Ghost Legion, page 12
Marty knew better. Barnes had been scared to death.
“The fox has fled.” Ryan Folson ran his fingers through his thick hair. “But where?”
Ninety-Six, some said. The British major had taken his Tories south a few days earlier, after receiving word from two deserters that the rebel army had formed and crossed the mountains.
“He didn’t believe, however, that you had so many men,” a Whig named Jonathan Hampton reported. From the look on Hampton’s face, he could scarcely believe it himself. “He called you a ghost legion.”
“Ghost Legion.” John Sevier chuckled. “I like that. And we shall send him to the Holy Ghost before long.”
“Not if he’s holed up at Ninety-Six,” Edisto Bickley said that night. Ferguson’s army could fort up in the garrison, which had 400, maybe 500 Tories. They would never flush them out of Ninety-Six, no matter how many more men kept joining this—this Ghost Legion.
And, by scores, more joined. Major William Candler brought thirty Georgians, and others were nearby, the gossip spread. William Hill’s South Carolinians were camped at Flint Hill, and Edward Lacey, another South Carolina Whig, was riding with his men, trying to locate the fleeing Tories.
“Well, as much as I would like to hang them King lovers,” Ryan Folson said after swallowing a mouthful of coffee, “he can run all the way back to Ninety-Six. Let him go. We can go find Zachariah Gibbs or Bloody Bill Cunningham or even Colonel Tarleton himself. I know them boys will fight us. Would not have to ride so much, either. Let Ferguson run.”
“He isn’t running.”
Marty looked up, surprised to see Flint O’Keeffe squatting by the fire, filling a mug with Folson’s unpalatable Patriot coffee.
“What do you mean, Lieuten . . . by Jupiter, can I call you O’Keeffe now, Lieutenant?”
The Irishman grinned. “You can call me Flint, Ryan.”
“Well,” Teever Barnes said, “I think the colonel was too hard on you, busting you the way he done. I was half a mind to let that mama and her little ones recapture their home, too.”
“Colonel Sevier did the right thing.” O’Keeffe sipped the coffee, and made a face. “He had to, for good order and discipline. Besides, lieutenant or private, it’s not like any of us will ever see a shilling for our work here.”
“So . . . you was saying,” Folson said. “About Ferguson?”
O’Keeffe nodded. “I was talking to Mister Hampton. He says, from what he learned, the major did not think we had a force of this size. Not even half our number. Now, he would not run from that, not if I know him, or, rather, his type.”
“But he’s gone,” Teever Barnes said. “Riding south for Fort Ninety-Six.”
Marty moved closer, deciding she would refill her mug with Folson’s coffee, a ploy, she knew. Likely Flint O’Keeffe realized this as well, for no one ever had second helpings of Folson’s stout mixture of mud and burned acorns. O’Keeffe, however, did not run off when she sat down, crossing her legs, between Folson and him.
“Nor would Ferguson go to Ninety-Six,” O’Keeffe said. “This is a decoy. Ride to Ninety-Six? Risk being attacked by Clarke or Sumter? No, if I were Ferguson, I would head southeast, toward Charlotte Town, toward Tarleton and Cornwallis. He means to crush us.”
“But you said he don’t know how big an army we got,” Barnes said.
With a grin, O’Keeffe said: “That should put the fear of God in him. Fourteen hundred men. We probably match his army.”
“We got more,” Barnes said. “Major Candler rode in a few hours ago with thirty Georgia boys.”
“Candler.” O’Keeffe spit out the name, poured the rest of his coffee onto the ground, and stood. He started to go, but Sergeant Gillespie walked into camp.
“Sentry duty, boys,” he said. “For the horse herd.”
She knew O’Keeffe would volunteer, and tried to beat him, but they both shouted at the same time.
“Thunderation, Flint,” Folson said. “I’m beginning to wonder if you don’t like my company.”
Or mine, Marty thought.
“Lieu . . . O’Keeffe . . . and you, too, McKidrict. We’re doubling the guards. Off with the both of you now. Folson and Bickley, you spell them at midnight.”
* * * * *
It didn’t work out the way she had planned, but she should have known better. Marty spent the next four hours on one side of the horse herd, shivering in the cold, alternating the Deckard from one shoulder to the other, while Flint O’Keeffe stood somewhere east of her. So much for getting a chance to apologize to him, talk to him. Maybe he hated her. She couldn’t blame him.
