Part 19
General Forbes arrived in his litter. A council of war was held; and in that even Washington advised that nothing more be done until spring. ’Twas plain to be seen how disappointed he was. All the Virginians knew that if his first advice had been taken, and the march had been made over his and Braddock’s road, through country that had been mapped and explored many a time, before this the army would have been comfortable in Duquesne.
But a lucky thing happened. Since the Major Grant battle the French and Indians had been bolder, and had prowled around Loyalhannon, firing by night on the sentries. One night, after Washington came――in fact, the very night after the council, a trap was set by an advance outpost, with Robert himself in charge.
By tracks that had been found, the enemy stole up under cover of a high bank along the creek and hid there to pick off the sentries. Very good! With his little squad Corporal Hunter crouched in the brush above the bank, and waited. Early in the morning the enemy came――six, led by a French officer.
“Fire!” Corporal Hunter suddenly ordered; the muskets flared through the dimness, and the men charged out. The enemy ran like shadows flitting. There were two dead Indians, but Robert did not pause for these. He had his eye upon the Frenchman. The Frenchman had been wounded in the leg; and when he found he could not get away he turned about and cried: “Mercy! Mercy!”
So Robert marched him to the fort.
This was a valuable capture. It might mean the fall of Fort Duquesne. Huzzah, huzzah! The Frenchman said that an officer named Ligneris commanded Fort Duquesne. The English armies in the north had cut off his provisions. His men were leaving him. Even his Indians were going home; the Delawares, Shawnees and Mingos had refused to help the French any longer, for they feared the wrath of the Long Knives; the Potawatomis and Ottawas and Hurons were tired of war――they said that now the English had been stopped, and they wished to go home for the winter. Fort Duquesne had only five or six hundred men.
Whether or not the Frenchman was lying, this put new life into the army. Snow, rain, mud and hunger mattered no longer; the time to strike had arrived; and Washington’s worn face brightened.
He and his Virginians and the Pennsylvanians were to be given the advance at last; stripped of baggage, taking only their knapsacks and blankets, twenty-five hundred picked men were to press after. That was the Washington way. Washington commanded but Colonel George Armstrong commanded the Pennsylvanians. Now the road onward had to be made in the rain and the snow and the mud. Sometimes the Pennsylvanians took the lead, and sometimes the Virginians; but with Washington encouraging, always calm, always strong, never disheartened, the Virginians finally got ahead and stayed there.
A fire-place was ordered by him, at each supply camp, to warm the General; for old Iron Head was coming in his litter. He was a man! And when the Potawatomis, Ottawas, Hurons and other of the Lake Indians at the fort learned from spies that the Long Knives of Washington were making the road, they refused to attack them. They had had experience with these soldiers who fought with their eyes open and rarely missed.
Six or seven miles of road were all that could be hewed out in a day. It was November 24 when the road was within six miles of the fort; and halt had been made until the main column came in, with Head of Iron borne in his curtained litter. And here was Scarouady, bringing Aroas, White Thunder, and other Mingos to greet Washington.
“Wah!” Scarouady said to Robert. “Is it true that Head of Iron is carried in that thing to keep him safe?”
“Yes,” said Robert.
“We have come to see,” continued Scarouady. “For the French Indians are told he is a man of such terrible temper that he must be guarded on the march or he will run wild and spread death among all the Indians who would fight him.”
“That is true,” answered Robert.
“Well,” said Scarouady, “I think Washington is going to take the fort, unless more foolishness is done. We will wait on the hill and see, for we have risked our lives before and gained nothing.”
The General was so weak from his pain that the officers urged him to wait a day or two before making the attack.
“No,” he replied. “I will sleep in Fort Duquesne tomorrow night or I will sleep nowhere.”
There had been smoke, this evening, in the direction of the fort; and in the middle of the night a great “Boom!” shook the woods. What this meant nobody knew and nobody cared. They all would see on the morrow.
In the morning they started on from these headwaters of Turkey Creek, near whose mouth, not many miles west, General Braddock’s army had been cut to pieces.
The day was dark and chill――this day when Fort Duquesne should fall, after four years of defiance.
The Buckskins led, to clear the road of the enemy. After them followed Head of Iron, in his litter, at the fore of the Highlanders. The Royal Americans held the right, under Colonel Bouquet. The other Virginians, and the Pennsylvanians and the Maryland and North Carolina companies held the left, under Washington. The drums beat――tap, tap――and the steady tramp of feet rustled the dead leaves of the forest aisles.
About noon they all began to pass skeletons; those were the remains of men killed during the Grant battle two months back.
From the scout-line Robert now and again could see these three columns toiling on through the wet, naked woods, up hill and down. The scouts had sighted no enemy, yet.
In the early dusk the view of the Forks opened from around Grant’s Hill. What was that? See! The fort was afire――the walls were smouldering under a canopy of smoke, and beyond, in the Ohio, the last of a fleet of boats was disappearing in the mists! Huzzah! The scouts ran boldly through the clearing; and stopped short. Wah!
Robert found himself at a race-track used by the Indians for foot-races. It stretched straight-away, and was marked by poles set upon either side of it; and every pole was topped by the head of a Highlander with his petticoat clothing hung beneath!
An Indian joke! Whew! Now what would happen? The scouts did not have long to wait. Down among the stumps marched the Washington Buckskins; they had won the honor of the lead, and Washington rode at their front. The Pennsylvanians and the other Provincials followed closely. One and all they saw the heads upon the poles, but this did not stop them. The Royal Americans in their red and blue came next, their fifes and drums playing merrily. The Highlanders strode after, with Head of Iron in his litter leading them on.
