Kings Pinnacle

by Robert Gourley

  Inside the cave, the air smelled very foul. As the three brothers walked deeper into the cave, they got out their kerchiefs and tied them over their noses. Robert finally stopped them and pointed to an area just off in a corner of the cave.

  “Bat guano, right there. It must be several feet deep. There must be hundreds of years of accumulation in just this one spot, and there must be a mountain of bat guano all over this cave,” said Robert.

  “Well, I guess that ruins my cave. I never get it all out of here, and the smell is never going to go away,” said Alex.

  “On the contrary,” said Robert. “It makes your cave very valuable. We can haul that guano to the powder mill and convert it to saltpeter for making gunpowder.”

  Just as Robert finished his sentence, they heard a sound coming from behind them in the cave. They turned around and split up to begin searching the nooks and crannies of the cave, trying to locate the source of the sound that they had all heard.

  “Weel, what do we have here?” said Hugh.

  Alex and Robert walked over to join him and found Hugh looking down at a young Cherokee warrior. The young man had an obviously broken leg and was lying on his back behind some rocks in the cave with his teeth gritted in pain. He looked to be in his early twenties.

  “Let’s get him out of this cave and up to the cabin, so we can fix that leg of his,” said Alex.

  They picked up the young man, trying to keep from jostling his broken leg too much, and carried him out of the cave. They cut two long poles and made a travois that they attached to one of the horses, so they could transport him back to the cabin. As soon as they reached the cabin, Martha evaluated the situation and took control. She asked the brothers to carry the young warrior into the cabin and get him comfortable on the bed. Hugh and Alex held him down while Robert moved to the foot of the bed and pulled the broken leg so that Martha could set it. As soon as Martha had the bone properly aligned and set, she placed splints over the break and bound it all up with leather strips to hold the splints in place. The young brave passed out during the ordeal, but he never uttered a word or cried out while he was conscious.

  “We’ve done all we can do for him right now. He needs rest and some food when he wakes up,” said Martha.

  “Robber and I need to get going,” said Hugh as he and Robert walked toward the door.

  “Good luck finding a sulfur deposit,” said Alex.

  Alex and Martha stood in their cabin doorway and waved goodbye to Hugh and Robert as they rode to the south away from the cabin.

  “What are we going to do with him when he wakes up?” asked Alex.

  “We’ll feed him and keep him quiet until he is able to walk and be on his way,” replied Martha.

  * * * *

  Captain Ferguson

  “Welcome back, Captain Ferguson. I understand that your raid on Chestnut Neck was successful,” said General Clinton.

  “Yes, sir, very successful,” replied Captain Ferguson.

  “Please give me a summary of what transpired.”

  “I would be pleased to, sir. As you know, we departed New York on nine British ships and transports commanded by Captain Henry Collins. On this raid, I commanded about five hundred troops, consisting of British regulars and Colonial loyalists. The weather was foul upon entering the Little Egg Harbor River, and that delayed us for a day making our way up the river to Chestnut Neck. But we made our way there as quickly as possible. Once there, we attacked the privateer base and fought the rebel defenders, whom we finally defeated. We also retrieved some of the supplies that we found there,” reported Captain Ferguson.

  “Did you recover any of the British ships that had been seized by the privateers?” asked General Clinton.

  “No, sir, we did not; but we destroyed all the supplies that we could not carry with us. We also destroyed a salt works and mill located at the mouth of the Bass River. And we burned the houses and storage facilities around the salt works.”

  “What transpired next?”

  “About a week later, I was notified by a defector that there was a detachment of rebel troops encamped nearby. So I loaded up two hundred and fifty men in long boats, and we rowed ten miles to the barrier isle where the rebels were camped. I then marched my troops about two miles from where we landed the boats to the outpost. We attacked them at first light while they were still asleep. There were no sentries posted, so we took them totally by surprise and killed or wounded about forty of them,” continued Captain Ferguson.

  “How many prisoners did you take?” asked General Clinton.

