Chapter 32: Arabella

It took me almost another week to make my report and find that Dan Morgan, Captain Foster and most of my fellow scouts were being pursued by Tarleton's legion in a hit and run series of fights and skirmishes. The British were hitting and we were running, deeper into the hills. By then, just after Christmas this was, Morgan had crossed the Broad River heading west, and, we found out a week later, Greene had moved the rest of his raggedy army, perhaps a thousand men, out of Charlotte and set up winter quarters near the falls of the Pee Dee at Cheraw Hill.

I was surprised and pleased to see that a lot of new men had joined Dan Morgan's little army, including some rough looking militia led by Jim McCall and the famous Andrew Pickens, who called himself a general and wore as colorful a uniform as I ever saw in the whole war. Some of the Georgia boys had rifles that looked a bit like my Pennsylvania gun, and we spent some time matching shots and admiring each other's weapons. They also had some awful fine drinking liquor and several very willing women to help keep them company on cold nights. We shared those too. I was glad they were on our side since they were a tough bunch indeed.

There were some black men among the militia that had joined Morgan. Some of them, I was told, were free men but several were slaves who had come along with their owners or the owner's son. One of these black men came on horseback along with his sister, who rode behind him on the same, big horse and who cooked for him. I saw them arrive. Ben was a very impressive looking man who sat a horse at least as well as I did and somehow had learned to play the trumpet. He became William Washington's official bugler. His sister was the first orange-haired Negro I had ever seen. She had freckles on her face and arms, light-colored eyes, and very curly reddish hair, not dark like Ginny's but kind of carrot-colored. Her name was Arabella, but her brother called her "Bell," and she was as slight and dainty a woman as her older brother was big and burly. When I got rations, I almost always took whatever it was to her fire, and she added it to her iron pot and did more and better with that poor food than I could have dreamed of doing.

Early in 1781, I guess January 3 or 4 it was, Captain Foster starting sending us out again in ones and twos to keep track of Tarleton, count his forces, and discover which way he was heading. He told us not to stir up any trouble but gave permission to shoot all the officers and screening horsemen we could draw down on. That sounded like a license to hunt, so I cleaned my rifle extra well and molded up some more balls being careful for a change to pick out the best of each batch and remelt the others.

George Reedy, the scout from New Jersey, and me found Tarleton's fast-moving force only about ten miles away the next Monday. First thing that surprised me was that, unlike Dan Morgan, the British and Tories did not seem to have any wagons or horse artillery that we could see. They were obviously not planning on spending forever away from their base or they hoped to live off the country.

We watched their outriders, mostly militiamen from the look of them, raid several farms along their path, driving off cattle and sheep, carrying off hams and bags of flour and leaving behind flaming cabins, raped women, crying children and slaughtered civilians. They did not hit all the small farms so they must have had some way to tell their friends from their foes. Since there were only two of us and the smallest band we could spot that morning had eight or nine riders, we decided to leave them alone and moved south of their line of march to see if the hunting there was any better.

In mid-afternoon we found a bunch we figured we could handle. Four scruffy horsemen were standing near a well behind a poor-looking farmstead deviling two women, one of whom had a baby in her arms. I guess they had just arrived when we came over the ridge and spotted them. Within a minute or two a wisp of smoke came from the cabin window and another armed man appeared, pushing a bent, white-haired figure before him.

George and I dismounted and got our rifles ready, using a fallen tree for a rest. It would be a long shot, at least a hundred yards, but we had both hit man-sized targets at that range, and we figured we could reload before they could get in musket range. Five was a bit tougher than four, but we believed we could do it for some reason. Pride I suppose.

The man we assumed was the leader of the group, because of the way he dressed and acted, pushed the older man toward some outbuildings, and when he reached them, we saw a puff of smoke and the old man fell forward, bright blood covering the back of his white head. Then we heard the report, echoing from the hills. One of the women screamed, and we heard that too. A Tory militiaman grabbed the screaming woman's baby and tossed it aside. The child rolled over twice in the dirt and then started crying, wailing. The sound echoed from the hills. The same man tore at the woman's dress and pushed her back against the well. The other two wrestled the second woman to the ground while a third knelt and opened his britches.

"I'll take the officer or whatever he is, on left there," I said. "The one in the brown coat, by the well. Pick out a target."

"I'll get the feller squatting by that woman, one with the hard on. Ready?" I nodded, and we both fired and started reloading. George's shot must have hit the man in the back because he pitched forward on his face by the woman's feet and kicked his legs a few times, his hands trapped under his body. I must have aimed a bit high since I blew out the back of the officer's head, and he toppled over, likely dead before he hit the ground, leaving a blood stain on the white-washed outhouse ten feet away. When we looked again, the two women were crouched near the well with the baby, and there were three very still bodies in the farm yard.

"I see one in the bushes near the necessary," I said, almost finished loading. "There's a fellow with musket coming up the hill on your right, in a big hurry, bayonet fixed." George hit him plum center, and he tossed his gun in the air before he fell back down the hill. I waited until the cowering man stood to see what the shot was and then got him in the belly somewhere. He fell to his knees, yelling and clawing.

As we reloaded, I yelled down to the women, "Where's the other man?" One of them, holding her dress together, stood and pointed toward the burning cabin and then ducked back behind the well. "I'll go flush him out," I said to George and started down the hill, running zig-zag and yelling.

He poked his musket out from the corner of the house and took a shot at me. George's ball stuck the log about two inches from his face, and I charged straight at him, wishing I had a bayonet but glad my rifle was loaded. I rounded the corner, and he was gone, his musket lying where he dropped it.

