"We make for Pittsburg," added Mount. "It will be a job to get the women and children through. Cresap wishes to see you, Mr. Cardigan. You will find him laying fuses to the magazine."
They piloted me to the casemates and around the barracks to the angle of the fort, where a stockade barred the passage to the magazine. The sentry refused us admittance, but Corporal Cloud heard us and opened the stockade gate, where we saw Cresap on his hands and knees, heaping up loose powder into a long train. He glanced up at us quietly; his thin, grave face was very pale.
"Am I right about those arrows?" he asked Mount.
"Mr. Cardigan says there's a Seneca war-arrow among 'em, too," replied Mount.
Cresap's keen eyes questioned me.
"It's true," I said. "The Senecas guard the western door of the Long House, and they have made the Cayugas' cause their own."
"And the eastern door?" demanded Cresap, quickly.
"The eastern door of the Long House is held by our Mohawks and Sir William Johnson," I said, proudly. "And, by God's grace! they will hold it in peace."
"Not while Walter Butler lives," said Cresap, bitterly, rising to his feet and turning the key of the magazine. "Throw that key into the moat, corporal," he said. "Mount, get some riflemen and roll these kegs of powder into the casemates."
"You know," he observed, turning to me, "that we abandon the fort to-night. It means the end of all for me. I shall receive all the blame for this war; the disgrace will be laid on me. But let Dunmore beware if he thinks to deprive me of command over my riflemen! I've made them what they are—not for my Lord Dunmore, but for my country, when the call to arms peals out of every steeple from Maine to Virginia."