Kings Pinnacle (36 page)

“Weel, what do we have
here?” said Hugh.

Alex and Robert walked over
to join him and found Hugh looking down at a young Cherokee
warrior. The young man had an obviously broken leg and was lying on
his back behind some rocks in the cave with his teeth gritted in
pain. He looked to be in his early twenties.

“Let’s get him out of this
cave and up to the cabin, so we can fix that leg of his,” said
Alex.

They picked up the young
man, trying to keep from jostling his broken leg too much, and
carried him out of the cave. They cut two long poles and made a
travois that they attached to one of the horses, so they could
transport him back to the cabin. As soon as they reached the cabin,
Martha evaluated the situation and took control. She asked the
brothers to carry the young warrior into the cabin and get him
comfortable on the bed. Hugh and Alex held him down while Robert
moved to the foot of the bed and pulled the broken leg so that
Martha could set it. As soon as Martha had the bone properly
aligned and set, she placed splints over the break and bound it all
up with leather strips to hold the splints in place. The young
brave passed out during the ordeal, but he never uttered a word or
cried out while he was conscious.

“We’ve done all we can do
for him right now. He needs rest and some food when he wakes up,”
said Martha.

“
Robber and I need to get
going,” said Hugh as he and Robert walked toward the
door.

“
Good luck finding a
sulfur deposit,” said Alex.

Alex and Martha stood in
their cabin doorway and waved goodbye to Hugh and Robert as they
rode to the south away from the cabin.

“What are we going to do
with him when he wakes up?” asked Alex.

“
We’ll feed him and keep
him quiet until he is able to walk and be on his way,” replied
Martha.

* * * *

Captain Ferguson

“
Welcome back, Captain
Ferguson. I understand that your raid on Chestnut Neck was
successful,” said General Clinton.

“Yes, sir, very successful,”
replied Captain Ferguson.

“Please give me a summary of
what transpired.”

“I would be pleased to, sir.
As you know, we departed New York on nine British ships and
transports commanded by Captain Henry Collins. On this raid, I
commanded about five hundred troops, consisting of British regulars
and Colonial loyalists. The weather was foul upon entering the
Little Egg Harbor River, and that delayed us for a day making our
way up the river to Chestnut Neck. But we made our way there as
quickly as possible. Once there, we attacked the privateer base and
fought the rebel defenders, whom we finally defeated. We also
retrieved some of the supplies that we found there,” reported
Captain Ferguson.

“Did you recover any of the
British ships that had been seized by the privateers?” asked
General Clinton.

“No, sir, we did not; but we
destroyed all the supplies that we could not carry with us. We also
destroyed a salt works and mill located at the mouth of the Bass
River. And we burned the houses and storage facilities around the
salt works.”

“What transpired
next?”

“About a week later, I was
notified by a defector that there was a detachment of rebel troops
encamped nearby. So I loaded up two hundred and fifty men in long
boats, and we rowed ten miles to the barrier isle where the rebels
were camped. I then marched my troops about two miles from where we
landed the boats to the outpost. We attacked them at first light
while they were still asleep. There were no sentries posted, so we
took them totally by surprise and killed or wounded about forty of
them,” continued Captain Ferguson.

“How many prisoners did you
take?” asked General Clinton.

“Only five, sir; we took
almost no quarter on the rebels. I lost only two men killed in the
action. I had only three wounded and one missing after the battle,”
said the captain.

“
I understand that the
rebels are calling it the Little Egg Harbor massacre,” said General
Clinton.

“That may be true. We were
shocked by their lack of preparation and the fact that they posted
no sentries. We were eventually confronted by Comte Pulaski with a
superior mounted force, so we retreated to our long boats and
returned to New York,” concluded Captain Ferguson.

“I had hoped to recover some
of our ships that the rebel privateers seized, but any victory is a
good victory. Well done, Captain Ferguson. You are dismissed,” said
General Clinton.

