Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1961 Read online

  Rifles at Ramsour’s Mill

  Manly Wade Wellman

  By Manly Wade Wellman

  RAIDERS OF BEAVER LAKE

  MYSTERY OF LOST VALLEY

  THE SLEUTH PATROL

  HAUNTS OF DROWNING CREEK

  WILD DOGS OF DROWNING CREEK

  THE LAST MAMMOTH

  REBEL MAIL RUNNER

  FLAG ON THE LEVEE

  YOUNG SQUIRE MORGAN

  LIGHTS OVER SKELETON RIDGE

  THE GHOST BATTALION

  RIDE, BEBELS!

  APPOMATTOX ROAD

  THIRD STRING CENTER

  IVES WASHBURN, INC., NEW YORK

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or parts thereof, in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

  Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 61-12754

  MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  To

  JAMES W. ATKINS

  who introduced me to the people

  of the South Fork,

  both past and present

  Contents

  Foreword

  1 War News and Fisticuffs

  2 There Is No Peace

  3 Tory Rendezvous

  4 Prisoner of War

  5 Godfrey Prothero’s Offer

  6 We Flight

  7 Home Again

  8 Captain Martin’s Company

  9 Spy’s Work

  10 The Bad News

  11 Flag of the Free

  12 General Rutherford

  13 The Making of a Map

  14 Scouting in the Water

  15 Battle Orders

  16 Closing In

  17 The Fight at the Mill

  18 Freedom on the South Fork

  Foreword

  This is fiction, but it is founded on historical fact.

  So far as I can find out, things were very much this way along the South Fork of the Catawba in North Carolina, about June of 1870, when neighbors enlisted to fight for American freedom or for British royalty, and found themselves face to face in battle. All the people in the story really lived, except for the Harpers and the Protheros and Robinson Alspaye; along the South Fork today you can find Gilmers, Berrys, Dicksons, Martins, McKissicks, and others, whose ancestors did the very deeds I try to tell about here.

  The America of the Revolution was a desperate young nation, and young Americans often found themselves forced to do desperate things. But their heirs and descendants today can love freedom as greatly and, if necessary, can fight for it as bravely.

  Manly Wade Wellman

  Chapel Hill, North Carolina

  1 War News and Fisticuffs

  May was bright and warm and richly green, and the noon sun rode the cloudless blue sky above the South Fork of the Catawba River. Mr. Blythe’s Latin school was over for the year, and out of the one-room log shed trooped a dozen big boys in buckskin and rough cloth, all whooping and jabbering at once.

  “No more Latin, no more Greek!”

  “We know that, Cy, but it’s good to hear it said.”

  Only farm work to do, all summer long—wondrous thought!

  Eighteen-year-old Zack Harper, lengthy and dark-haired and sinewy in his fringed leggings and homespun hunting shirt, was first into the open. Outside, he grinned all across his brown face in appreciation of the weather. All around the little school shed were trees shaggy with spring leaves, and straight before him flowed the South Fork, with more green trees on the far side. Zack’s mother and father said that there were no Mays like this in Virginia or Pennsylvania or England or Scotland. Zack had never been anywhere but here in North Carolina on the banks of the South Fork, but he felt sure that his father and mother were right. It was good to live here, to learn from the books under Mr. Blythe’s grave direction, and now to be free for the summer. To be sure, there was that war with England, but the war was far away. Let George Washington and Lord Cornwallis fight it. Zack flung out his long arms and stretched with joyful vigor.

  “Hark!” he yelled to his mates. “Our parents won’t make us work today. What if we fetch back food from our homes, eat together here, and then—”

  Shouts and cheers greeted the proposal.

  “Egad, I’ve waited for this since school began last October,” vowed brown-haired Will Caldwell, a short, spry youth who hoped to be a lawyer. “I vote with Zack for a feast, then fishing or swimming or what else may best please us.”

  “I vote the same,” seconded Bob Henry, who at fifteen was the youngest of these advanced Latin scholars. “I’ve had more than enough of how all Gaul was divided into three parts when Caesar was alive.”

