XVIISCOUTING FOR THE GRENADIERS
It seemed to Robert, while he lay panting and kicking and trying to wake, that a battle had been raging over him. He knew that he was wet with cold water, and that fingers were busy upon his head; and at last he looked into a face black-whiskered, black-eyed, a face very dark and stern, but ready to smile: the face, yes, of the Black Rifle!
Robert struggled to sit up in a jiffy. The Black Rifle was a fearsome man—an Indian-killer. And around-about there were other white-men, in buckskin and long hair, powder flasks and bullet pouches, hatchets and knives—several of them with fresh scalps at their belts.
He groped for his letter. It was gone again! The Black Rifle laughed silently.
“You miss something?” he asked in Delaware.
“You have it?” the Hunter stammered in English. His head hurt him. He put up his hand; his head was bandaged and wet; his hand came away red.
Captain Jack the Black Rifle continued to laugh inside himself.
“Hah, boy! You have a hard skull. The Huron hatchet glanced like a chip. Where were you going?”
“I carry letter to Washington. You got it?”
“No.”
What! It was lost? Had the Ottawas found it after all? The agony of the Hunter’s head was nothing compared with the agony of his heart. Hewould have tottered to his feet, but the hand of the Black Rifle pressed him down.
“Lie still. The letter’s on its way.”
“To Washington?”
“Aye, or to the Governor of Virginia. That’s what the address said on the inside.” They had acted quickly, these Black Rifle men! “We thought you dead. Who sent you?”
“No tell,” replied the Hunter.
“Very good. Then you needn’t. You’ve been in the river; those French Injuns didn’t chase you for nothing; aye, you’re a brave boy. You shall have that Huron’s gun and fixin’s. And there’ll be scalps missing at Fort Duquesne.” Captain Jack laughed shortly. “Now, lads! We must put more distance behind us ere the pack howls on our trail.”
A very giant of a man picked Robert up; they all filed rapidly into the woods.
The Black Rifle’s band had been scouting upon Fort Duquesne. Now they were returning into Pennsylvania with the news that they had. The Hunter had a gun again, but a boy with his scalp ripped open by a tomahawk and with his head throbbing could not go to Will’s Creek alone. Every mile in company with the Captain Jack men took him farther from Will’s Creek and nearer to Aukwick, and Tanacharison and Scarouady and (he hoped) the Buck.
Therefore to Aukwick he went, instead of to Will’s Creek.
The Buck had got through! Here he was, his own message delivered. Strobo would be glad when he knew.
Tanacharison was sick in bed. All this fall theMingos at Aukwick waited for word that the English were to drive the French from the Ohio. Scarouady made a trip to Onondago, to speak for the English before the council of the Iroquois. The Iroquois were growing tired. Said old Chief Hendrick, the Mohawk, to the English in Albany:
“The English pay us no attention, but the French are wise and active, and are always inviting us. You accuse the French of many things. When the French come, you run away. Look about your country. You have no forts. The French can come and turn you out of doors. They are men; they are making forts everywhere. But you are bare and open.”
More and more Iroquois were going over to the French. Captain Joncaire had persuaded the Delawares and the Shawnees. The Mingos at Aukwick listened to George Croghan but many outside travelled to Fort Duquesne where the French gave presents.
Washington had gone home from Will’s Creek. Maybe he had grown tired, too, of waiting for help. The Governor of Virginia had not given the French back the prisoners taken by Washington; and it was said that Strobo and Vanbraam had been sent to Canada by the French, as prisoners. But the package carried by the Buck to George Croghan had contained a map of Fort Duquesne; this also had gone to the Governor of Virginia, and why Assaragoa did not act, nobody knew.
Old Tanacharison died this fall. No doubt the French had made him sick, because he had fought them. Scarouady was appointed Half-King. That was good. He was not afraid of the French. Andthe winter wore on, and it was rumored that the King across the water had ordered his soldiers to come and drive out the French; and one day in the spring George Croghan asked that a council meet.
In the council he made a speech. The English and the Long Knives were starting, under a great general, to capture Fort Duquesne. The general had asked for warriors to help him.
