On his white horse Washington passed the mulberry trees. Quick as a flash little William turned,—"Why, father, he does look like my brother George! Is that why people call our George the 'Washington of the West'?"
A provisional treaty was signed at Paris, November 30, 1782, a few days after the return of George Rogers Clark from that last Chillicothe raid. Slowly, by pack-horse and flatboat, the news reached Kentucky.
The last of the British army sailed away. Washington made his immortal farewell, and went back to his farm, arriving on Christmas Eve. Bonfires and rockets, speeches, thanksgiving and turkey, ended the year 1782.
But with his return from the last scene at Yorktown, the father of Meriwether Lewis lay down and died, a martyr of the Revolution.
XX
THE OLD VIRGINIA HOME
Back over Boone's trace, the Wilderness Road he had travelled so many times, went General George Rogers Clark sometime in the early Spring of 1783, past the thrifty fields of Fincastle and the Shenandoah Germans, with their fat cattle and huge red barns. Every year the stout Pennsylvanians were building farther and farther up. Year by year the fields increased, and rosy girls stacked the hay in defiance of all Virginian customs across the Ridge.
But the man who a thousand miles to the west held Illinois by the prowess of his arm and the terror of his name, sprang not with the buoyant step of six years before when he had gone to Virginia after the gunpowder. His thoughts were at Kaskaskia, Vincennes, Louisville, where his unsustained garrisons were suffering for food and clothing.
"Peace, peace, peace!" he muttered. "'Tis but a mockery. Must Kentucky lie still and be scalped?"
Still the savages raided the border, not in numbers, but in squads, persistent and elusive. Isham Floyd, the boy drummer of Vincennes, had been captured by the savages and three days tortured in the woods, and burnt at the stake.
"My boy-brother in the hands of those monsters?" exclaimed the great-hearted John Floyd of the Bear Grass. A word roused the country, the savages were dispersed, but poor Isham was dead. And beside him lay his last tormentor, the son of an Indian chief, shot by the avenging rifle of John Floyd.