Brave Enemies - A Novel Of The American Revolution Read online

  BRAVE ENEMIES

  a novel by

  ROBERT MORGAN

  Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

  For my grandson, Evan

  Whensoever hostile aggressions . . . require a resort to war, we must meet our duty and convince the world that we are just friends and brave enemies.

  —THOMAS JEFFERSON

  CONTENTS

  Map

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  John Trethman

  Three

  Four

  Five

  John Trethman

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  John Trethman

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  John Trethman

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Acknowledgments

  Reader's Guide

  About the Author

  Also by Robert Morgan

  Special Preview of The Road from Gap Creek

  PROLOGUE

  Spartan District, South Carolina

  January 17, 1781

  I WAS THE ONLY ONE nearby who wasn’t running around. The redcoat threw down his musket and held his hands up. I thought he was hoping to surrender. The cavalry was coming toward him, and I stepped forward to protect him from the sabers. Col. William Washington’s men were hallooing and chopping at every Tory still standing. A man’s head went flying and rolled on the ground like a musk melon.

  It seemed impossible I could be there. I felt like somebody else. I had no business being there. I raised my rifle at the Tory, and he never took his eyes off me. He looked as if he might be eighteen or nineteen. I stepped closer, holding the gun on him. His face was black with smoke and dirt, and when I got closer I saw his cheeks were wet. He was crying and trembling.

  “Give me quarter,” he said.

  Somebody ran between us, and then somebody else. I stepped closer, wondering what I was supposed to do with him. In the smoke and confusion I couldn’t think of anything. Tears streamed down the redcoat’s dirty face. A few minutes before, he had thought we were fleeing and he was the victor. And here he was with his hands raised. I aimed my gun at his chest and stepped closer.

  “Give me quarter,” he said, and swallowed.

  I was going to have to protect him. If somebody tried to shoot him or take him away, I had to protect him. It was my duty to see he didn’t get sabered by Colonel Washington’s South Carolina cavalry.

  “I’ll give you quarter,” I said, trying to sound loud and firm.

  But even as I said it I saw the pistol in his belt. He patted down his red coat and reached for the pistol. “Give me quarter,” he said again, his voice shaking. But while he said it he reached for the pistol, like he meant, Give me quarter or I’ll shoot you.

  It happened so fast I didn’t know what to do. He held one hand raised over his head and with the other grabbed for the pistol. His face was wet with tears.

  “Give me that pistol,” I said. But he’d already gotten the pistol out of his belt and was pointing it at me.

  “We’ll give you quarter,” I said. But he was cocking the pistol. You never saw such a strange look as the boy had. Half his face was crying with grief and half was determined to fight on. He was so confused he was crazy.

  “You rebel turd,” he spat between his teeth.

  I still had my rifle aimed at his chest, and when I saw the pistol hammer bang and smoke spurt out I pulled my trigger. Rifle smoke covered the face and chest of the redcoat. He was knocked back like he’d been hit by a bull. Blood jumped from the hole in his chest, blood almost black compared to the cloth of the tunic. The boy fell with one hand raised and the other clutching the pistol. He never took his eyes off me. I’d never seen a face like that.

  When he fell, I was going to make sure he didn’t get back up. But then I felt something wrong with my foot. It was like I’d been kicked and my foot had gone to sleep. I looked at the rags wrapped around my right foot. They had been torn open and blood was running out. His pistol shot had hit my foot.

  The strangest thing was I didn’t feel anything but a twitch down there. There was so much mud and dirt on the rags it was hard to see anything. I took a step and my foot felt cold.

  Just then I saw Col. John Howard of the Maryland regulars riding through the field. As he got closer the Highlanders fired at him. They still stood in a line and hadn’t surrendered. Their bayonets stuck out in front of them and their tartan caps were bright in the early sun.

  “Will you surrender?” Colonel Howard hollered to the Highlanders.

  “We’ll nae surrender to rebels,” the Highlander officer hollered back.