Ugh! With all the Mingo warriors—fifty—and their families, Croghan set out to meet the General at Will’s Creek. There were Scarouady and Silver Heels and White Thunder and Big Tree and the Buck, and Robert, and the rest, not omitting Bright Lightning.
Will’s Creek has changed. A fort stood here now, named Fort Cumberland. And around the fort were a host of tents in lines, and red coats, and a batch of blue coats, horses, cattle, wagons and cannon on wheels.
It was a wonderful sight, and made Scarouady grunt approval.
“Ho!” he said. “Now I see the English. We shall eat up the French.”
The soldiers sent by the King were in red, with high, black, shiny hats, and white cross belts, and white leggins buttoned below the knee, and hair twisted into stubby tails hanging down their backs; large and fierce they looked. They numbered one thousand. The red of one half had yellow trimmings; of the other half, clay.
The blue-coated soldiers were Long Knives; four hundred and fifty, in nine companies. There were soldiers from New York and from Carolina, too. And there were seamen, or sailors, from great ships.But these numbered only fifty. Their clothes were very odd, and so was their language.
The general or head chief was Sir Edward Braddock—a famous warrior for the King. Gist was here, and so was Andrew Montour; and so were Captain Thomas Waggener and Ensign Peyroney who had been sorely wounded at Fort Necessity, and Doctor Craik, and several others—all Washington men, among the Virginians.
Much of this Robert learned little by little, for he could not see everything at once. First, how about Washington? Washington surely would be here, too, among the Long Knife Americans. But when Washington appeared, he was in red uniform, riding upon a fine horse, into the Indian camp. When he saw Scarouady and the Hunter and others that he knew, his face lighted.
“Brudder,” Scarouady greeted. “We go to fight ’um French.”
They shook hands all around. Then Washington spoke to Robert, with his brief smile:
“I thank you for the letter.” He was always very polite. “You did bravely.”
“You heard?” Robert stammered.
“I heard. You were wounded; now you are well. That is good. And I hear that Tanacharison is dead and Scarouady is Half-King.”
“Tanacharison no fight; heart get weak,” Scarouady grunted. “Me Half-King. Me bring warriors to fight for English. Wah! See my brudder in red, Long Knives in blue. My brudder no Long Knife?”
“I sit in the council of General Braddock who is the great chief of all,” answered Washington.“But I will be in the fight when my brothers and the Long Knives help the red-coat soldiers whip the French out of Fort Duquesne.”
It took Croghan and Gist to explain, later, that Washington was an aide, or assistant, to the great Chief Braddock, and marched by his side: a high honor.
“His Excellency the General bids me to say to Scarouady that the Mingos are welcome,” continued Washington, to Robert. “He has heard that they are great warriors. They shall be well rewarded.”
“I am American. I stay with Washington,” Robert pleaded hopefully.
“No,” replied Washington. “I stay with the General, for he has asked me to. You shall be American, if you like, and help show the way with Gist and Scarouady and the Virginians. I’d rather do that myself,” he added quickly.
After this there was much going on. General Braddock (who was a stout, heavy, red-faced old man) invited Scarouady and White Thunder and other chiefs to his tent. He gave presents and exchanged speeches, which Andrew Montour translated.
He had the drums beat and the fifes play, and the great guns fired; and sent a bullock to the camp, for a feast.
The Mingos invited the English to come over, and danced the war-dance for them. The English, very stiff in their red coats with high collars, and their white skin-tight breeches and their high, black hats, seemed to think that the Mingos were funny, and stared at them through pieces of glass fitted to one eye, and laughed and clapped their hands.
But the Mingos had only dressed for war, too.Their faces were painted red and black and yellow, their heads were shaven clean except for the tuft of greased scalp-lock, and their ears were hung with rings and pendants of shells. They were no funnier than the English themselves.
King Shingis and King Beaver and Chief Killbuck of the Delawares came in. They feasted, and talked with the General; and when they went away again they had promised to meet the English on the march, with many warriors. But Scarouady did not believe this.
“Their hearts are French,” he said. “Now they will go to Duquesne. We should march fast, and strike.”
The General took a long time to get ready. Then, on a sudden, he said that he could not feed so many warriors and women and children. Let ten warriors stay, to help him find the enemy; the other Mingos must go home.
