Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1961

by Rifles at Ramsour's Mill (v1. 1)

  He knelt beside a smooth rock at the ford’s edge, spread the paper on it, and dipped the pen in the ink. “There,” and he wrote swiftly. “My own name’s down to begin with. Who’s next?”

  Quickly they crowded to sign. Zack felt a surge of excitement as he wrote Zachariah Harfer. When the last name was down, Martin counted swiftly.

  “I make it seventeen,” he announced. “Not a host to make the earth tremble with its marching, but something for Tories to reckon with. Now, by custom we choose a captain.”

  “But you’re our captain, sir,” said Zack.

  “Choose,” said Martin. “Let every man say.”

  “Samuel Martin for captain!” cried Zack loudly, and a chorus of voices echoed the name.

  “Who else?” demanded Martin, but no other name was spoken.

  “You’re our captain,” said Cy Cole at last. “This is Captain Martin’s company.”

  They proceeded to elect a lieutenant. Cy nominated Zack, but Zack argued that he would be a scout, mostly away from the company. They chose Isaac Freeland for the office, and for sergeants, Amos Campbell and John Latner.

  “And now,” said Martin, “I must speak a few words, and hope I need do so but once. You have named your own officers, and you must be ready to obey them. My word is the highest, but when you are with one or other of these— Lieutenant Freeland, Sergeant Campbell and Sergeant Latner—their orders are your law.”

  He looked around the little company, stern and serious.

  “There will be no stealing and no skulking. No man fires his gun without orders, on the march, or in face of the enemy. None will be tardy in doing what his officers tell him. In the British Army, disobedient men are flogged or locked up • but I could not bring myself to flog one of you, and all of us are too much needed to be shut away. Yet let me promise you, any man who is slow to mind, or otherwise not a true member of the company, will find I have a short way of making him rue it.”

  He split the little company into two squads, one under qach sergeant. Zack was named to neither squad, but kept as scout and aide to the captain.

  “And we’ll learn no marchings and paradings,” summed up Martin. “No time for that; as to handling your guns, I’ll engage you know that science without more teaching. True soldiers would never call us soldiers—we are more like Indian warriors. And now, whose horse is swiftest? Matthew Leeper, ride to Colonel Dickson’s, up the Catawba. Take this note that says we are a small company ready to serve. Come back with any orders he may have. The rest of us will cook our noon meal—eat sparingly, friends, and save food for tonight and tomorrow.”

  After Zack had finished, he was summoned to Martin’s fireside, along with Lieutenant Freeland and the two sergeants. There, they heard that McKissick’s company had ventured southward across the border into South Carolina, seeking news of the approaching British. Martin proposed to move his own little command toward the Tory camp on Indian Creek. They would go Indian fashion, riding on the march but fighting on foot, every fourth man holding the horses. Martin set up a simple code of signals, the gobbles of turkeys, the whirring cries of partridges and other woods’ noises to order an advance or retreat or other movement.

  “Teach these signs to your men,” ordered Martin. “I give but a few—many would be hard to remember. But now, gentlemen, let Zack Harper tell of that Tory camp, its place and people.”

  Zack did his best to remember everything as he described the location of the camp, its surrounding groves and fields, the rough shelters. He estimated the number of the volunteers at about five hundred, and added what he had heard of: another hundred expected. He named Moore as commander1 and Welch as second in command. The captains, too, he could call by name as they had answered to the vote on whether to hang him: Cumberland, Warlick, Murray, Carpenter, Simpson, and Godfrey Prothero.

  “Well,” said Martin when Zack had finished, “if it comes to fighting we’ll try to give as good as we’re given. Now, what of the roads in that quarter? Let’s map them here in the dust, to consider how we may approach.”

  The little conference broke up as Matthew Leeper rode back to the ford with his report. Colonel Dickson expressed pleasure at news of the company’s formation. The Colonel added that patriot volunteers were pouring into his camp, and he desired that Captain Martin learn more of that Tory concentration to northwestward and bring back the news. Then the patriots would know how to plan for a battle to decide who should rule in the South Fork region.

