by Ron Carter
“Sir, there are three hundred of them coming this way. Knowlton’s doing a master’s job of retreating one hundred yards at a time with his twenty men, but they’ll soon reach our lines at the foot of the heights. If we act now, we can probably circle and trap them.”
Washington was on his feet instantly. “Take command of this operation. Get Major Leitch and one hundred twenty of his men to go with Knowlton to circle to their right flank and get in behind them. Get Colonel Crary and his Rhode Islanders to meet them at the Hollow Way and hold them. Capture or destroy them if you can.”
“Yes, sir.” Reed spun and was gone, pounding across the front porch. He mounted his horse and swung it around headed north, towards the sprawling camp surrounding Fort Washington, his three men following at a gallop.
Billy raised his head at the sound of the running horses passing forty yards away. He spoke quietly to Eli. “Know who they are?”
Eli watched them for a moment. “I’ve seen two of them. I think the one in the lead helps Washington.” He shrugged. “Wonder what’s got them moving so fast.”
They both broke off watching the mounted detail disappear in a cloud of dust when a lanky, soft-spoken sergeant came striding into Company Nine, inquiring. “Anyone here named Stroud? Anyone know someone named Stroud?”
Eli walked to meet him. “I’m Stroud.”
For several moments the man eyed Eli, surprise showing. “You’re Stroud?”
Eli said nothing and waited, hands locked over the muzzle of his rifle.
“You’re supposed to come with me.”
“Where to?”
“Inside the fort. There’s a nurse says it’s urgent.”
Eli dropped his hands, eyes instantly alive. “A woman?”
The man nodded. “Name’s Flint, I think. Pretty thing.”
Eli turned to Billy and Billy gave him a hand signal, and Eli turned back to the man. “Let’s go.”
They walked north through the haphazard camps of those who had arrived in the night and dropped where they stood. They passed a few fires and men who wore bloody bandages and sat staring at the ground. They climbed the steep incline up to Fort Washington, and the front gates were open, with pickets keeping a loose watch on who came and went. The sergeant led Eli inside the high, thick walls with the cannon covering all fields of fire, and made his way through the sea of faces inside, towards a door with the word “INFIRMARY” carved above.
Inside, Eli breathed shallow in the poor light and the smells and sounds of hundreds of wounded, crammed into a space made for one-third their number. He peered through the gloom, searching, and then the sergeant pointed and Eli looked, and she was there, near one corner, leaning over a cot on which a man lay with one arm missing below the elbow. Sweat drenched his pillow and he was constantly moving his legs, feet, arms, head, anything to relieve the pain and the shock of being a one-armed man for the rest of his life.
Mary Flint leaned over him, blotting with a cool, damp towel at the sweat running from his face. Eli was walking up behind her before she sensed his presence and turned. She gasped and relief flooded over her face. “Eli! They found you!”
His face was intense, eyes alive. “Are you all right? They said it was urgent.”
“I’m fine.”
He released held breath as she continued.
“Come with me where we can talk for a minute.”
She led him to a small room in the corner with the word “APOTHECARY” on the door, and closed it behind them. A lantern glowed, and light filtered in through a small window near the ceiling of one wall. The medicine smell was strong.
“While I had the fever someone told me General Sullivan was looking for anyone who might know of a woman who had been orphaned by the Indians a long time ago. They said a soldier named Stroud was looking for her. Was it you?”
Instantly Eli’s breathing constricted. “Yes.” He waited, eyes points of light boring into Mary.
“I asked wherever I could. An old man in the hospital remembered something.”
Eli started, waiting.
“He lived north, on a river or a lake. He had a family. He said the Iroquois came raiding and they killed his wife and two of his five children. They also attacked the neighbors eight miles away. They killed the parents and a small boy, but they left a girl alive because they thought she was insane. He thought the family name was Stroud. Could that have been your family?”
“Maybe. Where’s the girl? Did he say?”