When Croghan told Scarouady, Scarouady laughed.
“I think little of this old red-faced soldier chief,” he uttered. “He has never been in the woods, and he listens to no advice from us who have. While he is eating and drinking and making his stiff-coated men walk about like bears on their hind legs, I could take my men and Washington could take his men and we could capture the French. But I will stay, for I wish to fight the French, and I will not desert Washington. The rest may go home.”
Most of the Mingos did go home. The men were glad enough to do so; they did not get along well with the English soldiers, who treated them like children and seemed to have no manners; and besides,they heard that Gist’s son had been sent to bring up the Cherokees and Catawbas, who were enemies.
The women and children had been having a good time. Bright Lightning had been having the best time of all, for she was pretty and smart and was called a princess by the officers. But her father White Thunder sent her home with the others.
“You stay?” she asked of Robert and the Buck.
“We stay.”
“Wah!” Bright Lightning laughed. “I would stay too if I were a warrior. But maybe when you get into Fort Duquesne I will come and get you out. The English chief thinks he can blind the French and Ottawa with his red coats, but they will cut him into pieces like a snake.”
The Scarouady people went back to Aukwick. Those who did stay were Scarouady, White Thunder, Aroas who was Silver Heels, Big Tree, Cashuwayon or Captain Newcastle who was a Delaware and a son of old Queen Allaquippa, Scarouady’s son-in-law Iagrea, Guyasuta the young warrior, the Buck and Robert the Hunter.
Yes, the red-faced General seemed to be an unwise man. On the very day before the start was made, who should come into camp but Captain Jack the Black Rifle, leading thirty of his white warriors, all dressed for war. Washington and Gist and others shook hands with him. He went into the Braddock tent, and did not stay long. Soon he came out and he motioned to his men, and they left in single file, to enter the forest again.
Then Scarouady shouted: “Ho! Black Rifle!” He and Croghan ran after, and so did the Buck and Robert, to hear.
“Listen!” exclaimed Scarouady. “You are men. We are brothers. Do the Black Rifles and the Mingo scout together against the French and Ottawa dogs? Good! Now I feel hope.”
“No,” said the Black Rifle. “The English chief sends us away. He has soldiers in red to fight in the woods for him.” The Black Rifle men hurried on.
Gist laughed angrily.
“Scarouady knows that the Black Rifle is worth five hundred red-coat soldiers who have never fought in the woods. The Black Rifle offered to serve without pay.”
“I see that the chief called Braddock is like a buffalo bull,” replied Scarouady. “Where he looks, there he will go, without reason. He sends away my fifty warriors; he sends away the Black Rifle. If he sends away Washington and the Long Knives, we are lost, for in the woods his red-coat soldiers will be like the gobbling turkey when the hunter watches.”
After the long time getting prepared they all started to capture Fort Duquesne. This day was the tenth day of June, in the year Seventeen Hundred and Fifty-five. There were two thousand one hundred men. Six hundred men with axes and provision wagons and cannon had been ordered ahead to widen Washington’s road from Will’s Creek to Gist’s place. The army followed, with Gist and Scarouady’s men scouting in advance.
The march was very slow, because of the baggage and the great guns. The officers rode horses, and there was a small company of Long Knives called “Light Horse;” the other soldiers walked. Sometimes only two or three miles were covered in a day,and the line of men and wagons and cannon and pack horses reached from camp to camp.
Looking back through clearings, the Buck and Robert could see the march: a long, long column of wagons, cannon and horses, and on either side the red coats, and the fewer blue coats, all toiling up hill and down hill, through woods and bogs, with their weapons flashing and the thickly clothed English soldiers sweating as they carried their heavy muskets, knapsacks, cartridge boxes, tall hats and their stiff boots.
If their own scouts could see them so plainly, the enemy could see them, too. This proved to be true. The Buck came running back one evening and said that he and Scarouady had been seized by French and Indians, but that he had escaped to bring the news.
Then Gist, White Thunder, Newcastle, Aroas and the Hunter all ran to rescue poor Scarouady if they could. There he was, tied to a tree. He said that the French were for killing him, but that Guyasuta had been with the Ottawas, and they refused to use the hatchet on a great chief.
