Zack crept deep into the hay, dragging the two guns with him. He pulled handfuls of dry stems in front of him and peeped out cautiously.
Enoch was shaking down his long hair to conceal part of his face, and quickly he tied the handkerchief around his head, like a bonnet. Then he drew Mrs. Reep’s ample cape close around him to hide his buckskins, and tucked his feet up and out of sight. Into view from the trail appeared a horseman with a red coat. Zack recognized Major Welch at once. Another rider followed the major, then half a dozen more together. In their hats they wore the sprigs of pine needles that marked them as belonging to Moore’s Tory band, and all carried guns across the pommels of their saddles.
“Good day!” called out one of them. “This is Adam Reep’s house, as I think.”
“Aye, neighbor,” replied Reep. “Do you come on a visit to me?”
“We seek to visit other men than you, and with grim reward,” announced Major Welch darkly, and rode his horse into the yard. “Thus far we have trailed two desperate and villainous men, sir. Saw you aught of any travelers on this road in the last hour?”
“Not I, sir,” Reep told him.
“How can you say that, my son?” spoke up Enoch Gilmer, his voice cracked high and shrill, like the voice of an ill-tempered old woman. “Do you not mind the two who went past here just at dawn?”
“What two were those, Mother?” Reep instantly took the cue. “No, I saw nobody. I but now came into the front yard, and you were sitting here early.”
“Aye, aye,” shrilled Enoch, so that Zack could swear a sour old dame was speaking. “I was sitting out here, and you were away somewhere on what fool's errand I know not. They came past, one of them limping and leaning heavily on a staff—”
“The very fellows!” cried a rider from the group behind Major Welch. “I've seen the marks of that staff on the ground.”
The major doffed his cocked hat and bowed from his saddle. “You saw them, then, my good woman? And whither did they go?”
“One was a tall young rogue with dark hair and a long chin—”
“That would be the spy taken yesterday in camp,” volunteered another of the party.
“Silence,” Major Welch ordered sternly. “I want to hear which way they went. Pray go on, madam. Whither did they fare?”
“And the young man was helping his lame friend, and he asked me if the way went to Sherrill's Ford on the Catawba,” whined Enoch in his old-woman voice. “I told them 'twas yonder, to eastward, leading across the South Fork, and they went on their way.”
“How long ago?” asked Major Welch.
“Oh, ’twas just at peep of dawn. I think an hour at most.”
Welch gathered up his reins. “You hear?” he said to his companions. “They’ll have gone no more than three miles. Ride fast, and we’ll take them up ere many minutes.” Again he bowed and flourished his hat. “My thanks, madam, for your help.”
“No thanks to me, sir,” Enoch replied readily. “I but sat here as they went by.”
“Forward!” commanded the major, and the riders shook their bridles and rode away eastward at a canter.
Reep watched them go, and sighed in relief. “What did I say, wife?” he asked. “Is Enoch not as good as a play?”
“Faith, I myself believed he was your mother,” said Mrs. Reep, but with the gaiety gone from her voice and manner. “I could not speak or move, I could only pray. What’s now for you to do, Enoch?”
“It’s for Zack and me to be gone from here,” said Enoch. “Those fellows will go no farther than Ramsour’s Mill beyond here, and will be told there we were not seen passing. Then they’ll turn back to look this way for us once again.”
Reep had trotted up the ridge to peer after Welsh’s party. Now he came back. “They’re across the ford,” he reported.
“Come out, Zack,” called Enoch, and pulled the kerchief from his head. “We must take to the road again.”
Zack stood up, shook the hay from his clothes, and dragged the rifles after him. “But you can barely stand, much less walk,” he objected.
“I’ll help you there,” offered Reep. “I’ve a horse to lend you, and I wish ’twas two.”
“That will leave you unmounted,” said Enoch, but Reep shook his head and laughed.
“Hark you, I’ve been told how some of those Tories were recruited. They were told to enlist or stand plunder. When Moore sends men here to make me that fair offer and I beg off from joining them, I want no horse to be taken in my stead. You can return it in good time, Enoch, when all is quiet again. I trust you, and I relished the sport you made with those hunters after true men.”