  Last of the scholars to emerge was Andy Berry. He wore backwoods leggings and shirt like the others, but he was slender and solemn. Zack knew that Andy wrote verses and watched the stars at night. He knew also that Andy did not parade his imaginative studiousness, was as good a hunter and woods-runner as any of his South Fork friends.

  “What say you, Andy?” called Zack. “Surely your people will grant you the rest of today for sport.”

  “Aye,” said Andy slowly. “Yet, Mr. Blythe tells me grave news.”

  From behind Andy appeared Mr. Blythe, an opened letter in his hand. The schoolmaster was smaller than most of these advanced students. His hair was queued and tied with a dark ribbon, and he wore a neat, tailed coat and knee breeches of dark cloth, a white shirt, and steel-buckled shoes. For all their groans about lessons, the scholars liked Mr. Blythe. They knew the depth of his learning, his knowledge of the world outside these South Fork backwoods. Hadn’t his prize student, Captain Alex McLean’s son William, gone on from the little school to study medicine, so that, at the war’s outbreak four years back in 1776, he had been commissioned surgeon’s mate in the Continental Army? Zack and the others remembered those days of 1776, when they had mourned because they were too young to march away to strife and adventure with the young men of the South Fork. . . .

  “A letter came to me this morning,” the schoolmaster said gravely, “but I opened it only now, as you were leaving. I spoke to Andy Berry of what that letter contained—grim news, I fear. You should all hear it and meet it.”

  “News, sir?” echoed Zack. “About the war?”

  “Aye.” Blythe nodded. “We’ve had four years of war by now, young friends, but only afar off. Now, I apprehend, it comes this way.”

  They gathered to listen, staring and wondering.

  “You knew the British besieged Charleston, down on the South Carolina coast,” went on Blythe. “Now a courier brings word that Charleston fell on May twelve, and five thousand of our soldiers are taken.”

  “Then John McLean—” began Hugh Ewing. They knew John, brother of William McLean the surgeon’s mate, and that he had been in the Charleston garrison.

  “Taken, too,” added Blythe. “All who were in Charleston.”

  And Captain Billy Chronicle’s company?” demanded Will Caldwell. His brother Sam had volunteered for that company, led by a neighbor.

  “Captain Chronicle’s company was marching to Charleston when it heard of the capture, and turned back. Indeed, one of the company rode here with the news. But Cornwallis, with his redcoats, will march up into North Carolina.” Blythe folded the letter and put it away. “So says this warning. We must play the man, young friends, for we are apt to see war close at hand.”

  They were silent a moment. Rob Henry broke the silence.

  “I hear hoofs. See, there come two riders.”

  A pair of horsemen trotted into view from the trail that emerged out of the riverside trees. Zack knew one horse at once, a trim golden-yellow hunter. It bel
onged to John Prothero, a wealthy neighbor of the Harpers, who lived in a brick house with pillars instead of a log cabin or house of whipsawed planks. The rider was John Prothero’s son Godfrey, twenty years old and elegant, who had graduated from Mr. Blythe’s school two years earlier. The other horse, a sturdy bay, carried a broad-shouldered man in a linen coat and a cocked hat. The two swung out of their saddles close to the group of youths.

  “What long faces!” cried Godfrey Prothero. He wore clothes like a fine gentleman of the eastern settlements, a snug blue riding coat, a frilled shirt, a hat most elegantly cocked, breeches of white, polished buckskin and shiny top boots. His tawny hair looked curled and puffed, and it was dubbed behind far more nattily than Mr. Blythe’s hair. He lad a fine strong jaw and shining blue eyes, and knew very tvell how handsome and smart he looked.

  “Zack Harper,” he said grandly. “Young Will Caldwell. Yh, Bob Henry. Mr. Blythe, your obedient humble. I came to let these likely young men know Mr. Robinson Alspaye here, my valued friend from down South Carolina way.”

  “Aye, aye,” said Mr. Robinson Alspaye, his cocked hat in his hand. His brow was bald, and his gingery hair cut square behind, like a backwoodsman’s. He looked about thirty, both hard and heavy of muscle, tie grinned, r ed-faced and ingratiating.