“Who was the boy they killed?”
“Me, only they didn’t kill me. They took me. He must have thought I was dead because he couldn’t find me. Did he say what happened to the girl?”
“He took her to a reverend. She stayed there with his family. The reverend moved four years later.”
“Where? Where did he move?”
“South and east was all this man knew. Away from the Indians, towards New York.”
“Did he see the girl? Eyes? Hair? How old?”
“Blue eyes and golden brown hair. About six years old at the time of the raid.”
“That’s my sister.” Eli asked the next question and held his breath. “Did he remember her first name?”
“No.”
The air went out of him and for a moment his eyes dropped. “Where is this man now?”
“I lost track of him when they moved all the wounded up here. I’ve tried to find him but I can’t. I’ll keep trying.”
“What regiment? Who was his commander?”
“A New Hampshire or Vermont regiment. Militia. His commander was missing after the Long Island battle. He didn’t know who the new one was.”
“Do you know his name?”
“Josephus Tanner.”
For a time Eli stood, committing to memory every word Mary had told him. Finally he raised his eyes to hers. “I’ve been looking for my sister for four years. It’s part of the reason I left the Iroquois. I don’t know how to thank you. Someday I’ll find a way to pay you back.”
“No need. I’ll keep trying to find him again.”
Eli nodded. “Mary, it means more to me than you know. I thank you. I surely do.”
He stood facing her, and he wanted to say more but he could think of nothing that would sound proper. He raised his eyes to hers and for a long moment studied her upturned face, and then he turned and walked out the door of the small room. He made his way through the rows of wounded and the acrid smells of carbolics and the sounds of men in agony. He stopped at the big hospital door to look back, and she was standing in the door frame of the apothecary, watching. She raised a hand to wave, and he raised his and stepped out blinking into the bright sunshine.
She was alive! A minister! She was going to be tall and handsome. Blue eyed. Brown hair. Maybe married by now. Josephus Tanner. Must find him.
“Eli!”
The shout came from the south and Eli raised narrowed eyes, squinting to see. It was Billy, two hundred yards away, motioning frantically, and Eli broke into a run, his rifle in his right hand. Billy was talking loud as he slowed and stopped.
“There’s a party of redcoats on the plains just south of us and we’ve been ordered to get down there and help. Let’s go.”
They ran to catch up with Company Nine and take their positions, and they continued at a trot down the inclined Post Road from Harlem Heights to the plains, and stopped. To their right, at the Hollow Way, they saw the small force led by Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Crary, stopped in the trees and partially hidden, and then they saw the British on the ridge, waiting for them.
In the moment they waited on Crary, Billy turned to Eli. “Was it Mary at the hospital? Is she all right?”
“She’s all right. She heard about my sister. She talked to an old man named Josephus Tanner who remembered something. My sister lived. She was given to a minister.” His eyes narrowed. “I’ll find her. Sometime I’ll find her.”
Crary took a long look at the flat ground of the Hollow Way between his command
and the British, and he looked at the British gathered on the Bloomingdale Ridge on the far side, and he divided his force. He sent a small part of his Rhode Islanders forward out into the open, and they formed a line and on his command fired a long-range volley into the British. It fell short, as Crary knew it would. The British regiment, five times larger than the small group of Crary’s command, fired back a volley that fell short, and then they charged forward off the ridge, down towards the open Hollow Way, ready to engage and crush Crary’s tiny command.
Crary’s face came alive. It worked! They’re coming after us, right out in the open.
Instantly Knowlton and Leitch and Reed ordered their commands to the left, then straight south, out of sight of the British. The Virginia rifles led in a hard run to get behind the British before they were seen and trap them against the larger body of Crary’s Rhode Island command still waiting unseen in the trees.
The timing was slightly flawed, but close enough. Crary watched until the British reached a rail fence in the Hollow Way, and then he stood and shouted to those hiding behind, in the trees. “Follow me! Charge!”