  “Only five, sir; we took almost no quarter on the rebels. I lost only two men killed in the action. I had only three wounded and one missing after the battle,” said the captain.

  “I understand that the rebels are calling it the Little Egg Harbor massacre,” said General Clinton.

  “That may be true. We were shocked by their lack of preparation and the fact that they posted no sentries. We were eventually confronted by Comte Pulaski with a superior mounted force, so we retreated to our long boats and returned to New York,” concluded Captain Ferguson.

  “I had hoped to recover some of our ships that the rebel privateers seized, but any victory is a good victory. Well done, Captain Ferguson. You are dismissed,” said General Clinton.

  “Thank you, sir,” said the pleased Captain Ferguson who bowed to the general and departed his headquarters.

  * * * *

  Alex

  “Captain Mackenzie, what is your report?” commanded Colonel Tipton.

  “I have twenty men trained into top fighting condition. Each man is armed with muskets, fifty balls of ammunition, and two pounds of powder,” replied Alex.

  “Very good, Captain,” replied the colonel.

  The unit of the Continental Army’s southern division that Alex commanded was standing in formation at Fort Watauga. It had the beginnings of being a better organized unit at Alex’s insistence and hard work. The Longhunter and Jonas were members of Alex’s unit, as well as Hugh and Robert, who were out on another exploration mission toward the western frontier for the Pattons and not present today. Robert and Hugh’s first exploration mission to the south was a total failure. They had explored south of Fort Watauga for several weeks and found nothing. Several months had passed, and their new mission was to explore west to see if they could find any sulfur deposits out in that direction.

  There were no other militia units training at Fort Watauga that day. Alex had made a point of training the men under his command at least once per month unless they were engaged in the harvest. As part of their training, they often conducted raids against the Tories living in that area of the frontier who were still loyal to the crown. These raids would rile up the British and create confusion and controversy. They also fought occasional skirmishes with the Cherokees who had sided with the British. Today, Alex had set up targets inside the fort and was working with his men on marksmanship with their muskets and pistols. Alex worked with each man individually, teaching them how to breathe and how to squeeze the trigger. The results were astonishing and the men were amazed at the improvement in their accuracy and rate of fire.

  The practice was suddenly interrupted by one of the fort’s sentries.

  “Attack! Attack! Close the gates!” yelled the sentry.

  A few of the troops in Alex’s unit laid their muskets aside and ran to help the sentries close the fort’s gates. Alex and Colonel Tipton climbed the ladder up to the elevated walkway around the fort where they could look over the parapets at the surrounding fields. The sudden appearance of a Cherokee war party had taken the fort by surprise. As Alex and Colonel Tipton looked out at the sea of warriors, they realized that they were in trouble, being badly out-numbered. Since they had no warning, the surprise attack had not allowed them to get the settlers who lived around the fort inside to safety. As the men gazed out on the horizon, they saw smoke rising from the burning cabins, outbuildings, and farms in the distance.

  Ale
x looked off to the southwest toward his cabin and saw smoke rising in that direction also. He didn’t know if it was his cabin for sure, but it looked like it might be. That was soon confirmed when a group of warriors appeared from the tree line, holding Martha captive. One of the warriors was the young brave whose broken leg Martha and Alex had splinted, the one they had nursed back to health. Well, so much for gratitude, thought Alex. That young warrior, whose leg was now completely healed, was called the Raven, and he led the band of Cherokees that had captured Martha and attacked the fort. There were about one hundred warriors in his band. The Raven wore a single eagle feather in his hair. He had blackened a one inch ring around his face, circling both of his eyes, to give himself a fierce and sinister appearance.

  Martha looked bruised and battered but otherwise she seemed to still have her defiant spirit. Alex’s heart jumped to his throat as he looked at Martha being held captive. He knew he couldn’t do anything about it at the moment, but he also knew he would have to come up with something to save her.

  “Alex, lad, we’ll get her back,” said the Longhunter, who had climbed up the ladder and was standing next to Alex patting him on the shoulder.