The horse, a small but strong bay, was hastily saddled and bridled and led to the front stoop. With Zack’s help, Enoch scrambled up on its back. With hurried good-bys, the fugitives departed, Zack walking beside the horse. Enoch pointed them to westward.
“Since we got out of that camp and went east, Moore’s men will seek us through all that part of the country,” he judged. “So we ride away until we come near the head of Indian Creek. There we can cross and slip behind the camp where we had such sport.”
His advice was good. There was no mishap on the eight or ten miles to the crossing, nor on the ten miles they made by obscure trails southward and to west of the Tory stronghold until they came to the home of Christian Mauney. Mauney welcomed them at noon, heard their story with approving interest, and entertained them at his dinner table. Then he sent a farm servant to saddle another horse.
“This mount is for you, young sir,” he said to Zack. “Fetch it home to me when it is safe and convenient. Now, there are no Tories prying hereabout, else they would have come to my house before this. Ride southeast, you two, this side of Sloan’s Furnace and across Long Creek, as far as Crowder’s Mountain. That will put you close to your own home places.”
It was a twenty-mile ride, but along good woodland roads and trails, and without challenge. Zack and Enoch crossed Armstrong’s Ford long before sundown, and separated there to seek their homes.
As Zack dismounted at his own door, both his parents started out to greet him.
“Zack!” cried Alan Harper. “Where did you get that horse? And that is not your rifle you carry.”
“We looked for you to come back laden with turkeys and squirrels,” added Zack’s mother.
“I’m laden with news,” Zack told them, “and it is grave news.”
“Is it so?” said Alan Harper, and looked at his son narrowly. “Then come in and tell it.”
Zack tied up his borrowed horse and entered. His mother brought him food, and he ate it as he talked. Alan Harper listened to the story of the journey to the Tory camp, Zack’s capture there, and his escape with Enoch Gilmer.
“By heaven, this sounds like romance,” said Alan Harper when Zack had finished. “Yet I know that you never lied in your life, my son, nor even greatly colored a tale in the telling.” He rose from where he sat. “Come, there’s yet some riding for you to do.”
“Where do we go, Father?” Zack asked him.
“To the Prothero plantation. My old friend and his daughter will be as amazed at this business as am I, and must hear of Godfrey. Help me saddle up to go with you.”
In the last light of day, father and son dismounted before the home of John Prothero. It was a great square house, two stories high, built of red brick, made by Prothero’s slaves, and decorated in front with tall whitewashed pillars. A dignified brown butler answered their knock at the front door, and John Prothero appeared in the inner hall to welcome them in.
“Happy I am to see you, neighbors,” he said, though his face looked long and grave. “Come in, come in.”
Walking ahead through the front hall, he conducted them into his drawing room. It was pleasantly furnished, and on the wall hung a painting of Sir Markham Prothero, the gentleman who had come from England to Jamestown a century and a half earlier to found the American Prothero family. A man rose from where he sat, bowing. Beyond him, on a so
fa, sat Grace Prothero, pale and tense.
“Friend Alan and young Zack, you both know Lieutenant Sam Martin,” said Prothero. “He came but half an hour before you.”
“Aye, Sam’s our neighbor on the far side of Armstrong Ford,” said Alan Harper. “Are things well with you, Sam?”
Lieutenant Sam Martin was a lean, well-knit man with a tanned face, in his forties. He wore the blue coat of a Continental officer, stained with service, and his military cocked hat lay on a table beside his chair.
“I dare hope things will be better soon,” he answered Harper. “Better with all of us; for they are in sorry case now.”
“He speaks of matters in South Carolina,” said Grace, in a dull, worried voice.
“And gravely those matters have fallen out,” added Prothero. “Sit down, sit down, all of you. Sam, tell the story again.”
Soberly the lieutenant did so, and it was a baleful story tp hear.
