Ghost Legion, page 17
“Get rid of ye pig-stickers!” he yelled. “Take cover behind the trees, the rocks. Fight them like they fight us!”
“But. . . .”
“Just ye do it, boy. Do it or die like Ensign Yarbrough yonder!”
Brodie worked the Ferguson rifle, its barrel burning hot, while Pinckert charged his musket, pulling a cartridge from the box on his hip, biting off the top, and covering it with his thumb. He never got to finish, though. The rebels charged again, screaming, yipping, shooting.
“Fall back!” Pinckert yelled. “Fall back! Let us whip them at the top of the mountain!”
They retreated orderly, or as disciplined as they could, stumbling over the dead and dying. Balls splintered trees, peppering the fleeing militiamen with bark and bits of hot lead. One man leaned against an elm for support, only to fall with the tree, cut apart by rifle balls. A shot splintered the Ferguson rifle’s stock, knocking the weapon from Brodie’s hands, and he couldn’t stop to pick it up, had to keep moving, unarmed, following Pinckert. Back to the ridge, past a line of kneeling Loyalists. Once the last of the retreating soldiers cleared the line of fire, Captain DePeyster lowered his sword. A sergeant gave the order; the muskets rang out.
“Charge!”
Brodie looked around, found Saul Pinckert leading the way. He wanted to report Ensign Yarbrough’s death to Captain DePeyster. Instead, he pried a musket from a dead man’s hands, and stumbled down the mountain one more time.
Caught in an enfilade, the Loyalists fell, screaming, shot to pieces. Brodie slid beside Pinckert as a ball burned his armpit. He shouldered the musket, but the Brown Bess misfired, and he cursed his stupidity. On the mountain top, he had grabbed the dead man’s weapon, but not a cartridge box. He crawled to the nearest body, fumbling with the tin box strapped to the front of the waist belt.
The man’s head turned, eyes locking on Brodie.
“Water . . .,” the lips pleaded. Blood frothed from the soldier’s mouth.
“I cannot help you,” Brodie said, hating himself, removing the waterproof canister before backing away.
They had not reached Ensign Yarbrough’s body on this charge, meaning the rebels were gaining ground—kept gaining ground. Another attack and they would be in camp, with a clear, open killing field. They had to stop them, here. Now.
“Hold ye ground, boys!” Pinckert shouted. “And show them no mercy. For they shall give you none.”
Brodie let out a mirthless laugh when he opened the lid. When full, the japanned canister would hold thirty-six cartridges for Brown Bess muskets. The one he had scavenged held two.
“Come on ye vermin!” Pinckert roared at the hiding rebels. “Fight us, ye cowards!” Then to his men: “We shall kill them all this time, boys. Aim low!”
After another volley, they sank back behind the shelter of the trees, and began to reload. Pinckert looked at Brodie.
“It’s hopeless,” he said softly.
“I know,” Brodie agreed.
“Give them hell, boys!” Pinckert’s voice boomed again. “Ye cannot live forever! Glory will be ours!”
Pinckert shut the pan, charged the barrel, and was drawing the ramrod when Brodie saw the puff of dust fly off his friend’s chest. Pinckert’s groan was lost in an explosion of rifle fire, followed by the unholy whoops of the rebels.
“Now, boys, quickly reload your rifles, and let’s advance upon them!” a rebel officer called from somewhere in the thicket. “Give them another hell of fire!”
Pinckert rolled on his back, trying to catch his breath. Then he cursed, spitting out a bit of blood. Brodie tossed the empty musket aside, pressed both hands on Pinckert’s wound, stanching the flow.
“Saul’s dead!” someone cried. “Saul’s dead, too!”
Pinckert managed to say—“I am not dead.”—but only Brodie could hear him.
The Loyalists were running back up the mountain, chased by those yelling bandits. Brodie tried to pull Pinckert to his feet, but another ball slammed into the small of his friend’s back, driving both into the wet leaves.
“Save yeself . . .,” Pinckert began, but cried out in agony when Brodie lifted him, grunting, throwing the man over his shoulder. They stumbled. A rifle ball pierced Brodie’s hand. He winced, more from Pinckert’s weight than the wound. Then tripped, jamming his fingers against a rock, rolled over, tried to pull Pinckert up, but couldn’t. Gasping for breath, choking on the acrid smoke, he collapsed beside the big farmer.
