A Soldier of Virginia Part 17

"Not yet," I said. "They will stop so soon as they get to cover.

Wait a bit."

We waited for half an hour, watching the smoke curling over the house, and then, judging that the Indians had made off for fear of being ambushed, we crossed the clearing. It took but a glance to read the story. The women had been washing by the little brook before the cabin, with the children playing about them, when the Indians had come up and with a single volley killed them all except the child we had heard crying. They had swooped down upon their victims, torn the scalps from their heads, looted the house, and set fire to it. We dragged out the body of the woman which had been thrown within, in the hope that a spark of life might yet remain, but she was quite dead. Beneath the warrior Spiltdorph had shot we found the child. It was a boy of some six or seven years, and so covered with blood that it seemed it must be dead. But we stripped it and washed it in the brook, and found no wounds upon it except in the head, where it had been struck with a hatchet before its scalp had been stripped off. The cold water brought it back to life and it began to cry again, whereat Spiltdorph took off his coat and wrapped it tenderly about it.

We washed the blood from the faces of the women and stood for a long time looking down at them. They were both comely, the younger just at the dawn of womanhood. They must have been talking merrily together, for their faces were smiling as they had been in life.

As I stood looking so, I was startled by a kind of dry sobbing at my elbow, and turned with a jerk to find a man standing there. He was leaning on his rifle, gazing down at the dead, with no sound but the choking in his throat. A brace of turkeys over his shoulder showed that he had been hunting. In an instant I understood. It was the husband and father come home. He did not move as I looked at him nor raise his eyes, but stood transfixed under his agony. I glanced across at Spiltdorph, and saw that his eyes were wet and his lips quivering. I did not venture to speak, but my friend, who was ever more tactful than I, moved to the man's side and placed his hand gently on his shoulder.

"They died an easy death," he said softly. "See, they are still smiling.

They had no fear, no agony. They were dead before they knew that danger threatened. Let us thank G.o.d that they suffered no worse."

The man breathed a long sigh and his strength seemed to go suddenly from him, for he dropped his rifle and fell upon his knees.

"This was my wife," he whispered. "This was my sister. These were my children. What is there left on earth for me?"

I no longer sought to control the working of my face, and the tears were streaming down Spiltdorph's cheeks. Great, gentle, manly heart, how I loved you!

"Yes, there is something!" cried the man, and he sprang to his feet and seized his gun. "There is vengeance! Friends, will you help me bury my dead?"

"Yes, we will help," I said. He brought a spade and hoe from a little hut near the stream, and we dug a broad and shallow trench and laid the bodies in it.

"There is one missing," said the man, looking about him. "Where is he?"

"He is here," said Spiltdorph, opening his coat. "He is not dead. He may yet live."

The father looked at the boy a moment, then fell on his knees and kissed him.

"Thank G.o.d!" he cried, and the tears burst forth. We waited in silence until the storm of grief was past. At last he wrapped the coat about the child again, and came to us where we stood beside the grave.

"Friends," he said, "does either of you know the burial service? These were virtuous and Christian women, and would wish a Christian burial."

Spiltdorph sadly shook his head, and the man turned to me. Could I do it?

I trembled at the thought. Yet how could I refuse?

"I know the service," I said, and took my place at the head of the grave.

The mists of evening were stealing up from the forest about us, and there was no sound save the plashing of the brook over the stones at our feet.

Then it all faded from before me and I was standing again in a willow grove with an open grave afar off.

"'I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord,'" It was not my voice, but another ringing up to heaven from beside me. And the voice kept on and on until the last amen.

We filled in the shallow grave and covered it with logs and rocks. Night was at hand before we finished.

"You must come with us," said Spiltdorph to the stranger. "The doctor at the fort will do what he can for the child. If you still think of vengeance, you can march with us against the Indians and the French who set them on."

He made a gesture of a.s.sent, and we set off through the forest.

"Stewart," asked Spiltdorph, in a low voice, after we had walked some time in silence, "how does it happen you knew the burial service?"

"I have read it many times in the prayer-book," I answered simply.

"Moreover, I heard it one morning beside my mother's grave, and again beside my grandfather's. I am not like to forget it."

He walked on for a moment, and then came close to me and caught my hand in his.

"Forgive me," he said softly. "You have done a good and generous thing. I can judge how much it cost you," and we said no more until we reached the fort.

The news that the Indians had pushed hostilities so near the camp created no little uproar, and a party was sent out at daybreak to scour the woods and endeavor to teach the marauders a lesson, but they returned toward evening without discovering a trace of them, and it was believed they had made off to Fort Duquesne. The Indians whom we had killed were recognized as two of a party of Delawares who had been in camp a few days before, and who, it was now certain, had been sent as spies by the French and to do us what harm they could. Wherefore it was ordered that no more Delawares should be suffered to enter the camp.

We turned the child over to Doctor Craik, and took the man, whose name, it seemed, was Nicholas St.i.th, to our tent with us, where we gave him meat and drink, and did what we could to take his mind from his misfortune. He remained with us some days, until his child died, as it did at last, and then, finding our advance too slow to keep pace with his pa.s.sion for revenge, secured a store of ball and powder from the magazine, slung his rifle across his back, and disappeared into the forest.

