Beyond the Quiet Hills (33 page)

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Almost at the same time that Chief Logan had tried to entice the Cherokee to join his rebellion, Virginia's military commander, Lord Dunmore, began to pull his forces together. Sending out an order for the militia to gather, he formed a plan to divide his army into two wings. The southern wing, under the command of Colonel Andrew Lewis, would be composed almost entirely of mountain men from the western counties. The other wing Dunmore himself would command, and many of the northern frontiersmen were gathered at Fort Pitt. Dunmore's initial plan was to build a fort at the Kanawha River at Point Pleasant on the Ohio. Then the two forces would combine to strike the Shawnee villages along the Scioto River near the Pickaway Plains.

It was only in the later days of August that the Watauga militia met the rest of the command at Shelby's Fort. From there, the entire force set off for the Ohio River, a march of some two hundred miles. They reached Point Pleasant on October 9 and set up a camp.

Unknown to Lord Dunmore, or any of the militia, Chief Cornstalk, the most powerful of the chiefs that formed the enemy army, had been watching both wings through his spies. It became obvious to Cornstalk that the large army was still faraway. He summoned the Shawnee warriors and the allies—the Mingo, Delaware, and Wyandot to arms, and they rushed to the call in large numbers. Cornstalk's aim was to destroy the smaller force under Colonel Lewis, which included the Watauga militia, then attack the larger force.

The attack began when Cornstalk's forces halted just above the mouth of the Kanawha River. After dark they crossed the Ohio River, and just as dawn was breaking, the large force of Indians waited the signal to attack the white men who camped below in a valley. The warriors were painted for war, hungry for scalps and for revenge. As the first gray light of dawn touched the hills to the north, they crouched hidden in the forest, gripping their muskets and testing the edges of their tomahawks, their eyes glowing in the early-morning light.

“It's been a hard trip, Andrew,” Hawk remarked. He was sitting in front of a small fire roasting a squirrel, and now he took it out and tested it with the tip of his knife. “Not quite done,” he remarked.

“Mine is,” Andrew said. He was also roasting a squirrel, and now he pulled it back and tried to pull it off of the green stick of wood. “Ow!” he yelled. “It's hot!” He juggled the brown bit of meat until it grew cooler, then began tearing at it hungrily. “Sure tastes good. I just wish squirrels were as big as coons.”

“Would be nice, wouldn't it?” Hawk was more patient, and finally his meat cooled. He began to pull it off, chewing thoughtfully as he studied Andrew. He was pleased with the young man's endurance, for it had been a hard march down to the Pickaway Plains. They lay now in the fork of two creeks, and dawn was only minutes away.

“Wish I had some of your ma's flapjacks and johnny cakes and fried ham,” he said.

“Ah, you're just soft, Pa,” Andrew grinned. He chewed the tough meat, then smiled and nodded. “I wouldn't mind havin' some of that myself.”

Hawk looked over the forces and tried to estimate how they would do in a pitched battle. Almost all of them were experienced frontiersmen, but at least a fourth of the men had never heard a shot fired in anger. They were new to the frontier, untested and untried, and as Hawk lifted his eyes, trying to peer through the darkness, he wondered how many Indians lay out there somewhere. A vague feeling of unease moved through him, and he thought,
Am I getting old or am I afraid of a fight?
He stood up, holding the remains of the squirrel in his hands, cocked his head slightly to one side, and listened intently.

“Do you hear something, Hawk?” The speaker was a young man named Tom Feller, one of Hawk's neighbors. He was just married, with a baby on the way, and his wife had cried and begged him to stay home. Feller, however, had merely laughed, telling her, “Don't worry, Edna. I'll be back.”

Now Feller was watching rather anxiously. He was a good shot, but he had never been in any sort of battle, having arrived in Watauga from North Carolina only a few months earlier. “What is it?” he asked nervously.

“Nothing. That's what bothers me.”

“How can nothing bother you?” Feller demanded.

Hawk did not know how to explain it. It was something that was built up in a man over long periods of time in the wilderness. Sometimes silence meant as much as a noise. For example, he knew that right now there was an absence of the usual animal cries that one would have expected to begin at dawn. Perhaps it was nothing—but he well knew that the birds and the animals quieted when there was human movement, and the unnatural silence troubled him.

