The Boy Scouts of Bob's Hill Part 32

While we were standing there talking about it, a man burst through the bushes, followed by a girl, about eighteen years old, I guess.

"Are these your Injuns?" he asked, before we had time to run. Then he burst out laughing in such a way that we were not afraid to stay.

In a minute we had found out all about it. They were fern gatherers and Benny had taken them for bears. A lot of people go up on the mountain in August, picking what they call Boston ferns to sell to florists. They put them in cold storage and keep them a long time. There is a crazy little railroad at the foot of the mountain, on the east side, that carries whole train loads of those ferns to Hoosac Tunnel station, and afterward they are shipped all over the country to be put in bouquets.

Skinny's arrow had struck the girl and hurt her a little, but not much.

She was scared half to death.

Mr. Norton had a fine supper ready when we reached the camp again, and we ate until we couldn't eat any longer.

"You boys ought to know what you are doing every minute you are in the woods," he told us, after he had heard about the scare. "Suppose that Gabriel had been carrying a gun, as he wanted to, instead of a bow and arrows. Just think what would have happened. Hundreds of people have been killed in exactly that way. Careless hunters have mistaken them for bear or deer or some other game. You ought to have known what you were shooting at. It was a foolish thing to do, anyway. I don't believe there can be any bears around where so many people are looking for ferns and berries. We'll see dozens of pickers on the other side of the mountain, probably. If there ever were any bears they have been frightened away long before this. But suppose that had been a bear. For a bunch of boys to attack a bear with bows and arrows isn't bravery. It is foolishness.

I am ashamed of you."

We didn't feel quite so chesty when Mr. Norton had finished talking to us.

"Well, I am not going to spoil the day by scolding," he went on, after we'd had time to think it over a little. "You can see the folly of it as well as I. Let us sit here and watch the sun go down behind the west mountains. Did you ever see such glory? Then, when it grows dark, we'll build a campfire and I'll tell you about a great scout and a trip he once made through a wilderness."

It was fine sitting there, watching the sun sink into a golden sea behind the mountains, while the valley below was already in the shadow and the dark was creeping up the hillsides.

We sat there a long time without speaking, until finally the golden sea faded into a streak of gray, and up and down the valley we could see the twinkling lights of a half dozen towns and the farmhouses between.

Then Mr. Norton threw an armful of brush on the coals, and in the light of the blaze, which made the shadows dance like ghosts of Indian braves, he began his story.

"Some of you boys went out to Illinois, last summer," said he, "and I know from what you have told me that you learned much about the great French scout, LaSalle; how he explored the Ohio River and went up and down the Mississippi, taking possession of the country in the name of the king of France. We already have had one story which grew out of those early explorations. The Lewis and Clark Expedition through the Northwest, which I told you about, can be traced back to those scouting trips of LaSalle and the others, on account of which France claimed the country.

"This story is of another scouting trip, long after LaSalle's time and before Lewis and Clark were born, probably. It took place even before the United States was born, but, in a way, it grew out of those same trips of LaSalle and Tonty, Marquette and Joliet, the French explorers of the seventeenth century."

"Was this scout a Frenchman, then?" asked Benny.

"No, he was of English parentage, one of the finest English country gentlemen who ever lived, but born in America, and one of the greatest American scouts.

"He was a friend of yours, too, Skinny," he added, laughing to himself.

"Not me," Skinny told him, shaking his head. "I think a lot more of England than I did, on account of General Baden-Powell and the Boy Scout business, but I don't know this feller."

"That is strange. It seems to me that I have heard you remark something about his being able to lick Napoleon Bonaparte with one hand tied behind his back."

"George Washington!" shouted Skinny. "The Father of his Country. First in----"

"Say, who's tellin' this story, anyhow?" said Bill, pulling Skinny over and sitting on him.

"Yes, George Washington, who, it seems to me, would have made the finest kind of a Boy Scout in his younger days--a scout worthy of membership in Raven Patrol. He seems to have had all of the Scout virtues. He was trustworthy, loyal to his home and his native land; he was thrifty; he was brave; he was reverent."

"I'll bet he couldn't bandage a broken leg like we can," Benny told him.

"Maybe not, but he could find his way through the forest and he didn't go around shooting at girls, thinking that they were bears. He liked girls too well for that. I believe he liked the girls better, even, than our patrol leader does."

We set up a yell at that.

"Aw, I ain't stuck on no girls," said Skinny. "I just rescue 'em, that's all."

"It's all right," Mr. Norton told him. "A girl is the greatest thing in the world, unless it is a boy. Anyhow, George Washington was a splendid type of American boyhood and he surely liked the girls; used to write poetry about them when he was your age."

I don't know why, but somehow we seemed to think more of Washington after we had heard that. It seemed to bring him closer to us and make him a real person, instead of a picture on the wall, praying at Valley Forge or crossing the Delaware. Most always Washington is crossing the Delaware when you see him.

"He was a big fellow in the first place, while Napoleon was small. Size of body doesn't always count. Some of the greatest men the world has produced have been small of stature. But George Washington was a big fellow. Like Lincoln, he could outwrestle, outthrow, and outjump any of his mates. They still show a spot down in Fredericksburg where he stood and threw a stone across the Rappahannock River. He didn't seem to know the meaning of fear. From his early youth he was a fine horseman, taming and riding horses that n.o.body else could manage."

"Did his mother call him Georgie?" asked Benny, before we could stop him.

"Perhaps she did, although I hardly can imagine it. At the age of fourteen George wanted to enter the English navy and he came pretty near doing it. If he had, perhaps he would have become a great admiral instead of the father of his country. Who knows?