Guyasuta did not turn up again. He had gone over to the French.
After this many signs of the French and Indians were seen, in shape of camp fires and of boasts written upon barked trees.
Still the column moved on, getting deeper and deeper into the wilderness. In the many rough places it reached back four miles, along the road only twelve feet wide. The soldiers from the King across the water never had seen this kind of a country—so big, so lone, so wet, so rocky, so dark with hugetrees, so silent with watchful death. How they toiled and sweated, those red-coats! The mosquitoes bit them, the ticks burrowed into them, the rattlesnakes struck them, their feet blistered with walking and their hands blistered with tugging at the ropes and at the wagon and cannon wheels when the horses failed.
But at night they tried to be merry. Around their camp fires they sang a song which Robert heard often enough to remember.
To arms, to arms! My jolly grenadiers!Hark, how the drums do roll it along!To horse, to horse, with valiant good cheer!We’ll meet our proud foe, before it is long.Let not your courage fail you:Be valiant, stout and bold;And it will soon avail you,My loyal hearts of gold.Huzzah, my valiant countrymen! Again I say huzzah!’Tis nobly done—the day’s our own—huzzah, huzzah!March on, march on, brave Braddock leads the foremost;The battle is begun, as you may fairly see.Stand firm, be bold, and it will soon be over;We soon will gain the field from our proud enemy.
To arms, to arms! My jolly grenadiers!Hark, how the drums do roll it along!To horse, to horse, with valiant good cheer!We’ll meet our proud foe, before it is long.Let not your courage fail you:Be valiant, stout and bold;And it will soon avail you,My loyal hearts of gold.Huzzah, my valiant countrymen! Again I say huzzah!’Tis nobly done—the day’s our own—huzzah, huzzah!
To arms, to arms! My jolly grenadiers!
Hark, how the drums do roll it along!
To horse, to horse, with valiant good cheer!
We’ll meet our proud foe, before it is long.
Let not your courage fail you:
Be valiant, stout and bold;
And it will soon avail you,
My loyal hearts of gold.
Huzzah, my valiant countrymen! Again I say huzzah!
’Tis nobly done—the day’s our own—huzzah, huzzah!
March on, march on, brave Braddock leads the foremost;The battle is begun, as you may fairly see.Stand firm, be bold, and it will soon be over;We soon will gain the field from our proud enemy.
March on, march on, brave Braddock leads the foremost;
The battle is begun, as you may fairly see.
Stand firm, be bold, and it will soon be over;
We soon will gain the field from our proud enemy.
And so forth. A fine warrior song.
“They are foolish, but they are brave,” even Scarouady admitted. “The woods are no place for them, just the same.”
There had not been much opportunity to see Washington. He had given up his best horse to be used as a pack horse. Gist said that Washington, too, was worried over the long line that the French might cut to pieces, and over the slow march. He wished to speak to the General about hurrying.
He must have done so, for at the Little Meadows, about twenty-five miles from Will’s Creek, a mannamed Colonel Dunbar was left with part of the heavy baggage and provisions and about one thousand men. Taking twelve hundred of the best men, and twenty cannon, and thirty wagons, General Braddock pushed on. Four hundred of these men were kept to the front, making the trail.
After another long time they all came to the Great Meadows; but they did not stop to look at Fort Necessity. They camped on the other side, and then marched up the Laurel Hills and camped near the Rock Fort where Washington and Tanacharison had met to attack Jumonville.
Robert remembered that night very well; so did Scarouady and so did Washington, probably—but Washington was not here now. He was sick and unable to travel.
That was bad. Washington was behind, with Colonel Dunbar. Still Gist had said:
“Have no fear. He stays to get well for the fight, by the General’s orders. The General thinks so much of him that he promises to wait for him before striking the French.”
The next camp was at Gist’s place. The mountains had been crossed, but the forests were as dense as ever. The soldiers began to get nervous. They heard strange sounds at night; by day men straggling aside to pick berries were killed and scalped.
When the march was within twenty-five or thirty miles of Fort Duquesne by trail, and only thirteen by straight line, the Buck was killed also.