  “Then give them one more fire,” Col. Andrew Pickens yelled to the South Carolina volunteers. Several fired into the Highlander ranks and a half-dozen men fell.

  Colonel Washington and his South Carolina cavalry were all over the field. They rode down any redcoat that still carried his musket or sword. They carried sabers long as muskets, and some held lances and some wore pistols on their belts. They had gold patches on their shoulders, and they rode easy, like they lived on their horses. Some had sheepskin capes thrown over their shoulders. No foot soldiers could stand up to dragoons. I didn’t see Col. Banastre Tarleton and his dragoons anymore. There was so much smoke you couldn’t see far anyway.

  A British officer took hold of Colonel Howard’s stirrup and ran alongside as the colonel tried to ride away. “We’ll give you quarter,” Colonel Howard said.

  But the redcoat wouldn’t let go of the stirrup. I reckon the officer wasn’t at himself in all the panic and suddenness of what had happened. The colonel looked around and saw me a few yards away. “Young man,” he hollered at me, “take this man prisoner and see he’s not harmed.”

  My rifle was not loaded and I had no way to guard the officer. But I couldn’t disobey Colonel Howard. I took a step in his direction, and suddenly pain like a scalding hot needle drove into the bones of my foot. Pain washed through me in a hundred bolts of lightning. I knew I was falling in the broom sedge but couldn’t stop myself.

  I DON’T EVEN REMEMBER hitting the ground, but I do recall the smell of cow manure in the broom sedge. I reckon the Cowpens were just covered with cow piles and we’d been too busy that morning to notice them. Last thing I remember was the smell of broom sedge and frost down under the stink of smoke and blood. It was like I was sinking and there was nothing to hold me up, and the cow piles were turning gold.

  But while I was drifting under the field I could hear what was going on above. Surely I was told about it later. But I seem to remember like I’d seen it myself, the horses galloping over where I lay, chasing each other in the field. And Colonel Washington riding way down the Green River Road chasing some dragoons. He rode so hard he got ahead of his other men.

  They said later that Colonel Tarleton saw Colonel Washington coming after him all by himself, and Tarleton and two lieutenants turned and faced the American. “There’s the blackguard by himself and I will kill him,” Tarleton spat out.

  They cut Washington off at the far end of the field from where the British were fleeing and surrendering. Colonel Washington saw what trouble he was in and raised his saber as Tarleton lunged forward. But Washington’s blade broke across Tarleton’s sword and he had nothing to defend himself with but the stump. It looked as if Colonel Washington was going to be hacked to pieces, and he started backing away. Tarleton and the two other men came after him. But just then Washington’s black bugle boy rode up and fired his pistol at the attackers. Tarleton drew his two pistols
and shot Washington’s horse.

  The rest of Washington’s bunch arrived then and Tarleton and the other English turned their horses and galloped away. “You blackguard traitors,” Tarleton called over his shoulder.

  They say Washington’s horse stumbled backward. A horse makes an awful whinny when it’s in pain. It backed away a few steps and fell.

  The Green River Road stretched south like a red string across the woods and through the pine thicket. I was told how Tarleton rode down it hard as he could make his horse go with whip and spurs. Colonel Washington had taken another man’s horse and rode after Tarleton like he was in a race to the finish.

  All along the road there were dozens of baggage wagons and little groups of slaves watching over the supplies. A cluster of slaves stood around a fire on the side of the road warming their hands. It was a cold morning and they were trying to keep warm after traveling most of the night behind Tarleton’s army. They were cooking potatoes in the coals. Tarleton and his men galloped past them on the long road going south.

  IT WAS LIKE I was deep under the Cowpens and heard the Tories all around asking for quarter. Sgt. Harold Gudger of my North Carolina company kicked one in the face where he lay on the ground with his hands up. Sergeant Gudger kicked him in the side of the head and in the face, and then kicked him again. “Let’s hear the British halloo,” Gudger said.

