Camp Follower: A Mystery of the American Revolution (56 page)

Each man stood
taller as his commander swaggered for the next group of soldiers.
 
Minus his lithe foxhounds while the unit was
on the move, the Legion's commander didn't lack for presence in his swan
feather helmet and spotless uniform.

She smiled over
Tarleton's heartfelt pride and penned her observations.
 
The dragoons in the Santee had verbalized
their leader's regard for his troops, but had she not tromped through mud and
ice with them, she'd never have seen it for herself.
 
What a glorious story for Londoners.
 
She ignored Hannah's protest in her memory:
Something horrible
is going to happen to the Legion
.
 
That moment, she didn't believe it.
 
The colonel cared for his men.
 
He wouldn't let it happen.

Thursday the
eleventh of January, Tarleton received Cornwallis's permission, rain-delayed,
to march the Seventh Regiment north with him instead of sending them to Ninety
Six.
 
The Legion departed Duggin's
Plantation and camped south of the petulant Indian Creek.
 
Before dawn next morning, guards escorted a
Loyalist scout through picket lines.
 
About forty-five miles north, Morgan had parked his army on the scout's
property at Grindal Shoals, a crossing on the Pacolet River.
 
While Pickens's Brigade offered Morgan a
buffer and early warning to the south, the general gouged the land of
provision.

Confident in
Cornwallis's support to the east, even though weather perforated communications,
the colonel roused the Legion.
 
The
churning water of Indian Creek had subsided enough to permit their crossing, as
had that of Dunkens Creek farther to the north, but with the ground soaked, a
scant six or seven miles was all they could manage for Friday.
 
Their mileage fared little better the
following day, the second of Tarleton's four days of flour, although the entire
unit pulled together with amazing teamwork at freeing bogged down wagons.
 
Helen remembered Fairfax's warning about
going hungry.

Sunday, day
three of the flour supply, the Legion crossed the Enoree River, thirty miles
from Grindal Shoals.
 
Tarleton pushed
northwest to cut off retreat by Morgan and threaten Wofford's ironworks, where
farriers serviced the horses of Morgan's dragoons.

Exhaustion
lined faces around campfires that night.
 
Those on foot had forded creeks knee-deep in water the temperature of
glaciers.
 
When cooked rations became
available, Helen, her appetite gone, forced herself to eat, unsure how
conditions would deteriorate in subsequent days.
 
She also forced out a journal entry, her script jittery with
chill, even after Jonathan tucked a blanket around her.
 
Morgan wasn't far ahead of them, and his
scouts orbited the Legion.

Monday dawned
gray and bitter and delivered two surprises colder than the air for Helen.
 
The first came around five in the morning,
when sentries found Newman the postal carrier just outside picket lines, his
throat slit.
 
No one questioned what
Newman, not on patrol, had been doing out there.
 
The consensus was that Pickens's scouts had murdered him.
 
Helen, jittery, wondered whether Fairfax had
lured him out and delivered his version of Crown justice.

The second
surprise arrived in the personage of Tobias Treadaway, who found his way to
them as they were breaking camp.
 
The
gabby agent had ridden from Cornwallis's encampment on the fourteenth; that
moment, His Lordship was making ready to cross the Broad River.
 
To Tarleton, who had received no
correspondence for several days from his superior, the news was welcome.
 
It positioned Cornwallis and his army but
thirty miles east of them.

Helen was
bothered that Treadaway, integral to the Epsilon spy ring, didn't bear
correspondence from the Earl.
 
The agent
could be lying about Cornwallis's position, encouraging Tarleton into a trap
without adequate reinforcements.
 
What
was Fairfax doing about it?
 
Nothing
that Helen could see.

She debated
going directly to Tarleton and telling him everything she knew — but then
militia scouts, Neville among them, netted another spy.
 
The man revealed that Morgan was headed for
Burr's Mills on Thicketty Creek and that he'd heard reports of Cornwallis
crossing the Broad River that day, southeast of them.
 
When the intensity of the interrogation ramped up, the spy diverted
the soldiers long enough to swallow a poison he'd concealed, thus depriving his
captors of watching him thrash in the noose.
 
Fanatics, the rebels.
 
The Legion
hanged his body anyway.

Helen,
shivering, saw it as the army marched out in pursuit of Morgan, who'd sounded
retreat from Grindal Shoals.
 
To her,
the incident stank worse than five hundred Legionnaires on campaign without any
soap among them.
 
Her weary journalist's
brain trotted out the lurid scheme of a rebel spy who'd committed suicide, rather
than confess to supplying misinformation about Cornwallis's position.
 
Fairfax hadn't been present during the
interrogation.
 
Otherwise, she suspected
the spy might have confessed far more.

The fatigued,
hungry Legion arrived at the Pacolet River late afternoon.
 
Scouts reported fords guarded a good
distance in either direction along the opposite bank.
 
Across the roiling river, Morgan's militiamen gathered to jeer
and offer obscene gestures.
 
A dozen
lined up to synchronize dropping their breeches and wagging bare buttocks at
the Crown forces.
 
"Shit,"
muttered a legionnaire near Helen.

Noisy as the
river was, it transmitted an Ulster Scot's accent —"Tory sons of
whores!"— along with regional accents.
 
"Come and get it, pigs!" and "Kiss my arse, Ban!"
 
A breeze also wafted over the aromas of fried
pork and johnnycakes.
 
The rebels didn't
lack for food.
 
The inside of Helen's
mouth tasted of the same disgust, hunger, and muddy exhaustion borne by every
soldier who marched with Tarleton.

One of Morgan's
sharpshooters picked off a pine branch above a Legion dragoon, dumping cones
and needles atop him and spooking his horse.
 
Soldiers growled, and at least twenty muskets cocked.