“Thank you, sir,” said the
pleased Captain Ferguson who bowed to the general and departed his
headquarters.

* * * *

Alex

“
Captain Mackenzie, what
is your report?” commanded Colonel Tipton.

“I have twenty men trained
into top fighting condition. Each man is armed with muskets, fifty
balls of ammunition, and two pounds of powder,” replied
Alex.

“
Very good, Captain,”
replied the colonel.

The unit of the Continental
Army’s southern division that Alex commanded was standing in
formation at Fort Watauga. It had the beginnings of being a better
organized unit at Alex’s insistence and hard work. The Longhunter
and Jonas were members of Alex’s unit, as well as Hugh and Robert,
who were out on another exploration mission toward the western
frontier for the Pattons and not present today. Robert and Hugh’s
first exploration mission to the south was a total failure. They
had explored south of Fort Watauga for several weeks and found
nothing. Several months had passed, and their new mission was to
explore west to see if they could find any sulfur deposits out in
that direction.

There were no other militia
units training at Fort Watauga that day. Alex had made a point of
training the men under his command at least once per month unless
they were engaged in the harvest. As part of their training, they
often conducted raids against the Tories living in that area of the
frontier who were still loyal to the crown. These raids would rile
up the British and create confusion and controversy. They also
fought occasional skirmishes with the Cherokees who had sided with
the British. Today, Alex had set up targets inside the fort and was
working with his men on marksmanship with their muskets and
pistols. Alex worked with each man individually, teaching them how
to breathe and how to squeeze the trigger. The results were
astonishing and the men were amazed at the improvement in their
accuracy and rate of fire.

The practice was suddenly
interrupted by one of the fort’s sentries.

“Attack! Attack! Close the
gates!” yelled the sentry.

A few of the troops in
Alex’s unit laid their muskets aside and ran to help the sentries
close the fort’s gates. Alex and Colonel Tipton climbed the ladder
up to the elevated walkway around the fort where they could look
over the parapets at the surrounding fields. The sudden appearance
of a Cherokee war party had taken the fort by surprise. As Alex and
Colonel Tipton looked out at the sea of warriors, they realized
that they were in trouble, being badly out-numbered. Since they had
no warning, the surprise attack had not allowed them to get the
settlers who lived around the fort inside to safety. As the men
gazed out on the horizon, they saw smoke rising from the burning
cabins, outbuildings, and farms in the distance.

Alex looked off to the
southwest toward his cabin and saw smoke rising in that direction
also. He didn’t know if it was his cabin for sure, but it looked
like it might be. That was soon confirmed when a group of warriors
appeared from the tree line, holding Martha captive. One of the
warriors was the young brave whose broken leg Martha and Alex had
splinted, the one they had nursed back to health. Well, so much for
gratitude, thought Alex. That young warrior, whose leg was now
completely healed, was called the Raven, and he led the band of
Cherokees that had captured Martha and attacked the fort. There
were about one hundred warriors in his band. The Raven wore a
single eagle feather in his hair. He had blackened a one inch ring
around his face, circling both of his eyes, to give himself a
fierce and sinister appearance.

Martha looked bruised and
battered but otherwise she seemed to still have her defiant spirit.
Alex’s heart jumped to his throat as he looked at Martha being held
captive. He knew he couldn’t do anything about it at the moment,
but he also knew he would have to come up with something to save
her.

“Alex, lad, we’ll get her
back,” said the Longhunter, who had climbed up the ladder and was
standing next to Alex patting him on the shoulder.

“
I hope they keep her
alive till after sundown so that I can slip out of the fort and try
to save her,” said Alex.

“There’re a lot of warriors.
We’ll have to be careful about how we go about it,” replied the
Longhunter.

“I don’t want you to put
yourself in danger,” said Alex, shaking his head.