  With his mouth full of blood the Highlander spat on Gudger’s boot and the sergeant kicked him again. And then a shot rang out behind the sergeant and he fell down. I think it was my friend T. R. Heatherly that had fired at Gudger. T. R. had finally gotten his chance.

  Nearly everybody in a British uniform on the field who wasn’t dead or wounded had given up. The little group of Highlanders over to the right were still reloading and firing at the militia. But the field was in such confusion I guess it wasn’t easy to pick a target. The bagpipes kept playing and the men in tartan caps fired again.

  “Kill the Scottish polecats,” somebody said.

  Colonel Pickens ordered a group of men to march with him toward the Highlanders. When they got close enough he yelled to the major to surrender.

  “We’ll nae be slaughtered like cattle,” the major of the Highlanders shouted.

  “We’ll give you good quarter,” Pickens said.

  The pipes kept playing their tune. It was strange, like everything else that day. The sound of the music made it hard to hear what was being said. A patriot stabbed the bag of the pipe with a hunting knife and the music ended in a sour wheeze. The Highlanders dropped their muskets and raised their hands.

  The cannon on the left had not been surrendered. The artillerymen were trying to reload again. In their blue-and-red coats they worked furiously ramming in a charge. They worked as the soldiers around them fled or gave up. The man with the burning match stood ready to light the vent, but I don’t think they knew where to aim the three-pounder. Prisoners were so mixed up with Continentals and volunteers they couldn’t fire in any direction without hitting redcoats.

  “Halt!” one of Washington’s cavalry called to the crew of the cannon. They wheeled the grasshopper around at him and the fuse man touched the powder vent. But I reckon the barrel was set too high, for after the cannon jumped back and smoke punched out of the mouth, the shot whined across the field, but the horseman kept riding toward them.

  The artillerymen started reloading again just like they were behind their own lines. From where I lay I heard the cavalryman yell “Halt!” again. The fuse man reached his burning linstock toward the vent of the cannon and the cavalryman shot him.

  Other volunteers had seen what was happening and they shot the artillerymen one by one as they tried to fire the cannon. The last artilleryman pulled out his sword and thrust at a volunteer, and the patriot shot him in the face. From where I lay under the field I could see it all.

  It felt like I was rising under the battlefield toward the surface of the ground. I was floating to the surface. As I rose higher the voices got louder. I rose past layers of rock and veins of water, past roots and bands of clay and old bones, past groundhog dens and nests in rocks where hundreds of rattlesnakes were sleeping through the winter all tangled together.

  When I broke through the top to daylight, it was like a gun was fired in my face. The air was so bright I could hardly open my eyes. And when I did look around, my eyes hurt as if they were scalded. The sun flared in the clouds like a torch a few inches away. I looked way up in the air where crows were circling and there was just a break in the clouds. I looked so deep into the sky it was as if I was falling away from it forever. The air was damp and cold and there was nothing beyond the crows but blinding clouds. There was nothing out there to hold on to. I was scared and I looked over at the light above Thicketty Mountain, and the light drove me back against the ground.

  A man bent over me and said, “Let me look at your wound, laddie. I’m a doctor.” He wore a tartan cap and epaulets on his jacket. He was a Highlander officer.

  Men lay all over the field, and prisoners were gathered in bunches huddled in the broom sedge. Flags lay in the weeds and peavines. Here and there men had started fires and warmed their hands over the flames. The air was damp and cold, now that the smoke had blown away, and the sun was so coppery it was obvious not much time had passed since the battle had started. It was still early morning, but it felt like hours and maybe days had passed.

  “Hold still, lad,” the officer said. I must have jerked without knowing it. He cut away the lacings and rags of canvas and they were all wet with blood. “Steady does it,” he said.

  He pulled out a blue bottle and spoon and poured the spoon full. “Drink this,” he said.

  I could tell from the scent it was laudanum. I took the stuff on my tongue and it tasted like mold from deep in a cellar, mixed with old ink and juice of metal. Soon as I drank it, something warm went down through my belly, and then it turned cool, and a cool flame reached out through my arms and legs, soothing the terrible pain in my foot.

