King's Mountain (37 page)

We were where my militia had fought only a few hours ago, though now it seemed to me as if a week had passed, for much had happened, and weariness was fogging my mind. A moment later I heard Valentine calling out for me, and I could see him waving from the edge of the stream among the trees at the base of the ridge. Near him, I saw our younger brother Joseph kneeling beside Robert, who sat propped against a tree, pale but conscious. Joseph had taken a dipper of water from the creek, and was dabbing at Robert's face with a bit of cloth.

When he saw me coming, Robert raised a hand to hail me, but then his face contorted with pain, and he let it fall again. I took the last few yards of the slope at a run, and the little Tory surgeon followed me as best he could.

“Hello, Bob,” I said, willing myself to sound cheerful. “You never could stay out of trouble, could you?”

He managed a faint smile. “I got hit when my back was turned. I reckon they were aiming at you, Jack, for that's the part of me that most resembles you.”

I laughed. “Well, now they can tell us apart both coming and going. I have brought you a surgeon, Bob. We'll soon set you to rights.”

While Dr. Johnson knelt beside Robert and began to study his patient, I drew Valentine and Joseph aside for a whispered discussion a few yards away. “When did he get hit?”

“Early on, Jack,” said Joseph. “He was right close to me as we went up the slope. It was sheer bad luck. He was stooping to pick up his ramrod, and just then someone let fly with a load of buckshot, and got him in the lower back.”

“Can you tell how bad it is?”

Valentine shook his head. “Hard to tell. He never passed out. There's blood, but the shot went in deep. He's hurting, of course, but we both know that's no sign. Sometimes flesh wounds can pain you more than mortal ones. Now that you've come, I reckon I'll go look for some whiskey. We can cleanse the wound with whatever he doesn't drink.”

“Round up my boys when you get a chance,” I told Joseph. “It'll soon be dark, and I want all of us together by then. We'll be staying here tonight.”

Joseph glanced up the hill, and I knew that he was thinking that sleep would be hard to come by on that battlefield amongst the dead and dying, but he made no comment, and merely nodded and hurried away.

When Valentine and Joseph had gone, I got some water from the stream at the doctor's request, and then I knelt down beside him as he probed the wound with a small, sharp instrument. Robert was paler now, but he seemed determined not to cry out. When Uzal Johnson had washed the wound, I noticed that there didn't seem to be overmuch blood, which led me to hope that the wound wasn't mortal.

“How do you feel?” I said, patting my brother's shoulder.

“There's a good many hurt worse,” he said, trying to turn a grimace into a smile. “At least I'm not yelling my head off.”

The doctor looked up, as if he intended to say something, but then he thought better of it, and went back to probing the wound. The sun was low in the sky now, and there was more shadow than light in the woods. It was colder now, too, as night was setting in—not cold enough, though: the stench of spilled blood and the odor of dead bodies would soon fill the plateau with a new horror, when darkness finally hid the sight of the carnage.

We sat there in silence for a few minutes, while the doctor concentrated on his grisly task, and in my weariness I nearly sank into sleep, despite my worries for Robert.

At last, Uzal Johnson sat back on his heels and flung the probing tool down on his coat, which he had laid next to Robert when he began. “Well, I can't find it!” he snapped. “I doubt I could find a cannonball in this darkness.”

“Shall I build you a campfire?”

He shook his head. “The pellet is in too deep. Even if I could see well enough, I think I might do more harm than good by digging around trying to get it out. We don't want him to lose any more blood.”

He stood up and headed for the stream to clean his hands, and I followed him, so that I could ask about Robert without his overhearing us. “How is he?”

The doctor sighed, and, fishing a scrap of linen out of his bag, he swirled his hands in the creek water and began to wipe them. “The pellet went into his kidney, best I can tell.” I waited for him to tell me the implications of that, and after a moment he went on, “It's a grave wound, but it could be worse. He has two kidneys; he can live without one of them if he has to.”

“Yes, better to be shot there than in the head or the heart. But what of the injury itself?”

