After this there was no doubt as to the value of the American “Provincials,” whether in buckskin or in rags. The Major Lewis battalion had held the enemy while the Major Grant Regulars had retreated; and then Captain Bullitt’s company had saved these, or they would all have been killed in the woods.
General Forbes issued an order complimenting Washington upon his men, and Captain Bullitt was promoted to be a major.
As for Robert, he had been lucky; and as for Scarouady, he went away, disgusted again with the foolishness of fighting with one’s eyes closed.
The useless battle in front of Fort Duquesne had occurred about the middle of September. October passed, with Colonel Bouquet waiting here at Loyalhannon where he had finished the supply-fort named Fort Ligonier.
Washington was bringing on the new Virginia regiment, and General Forbes was on the way from his sick bed.
Washington arrived first. If ever a man was welcome, it was he. The very sight of him gave confidence that the onward march would be made with sense.
But General Forbes was coming on from Raystown in a litter, with the main column. The fifty miles of new road had been found to be very bad, and Fort Duquesne was another fifty miles ahead. November had opened with rain and snow again; the Virginia and Maryland troops were short of clothing and blankets. If fifty days had been spent in getting this far, only fifty miles, when could they all break through the next fifty miles upon a winter trail?
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!