He spun and sprinted straight at the British, sword high, waving, shouting as he came, and his men came out of hiding hot on his heels, muskets and rifles high, voices raised in a sustained battle cry.
Suddenly the advancing British understood they were facing a much larger force than they had seen, plunging straight at them shouting, screaming, a swarming horde. They stopped dead in their tracks and for a brief moment they stared in confusion. Then from behind came the shout, “They’ve flanked us!” and they turned their heads to see Knowlton and Leitch and Reed breaking out of the brush deep on their right flank.
Knowlton raised his sword and shouted, “Follow me,” and plunged straight at the nearest redcoats, followed by Leitch, who shouted to his command, “Follow me,” and their men appeared as if by magic from behind rocks and trees and ditches.
The British turned and the Scottish Black Watch bolted for Knowlton’s flank, and then the British buglers sounded a foxhunter’s call. Loud and clear it came, an open, deep insult to every American facing them, and a seething rage instantly filled every man in the American lines. Knowlton slowed for a moment to give Reed time, and Reed shouted orders and without hesitating came storming with his sword in his hand. “Follow me!” he bellowed, and the Virginia rifles surged behind him, straight towards the oncoming Scottish Black Watch. On command they stopped at one hundred yards and knelt, and Reed waited for one split second while they cocked their long rifles, and he shouted, “Fire!”
One hundred fifty long rifles blasted. Every man in Reed’s command could hit a teacup at one hundred yards with his long rifle, and they had aimed at where the white belts crossed on the chests of the British soldiers. A hundred of the redcoats grunted and gasped as the rifle balls ripped into them, and they went over backwards, and more than half of them did not move again.
The remaining British desperately returned fire, stunned that the Americans had not broken and run as they had just twenty-four hours earlier. They reloaded while they waited for the smoke to clear, and they swallowed hard as they saw the Americans running towards them with those deadly rifles, to crouch again, sixty yards away. Before the British could once again shoulder their muskets for a second volley, Reed had his command on one knee, taking sure aim, and shouted, “Fire,” for the second time.
The rifles cracked and the front ranks of the British regulars wilted. Men were knocked backwards, dead, dying, wounded, and those behind saw Reed’s Americans running through their own rifle smoke, straight at them, while Knowlton and Leitch, with the threat to their flank removed by Reed’s Virginians and Bostonians, came on once again, swords high and voices raised in chorus with their men.
The British regulars turned on their heels and ran into the trees and around them and through the brush, never stopping to look back. Their officers shouted and cursed them and they paid no heed. They lost their muskets and they didn’t care as they scrambled on their hands and knees back up the Bloomingdale Ridge, with Knowlton and Leitch on their heels.
Reed followed them, and this time it was the Americans shouting, “Hallooo, Hallooo,” taunting the British, telling them it was the day of the Americans, and the British were the ones who had broken to run.
Knowlton and Leitch stormed over the lip of the Bloomingdale Ridge in hot pursuit, still leading their men, swords high, when suddenly Leitch grabbed his side and pitched forward, hit hard by three bullets, almost at the same instant. Within minutes Knowlton threw an arm across his middle and stumbled and went down with a musket ball deep in the small of his back.
But still the Americans surged on. Behind the redcoats, a company of Hessians sent forward to save the retreating British from total annihilation quickly formed a line and set up two cannon, three-pounders, and as the Americans came into view they opened fire. Billy and Eli led Company Nine forward through the hail of whistling musket balls and grapeshot, and they stopped in a line. Eli went to one knee with his rifle and buried the front sight in the middle of the Hessian commanding the first cannon and squeezed the trigger, and the officer went down backwards and the cannon crew scattered. Billy and twenty others fired their muskets and more enemy soldiers went down, and then Company Nine was on its feet again, working forward, slowed but not stopped.