  “That’s good enough for us,” pronounced Martin, “and we have been beforehand with Colonel Dickson in our plans. We’ll even go spy out yonder Tories, as he asks. Sergeants, order your squads to horse. Zack Harper will ride with me at the head, and Lieutenant Freeland will take the rear of the column.”

  Martin directed them, not to the main road along the eastern back of the South Fork, but to a less-traveled trail that ran parallel to it. The mounted party was forced to ride single file. Zack kept well ahead of the main body, and Martin sent riders to the right to make sure that the march was not being observed by possible enemies. Again and again he called a halt, by the cry of the partridge twice repeated, while Zack, Cy Cole, and others crossed the South Fork to , explore the woods and fields there. Three times they left the trail to avoid the passing of a farmer’s dooryard.

  “It’s not that I wholly mistrust these neighbors of ours,” said Martin, “but I want nobody to prattle of our heading this way. Let us be known at the time we ourselves choose for it.”

  So slowly and carefully did they move that they accomplished no more than a dozen miles upstream before Cap, tain Martin called a final halt for the day.

  “ ‘Tis four o clock past,” he announced, looking at a massive silver watch the size of one of Mrs. Harper’s biscuits. “We are now past the head of Long Creek where it flows into the South Fork yonder opposite us, and just above here is a shallow stretch of the water, firm underfoot and a proper place to cross if we choose. From there, as I judge, we are fifteen miles or so from where Colonel Moore’s Tory rabble is thick.”

  He ordered the horses unsaddled and set to graze, and told his men to cook their suppers before sunset. The fires, he said emphatically, must not burn in the night lest they betray their position to possible lurking enemy observers. He then divided the company into three watches, the first under Lieutenant Freeland, the others under the two sergeants, and said that guard must be kept, alert and in force, the whole night long. Meanwhile, at his direction, lines with baited hooks were dropped into the river and fastened to branches, in hopes of catching breakfast.

  Zack, Cy, and Andy Berry were in the second watch, and ate supper together under some hickory trees. Then they* raked earth over their fire and went with tomahawks to cut evergreen boughs to make beds for themselves. Zack: was weary from his recent adventures, and fell asleep before: sundown. Sergeant Campbell roused him in the night.

  “ ’Tis nearly nine, and we must watch till one of the clock,” said the sergeant. “Go you to the west there, where you can watch that crossing you heard Captain Martin telh of. The password for tonight is duck, and the reply to it is drake—the countersign. Call on any who come near for the password.”

  Zack moved away to the riverbank and sent back the man on guard there. He stood in dark shadow beneath the low- drooping branches of a broad sycamore and watched the blaze of moonlight on the water.

  Strongly into his mind came a picture of the home he had left. He tried to banish it, but he could not. He could see the . very pattern of the hooked rug on the floor, could hear ' the voices of his father and mother, seemed to sit again at the table and eat dinner. Angrily he fought the empty loneliness that twitched at him.

  Was this the way for a fighting man to dream and hope? Hadn’t he faced death up there on Indian Creek, a shameful hanging death at that, and defied the Tories who had sentenced him? To go through that, to survive and escape, and now to sink into this melancholy . . . well, Zack hoped his comrades never found out ho
w homesick he was.

  A noise in the woods, and he whirled toward it, his rifle coming up in his hands. “Who goes there?” he challenged.

  “Duck,” said a low voice.

  “Drake,” Zack gave back the countersign, and Captain Martin’s wiry form moved toward him, half-revealed by the patchy moonlight that soaked through the foliage.

  “I cannot sleep, and I am making a tour of the sentries,” said the captain, now close to Zack. “Is that Harper? How is it with you? Are your spirits good?”

  Zack was grateful for the night that masked his flush of embarrassment. “I hope so, sir. I—was thinking of the war.” Then, because he felt he must say it: “And thinking of home, too.”

  “So am I thinking of home,” replied Martin. “I cannot put the thought from my mind, or the wish that I was there again, safe and happy with my good dame. Well, I doubt that any man who is a man can be free from homesickness.” He was gone among the trees again, and Zack’s spirits rose like a soaring hawk.

