By an Associate.

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Continuing the narrative that began here.

Chapter 3.—Washington a hero in Williamsburg.—Resigns in protest against English policy.—Life at Mount Vernon.—General Braddock takes Washington as aide-de-camp.—Washington’s strategy.—Defeat.—Death and burial of Braddock.

Washington’s dispatch, which he wrote on the way, preceded him to Williamsburg, and created a sensation in the capital. We arrived to find that Washington was celebrated as the hero of the age; the House of Burgesses presented a framed certificate to him, and, at Washington’s insistence, to Parson Weems and me as well. Once again Washington had proved his mastery of the art of the military dispatch, and indeed he confided in me that he looked forward to a time in the distant future when the battles themselves would be unnecessary, wars being won or lost on the strength of the commanders’ dispatches.

The colonel’s fortunes seemed to be at a peak. Fortune, however, is not known for her constancy. Some weeks later, ships arrived from England bearing soldiers and officers. What had been an American conflict was now all-out war between England and France, and the officers newly arrived from England bore new orders which made the lowliest English lieutenant the superior of any colonial officer whatsoever. Washington’s pride could not submit to such humiliating conditions. He resigned his commission and retired to his estate at Mount Vernon, whither Parson Weems and I accompanied him. By this time, I should mention, Washington had grown to exactly my height, so that in the most literal sense we saw eye to eye.

Mount Vernon was certainly a different world for me. Accustomed to a solitary life on the frontier, I found myself on a plantation almost as big as the city of Williamsburg, and one with a large population of slaves. I must own that I had never thought much of slavery one way or the other, as there had been no slaves on the frontier; but the more I lived among them, the harder I found it to understand how these men, women, and children, with hearts and minds and wills, could be accounted as property. Washington seemed to accept the institution of slavery without a thought; I supposed that a lifelong acquaintance with it had taught him to accept it as part of the order of nature. Not until many years later would I discover how mistaken I had been.

Life at Mount Vernon was easy and pleasant—so easy and pleasant, indeed, that I wondered what I was doing there. Parson Weems spent his days composing tracts against the papists. I read the books in Washington’s library, walked along the river, ambled through the gardens, and generally made myself comfortably useless.

Washington occasionally persuaded me to join him in equestrian exercises. He was passionately fond of horses, and he was a master of all departments of the art of riding except for the matter of staying on the horse. This latter skill eluded him, but he took his tumbles good-naturedly.

The arrival of General Braddock put an end to our indolence. He came to Mount Vernon in February and was, of course, treated with Washington’s wonted hospitality. After a generous dinner, we sat and shared a bottle of Madeira, and Braddock revealed the reason for his visit.

“Washington,” he said, “your reputation has reached my ears, as indeed it has reached the ears of every Englishman, in the colonies or at home. The stunning success of your previous expedition could hardly have been improved upon, unless indeed you had defeated the French instead of the other way around. When I arrived in Virginia, I immediately inquired after you; and when I was told that you had resigned your commission, you can hardly imagine my disappointment, or my anger at the muddleheaded fools in London whose insulting ignorance deprived me of the finest officer in the colonies. I have come to rectify that grievous mistake. I am leading my army against Fort Duquesne in the spring. If you will consent to accompany me as my aide-de-camp, you will have your rank of colonel with undisputed authority over all officers in my army, myself only excluded. I believe that with your expert knowledge and brilliant strategic mind, we shall—um, we shall—um—”

The general stopped and appeared to be listening intently.

“Is something wrong, sir?” Washington asked.

“You didn’t hear, just now, a sound that might possibly be described as ‘lowing,’ did you?”

“I don’t believe so,” Washington answered. He glanced at me and Parson Weems, and we both shook our heads.

“Ah. Very good,” said Braddock. “One can never be too careful. As I was saying, I have no doubt that we shall defeat the French if I have you by my side, whereas I make bold to say that without you I do not believe it can be done. Will you accompany me?”

“My duty and my inclination both point to the same conclusion,” replied Washington. “I must answer in the affirmative; it is my duty as a Virginian, and it is my pleasure as a soldier. This life of farming is an honorable profession for a gentleman, but for a soldier it must always seem a life of indolence and sloth. I have heard the bullets whistling, and believe me, there is something charming in the sound.”