Another ball whined off a rock.
Brodie lunged for his friend, snatching the bloody buckskin shirt. Pinckert gripped Brodie’s hands, surprisingly strong, pulled them away.
“Ye will not die with me. . . .” He spit out flakes of blood. “Go on . . . Stuart.” Pinckert sank back into the brush, resting his head against a rock. His eyes focused on something beyond Brodie, maybe the sky, if he could see that far through the smoke and trees. “Oh, Lord,” he said softly. “If I could only hold me sweet Nellie, me angel Matilda, me boys . . . once more. . . .” He looked at Brodie again. “Be gone, friend.” He coughed, shuddered.
A ball tore through Pinckert’s shoulder. He didn’t seem to feel it.
“I shall see you in the morning, Saul,” Brodie said softly.
Saul Pinckert grinned. “Aye, Preacher Darky,” he whispered. “Amen.”
Brodie left Pinckert there, running in a crouch as lead flew all around him. This retreat lacked any order, and Brodie knew it was finished. He cleared the woods, staggered toward camp, saw Captain DePeyster raising his sword, blaring orders that went ignored. A ball killed the captain’s horse, dropped it like a stone, but DePeyster freed his boots from the stirrups, leaped aside, grabbed another horse with an empty saddle, pulled himself into the saddle, raised the sword again.
“Rally your men!” he shouted to his junior officers.
No one listened.
Finally DePeyster spurred his mount and charged through camp. Brodie followed, past the rows of tents, the wagons. He spotted Dr. Johnson helping a badly wounded man into his tent, oblivious to the tumult around him. Ahead of him, Major Ferguson went down, and Brodie’s heart skipped. A second later, however, the Bulldog was up, finding another horse, pulling himself with his one good hand into the saddle. Captain Chesney handed Ferguson his sword—broken—and the Bulldog loped toward the woods and back, shrieking orders.
At the edge of the mountain, the surviving Loyalists gathered for one last stand, but the rebel noose tightened.
Bound for the cord, his mother had told him, but neither she nor Brodie had ever pictured this kind of hangman’s noose.
He reached the circle of survivors, knelt, and tried to pick up another abandoned musket. Try as he might, though, his bloody, smashed fingers could not grip it.
“Major!” Captain DePeyster cried out at Ferguson. “The battle is lost, sir. We must yield or die like ducks in a coop!”
Enraged, Ferguson responded: “Never! Never shall I surrender to such damned banditti! ” He raked the animal’s sides with spurs, raced toward a white flag being waved by a Loyalist lieutenant. The broken sword slashed forward, and the flag toppled to the ground. Other Loyalists, even some of Ferguson’s best troops from New York and New Jersey, broke toward the rebels, begging for mercy, tossing their muskets away.
They died, and, above the horrible din, Brodie heard the words.
“Give them Buford’s play!”
“Tarleton’s quarter!”
“Bloody Tarleton!”
“Remember the Waxhaws!”
Ferguson galloped back. His eyes fell on Brodie, but he didn’t seem to notice the man. He didn’t recognize anything, or anyone. Again, Captain DePeyster begged that they surrender. Again, the Bulldog refused to listen.
Balls whipped overhead, from all sides. The rebels had surrounded them. DePeyster was right. They would all die here if they didn’t give up. But if they did? Likely they would be butchered anyway.
The man standing next to Brodie buckled, sank to his knees, and fell, face down.
Brodie just stood, numbed, resigned.
“Ghost Legion,” he whispered. How badly had Major Ferguson been mistaken, underestimating the enemy, overestimating his chances, troops, and tactics.
“Here is our last chance, lads!” The Bulldog’s horse reared. “There will be no quarter. Ride for the woods, men! Ride or die! But at least we shall die game.”
Ferguson galloped ahead, swinging his saber, the silver whistles bouncing across his chest as he slashed left and right, cleared a horde of mountaineers, and bolted forward. Behind him rode a handful of officers. Brodie looked for DePeyster, but the captain wasn’t with them. Behind him, he heard DePeyster’s sigh. Look away, Brodie told himself, but he couldn’t.
A volley rang out, followed by other shots echoing from the woods. Ferguson’s head whipped back violently, and the saber fell under charging hoofs. Wheeling in the saddle, the Bulldog rocked as other balls struck his arm, stomach, chest. Mercifully Major Patrick Ferguson fell from the saddle. Alas, his boot caught in the stirrup, and the panicked horse dragged him over the rocks, over dead bodies. The vermin shot his body as the horse dragged him past the rebel line, then turned, galloping toward the last band of Loyalists.
