Kiss of a Traitor (20 page)

Marion found himself at an impasse and took to heart his men’s concerns. He had no hope of carrying on without his militia. Neither could he fight without arms and ammunition. The general disbanded the militia, allowing each man to examine his own conscience and make his choice. Then he led his remaining followers in a withdrawal to Snow Island.

With Marion inactive and Sumter wounded, Tarleton rested at Brierly’s Ferry near Winnsboro where he awaited new troops from England. Lord Cornwallis assumed he had subdued South Carolina and now wished to carry the fight into North Carolina. He sent word to Tarleton to join him as soon as the reinforcements arrived.

As Ford sat idle in Tarleton’s camp, orders arrived from Colonel Bellingham to release Major Aidan Sinclair for duty in Georgetown. Ford eagerly prepared to leave Tarleton’s command. His fight was here with Marion, not in North Carolina. The situation was worsening for the patriots; the general would need his expertise more in Georgetown than in the north. First, he sent word to Marion of Tarleton’s reinforcements, which were marching from Charles Town to Winnsboro. Then bundling up his gear with a light heart, he saddled his horse and took off for Snow Island.

Not one to remain far from the action, Marion could not resist the temptation to foil Tarleton and his cohorts once again before they vacated his realm. After summoning his militia, he set out for Nelson’s Ferry with seven hundred men at his back.

Marion overtook Major McLeroth and the recruits above Halfway Swamp on the road to Camden. A grassy field beside the road sloped downward with a rail fence at the bottom of the decline. Oaks and ash trees, their branches now bare of leaves, dotted the field. Behind the rise, the field ran into sparse woodland along the edge of a boggy cypress pond stretching off toward the swamp.

Marion first picked off the British pickets. After sending out riflemen to deal with the rear guard, he swung his horsemen around to attack McLeroth’s flank. The British scattered and drew up positions behind the split-rail fence. There the British riflemen held off the partisan horsemen. When the battle reached a stalemate, Marion withdrew his men beyond the British guns to the trees at the head of the pond. With the British pinned down and powerless to retreat farther than the fence, Marion waited and offered McLeroth the next move.

Musket fire drove Ford from the road. He turned his horse and splashed into the swamp. Spanish moss brushed his shoulders as he circled through the cypress trees. Muskrats dove into the creek and herons took wing at hooves churning through muddy water, and Ford kept a tight rein on his nervous mount.

When the musket fire ceased, Ford pulled up and eased forward cautiously. Coming upon the edge of a pond, he followed its shoreline. When his horse shied and reared at a man popping up from the reeds directly beneath its hooves, Ford looked down into the barrel of a musket aimed at his chest. The knot in his throat eased when he recognized the man.

“Dammit to hell, Collins,” he breathed as he brought his horse under control.

Private Collins shoved the moss-covered hat back on his head and grinned. “Cap’n Ford. We wasn’t expectin’ ya, but I’m sure the general would welcome ya ta his little party.”

Ford frowned. “Marion is here?”

“Shore is.” Collins pointed toward a field near the pond. “He’s over there, waitin’ ta see what the redcoats want ta do. We got us ‘bout two hundred new Lobsterbacks crouched down behind a fence. They’re so young they’re still wet behind the ears an’ pissin’ their breeches by now.”

“Tarleton’s recruits,” Ford said.

“Don’t know who they’re fer,” Collins replied as he squatted back on the ground. “Jes’ know they ain’t going nowhere right now. Best hurry up if ya don’t wanna miss the fun.”

Ford stripped off his green dragoon jacket and tied it behind his saddle so some overzealous picket would not be tempted to put a musket ball through it. Returning the private’s salute, he spurred his horse toward Marion’s position.

Once Ford made his way through the pickets, Marion greeted him with a welcoming smile. “Captain Ford, I see you have come to join us while we drill Tarleton’s new recruits in battlefield tactics.”

Ford dismounted, handed off his reins to a private, and saluted. “Indeed, General. I was on my way to see you when I heard the commotion and decided to pay a call. Word at Brierly’s Ferry is you’re hiding in the swamp and licking your wounds from the rout at Georgetown. Cornwallis seemed confident he had nothing more to fear from you.”

Marion snorted. “My men were becoming rusty sitting around on the island with nothing to do other than grumble over the quantity and quality of the food. Mark my words; it never pays to allow military men to succumb to boredom. Thanks to your timely intelligence, you provided us with a bit of a diversion. I imagined the men would enjoy denying Tarleton his new recruits.” He turned to watch a British officer coming up the field with a white flag. “I assume you received the orders I sent?”

Ford nodded. “I had a hunch they originated with you. I suppose you have work for me in Georgetown.”

“I do; you are assigned to the garrison. But for now, bury yourself amongst those men.” He tilted his head toward a group of partisans a few yards away. “We have company, and he might be an acquaintance of yours.”

As the redcoat approached Marion, Ford moved off to stand with the men and caught a fair amount of the ensuing confrontation between the British officer and the patriot general.

“Major McLeroth deems it unconscionable that an officer should shoot pickets from ambush,” the redcoat protested, his face as red as his coat. “The sort of fighting in which you engage is contrary to all the laws of civilized warfare.”

Ford chuckled. The British had never understood or modified their strategies to the partisans’ guerilla-style warfare. Settlers had learned the unorthodox fighting method the hard way, through battles with the Cherokee Indians years earlier. British stubbornness to come to terms with an unconventional war and change their tactics resulted in needless deaths among their foot soldiers.

