King's Mountain (12 page)

I sighed. “Well, Colonel, you will find men in this war who obey orders and trust their betters, without any thought at all to their own rights or liberty. But those men are mostly fighting on Ferguson's side, not ours. We do things differently on this side of the mountain.”

VIRGINIA SAL

It was September now and we had been on the move, heading up into the hill country, looking for converts to the cause and for livestock to feed the army. It was still warm, even at night, and sometimes we'd come upon apple trees bearing their fruit, so our sojourn in the foothills suited me all right, but I did notice that some of the trees on the high hills were already beginning to turn red and gold, which made me wonder what the army would do when winter came. I hoped we'd stop camping in the woods, and go somewhere like Charlotte Town until spring came. The general's headquarters were there, and I reckoned that the major could take over any house he wanted there.

I asked Virginia Paul about it, but she only shook her head and said that I needn't worry about the winter, that I should not pass a day of it cold or hungry. I suppose she was just trying to ease my mind so I wouldn't pester her with my worries, but she sounded as if she knew it for a fact, so I tried to believe her and to put the matter out of my mind.

There were other things to worry about soon enough. But for a while it seemed like summer and good fortune would go on forever.

Dr. Johnson stopped by the tent one afternoon while I was sitting on a blanket in the tent opening, mending one of the major's shirts. The doctor rubbed his hands together, looking big with news. “We shall eat well tonight, my girl!” he said. Uzal Johnson thought a fair bit about food, even though we generally had enough. I thought that tending to sick people made him more determined than most people to take enjoyment where he found it. Or maybe he was used to more and better meals than I was.

“Did somebody shoot a wild turkey?” I said, for we were not in farm country now. Instead of broad fields of corn and tidy gardens of beans and carrots at the big farms in the river valleys, there was now about us only woods and fields of wild grass, that even the major's fine white horse seemed loath to eat. The major had ridden off earlier in the day with a dozen soldiers, but he seldom bothered to tell us what he was about, and, being just his servant girl, I would hardly have asked him for an accounting. As often as not, I didn't care where he went, anyhow. It was just a bunch of men riding out, armed to the teeth, talking or fighting, and feeling mighty important about whatever it was they were doing. It was all one to me. Sometimes Virginia Paul would know the particulars, but she didn't seem to care any more than I did.

“Well, someone may shoot a turkey, now you come to mention it, Sal, for I think I caught sight of one in the weeds last evening, but what I am talking about is beef!” He hit his fist against his palm, and grinned. “At least I do hope so. Major Ferguson has gone to parlay with a landowner who has persuaded himself to stay loyal to the king. It seems this gentleman farmer knows where McDowell's militia hid their beeves before they fled over the mountains. The cattle are pastured in coves up the mountain near here, and the major has taken some men to go after them.”

None of that had anything in particular to do with me, except that if we did manage to round up some cattle, I'd eat better, same as the major, because he was good about seeing that his people were fed. More cattle to feed the men was good news, but even without them I had few complaints about the victuals we were given on the march, for we always passed by a goodly number of Loyalist farmers along the way, and the major prevailed upon them to feed his men. He also prevailed upon the rebel farmers to provision his army, but he did not ask them politely. He took what he wanted. Since it amounted to losing their crops and livestock either way, I thought that perhaps some of the Loyalist farmers were simply making a virtue of necessity, to keep us from burning their farms as well as taking their goods. Maybe when the other army passed by, they'd switch sides again. Anyhow, we never went hungry. I supposed that Major Ferguson was making a point of finding the Burke militia's beeves simply to deprive them of the use of them, but I'd be happy to help him eat the meat.

“I hope he finds those cattle, and that doing so will raise his spirits,” said Dr. Johnson. “The major has been unsettled of late, though he insists that he is not sick, and since I can find nothing wrong with him, I suppose I must believe him.” He stepped past me, and sat down on the major's trunk, watching my needlework. “Does Major Ferguson seem ill to you, Sal?”

