I would I might forget the terrible scene which followed this killing of the British commander.  ’Twas little to our credit, but I may not pass it over in silence.  De Peyster quickly sent a man to the front with a white flag, and the answer was a murderous volley which killed the flag-bearer and many others.  Again the flag was raised on a rifle-barrel, and once more the answer was a storm of the leaden death poured into the panic-stricken crowd huddled like sheep at the wagons.

“God!” said de Peyster; and with that he began to beat his men into line with the flat of his sword in a frenzy of desperation, being minded, as he afterward told me, to give them the poor chance to die a-fighting.

[Illustration]

I saw not what followed upon this last despairing effort, for now Tybee was down and I was kneeling beside him to search for the wound.  But when I looked again, the crackling crashes of the rifle-firing had ceased.  A stout, gray-headed man, whom I afterward knew as Isaac Shelby’s father, was riding up from the patriot line to receive Captain de Peyster’s sword, and the battle was ended.

XL

VAE VICTIS

If my hand were not sure enough to draw you some speaking picture of this our epoch-marking battle of King’s Mountain, it falters still more on coming to the task of setting forth the tragic horrors of the dreadful after-night.  Wherefore I pray you will hold me excused, my dears, if I hasten over the events tripping upon the heels of the victory, touching upon them only as they touch upon my tale.

But as for the stage-setting of the after-scene you may hold in your mind’s eye the stony hilltop strewn with the dead and dying; the huddle of cowed prisoners at the wagon barricade; the mountaineers, mad with the victor’s frenzy, swarming to surround us.  ’Twas a clipping from Chaos and Night gone blood-crazed till Sevier and Isaac Shelby brought somewhat of order out of it; and then came the reckoning.

Of the seven hundred-odd prisoners the greater number were Tories, many of them red-handed from scenes of rapine in which their present captors had suffered the loss of all that men hold dear.  So you will not wonder that there were knives and rifles shaken aloft, and fierce and vengeful counsels in which it was proposed to put the captives one and all to the cord and tree.

But now again Sevier and Shelby, seconded by the fiery Presbyterian, William Campbell, flung themselves into the breach, pleading for delay and a fair trial for such as were blood guilty.  And so the dismal night, made chill and comfortless by the cold wind and most doleful by the groans and cries of the wounded, wore away, and the dawn of the Sunday found us lying as we were in the bloody shambles of the hilltop.

With the earliest morning light the burial parties were at work; and since the stony battle-ground would not lend itself for the trenching, the graves were dug in the vales below.  Captain de Peyster begged hard for leave to bury the brave Ferguson on the spot where he fell, but ’twas impossible; and now, I am told, the stout old Scotsman lies side by side with our Major Will Chronicle, of Mecklenburg, who fell just before the ending of the battle.