“Time will tell. I have cleaned the wound as best I could. I can sew it up, and bandage it to keep it uninfected. After that…” He shrugged. “He has not gone into shock, which is a good sign, considering the hard few days he has had. He is young and strong. He might recover if he will stay somewhere close by and rest for a week. Two weeks would be better. Put him with a farmer hereabouts, and let them keep him in bed until the wound heals, and he should be all right.”

From his resting place by the stream, Robert called out, “Where have Joe and Valentine gone?” he said. “I could use that whiskey they promised.”

“They should be back soon. They've probably gone back to get James and the horses. Then we can see about getting you lodgings with some local Whigs. How far can he travel safely, Doctor?”

Uzal Johnson shook his head. “Impossible to tell, Colonel. Any time spent on horseback might jog that pellet loose and do more damage. I wouldn't go three miles if it was me.”

Robert tried to laugh. “In my place, Doctor, I'll wager that you would. We are half a day's ride from Charlotte Town, and if Tarleton isn't here now, he could be at any moment. And if the Redcoats were to find me laid up in a cabin in these parts, I reckon I wouldn't have to worry anymore about this gunshot wound, 'cause they'd hang me before you could say Jack Robinson.”

Johnson nodded. “You must weigh the risks, sir.”

Robert looked up at me, and braced his arms as if to push himself to stand up, but a spasm of pain must have hit him, for he thought better of it and settled back down against the tree. “I want to go home, Jack.”

“This man advises against it,” I said, nodding toward Uzal Johnson. “He's a good doctor, Bob. He has been to college up in New York.”

My brother shook his head. “I'm sure he's a daisy, Jack, but I can't take his advice. All the rest of you will be heading out tomorrow. I don't want to be alone and helpless down here at the enemy's back door. I want to get home. I want to see my boys. Keziah can take care of me.”

I looked over at the doctor. He met my gaze with a shrug and an expressionless stare. He was a Redcoat: it was no business of his what the rebels did. Or perhaps he had enough experience with headstrong patients to know that you cannot talk them out of a course of action if they are dead set upon it. After a moment's silence, he said, “Well, I have done all I can for your brother, Colonel. I hope he makes it. Now, by your leave, I'd like to go and tend to the rest of the wounded.”

“You'll have a long night of it,” I said.

He nodded. “I hope so. I hope they live long enough for me to get to them.”

I thanked him, and he made his way back up the hill, where most of the dead and injured lay. He would have a long night, I knew, for there were perhaps a hundred men in need of his care. Our work was done, but his was just beginning.

*   *   *

By sunset, fatigue had caught up with us, although we still had much to do in the aftermath of the battle: bodies to bury, spoils of war to parcel out, prisoners to be dealt with, and wounded men to be seen to. We had done very little of any of it before darkness came. Some of the men took it at turns to stand guard in case Cornwallis had sent reinforcements to Ferguson. After the long march, a day and a half without sleep, and then the battle, we were too weary even to quit the field to make camp. As gruesome as it sounds, we simply lay down on that same ground we had fought on, and slept there amongst the dead and the dying. It felt like reliving the battle over again. Our exhaustion was our salvation, though, for even had we wanted to heed the cries of the suffering, fatigue pulled us into oblivion, for a few hours at least.

The last thing I remember is seeing a little lantern bobbing across the field, as Uzal Johnson made his way from patient to patient amongst the dead and dying.

Come sunup, it was quieter.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

October 8, 1780

The morning after the battle, I awoke on the cold ground of the battlefield, roused more by hunger and sunshine than because I was rested. As I sat up, blinking through the mists at the pale morning sunshine, I heard shrill cries that sounded like women weeping. I scrambled to my feet and looked across the field, where the wounded still lay, mingled with the dead. In the distance through the swirling morning mist, I could see a crowd of people wandering along the ridge, stooping to turn over bodies for a look at their faces, and crying piteously as they went. In my half-waking state, I thought of spirits of the dead, still roaming the place where they had died, but an instant later, I was fully awake, and I knew who they were: the inhabitants of the nearby farms, who had come in search of sons and husbands who had fought in the battle. Many of those who fought here—for both armies—came from settlements within a few miles of King's Mountain. Some had come unwillingly, for we had heard tales of the Tories forcing men into service. These people must have waited by their firesides through a long night, not knowing the fate of husband, son, or brother, and now at first light they had ventured here to learn the worst.

