egaled them with rum, and gave
them a bullock for a feast; whereupon, being much pleased, they danced a
war-dance, described by one spectator as "droll and odd, showing how
they scalp and fight;" after which, says another, "they set up the most
horrid song or cry that ever I heard."[211] These warriors, with a few
others, promised the General to join him on the march; but he apparently
grew tired of them, for a famous chief, called Scarroyaddy, afterwards
complained: "He looked upon us as dogs, and would never hear anything
that we said to him." Only eight of them remained with him to the
end.[212]

[Footnote 211: _Journal of a Naval Officer_, in Sargent. _The Expedition
of Major-General Braddock, being Extracts of Letters from an Officer_
(London, 1755).]

[Footnote 212: _Statement of George Croghan_, in Sargent, appendix iii.]

Another ally appeared at the camp. This was a personage long known in
Western fireside story as Captain Jack, the Black Hunter, or the Black
Rifle. It was said of him that, having been a settler on the farthest
frontier, in the Valley of the Juniata, he returned one evening to his
cabin and found it burned to the ground by Indians, and the bodies of
his wife and children lying among the ruins. He vowed undying vengeance,
raised a band of kindred spirits, dressed and painted like Indians, and
became the scourge of the red man and the champion of the white. But he
and his wild crew, useful as they might have been, shocked Braddock's
sense of military fitness; and he received them so coldly that they left
him.[213]

[Footnote 213: See several traditional accounts and contemporary letters
in _Hazard's Pennsylvania Register_, IV. 389, 390, 416; V. 191.]

It was the tenth of June before the army was well on its march. Three
hundred axemen led the way, to cut and clear the road; and the long
train of packhorses, wagons, and cannon toiled on behind, over the
stumps, roots, and stones of the narrow track, the regulars and
provincials marching in the forest close on either side. Squads of men
were thrown out on the flanks, and scouts ranged the woods to guard
against surprise; for, with all his scorn of Indians and Canadians,
Braddock did not neglect reasonable precautions. Thus, foot by foot,
they advanced into the waste of lonely mountains that divided the
streams flowing to the Atlantic from those flowing to the Gulf of
Mexico,--a realm of forests ancient as the world. The road was but
twelve fe