“Yes!” Braddock agreed vehemently. “Yes!—they whistle ‘All in a Garden Green’!”

“In my last encounter, it was ‘Lillibullero.’ ”

“Probably a difference in the North American climate.” Braddock stood and extended his hand across the table. “Your hand, sir,” he said. Washington stood and took Braddock’s hand, and the agreement was sealed.

“One condition I should like to add,” Washington said as he sat back down. “I should feel much more confident if Mr. Gist and Parson Weems came with us. Parson Weems’ tracts are very effective weapons of the spirit, and Mr. Gist has an unrivaled understanding of the cardinal directions.”

“Splendid!” said Braddock. “I myself have always had difficulty with east, so it will be very useful to have an expert on hand.”

General Braddock accepted Washington’s invitation to stay at Mount Vernon that night. Early in the morning, just after dawn, I was awakened by a loud pounding from very nearby in the house. Tossing a robe over my nightshirt, I dashed out into the hall to find that Braddock had procured a hammer from somewhere and was pounding a nail through a brass plaque into the door of his bedroom. He stepped back to admire his handiwork, and I was able to read the words engraved on the plaque:

edward braddock slept here

At this moment Washington appeared, already fully dressed, saying, “Good morning, general. I trust you slept well.”

“Quite soundly,” Braddock replied. “I hope I have not got you out of bed too early, but I wished to lose no time in expressing my gratitude for your hospitality.”

“Not at all. I have always thought that gratitude ought to be promptly expressed, or—”

“—or it is as good as a cucumber!” Braddock finished, and the two men clasped hands. “Truly a man after my own heart!”

Several months still had to elapse before General Braddock’s planed expedition. He wanted to wait until the spring floods had subsided before he set out. Washington occupied that time in having one of his slaves teach him how to play the mandolin, which he thought would give him a tactical advantage over the French; but as far as I know nothing ever came of this scheme.

We set out in June with a large force and a cumbersome baggage train, which meant that the Indian trail had to be broadened considerably to accommodate us. Washington was of less use in this regard than I had hoped. If a grove of cherry trees stood in the way, Washington could be relied upon to demolish them expeditiously; but it was vain to try rousing his enthusiasm for an oak or a maple or a beech, for no matter how valiantly he tried to bring on his mania, he was worth no more than any other soldier with an axe.

“Nevertheless,” said Braddock one evening as he dined with the officers, “it is imperative that we make quick progress, both for the sake of expelling the French as quickly as possible and so that Jeremy will not catch up with me.”

“Jeremy?” Parson Weems asked.

“My mortal enemy,” Braddock explained.

“And this Jeremy,” I asked, “wouldn’t happen to be a mule, would he?”

“No, sir,” Braddock replied. “An ox—the most fiendishly devious and diabolically wicked ox ever bred.”

Parson Weems gave me a slight smile; Braddock’s English officers pretended not to be paying attention.

Washington, however, responded immediately. “I know but too well what you mean. I myself have been pursued from my youth by a mule named Irving. He lives to deepen my sorrows—”

“—to blast your victories—”

“—and to hound me into an early grave. And yet⁠—”

“—And yet he is not visible in the strict sense! By Jove, Washington, I was certainly right about you! It has been my observation, sir, that all great military commanders are pursued throughout their careers by the forces of envy and malice, personified in malevolent invisible animals. It is almost the proof of a commander’s greatness. Ah, Washington, what shall we not accomplish together?—But for the present we require a plan, and for that I hope we may rely on your wisdom.”

“What wisdom I have, though I am very much your junior in age and experience, is at your disposal,” said Washington.

“Then let us clear the table, bring in more Madeira, and discuss our strategy,” Braddock responded.

In a few minutes the table was cleared, and Braddock’s officers unrolled a long chart consisting of a circle marked “there” on the left, a circle marked “here” on the right, and a long arrow connecting here to there.

“We are here, and the French are there,” Braddock explained. “My plan was to take our whole army from here to there, crush the French, and place ourselves there. But I should like to have your opinion.”

“If you will take my advice,” Washington said, “you will leave most of your force and equipment behind and attack the French with half our army at most.”

“An intriguing suggestion,” Braddock remarked. “What is your reasoning?”

