A Soldier of Virginia Part 28

"Sit down a minute, Long," I said, as he started back to his quarters. "I don't believe we'll have any more trouble with those fellows, but perhaps it would be well to watch them."

"Trust me for that, sir," he answered. "I'll see to it that there are no more meetings of that kind. With Polete away, there is little danger. The only question is whether he will stay away."

"I think he will," and I looked out over the river thoughtfully. "He seemed to understand the danger he was in. If he returns, you will have to deliver him up to the authorities at once, of course."

"Well," said Long, "I'm not a bloodthirsty man, sir, as perhaps you know, but I think we'd be safer if he were dead. Still, we'll be safe enough anyway, now the n.i.g.g.e.rs know their plot is discovered. But we were in a ticklish place there for a while this evening."

"Yes," I answered, with a smile. "It was not so easy as I had expected. I want to thank you, Long, for going with me. It was a service on your part which showed you have the interest of the place at heart, and are not afraid of danger."

"That's all right, sir," he said awkwardly. "Good-night."

"Wait till I get your pistols," I said. "You left them in the hall, you know."

The moonlight was streaming through the open window, and as I stepped into the hall, I rubbed my eyes, for I thought I must be dreaming. There in a great chair before the fireplace sat Colonel Was.h.i.+ngton. His head had fallen back, his eyes were closed, and from his deep and regular breathing I knew that he was sleeping. Marveling greatly at his presence here at this hour, I tiptoed around him, got Long's pistols, and took them out to him. Then I lighted my pipe and sat down in a chair opposite the sleeper, and waited for him to awake. I had not long to wait. Whether from my eyes on his face, or some other cause, he stirred uneasily, opened his eyes, and sat suddenly bolt upright.

"Why, Tom," he cried, as he saw me, "I must have been asleep."

"So you have," I said, shaking hands with him, and pressing him back into the chair, from which he would have risen. "But what fortunate chance has brought you here?"

"The most fortunate in the world!" he cried, his eyes agleam. "You know I told you that the governor and House of Burgesses would not bear quietly the project to leave our frontier open to the enemy. Well, read this,"

and he drew from his pocket a most formidable looking paper. I took it with a trembling hand and carried it to the window, but the moon was almost set, and I could not decipher it.

"What is it?" I asked, quivering with impatience.

"Here, give it to me," he said, with a light laugh, which reminded me of the night I had seen him first in the governor's palace at Williamsburg.

"The House of Burgesses has just met. They ordered that a regiment of a thousand men be raised to protect the frontier in addition to those already in the field, and voted 20,000 for the defense of the colony."

"And that is your commission!" I cried. "Is it not so?"

"Yes," he said, scarce less excited than myself. "'Tis my commission as commander-in-chief of all the Virginia forces."

I wrung his hand with joy unutterable. At last this man, who had done so much, was to know something beside disappointment and discouragement.

"But you do not ask how you are concerned in all this," he continued, smiling into my face, "or why I rode over myself to bring the news to you. 'Tis because I set out to-morrow at daybreak for Winchester to take command, and I wish you to go with me, Tom, as aide-de-camp, with the rank of captain."

CHAPTER XXIV

A WARNING FROM THE FOREST

It was at Winchester that Colonel Was.h.i.+ngton established his headquarters, maintaining a detachment at Fort c.u.mberland sufficient to repel any attack the Indians were like to make against it, and to cut off such of their war parties as ventured east of it. From Winchester he was able more easily to keep in touch with all parts of the frontier, and with the string of blockhouses which had been built years before as a gathering-place for the settlers in the event of Indian incursions. By the first of September his arrangements had been completed, but long before that time it was evident the task was to be no easy one.

Already, from the high pa.s.ses of the Alleghenies, war parties of Delawares and Shawanoes had descended, sweeping down upon the frontier families like a devastating whirlwind, and butchering men, women, and children with impartial fury. The unbounded forest, which covered hill and valley with a curtain of unbroken foliage, afforded a thousand lurking-places, and it was well-nigh impossible for an armed force to get within striking distance of the marauders. So, almost daily, stories of horrible cruelty came to the fort, plunging the commander into an agony of rage and dejection at his very impotence. The fort was soon crowded with refugees,--wives bewailing their husbands, husbands swearing to avenge their wives, parents lamenting their children, children of a sudden made orphans,--and from north and south, scores of hard-featured, steel-eyed men came to us, their rifles in their hands, to offer their services, and after a time these came to be one of the most valuable portions of our force.

Ah, the stories they told us! Tragedies such as that which Spiltdorph and I had come upon had been repeated scores of times. The settler who had left his cabin at daybreak in search of game, or to carry his furs to the nearest post, returned at sundown to find only a smoking heap of ashes where his home had been, and among them the charred and mutilated bodies of his wife and children. Horror succeeded horror, and the climax came one day when we were pa.s.sing a little schoolhouse some miles below the fort, in the midst of a district well populated. Wondering at the unwonted silence, we dismounted, opened the door, and looked within. The master lay upon the platform with his pupils around him, all dead and newly scalped. The savages had pa.s.sed that way not half an hour before.

And to add to the trials of the commander, his troops, hastily got together, were most of them impatient of restraint or discipline, and with no knowledge of warfare, while the governor and the House of Burgesses demanded that he undertake impossibilities. It was a dreary, trying, thankless task.