A twig snapped, and the Deckard rolled in her arms, came to her shoulder. She peered into the shadows, waiting.
“I am no Tory,” Ryan Folson grumbled, “but, if you shoot me, at least I won’t have to wait in the damp till Vance relieves me. Get out of here, McKidrict. Get some sleep.”
She practically ran, slowing down only when Folson admonished her, told her she might spook the horses. Marty ducked into the trees, found the path, came out by the brook. She looked toward the camp, saw only a few glimmering fires, then back toward the horses. Nothing.
“Hello,” Flint O’Keeffe said.
She found him there, sitting on a tree stump, pitching stones into the water. Marty felt her confidence slipping, the way it used to, before she had met this cock of the walk Irish Virginian, this cooper’s apprentice turned preacher turned Patriot, this . . . this seeker—like her.
“I am sorry. . .”—she tested his name—“Flint.” Liked the sound of it, the way it came out of her mouth, natural. “I’m sorry, Flint. You should not have told Colonel Sevier. . . .”
“I am glad I did, Marty.” A rock skipped over the Broad. “Sometimes.” He turned toward her. “If I had let you talk, however, the colonel would have discharged you, sent you home. Mayhap I should have done that.”
“I wouldn’t have gone,” she said. “I would have followed . . . you.”
Laughing, he threw the last pebble into the brook, and rose. “You are the most singular individual I have met since leaving Williamsburg.”
Confident, again. Marty stepped toward him, leaned her Deckard against an elm. She waited for him to kiss her, wanted him to, but he didn’t.
Instead, he sighed. “Major Candler is part of Elijah Clarke’s command,” he said bitterly. “He was the man who sent us to that Negro’s inn. I guess I cannot ever escape that. . . .”
“War,” she said, “is hypocrisy.”
He looked at her, started to reach for her, but couldn’t.
Marty kissed him, briefly, sweetly, and stepped back.
“We should get back to camp,” he said. “Tomorrow will be a long day. We shall ride hard, chasing down Ferguson.”
“Yes,” Marty agreed.
O’Keeffe reached for her.
Chapter Fifteen
Beneath a blanket of wet pine straw and rotting leaves, Stuart Brodie controlled his breathing, peering into the distance as horses trotted past. Horses—and horses—and more horses. He had never seen so many. Finally men on foot, marching and singing; he didn’t recognize the song. The Bulldog had been mistaken—badly mistaken—for this Ghost Legion did not comprise phantoms and shadows, but well-armed, determined rebels, flesh and blood, the bulk of them well mounted. Ten minutes after the last had vanished, Brodie pulled himself out of his hiding place. Carefully he backed into the woods, taking no chances, clutching the Ferguson rifle tightly, and did not stop until he neared the clearing. He gave the call of a night owl, waited for the blue jay’s screech, and jogged forward.
Saul Pinckert held the reins to three mounts, and waited for Brodie’s report.
“You should have stayed with your family,” Brodie told him glumly.
“That bad?” Pinckert asked.
He nodded. “Those deserters weren’t lying. Shelby and Sevier have more than a thousand men with them. Much more.”
“A thousand and a half,” said Ensign James Yarbrough, stepping out of the brush. Yarbrough was part of Ferguson’s elite troops from the Northern colonies, a Loyalist who called Burlington, New Jersey home. The Bulldog had sent the scouts out to find the rebels, selecting Pinckert and Brodie because they knew this country, and Yarbrough because he knew armies. Yarbrough had climbed a pine, taking advantage of moonlight, to spy on the passing forces.
“They are still heading south,” Yarbrough said. “Though I do not expect them to continue. Most likely they will make camp in an hour or less, and send scouts out at dawn.”
“Will we fight them?” Pinckert asked.
“That is for the major to order,” Yarbrough replied. “We should make haste.” He had already mounted his mare.
* * * * *
Ferguson’s army had left Gilbert Town three days earlier. Pinckert had arrived, to Brodie’s surprise, a few hours before they rode out, saying the rebellion wouldn’t be put down with him working his farm. Part of Brodie was glad to have his unlikely friend back with him. A deeper part regretted Pinckert’s decision, his duty.
