King's Mountain Read Online Free Page A

”
    I stared at her, but she did not back down. “Let you leave the fort without protection?”
    She nodded, and the others murmured assent. “We need the milk for the youngest children,” she said quietly. “We haven’t enough food as it is. Let the four of us slip out through the gates. With buckets. Let us milk the cows, at least, even if we must leave them there in the field. If we see any sign of trouble, we can drop the pails and run back to the fort. We are the fastest runners in the settlement.”
    I doubted that, and I directed my gaze to their trailing skirts to make my point, but they all nodded in agreement that this preposterous statement was so.
    â€œNot faster than the flight of an arrow,” I muttered, but they paid no heed. The bawling of the distant cattle drowned out my objections, and I could not deny the truth of their argument: food was indeed scarce, and we did not know how long it would have to last. But the danger was a consideration as well. Already, we had lost two of our number to a quest for supplies.
    It was only a week or so before the cows began their pained exhortations, when we’d sent out two of our own. It had been quiet for an entire day, so James Cooper and a brave young boy called Samuel Moore had ventured out of the fort and down to the river in search of wood for roofing a hut being constructed within the fort.
    The Cherokee must have been watching them from the moment they slipped out of the gate, but they let them get all the way to the river’s edge before they made themselves known. The ambush, when it came, happened close enough to the fort that we could hear the two men’s screams, but too far away for us to provide any covering fire for them. It was too late by then, anyhow. When their cries for help reached us, I rushed to the gate to assemble some of the militia and attempt a rescue, but Captain Robertson blocked the way, and ordered us to stay within.
    â€œBut they’ll be killed!”
    He nodded. “That may be. But you know full well that the Indians sometimes play tricks upon an unwary enemy. The attackers themselves will scream and call for help as if they were the captives, and foolhardy defenders will rush to the aid of these imaginary victims, only to be slaughtered themselves. We will not chance it. Your life is worth more than the risk.”
    I was all but certain that Cooper and the boy were in mortal danger, but I could not disobey the orders of a superior officer, though sometimes I wish I had, for many is the night since then that the screams of those men have troubled my sleep.
    We watched as James Cooper tried to swim across the river to the comparative safety of the wood beyond, but before he reached the opposite shore, the Cherokee warriors brought him down with arrows and shot. Then they hauled his bleeding body out upon the riverbank, within sight of the fort, finished the job of killing him with their knives, and then took his scalp for a trophy.
    As for the boy who had gone with him—poor little Sam Moore—we heard that he had been burned at the stake. There was little to choose between the two fates—being killed outright or being taken prisoner.
    At the time, the four women knew of Cooper’s fate, and they could guess at the probable end of young Sam Moore. How could they suggest that I let them leave the fort?
    The cries of the cattle echoed around me. Oh, yes.
    â€œThe Indians are gone,” one of them said. “Else they’d have killed the cattle already.”
    â€œUnless they left them alive to torment you,” I replied.
    Catherine Sherrill gave me a steely look. “We cannot let the beasts suffer, sir. Give us the pails and let us take our chances. In this war, sir, are we not all soldiers?”
    I could not dispute that. If the fort were overrun, all our lives would be forfeit. Perhaps, though, the young women could slip more quietly in and out than armed