  The officer picked the bloody bits of rag and thread out of my foot, but I didn’t seem to care. It didn’t matter that he was taking all the wrappings off and making the wound bleed more. I’d been hit on the ankle, and he picked out threads and pieces of leather and bone. The cold air made the wound bleed worse.

  “Look away,” the officer said.

  I looked over to the left and saw Gen. Daniel Morgan ride up and get off his horse. He walked between the groups of prisoners, shaking hands and slapping boys on the back. “Benny Tarleton is running for tall timber,” he said. The general’s face was red in the morning air. He had a big scar on his cheek that twisted his face a little sideways.

  Old Morgan patted a Maryland private on the back and shook hands with a lieutenant. “We kicked his arse all the way to the Broad River,” the general said.

  There was the little drummer boy that had been with the Maryland regulars. He still carried his drum and I don’t reckon he was more than nine or ten years old. He stood by the fire warming his hands, and when Old Morgan saw him the general rushed over and picked him up and kissed him on both cheeks. “We done it, honey,” he said, “and you helped us too.”

  He set the boy down and turned around. “What you did here this day will never be forgotten,” he said. “I take my hat off to you all. The people will honor you and the girls will love you.”

  The general walked across the field roaring his thanks to the wounded and to men standing by fires. He stopped at a fire and held out his hands to the flames. Old Morgan was taller than the other men. The shoulders of his blue coat looked wide as an ox yoke. He turned and looked at me on the ground and stepped over and knelt beside me.

  “Give me your hand, son,” he said. The general’s eyes blazed in the light. I reached out and he took my dirty hand in his huge paw. He had the hand of a woodchopper, with hard calluses on the palm. I saw the awful scar on his cheek, like half his mouth had been torn away and then healed up.

  “I will n
ever forget what you have done,” he said. When he stood up I saw pain on the general’s face. He winced and turned white like he’d been wounded. “This old rheumatism has gotten me,” he said and limped away.

  A cheer went up across the field. Everybody except the prisoners was cheering him. He walked down the field stepping around bodies. Wagons were coming up the Green River Road from the south. It was Tarleton’s baggage wagons that hadn’t been burned. Slaves walked along behind driving cattle. There was a wagon with a chimney on it, the blacksmith’s forge I’d heard about. A cheer went up when a wagon with two big grog barrels on it creaked by.

  Where the cannons had been taken on the field, men stood around admiring them. The brass shone like gold. Something jerked my leg and I looked down and saw the officer picking at the wound with a knife and a kind of pin. “Hold still, laddie,” he said, “and be so kind as not to look.” He picked out pieces of bone red as painted splinters. I jerked again.

  “You must hold steady,” the officer said. He looked at my wound like a man studying fine print. His army had been defeated and yet the Scotsman was doctoring me. He picked out more bits of skin and cloth and slivers of bone.

  “Your foot may have to come off,” the officer said.

  “No,” I yelled and tried to jerk away. But my arms didn’t move the way they were supposed to. They were too little and weak. My hands felt far away.

  “You’ll not help yourself that way,” the officer said. He wiped his hands on a rag and stood up. I decided I’d not let him touch my leg again. I would slip away into the woods. I would find a spring in a thicket. My mouth was so dry my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth and my teeth felt stuck in glue.

  “Do you want a drink?” a soldier said. He bent down holding a canteen. When he pressed it to my lips I could taste the damp cedar wood. The water was sweet as white honey as he poured it through my lips. Living water, I thought, remembering the Bible.

  “You’ll live,” the soldier said.

  I drank more from the cedar canteen. My body was all dried out and I was parched to my fingertips. The man holding the canteen had a blackened face, and I noticed the strangest thing. I was looking at him and the clouds beyond him. And it felt like the world started tilting up. The ground beyond my feet rose toward the sun so steep I was about to slide backward. I could hardly hold on to the ground.