  “Splendid lads all,” he said to Godfrey Prothero. “Every one the pattern of a good soldier and a true loyal hero.”

  “Good soldier?” repeated young Bob.

  “Aye,” said Alspaye. “What, you have not heard the news? The British come here in thousands, to set free your South Fork lands.”

  “Set them free?” cried Cy Cole. “They are free already, by resolve of the citizens and by action of the Continental Congress.”

  Alspaye bared his teeth in a grin. “Say you so, boy? What continent does that Continental Congress of rebels hold? Its raw troops flee before King George’s men, and I am here to urge you to stand strong and true for King George, bless him—”

  “Treason!” snapped out Andy Berry, his thin, pale face flushing.

  Alspaye glanced at Godfrey Prothero. “Egad, you’ve led me into a bunch of rebels. I thought you said these were friends.”

  “And they are,” vowed Godfrey. “I marvel to hear them talk as they do. But yonder’s Zack Harper, whose father served with Braddock in ’55, and a loyal King’s man he was. If Cy Cole and Andy Berry play the fool’s part, these others are wise.”

  “I know not how you count wisdom,” put in Will Caldwell, but my brother Sam is with Chronicle’s company this moment—”

  “The more fool, he,” broke in Godfrey Prothero, “and the more fool you, Sam, for thinking as he does.”

  “All those rebels are fleeing before Cornwallis,” elaborated Alspaye. He looked from one face to another. “I am here to give you a chance at joining the winning side.”

  “Cornwallis is not on the winning side yet,” said Will sharply.

  Alspaye lifted a big red hand. “Give me leave to speak? The King’s side is rising here, under Colonel John Moore. We are hundreds of true men taking arms hereabouts. If you think—”

  “Sir,” said Mr. Blythe evenly, “I must ask you to leave my property, and at once.”

  “Aye,” chimed in Will Caldwell. “We waste no time with gallows-bird Tories.”

  Alspaye looked at him in mock diffidence. “You’re the lad whose brother even now flees like a hare with that Captain Chronicle. Belike he’s outrun his pay in worthless Continental paper money. See, here’s the pay drawn by true King’s men.”

  He fished in a pocket of his coat and held out his broad palm with two glittering golden coins on it. “And there’s more for any youngster who has the sense to join—”

  Angrily Will Caldwell struck the coins from Alspaye’s hand.

  “So my brother would do,” he snapped.

  “Would he so?” inquired Alspaye. “Here, young loudmouth, is a message to fetch your bold brother.”

  His left hand became a fist. He made an incredibly swift stride, almost a leap, and Zack heard the thud of his fist on Will’s face. It was followed by Alspaye’s big right fist, and Will staggered back, almost falling.

  There was a sudden concerted yell from the others, and Godfrey Prothero snatched a long silver-mounted pistol from under his neat coat.

  “No mobbing of Mr. Alspaye!” he warned quickly. “He fears no single one of you, but if you all rush, this bullet will strike at least one of you down.”

  Zack had sprung to Will’s side, supporting him. Will’s lip was bleeding, and his face was pale.

  “That was a coward’s blow,” said Zack to Alspaye. “He’s half your size.”

  “Are you big enough to stand the mate to it?” flung back Alspaye.

  “No, Zack,” came Mr. Blythe’s warning, but Zack had already rounded on Alspaye.

  “I’m big enough to stand whatever buffet you strike,” he replied.

  “Wait, all of you,” said Godfrey. “I hold this pistol to make sure of fair play. Zack fights Alspaye, and Zack alone.”

  “No pistol needed to see fair play here,” Zack told him shortly.

  “Loudly crowed, lad,” snickered Alspaye, and prepared to fight.

  Zack appraised him quickly. Alspaye was shorter than he, and might weigh fifteen or twenty pounds more. Yet a thickness of waist hinted at a shortness of breath. Zack had never looked for fights, but he had never fled from one, and in most of his tussles, friendly or otherwise, had been the winner.

  “Come, then,” he said, and moved forward, half-crouched for a grapple.