“Elementary strategy,” said Washington. “The French will be expecting us to attack with a large force. By attacking them with a small force, we take them completely by surprise. The Stratagemata of Frontinus are full of such ruses, which among the ancients invariably met with success.”

“By Jove, what a remarkable military mind you have! Yes, I see how such a deception might put the fear of God into the papists! We shall put your plan into effect tomorrow morning.”

Accordingly, the next morning the army was divided into two parts, the greater part remaining with the baggage train to follow the lesser part at a slower pace. Braddock and Washington and I would lead the lesser part over the Indian trail on horseback; Parson Weems, at Washington’s insistence, came with us, but mounted on a docile old mule, as he did not consider himself much of a rider.

“I have named him ‘Irving,’ ” Parson Weems confided in me.

“You are a strange and cruel man,” I told him.

The main difficulty with making our expedition on horseback was keeping the general and the colonel on the horses. After a number of failures on the part of one of the officers, I took over the duty of helping Washington mount. After considerable effort, I would at last succeed in getting him up one side of the horse, only to hear him land with a thud on the other side. Braddock’s valet had much the same trouble with his master. When we did get our two commanders mounted, we seldom went three miles without losing one of them on the side of the trail.

Each morning the camp awoke to the sound of the commanders nailing brass plaques to trees, and two mules were delegated especially to the task of carrying the sacks of plaques and nails.

We had made good progress by the beginning of July, and we were probably within two days’ ride of Fort Duquesne when the French suddenly fell upon us.

They appeared all at once from both sides of the trail, and it was evident immediately that there were far more of them than there were of us. The battle might have been a rout from the beginning, except that we had no avenue of escape in any direction. Washington fell off his horse immediately, or rather his horse shot out from under him and tore away into the woods. (These words “shot out from under him,” taken verbatim from Washington’s later dispatch, would later be widely misinterpreted.) In the confusion, we did our best to get Washington mounted on another horse. Immediately he galloped off again, urging the men to press forward toward the west. A moment later, Braddock sailed by, urging the men, “Back! Back toward the thingy!”

“East?” I called out.

“Good man, Gist!” cried Braddock as he fell from his horse.

I ran to him and gave him what assistance I could.

“Do you hear those bullets whistling ‘Lillibullero’?” he shouted as we mounted him on another horse. “By Jove, Washington was right!”

I had no heart to tell him that it was Parson Weems again, and at any rate he had already galloped into the thick of the battle.

With the two commanders giving opposite commands, and the French pressing in from all sides, the men were desperate, and the battle was turning into a massacre. Perceiving, however, a gap in the French encirclement toward the east, I rounded up the dozen men nearest me, and by our shouts we attracted more; and we were able to press through and begin what was perhaps too panicked and disorderly to be called a retreat, but was at least better than the massacre we were leaving behind us.

It seemed that we half-walked, half-ran for hours, turning as we could to fire on any pursuers. Eventually the French gave up the pursuit, since they could gain nothing by it. We began to regroup. I found that Parson Weems had made it on his mule, and somehow the two mules bearing the brass plaques had followed him. Washington was on foot and could not say where his horse had gone; but Braddock, who by the men’s accounts had always placed himself where the fighting was thickest, was gravely wounded, borne on the back of some horse or other. When it seemed clear that we were out of harm’s way for the moment, we stopped and let down General Braddock to see what could be done for him.

“Please don’t waste your efforts on me,” he told me when I had a look at his wounds—and indeed, though I said nothing, I could see that any effort would be wasted. “Washington will lead you back. Where is Washington?—Ah, there.—Washington, my boy, my career comes to an end here, but yours is just beginning. You know what to do now. Write the dispatch! The battle is lost, but write the dispatch and the war is won! It’s not whether you win or lose, Washington—it’s the dispatch!”

Those were his last words for some time. He slipped away from the conscious world for a quarter-hour or so, during which I told Washington frankly that there was nothing I could do, nor could our surgeon have done anything more had he not been killed in the battle.

The next time Braddock’s eyes opened, he seemed not to see us at all. From the smile on his face, I believed he was already seeing sights far more splendid. He spoke only four more words: “I’ve beaten you, Jeremy!” Then he passed out of our world.

