Kings Pinnacle (39 page)

“Martha, stop paddling now,”
said Alex.

Martha immediately lifted
her paddle and rested it across the two gunwales and leaned on the
paddle to catch her breath. Alex slowed his breathing, cocked his
flintlock, and squeezed the trigger. The musket ball went a little
high of the warrior’s chest where Alex was aiming and caught the
warrior in the middle of his forehead. The impact knocked the
warrior back into the brave paddling behind him. The warrior in the
rear of the canoe instinctively dropped his paddle to catch the
brave falling backwards into his lap. The increased weight in the
back of the canoe caused it to violently skew to the right, veering
into the path of one of the other Cherokee canoes as it rapidly
lost speed. The collision of the two canoes in the middle of the
fast flowing river overturned both of them, dumping all four
warriors into the river and leaving only two canoes following and
closing on Alex and Martha. The surviving three braves from the
overturned canoes swam toward the river bank.

The Longhunter and Jonas
were so far ahead and the raging river was so noisy that they
didn’t even hear Alex’s shot.

* * * *

Captain Ferguson

“
Captain Ferguson, I am
pleased to promote you to the rank of Major in the Seventy-First
Foot of Fraser's Highlanders. I have been very happy with your work
and your leadership here in New York. I am also going to transfer
you immediately to accompany me to the southern theater of the war
and give you command of the New York and New Jersey Loyalists,”
said General Clinton.

“Thank you very much, sir,”
replied the newly minted Major Ferguson.

“We will depart by ship
immediately for Savannah. We land at Tybee Island, and then we will
join Lord Cornwallis in Savannah. Our first objective is to capture
Charleston. After we take Charleston, I will return to New York,
and you will stay in the south to lead the loyalists against the
rebels.”

“Very well, sir. I will make
ready to depart.”

The voyage from New York to
Tybee Island, near Savannah, would take a little over a month.
General Clinton was moving almost fourteen thousand troops from New
York and the northeast to South Carolina. He had been told that
loyalist support was extremely high in the southern colonies and
that the colonists in the south were sick of opposition to their
rightful government. For that reason, he thought that an expedition
in the south colonies held promise. And Major Ferguson might just
hold the key to turning the war around for him and stopping the
rebels.

* * * *

Alex

The Cherokees normally used
a short bow in battle that could easily be fired in close quarters
such as riding on a horse or sitting in a canoe. The warriors
following in the remaining two canoes fired arrows at Alex and
Martha from time to time, but luckily none met their mark. Alex’s
bow was a six foot longbow and could only be fired from a standing
position. It was going to be of no use in the canoe. The longbow
had about the same accuracy as a short bow at close range, but the
longbow was a much more effective weapon at long range, and it had
much more penetrating power. On the other hand, the short bow could
be maneuvered in tight spots and fired from any number of
positions. That left only his pistol and his knife as possible
weapons against the pursuers, since his rifle had just been fired,
and he could not possibly reload it sitting in a moving
canoe.

As soon as the lead Cherokee
canoe came within range, Alex began to develop a plan for how to
deal with it. When the Cherokees came within a few yards, Alex
pulled his pistol out of his belt, cocked the flintlock and fired a
pistol ball into the chest of the brave sitting in the front
paddling position of the canoe. The warrior that was paddling in
the rear position saw his comrade slump forward and drop his paddle
after the shot was fired. He knew that he couldn’t keep up with
Alex and Martha, so he turned his canoe toward the bank to see if
he could help his comrade.

Jonas and the Longhunter
were now even further ahead of Alex and Martha, so they did not
hear the pistol shot either. They kept stretching out their lead.
Alex was now out of firearms, and there was still the fourth canoe
of Cherokee warriors gaining on him and Martha. He had no idea what
to do, so he decided to keep paddling and see what opportunities
might develop down the river.

The last canoe, with the two
Cherokees paddling as hard as they could, came closer and closer.
As soon as it got within a few yards of Alex and Martha, the brave
in the forward position stopped paddling and steadied himself on
his knees. He raised his short bow and notched an arrow to shoot at
Alex and Martha. At this range, there was no way he could miss.
Alex had been keeping an eye on the approaching canoe, but he had
been able to do very little except try to steer his canoe away from
the Cherokee braves. They were too far away for him to attempt a
knife throw, which probably would be inaccurate anyway in the
moving canoe. Alex said a little prayer, which was the only thing
he could think of doing.

Just as the brave drew back
his bow string to fire the deadly arrow, two shots rang out from
the river bank. Both Cherokee warriors fell dead in their canoe as
it continued to travel down the river, following the current in a
haphazard fashion. Alex looked toward the bank where the shots had
come from. To his surprise, he spied Robert and Hugh standing on
the bank with their muskets pointed at the canoe with the two dead
warriors in it. Alex smiled to himself and steered his canoe toward
the bank where Robert and Hugh were standing. The Longhunter and
Jonas had finally glanced behind them and noticed what happened;
they steered for the bank also. Alex pulled his canoe up on the
bank and helped Martha get out of it. As soon as Robert and Hugh
caught up to Alex and Martha, Alex reached out and hugged them both
in a bear hug. Martha joined into the group hug also. Soon they
were patting each other on the back and laughing.

“Where did you two come
from?” asked Alex.

“Weel now, we were just out
for a Sunday stroll along the river bank and saw that ye and Martha
were out for a Sunday canoe ride,” said Hugh with a
grin.

