10 In Morgan’s Camp
Then we proceeded to the encampment, and Colonel Washington himself went with us, his plans being changed by my news. My head was buzzing with excitement. We were going to fight Tarleton at last, though with all the odds against us, numbers, discipline, and arms, while Tarleton himself had won his reputation as the ablest and most successful cavalry commander in the British service. We might again experience the disgrace and disaster of Camden, but Morgan was no Gates, and perhaps, on the other hand, we might equal the exploit of the wild borderers at King’s Mountain, though it was a little too much to hope for that. But still we would fight, and to a young man it always seems better to fight than to run.
“Old comrade,” I said to my horse, “we meet the enemy to-morrow!”
He nodded joyously and then looked gravely at the bandage around my head.
“It is nothing,” I said. “I will take it off to-night. My head is well.”
He nodded again, as if all his troubles were over.
The wife of Captain Dunn, of the South Carolina militia, was in the camp, a lady whom I knew, my distant kinswoman, and Julia was given into her charge.
“Take good care of her, Cousin Anna,” I said. “Remember that she is my prisoner.”
“Your prisoner, is she?” she replied enigmatically. “But remember, Philip, that the captor often becomes the captive.”
“Cousin Anna,” I said indignantly, “I hope you are not going to preach our defeat by Tarleton on the very eve of battle. It will have a discouraging effect.”
“I said nothing about the battle. Go and attend to your work, Philip. I will take care of the girl.”
To Julia I said:
“We fight to-morrow, and I may not see you again.”
Then I bent down and kissed her lips.
She replied very simply and earnestly:
“May you live through it, Philip!”
Cousin Anna’s back was to us, and she did not see or hear.
I turned away and began to examine the camp and this field, destined to be the scene of a memorable battle which was itself the opening of one of the greatest, most skilful, and successful campaigns ever conducted on the soil of our continent.
We were on a long slope, consisting of several hills rising above each other like the seats of an amphitheatre, though at a much greater elevation, as the slope was so slight that it offered no impediment to the gallop of a horse. The men were gathering up fence-rails, which they were using for the camp-fires, and I noticed many old tracks of the feet of animals. To my question one of the men said:
“We are going to fight where the cows pastured. Don’t you know that this army is camped on the cow-pens of a very worthy man named Hannah? And these rails are the last that are left of his pens.”
Behind us flowed the wide, deep, and unfordable Broad River, retreat thus being cut off in case of defeat. I asked the meaning of this strange military maneuver, which meant either victory or destruction, and again the explanation was ready:
“More than half of our men are militia, and you can never tell whether militia will run like rabbits or fight like devils. All early signs fail, and General Morgan says it’s cheaper to have the river behind us and make ’em fight than to station regulars in the rear to shoot down the cowards.”
Presently I saw General Morgan himself passing among the men and preparing for the expected attack in the morning.. This was one of our real heroes, a fighter and leader and no politician, a man whom the great Washington esteemed and loved to reward. I had seen him at Saratoga and elsewhere, and his figure as well as his name always drew attention. Over six feet high and built in proportion, with a weight of two hundred pounds, and a large, fine, open face, he was a type of the true American, the best of all men in mind and body.
There was plenty of provender in the camp, and I gave Old Put the first solid meal that had come to him in several days. I wanted him to be in good trim for the morrow, for he and I were to take our proper place with Washington’s cavalry, to which we belonged, only a handful of men, but able and true and capable of doing great things in the nick of time. There had been some question about the bandage on my head, which I wore as a precaution against taking cold in the scalp-wound, but I showed that it was only a trifle, and Colonel Washington rightfully remarked that such a slight wound would only increase a man’s efficiency on the battle-field. Then he presented me with a fine sabre, which I needed badly, and told me to lie down on the ground and go to sleep; but I could not sleep just then, and with the freedom of our colonial armies I roamed about the encampment.
The camp-fires flared up in the cold January darkness. The men sat around them, talking and playing with old greasy cards or singing the songs of the hills and the woods. Some of the soldiers were asleep on their blankets or the bare ground, for we were always a ragged and unhoused army at the best, and only a few of the officers had tents.
A sharp breeze came across the river, and the flames bent to it, their light flickering over wild, brown faces that knew only the open air, wind, rain, hail, or whatever came. Most of them still carried curved and carved powder-horns and bullet-pouches, inseparable companions, over their shoulders, and long, slender-barrelled rifles, so unlike the British muskets, lay at their sides.
Smoke rose from the fires and blew in the faces of the men, deepening the brown and giving them another shade of the Indian. A curse mingled now and then with the singing and the talk of the card-players, and from the borders of the camp came the stamp of the horses and an occasional neigh. In the darkness, half-lighted by the reeling fires, the camp became a camp of wild men, whose faces the wavering light moulded into whatever grotesque images it chose.
We were but a little army, only nine hundred strong, but many of us had come great distances and from places wide apart. An arc of a thousand miles would scarce cover all our homes. There were the militia, South Carolinians and Georgians, raw troops, whom one can never trust; then the little remnant of the brigade that De Kalb had led on the fatal day of Camden, splendid soldiers whose line the whole British army could not break, the survivors now eager to avenge the disgrace their brethren suffered on that day; then the stanch Virginia troops, that we knew would never fail, and near them our two or three score of cavalrymen under Washington—a little army, I say again, but led by such leaders as Morgan, Washington, Howard, and Pickens! Down the slopes the sentinels were on watch, but there was no fear of a surprise, for the scouts were just bringing in word that Tarleton could not come before daylight, and then, owing to the slope and the open ground, his approach would be seen for a great distance.
The new men talked the most, some about the coming battle, eagerly, volubly, others about things the farthest from it, but in the same eager, voluble, unreal tone. The veterans were silent mostly, and already with the calm and hardihood of long usage were seeking the rest and sleep which they knew they would need. A tall, thin man, with a wild face, whom I took to be one of the preachers at the great revival meetings so common on the border, rose in the midst of the camp and began to speak. Some listened, and some went on with the talking and card-playing. I could hear the rustle of the pasteboard as the cards were shuffled. He was a fighting preacher, for he exhorted them to strike with all their strength in the coming battle, and if they must die, to die like Christian heroes. He prayed to God for the success of our arms, then stepped from the stump on which he stood and disappeared from my sight. He fought in the front line of the South Carolina militia the next day.
I sought my own place in our troop and lay down upon one half of my blanket, with the other half above me. Old Put gnawed at some fodder by my side.
“Wake me up in the morning when you see the first red gleam of the British coats, old comrade,” I said, and, knowing that he would do it, I closed my eyes.
But sleep would not come just yet, and I opened my eyes again to see that the fires were sinking and the darkness was coming down nearer to the earth. Half the men were asleep already; the others were quiet, seeking slumber, and the steady breathing of nearly a thousand men in a close space made a strange, whistling noise like that of the wind. A flaring blaze would throw a streak of light across a sleeping soldier, showing only a head or a leg or an arm, as if the man had been disjointed. I would hear the faint rattle of a sentry’s fire-lock and the heavy hoof of a horse as he crowded his comrades for room. An officer in dingy uniform would stalk across the field to see that everything was right, and over us all the wind moaned and the darkness gathered close up to the edge of the dying fires. Weakness overpowered my excited brain and nerves, and I slept.