As the women wandered over the battlefield, searching for a familiar face amongst the dead and dying, their screams and lamentations drowned out the cries of the wounded, and bid fair to be louder than the battle itself—or perhaps it only seemed so to me because I had less to distract me now. Some of these people set about to do what they could for the wounded, fetching water and dressing wounds. I suspect that others were there to rob the dead, out for what profit they could make from the misfortunes of others, but we had no time to spare for such concerns.

There would be no time to recover from the march and the fighting, not with Charlotte Town and the army of Cornwallis a day's ride away. Word was sure to reach them soon, and they might come after us to avenge Ferguson. We had to make ready to move out.

We killed some of the Tory cattle, though there were precious few of them for so many mouths to feed, and we took whatever food we could find for our morning rations. On our journey across the mountains and down to King's Mountain, while we were eating parched corn, half-cooked meat, and whatever else we could scavenge, the men had kept themselves going by imagining the splendid feast we would have once we took possession of the Tories' food supply, but once we had it, we were disappointed to find that Ferguson's army had little more to eat than we did. The Carolina border country had been picked clean by the predations of the various armies until there was almost nothing left to take. We would go hungry a while longer.

After that hasty and meager breakfast, we began the business of tying up the loose ends, to make ready for our departure.

We assigned some of the men to burial detail, first to inter the fifty of our own men who had perished in the fighting. The enemy dead numbered more than two hundred, and there would not be time to properly bury them all before we needed to move out. Colonel Campbell announced that he and some of his men would stay behind to finish the task, and they would rejoin us as soon as they could finish their grisly labors.

Some other soldiers spent the early morning hours fashioning litter poles out of stout tree limbs and blankets so that we could transport the most gravely wounded. My brother Robert had refused this means of conveyance, though, and insisted on being given his horse.

Early in the day we had a family conclave to try once more to reason with him, for though he had insisted yesterday upon going home, I had hoped that a night to consider it might change his mind. It had not.

“The rest of us can't go straight home, Bob,” I told him. “If we could we'd give you an escort, but we have eight hundred prisoners to contend with. Still, it's dangerous for you to try to make a long ride with a bullet in your back.”

Valentine nodded. “Jack is right. Wouldn't it be better if you stayed hereabouts for a while? That Hambright fellow lives somewhere near here. He could keep an eye on you until we could come back this way.”

Robert looked worse than he had yesterday for despite the whiskey Joseph found for him, he had slept little the night before, and the effects of the wound were beginning to take hold. There were dark shadows under his eyes, and though he was the youngest of us, he looked a decade older.

My sons Joseph and James had joined us on the hillside, but they knew better than to say anything in this discussion. They gnawed at their food, big-eyed and solemn, while their elders debated the fate of their uncle.

I wished I could simply order Robert to bed rest in a nearby farmhouse, for after all he was but a captain and I was the colonel in command of our militia, but though I outranked him both in war and in the family, Robert paid little heed to me on this matter. In the face of my arguments, coupled with Joseph's and Valentine's, he set his jaw in a mulish scowl and said, “I'm going home, boys. Just fetch me my horse, and some of the rations and gunpowder, and I'll be off.”

I looked at Valentine and Joseph, hoping for more brotherly support, but they simply shrugged. Glancing nervously at me, Joseph said, “Well, Bob may be right about the Redcoats swooping in from Charlotte Town. Maybe he could get a little farther away from here, and then rest up where it's safer.”

Robert shook his head. “I'm going home.”

There was no reasoning with him, and no way that the rest of us could abandon the militia to escort him home. I could tell, though, that his mind was made up, and we could argue all day without making a dent in his resolve. I thought the matter over for a few moments. “All right,” I said at last. “For the last time, I tell you that I wish you would not do this. But if you are hell-bent to get back over the mountain, then I will let James accompany you.”