  The next instant he reeled back before a solid, brain-rattling punch between the eyes. Alspaye had struck skillfully and strongly, and would have landed his other fist had not Zack caught his forearms and pushed him violently away.

  “How does it taste, boy?” Alspaye grinned, and came in again.

  “I forbid,” Mr. Blythe tried to say, but none paid attention. All watched Alspaye, moving knowledgeably with left fist lifted, right drawn back like a stone ready to throw. This was better boxing than the backwoods knew, Zack told himself, as he dodged the darting left, and then the right struck his ear and staggered him again.

  He flung himself in, threw his arms around Alspaye’s thick body, and tried to lock heels for a throw. Another punch knocked him loose. He floundered down to one knee, even as Alspaye pressed in close, and half by instinct caught Alspaye around the legs. A quick heave and Zack was up, throwing his enemy. Then he flung himself on the prone, struggling body.

  A wild yell of joy went up from the others. Zack writhed aside to avoid a thumb that darted for his eye. He clamped both hands on Alspaye’s red neck and pounded Alspaye’s head on the ground.

  “Surrender!” he commanded. “Say you’ve had enough.”

  Alspaye bucked and strove, but Zack pinned him with a knee on his chest. “Surrender,” he said again.

  “He has a knife, Zack!” squealed Cy Cole.

  It was true. Alspaye had snatched a straight, bright blade :rom his boot top. Zack leaped up and away, and as Alspaye scrambled to his feet Zack seized his knife wrist in both his lands.

  An Indian wrestling trick, taught him in boyhood by a Catawba playmate, flashed into Zack’s mind. He quickly turned his back to Alspaye, dragged the imprisoned arm across his shoulder, and bent forward swiftly and powerfully. The heavy body whirled through the air above him, and as Zack let go, slammed head first to the ground. Alspaye lay there, quivering and senseless, and Zack’s moccasin kicked the knife away. Stooping, he caught it up.

  “Drop that!”

  Godfrey Prothero’s face was crimson with fury, his hand leveled the pistol. Zack glared back, too angry to be afraid.

  “He drew on me when I used only my bare hands,” he growled. “Now you draw on me. Shoot if you dare, Godfrey.”

  “If he fires, we’ll tear him to pieces!” yelled little Bob Henry.

  Prothero lowered the pistol muzzle. The red in his face faded. He stared in confusion at t
he tense knot of South Fork boys.

  “Let’s have no more fighting,” said Mr. Blythe sternly.

  “Amen to that,” said Zack. “Put up your weapon, Godfrey, and I’ll put up mine.”

  Godfrey slid the pistol under his coat, and Zack flung the knife into a thicket. Alspaye stirred, muttered, and slowly rose. He rubbed his head.

  “Zounds!” he grumbled, and blinked at Zack. “You’ll be remembered for assailing a King’s man.”

  “And you’ll be remembered for a sneaking blow to a smaller enemy,” replied Zack. “Get on your horse and get out of here.”

  Alspaye walked heavily to his horse, put on his hat askew, and climbed into the saddle. “I’ll remember you,” he told Zack again. “Come, Mr. Prothero.”

  Godfrey too had mounted. The pair of them rode back to the trail and out of sight.

  2 There Is No Peace

  It was a two-mile walk to Zack’s home. He made the journey swiftly, with long, ground-eating strides. The earlier thought of a holiday along the river was gone, driven away by the talk of approaching war and that grapple with Robinson Alspaye.

  Rounding a bend of the tree-bordered trail, Zack saw his father’s house in the clearing beyond the foliage. It consisted of two square log structures, sturdy as blockhouses, joined by a roof that left an open porchlike space between. The windows had small glass panes; the doors were of sturdy whipsawed planks deated together. On the bench by the main door sat Zack’s father, a jumble of harness in his lap, but he was not working on it. Before him stood the plump, cock-hatted figure of John Prothero.

  As Zack came into full view, Alan Harper rose and beckoned his son with a full-armed wave. He was as tall and lean as Zack, with long gray hair and a square jaw. He wore buckskin leggings and a wool waistcoat. Zack trotted across the clearing toward the two men.