As we walked away, Gist said there was small fear of Indians either in the darkness or in great cold, for they liked neither, and he thought the cold had perhaps saved us from pursuit.
This was the case at Valley Forge in ’78, when, although my soldiers suffered greatly, the snows and the cold were such as to keep Sir William Howe in his lines.
From the top of a hill, as I looked back on the river, Gist said: “You will never again, sir, be in a worse business than that, nor ever see the like again.” But this I did, when, on the night before Christmas, in 1776, I crossed the Delaware in a boat with General Knox, amid as great peril of ice, on our way to beat up the Hessian quarters at Trenton.
While we were in danger, Gist had been silent; but now that we were released from anxiety and on a clear trail, he talked all the time, whether I made answer or not. I remember little of what he said, being engaged in thinking how soon I should be able to reach Williamsburg. I recall, however, his surprising me with a question as to whether I had ever before had a man shoot at me. I said never, and having my mind thus turned to the matter, felt it to be strange that so great an escape and such nearness to death had not more impressed me. But, in fact, I had no time to think before we caught the man, and after that the great misery of the cold so distressed me that how to keep warm employed my mind.
XXII
We were now on a good trail, and by nightfall came to the cabin of Frazier, a trader in furs; and this was where the Turtle Creek falls into the Monongahela. Here I wrote up my diary.
As there was hope of packhorses coming hither which might be used on our return, I waited, pleased to be fed and warmed, but hearing bad news of massacres by the Ottawas. Near by I visited the Queen Aliquippa, and made her presents of a match-coat and a bottle of rum I had of the trader, asking, too, her advice as to the Indians, all of which pleased her mightily.
I was surprised to find a woman with rule over Indians, but she was said to be wise in council. I never heard of a King Aliquippa. The queen was old and fat and as wrinkled as a frosted persimmon. She smoked a pipe and had a tomahawk in her belt, and I did not think she would be a comfortable partner in the marriage state.
At last, as we failed at this place to get horses after a three days’ rest, we left on foot, January 1, reaching Gist’s home on the Monongahela, a sixteen-mile tramp. There I left Gist, and, buying a horse, pushed on, passing packhorses carrying stores for the new fort begun at the Forks.