At that moment Captain Lewis came walking rapidly out of the waning darkness. “You all right, Spencer?”

“Yes, we are, Captain,” Hawk replied.

Lewis was a short, muscular man with a deep chest and a full beard, rich brown but beginning to be speckled with gray. His deep-set eyes swept the territory as he peered into the darkness. “I don't feel good about this. We'd better pull ourselves into tighter ranks.”

“All right, Captain,” Hawk said. He liked Lewis and had confidence in the man who had survived more than one Indian war. Now he murmured, “Some of the men haven't ever heard a shot fired.”

“That's right. Have 'em scattered out among your more experienced men.”

“All right, Captain. I'll do that.”

But he had no time to carry out the order, for even as the two men stood there speaking, a broken cry rose up and was cut off abruptly. It was a cry of fear, of terror, and it ended with a slight gurgling noise.

Hawk knew that sound. It was a knife slitting the throat of an unwary militiaman. “Indians!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “Heads up! Make every shot count!”

His father's cry caught Andrew MacNeal off guard. He had just bitten off a huge bite, but at the scream that split through the morning's silence in an eerie, ghostlike fashion, and his father's urgent warning, he spat it out and made a wild grab for his musket. Shots suddenly rang out up ahead at the joining of the creek, and he heard his father calling out to form a line of battle.

“Find yourself some cover. They'll be coming in soon,” he yelled. Then he turned and said, “Andrew, get behind that log over there.”

“Yes, sir!” Andrew threw himself behind the log, checked his priming, and quickly put his powder horn and cartridge box beside him. He was surprised to find that he was calm. One part of his brain was screaming out that he might be dead, but he found himself able to override the fear as he watched the experienced mountain men find cover. He had no time to think for long, for a flicker of movement caught his attention and his father's musket suddenly exploded, almost in his ear. Andrew heard a muffled cry, and the movement suddenly ceased.

“You got that one,” Tom Feller grinned. “Now I'll get me one.”

Straining his eyes, Andrew saw little to shoot at. He had thought that a battle would be where two forces would come together, both in plain sight, but he soon discovered that the Indians were too wily for that. They flitted from tree to tree, almost invisible, so that all he ever got was a glance. Three times he shot, and three times he was bitterly disappointed, knowing that he had missed.

The battle had not gone on for more than five minutes when suddenly Jude Satterfield, who was standing behind a tree to Andrew's left, stepped out to get a better shot, but he never got it off. Andrew heard the sound of the bullet as it made a dull thud, and he saw Jude driven back. He fell to the ground, and Andrew sprang to him, crying, “Are you all right?” But looking down, he saw that the bullet had taken the man directly in the throat and blood was spouting like a fountain. Jude was trying to speak, but he could not. As he bent over the man and pulled him half up, he tried to stop the flow, even though he knew it was hopeless. He saw the frantic light of fear in Jude's eyes, and then the eyes dimmed, and with a cough Jude kicked twice, clawing at his throat, then stiffened and drew still.

“Andy, watch out!”

Andrew heard his father's cry and leaped for his musket, which he had just reloaded. This time he did see an Indian, a coppery figure painted with lurid colors who had burst out of the trees and was running straight for the line. He was joined by others, but Andrew could only see this one. His eyesight seemed to play him a trick so that the fierce visage of the Indian swelled and grew enormous before his eyes. He could even see the markings clearly on the face. Lowering his rifle, he put the bead right on the man's chest and pulled the trigger almost without thinking. The spark hit the frizzen and the rifle exploded, the shock of it striking hard against Andrew's shoulder. Involuntarily he closed his eyes, but at once he lowered his musket and saw that the Indian had stopped, as if he had run into a tree. He stood for one moment, looking down at the hole that began to leak red blood down the war paint, the blues and greens and ochres on his chest, and then he fell forward, his fingers clawing at the ground.

