The Shadow of the North: A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign, Altsheler [reading eggs books txt] 📗

"I like it not," replied the Onondaga. "In war I fear the forest when it is silent."

Near them a small circle of land had been cleared and in it stood a house, lone and deserted. It had been built by a trader named Fraser and in it Washington, who had visited it once before on a former mission, and one or two others sat, during the period of rest and refreshment. The young Virginian, despite his great frame and gigantic strength, was so much wasted by fever that, when he came forth to remount, he was barely able to keep his place in his saddle.

Now the merry trumpets sang again and the red and blue column, lifting itself up, resumed its march along the trail through the forest toward Duquesne. The river was on one side and a line of high hills on the other, but the forest everywhere was dense and in its heaviest foliage. Braddock, despite the safe passage of the ford, was not reckless. A troop of guides and Virginia light horsemen led the way. A hundred yards behind them came the vanguard, then Gage with a picked body of British troops, after them the axmen, who had done such great work, behind them the main body of the artillery, the wagons and the packhorses, while a strong force of regulars and Virginians closed up the rear. Scouts and skirmishers ranged the flanks, though they were ordered to go not more than a few hundred yards away.

Robert, Tayoga and Willet were with the guides at the very apex of the column, and they continually searched the forests and the thickets with keen eyes for a possible enemy. But all was quiet there. The game, frightened by the advancing army, had gone away. Not a leaf, not a bough stirred. The blazing sun, now near the zenith, poured down fiery rays and it was hot in the shade of the great trees that grew so closely together.

Robert and the other scouts and guides in the apex marched on soundless feet, but he heard close behind him the tread of the Virginia light horsemen, behind them the steady march of the regulars under Gage, and behind them the deep hum and murmur of the army, the creaking of wheels and the clank of the great guns. Despite the following sounds he was conscious all the time of the deep, intense silence in the forest on either side of him. The birds, like the game, had gone away, and there was no flash of blue or of flame among the green leaves.

"There's a dip just ahead," said Willet, pointing to a wide ravine filled with bushes that ran directly across the trail.

They continued their steady advance, and Robert's heart fluttered, but when they came to the ravine they found it empty of everything save the bushes, and the scouts and guides, plunging into it, crossed to the other side. The light horsemen of Virginia followed, after them Gage's regulars and then the main army drew on its red and blue length, expecting to cross in the same way.

Robert, Tayoga and Willet, leading, entered the deep forest again. Some chance had put young Lennox slightly in advance of his comrades, but suddenly he stopped. A short distance ahead a figure bounded across the trail and disappeared in the thicket. It was only a flitting glimpse, but he recognized St. Luc, the athletic figure, the fair hair and the strong face.

"St. Luc!" he exclaimed. "Did you see, Dave? Did you see?"

"Aye, I saw," said the hunter, "and the enemy is here!"

He whirled about, threw up his arms and shouted to the column to stop. At the same moment, a terrible cry, the long fierce war whoop of the savages, burst from the forest, filled the air and came back in ferocious echoes. Then a deadly fire of rifles and muskets was poured from both right and left upon the marching column. Men and horses went down, and cries of pain and surprise blended with the war whoop of the savages which swelled and fell again.

Robert and his comrades had thrown themselves flat upon the ground at the first fire, and escaped the bullets. Now they rose to their knees, and began to send their own bullets at the flitting forms among the trees and bushes. Robert caught glimpses of the savages, naked to the waist, coated thickly with war paint, their fierce eyes gleaming, and now and then he saw a man in French uniform passing among them and encouraging them. He saw one gigantic figure which he knew to be that of Tandakora, and he raised his reloaded rifle to fire at him, but the Ojibway was gone.

Surprised in the ominous forest, the British and the Virginians nevertheless showed a courage worthy of all praise. Gage formed his regulars on the trail, and they sent volley after volley into the dense shades on either side, the big muskets thundering together like cannon. Leaves and twigs and little boughs fell in showers before their bullets, but whether they struck any of the foe they did not know. The smoke soon rose in clouds and added to the dimness and obscurity of the forest.

"A great noise," shouted Tayoga in Robert's ear, "but it does not hurt the enemy, who sees his target and sends his bullets against it!"

The soldiers were dropping fast and the bullets of the French and the savages were coming from their coverts in a deadly rain. Robert, Willet and Tayoga, with the wisdom of the wilderness, remained crouched at the edge of the trail, but in shelter, and did not fire until they saw an enemy upon whom to draw the trigger. Then a deeper roar was added to the thundering of the big muskets, as Braddock brought up the cannon, and they began to sweep the forest. The English troops, eager to get at the foe, crowded forward, shouting "God save the King!" and the cheers of the Virginians joined with them.

"We'll win! We'll win!" cried Robert. "They can't stop such brave men as ours!"

