Left to himself, Dan Morgan would have locked horns with the enemy at the fording of the Pacolet; but in the council of war, our colonel and John Howard of the Marylanders were for drawing Tarleton still deeper into the wilderness, and farther from the British main, which was by this moved up as far as Turkey Creek.  So we broke camp hastily and fell back into the hill country; and on the night of the sixteenth took post on the northern slope of a low ridge between two running streams.

For its backbone our force had some three hundred men of the Maryland line and two companies of Virginians.  These formed our main, and were posted on the rising ground with John Howard for their commander.  A hundred and fifty paces in their front, partly screened in the open pine, oak and chestnut wooding of the ground, were Pickens’s Carolinians and the Georgians; militiamen, it is true, but skilled riflemen, and every man of them burning hot to be avenged on Tarleton’s pillagers.

Still farther to the front, disposed as right and left wings of outliers, were Yeates and his fellow borderers and some sixty of the Georgians set to feel the enemy’s approach; and in the reserve, posted well to the rear of the Marylanders and Virginians, was our own colonel’s troop guarding the horses of the dismounted Georgians.

’Twas when we were all set in order to await the sun’s rising and the enemy’s approach that Dan Morgan rode the lines and harangued us.  He was better at giving and taking shrewd blows than at speech-making; but we all knew his mettle well by now, and I think there was never a man of us to laugh at his unwonted grandiloquence and solemn periods.  In the harangue the two battle lines had their orders:  to be steady; to aim low; and above all to hold their fire till the enemy was within sure killing distance.

“’Tis a brave old Daniel,” said Dick, whilst the general was sawing the air for the benefit of the South Carolinians. “’Twill not be his fault if we fail.  But you are older at this business than any of us, Jack; what think you of our chances?”

I laughed, and the laugh was meant to be grim.  I knew the temper of the British regulars, and how, when well led, they could play the hammer to anybody’s anvil.

“Any raw recruit can prophesy before the fact,” said I.  “We have Tarleton, his legion, the Seventh, a good third of the Seventy-first, and two pieces of artillery in our front.  If they do not give a good account of themselves, ’twill be because Tarleton has marched them leg-stiff to overtake us.”

Dick fell silent for the moment, and when he spoke again some of Dan Morgan’s solemnity seemed to have got into his blood.

“I have a sort of coward inpricking that I sha’n’t come out of this with a whole skin, Jack; and there’s a thing on my mind that mayhap you can take off.  You have had Madge to yourself a dozen times since that day last autumn when I asked her for the hundredth time to put me out of misery.  As I have said, she would not hear me through; but she gave me a look as I had struck her with a whip.  Can you tell me why?”