“I don’t think many of us know the story,” Alfred Paulson said, thoughtfully. “Won’t you tell it to us, Ted?”
“You want me to tell you the story of the Black Riders?” Ted asked.
There was a general nod of assent. He looked at his watch, shaking his head.
“It is getting too late now,” he said. “But I’ll tell it to you after supper tomorrow night.”
Back of them a stick broke sharply and a few of them turned their heads to look in the direction of the tents. But in the talk that followed no one paid any further attention to it.
On the following evening, after the supper, Ted faced an expectant group of boys. They were ranged in a bow formation, with the ends drawn in toward the middle, and Ted stood near the fire. They were very quiet and he began at once.
“Most of you fellows know something about the history of the Revolutionary War at the time that Washington and his men were in Valley Forge, about forty miles from here, and the British were having a gay old time in Philadelphia. The British and the Hessians were all around here, a fine, fully equipped army of men, while the ragged, cold, heroic Americans were freezing over in Valley Forge. That was in the winter of 1777 and 1778, if my memory serves me correctly, and things in this particular part of the country were in pretty bad shape.”
“There was a man down in Germantown by the name of Simon Reed, and he was a patriot who had never run away even in the face of the British. He knew that up in these mountains there were some wild, hard-fighting farmers, and he used to slip out this way nights to get them organized. Right in this hollow they used to meet, all dressed in black, all of them riding black horses, and here they’d make up their plans to annoy the British. They used to go stealing out of here and lay in wait for stray British baggage trains, and then they’d swoop down on them and capture them. All through the winter they did such good work for Washington that they came to be recognized as the Black Riders. You know, during the Revolution, there were a number of cracker-jack bands of fighting men who just hung onto the British flanks and worried them to death, Marion’s men in the South, and Morgan’s Riflemen, Light-Horse Harry Lee’s men, and others. These Black Riders were a smaller bunch, but they helped a lot.”
“After awhile things got so hot for them around here that Washington had them taken into the regular army as part of Light-Horse Harry Lee’s division and they ceased to be known as the Black Riders from then on. But people around here always remembered them from the days before they joined Lee and this spot had always been known as their camp.”
“Gosh, that’s a great story!” exclaimed Drummer.