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His representations were of no avail. The officers of the regular service had received a fearful idea of Braddock's road from his own despatches, wherein he had described it as lying "across mountains and rocks of an excessive height, vastly steep, and divided by torrents and rivers," whereas the Pennsylvania traders, who were anxious for the opening of the new road through their province, described the country through which it would pass as less difficult, and its streams less subject to inundation; above all, it was a direct line, and fifty miles nearer.
Nor was Tayoga, the young Onondaga, free from emotion when he thought of Braddock's defeat, and the blazing triumph it meant for the western tribes, the enemies of his people. They had turned back, availing themselves of their roving commission, when they saw that the victors were not pursuing the remains of the beaten army, and now they were watching the French and Indians.
"As I have heard," he said after Braddock's defeat, "since my arrival at this place, a circumstancial account of my death and dying speech, I take this early opportunity of contradicting the first, and of assuring you, that I have not as yet composed the latter." Many years later, in draughting a letter for his wife, he wrote,
The retreat had become a rout and then a massacre. The savages raged up and down in the greatest killing they had known since Braddock's defeat. The lodges of the Iroquois would be full of the scalps of white men. All the five felt the full horror of the scene, but it made its deepest impress, perhaps, upon Paul. He had taken part in border battles before, but this was the first great defeat.
It was reported, too, that Cahokia had been taken, and that, even as the messenger was leaving Kaskaskia, "Gibault, a French priest, had his horse ready saddled to go to Vincennes to receive the submission of the inhabitants in the name of the rebels." George Rogers Clark was a Virginian, born in the foothills of Albemarle County three years before Braddock's defeat.
You must all join hands in breaking me into the circus business. Don't let me be a what is it you call it? A rube, that's it. We'll be the show's happy family. Every circus has a 'happy family. Yes, 'pon my soul, I like the life. I do enjoy these quiet, impromptu little suppers." David was suddenly conscious that Braddock's eyes were upon him. He met the gaze, curiously impelled.
"With my company of the 67th, I would go anywhere. And, agreed with you, that at this present moment I know more of soldiering than they; but place me on that open ground where you found us, armed as you please, and half a dozen of my friends, with rifles, in the woods round about me; which would get the better? You know best, Mr. Braddock's aide-de-camp!"
At all events, and be the cause of difference what it might, when the storm of the Revolution burst over the land, the brothers were found arrayed on opposite sides the two younger, the fathers of Roland and Edith, instantly taking up arms in the popular cause, while nothing, perhaps, but helpless feebleness and bodily infirmities, the results of wounds received in Braddock's war, throughout which he had fought at the head of a battalion of "Buckskins," or Virginia Rangers, prevented the elder brother from arming as zealously in the cause of his king.
"If you think so," was the quiet answer, "you are at liberty to step back." The moment was too exciting, too fraught with meaning, to think of peril. The old fighting spirit of Braddock's field was unchained for the last time.
It is no easy task to find the tomb of Tahoser. And yet if I could if I could only get the money," and he walked up and down with his head bent on his breast. Mrs. Jasher was used to Braddock's vagaries by this time, and merely continued to fan herself placidly. "I wish I could help you with the expedition," she said quietly. "I should like to have some of that lovely Egyptian jewelry myself.
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