We buried Braddock under a great white oak. Washington gave a moving oration in memory of all our fallen; about Braddock in particular he said only, “The world has lost a hero, but I have lost a friend.”

Then, as our fife-player whistled an appropriate dirge (he had lost his fife in the battle), Colonel Washington nailed a brass plaque into the oak tree above Braddock’s grave:

edward braddock slept here

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To be continued in Chapter 4. Or you can order the whole book now and spare yourself the wait.

By an Associate.

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Continuing the narrative that began here.

Chapter 2.—Expedition to Fort Duquesne.—Death of Jumonville and capture of French force.—Construction of Fort Washington.—Siege of fort.—Defeat and surrender.—Arduous march back.—I accept Washington’s offer.

A scant four months later, Washington appeared at my door again. The man at my door was certainly the same Washington, but at the same time was different. For one thing, he was dressed in an even more splendid buff-and-blue uniform; but there was something else. In fact it came to me while he was greeting me: I was not looking down at him. The man had grown a good six inches. I was still somewhat taller than he was, but now his head came above my shoulders.

“Once again, Virginia has need of your services, Mr. Gist,” he told me after we had exchanged greetings. “You were instrumental in the success of our recent expedition, and the governor and I would be honored if you would add your unrivaled knowledge of the western forests to our current enterprise.”

“What little ability I have is at your service, Mr. Washington,” I replied.

“Lieutenant Colonel Washington now. I received my commission at the beginning of the month. But ranks and titles mean nothing between friends, Gist, and I hope you will permit me to consider you a friend.”

“I am honored, sir.”

“And as your friend, let me tell you, do not belittle your own abilities. You have an instinct for difficult notions that has already proved very valuable. North, for instance. I have always had difficulty with that one, but you grasped it right away. I assume you have an equally good grasp of west, and those two notions together ought to get us to our destination.”

“And what is that, if I may ask?”

“The Forks of the Ohio, Gist. My Ohio Company is constructing a fort there, and I have a commission from Governor Dingwoodle to reinforce it and take command. If, therefore, we may make use of your boat once more, I believe that we should be able to make quick progress by simply retracing the route that brought us hither the last time.”

“The spring floods may retard our progress a little,” I remarked, “but otherwise I see no reason why the expedition should not proceed quickly enough. How many are in your party this time?”

“One hundred sixty-three,” Washington answered.

“One hundred sixty-three?” I stepped past him. Gathered in the clearing around my cabin was a motley assortment of militiamen, the sort of force for which the term “ragtag” might have been invented. I recognized none of them except, sitting on the stump of the cherry tree, the familiar figure of Parson Weems.

“Do you think we shall need to make more than one crossing with the boat?” Washington asked.

“It’s possible,” I answered.

“Then the sooner we start the better,” said Washington. “There is a wise old saying…” He pulled out his copybook from his breast pocket and found a page in it. “ ‘A gentleman ought to avoid contradicting a lady if it is at all possible.’ I live my life by these maxims.”

After one hundred seven trips across the river and one hundred six back, we succeeded in transporting all the men and their equipment across the Potomac. We had proceeded only a few miles along the trail, however, when we were met by a small group of ill-dressed men coming from the other direction. One of them approached Washington immediately.

“Sir,” he said, “I perceive by your blue-and-yellow uniform that you must be Lieutenant Colonel Washington.”

“Buff and blue,” Washington replied.

“Sir,” the stranger said, “the French have taken Fort Washington.”

“What do you mean?” Washington demanded in alarm.

“I mean that, whereas once we were inside the fort, with the French outside, now we are outside the fort, and the French are inside.”

Washington looked grim. “This is disturbing news,” he said.

“The French commander also said some very uncomplimentary things about you personally,” the newcomer continued.

“What things were those?” Washington asked.

“I believe his exact words were, ‘And you may tell that petit caniche Washington that if he should come here, je vais kiquer his derrière.”

I asked the man whether this French commander were a certain Captain Hautain, and he answered that he believed that was the name.