“Burning houses, killing noncombatants, destroying stock and fields, and raping women are more unconscionable than shooting armed pickets.” Marion’s voice rang out as loud and indignant as the officer’s. “Your Major Wemyss and Lieutenant Colonel Tarleton have visited death and destruction on an unarmed populace. As long as you continue to burn and perpetrate these indignities on my friends and neighbors, I shall continue to shoot pickets.”

The argument went on for several more minutes. Then Marion’s voice soared again. “I consider the challenge that of a desperate man in desperate circumstances. But if Major McLeroth wishes to see mortal combat between teams of twenty men picked by each side, I shall gratify him.”

The British officer nodded, and they agreed upon an area in the field near a twisted oak tree. Marion returned, chose twenty sharpshooters from among his men, and pointed to the site where the battle would take place. None of the soldiers refused; their expressions showed eagerness for the fight.

“We shall fire our first shots at fifty yards,” the leader of Marion’s men said to his team.

When the partisans advanced toward their British counterparts, the redcoats suddenly shouldered their muskets and retreated in quick step. Marion’s men laughed at the hasty retreat and ambled back to their lines. McLeroth’s men decamped during the night, leaving their supplies behind, and fled, granting Marion a less-than-satisfying victory.

Ford attended Marion the following morning and received his instructions for Georgetown. He would leave ahead of the brigade for Snow Island to check on Dancer before reporting to his new post. Then he would make the courtesy call on his fiancée. Icy fingers tripped down his spine at the thought.

Visions of Sweetie and Killer plagued him at first, but his dour outlook slowly dissipated, and a grin tugged at his mouth. He owed Miss Wilhelmina a dose of mayhem, and he knew precisely what form his revenge would take.

Nothing.
Willa approached Sockee Swamp with her spirits sagging. Not one swamp on her list yielded a clue to Francis Marion’s whereabouts. After dodging British and Loyalist patrols for days, a sense of hopelessness seeped into her bones. Suppose she never found the camp? How could she return to Willowbend empty-handed? How could she not, considering the stress her actions were doubtless causing her father?
Is it worth it?
She posed that query a thousand times and the answer still eluded her.

Her cross-country journey did, however, yield an unforeseen result. It opened her eyes to the war in ways she never before considered. She witnessed firsthand the devastation brought about by the Crown on poor farmers and their families, and the brutality turned her guts to water. Burned-out homes and barns. Livestock lying slaughtered in yards, their bellies slit open by bayonets. Men who had never lifted a musket against the British left hanging by the neck from oak trees. Weeping women with lined faces and ravished bodies cuddling their hungry children.

The evening before, she came upon a small farmstead and watched from the safety of a pine stand while British soldiers beat and hanged the owner. Then they violated, not only the man’s widow, but also turned their brutality on his two young daughters, who looked no more than ten or eleven years of age. Not yet satisfied by the horrors they had inflicted, the redcoats tore the woman’s baby from her arms and smashed its head against a porch post. Then they tossed the small body through the open front door as though it were no more than rubbish and torched the house and barn. Willa heard them laughing as they rode away.

Are these the actions of my father’s troops?
Willa gave up the meager contents of her stomach to the needle-covered ground, then wiped her mouth with her coat sleeve. She could not help but wonder:
Was this war? Was this the way the King gained peace to win the hearts and minds of his subjects? And should he win the war, what would he have left?
She took a swallow of water from her canteen, swished it around in her mouth, and spat it out. As she mounted Cherokee, she sought to banish the images. They remained, shouting questions she had no wherewithal to answer … dared not answer, such as, what action would she take when she found Marion’s camp? The response no longer seemed as obvious as it once was.

Willa ducked beneath a sweep of low branches and headed into Sockee Swamp. Cherokee’s hooves splashed softly in the stagnant water and echoed the beating of her heart. Surrounded by gloomy cypress sentinels, she forced herself to focus on her mission and surroundings. She could not afford inattention in such treacherous territory so far from home.

Swamp sparrows called, red squirrels chattered, and a bobcat’s wail came from deep inside the dim interior. The sharp tang of wet cedar and the rich aroma of fertile soil tingled in her nostrils. Once more at home in the swamp, she sat back in the saddle.

She had negotiated a vast area of marsh mud when a cold rain began to fall. Then Cherokee threw up his head and whickered softly. Her spine stiffened, and she halted the horse, whispering, “Shhhh.” Catching a flicker of movement to one side, she pivoted her head and squinted to see through the trailing vines, conifer branches, and curtain of rain.

At a shadowy figure among the trees, she caught her breath, and her pulse raced. A man on horseback, merging uncannily into the gray-green foliage. Were it not for the twitch of his horse’s ears and Cherokee’s warning, she would have missed him entirely.

Cherokee’s muscles bunched as he waited for her signal. She leaned forward, and they shot away like a tenpounder fired from a field cannon.

Ford had a few days’ leeway before he was obligated to report to Georgetown and decided to put Dancer through his paces. The black horse had snubbed Ford’s overtures for the first twenty-four hours after his master’s arrival. Now as Dancer stretched his legs, he appeared to forgive Ford and relish the outing.

When icy rain wet the black’s shoulders and trickled beneath the collar of Ford’s gray greatcoat, he turned the horse into the swamp under the tree canopy to deflect the brunt of the moisture. Sockee Swamp was
his
swamp. He had come to know it as well as any man, and he inhaled its acidic aroma with pleasure.