The Hessians fired more than fifty cannon rounds as rapidly as they could, and then they were out of ammunition, and once again Billy and Eli led Company Nine forward at a run, shouting, and then the Virginians were with them, and the Rhode Islanders. The Hessians took one look at the screaming scourge and they grabbed their cannon and fell in with the retreating redcoats.
Billy and Eli and the Americans never slowed. They pressed on, firing as they ran, straining to catch up with the backs of the routed, panic-driven enemy, who were dropping in twos and threes all along their rear lines.
The Hessians and British ran until they reached their main lines, and they continued right on past. Billy and Eli raised their hands and slowed enough to realize they had pushed the enemy back into their own main camp, and they were facing thousands of British under the command of General Cornwallis.
They signaled, and the troops slowed and stopped, and for one long minute they looked at the British main lines, four hundred yards to the south. They stood there, sweaty, faces dirty from gun smoke, but they were grinning and shaking their fists, and the Rhode Islanders and the Connecticut and Massachusetts and Virginia commands were pounding each other on the back, jubilant, all barriers, all differences forgotten.
Their withdrawal was slow, steady, controlled, and the British did not follow. They worked their way back towards the Bloomingdale Ridge, and the call came, “Colonel Knowlton! Over here!”
They gathered around him, lying on his side, eyes closed, breathing fast and shallow. Reed was on his knees in an instant, and he lifted Knowlton’s head to his chest while Billy and Eli and some officers held back the gathering troops to give Reed room and air.
Knowlton’s eyes fluttered open, too bright. He blinked to focus and then he recognized Reed. The gray lips moved as he tried to speak, but no sound would come, and he tried once more. Reed leaned close.
“Did we drive them? Did we carry the day?”
Reed nodded. “Don’t talk. We’re taking you to the fort.”
Knowlton’s breathing became ragged. “I won’t make it. Did we carry the day?”
Reed choked out, “We did. You led. Your men were among the finest.”
Knowlton’s eyes closed for a moment and a faint smile formed on his lips. He tried to make his dry mouth work once more, but could not, and slowly his eyes closed and his head settled against Reed’s chest, and Reed raised a hand to smooth the sweaty, matted hair.
Captain Stephen Brown knelt beside him, tears streaming. “He was my superior officer. I was right beside him when he went down. I caught him. He said he didn’t value his life much, if we could but carry the day.
I’m glad we got back to tell him. I never saw the like of what he did. May I help put him on a horse? take him back?”
Reed wiped his eyes. “Use my horse.”
Billy and Eli turned away and they stood for a time, silent, and with a hundred other men wiped at their eyes unashamed.
A hushed voice called, “Leitch! Over here.”
Leitch was sitting with his back against a rock. He was wrapped tight with a bandage around his middle, showing a great gout of blood on his right side. Reed went to one knee. “Can you stand?”
“I don’t think so, but I can ride if you can get me on a horse.” His face was showing gray, but his voice was strong, his breathing regular, his eyes clear, focused.
Strong hands lifted him onto a horse, and within minutes his feet were tied to the stirrups and he was laced to the saddle. A mounted captain took the reins of his horse while two more reined in on either side to reach for his arms to steady him. They raised their mounts to an easy lope and headed down the slope of the Bloomingdale Ridge, onto the Harlem Plains, towards the Post Road up to the fort. At that moment, reinforcements sent by Washington came pounding up, including Generals Putnam and Greene and a large company of Marylanders.
General Putnam, the ranking general, quickly called for a council, and the officers gathered. The sun was still high.
“Shall we wait and meet them here and make a stand?”
Just then Tench Tilghman, an aide to Washington, galloped up on his lathered horse and handed a sealed message to Putnam. The signature was that of George Washington.
“Under any circumstance do not commit to a major engagement in the open field. At such time as you have destroyed the British that were on Bloomingdale Ridge, or they have retreated to their main lines, break it off and return to the fort. I repeat, do not become entangled in a major engagement.”