“My men follow with a canoe so that we can cross,” said Washington.
“It iss a goot friend of yours, major?” spoke the stout, red-nosed man, in English hard to understand.
“He is the boy who showed me how to wade a stream by carrying a rock,” answered Washington. “Half-King is his father.”
Washington remembered. That had been several years ago; he seemed much older now, and the Hunter had grown, too. But he remembered.
Other men came. They were Christopher Gist and John Davidson the trader. They had left a third man to wait for the men bringing a canoe down from John Fraser’s place up the Monongahela.
Washington talked with Gist and Davidson. He had been looking at the land here in the Forks and had seen what Tanacharison had seen long ago—that it was the best place for a house with big guns.
“It lies high and level,” said Washington, “and commands the two rivers and the entrance to the Ohio. By the Monongahela we could travel to and from the Virginia outposts in the south, and no one from the north could pass out of the Allegheny.”
“Yah, it iss the proper meelitary situation,” said the red-nosed man. “Dere iss no better.”
“The spot where I was told to start a fort for the Ohio Company is yonder across the Monongahela, and two miles down the Ohio,” said Gist. “That’s where old Shingis of the Delawares lives, on the south bank. Do you wish to stop and see him, major?”
“Yes, we’ll stop and invite him to our council at Logstown,” replied Washington.