"A midshipman's warrant was obtained for him, so the story goes, and his clothes actually had been sent aboard a man-of-war. Then, at the last minute, his mother found that she could not give up her oldest boy and she withdrew her consent. It was a great disappointment to the boy, but like the good Scout that he was he obeyed his mother and went back to school. He learned to be a surveyor.

"Boys matured earlier in those days when the country was new. When Washington was only sixteen he set out on horseback through the Blue Ridge Mountains on a surveying trip. A year afterward he was given command of the militia in a Virginia district, with the rank of major."

"I don't see what LaSalle had to do with all that," said Harry.

"He didn't have anything to do with it, but he had something to do with the scouting trip which came later. You see, France and England each had obtained a strong foothold in this country; France, along the Great Lakes and Mississippi River; England, along the Atlantic Coast. Between the Mississippi and the coast stretched a beautiful and fertile country, the valley of the Ohio. When LaSalle made his explorations he took possession of the Mississippi in the name of the king of France. On that account France claimed to own all the land along the Mississippi and along all the rivers which flowed into the Mississippi. That took in a great part of the continent."

"I don't see how because LaSalle stood on a rock and hollered out some words," Hank told him, "that made the whole country belong to France."

"England couldn't see it. Still, the English claim was not much better.

Commissioners from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia made a treaty with the Iroquois Indians in 1741. By the terms of that treaty, for something like $2,000, the Indians gave up all right and t.i.tle to all the land west of the Alleghany Mountains, clear to the Mississippi River. There were all kinds of Indians living in the Ohio Valley but, according to the traditions of the Iroquois Indians, their forefathers once upon a time had conquered it."

"It looks like six of one and half a dozen of the other," I said.

"There wasn't a white settlement in the whole territory. Some hardy fur traders from Pennsylvania had made trips into the valley and this led to the formation of the Ohio Company of Virginia, with the object of getting ahead of the French and colonizing the lands. Then the French began to get busy. France owned Canada at that time, you know. In 1749 the French Governor of Canada sent three hundred men to the banks of the Ohio River with presents for the Indians. They ordered the English traders out of the country and nailed lead plates to trees, telling everybody that the land belonged to France. The Indians liked the presents well enough, but the lead plates made them mad, when they found out their meaning. One old chief exclaimed:

"'The French claim all the land on one side of the Ohio; the English claim all the land on the other. Now, where does the Indian land lie?'

"I have gone into this explanation in order to make it clear to you why Washington was sent on his scouting trip. Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia wanted to send some one whom he could trust to the French commander, to protest against the French coming into the country. At the same time, he thought the messenger would be able to find out how strong the French were, how many canoes they had, and all that. It was a perilous mission to undertake through an unknown wilderness, with winter coming on. Young Washington was only twenty-two years old, but he was selected as the one to make the dangerous trip.

"Major Washington started from Williamsburg, October 31, 1753. On the frontier he procured horses, tents, etc. Later he was joined by a famous woodsman, named Christopher Gist. They took along a white man to act as interpreter and some Indian guides. Chief White Thunder was one. Another was known as the Half King. His friendship was very important to the English.

"I imagine that the mountains which they went through were much like these, except that rains and snow had made them almost impa.s.sable. The party pushed on, however, and early in December arrived at the first French outpost. The French captain gave a feast in their honor, in the course of which he drank so much wine that it made him talkative. He began to brag of what the French were going to do. He said that they were going to take possession of the entire Ohio Valley. The young American scout kept his head clear and afterward wrote down in a book all that he had heard.

"Then Washington set out again, and after four more days of weary travel they came to the French fort on the west fork of French Creek, about fifteen miles south of Lake Erie. There he delivered his message, and after a great deal of delay received a sealed reply.

"While pretending to be friendly, the French did their best to win the Indian guides away from Washington. They plied them with liquor and with presents, so much so that the young scout had a hard time in starting them toward home. He succeeded finally in getting away. They first went up the creek in boats as far as an Indian village, called Venango; then set out by land. Soon their pack horses became so jaded that Washington used his saddle horse for a pack horse and walked. After three days of that, he and Gist took their packs on their shoulders, their guns in their hands, and started out alone, on a short cut to the Ohio River.

"You will find the story in any history. At one time a treacherous Indian guide wheeled suddenly and shot at Washington, but did not hit him. The two men quickly overpowered the savage, and Gist was for killing him. Young Washington would not permit that, so they did the next best thing. They took his gun away and sent him home, making him think that they would follow in the morning. Instead of that, they left their campfire burning and traveled all night and all the next day, to get as far away from the spot as possible. At last they reached the Alleghany River, which they hoped to find frozen. There was open water, however, and they were forced to build a raft. All they had to work with was one hatchet, like Skinny's, I mean Gabriel's. On the way across, a cake of ice struck the raft and threw Washington into the river."

"Gee, I'll bet that it was cold," said Skinny.

"It was, but Washington clung to the raft and finally, in a half-frozen condition, drifted against an island, where the two men camped that night. In the morning they found ice cakes so wedged in that they were able to walk ash.o.r.e.

"January 16, in the dead of winter, Washington succeeded in reaching Williamsburg, and delivered the French commander's letter to Governor Dinwiddie. Soon after that came the French and Indian war, which I am sure you know all about, in which France lost all her American possessions except the great tract west of the Mississippi, which Napoleon later sold to President Jefferson.

"You see, being a scout in those days wasn't all play. It brought many hardships that we know little about, but, after all, it called for the same kind of boy. Washington was brave and true, helpful, kind, and clean, and he was prepared. When the time came, his preparedness put him in command of the American forces and afterward made him the first President of the United States."