Brodie ran forward, waving his hands, somehow managing to stop the horse. Three men rushed forward, freed Ferguson’s boot, picked him up, laid him gently on a blanket. A second later, one of those men fell, dead from a rifle ball that pierced his heart.
“God have mercy!” Captain Chesney cried out. “He still lives!”
Brodie let the horse go, stared briefly at the Bulldog.
God is not merciful, Brodie thought. Not today. Not after all that has happened on this awful hill. Not letting the Bulldog live.
A rider swung onto the major’s mount, bolted toward the rebels, waving a handkerchief in his hand. The brigands shot him dead.
“Quarter!” echoed all around him. “Quarter!”
“Captain! We must surrender. We must not all die here!”
“Quarter!”
“Mercy!”
“Quarter!”
Brodie knelt over Ferguson, wiped the blood off the major’s face. He had been shot in the head, and Brodie could see the man’s brains. Both arms had been broken, as well as the leg that had hung in the stirrup. Blood stained his duster, ripped to pieces by rocks and rebel balls. His breathing was labored, hoarse, but his eyes fluttered open, focused on Brodie.
“Lift my . . . head. . . .” He tried to rise, but sank, swallowed. “Lift my head . . . Mister . . . Brodie. Let me . . . sit . . . for a . . . while.”
Gingerly Brodie pulled the major up, leaned him against a rock cairn. The major nodded, as if saying he were comfortable, and spoke again, softer this time.
“Have you . . . seen . . . Miss . . . Sal?”
Brodie remembered the lovely red-headed woman, lying dead in front of the surgeon’s tent.
“Yes, sir. She is with Doctor Johnson.” And thought to himself: She is with God.
The major said something, but Brodie couldn’t hear him. Instead, the cries rang out all around him.
“Quarter!”
“For the love of God. . . .”
“Quarter!”
“Tarleton’s quarter! Tarleton’s quarter!”
“Mercy! Mercy!”
“Stop it! This is murder! These men are trying to surrender! That’s a white flag!”
“I don’t see it.”
“Don’t know what a white flag means!”
“Quarter!”
“Quarter!”
Ferguson could not hear the shouts, nor the gunfire. His eyes located Brodie again, but he didn’t see him, not really. The Bulldog smiled. “You should have seen me, Mum, at Minden. A ‘prodigy’ . . . they called . . . me . . . ‘of valor’. . . . Oh, what . . . wonderful . . . glory.”
He would not watch this man, this soldier he loved, die. Brodie stood. Another ball whistled over his head, and he strode to Captain DePeyster, trying to forget the images of Patrick Ferguson . . . of Ensign Yarbrough . . . of countless faces of men he never knew, or knew only by sight . . . of Virginia Sal . . . of Saul Pinckert.
“We must try again to surrender!” DePeyster said.
An ensign shouted back. “Well, send the nigger! Let the barbarians kill him. For, damn you, I sha’n’t go.”
Brodie didn’t care. Making his fingers bend, he snatched the musket from the ensign’s hand, biting back pain, and grabbed the dirty homespun shirt from another officer. Captain Chesney tied the sleeves to the barrel, but would not look Brodie in the eye, knowing they were sending him, in all likelihood, to his death.
The weapon was loaded, Brodie noticed. Not that that meant anything.
Uncaring, Brodie climbed onto the horse, kicked it forward, had to kick harder. The horse hesitated, but finally eased toward the over-mountain men. He waved the flag back and forth steadily, waiting for the rebel ball to strike him.
He didn’t have to wait long.
Chapter Twenty-One
It was over. The battle had lasted perhaps an hour.
Only an hour. Marty found it hard to comprehend, feeling as though she had been fighting for days, yet now the Tories began to lay down their muskets, and the Whigs, even Ryan Folson, had stopped killing them. Maybe they finally heard the pleadings, the orders from Shelby, Sevier, and Flint O’Keeffe. Maybe they, too, had at last been sickened by it all, or perhaps they were just too worn out from the blood lust to continue the slaughter.