“Just you try and stop me
and Jonas. You don’t think we would let you go alone do you, lad?
Jonas is a better fighter than I am. They’ll never know what hit
em,” replied the Longhunter with an easy smile.

During the afternoon, the
warriors dug a hole in the ground and set a post in it. The post
was located more than three hundred yards from the fort, just out
of rifle shot range for Alex, even taking into account Slayer’s
added range. Martha was tied to the post hand and foot by the
Raven, with her hands behind her back while she was standing on a
stump set against the post. Then the warriors piled limbs and logs
around the base of the post. They leaned some of the wood up
against the stump Martha was standing on. It looked like they
intended to burn her at the stake. As he looked at Martha, tied to
the stake, Alex gritted his teeth and raked his left hand through
his hair as dusk gathered over the fort.

* * * *

Big Mike

“
General Washington has
decided that he doesn’t want to risk another major confrontation
with the British Army, so the idea to feed false information to the
British from the false Prophet won’t be of any more use to us.
There is no need for you to continue to impersonate Major Ruskin.
Your expertise with the cannons has been recognized by General
Washington, and he wants you to continue commanding the cannons,”
said Captain Ellison McCoy to Big Mike Finn.

“Mike, I want you to come
along with us on this raid,” continued the captain.

“What do you want me to do,
sir?”

“We intend to capture the
British fortification at Stony Point, New York and confiscate their
cannons. They have about fifteen field pieces that we want. When we
have them in hand, I want you and your cannoneers to take charge.
Turn them around to fire on Verplanck’s Point, across the Hudson
River, where the British have another fortification,” replied
Captain McCoy.

“Do you think it will be
very difficult to take Stony Point?”

“General Washington has been
sitting on top of Buckberg Mountain, about two miles northwest of
the fort, for the last several days, watching it with a telescope.
He hasn’t been just watching King’s Ferry go back and forth between
Stony Point and Verplanck’s Point. He has been looking for a
weakness in their fortifications. And now he has found one and
devised a plan to exploit it.”

“If you don’t mind my
asking, what is the weakness?”

“The general has observed
that the southern ramparts, which are made of wood, do not extend
far enough out into the Hudson River. At low tide, the beach is
exposed between the ramparts and the water. A group of men can
literally walk around the ramparts on the beach, scale the point,
and stroll right into their camp,” answered Captain
McCoy.

“When are we going to
attack?”

“The plan is to attack them
at midnight tomorrow night at low tide. The men will carry unloaded
muskets and will attack with bayonets only, so that we don’t alert
the sentries. Diversionary attacks will come from the north and
directly across the causeway from the west because that is what
they will expect. But the men who attack from the south around the
ramparts will be the main attack body of troops. We will have to
scale the steep, rocky sides of Stony Point, and it won’t be an
easy job,” said Ellison.

The weather took a turn for
the worse the evening just before the attack was to take place. The
wind had picked up out of the south, and its increased strength
caused the British ships that were anchored in the bay south of
Stony Point to pull up their anchor. They were sailed downriver to
find a better-sheltered anchoring. Big Mike was marching with the
troops attacking from the south.

“Wasn’t there supposed to be
some dry beach between the ramparts and the Hudson River?” asked
Big Mike.

“Well, I guess the wind has
whipped up the river, and we are just going to have to wade around
the ramparts,” answered Captain McCoy.

The men waded in two to four
feet of water to get around the ramparts on the south side of Stony
Point. Each man had a white band on his sleeve or a white patch
pinned to his hat to help identify friend from foe in the darkness.
In addition, the watchword, or password, was “The fort's our own,”
which also helped the men identify each other. The moon was covered
by clouds and visibility was very low. When the men heard the
sounds of the diversionary attacks from the north and west across
the causeway, they began their attack. They used the noise of the
other attacks to cover their final push past the ramparts and up
the sides of Stony Point. The British were taken unawares, so when
the British realized they were under attack, it was almost too
late. The battle was over in less than thirty minutes.