Washington turned to address his men. “Men, the object of our expedition has changed. We are going to eject the French from the Forks of the Ohio, where they have ensconced themselves in the very fort we had been marching to reinforce. I must warn you all that we face a foe who does not scruple to insult us in a language we cannot understand. From that fact alone you may learn how wicked these papists are, and why it is necessary to expel them utterly from my—I mean our—land. I rely on every man’s attachment to his country and to his Protestant faith, and to the large bonus Governor Damwadi will doubtless authorize when we are successful.”

The men seemed pleased at least by the prospect of the bonus, and a few of them attempted something like a cheer, which gave Washington obvious satisfaction.

Indeed, I could already see the qualities that would make Washington such a renowned leader of men. The first night he showed himself a stern disciplinarian, sending several men to bed without supper for various infractions. Yet the men, if they did not positively love him, at the very least did not seem to be plotting to assassinate him.

Our progress was considerably slower than it had been in the previous expedition, owing to the larger number of men, the amount of equipment, and the many swollen streams we had to cross. Twice the mania came upon Washington, and an innocent cherry tree met its fate; but the third time was attended with momentous consequences.

It was a bright mid-morning in late May; the sunlight painted irregular splotches on the forest floor, and the air was pleasantly warm without oppressive heat. All at once Washington stopped in mid-stride, and I recognized all the symptoms: the perspiration, the gritted teeth, the trembling tension of every muscle. Beside him was a particularly fine black cherry, at least fifty feet tall, and in full bloom.

It was too much for him. In a movement too quick for the eye to follow, the hatchet came out of his pack, and chunks of wood began to fly in all directions. The air was filled with the heady scent of cherry sap, and Washington was shouting “Hatchet! Hatchet! Hatchet!” with each blow. The men, who by now had seen this performance at least twice before, did their best to remove themselves from harm’s way; and soon the tree was toppling into the forest.

Suddenly there was a loud cry, followed by confused shouting. One voice, higher than the rest, penetrated the din: “On a tué de Jumonville!”

A French patrol! Washington quickly ordered his men into battle array, which was hard to distinguish from their accustomed random grouping, and led a charge toward the source of the shouting. I readied my musket, but by the time I reached the spot, the French were already surrendering to our overwhelmingly superior numbers. Their commander had been crushed by the falling tree, and he had probably died almost instantly; the rest of the French force numbered only nineteen, who were taken prisoner.

Having won this signal victory, Washington determined to build a fort immediately, reasoning that it would be easier to keep prisoners if he had a fort to keep them in. The Youghiogheny River being nearby, I suggested that as a location; Washington, however, insisted on erecting the fort exactly where we stood, which happened to be a low and boggy meadow most remarkable for the proliferation of skunk cabbages in it. He immediately set the men to building, as soon as the French commander had been given a decent burial; meanwhile, he sent messengers back to Williamsburg with a dispatch giving a full account of the affair.

The fort went up quickly. We had all the logs we could desire: it was necessary only to find a grove of cherry trees and turn Washington loose on them, and we instantly had several days’ worth of lumber. Washington himself drew up the plans for the fort, though I persuaded him to make some minor revisions. In particular, I thought that a museum, an opera house, and a university, while they would be of undoubted utility once we had established a more permanent possession of the Ohio country, might strain our resources at the present moment. Washington reluctantly agreed, but he would not give up his plan for a small theater for puppet shows. “I am passionately fond of puppet shows,” he said. “And it is fitting that at least some accommodation should be provided for the muses at the very foundation of what will doubtless blossom into a great city, a beacon shining from the west—a city to be known, when it takes its place among the world’s great centers of the arts and sciences, as Washington.”

“Wasn’t—” I began; but I stopped myself, supposing that no good could come of asking the question.

“You see,” Washington continued, “it is fitting that the place be named after myself, since it is by necessity that we have constructed it.”

Fort Washington was nearly complete when messengers arrived from Williamsburg bringing a new commission promoting Washington to full colonel and officially ordering him to eject the French from the Forks of the Ohio by whatever means he thought appropriate. We were now on a war footing. Shortly after that, about two hundred men arrived, sent by Governor Dinwiddie as reinforcements. Washington immediately put them to work, some planting flower gardens, some laying out a green for lawn-bowling, and an elite detachment charged with mounting a puppet-show. The first performance took place the next afternoon; the plot involved the domestic arrangements of a husband and wife who settled their disputes by hitting each other with sticks. The men laughed riotously; Washington, however, watched impassively without so much as a smile through the whole performance, though he gave it his enthusiastic applause at the end.

