and compelled to assume 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 passed 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 Washington
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 shied violently as a negro stumbled blindly into the
road and collapsed in