"Dogs, you may go!"
One moment they wavered, then broke and fled tumultuously from the council house.
All night they debated in the woods near the fort. In the morning, "Let me sign," said Buckongahelas.
Smiling, Clark guided the hand of the boastful Delaware, and all the rest signed with him.
XXIII
MISSISSIPPI TROUBLES
For the first time in their stormy history, the front and rear gates of the Kentucky forts lay back on their enormous wooden hinges, and all day long men and teams passed in and out with waggon loads of grain from the harvest fields. So hushed and still was the air, it seemed the old Indian days were gone for ever. At night the animals came wandering in from the woods, making their customary way to the night pens. Fields of corn waved undisturbed around the forts.
But the truce was brief. Already the Cherokees were slaughtering on the Wilderness Road, and beyond the Ohio, Shawnee and Delaware, wild at the sight of the white man's cabin, rekindled the fires around the stake.
Thousands of emigrants were coming over the mountains from Carolina, and down the Ohio from Pittsburg social boats lashed together rode in company, bark canoes, pirogues, flatboats, keelboats, scows, barges, bateaux and brigades of bateaux, sweeping down with resistless English, Scotch, Irish, Germans, Huguenots, armed for the battle of the races.
Still the powerful fur traders of Quebec and Montreal hung on to Detroit and Mackinac, still De Peyster opposed giving up the peninsulas of Michigan.
"Pen the young republic east of the Alleghanies," said France, Spain, England, when the Peace Treaty was under consideration. But Clark's conquest compelled them to grant the Illinois.