"Up the hill," I heard a woman call. I scanned around until I saw movement, dropped to one knee and shot the fleeing man in the back at about fifty or sixty yards. He threw one arm up and fell. It was an easy shot, but I enjoyed it.

We helped the women bury the old man and dragged the five militiamen's bodies deep into the woods for the critters to take care of. They had nothing on them worth keeping. The women, a mother and daughter they were, took the horses and weapons, said they would be all right, and rode off toward the west.

Then we shadowed Tarleton's legion until they settled by a stream and built up some cooking fires, we tried to note which tents were raised for the officers to meet and sleep in. You usually could tell because they did not put up their own shelters. When the moon rose, we crept down to within a hundred-and-fifty yards or so and found a clump of heavy brush that might hide some of the pan and muzzle flash. Tarleton had sentries out, but we each had a musket as well as a rifle so we felt relatively safe and hoped we could get off two or three-well-aimed shots before we had to skedaddle.

Reedy and I picked out shooting sites and escape routes, left our mounts on the back side of a hogback ridge, and when we were ready, cut loose at the largest of the officers' tents and then ran to hide behind trees and reload our rifles. When I looked again toward the camp, a lot of people were running around, but I could not see anyone coming toward me so I tried to find a good target. A man stood silhouetted in front of a dying camp fire, hands on hips, and I aimed at his nose and probably hit him in the belly button since he folded up before he fell. As I ran farther up the hill, I heard someone crashing along behind me.

"George?" I loudly whispered with my ramrod pumping in my rifle. A Redcoat broke out of the brush about ten yards away, bayonet leveled and running hard, looking right at me. I dropped my rifle wondering if I could have shot my ramrod at him, slipped my musket off my back, wishing I had fixed my old bayonet to it, brought the gun to my shoulder and pulled the trigger in the yelling man's face. The flint struck the frizzen, but the musket did not fire. I guess I had jostled the pan empty running up the hill. It is really surprising how many useless things you can think about in an instant.

I parried his bayonet thrust aside so that the spike just grazed my forehead and the muzzle struck my shoulder. I threw my right hand forward and hit the soldier in the ribs with the stock of my musket as he tripped over my outstretched leg. "Damn," he yelled as he scrambled to his feet, entangled in some dead vines. It was dark where he fell but from the sound of it, I clubbed him in the face with the butt of my weapon when I jammed it down at him. You could hear teeth crunch. He rolled over and came to his knees in a moonlit spot with his hands to his bleeding mouth. I dropped my musket, picked up his and bayoneted him three times as rapidly as I could, not caring where I stuck him. The only sound he made was "ungh," so I was able to hear the next sentry as he ran toward me. I dropped to one knee, braced the Brown Bess against a tree root and the running man impaled himself and tore the musket from my hands as he disappeared head-first over the ridgeline, screaming.

I felt around in the leaves until I found another musket, not caring whose it had been, and heard a nearby shot but did not see the flash. Then I retrieved my rifle and finished loading it. The campfires had been doused, and I could not find a target worth shooting at so I lit out for the horses, wiping blood out of my left eye. George was already there, draining a canteen by the time I arrived.

"Get shot?" he asked, pouring the last of his water on my head.

"Jes' scraped," I said, "Thanks." I let my fingers explore the wound and found a gouge about the size of my forefinger well above my left ear. It was very sticky and still bleeding so I wasted some time looking for moss before we mounted up and headed north to report what we had discovered. I tore a sleeve off my only spare shirt and wrapped it around my head as a bandage. Moonlight is not much help when it comes to looking for moss.

I kept falling asleep as we rode but never fell out of the saddle. By sunrise we were being challenged by Morgan's pickets and were both very happy to smell breakfast cooking. I stumbled off my horse by Arabella's and Benjamin's fire and gratefully accepted the cup of coffee she offered me.

"You are, without a doubt, the worst lookin' live man I ever seen," she said with a bright-toothed smile. "Fact, I seen some laid-out dead folks look a lot better'n you do."

"You look good this mornin' too," I said, trying to return the smile.

She peeled off the bandage carefully and looked at my head wound, picking things out with her fingers. "It's healing up toward the ends, but in the middle there, I kin see some white bone. 'Spect that's your skull."

"Hope so," I said. "Ain't likely no knee."

"Ought'a sew that up," she said, "tsk-tsking" as she wiped the blood off my face with what had been a good shirt. "Ben, go ast them fancy ladies, if they's up and about, if any a'them's got a needle and thread you can borrow."

Arabella took the kerchief from around her throat, dunked it in her water bucket and finished cleaning the wound by the time her brother returned with a large, curved needle. I enjoyed smelling her body as she worked.

"Fair-haired woman yonder says this here's good for sewin' up folks. Said she was a midwife sometimes. But nobody had no thread they wanted to part with."

"Find that banjo playin' feller you mess around with. See if'n he's got an extra string. Think that'll do?" she asked me as her brother went off again, and she held the shining needle before my eyes. I nodded, wanting to sleep more than anything else. I could feel more blood oozing through my matted hair, and the wound was starting to hurt some.

"Pull off your belt and turn around here so the sunlight's on your face," Arabella said, holding the needle in the fire until its tip glowed red. Ben returned, smiling, with a long piece of cat gut. His sister threaded her needle, told me to put the end of my belt in my mouth and clamp down on it, and then she went to work. I do not know how many times she pulled that cord tight, but she took a lot of stitches in my scalp, and I damn near bit through my belt before she was done. When she tied off the end, I gave her Magda's sharp little knife to trim the line, and she sat back, obviously pleased with herself.