A Soldier of Virginia Part 15

"What is it, Sam?" I asked, as he cantered up beside me.

"Lettah f'um Kuhnal Washin'ton, sah," he said, and handed me the missive.

I tore it open with a trembling hand.

DEAR TOM [it ran],--I have procured you an appointment as lieutenant in Captain Waggoner's company of Virginia troops, which are to make the campaign with General Braddock. They are now in barracks at Winchester, where you will join them as soon as possible.

Your friend, G. WASHINGTON.

"Sam," I said, "go back to the kitchen and tell Sukey to fill you up on the best she's got," and I turned and ran into the house. I tapped at the door of my aunt's room, and her voice bade me enter.

"I have just received a note from Colonel Washington," I said, "in which he tells me that he has secured me a commission as lieutenant for the campaign, so I will not need to trespa.s.s on your hospitality longer than to-morrow morning."

There was a queer gleam in her eyes, which I thought I could read aright.

"Yes, there are many chances in war," I said bitterly, "and I am as like as another to fall."

"I am not quite so bloodthirsty as you seem to think," she answered coldly, "and perhaps a moment ago I spoke more harshly than I intended.

Everything you need for the journey you will please ask for. I wish you every success."

"Thank you," I said, and left the room. My pack was soon made, for I had seen enough of frontier fighting to know no extra baggage would be permitted, and then I roamed up and down the house in hope of seeing Dorothy. But she was nowhere visible, and at last I gave up the search and went to bed.

I was up long before daylight, donned my old uniform, saw my horse fed and saddled, ate my breakfast, and was ready to go. I took a last look around my room, picked up my pack, and started down the stairs.

"Tom," whispered a voice above me, and I looked up and saw her. "Quick, quick," she whispered, "say good-by."

"Oh, my love!" I cried, and I drew her lips down to mine.

"And you will not forget me, Tom?" she said. "I shall pray for you every night and morning till you come back to me. Good-by."

"Forget you, Dolly? Nay, that will never be." And as I rode away through the bleak, gray morning, the mist rolling up from hill and river disclosed a world of wondrous fairness.

Which brings me back again to the camp at Winchester,--but what a journey it has been! As I look back, nothing strikes me so greatly as the length of the way by which I have come. I had thought that some dozen pages at the most would suffice for my introduction, but memory has led my pen along many a by-path, and paused beside a score of half-forgotten landmarks. Well, as it was written, so let it stand, for my heart is in it.

CHAPTER XIII

LIEUTENANT ALLEN SHOWS HIS SKILL

The days dragged on at Winchester, as days in camp will, and I accepted no more invitations to mess with the officers of the line. Indeed, I received none, and we provincial officers kept to ourselves. Major Washington had returned to Mount Vernon, but I found many of my old friends with the troops, so had no lack of company. There was Captain Waggoner, who had got his promotion eight months before, and Peyronie, recovered of his wound and eager for another bout with the French. He also had been promoted for his gallantry, and now had his own company of rangers. There was Captain Polson, for whom a tragic fate was waiting, and my old captain, Adam Stephen. And there was Carolus Spiltdorph, advanced to a lieutenancy like myself, and by great good fortune in my company. We began to chum together at once,--sharing our blankets and tobacco,--and continued so until the end.

Another friend I also found in young Harry Marsh, a son of Colonel Henry Marsh, who owned a plantation some eight or ten miles above the Frederick ferry, and a cousin of my aunt. Colonel Marsh had stopped one day at Riverview, while on his way home from Hampton, and had made us all promise to return his visit, but so many affairs had intervened that the promise had never been kept. The boy, who was scarce nineteen, had secured a berth as ensign in Peyronie's company, and he came frequently with his captain to our quarters to listen with all his ears to our stories of the Fort Necessity affair. He was a fresh, wholehearted fellow, and though he persisted in considering us all as little less than heroes, was himself heroic as any, as I was in the end to learn. We were a hearty and good-tempered company, and spent our evenings together most agreeably, discussing the campaign and the various small happenings of the camp. But as Spiltdorph shrewdly remarked, we were none of us so sanguinary as we had been a year before. I have since observed that the more a man sees of war, the less his eagerness for blood.