  9 Spy’s Work

  THE night passed without alarm, and at dawn the campers found that the baited hooks they had left dangling in the water had lured plenty of fish for breakfast. Zack, Andy, and Cy toasted the best of their own catch on green twigs over coals of the morning fire. As Zack finished the last mouthful of firm white flesh, Sergeant Campbell strolled past to say that Captain Martin wanted him.

  At once Zack reported to his captain. Martin sat on a log, with Lieutenant Freeland squatting under a nearby tree, sharpening a knife on a morsel of whetstone. Zack saluted, clumsily, he felt sure, and Martin touched his own hand to his brow.

  “If we are to approach these Tories, we must do so with all care and sense,” said Martin. “Therefore the company will camp near here.” He pointed into the woods. “Yonder is a grassy clearing among the trees, where our horses may graze. Some of us will gather supplies, and we will learn more of marching and serving together as a body. But a few of us must scout at once, to make sure of the lay of the land ind the Tories abroad in it.”

  “Aye, Captain, that is true,” Zack agreed.

  “You’ve been to that stronghold of Colonel Moore,” went Martin. “It must be your task to go again and learn what you can of it, then bring back the report. I can spare you two men. Which will you take?”

  “My two messmates,” replied Zack. “Cy Cole has hunted in those parts. And Andy Berry is thoughtful and coolheaded, and wise on the trail. Both of them have good horses, too.”

  “Cole, Berry! ” called the captain loudly, and the two came Expectantly to his summons.

  “You will go with Harper, at once,” ordered Martin. “He is your captain for a spell of scouting. Have you food for two days, perhaps? That should be sufficient, and I’ll expect you back with news by tomorrow night, or the morning 'after. We’ll camp here for at least three days. Is it understood? Are there questions?”

  “None, sir,” said Zack, and “None, sir,” echoed Andy and Cy.

  “Then go, and luck go with you.”

  They saluted, and went to saddle their horses. Each took his rifle, slung bullet pouch and powder horn over his shoulder, and belted himself with knife and tomahawk. Then the three of them led their horses to the shallows and paused there, cautiously reconnoitering. After a moment Zack rode across while his comrades waited with rifles cocked. On the far side Zack made a swift survey among the trees to be sure that nobody was lurking, then beckoned the others with a sweep of his fringe-sleeved arm. They, too, splashed through, the water and joined him.

  “Where away, Captain Harper?” inquired Cy with an expectant grin.

  “I’m no captain, just the leader of this scout. We ride due west from here, up Long Creek until we pass Sloan’s Furnace. From there we strike northwest, beyond Christian Mauney’s, and try to come up behind the Tory den. That will be a thirty-mile ride, and we can do it in good time to finish our spying by daylight.”

  They swiftly agreed on a code of signals, somewhat different from Captain Martin’s. They would rely on the cries of birds, the crow by day and the owl by night.

  “One call means to come ahead,” summed up Zack. “Two means danger or the enemy at hand—double for trouble. Three means fall back. That’s enough for us. Now let’s ride.”

  They headed in single file along the bank of Long Creek, Zack in the lead. He glanced sharply to the right into the trees, then across the water to the left. A thrill of pleasant excitement went through him. Though he had shrugged away Cy’s attempt to call him captain, he felt the triumphant responsibility of leadership.

  As Martin had done with the company the day before, Zack practiced extreme caution. When he approached a farm clearing, he led his companions around its edge under cover of trees. A dog barked from somewhere, but nobody challenged them. They came to the road from Mauney’s to Tuckaseege Ford, and carefully scouted both ways before crossing it on the creek-side trail. It was nearly noon when they approached Sloan’s Furnace, a good twenty miles from where they had begun their journey.

  They reined in under the shelter of a dense thicket of 1 green willows. aHark,” said Andy, “I hear voices.”

  “And so do I,” said Zack. “Dismount.”

  They dropped to earth and peered through the leaves toward the little cluster of buildings that housed the furnace at the creek’s bank. Several men seemed to be there.

  “Keep the horses here,” Zack directed, “and I’ll go forward to see what’s happening.”

  He fell to his hands and knees, scrambled forward under the low-hanging boughs, and came to a place where he could see clearly.

