King's Mountain Read Online Free Page B

men would be able to do. I hoped that to be the case, but whether true or not, the fact was that we could spare the girls more than we could the men, for if there were too few men left to defend the fort, then all within would die.
    â€œVery well,” I said. “You four may go at your own risk, but if you hear anything—the slightest sound in the underbrush—you are to drop those pails, and run straight for the fort without a thought for your companions. If you stop for one another, you may all perish. So you will run straight back as if you were alone. If you hear anything. Even a bird call. It might be a signal. Do you promise me that?”
    Solemnly they nodded. They’d have promised me golden goose eggs to get my leave for their reckless errand.
    If they heard anything. Did they think me foolish or had they, too, forgotten that no one could hear a twig break when a field full of cows is bellowing in agony. And if they were indeed ambushed at the meadow, would they in their terror remember what they had been told? I knew what a risk they were taking, and I hoped that their bravery was illuminated with the knowledge of the danger they faced, for if they were merely softhearted simpletons, then, in letting them go, I would be consigning more helpless creatures to suffering.
    They were right, though. We needed the milk, and more than that, we could ill afford for the cows to die. The risk must be taken. The men were needed to man the guns, and the older women had children to tend. If anyone could be spared, it was indeed these unmarried girls. I felt heartless even as I thought it, but life on the frontier is a lesson in hard truths.
    It had been quiet for days. I decided that we could wait no longer, or the cows would die, Indians or no. With many misgivings, which I forebore to speak of, I escorted the four maidens and their pails out of the log building and saw them safely to the great wooden gate. “Godspeed,” I said, but, intent upon their mission, they hurried away with their oaken buckets without a backward glance. I watched them go, admiring their courage, for even though they were soldiers as much as any of us, they had willingly set out on a mission from which I doubted they would return.
    I wished that there were a clear view of the meadow, instead of the curtain of trees into which they vanished only a few yards from the fort.
    The young man who stood guard next to the gate touched my arm as I turned away. “Do you think the Indians have gone, sir?”
    I shrugged. “I wouldn’t have.”

PATRICK FERGUSON
    Pitfour, Scotland
    1758
    â€œ There are better tombstones in Strachur.”
    I was startled, that’s all. Anybody would be, hearing a voice like that, as if out of nowhere in a gloomy kirkyard. I was glad to be alone—glad that I had managed to stand my ground, and that my sister Betty had wandered off into the sanctuary of the kirk, for she would have laughed and pointed to see me tremble so as if I were a quaking bairn.
    But I wasn’t afraid, not of old graves on a gray afternoon. Of course I wasn’t. We Fergusons are an educated family, not a tribe of superstitious bumpkins. And isn’t my uncle a famous general over the water in Canada? If I am to follow in his path, I must not be skittish over a sudden rush of movement or noise—for what else are battles but that?
    It was just that I hadn’t seen anyone else about among the tombstones, that’s all.
    *   *   *
    High summer it was, and we had journeyed up from Edinburgh to our country house at Pitfour, in Buchan, just inland from Peterhead. The place had belonged to my Grandfather Ferguson, who had been Sheriff-Depute of Aberdeen, though I never knew him, for he died a decade before I came into the world. Upon his death, Pitfour was inherited by my father. One day it will go to Jamie, I suppose, along with any titles that happen to be going, for he is the eldest,