“By George, when the claymore meets the tomahawk—eh, George?” had chuckled Lord Fairfax. “And which’ll be the more astonished, think you: The wild Hielander when he sees a man wi’ no skeen on his head (for they don’t scalp in Scotland) or the wild Injun when he sees a bonny warrior in petticoats?”
The whole force numbered about six thousand men. Six or seven hundred Catawbas and Cherokees were expected. Brigadier-General John Forbes, a hard fighter and a veteran, was in Philadelphia, to take command. Washington had been gladly accepted to command the Long Knife Americans. If anybody knew about Fort Duquesne, he did. It looked as though Fort Duquesne would be taken this time; especially when word came that many of its Indians had gone home, rich with plunder, and that the garrison was small.
And the English were beginning to gain victories in the north, which so frightened the Ohio Indians that they commenced to exchange peace belts with the Governor of Pennsylvania. Even Shingis was “willing.”
The march, however, was delayed, as usual. Washington advised General Forbes to take the Braddock road, which needed only a little repairing. But General Forbes (who seemed to have ideas of his own) decided to make a new road from central Pennsylvania straight to Fort Duquesne. People told him that the mountains were lower and the rivers less swift.
If he had listened to Washington he would have got to Duquesne sooner and with much less trouble. But Washington had his way in one thing: he put two hundred of his men into hunter clothes of buckskin shirt and leggins, and blankets, and sent them forward under Major Andrew Lewis to Colonel Henry Bouquet of the Royal Americans, who commanded at the rendezvous camp while General Forbes lay sick in Philadelphia.
It seemed good to Robert Hunter to be in buckskin; and all the men (and Washington also) were pleased when Colonel Bouquet the Regular said that this was the most proper dress he had seen yet.
Colonel Bouquet’s camp was at Raystown, of central Pennsylvania north from Fort Cumberland. While the road was being cut ahead, he built a fort named Fort Bedford (which became the town of Bedford, Pennsylvania); he had the Highlanders—who were a strange sight in their things called “kilts” that did look like short petticoats, and the Royal Americans in dark red coats faced with blue, and part of the Virginians (among them Robert) in hunting shirts and in green uniforms faced with buff.
When the road had been hacked out far enough (a terrible road that had proved to be, too; much worse than the Washington and Braddock road) he marched forty miles across the Alleghany Mountains to Loyalhannon Creek on the other side of the same Laurel Hills crossed farther west by the Washington and Braddock road.
Washington had been at Fort Cumberland, completing his regiments; but he would follow. He had not missed the Braddock fight, and he certainly would not miss this. General Forbes was still very sick in Philadelphia—and working from his bed; but he would be on hand, too.
At Loyalhannon Creek Colonel Bouquet began another supply fort. This was General Forbes’ plan: not to bore in as General Braddock had done, with a lot of baggage to guard; but to leave bases, as he went, for his supplies; and when he was near Duquesne to use all his men and take it quickly.