  Sloan’s Iron Works consisted of a square dwelling house, a low shed containing the blacksmith shop, and two rounded furnaces of brick, like beehives. A water wheel provided power to work the trip hammer that pounded iron ore into workable condition and to blow the trompe bellows that fanned the charcoal flame. In front of the smithy some horses were gathered, their bridles held by two men. Half a dozen dismounted riders leaned on rifles by the door, and one of their number hoarsely harangued a sturdy leather-aproned man. Zack recognized the figure as Reuben Sloan, owner of the iron works, who once had made iron tires for Alan Harper’s wagon. Sloan faced his visitors defiantly, with feet planted wide apart and knuckles on his hips. Zack saw him shake his head vigorously, as though in refusal of some demand.

  Between the willows and the furnace grew brushy grass and weeds, on a field once planted to grain but now disused. Zack threw himself down and wriggled forward, stealthy as a snake, his rifle in his hand. After a few moments he could make out words.

  “Sir, I have no wish to do what you say,” he heard Sloan blurt out.

  “Sir, what you wish does not concern us,” rejoined another voice, and Zack felt that he recognized it. “I am here as a captain of men loyal to King George, and I speak to you for my commander, aye, and for the King himself. He who is not with us in these times of war must be counted against us. We need your iron and your skill at working it, and we mean to have them both.”

  “What if the Continental Congress needs my iron and my skill?” inquired Sloan boldly.

  “I have no doubt but that that mob of rebels needs them too,” was the reply. “Yet I am not concerned with what the Congress needs, for I am its enemy. If you do not agree to do what we ask, and take the good pay we offer, I’ll assure you on the word of Captain Robinson Alspaye that your house and furnace will go up in fire and be of no help to either side.”

  Alspaye—that was the man who spoke. And he called himself captain. Promotion in the ranks of the Tories then; it argued that Colonel Moore’s force was growing larger.

  “And now, Mr. Sloan,” Alspaye was prodding, “what choice do you make?”

  “If you burn me out, there’s an end to my furnace and my living,” said Sloan unhappily. “Let me make a promise of my own, and upon my own word which has been as good as gold hereabouts for long years. Destroy my home and my work, and you’d best kill me while you’re about it.
Otherwise I’ll make it my one task and study in life to kill you, Captain Alspaye.”

  “Say the word, Captain, and he dies with that threat in his mouth,” volunteered one of the listening party.

  But Alspaye laughed loudly. To Zack, at least, his laughter sounded a trifle strained.

  “No, no,” he said, “we have time, and we can offer this man of iron a little of it in which to make up his mind. Mr. Sloan, you’ve heard what we want of you, and you know that we mean to have it. Yet you’ve heard it only these few minutes ago. Suppose we give you until dawn tomorrow to make up your mind. We’ll be back then, ready to present you with yellow gold or red fire.”

  “I see,” growled Sloan.

  “And the choice will be yours to make, and we’ll see that you get one or the other in good quantity. Mount, men, and let’s ride back to camp.”

  Zack cautiously parted a tuft of weeds and watched as the Tory party got into the saddle. Alspaye was the last to mount his horse, and he leaned down, grinning at Sloan. Zack’s hand tightened on his rifle. A single quick lining of his sights, a touch of the trigger, and Alspaye would have grinned his last. But Zack stayed motionless, watching the patrol as it trotted northward along the road that led to Mauney’s, and vanished into the trees. Then he crept forward, until his voice could be heard as far as the smithy.

  “Mr. Sloan!” he said. “Mr. Reuben Sloan!”

  Sloan had stood glaring at the spot where Alspaye’s men had vanished. He swung around at Zack’s hail, swift as a cat for all his powerful bulk. “Who’s that?” he barked out.

  Zack rose to a knee. “Zack Harper, from down the South Fork. You know my father. I crept close and heard what Captain Alspaye demanded of you.”

  “Captain Alspaye!” The name seemed to taste bitter in the furnaceman’s mouth. “He rode in here like a great lord on his own lands, telling me what I must do and how I must do it.” Again he craned his thick neck to glower after the departed riders. “They’re gone, youngster. Come now and tell me why you sneak and listen like a gleaner of gossip.”