“Out wi’ him!” commanded the major.  “We’ve no time to foolish away wi’ a Bedlamite.  Take him away and peg him out, and gi’ him a dash o’ water to cool his head.”

Pengarvin fought like a fury, and his venomous rage defeated all his attempts to say calmly the words which might have got him a hearing.  So he was haled away, spitting and struggling like a trapped wildcat; and when we were rid of him the major bade us good night again.

Tybee held his peace like a good fellow till we had rolled us in our blankets before one of the camp-fires.  But just as I was dropping asleep he broke out with, “I would you might tell me what piece of rebel villainy this is that I’ve been a winking accomplice to.”

I laughed. “’Tis a thing to make Major Ferguson rejoice, as you saw.  And surely, it can be no great villainy to give a man what he’s thirsting for.  Bide your time, Lieutenant, and you shall see the outcome.”

XXXIX

THE THUNDER OF THE CAPTAINS AND THE SHOUTING

The camp was astir early the next morning, and it soon became noised about that we were to fall back, but only so far as might be needful to find a strong position.  From this it was evident that a battle was imminent, though as yet there were no signs of the approach of the patriots.

From the camp talk we, Tybee and I, gleaned some better information of the situation.  A fortnight earlier Major Ferguson had captured two of the over-mountain men of Clark’s party and had sent them to the settlement on the Watauga with a challenge in due form—­or rather with the threat to come and lay the over-mountain region waste in default of an instant return of the pioneers to their allegiance to the king.

This challenge, so our scouts told us, had been immediately accepted.  Sevier and Shelby had embodied some two hundred men each from the Watauga and the Holston settlements, and Colonel William Campbell, the stout old Presbyterian Indian fighter, had joined them with as many more Virginians.

Crossing the mountain these three troops had fallen in with other scattered parties of the border patriots under Benjamin Cleaveland, Major Chronicle and Colonel Williams, of South Carolina, until now, as the scouts reported, the challenged outnumbered the challengers.  Learning this, Ferguson, who was as prudent as he was brave, thought it best to make his stand at some point nearer the main body of the army; and so the withdrawal from Gilbert Town had fallen into a retreat and a pursuit.

From what Captain de Peyster has since told me, there would seem to be little doubt that the major meant to fight when he had manoeuvered himself into a favorable position; this in spite of Lord Cornwallis’s commands to the contrary.  In his despatches he was continually urging the need for a bold push in his quarter, and asking for Tarleton and a sufficient number of the legion to enable him to cope with a mounted enemy.  But be this as it may, the garbled letter I had brought him turned whatever scale there was to turn.  He had now with him some eleven hundred regulars and Tories, the latter decently well drilled; he had every reason to expect the needed help from Cornwallis; and, on the night of my arrival, he had word that another Tory force under Major Gibbs would join him in a day or two, at farthest.