The Bulldog tinkered with his plan as he rode, deciding on a feint toward Ninety-Six, which he hoped would fool Isaac Shelby’s Ghost Legion. Upon learning that Elijah Clarke’s Georgians were on their way to join the over-mountain men, Ferguson had decided to try to intercept them. Still, he had to learn the location and, more importantly, the size of his pursuers. That’s why he had sent Yarbrough, Pinckert, and Brodie on a scout.
They caught up with the Bulldog at a farm worked by a Loyalist named James Step.
“Fifteen hundred men?” Ferguson said. “Are you certain, Ensign?”
“Yes, Major. The Negro and I both reached that number. What’s more, sir, they are moving fast, though still riding south. I do not think, however, that they shall be misled much longer.”
Paling, Major Ferguson sat on a stool beside Step’s well, stroking his chin—he had not shaved in two days—with his one good hand. The silence proved unnerving.
“If we hasten to his Lordship . . .,” Yarbrough suggested. “Charlotte Town is only sixty miles, Major.”
The Bulldog did not seem to hear.
“Cleveland’s Virginians have already joined Shelby and Sevier, sir,” Captain DePeyster said. “John Murray has told us this. Those deserters were right, too. Campbell is with them. Others are sure to join.”
Silence.
At length, the major looked up, first at DePeyster, then at Yarbrough, but did not even consider Brodie or Pinckert. Brodie took no offense. This was a discussion among officers.
“Do you think this mission foolhardy, gentlemen? Crushing Clarke?”
DePeyster did not answer. Ever loyal, he would never question the Bulldog. His comments moments earlier were as close as he would come to that. Yarbrough, however, held no such reservations about speaking his mind.
“For all we know, Major, the Georgians are already with Campbell.”
Ferguson drummed a beat on his chin with his fingers, finally rose, calm now, reassured, the old Bulldog once again. “We shall move toward Cornwallis, gentlemen, but not directly. Ensign Yarbrough, have a courier send my compliments to Colonel Cruger at Ninety-Six, and ask him to send reinforcements, as many regiments as he can spare.” He smiled. “Let the rebels find us. Our furloughed men will rejoin us soon, as will Colonel Cruger. And we shall still wipe out these traitors, gentlemen.”
* * * * *
But Cruger wouldn’t be coming.
The courier returned Sunday night, catching up with the army at Denard’s Ford.
Brodie could see the tension in the men’s faces, could feel it, taste it. Ferguson remained calm, however, a rock. The army would be reinforced, he said, perhaps not by Cruger, but by the returning furloughed men, not to mention Zachariah Gibbs’s and Bloody Bill Cunningham’s raiders. “Victory remains in our grasp,” he said before dismissing the officers, then asked Brodie to join him in his chambers.
“You once told me you could write, Mister Brodie,” Ferguson said. He took a drink from Virginia Sal, then asked her to take quill and paper to the freedman. She did as told, before discreetly retiring.
“Denard’s Ford, Broad River,” Ferguson dictated, “Tyron County, October First, Seventeen-Eighty.”
Brodie wrote.
“Make it large, Mister Brodie, and legible.”
Gentlemen:
Unless you wish to be eat up by an inundation of barbarians, who have begun by murdering an unarmed son before the aged father, and afterwards lopped off his arms . . .
As he wrote, Brodie tried to remember such an event happening. Certainly he had not witnessed it. In fact, that sounded more like an act performed by Bloody Bill Cunningham on Whigs. Still, those Patriots had murdered his brother. He wouldn’t put any butchery beneath them.
. . . and who by their shocking cruelties and irregularities, give the best proof of their cowardice and want of discipline; I say, if you wish to be pinioned, robbed, and murdered, and see your wives and daughters, in four days, abused by the dregs of mankind—in short, if you wish or deserve to live, and bear the name of men, grasp your arms in a moment and run to camp.
The Backwater men have crossed the mountains; McDowell, Hampton, Shelby, and Cleveland are at their head, so that you know what you have to depend upon. If you choose to be degraded forever and ever by a set of mongrels, say so at once, and let your women turn their backs upon you, and look out for real men to protect them.
Finished, Brodie handed the letter back to the Bulldog for his signature. The major looked exhausted as he dipped the quill into an inkwell and signed his name, rank, and regiment. Brodie set the letter out to dry.