Mounted on a lathered gray stallion, a Tory captain rode up to Colonel Campbell. Unable to hold his emotions in check, tears streamed down his face as he unbuckled his saber scabbard and handed the weapon, still sheathed, to the devout Whig. “It’s damned unfair,” the officer said, practically blubbering. “Damned unfair.”
Campbell ignored both the comment and the saber. “Officers,” he ordered the prisoners, “rank by yourselves. The rest of you, take off your hats and sit down!”
O’Keeffe stepped forward, and helped the Tory dismount, took the proffered weapon, which he passed to Marty. O’Keeffe introduced himself to the bedraggled enemy, who gave his name as Abraham DePeyster.
“Our men were trying to surrender, only to be shot down,” DePeyster repeated. “Damnable actions, sir.”
O’Keeffe said nothing.
Across the ridge, stories began to spread. That rumor that Banastre Tarleton’s Green Dragoons were nearby had proved false. Colonel Williams, however, lay mortally wounded from a shot in the breast. Robert Sevier, the colonel’s brother, was also bleeding to death somewhere. Major William Chronicle was dead. Colonel Hambright had sustained a serious leg wound. Yet victory had been complete. Blood stained King’s Mountain, predominantly Tory blood. Marty looked around at the carnage. Later, she would learn the estimates: fewer than thirty Patriots killed, and only sixty or so wounded. For the Tories, almost 250 dead and more than 160 wounded. The rest, close to 600, were prisoners. Lord Cornwallis’s Western flank no longer existed.
“Three huzzas for liberty!” Colonel Campbell bellowed from horseback, and, lifting his hat, he began the cheer.
“Huzza! Huzza! Huzza! ”
Laughter seemed out of place, Marty thought, but there was Colonel John Sevier, pointing at the bloody, blackened head of Isaac Shelby. “By God, sir, they have burned off your hair!” Old Chucky Jack could hardly contain himself, giggling so hard he almost tumbled out of the saddle, pointing and laughing, first at Shelby, then at Marty herself.
“You do not look much better, McKidrict. Nor do you Mister O’Keeffe.”
Shelby grunted. “I warrant we have more important matters to discuss than my appearance, Colonel,” he said stiffly.
She felt Flint O’Keeffe’s hand on her arm, and let him steer her away. A few celebratory rifle shots echoed in the woods, more cheers, but now Marty heard the groans again, moans as men writhed on the ground, slipping in their own blood.
“Water . . . please . . . water. . . .”
Sergeant Gillespie quickly brushed past, carrying a wounded man she didn’t recognize toward the Tory surgeon’s tent.
She stepped over a dead man.
“We should have one of the Tory doctors examine you, Marty,” O’Keeffe said. “You look frightful, and quite pale.”
Briefly she considered O’Keeffe. He didn’t look that healthy himself.
I just want to leave this place, she thought, go back over the mountains, find that place you keep dreaming about. Forget all about King’s Mountain. Start over again. With you. She wet her lips, struggling to form the words, to tell Flint O’Keeffe how she felt, but his eyes widened, and he muttered an oath, then bolted away.
“Stop it!” she heard him screaming. “Cease with these atrocities!”
Spinning around, she staggered after him, dropping the Tory’s saber, her mouth falling open. Ryan Folson and a handful of other men had gathered over a body—the late Major Patrick Ferguson. Folson had unbuttoned his breeches, and stood urinating on the corpse. Others did the same, splashing urine off the dead man’s bloody clothes, his face, drenching his hair.
“Well, Paddy,” Folson said, after emptying his bladder and then spitting on the body until his mouth turned dry. “I guess you will not be hanging any of us. Or laying our country to waste with fire and sword. Will you? Hurry up, lads. When you are done, I think I shall commence to shat on this man’s. . . .”
O’Keeffe shoved him aside. “Outrageous!” he bellowed. “Here lies a brave man, and, by Jehovah, I will not stand by and allow these transgressions.”
“Lieutenant . . .,” Nicholas Waldrin began, but O’Keeffe whirled on him, pushed him backward as Waldrin buttoned his breeches.
“Abominable!” O’Keeffe shrieked. “Victory is ours, and I will not allow you to disgrace what we have accomplished here.”
Another man, one she did not know, swore underneath his breath and began spraying Ferguson with yellow urine. “I do not answer to you . . .,” he began, but never finished. Flint O’Keeffe’s fist sent him sprawling, splattering his moccasins with urine. The man rolled up, attempted to stand and charge, but slipped.
