Part 41 (2/2)

”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 b.a.l.l.s of the English and Americans fired almost at random were pa.s.sing 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 ma.s.s 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 ma.s.s. 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, rus.h.i.+ng to raise up his body, was killed and fell by his side. The youthful s.h.i.+rley, Braddock's secretary, received a bullet in his brain and died instantly. Out of eighty-six officers sixty-three were down.

Was.h.i.+ngton 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 pa.s.sed, 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 ma.s.s 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed a rifle from a fallen soldier, and who was fighting gallantly on foot.

”Who would have thought it?” exclaimed the Virginian. ”An army such as ours, to be beaten, nay, to be destroyed, by a swarm of savages!”

”But don't forget the Frenchmen!” shouted Robert in reply. ”They're directing!”

”Which is no consolation to us,” cried Stuart. He said something else, but it was lost in the tremendous firing and yelling of the Indians, who were now only a score of yards away from the devoted rear guard that was doing its best to protect the flying and confused ma.s.s of soldiers.

Robert discharged his bullet at a brown face and then, as he walked backward, he tripped and fell over a root. He sprang up at once, but in an instant a gigantic figure bounded out of the fire and smoke, and Tandakora, uttering a fierce shout of triumph, circled his tomahawk swiftly above his head, preparatory to the mortal blow. But Tayoga, quick as lightning, hurled his pistol with all his might. It struck the huge Ojibway on the head with such force that the tomahawk fell from his hand, and he staggered back into the smoke.

”Tayoga, again I thank you!” cried Robert.

”You will do the same for me,” said the Onondaga, and then they too were lost in the smoke, as with the rear guard of Virginians they followed the retreating army.

Robert and his comrades, swept on in the press, crossed the river with the others and gained the farther sh.o.r.e unhurt. Willet looked back at the woods, which still flamed with the hostile rifles, and shuddered.

”It's worse than anything of which I ever dreamed,” he said. ”Now the tomahawk and the scalping knife will sweep the border from Canada to Carolina.”

The panic was stopped at last and the broken remnants of the army, covered by the Virginians who understood the forest, began their retreat. Braddock died the next day, his last words being, ”We shall know better how to deal with them another time.” Was.h.i.+ngton, Orme, Morris and the others carried the news of the great defeat to Virginia and Pennsylvania, whence it was sent to England, to be received there at first with incredulity, men saying that such a thing was impossible. But England too was soon to be in mourning, because so many of her bravest had fallen at the hands of an invisible foe in the far American wilderness.

Robert, Willet and Tayoga followed the retreating army only a short distance beyond the Monongahela. They saw that Grosvenor, Stuart and Cabell had escaped with slight wounds, and, slipping quietly into the forest, they circled about Fort Duquesne, seeing the lights where the Indians were burning their wretched prisoners alive, and then plunging again into the woods.

Late at night they lay down in a dense covert, and exhausted, slept. They rose at dawn, and tried to shake off the horror.

<script>