That same evening, I dined with Washington, Parson Weems, and three of the officers, and we discussed the best means of surprising the French at their fort, which they had renamed Fort Duquesne.

“It seems to me,” Washington said, “that our best chance is to march directly southeast.”

“But the French are northwest of us,” one of the officers objected.

“Precisely,” Washington replied. “They will be expecting us to march directly to the northwest. But see what an advantage our Protestant natural philosophy gives us over the benighted papists. The most distinguished English philosophers and geographers assert that the earth takes the form of a sphere. If, therefore, we march straight to the southeast, we must eventually come upon the French fort from the northwest, taking the French completely by surprise.”

The three officers stared without saying anything, and after a moment I perceived that they were staring at me. Parson Weems, too, was looking in my direction, with an expression compounded of amusement and anticipation.

“In theory,” I said cautiously, “that strategy would indeed take the French by surprise. However, the advantage gained in surprise might might not be worth the loss of time. While we were marching, the French would have ample time to bring their reinforcements from Quebec, and no matter how surprised they were, they might be able to oppose us with overwhelming numbers.”

“True,” Washington agreed. “We might—heh—therefore be better—heh heh—better advised to—heh heh ha ha—to—ha ha ha—”

What had started as light chuckling rapidly grew into a gasping, choking fit of laughter. The officers were plainly alarmed, and even Parson Weems looked worried.

“Are you all right, Washington?” I asked, standing ready to offer my assistance.

“He hit—” Washington fell forward laughing and gasping, and for some time was unable to make any articulate sounds. At length he tried again: “He hit his—” More laughs, more gasping. Finally he was able to choke out a phrase: “He hit his wife with a stick!” He pounded the table with both fists, laughing and gasping with tears pouring down his cheeks; and it was quite some time before he was able to master himself sufficiently to resume the discussion.

Eventually it was decided that we should attack the French without delay by marching to the Youghio­gheny and then down to the Monongahela, which we could follow to Fort Duquesne. It had the advantage of being a slightly more direct route than going around the world to the southeast, yet at the same time being somewhat more devious than marching straight along the Indian trail to the Forks of the Ohio.

In two days, all was prepared, and our whole force set out into the forest. Scarcely had we gone a mile, however, when a French force appeared before us and began firing. Washington’s soldiers, brave to a man, soon discerned that the French had a distinct advantage in numbers, and were not afraid to show the broad expanses of their backs to the enemy, no matter how tempting a target they made. With laudable expedition, the entire force made it back to the fort in a few minutes.

The French soon had us surrounded, and as the bullets flew, Parson Weems began absentmindedly whistling “Lillibullero,” as was his wont in times of danger.

Washington was glowing with battle ardor. “Do you hear those bullets whistling?” he shouted to me as he dashed from one side of the little fort to the other. “Believe me, there’s something charming in the sound!”

I suppose I ought to have told him that it was Parson Weems he heard, but in the excitement there was no obviously appropriate occasion for conveying that information.

For most of the day we held out, but it was obvious that the French, with at least twice our numbers, must inevitably prevail. The officers and I agreed that a surrender upon terms was better than the loss of all our men. As I was, by this time, the one best acquainted with the humors of our commander, it fell to me to approach him with this unpleasant proposal.

“Washington,” I said bluntly, “the officers and I believe it is time to discuss terms of surrender.”

“Had enough, have they? Well, I shall be merciful. They shall have honorable conditions, since they have fought bravely.”

“I meant our surrender,” I said. I dreaded his reaction, but it had to be put as unambiguously as possible.

“Really?” He looked nonplussed for just a moment, and then said, “Oh, well—win some, lose some. Find a white rag somewhere, tie it on a stick, and let’s get on with it.”

I was quite surprised to hear him accept our advice with such good cheer, and I told him as much. But Washington merely pulled his copybook from his pocket and told me, “As the old saying has it, ‘The other guests will be better pleased if you do not make slurping sounds when eating broth.’ Such is the life of a soldier.”

Within the hour, then, we were facing Captain Hautain himself, who could not contain his sneer. “So! It is the assassin of de Jumonville, yes?”