From Lieutenant Allen I kept aloof as much as possible, and he on his part took no notice whatever of me. Some rumor of my affair with him had got about the camp, but as neither of us would say a word concerning it, it was soon forgot in the press of greater matters. Whatever Allen's personal character may have been, it is not to be denied that he labored with us faithfully, though profanely, drilling us up and down the camp till we were near fainting in the broiling sun, or exercising us in arms for hours together, putting us through the same movement a hundred times, till we had done it to his satisfaction. We grumbled of course, among ourselves, but at the end of another fortnight the result of his work began to be apparent, and Sir Peter Halket, when he inspected us just before starting for Fort c.u.mberland, as the fortification at Will's Creek was named, expressed himself well pleased with the progress we had made.

For the order to advance came at last, and after a two weeks' weary journey along the road which had been widened for the pa.s.sage of wagons and artillery, we reached our destination and went into quarters there.

The barracks were much better appointed than were the ones at Winchester, for this was to be the rendezvous of the entire force, and the independent companies which Colonel Washington had stationed here the previous summer had been at work all winter clearing the ground and building the fort. They had cleared a wide s.p.a.ce in the forest, and on a little hill some two hundred yards from Will's Creek and four hundred from the Potomac, had erected the stockade. It was near two hundred yards in length from east to west, and some fifty in width, but rude enough, consisting merely of a row of logs set upright in the ground and projecting some twelve feet above it, loopholed, and sharpened at the top. There were embrasures for twelve cannon, ten of which, all four-pounders, were already mounted. Though frail as it could well be, it was deemed sufficient to withstand any attack likely to be brought against it. A great two-storied barrack for the officers of the line had been erected within the stockade, and two magazines of heavy timber. The men were camped about the fort, and half a mile away through the forest a hundred Indians had pitched their wigwams. And here, on the tenth of May, came the Forty-Eighth under Colonel Dunbar, and General Braddock himself in his great traveling chariot, his staff riding behind and a body of light horse on either side. We were paraded to welcome him, the drums rolled out the grenadiers, the seventeen guns prescribed by the regulations were fired, and the campaign was on in earnest.

The morning of the next day, the general held his first levee in his tent, and all the officers called to pay their respects. He was a heavy-set, red-faced man of some sixty years, with long, straight nose, aggressive, pointed chin, and firm-set lips, and though he greeted us civilly enough, there was a touch of insolence in his manner which he made small effort to conceal, and which showed that it was not upon the Virginia troops he placed reliance. Still, there was that in his heavy-featured face and in his bearing which bespoke the soldier, and I remembered Fontenoy and the record he had made there. In the afternoon, there was a general review, and he rode up and down with his staff in front of the whole force, most gorgeous in gold lace and brilliant accoutrement. Of the twenty-two hundred men he looked at that day, the nine Virginia companies found least favor in his eyes, for he deemed them listless and mean-spirited,--an opinion which he was at no pains to keep to himself, and which had the effect of making the bearing of his officers toward us even more insulting.

As we were drawn up there in line, the orders for the camp were published, the articles of war were read to us, and in the days that followed there was great show of discipline. But it was only show, for there was little real order, and even here on the edge of the settlements, the food was so bad and so scarce that foraging parties were sent to the neighboring plantations to seize what they could find, and a general market established in the camp. To encourage the people to bring in provisions, the price was raised a penny a pound, and any person who ventured to interfere with one bringing provisions, or offered to buy of him before he reached the public market, was to suffer death. These regulations produced some supplies, though very little when compared to our great needs.

A thing which encouraged me greatly to believe in the sagacity of our commander was the pains he took to engage the good offices of the Indians,--such of them, that is, as had not already been hopelessly estranged by the outrages committed upon them by traders and frontiersmen. Mr. Croghan, one of the best known of the traders, had brought some fifty warriors to the camp, together with their women and children, and on the morning of the twelfth, a congress was held at the general's tent to receive them. All the officers were there, and when the Indians were brought, the guard received them with firelocks rested.