“Well, no sicker than usual, I reckon,” I said, for I remembered what Virginia Paul had told me about his bouts with fever in Europe and again a few years later in the islands. I wondered if that ailment might come back one day, for the Carolinas can be fever country in hot weather, but the major had passed the whole summer without a sign of it, though he did seem restless and foul-tempered sometimes, and his sleep was troubled. I hadn't been with him that long, though, so for all I knew that was how he always was. Dr. Johnson knew him better, so I took his word that something was amiss, though it seemed to me that the major might have a good many reasons to feel poorly.

“Can't you fix his arm?” I asked him. “He can't straighten it out, but holds it up against his chest all the time. I reckon that affliction would get anybody down, much less a soldier, who is supposed to be able-bodied. Does it pain him?”

The doctor considered it. “I shouldn't think so. It has healed. And for that reason, I can do nothing for him. The wound was treated, and the joint has fused in place. That cannot be changed.”

“It's a good thing he is left-handed, so that he can still write and eat.”

Uzal Johnson shook his head. “The major was born right-handed. He has taught himself to use his other hand so as not to be completely incapacitated by his injury. It's wonderful what he managed in so short a time. He is trying hard to retain his commission. I gather that the army is his home now. It is his inheritance, anyhow, and all the fortune he is ever likely to get.”

“About his wounded arm—I never heard what happened to him.” I wondered if Virginia Paul knew, but I reckoned she did, because she seemed to know everything. She had not got around to telling me yet, though.

The doctor watched me wielding the needle. “Have you asked him?”

“I have not. He'd take that as an impertinence, and I wouldn't like to ask, anyhow. He hates being a cripple. You can tell.”

“Well, he's not accustomed to it yet. It happened less than two years ago. Bad luck for a career soldier, even more than for most men. It's all on account of that infernal gun of his, though I think he blames everything but that.”

“Tell me, please. Did you attend him when he got hurt?”

“I did not. But I know the particulars. We have dined together often enough, and exchanged the tales of our troubles.”

I looked up from my needlework. “Well, you look fit enough, doctor.”

He smiled. “I am sound in body, but this war has cost me dearly, too. Eight years ago I graduated from King's College in New York, and set out to practice medicine back home in New Jersey. I had four prosperous years until the rebellion began brewing, and then the Whigs commissioned me for a surgeon. Presently, I left them, for I decided that my allegiance lay with the king, and besides the Whigs were losing.”

I nodded. “It seemed that way to me, too.”

“I cast my lot with the New Jersey Volunteers. The rebels confiscated my medicines and such of my property as they could get their hands on, which did nothing to endear me to their cause. So, now, four years later, here I am in this temperate jungle, where the air in summer feels like cotton wool when you try to breathe it. It has been a long war.”

We fell silent for a bit, while I plied my needle, and the doctor took out his little book and began to write in it, as he often does of an evening by lamplight. Finally, though, my curiosity got the better of me, and I said, “But you know how the major came to be crippled?”

“Oh, yes. He was badly wounded up in Pennsylvania, at Brandywine. That's the short of it, but if you want to hear all that led up to it, I know a good bit of that, too.”

I squinted up at the sun, which was still above the treetops. The major wouldn't be back for a couple of hours yet, and I could make the mending last as long as the tale. “Tell me then, if you please, an' the soldiers can spare you a while longer.”

Dr. Johnson nodded. “They seem well enough. Well, where to begin? Back when I was learning to name the bones at medical college, the good major was stationed in the Caribbean, keeping the peace for the English planters. He managed to get through those skirmishes unscathed, but he fell ill with malaria, which is not at all uncommon for soldiers who are sent hither and yon across the empire. Banastre Tarleton has it, too, you know. It can go away for months at a time, but then it comes roaring back, and lays the sufferer low for weeks.”

I nodded. “I knew about that. I don't reckon you doctors can cure the malaria fever, either.”