But the fire of the French and the savages was increasing in volume and accuracy. The bullets and cannon balls of the English and Americans fired almost at random were passing over their heads, but the great column of scarlet and blue on the trail formed a target which the leaden missiles could not miss. Continually shouting the war whoop, exultant now with the joy of expected triumph, the savages hovered on either flank of Braddock's army like a swarm of bees, but with a sting far more deadly. The brave and wily Beaujeu had been killed in the first minute of the battle, but St. Luc, Dumas and Ligneris, equally brave and wily, directed the onset, and the huge Tandakora raged before his warriors.

The head of the British column was destroyed, and the three crept back toward Gage's regulars, but the fire of the enemy was now spreading along both flanks of the column to its full length. Robert remembered the warning words of St. Luc. Every twig and leaf in the forest was spouting death. Gage's regulars, raked by a terrible fire, and in danger of complete destruction, were compelled to retreat upon the main body, and, to their infinite mortification, abandon two cannon, which the savages seized with fierce shouts of joy and dragged into the woods.

"It goes ill," said Willet, as the terrible forest, raining death from every side, seemed to close in on them like the shadow of doom. Braddock, hearing the tremendous fire ahead, rushed forward his own immediate troops as fast as possible, and meeting Gage's retreating men, the two bodies became a great mass of scarlet in the forest, upon which French and Indian bullets, that could not miss, beat like a storm of hail. The shouts and cheers of the regulars ceased. In an appalling situation, the like of which they had never known before, hemmed in on every side by an unseen death, they fell into confusion, but they did not lose courage. The savage ring now enclosed the whole army, and to stand and to retreat alike meant death.

The British charged with the bayonet into the thickets. The Indians melted away before them, and, when the exhausted regulars came back into the trail, the Indians rushed after them, still pouring in a murderous fire, and making the forest ring with the ferocious war whoop. The Virginians, knowing the warfare of the wilderness, began to take to the shelter of the trees, from which they could fire at the enemy. The brave though mistaken Braddock fiercely ordered them out again. A score lying behind a fallen trunk and, matching the savages at their own game, were mistaken by the regulars for the foe, and were fired upon with deadly effect. Other regulars who tried to imitate the hostile tactics were set upon by Braddock himself who beat them with the flat of his sword and drove them back into the open trail, where the rain of bullets fell directly upon them.

Robert looked upon the scene and he found it awful to the last degree. The bodies of the dead in red or blue lay everywhere. Officers, English and Virginian, ran here and there begging and praying their troops to stand and form in order. "Fire upon the enemy!" they shouted. "Show us somebody to fire at and we'll fire," the men shouted back. The confusion was deepening, and the signs of a panic were appearing. In the forest the circle of Indians, mad with battle and the greatest taking of scalps they had ever known, pressed closer and closer, and sent sheets of bullets into the huddled mass. Many of them leaped in and scalped the fallen before the eyes of the horrified soldiers. The yelling never ceased, and it was so terrific that the few British officers who survived declared that they would never forget it to their dying day.

Among the officers the mortality was now frightful. The brave Sir Peter Halket was shot dead, and his young son, the lieutenant, rushing to raise up his body, was killed and fell by his side. The youthful Shirley, Braddock's secretary, received a bullet in his brain and died instantly. Out of eighty-six officers sixty-three were down. Washington alone seemed to bear a charmed life. Two horses were killed under him and four bullets pierced his clothing. Braddock galloped back and forth, cursing and shouting to his men, and showing undaunted courage. Robert believed that he never really understood what was happening, that the deadly nature of the surprise and its appalling completeness left him dazed.

How long Robert stood at the edge of the circle of death and fired into the bushes he never knew, but it seemed to him that almost an eternity had passed, when Tayoga seized him by the arm and shouted in his ear.

"It is finished! Our army has perished! Come, Lennox!"

He wiped the smoke from his eyes, and saw that the mass in red and blue was much smaller. Braddock was still on his horse, and, at the insistence of his officers, he was at last giving the command to retreat. Just as the trumpet sounded that note of defeat he was shot through the body and fell to the ground where, in his rage and despair, he begged the men to leave him to die alone. But two of the Virginia officers lifted him up and bore him toward the rear. Then the army that had fought so long against an invisible foe broke into a panic, that is what was left of it, as two thirds of its numbers had already been killed or wounded. Shouting with horror and ignoring their officers, they rushed for the river.

Everything was lost, cannon and baggage were abandoned, and often rifles and muskets were thrown away. Into the water they rushed, and the Indians, who had followed howling like wolves, stopped, though they fired at the fleeing men in the stream.

As the retreat began, Robert, Tayoga and Willet, whom some miracle seemed to preserve from harm, joined the Virginians who covered the rear, and, as fast as they could reload their rifles, they fired at the demon horde that pressed closer and closer, and that never ceased to cut down the fleeing army. It was much like a ghastly dream to Robert. Nothing was real, except his overwhelming sense of horror. Men fell around him, and he wondered why he did not fall too, but he was untouched, and Willet and Tayoga also were unwounded. He saw near him young Stuart who had lost his horse long since, but who had snatched a rifle from