There was great powwowing and smoking the pipe, and the general gave them a belt of wampum and many presents, and urged them to take up the hatchet against the French. This they agreed to do, and doubtless would have done, but for the conduct of some of the officers of the line.

The Indian camp, with its bark wigwams and tall totem pole, had become a great place of resort with certain of the officers. They had been attracted first by the dancing and queer customs of the savages, and had they come away when once their curiosity was satisfied, little harm had been done. Unfortunately, after looking at the men they looked at the women, and found some of them not unattractive. So, for want of something better to do, they set about debauching them, and succeeded so well that the warriors finally took their women away from the camp in disgust, and never again came near it. Other Indians appeared from time to time, but after begging all the rum and presents they could get, they left the camp and we never saw them again. Many of them were Delawares, doubtless sent as spies by the French. Another visitor was Captain Jack, the Black Rifle, known and feared by the Indians the whole length of the frontier.

He had sworn undying vengeance against them, having come home to his cabin one night to find his wife and children butchered, and had roamed from the Carolinas to the Saint Lawrence, leaving a trail of Indian blood behind him. He would have made a most useful ally, but he took offense at some fancied slight, and one day abruptly disappeared in the forest.

Never during all these weeks did the regulars get over their astonishment at sight of the tall warriors stalking through the camp, painted in red, yellow, and black, and greased from head to foot, their ears slit, their heads shaved save for the scalp-lock with its tuft of feathers; nor did they cease to wonder at their skill in throwing the tomahawk and shooting with the rifle, a skill of which we were to have abundant proof erelong.

It was not until four or five days after his arrival with General Braddock that I had opportunity to see Colonel Washington. I met him one evening as I was returning from guard duty, and I found him looking so pale and dispirited that I was startled.

"You are not ill?" I cried, as I grasped his hand.

"Ill rather in spirit than in body, Tom," he answered, with a smile.

"Life in the general's tent is not a happy one. He has met with nothing but vexation, worry, and delay since he has been in the colony, and I believe he looks upon the country as void of honor and honesty. I try to show him that he has seen only the darker side, and we have frequent disputes, which sometimes wax very warm, for he is incapable of arguing without growing angry. Not that I blame him greatly," he added, with a sigh, "for the way the colonies have acted in this matter is inexcusable. Wagons, horses, and provisions which were promised us are not forthcoming, and without them we are stalled here beyond hope of advance."

He pa.s.sed his hand wearily before his eyes, and we walked some time in silence.

"'Tis this delay which is ruining our great chance of success," he continued at last. "Could we have reached the fort before the French could reinforce it, the garrison must have deserted it or surrendered to us. But now they will have time to send whatever force they wish into the Ohio valley, and rouse all the Indian tribes for a hundred miles around.

For with the Indians, the French have played a wiser part than the English, Tom, and have kept them ever their friends, while to-day we have not an Indian in the camp."

"They will return," I said. "They have all promised to return."

Washington shook his head.

"They will not return. Gist knows the Indians as few other white men do, and he a.s.sures me that they will not return."

"Well," I retorted hotly, "Indians or no Indians, the French cannot hope to resist successfully an army such as ours."

For a moment Washington said nothing.

"You must not think me a croaker, Tom," and he smiled down at me again, "but indeed I see many chances of failure. Even should we reach Fort Duquesne in safety, we will scarce be in condition to besiege it, unless the advance is conducted with rare skill and foresight."

I had nothing to say in answer, for in truth I believed he was looking too much on the dark side, and yet did not like to tell him so.

"How do you find the general?" I asked.

"A proud, obstinate, brave man," he said, "who knows the science of war, perhaps, but who is ill fitted to cope with the difficulties he has met here and has still to meet. His great needs are patience and diplomacy and a knowledge of Indian warfare. I would he had been with us last year behind the walls of Fort Necessity."

"He has good advisers," I suggested. "Surely you can tell him what occurred that day."

But again Washington shook his head.

"My advice, such as I have ventured to give him, has been mostly thrown away. But his two other aides are good men,--Captain Orme and Captain Morris,--and may yet bring him to reason. The general's secretary, Mr.