  “I hope they keep her alive till after sundown so that I can slip out of the fort and try to save her,” said Alex.

  “There’re a lot of warriors. We’ll have to be careful about how we go about it,” replied the Longhunter.

  “I don’t want you to put yourself in danger,” said Alex, shaking his head.

  “Just you try and stop me and Jonas. You don’t think we would let you go alone do you, lad? Jonas is a better fighter than I am. They’ll never know what hit em,” replied the Longhunter with an easy smile.

  During the afternoon, the warriors dug a hole in the ground and set a post in it. The post was located more than three hundred yards from the fort, just out of rifle shot range for Alex, even taking into account Slayer’s added range. Martha was tied to the post hand and foot by the Raven, with her hands behind her back while she was standing on a stump set against the post. Then the warriors piled limbs and logs around the base of the post. They leaned some of the wood up against the stump Martha was standing on. It looked like they intended to burn her at the stake. As he looked at Martha, tied to the stake, Alex gritted his teeth and raked his left hand through his hair as dusk gathered over the fort.

  * * * *

  Big Mike

  “General Washington has decided that he doesn’t want to risk another major confrontation with the British Army, so the idea to feed false information to the British from the false Prophet won’t be of any more use to us. There is no need for you to continue to impersonate Major Ruskin. Your expertise with the cannons has been recognized by General Washington, and he wants you to continue commanding the cannons,” said Captain Ellison McCoy to Big Mike Finn.

  “Mike, I want you to come along with us on this raid,” continued the captain.

  “What do you want me to do, sir?”

  “We intend to capture the British fortification at Stony Point, New York and confiscate their cannons. They have about fifteen field pieces that we want. When we have them in hand, I want you and your cannoneers to take charge. Turn them around to fire on Verplanck’s Point, across the Hudson River, where the British have another fortification,” replied Captain McCoy.

  “Do you think it will be very difficult to take Stony Point?”

  “General Washington has been sitting on top of Buckberg Mountain, about two miles northwest of the fort, for the last several days, watching it with a telescope. He hasn’t been just watching King’s Ferry go back and forth between Stony Point and Verplanck’s Point. He has been looking for a weakness in their fortifications. And now he has found one and devised a plan to exploit it.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking, what is the weakness?”

  “The general has observed that the southern ramparts, which are made of wood, do not extend far enough out into the Hudson River. At low tide, the beach is exposed between the ramparts and the water. A group of men can literally walk around the ramparts on the beach, scale the point, and stroll right into their camp,” answered Captain McCoy.

  “When are we going to attack?”

  “The plan is to attack them at midnight tomorrow night at low tide. The men will carry unloaded muskets and will attack with bayonets only, so that we don’t alert the sentries. Diversionary attacks will come from the north and directly across the causeway from the west because that is what they will expect. But the men who attack from the south around the ramparts will be the main attack body of troops. We will have to scale the steep, rocky sides of Stony Point, and it won’t be an easy job,” said Ellison.

  The weather took a turn for the worse the evening just before the attack was to take place. The wind had picked up out of the south, and its increased strength caused the British ships that were anchored in the bay south of Stony Point to pull up their anchor. They were sailed downriver to find a better-sheltered anchoring. Big Mike was marching with the troops attacking from the south.

  “Wasn’t there supposed to be some dry beach between the ramparts and the Hudson River?” asked Big Mike.

  “Well, I guess the wind has whipped up the river, and we are just going to have to wade around the ramparts,” answered Captain McCoy.

  The men waded in two to four feet of water to get around the ramparts on the south side of Stony Point. Each man had a white band on his sleeve or a white patch pinned to his hat to help identify friend from foe in the darkness. In addition, the watchword, or password, was “The fort's our own,” which also helped the men identify each other. The moon was covered by clouds and visibility was very low. When the men heard the sounds of the diversionary attacks from the north and west across the causeway, they began their attack. They used the noise of the other attacks to cover their final push past the ramparts and up the sides of Stony Point. The British were taken unawares, so when the British realized they were under attack, it was almost too late. The battle was over in less than thirty minutes.

