thought so; here they come!"

At the word the forest-covered steep at our end of the hill sprang alive with dun-clad figures darting upward from tree to tree. Volley after volley thundered down upon them as they climbed, but not once did the dodging charge up the slope pause or falter. Unlike all other irregulars I had ever seen, whose idea of a battle is to let off the piece and run, these mountain men held their fire like veterans, closing in upon the hilltop steadily and in a grim silence broken only by the shouting encouragements of the leaders--this until their circling line was completed.

Then suddenly from all sides of the beleaguered camp arose a yell to shake the stoutest courage, and with that the wood-covered slopes began to spit fire, not in volleys, but here and there in irregular snappings and cracklings as the sure-shot riflemen saw a mark to pull trigger on.

The effect of this fine-bead target practice--for it was naught else--was most terrific. All along the breastwork, front and rear, crouching men sprang up at the rifle crackings to fling their arms all abroad and to fall writhing and wrestling in the death throe. At our end of the hill, where the rock barrier was thinnest, the slaughter was appalling; and above the din of the firearms we could hear the bellowed commands of the st.u.r.dy old Indian fighter, Benjamin Cleaveland, urging his men up to still closer quarters. "A little nearer, my brave boys; a little nearer and we have them! Press on up to the rocks. They'll be as good a breastwork from our side as from theirs!"

You will read in the histories that the Tory helpers of Ferguson fought as men with halters round their necks; and so, indeed, a-many of them did. But though they were most pitiless enemies of ours, I bear them witness that they did fight well and bravely, and not as men who fight for fear's sake.

And they were most bravely officered. Major Ferguson, boldly conspicuous in a white linen hunting-shirt drawn on over his uniform, was here and there and everywhere, and always in the place where the bullets flew thickest. His left hand had been hurt at the first patriot gun fire, but it still held the silver whistle to his lips, and the shrill skirling of the little pipe was the loyalist rallying signal. Captain de Peyster, too, did ample justice to the uniform he wore; and when Campbell's Virginians gained the summit at the far end of the hilltop, 'twas de Peyster who led the bayonet charge that forced the patriot riflemen some little way down the slope.

But these are digressions. No man sees more of a battle than that little circle of which he is the center; and the fighting was hot enough at the wagon barricade to keep both Tybee and me from knowing at the time what was going on beyond our narrow range of sight or hearing. You must picture, therefore, for yourselves, a very devils' pandemonium let loose upon the little hilltop so soon as the mountain men gained their vantage ground at the fronting of the rock breastwork; cries; frantic shouts of "G.o.d save the king!" yells fierce and wordless; men in red and men in homespun rushing madly hither and yon in a vain attempt to repel a front and rear attack at the same instant. 'Twas a h.e.l.l set free, with no quarter asked or given, and where we stood, the Tory defenders of the wagon barrier were presently dropping around us in heaps and windrows of dead and dying, like men suddenly plague-smitten.

In such a time of asking you must not think we stood aloof and looked on coldly. At the first fire Tybee stripped off his coat and fell to work with the wounded, and I quickly followed his lead, praying that now my work was done, some one of the flying missiles would find its mark in me and let me die a soldier's death.

So it was that I saw little more of the battle detail, and of that fierce frenzy-time I have memory pictures only of the dead and dying; of the torn and wounded and bleeding men with whom we wrought, striving as we might to stanch the ebbing life-tide or to ease the dying gently down into the valley of shadows.

And as for my prayer, it went all unanswered. Once when I had a dying Tory's head pillowed on my knee I saw a rifleman thrust his weapon between the wheel-spokes of the outer wagon and draw a bead on me. I heard the crack of the Deckard, the _zip_ of the bullet singing at my ear, and the man's angry oath at his missing of me. Once again a rifle-ball pa.s.sed through my hair at the braiding of the queue and I felt the hot touch of it on my scalp like a breath of flame. Another time a mountaineer leaped the rock barrier to beat me down with the b.u.t.t of his rifle--and in the very act Tybee rose up and throttled him. I saw the grapple, sprang to my feet and whipped out my sword.

"Stop!" I commanded; "you have broken your parole, Lieutenant!"

The freed borderer glared from one to the other of us. "Loonies!" he yelled; "I'll slaughter the both of ye!" And so he would have done, I make no doubt, had we not laid hold of him together and heaved him back over the breastwork.

These are but incidents, points of contact where the fray touched us two at the wagon barricade. I pa.s.s them by with the mention, as I have pa.s.sed by the sterner horrors of that furious killing-time. These last are too large for my poor pen. As we could gather in the din and tumult, the mountain men rushed again and again to the attack, and as often the brave major, or De Peyster, led the bayonet charges that pushed them back. Yet in the end the unerring bullet outpressed the bayonet; there came a time when flesh and blood could no longer endure the death-dealing cross-fire from front and rear.

I saw the end was near when the major ordered the final charge, and Captain de Peyster formed his line and led it forward at a double-quick.

The mountaineers held more than half the hilltop now, and this forlorn hope was to try to drive them down the farther slopes. On it went, and I could see the men pitch and tumble out of the line until at bayonet-reach of the riflemen there were less than a dozen afoot and fit to make the push.

De Peyster fought his way back to the wagons, gasping and b.l.o.o.d.y. Some of the Tories crowding around us raised a white flag. The major, sorely wounded now and all but disabled, swore a great oath and rode rough-shod into the ruck of cowering militiamen to pull down the flag. Again the white token of surrender was raised, and again the major rode in to beat it down with his sword. At this Captain de Peyster put in his word.

