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.
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