"It is the effects of the fever," said Mrs. Morris. "The doctor says you will have to take it easy for several months."
Rodney, too, had suffered from the march through the forest and from the fighting and was confined more or less to the house.
"It's a shame—and just after I thought I was getting so strong," sighed the cripple. "Somehow, we seem to be an ill-fated family."
During all those dreary months no direct word had come to them concerning little Nell, but through White Buffalo had come a report that a certain tribe of Indians known as the Little Waters had several white girls in their keeping and that one old Indian chief had taken one of the captives as his daughter, he being childless.
"If they take 'em in as their children they'll treat 'em putty civil-like," said Sam Barringford. "But I reckon you don't want to lose little Nell even so."
"No! no!" said Mrs. Morris. "Oh, we must get her back somehow!"
After this news was brought in, Barringford and Dave's father went north-westward once more, in the hope of opening negotiations with the Indians. How this trip would turn out was still a question, although White Buffalo declared that little could be done so long as the war hatchet remained unburied between the English and the French Indians.
As soon as the new call came for additional troops to the colonial militia, Dave signified his intention of once more entering the service under his old commander, Colonel Washington. About this he did not hesitate to see Washington personally.
"I'll be glad to have you with us," said Washington, after the youth had explained matters. "I remember how you acted in our other campaign against Fort Duquesne, and I haven't forgotten, Master David, how we shot the bear,"—this with a twinkle in his eye. "Yes, join us by all means if you care to do so." And Dave signed the muster roll that day,—as a colonial militiaman, at a salary of ten-pence a day, twopence to be deducted for clothing and other necessaries! This was the regular rate of pay, and for those days was considered quite fair.
It must be confessed that the troops under Colonel Washington formed a motley collection. Many of the best of the pioneers and frontiersmen had grown tired of the delays in the past and now refused to re-enlist, fearful that they would be called on to do nothing but wait around the fort, while the summer harvests at home demanded their attention. Drumming up recruits proved the hardest kind of work, and the companies were made up in some cases of men who knew not the meaning of home life—hardy trappers and traders, some industrious enough, but others given to drink and brawling, and not a few who lived almost as the Indians did, using the redmen's style of dress and occasionally painting their faces, "jes' fer the sport on't," as they expressed it. When it came to fighting these men were like human tigers, but in camp and on the march it was next to impossible to bring them under military discipline. Many refused to carry rations as the regular soldiers did, preferring to bring down game as they needed it, and if game was not handy they appropriated a pig or a cow belonging to some settler—thus bringing additional trouble on the command.