"Hold your
fire!" bellowed an officer.
 
His
command carried to the rebels, who hooted and guffawed at the Legion's
restraint.
 
Or more appropriately, its
impotence.

The angry army
withdrew into the evergreen screen.
 
Pickets were set, scouts were redeployed.
 
Tarleton ordered fires lit for meal preparation — the final day
of the flour supply — but specified that the army not encamp.
 
He and senior officers sequestered
themselves to strategize.

Bone-tired and
grimy, Helen refused to think about marching farther or even rising from the
blanket where she'd eaten supper.
 
Little conversation passed around the fires.
 
Men stood or crouched in silence, Highlanders from the 71st
twitchy with the need to fight, others dazed with exhaustion.
 
A volatile mix.

One cookfire
over, Treadaway squatted in a stupor.
 
Fairfax ambled to him, whipped out the superlative brandy he'd served
her, and nudged the agent in the shoulder with the flask.
 
Treadaway revitalized and thrust out his tin
mug.
 
Fairfax obliged with a liberal slosh.
 
A waste of brandy, considering Treadaway's
"disposable" nature.
 
Maybe one
of Newman's final acts had been to sample Fairfax's brandy.

With a sigh of
weariness, Jonathan laid the desk on the blanket at her side and scooted around
to face her, blocking her view of the pair.
 
"The colonel must be a fencer."
 
He began massaging her hands.
 
"I recognize a feint in the making."

She
groaned.
 
"The army is worn
out.
 
Every ford is guarded.
 
How can we fool Morgan?
 
Best to set up camp here and rest
overnight.
 
Deal with Morgan on the
morrow."

"A good
tactician understands that night is his friend."

She groaned
again.
 
"Damn.
 
We're going to march in the dark."

"You've
another journal entry to complete by then."

"I can
hardly put one foot before the other."

"This
moment, only writing is required of you."

His humor and
sagacity encouraged her smile.
 
Not for
the first time, she felt the support and focus he gave her.
 
Gratitude warmed her heart.
 
Before she took up her quill, she stroked
his cheek.

The march
started at nine, illuminated by plenty of torches so Morgan couldn't miss the
offensive toward the vulnerable Wofford's ironworks.
 
Rebel scouts hallooed alarm.
 
Torchlight blossomed, and the camp across the river, complacent for the
night, awakened.

For three
hours, Tarleton marched along the river before he signaled bivouac and ordered
everyone except guards to rest — no fires except a token display near the
bank.
 
The rebels took up position and
camped, although Helen felt certain they weren't as smug as before.
 
Morgan had taken the bait, but for what did
Tarleton bait him?

At two in the
morning, Jonathan coaxed her awake.
 
Around her, soldiers softly rolled up their blankets.
 
"Hush, my dear.
 
We're countermarching.
 
Tarleton's gambling that Morgan pulled in
his guard from a ford downriver, and we can cross there."

Dew-sodden and
stiff with cold, she shook out a yawn and helped him roll blankets.
 
Her legs felt lined with lead, her eyes as
if they'd been blasted by grit.
 
She
fell in line behind a wagon, Jonathan leading Calliope beside her, and
concentrated on placing one foot before the other without tripping.
 
The night smelled of river, pine, and wet
Piedmont soil.

Bridles and
wheel-creak muffled, the Legion left a guard to maintain fires awhile and keep
rebel watchmen believing they were still camped opposite the Pacolet.
 
The guard caught up with Tarleton's main
army less than an hour before dawn.

Advance scouts
reported Morgan's guard about six miles downriver had drawn in.
 
Helen's hazed brain grasped at Tarleton's
cleverness and also at the reality.
 
She'd seen Jonathan's map of the area: woodlands and cattle ranges.
 
Morgan couldn't run far north before the
Broad River cut off his escape.
 
Later
that day, Tuesday the sixteenth of January, the two armies could do battle.

She must stay
awake for it — no, she had to snatch sleep before then.
 
She couldn't ever remember being so tired,
even when she was settling Silas's final debts.
 
Must be a combination of physical labor, sleep deprivation,
inclement weather, and scant rations, like a drug, yes, almost like laudanum,
and
why
had Fairfax stolen her laudanum?

She stumbled
mid-stride.
 
Jonathan steadied her.
 
An ensign hissed for silence.
 
"Helen," Jonathan whispered,
"do you want to ride Calliope?"

"No."
 
She sucked in several deep breaths that hurt
her lungs and stung her eyes.
 
Soldiers
around her trudged along.
 
They felt
just as wretched.
 
The rebels had food
and slept, dry and warm, hours away from the Legion.
 
Did Tarleton expect his hungry, exhausted troops to prevail over
that?
 
Something horrible is going to
happen to the Legion
.
 
She shuddered
and shook off Hannah's words.

At dawn, they
crossed the Pacolet River at Easterwood Shoals, another opportunity to
experience frigid, knee-deep water.
 
On
Morgan's side of the river at last, Tarleton surveyed his dripping, shivering
army, his back straight in the saddle despite his own damp uniform.
 
Triumph and perseverance glowed in his
eyes.
 
"
Now
we have
them."
 
A snarl tore over his
face.
 
"He won't fight.
 
He's a coward.
 
Are you with me, lads?"

Muskets and
sabers rose to greet the dawn overcast, and a roar ripped from the wolves.
 
"Huzzah!"

Chapter Fifty-Seven

CAVALRYMAN
CAMPBELL TROTTED his gelding over to a cluster of dismounted dragoons.
 
"They scampered like rabbits!"

"Huzzah!"
erupted in unison from the dragoons.

Wind and cold
had chapped color to the cheeks of the next man who spoke.
 
"The colonel was right.
 
Morgan won't stand up to us."