In the mean time our preparations had been hurried on apace. It was no light task to cut a road through near a hundred and fifty miles of virgin forest, over two great mountain ranges and across innumerable streams, nor was it lightly undertaken. Captain Waggoner brought with him to table one night a copy of the orders for the march and for encampment, which were adhered to with few changes during the whole advance, and we discussed them thoroughly when the meal was finished, nor could we discover in them much to criticise.

It was ordered that, to protect the baggage from Indian surprise and insult, scouting parties were to be thrown well out upon the flanks and in front and rear, and every commanding officer of a company was directed to detach always upon his flanks a third of his men under command of a sergeant, the sergeant in turn to detach upon his flanks a third of his men under command of a corporal, these outparties to be relieved every night at retreat beating, and to form the advanced pickets. The wagons, artillery, and pack-horses were formed into three divisions, and the provisions so distributed that each division was to be victualed from the part of the line it covered, and a commissary was appointed for each. The companies were to march two deep, that they might cover the line more effectively. Sir Peter Halket was to lead the column and Colonel Dunbar bring up the rear. An advance party of three hundred men was to precede the column and clear the road.

The form of encampment differed little from that of march. The wagons were to be drawn up in close order, the companies to face out, the flanking parties to clear away the underbrush and saplings, half the company remaining under arms the while, and finally a chain of sentries was to be posted round the camp. Sir Peter Halket, with the Forty-Fourth, was to march with the first division; Lieutenant-Colonel Burton with the independent companies, provincials, and artillery, was to form the second; and Colonel Dunbar, with the Forty-Eighth, the third.

I confess that when I had become acquainted with these orders, they seemed to me most soldier-like. A copy of them lies before me now, and even at this day, when I scan again the plan of march, I do not see how it could be improved. I admit that there are others who know much more of the art of war than I, and to them defects in the system may be at once discernible. But at the time, these orders gave us all a most exalted opinion of our general's ability, and I remembered with a smile the gloomy prophecies of Colonel Washington. Surely, against such a force, so ably handled, no army the French might muster could avail, and I awaited the event with a confidence and eager antic.i.p.ation which were shared by all the others.

CHAPTER XV

WE START ON A WEARY JOURNEY

The twenty-ninth of May dawned clear and bright in pleasant contrast to the violent storm which had raged the day before. Long ere daybreak, the camp was alive with hurrying men, for the first detachment was to march under command of Major Campbell, and the sun had scarce risen above the horizon when the gates were thrown open and the troops filed out. Six hundred of them there were, with two fieldpieces and fifty wagons of provision, and very smart they looked as they fell into rank beyond the bridge and set off westward. The whole camp was there to see them go, and cheered them right heartily, for we were all of us glad that the long waiting and delay had come to an end at last.

All day we could see them here and there in the intervales of the forest pushing their way up a steep hill not two miles from the camp, and darkness came before they pa.s.sed the summit. Three wagons were utterly destroyed in the pa.s.sage, and new ones had to be sent from camp to replace them, while many more were all but ruined. Spiltdorph and I walked out to the place the next day and found it an almost perpendicular rock, though two hundred men and a company of miners had been at work for near a week trying to make it pa.s.sable. We could see the detachment slowly cutting its way through the valley below, and I reflected gloomily that, at so slow a rate, the summer would be well-nigh gone before the army could reach its destination. Indeed, I believe it would have gone to pieces on this first spur of the Alleghenies, had not Lieutenant Spendelow, of the seamen, discovered a valley round its foot.

Accordingly, a party of a hundred men was ordered out to clear a road there, and worked to such purpose that at the end of two days an extremely good one was completed, falling into the road made by Major Campbell about a mile beyond the mountain.

On the seventh, Sir Peter Halket and the Forty-Eighth marched, in the midst of a heavy storm, and at daybreak the next day it was our turn.

Under command of Lieutenant-Colonel Burton, all of the independent companies and rangers left the camp, not, indeed, making so brilliant an appearance as the regulars,--who stood on either side and laughed at us,--but with a clearer comprehension of the work before us and a hearty readiness to do it. It was not until the tenth that the third division under Colonel Dunbar left the fort, and finally, on the eleventh, the general joined the army where it had a.s.sembled at Spendelow camp, five miles from the start.

Our tent that night was a gloomy place, for I think most of us, for the first time since the campaign opened, began to doubt its ultimate success. We soon finished with the food, and were smoking in gloomy silence, when Peyronie came in, and after a glance around at our faces, broke into a laugh.

"Ma foi!" he cried, "I thought I had chanced upon a meeting of our Philadelphia friends,--they of the broad hats and sober coats,--and yet I had never before known them to go to war."

"Do you call this going to war?" cried Waggoner. "I'm cursed if I do!"

Peyronie laughed louder than ever, and Waggoner motioned him to the pipes and tobacco.

"By G.o.d, Peyronie!" he said. "I believe you would laugh in the face of the devil."

Peyronie filled his pipe, chuckling to himself the while, and when he had got it to drawing nicely, settled himself upon a stool.

"Why, to tell the truth," said he, "I was feeling sober enough myself till I came in here, but the sight of you fellows sitting around for all the world like death-heads at an Egyptian feast was too much for me. And then," he added, "I have always found it better to laugh than to cry."