With trembling hands, Andrew grabbed his powder horn and poured a fresh charge down the barrel. He put some of the powder in the pan after shoving a ball down covered with a patch. His heart was beating and he tried to think, but his mind was racing with the instinct of survival. He knew he had just killed a man, a fellow human being, and somehow even in the midst of the screams and explosions of the muskets up and down the line, a deep sadness settled on him like an ominous shadow.

There was no time to grieve, however, for the battle raged furiously. At times the Indians would attack, and sometimes Lewis would direct the men to move forward.

Hawk's face was black with powder, but he paid no heed. He was worried about Andrew, and more than once warned him to stay behind in cover. “We're going to be moving up,” he said, throwing himself down behind a log and peering out into the morning light. It was later now and the sun was hot as it beat down upon them. Licking his lips, he shook his head. “We're gonna be thirsty if we get away from this water. Be sure your canteen's full.”

“All right, Pa.”

Hawk hesitated, then said, “You're doing a man's job. Does it bother you?”

“I reckon it does, Pa.”

Hawk suddenly reached over and squeezed Andrew's shoulder. “I'm glad it does. It bothers me, too. It bothers any man who thinks, but we don't have any choice.”

For three full hours the battle raged. From time to time parts of the line engaged in hand-to-hand combat. The screams of the wounded and the dying were ugly and scraped on Andrew's nerves. He moved forward when told to do so by the leaders, fell behind cover, and at times retreated when the Indians threw their strength into another attack. It was a matter of wonder to him that he could fight like this. Somehow he knew it had something to do with Abigail. It seemed far away now, but once when the fighting slacked off and he sat panting, his back to a tree, taking a sip of the precious water, he knew the battle madness had something to do with his loss of Abigail. He felt he had lost her to Jacob, and it was this loss that sent him forward into the fierce fighting. He was not anxious to die, but somehow there was a calmness and a coolness in his spirit, and his great regret was losing the girl whom he now realized he loved more than life itself.

The day moved on inexorably, and finally the settlers pushed the Indians back. As they did so, the lines became scattered and broken and fragmented. Before he realized it, Andrew found himself cut off from the rest. He could still hear the shouts from both sides, and as he tried to move back toward the main action, he crossed a narrow, sluggish creek half buried in mud. The gumbo tugged at his feet, and he lost a moccasin, then wasted precious time in pulling it out of the dripping mud.

As he moved toward the sound of fighting, the smell of ferns rose in wild fragrance as he trampled them under his feet. Frantically, he hurdled dead logs matted with berry vines, and once a covey of quails, flushed from cover, drummed away in low flight from him.

Andrew grew winded, and as he drew closer to the raging battle where the fighting was hardest, bullets whipped by, and a chunk of bark flaked from a tree struck him on the cheek. He pulled himself back and fired at an Indian half hidden in the brush not fifteen feet away. The Indian swayed as the bullet struck him. The warrior turned and looked with wild eyes as the round spot on his chest bubbled and grew larger and the blood made a bright streak down his chest. Andrew watched as a dullness clouded the eyes of the Indian, then he fell back and lay without movement.

Andrew tried to reload his musket, but even as he pounded the ball down the barrel, a musket ball stung his side. He was not hit hard, but he looked up to see a Mingo coming for him at a dead run. He had a musket in his hand, but apparently it was not loaded. He was not twenty feet away, and with a wild, savage cry, he dropped the musket, snatched a tomahawk from his belt, and threw himself forward toward Andrew.

The sight of that glittering tomahawk, caught by the afternoon sun, sent a chill of fear through Andrew. There was no chance of reloading. He knew he could not outrun the Mingo, so he did the only thing he could. Grasping his musket close to the end of the barrel, he waited, his feet firmly planted. His heart seemed to be slogging with a slow, regular beat, and he found himself distinctly shocked that he was not filled with panic.

The Indian was not large but sinewy, and as he threw himself forward, Andrew forced himself to ignore the glittering tomahawk. One of them would die; he recognized that.

Swinging the musket in a wild arch, he saw the tomahawk descending. The musket caught the Indian on the shoulder and destroyed his aim. He was driven to one side, and the tomahawk went sailing through the air, but before Andrew could move, the Mingo had pulled out a wicked-looking knife, and with a wild cry, he leaped at Andrew.