“
Somehow that doesn’t
surprise me,” replied Alex.

“To tell ye the truth
laddie, Robber and I discovered a deposit of sulfur just to the
south of here, and we were headed back by way of the river bank so
that we could remember where the deposit was located. We saw the
Longhunter and Jonas and hailed them, but they couldn’t hear us
because the river makes too much noise when it’s running this fast.
Then we saw you and Martha come along and the predicament that ye
had gotten yourself into, so we decided to lend a hand.”

Robert had actually
discovered the sulfur deposit and the gold, but Hugh had harmlessly
taken the credit for it. Robert didn’t mind at all; he was just
happy that Hugh hadn’t mentioned the gold discovery until he had a
chance to think of what he wanted to do about it.

“It’s a good thing you did.
Martha and I wouldn’t be here now if you hadn’t.”

“Ye would do the same for
us, laddie,” said Hugh, and Robert nodded in agreement.

* * * *

The Raven

The Raven wasn’t dead, but
the blow to his head from Alex’s rifle had knocked him unconscious
and sent him floating face down in the Watauga River. When the
river water rushed into his lungs, he came back to the world of the
living and sputtered out the water. As he swam to the bank and
climbed up to join his band of warriors, he thought about what he
should do for revenge.

He was angry that, with the
help of her husband and his friends, the woman had escaped burning
at the stake. He was also angry that the settlers had come into his
lands. The British had formed an alliance with the Cherokees and
armed them with a large cache of weapons which they had used to
wreak havoc among the settlers on the frontier. But now most of the
British weapons were no longer in use, because the braves hadn’t
been taught how to maintain and clean them. They also ran out of
ammunition and had no way to resupply it. It was back to using bows
and arrows and knives as it had always been.

Some of the Cherokees wanted
to sell their land to the settlers, but the Raven was vehemently
opposed it. When the majority of the Cherokees had agreed to sell
their land to the Transylvania Company, he had broken with the
group and joined the Chickamauga band, who only wanted to fight the
settlers and drive them out of the frontier and off the Cherokee
lands.

“Let’s burn all the rest of
the cabins and farms around the fort that we may have missed and
then continue the siege of the fort,” said the Raven to his
braves.

* * * *

* * * *

Alex

“
Fort Watauga is under
attack by the Cherokees, and I suspect that all the frontier forts
may be in the same predicament. We are going to Fort Patrick Henry
to see if we can round up some men to help us drive off the
Cherokees attacking Fort Watauga,” said Alex, bringing Robert and
Hugh up to date on the latest developments that had occurred since
they had left on their exploration for a sulfur deposit.

“Och, what do ye think
Robber and I ought to do?” asked Hugh.

“We’re only a few miles
south of Fort Patrick Henry. If we can find one of these Cherokee
canoes for you two, we can continue paddling down the river to the
fort. When we get there, we’ll see what the situation looks like.
You two can hobble your horses, and we will pick them up tomorrow
when we come back this way,” replied Alex.

The Longhunter and Jonas had
finally paddled back upstream to join the group on the river bank.
They discussed the plan with the Longhunter and Jonas and finally
located one of the abandoned Cherokee canoes stuck on a pile of
brush for Robert and Hugh. After everyone agreed to the plan, Alex,
Martha, Robert, Hugh, the Longhunter, and Jonas boarded their
respective canoes and continued paddling toward Fort Patrick Henry
as they traveled down the south fork of the Holston. The Longhunter
and Jonas were still in the lead canoe followed by Alex and Martha.
Robert and Hugh brought up the rear.

Fort Patrick Henry was
located on the north end of Long Island of the Holston River, a
river island located just about a mile to the southeast of where
the south fork of the Holston River flows into the main Holston
River on its westward journey through the frontier. Long Island was
considered a sacred and important island site to the Cherokees.
Cherokee councils and gatherings had long been conducted on the
grassy plains of the island, called Long Island Flats. The
Cherokees resented the presence of Fort Patrick Henry on their
sacred soil.

Fort Patrick Henry was
actually the starting point of The Wilderness Road. It was the
point Daniel Boone departed from as he traveled west through the
Cumberland Gap to open up Kentucky to settlers. The fort would
later be used as a staging point for the many settlers who followed
his trail. The men who occupied the fort and lived in the area
around Fort Patrick Henry were the same type of men who lived
around Fort Watauga. Alex knew that he could count on them for
help. When their canoes finally arrived at the south tip of Long
Island, the sun was high up in the sky. They had to choose whether
to take the right or the left branch of the river around the
island. Long Island is about three miles long and Fort Patrick
Henry was located at the north end of the island, where it was
built on a bluff overlooking the river. The fort enclosed about
three acres of land with a stockade wall that had bastions at the
corners. Long Island Flats led up to the fort’s main
gate.

“Alex, do you want to take
the right branch or the left branch?” yelled the Longhunter in the
lead canoe.

“Let’s stay to the left,”
replied Alex.

The left branch was the
smaller and shallower of the two branches, and it was not flowing
as rapidly as the swollen right branch. Alex directed the group to
beach their canoes about a mile south of the fort. They climbed the
river bank and stood on the edge of the Long Island Flats. From
their vantage point, looking over the tall prairie grass growing on
the flats, they could see that Fort Patrick Henry was also under
siege by the Cherokees. It looked like a band of almost two hundred
warriors were camped just outside the musket range of the
fort.