When they caught up with the tree markers, at a noon camp in the forest beside a stream, there were two of them; one was an Indian and the other was the trader Cresap.
That, however, was good. Scarouady knew the Indian, and Cresap knew Washington.
Scarouady advanced straightway, and spoke:
“Hello, Nemacolin. Hello, brother.”
“Hello, Monacathuatha,” replied Nemacolin, in the Delaware. He was a Delaware who lived at the Monongahela above Queen Allaquippa’s town. “My brother is welcome.”
“Good,” said Scarouady. “What does my brother do here, far from home and his hunting ground, marking trees with a white man?”
“We make a road for an English company to travel over from the Potomac to the Monongahela,” said Nemacolin. “The English are blind, so I show this man the way, for it is my road through the Little Meadows and the Great Meadows and over the Laurel Hills to the Monongahela.”
“Wah!” exclaimed Scarouady. “An English company? That is the Washington company?”
“I do not know,” replied Nemacolin. “It is an English company to build a great house on my land and keep many goods there.”