“Americans? Where did you learn that word?” asked Gist.
“I heard. Washington is American; you are American. Mebbe many Americans in Virginia and Pennsylvania. Not the same as English of the King across the water. Mebbe if you act quick you beat the French.”
“Your ears are big. You should be called the Rabbit,” laughed Christopher Gist. “Methinks the French are quick and brave, like the eagle; the English are slower, but also brave, and hard to turn when once they have started, like the buffalo. If we Americans, such as you call Washington, are free to act, we may partake of the qualities of both the French and English; but now we are children of the King. Well, from this Shawnee town I go down river to see more country. You will go up river, and tell Tanacharison what we have done. You have been a good boy; the horse you ride is yours.”
Then Gist travelled for the south, and Robert turned around and rode home alone, to report to Tanacharison and Scarouady.
He had left Logstown in the last week of November; he arrived at the beginning of the last week of March, having been gone four months.
V
THE YOUNG CHIEF ARRIVES
The French were coming! The great council of Mingos, Shawnees, Delawares, Wyandots and Miamis had been held at Logstown. Christopher Gist was there and a man named Captain Joseph Fry to sign for Virginia. Washington had stayed home. Gist said that Washington’s brother, the sick chief, had died, and Washington was needed to comfort the widow.
The Iroquois from Onondago the council seat did not come.
“We do not meet to talk of business in the woods and weeds,” they sent word. “But the English have our permission to use land southeast of the Ohio. We do not give title to that land. The lands of Virginia stop on the sunrise side of the Alleghany Mountains.”