  Big Mike and his men took charge of turning the cannons around and firing them into the fortifications at Verplanck’s Point, but the range was so great that no significant damage was done.

  “This isn’t worth the trouble,” said the frustrated Big Mike.

  “True. Let’s get these cannons hitched up so that we can get them out of here,” replied Ellison.

  * * * *

  Alex

  When it was fully dark, Alex, the Longhunter and Jonas slipped over the back wall of the fort and ran to the trees, which were only a hundred yards behind the fort. The Raven had not placed any of his Cherokee warriors behind the fort, so it was a relatively easy task to get out of the fort and melt into the trees. If everyone had left the fort over the back wall, that would have been fine with the Raven and the Cherokees. They could have waltzed in unmolested and burned everything to the ground. The warriors had attacked the fort several times during the afternoon and early evening, but they had been forced back each time by musket fire from Alex’s men. Alex’s marksmanship training was paying off in a big way, and several of the braves had been carried off, either wounded or dead. At one point, the braves had tried to scale the Fort Watauga palisade, but a kettle of boiling water poured down from above them had stopped that attempt dead in its tracks. The Cherokees were not foolish enough to make any more attempts to scale the walls after that.

  All three men were carrying muskets and pistols. Alex also carried his longbow and a quiver of arrows strapped over his shoulder. Of course, each man also carried one or more knives in sheaths at various places on his person or in his clothes. The three men worked their way around the fort in the trees until they were behind the warriors, with Martha and the warriors between them and the fort.

  The Cherokee braves were all gathered in a circle around the stake where Martha was tied, and were standing or sitting on the ground. They were getting settled in to enjoy the entertainment of see
ing her burning at the stake. Alex counted only two braves watching the horses. He and his men were positioned not very far back in the trees, where they also had a good view of Martha tied to the stake. Alex, the Longhunter and Jonas huddled in the trees and Alex whispered the order for them to execute the initial part of the plan. Jonas and the Longhunter would each take out a sentry, and Alex would work his way through the brush to get as close as he could to Martha and the rest of the warriors.

  As soon as the Longhunter, Jonas and Alex were positioned where they could accomplish their missions, Alex pulled an arrow from his quiver that he had specially prepared for this task. He had tied a small piece of cloth around the arrow just behind the tip. The cloth had been soaked in tar and the tar had some very flammable dry straw embedded into it. He pulled out his flint and steel and struck sparks on the tarred portion of the arrow. It took him several moments to get the sparks to ignite the arrow. As soon as it was blazing well, Alex notched the arrow into his bow string and lifted up the bow at a forty-five degree angle above the horizon. Alex quickly fired the flaming arrow high in a great sweeping arc, directly over Martha and the Cherokees, toward the fort. Everyone inside and outside the fort looked up and watched the arrow as it soared across the dark sky. It finally stuck, still burning in the ground about half way between the warriors gathered around the stake and Fort Watauga.

  As the fiery arrow was in flight, several things happened at once. The Longhunter and Jonas killed the two sentries with their knives. They had sneaked up behind them and slit their throats as the guards raised their heads up to watch the flaming arrow fly across the sky. Simultaneously, the Fort Watauga gates opened, and Alex’s men, who had massed just behind the gates, came streaming out of the fort yelling and howling, running towards the warriors. The warriors saw the attack coming toward them and momentarily forgot about the flaming arrow and who might have fired it. They rose to the challenge by getting up and running straight towards Alex’s men, bellowing war whoops. As soon as the warriors were within a hundred yards of Alex’s men, the militiamen stopped, fanned out, knelt down on one knee, cocked their musket flintlocks, and almost simultaneously fired a volley toward the attacking warriors. As soon as they had fired, they immediately got up, turned around and ran back toward the fort, with the Raven and his Cherokee warriors in hot pursuit.