“Make four copies,” Ferguson ordered. “Send couriers out at dawn in each direction. Keep the original for my papers. We shall see if anyone responds.”
The letter sounded desperate to Brodie. Maybe Ferguson had become desperate, realizing that this force of well-trained men loyal to the King had not one whit of a chance against the ruffians from over the mountains. Brodie answered with a nod. He had one courier already in mind. He would send Saul Pinckert north, toward South Mountain Gap. He’d tell that stubborn lout not to come back.
* * * * *
From Denard’s Ford, the army moved laggardly, covering barely four miles before they made camp, a cold camp that night, no fires, all the men in line, lying on the wet earth, shivering from the chill and fright of impending battle, waiting with their firelocks and bayonets, waiting.
Waiting . . . for nothing.
The rebels never showed.
It took the Loyalists two days to travel from the Broad River to the Cowpens, just below the Carolina border, a journey that normally would take even a force the size of Ferguson’s no more than one day. Then, they tarried two days at Tate’s plantation.
By that time, Brodie found his own nerves raw. Why wait? It seemed as if the Bulldog had lost his mind, petrified by fear, paralyzed, indecisive. Brodie couldn’t blame that on Virginia Sal or Virginia Paul. Cruger wasn’t coming, and few furloughed men had arrived in camp, although they caused cheers when they did ride or walk in. Brodie cursed when he recognized one of the men.
“I told you to stay with your family, Saul!” he screamed at Pinckert—the first time he had ever called the big man by his given name.
“Don’t ye preach at me, darky!” the big man bellowed. “Them swine was at me farm, made camp there after we had left.” He cursed, trembling with rage. “Turned me cabin into a hospital, sent me wife and young ones to the bloody barn. The barn! It raining, stormy, and cold. Left Matilda, I did, left her holding Nellie, me youngest, sick with fever. Fever from the rain, from sleeping in a barn. Dying, she is. No, sir, I sha’n’t shirk me duty, not and let them Patriots stain this land with their terror. No, sir. Saul Pinckert aims to fight.”
Brodie bowed his head, remembering the shy little girl, Pinckert’s lovely wife, the peacefulness of that brief interlude he had spent at Saul Pinckert’s home. After a moment, he gathered the reins to the big man’s horse and led it away, leaving Saul Pinckert standing in the middle of camp, blubbering like a toddler.
That night, Brodie and Yarbrough rode out on another scout, and, after finding sign of the rebel camp, galloped back to Ferguson.
Midnight had passed. It was Friday, October 6th.
“Suggestions, gentlemen?” Ferguson asked.
“Major,” Yarbrough began, “we know we can expect no help from Colonel Cruger, and it seems unlikely that Captains Gibbs or Cunningham will reach us in time. We do not know even where they are, sir. They could be anywhere betwixt Charlotte Town and Savannah. Or dead. I deem it wise, sir, to make haste to Cornwallis. Find and fight these brigands another day.”
“Run!” The word shot out of the Bulldog’s throat like a cough.
Yarbrough bristled as if the major had called him a coward. Brodie half expected the eager ensign to strike the major with his gauntlet.
“You were searching for your own ground, Major,” Captain DePeyster said soothingly. “To fight them.”
“Aye,” Ferguson said. “But now I have a more pressing concern.”
Yarbrough spoke again. “Sir, Charlotte Town is within our grasp. . . .”
The Bulldog’s fist pounded on the writing desk set up in his quarters. “And what of our furloughed men, Mister Yarbrough? You would have me abandon them, leave them to the mercy of those backwater butchers? No, sir. By God, I will not leave any of our boys behind, Ensign. We must give them a chance to find us, and fight these rebels if need be.”
Another silence, broken by a visibly shaking Yarbrough. “And what if those men you furloughed are not returning, Major?”
“That North Carolinian, Pinckert, he came back, Mister Yarbrough. Twice. What chance will Loyalists have if they do not fight? They shall return, mister. I believe in them, and I sha’n’t abandon them. We must give them a chance to find us.”
“King’s Mountain.” Brodie blinked, realizing he had spoken those words. In the flaring light, he saw all eyes staring at him, questioning him. “It’s not much of a mountain,” he explained, “but the top is wide open. Easy for our boys to find us, and easy for us to see our boys.”