What now? Listen! They had sighted the first of the heads――they had broken into a hoarse growl. The growl spread; and see! They had gone mad! They had thrown away their muskets, they had bared their stout swords, they were coming in a mob, like wild buffalo; their bare knees worked up and down, their kilt petticoats flapped, the ribbons of their caps streamed behind them, and treading under foot whatever was in their path they charged for the fort, to kill.
But there was nobody in the fort. The French had blown up the ammunition magazine (this had been the “Boom!” in the night), and had gone away in boats.
“The last boats left only an hour before the Long Knives came,” said Scarouady. “Well, now Washington and I have been at the death of this great house which the English should have taken years ago. It was a house of much mischief.”
That was a moment not to be forgotten, when, with all the troops presenting arms, and the fifes piping and shrilling, and the drums rolling, by order of General Forbes himself Colonel George Washington, the youngest field officer, raised the flag over the ruins of Fort Duquesne. He had earned that honor.
The Ohio country was to be English; the French had made a strong fight, but they never were to come back.
“Your reports upon this place are correct, Colonel Washington,” said the worn old Head of Iron. “It is the site for a fort, and the site for a city. In the name of His Majesty I christen it Pittsburgh, as a tribute to Sir William Pitt, His Majesty’s great prime minister who has so vigorously prosecuted this war to the glory of His Majesty’s arms.”
Huzzah, huzzah, huzzah!
XXIII
COLONEL WASHINGTON RESTS
The next day was spent in resting. Little was left of Fort Duquesne save the charred logs of the palisades, and the tall chimneys of the buildings.
Several more Indians came in. They were Delawares and Shawnees, who wished to see Head of Iron――that terrible chief who had to be guarded in a litter, lest he break loose and spread death. They were anxious to look upon Washington again, who was under the protection of the Great Spirit.
Thirteen fair shots had been made at him in the Braddock fight, by a chief. Not one bullet had struck him. Evidently he was not to be slain by bullets.
While quarters were being built for the new garrison the bones of the Grant soldiers were gathered and buried. Then a number of the soldiers wished to see Braddock’s Field. So they went out, with Robert and others of the Virginians who had seen it before.
The Delawares and Shawnees acted as guides. As for Robert, there had been such a rout and excitement that he had had time to note very little. How long ago that seemed!
The woods from the ambush hill to the river were still strewn with skeletons――the tree trunks were scarred with bullets and cannon-balls, and fragments of clothing, grenadier hats and rusted muskets were scattered everywhere.
Young Major Peter Halket, of General Forbes’ staff, wondered if anybody could tell him where his father and younger brother had fallen. Robert asked the Shawnees――“Two red-coat soldiers,” he said: “an old gray-haired man and a boy. They fell together, the boy on top of his father, down toward the river.” He remembered that.
“Ho!” cried one of the Shawnees. “Yes; I saw. It was many moons ago, but I will try to find the spot.”
He led off, and they all followed. And after a time he stopped, to peer about. Then he ran straight; then they heard him cry, from the woods――a discovery whoop. Then they went in to him. He was waiting under an oak tree. He pointed at the foot of it, where leaves were heaped up.
Captain West, who commanded the party, formed a circle of the men and ordered the leaves to be raked aside. And sure enough, here were two skeletons, one with its arms around the other. They were old Major Halket, the brave Scotch nobleman, and his son. Young Major Halket knew by the teeth which had been his father’s.
The bones were wrapped in a Highland plaid, and buried, and a volley fired over the grave.
The quarters having been built, and two hundred Virginians under Lieutenant Colonel Hugh Mercer having been detailed to guard them, the column started home. It was the middle of December when the Virginians were finally in Fort Loudoun of Winchester. They were to be disbanded. In Washington’s opinion they had served enough; a “really fine corps” General Forbes had called them; now the border was clean of the enemy, and it was time that they be mustered out.
Washington resigned his post of commander――which made the men all the more anxious to quit soldiering and go home, too. The two regiments drew up an address to him――
“In you we place the most implicit confidence,” it said. “Your presence only will cause a steady firmness and vigor to actuate every breast, despising the greatest dangers, and thinking light of toils and hardships, while led on by the man we know and love.”
This was the Thirtieth Day of December, 1758. He handed in his commission very soon; and on January 6 he was married. That had not been unexpected. He had been sending out letters to Mrs. Martha Custis, from every camp; and he had been in a great hurry to get back, after the capture of the fort.
The English were growing stronger, the French were growing weaker. The Seven Years War between Great Britain and France lasted about five years longer; France lost not only the Ohio Country but Canada as well; Onontio of the Indians was driven from America.
But in this fighting Robert Hunter and the other Buckskins took no part. They had to wait for a greater war, when Washington again proved his mettle and his wisdom. That, however, was still years ahead; although, said certain people, among them old Lord Fairfax, it was surely coming.
THE END
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Transcriber’s Notes:
――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_); text in bold by “equal” signs (=bold=).
――Except for the frontispiece, illustrations have been moved to follow the text that they illustrate.
――Obvious printer’s, punctuation, and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected, except as noted below.
――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.
――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.
――Page 20: “... Washington retires from the Presidency and is succeeded by Thomas Jefferson.” should read “... Washington retires from the Presidency and is succeeded by John Adams.”