The woods from the ambush hill to the river were still strewn with skeletons—the tree trunks were scarred with bullets and cannon-balls, and fragments of clothing, grenadier hats and rusted muskets were scattered everywhere.
Young Major Peter Halket, of General Forbes’ staff, wondered if anybody could tell him where his father and younger brother had fallen. Robert asked the Shawnees—“Two red-coat soldiers,” he said: “an old gray-haired man and a boy. They fell together, the boy on top of his father, down toward the river.” He remembered that.
“Ho!” cried one of the Shawnees. “Yes; I saw. It was many moons ago, but I will try to find the spot.”
He led off, and they all followed. And after a time he stopped, to peer about. Then he ran straight; then they heard him cry, from the woods—a discovery whoop. Then they went in to him. He was waiting under an oak tree. He pointed at the foot of it, where leaves were heaped up.
Captain West, who commanded the party, formed a circle of the men and ordered the leaves to be raked aside. And sure enough, here were two skeletons, one with its arms around the other. They were old Major Halket, the brave Scotch nobleman, and his son. Young Major Halket knew by the teeth which had been his father’s.
The bones were wrapped in a Highland plaid, and buried, and a volley fired over the grave.
The quarters having been built, and two hundred Virginians under Lieutenant Colonel Hugh Mercer having been detailed to guard them, the column started home. It was the middle of December when the Virginians were finally in Fort Loudoun of Winchester. They were to be disbanded. In Washington’s opinion they had served enough; a “really fine corps” General Forbes had called them; now the border was clean of the enemy, and it was time that they be mustered out.
Washington resigned his post of commander—which made the men all the more anxious to quit soldiering and go home, too. The two regiments drew up an address to him—
“In you we place the most implicit confidence,” it said. “Your presence only will cause a steady firmness and vigor to actuate every breast, despising the greatest dangers, and thinking light of toils and hardships, while led on by the man we know and love.”