Martin had been with Captain William Chronicle’s company of South Fork volunteers that had marched with the North Carolina forces to help the garrison of Charleston. When they had turned back at news that Charleston had fallen, Martin and others had left the main body to scout the advance of the British Army. He had heard of sweeping moves to occupy the back country, and he himself had watched from hiding as the Royal Dragoons of Colonel Ban- astre Tarleton butchered the survivors of Buford’s Virginia command who had surrendered. Patrick Ferguson, another British colonel, was gathering Tory volunteers to his standard. Everywhere, said Martin, the only way to avoid plunder and prison, even death, was to swear loyalty to King George and to take up arms for him.
“Woe for the folk of South Carolina,” breathed Grace. “Does nobody oppose these British?”
“Only scattered bands, like Chronicle’s,” Martin told her. “Francis Marion lies hidden in the swamps, with a broken leg. Sumter is trying to raise a fighting company. I know of no others to the south of us.”
“North Carolina goes free so far,” observed Prothero hopefully.
“Only for the time,” Martin said gloomily. “The word is that Lord Cornwallis waits but for the harvest to be taken in, and then he will bring his army hither to devour all that we have.” He looked at Alan Harper. “What news of matters here?”
Zack opened his mouth, but closed it again. “I dread to say,” he confessed.
“Speak, Zack,” Prothero bade him. “Tell us aught you know of what moves here. We’re all close friends together.”
“Have you brought us news of Godfrey?” Grace asked.
Zack recounted all that had befallen him, from the time when Grace had asked him to go searching for her brother. They heard him with the deepest attention. Martin and Prothero interrupted now and then with questions. But when Zack made an end there were some moments of gloomy silence.
“And so,” said Prothero bitterly, at last, “Godfrey makes one of that horde of Tory robbers on Indian Creek.”
“Godfrey is no robber,” protested Grace at once.
“No more is he,” Zack seconded her. “I told you, sir, that your son spoke against all his brother officers to save me from hanging, and the word I bring from him is the word he wished me to bring.”
Somberly Prothero shook his head. “My prayers for peace have availed nothing. It’s past the time for prayer. Alas, friends, what must we do?”
“I know what I must do,” said Martin stoutly. “I returned but this morning, and tomorrow I go seeking at every friend’s home for men willing to take up their rifles and stand together against Cornwallis and all Tories for the sake of freedom and right.”
“Let me be your first volunteer,” said Zack suddenly.
8 Captain Martin’s Company
Zack’s father fairly sprang from where he sat, and Prothero leaned forward in his chair and gaped. Beyond Lieutenant Martin, Grace put a hand to her mouth, and her eyes above it were wide.
Had Zack’s words been so stunning as all that? But he had said them, and he had meant them, despite the insistent talk of neutrality.
All the while Martin had been telling of the desperate situation in South Carolina and the approach of British forces to the border, Zack had been thinking of his home, the stout log farmhouse. It was more elegant than Adam Reep’s snug little cabin, it was less so than this two-story brick house in which he now sat, but it was home.
Zack’s life revolved around that home of his. He had been born there, he had played there as a child, worked there as a growing boy. His first studies in reading and writing and ciphering had been carried on there, with his mother for teacher. With his father he had worked in the fields, had felled trees for lumber or fuel, had smoked meat, had harvested corn. He had helped make stools and tables, had helped build sheds. That home was partly of his own fashioning.
“I mean what I say,” he told them all. “Father, perhaps you think that I should be sorry—”
“No, Zack, I do not think that. But when did you decide?” “I can’t say for certain. Maybe this moment, maybe up yonder when I lay captive in Colonel Moore’s camp, with a noosed rope waiting for me. But Lieutenant Martin’s talk of plundered and burned houses in South Carolina, and what Adam Reep said of how the Tories would have him in arms beside them or take his property—that made me speak now. Father, I cannot hold for neutrality, as do you and Mr. Prothero.”
“Nor can I hold for neutrality any longer,” Alan Harper said deeply. “Not from this moment forth. Peace and good will have fled from our land. A man may wish to hold clear, but he cannot. He must choose the one side or the other, if he is a man. And I am like my son. I choose the American side, though once I fought for King George.”