The doctor shrugged. “There's precious little we can cure. Sometimes I think we simply amuse the patient until he gets well on his own—though wounds are different, of course. We can patch those up, after a fashion. But rest and a better climate can sometimes help those suffering from fever. Anyhow, Ferguson was not in my care in those days, so I cannot say what ailed him. When he fell ill, they sent him back to Scotland to recuperate. And as he recovered his strength, he began to devote his time to developing a new-fangled weapon that he hoped would replace the army's Brown Bess.”

“Is that what the soldiers here are carrying?” I didn't know much about guns, except to get out of the way of them.

Dr. Johnson shook his head. “No. His invention did not replace the Brown Bess. But the major will tell anyone who will listen that it should have. His new weapon had a far greater range and accuracy—or so he says. I have never seen one myself, I am no expert on weapons, though I fear I am becoming well versed in treating their consequences.”

I scooted over a bit, so that the light shining through the tree branches would fall on the seam I was working on. “How was the major's new gun different from the old ones?”

“I couldn't tell you in terms of the mechanics of it. If you ever have trouble sleeping, ask the major for the particulars, and he will talk about it until cock crow. It was a breech-loader, I do know that, while the army's Brown Bess loads at the muzzle.”

“Which one is better?”

“Well, heaven only knows. The major says that his weapon would be easier for soldiers to reload while lying down or when hidden in underbrush. I suppose that would be an advantage.”

“Did he ever make one to try it out?”

“Indeed, he paid for a gunsmith to make several of them, and he tested them himself. Why, he even went to Windsor Castle and demonstrated the thing for the king. Can you imagine? Had it been me, I doubt if I could have held the rifle steady.”

I shrugged, as if I didn't care a bit about seeing any old king, but I ached to ask the major a thousand questions about his visit there. What did the king look like? What furniture was there in the castle? Did they give you anything to eat—and did they serve it to you on plates of gold? It wasn't any use, though. Men never talk about things like that, and like as not they don't even notice. But it felt like I had a little hot coal in the pit of my stomach just to think that I was acquainted with somebody who had met the king.

Well, it was no use even to dream about such as that, so I pretended to take this news in stride. “The major is the son of some kind of nobleman, ain't he? Maybe he feels a little closer to the king's level than the rest of us on account of that. And maybe he didn't hold the rifle steady, either. From what you say, the king wasn't impressed enough to buy any.”

“The major would have it that King George was impressed indeed, but His Majesty may not know any more about guns than we do. Anyhow, ultimately it isn't the king's decision. The army has a Board of Ordnance to choose their weaponry.”

“A what?”

“A committee of high-ranking officials who are empowered to make decisions of that sort.”

“People who do know about guns, then?”

“One would hope for that to be the case,” said the doctor with a weary sigh, “but my experience with armies tells me that they are simply aristocratic and well-connected people, the sort who feel that any decision is right because
they
have made it, whether they know anything about the matter or not. And such people are not fond of change.”

I nodded. “They might be afraid that one of the changes might be
them
.”

He laughed. “There's no cure for that, either. But the major jumped all the hurdles for them. And in the end they decided that Ferguson's marvelous rifle-gun was too expensive to make, unreliable in conditions of rain and mud, and too difficult for the ordinary soldiers to use. Who knows? Perhaps they were right, but he swears his breech-loader was the better weapon. Nevertheless, when he was deemed fit to return to duty, they gave him his own special company of soldiers, equipped with the new weapon, and they shipped them off to America to join the war.”

I looked up at the sun again. The major could come back at any moment now, and the chance might not come again to find out about his wound. “Tell me the part where he got hurt, Doctor.”

“It was at a place called Brandywine, where they fought against the Continental Army. Major Ferguson was looking forward to the battle, because he had his own troops, all equipped with the rifle he invented. In the course of the battle, he was shot in the arm, shattering the elbow. He says that the surgeons wanted to amputate, but he refused. He spent a year in the city of New York, recovering. He saved his arm, but it healed frozen in place as you see. With great determination and more than a little courage, he learned to write and to eat with his left hand, and he was determined to continue his military career, but his superiors sent him south, perhaps because they don't think there's much of a war here. No one wanted a crippled officer in his command. So here he is.”