"'Tis no use, Major; there is no more fight left in us! Five minutes more of this and we'll be shot down to a man!"

Ferguson's reply was a raging oath broad enough to cover all the enemy and his own beaten remnant as well; and then, before a hand could be lifted to stay him, he had wheeled his horse and was galloping straight for the patriot line at the farther extremity of the hilltop.

What he meant to do will never be known till that great day when all secrets shall be revealed. For that furious oath was this brave gentleman's last word to us or to any. A dozen bounds, it may be, the good charger carried him; then the storm of rifle-bullets beat him from the saddle. And so died one of the gallantest officers that ever did an unworthy king's work on the field of battle.

I would I might forget the terrible scene which followed this killing of the British commander. 'Twas little to our credit, but I may not pa.s.s it over in silence. De Peyster quickly sent a man to the front with a white flag, and the answer was a murderous volley which killed the flag-bearer and many others. Again the flag was raised on a rifle-barrel, and once more the answer was a storm of the leaden death poured into the panic-stricken crowd huddled like sheep at the wagons.

"G.o.d!" said de Peyster; and with that he began to beat his men into line with the flat of his sword in a frenzy of desperation, being minded, as he afterward told me, to give them the poor chance to die a-fighting.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

I saw not what followed upon this last despairing effort, for now Tybee was down and I was kneeling beside him to search for the wound. But when I looked again, the crackling crashes of the rifle-firing had ceased.

A stout, gray-headed man, whom I afterward knew as Isaac Shelby's father, was riding up from the patriot line to receive Captain de Peyster's sword, and the battle was ended.

XL

VAE VICTIS

If my hand were not sure enough to draw you some speaking picture of this our epoch-marking battle of King's Mountain, it falters still more on coming to the task of setting forth the tragic horrors of the dreadful after-night. Wherefore I pray you will hold me excused, my dears, if I hasten over the events tripping upon the heels of the victory, touching upon them only as they touch upon my tale.

But as for the stage-setting of the after-scene you may hold in your mind's eye the stony hilltop strewn with the dead and dying; the huddle of cowed prisoners at the wagon barricade; the mountaineers, mad with the victor's frenzy, swarming to surround us. 'Twas a clipping from Chaos and Night gone blood-crazed till Sevier and Isaac Shelby brought somewhat of order out of it; and then came the reckoning.

Of the seven hundred-odd prisoners the greater number were Tories, many of them red-handed from scenes of rapine in which their present captors had suffered the loss of all that men hold dear. So you will not wonder that there were knives and rifles shaken aloft, and fierce and vengeful counsels in which it was proposed to put the captives one and all to the cord and tree.

But now again Sevier and Shelby, seconded by the fiery Presbyterian, William Campbell, flung themselves into the breach, pleading for delay and a fair trial for such as were blood guilty. And so the dismal night, made chill and comfortless by the cold wind and most doleful by the groans and cries of the wounded, wore away, and the dawn of the Sunday found us lying as we were in the b.l.o.o.d.y shambles of the hilltop.

With the earliest morning light the burial parties were at work; and since the stony battle-ground would not lend itself for the trenching, the graves were dug in the vales below. Captain de Peyster begged hard for leave to bury the brave Ferguson on the spot where he fell, but 'twas impossible; and now, I am told, the stout old Scotsman lies side by side with our Major Will Chronicle, of Mecklenburg, who fell just before the ending of the battle.

The dead buried and the wounded cared for in some rough and ready fashion, preparations were made in all haste for a speedy withdrawal from the neighborhood of the battle-field. Rumor had it that Tarleton with his invincible legion was within a few hours' march; and the mountain men, sodden weary with the toils of the flying advance and the hard-fought conflict, were in no fettle to cope with a fresh foe.

As yet I had not made myself known to the patriot commanders, having my hands and heart full with the care of poor Tybee, who was grievously hurt, and being in a measure indifferent to what should befall me.

But now as we were about to march I was dragged before the committee of colonels and put to the question.

"Your uniform is a strange one to us, sir," said Isaac Shelby, looking me up and down with that heavy-lidded right eye of his. "Explain your rank and standing, if you please."

I told my story simply, and, as I thought, effectively; and had only black looks for my pains.

"'Tis a strange tale, surely, sir,--too strange to be believable," quoth Shelby. "You are a traitor, Captain Ireton--of the kind we need not c.u.mber ourselves with on a march."

"Who says that word of me?" I demanded, caring not much for that to which his threat pointed, but something for my good name.

Shelby turned and beckoned to a man in the group behind him. "Stand out, John Whittlesey," he directed; and I found myself face to face with that rifleman of Colonel Davie's party who had been so fierce to hang me at the fording of the Catawba.

This man gave his testimony briefly, telling but the bare truth. A week earlier I had pa.s.sed in Davie's camp for a true-blue patriot, this though I was wearing a ragged British uniform at the moment. As for the witness himself, he had mis...o...b..ed me all along, but the colonel had trusted me and had sent me on some secret mission, the inwardness of which he, John Whittlesey, had been unable to come at, though he confessed that he had tried to worm it out of me before parting company with me on the road to Charlotte.

I looked from one to another of my judges.

"If this be all, gentlemen, the man does but confirm my story," I said.