“So did I fight for him, twenty-five years gone,” spoke up Martin. “I felt he was in the right then, and I ventured my life in his service. But now he is in the wrong, and my life is ventured against him.” He glanced at Mr. Prothero. “Sir, I crave pardon for speaking thus against the flag your son has chosen.”
“Alack, Godfrey made up his own mind,” said Prothero miserably. “He thought he did right, I am certain of that, for he is my son. But, friends, he was misled. I, too, make my choice here and now.”
He rose to his feet.
“I am for American independence.”
Silently Alan Harper held out his hand, and Prothero took it. Grace, too, had risen.
“Gentlemen, pray excuse me,” she said. “I—I must go and think apart.”
They watched her as she walked to the door, then turned and faced them again. She was as pale as ashes, but steady.
“My heart’s sore for Godfrey,” she said. “But, sore or not, it must be true to this land and to this land’s hope and struggle for liberty.”
And she was gone.
“Yonder’s a brave girl,” pronounced Martin. “Many a tall man she’d put to shame. Now, Zack, you are my first recruit.”
“Shall I be your second?” offered Alan Harper, but Martin shook his head.
“Not yet, old friend. That would leave your homestead without a man to guard it, and homes must be guarded and fields tended and crops harvested—for the right side, lest the wrong side devour them. And I say the same to Mr. Prothero. Sir, you and Alan here both know what war is. But I counsel you not to take the field as yet.”
“You speak true, Sam,” nodded Prothero. “And I would dread to find myself fighting my own son among the Tories.”
“Pray heaven that does not come,” said Martin, and clapped Zack’s tall shoulder. “This volunteer I accept. Zack, I hear that Captain McKissick had enlisted many young men hereabouts. I’ll try to glean those who are left.”
“When do we muster?” Zack asked.
“Today is Friday, June second. Let us wait over the Sabbath, and meet at noon on Monday the fifth. Suppose we say Armstrong’s Ford.”
“I’ll be there,” promised Zack.
“Come armed, and wear clothes for summer woods- running. Have you a horse? Aye, and fetch two days’ supply of food. It’s
my thought to make a scout toward that Tory camp where you were, and I’ll need you to lead us thither.”
“Good night,” Alan Harper was saying to Prothero. “Come, Zack, your mother must hear this thing you will do.”
Noon of the fifth day of June, and the sun was bright and hot above the trees that grew on either side of the approach to the ford. Zack was there as early as any.
He wore a low-crowned felt hat, its broad brim cocked up in front. His knee-length hunting shirt was of stout linen weave, dyed with walnut bark, and his loose pantaloons of the same material were bound at the knees with strips of blue cloth. In his belt were knife and tomahawk, and he carried the fine rifle Enoch had stolen for him from the Tories. In his haversack were corn bread, smoked pork, a flask of powder, some extra bullets, spare moccasins, and flint and steel. He rode the horse lent him by Christian Mauney.
Other recruits rode in, dismounted, and lounged against the tree trunks or squatted like Indians in the shade. Some fifteen or sixteen had gathered to Martin’s call. They included the Campbell brothers, Andy Berry, Cy Cole, Matthew Leeper, Peter Smith, and others Zack knew. They Wore cloth hunting shirts and felt hats or homemade cloth caps. One or two bound their hair back with buckskin thongs. Their rifles were mostly of the popular Pennsylvania make that threw a bullet far and true, but some were of home manufacture, plain barrels with roughly whittled stocks but serviceable for all that. Martin had appeared in hunting clothes instead of his blue uniform, with rifle and tomahawk.
Martin waved them near him. As they clustered around, he looked from face to face.
“Some of you are very young,” he said, “but I’ll warrant you all stout-hearted.”
“Aye, sir, we are,” volunteered one of the Campbells, “and as wishful to face a British redcoat as to eat a plum.”
“It’s not quite the same business,” Martin said soberly. “Wait till you’ve heard a hundred guns fire, and seen your friends fall like leaves. That lowers the highest spirit. Now, I’ve brought paper and pen and inkhorn. At the top I’ve written that this is a company of neighbors sworn to fight for liberty. All who agree will sign their names.”
Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1961 Page 6