"They expect me to perform miracles," he said to me bitterly one day.

"How am I to protect a frontier four hundred miles in length with five or six hundred effective men, against an enemy who knows every foot of the ground, and who can find a hiding-place at every step?"

Only by the sternest measures could many of the levies be brought to the fort, and one man--a captain, G.o.d save the mark!--sent word that he and his company could not come because their corn had not yet been got in.

Yet, in spite of all these drawbacks, we did accomplish something. There were a few of the Iroquois who yet remained our friends, and the general spared no effort to retain their goodwill, for their services were invaluable. With a lofty contempt for the Delawares and Shawanoes, whom they had one time subjugated and compelled to a.s.sume the name of women, they roamed the forest for miles around, and more than once enabled us to ambush one of the war parties and send it howling back to the Muskingum, where there was great weeping and wailing in the lodges upon its return.

But it was fruitless work, for the Indians, driven back for the moment, returned with augmented fury, and again drenched the frontier in the blood of the colonists.

We realized one and all that nothing we could do would turn the tide of war permanently from our borders and render the frontier safe until the French had been driven from Fort Duquesne. For it was they who urged the Indians on, supplying them with guns and ammunition, and rewarding them with rum when they returned to the fort laden with English scalps. An expedition against the French stronghold was for the present out of the question, and we could only bite our nails and curse, waiting for another night when we might sally forth and fall upon one of the war parties. But the few Indians we killed seemed a pitiful atonement for the mangled bodies scattered along the frontier and the hundreds of homes of which there remained nothing but blackened ruins. As the weeks pa.s.sed and the Indians saw our impotence, they grew bolder, slipped through the chain of blockhouses, and ravaged the country east of us, disappearing into the woods as if by magic at the first alarm.

The month of August and the first portion of September wore away in this dreary manner, and it was perhaps a week later that Colonel Was.h.i.+ngton sent me to Frederick to make arrangements for some supplies. The distance, which was a scant fifty miles, was over a well-traveled road, and through a district so well protected that the Indians had not dared to visit it; so I rode out of the fort one morning, taking with me only my negro boy Sam, whom I had selected for my servant since the day he had warned me against Polete. I remember that the day was very warm, and that there was no air stirring, so that we pushed forward with indifferent speed. At noon we reached a farmhouse owned by John Evans, where we remained until the heat had somewhat moderated, and set forward again about four o'clock in the afternoon.

We had ridden for near an hour, and I was deep in my own thoughts, when I heard something breaking its way through the underbrush, and the next moment my horse s.h.i.+ed violently as a negro stumbled blindly into the road and collapsed into a heap before he had taken half a dozen steps along it. I reined up sharply, and as I did so, heard Sam give a shrill cry of alarm.

"Shut up, boy," I cried, "and get off and see what ails the man. He can't hurt you."

But Sam sat in his saddle clutching at his horse's neck, his face spotted with terror as I had seen it once before.

"What is it, Sam?" I asked impatiently.

"Good Gawd, Mas' Tom," he cried, his teeth chattering together and cutting off his words queerly, "don' yo' see who 'tis? Don' yo'

know him?"

"Know him? No, of course not," I answered sharply. "Who is he?"

"Polete," gasped Sam. "Polete, come back aftah me," and seemed incapable of another word.

In an instant I was off my horse and kneeling in the road beside the fallen man. Not till then did I believe it was Polete. From a great gash in the side of his head the blood had soaked into his hair and dried over his face. His s.h.i.+rt was stained, apparently from a wound in his breast, but most horrible of all was a circular, reeking spot on the crown of his head from which the scalp had been stripped. It needed no second glance to tell me that Polete had been in the hands of the Indians.

By this time Sam had partially recovered his wits, and being convinced that it was Polete in the flesh, not in the spirit, brought some water from a spring at the roadside. I bathed Polete's head as well as I could, and washed the blood from his face. Tearing open his s.h.i.+rt, I saw that blood was slowly welling from an ugly wound in his breast. He opened his eyes after a moment, and stared vacantly up into my face.

"Debbils," he moaned, "debbils, t' kill a po' ole man. Ain't I said I done gwine t' lib wid yo'? Kain't trabble fas' 'nough fo' yo'? Don'

shoot, oh, don' shoot! Ah!"

He dropped back again into the road with a groan, and tossed from side to side. I thought he was dying, but when I dashed more water in his face, he opened his eyes again. This time he seemed to know me.

"Is it Mas' Tom?" he gasped. "Mas' Tom what let me go?"

"Yes, Polete," I answered gently, "it's Master Tom."

"Whar am I?" he asked faintly. "Have dee got me 'gin? Dee gwine to buhn me?"

"No, no," I said. "n.o.body 's going to harm you, Polete. Where have you been all this time?"

"In d' woods," he whispered, "hidin' in d' swamps, an' skulkin' long aftah night. Could n' nevah sleep, Mas' Tom. When I went t' sleep, seemed laike d' dogs was right aftah me."

His head fell back again, and a rush of blood in his throat almost choked him.

"Wish I'd stayed at d' plantation, Mas' Tom," he whispered. "Nothin'