“You are my son and I am old and weak.”
“I am a soldier and must obey the big chief’s commands, as must you.”
“I shall live,” said the old man wearily, “until you come again.”
Erskine nodded and went for his horse. Black Wolf watched him with malignant satisfaction, but said nothing—nor did Crooked Lightning. Erskine turned once as he rode away. His mother was standing outside her wigwam. Mournfully she waved her hand. Behind her and within the tent he could see Early Morn with both hands at her breast.
XXII
Dawned 1781.
The war was coming into Virginia at last. Virginia falling would thrust a great wedge through the centre of the Confederacy, feed the British armies and end the fight. Cornwallis was to drive the wedge, and never had the opening seemed easier. Virginia was drained of her fighting men, and south of the mountains was protected only by a militia, for the most part, of old men and boys. North and South ran despair. The soldiers had no pay, little food, and only old worn-out coats, tattered linen overalls, and one blanket between three men, to protect them from drifting snow and icy wind. Even the great Washington was near despair, and in foreign help his sole hope lay. Already the traitor, Arnold, had taken Richmond, burned warehouses, and returned, but little harassed, to Portsmouth.
In April, “the proudest man,” as Mr. Jefferson said, “of the proudest nation on earth,” one General Phillips, marching northward, paused opposite Richmond, and looked with amaze at the troop-crowned hills north of the river. Up there was a beardless French youth of twenty-three, with the epaulets of a major-general.
“He will not cross—hein?” said the Marquis de Lafayette. “Very well!” And they had a race for Petersburg, which the Britisher reached first, and straightway fell ill of a fever at “Bollingbrook.” A cannonade from the Appomattox hills saluted him.
“They will not let me die in peace,” said General Phillips, but he passed, let us hope, to it, and Benedict Arnold succeeded him.