“If you mean,” said Washington coldly, “that I led my men to victory against Mr. Jumonville’s party, that is accurate.”

“Victory! Plume de ma tante! You drop-ped the tree on him! I should have you executed for this thing alone!”

“We have come to discuss terms. If you do not wish to negotiate, we can go back to the fort and resume the battle.”

“Oh, you shall be given terms, Monsieur Washington. When one has the little yapping poodle which chomps at the ankles, then one throws it the bone, yes? Eh bien, we give you the terms, and you allez-vous-en, and we are finis avec you.” He looked back at one of his officers, who stood ready at a portable desk with a quill and paper. “Et maintenant, our terms.”

The terms he dictated were simple and, I thought, for the most part generous.

“1. The Virginians will hand over their arms.

“2. The Virginians may march back with full honors of war.

“3. Colonel Washington will not name anything else in the Ohio country after himself for the space of one year.

“4. Colonel Washington will sign a paper stating that ‘Washington n’est qu’un tout petit caniche qui jappe incessamment.’ ”

Before he affixed his signature, Washington was careful to ask, “What exactly do you mean by ‘full honors of war’?”

“Sacred blue!” cried Captain Hautain. “I mean that you will be permitted to march out of la Nouvelle France without having to wear a sign on your back that says ‘Kiquez-moi’!”

“That sounds fair,” Washington agreed, and he signed the instrument of surrender.

Our march back was a difficult affair. Washington himself was in surprisingly good spirits, and I wonder whether we should have made it back at all had it not been for his relentless good cheer. But we had no arms for hunting game. Once indeed Washington managed to crush a deer with a cherry tree, but we could not rely on such good fortune for the most part.

Parson Weems once congratulated Washington on his philosophical acceptance of defeat, but Washington saw nothing unusual in it. “Victory or defeat is almost immaterial,” Washington explained. “The important thing is the dispatch. A well-written dispatch conquers all difficulties. As a wise man once said, ‘Assistance promptly rendered to a lady purchases a good reputation for a gentleman in society.’ ” (This last was from his copybook.) “It is clear to me that Irving somehow warned the French of our attack, as there is no end to his malevolence; my duty, therefore, is to report to the governor, and to advise him on the next step to be taken to assure our ultimate victory, and the entire possession of the Ohio country for Virginia.”

“What will you tell the governor?” asked Parson Weems.

“The truth, of course: that the entire expedition would have been lost but for the presence of mind and quick action of Colonel Washington.”

We met a small party of Indians one day, and Washington attempted to trade with them for badly needed provisions; but the Indians made use of a gesture that consisted of bringing the thumb up to the tip of the nose, waving the fingers in the air, extending the tongue between the pursed lips, and making a sound like air escaping from a bladder, which in their marvelously expressive sign language signifies, “We are not inclined to treat with you at present.” This was an indication that the local tribes were less favorably disposed toward us than they had been before, and that perhaps they were beginning to favor the French—a suspicion that would prove all too well founded.

At last we reached the Potomac, where, owing to our having considerably less equipment to carry, it took only one hundred sixty-five crossings in my boat to bring all 350 men across. Washington stayed on the north shore until the last man was across, and it was when we had already brought the second-to-last load across that we realized we had left Washington alone on the shore with the entire treasury of the expedition. I directed the men to take cover behind trees until the hail of dollars had subsided; then I went back across to pick up Washington, while the men collected the bonus to which they were doubtless entitled.

It was a little cramped, but I offered the men the hospitality of my cabin for the night, which they gladly accepted. In the morning, as they prepared to leave, Washington made an unexpected proposition.

“Gist,” said he, “I have come to rely on your good sense and your expert knowledge of the cardinal directions. If you would consent to come with me, Virginia would be the better for it.”

I thought it over briefly. We were now at war with France; I certainly could not rely on the security of my isolated cabin anymore, especially if the Indians had allied themselves with the French. But with Washington, I might have some small chance of affecting the outcome of that war. I gave him my hand and accepted his proposal.

“Splendid!” said Washington. “With Parson Weems’ spiritual advice and your practical wisdom, the three of us should be more than a match for Irving.”

To be continued in Chapter 3. Or you can order the whole book now and spare yourself the wait.