“The Governor took command of the main force?” 373

“Yes. And he carried his bale like the worst of us; I’ll say that for him. It was hot, and we all drooped a bit before night. And he made a good fight, too, if you can forgive him that bungling march. When we bivouacked, some of Du Luth’s boys scouted ahead. They got in by sunrise. They’d been to the main village of the Senecas on the hill beyond the marsh,––you know it, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And they saw nothing but a few women and a pack of dogs. The Governor was up early,––he’s not used to sleeping out doors in the mosquito country,––sitting on a log at the side of the trail, talking with Granville and Berthier. I wasn’t five yards behind them, trying to scrape the mud off my boots––you know how that mud sticks, Menard. Well, when the scouts came in with their story, the Governor stood up. ‘Take my order to La Durantaye,’ he said, ‘that he is to move on with all caution, that the surprise may be complete. He will push forward, following the trail. You,’ he said, to a few aides who stood by, ‘will see that the command is aroused as silently as possible.’ Well, I didn’t know whether to laugh at the Governor or pity myself 374 and the boys. Any man but the crowd of seigniors that he had about him would have foreseen what was coming. I knew that the devils were waiting for us, probably at one of the ravines where the trail runs through that group of hills just this side of the marsh. You know the place,––every one of us knows it. But what could we say? I’d have given a month’s pay to have been within ear-shot of La Durantaye when he got the order. La Valterie told me about it afterward. ‘What’s this?’ he says, ‘follow the trail? I’ll go to the devil first. There’s a better place for my bones than this pest-ridden country.’ He calls to Du Luth: ‘Hear this, Du Luth. We’re to “push forward, following the trail.”’ I can fairly hear him say it, with his eyes looking right through the young aide. ‘Not I,’ says Du Luth, ‘I’m going around the hills and come into the village over the long oak ridge!’ ‘You can’t do it. I have the Governor’s order.’ And then Du Luth drew himself up, La Valterie says, and looked the aide (who wasn’t used to this kind of a soldier, and wished himself back under the Governor’s petticoats) up and down till the fellow got red as a Lower Town girl. ‘Tell your commanding officer,’ says Du Luth, 375 in his big voice, ‘that the advance will “push forward, following the trail,”––and may God have mercy on our poor souls!’

“Well, Menard, they did it, nine hundred of them. And we came on, a quarter of a league after, with sixteen hundred more. We got into the first defile, and through it, with never a sound. Then I was sure of trouble in the second, but long after the advance had had time to get through, everything was still. There was still the third defile, just before you reach the marsh, and my head was spinning, waiting for the first shot and wondering where we were to catch it and how many of us were to get out alive. And then, all at once it came. You see the Senecas, three hundred of them at least, were in the brush up on the right slope of the third defile; and as many more were in the elder thickets and swamp grass ahead and to the left. They let the whole advance get through,––fooled every man of Du Luth’s scouts,––and then came at them from all sides. We heard the noise––I never heard a worse––and started up on the run; and then there was the strangest mess I ever got into. They had surprised the advance, right enough,––we could see Du 376 Luth and Tonty running about knocking men down and bellowing out orders to hold their force together,––but you see the Senecas never dreamed that a larger force was coming on behind, and we struck them like a whirlwind. Well, for nearly an hour we didn’t know what was going on. Our Indians and the Senecas were so mixed together that we dared not shoot to kill. Our own boys, even the regulars, lost their heads and fell into the tangle. It was all yelling and whooping and banging and running around, with the smoke so thick that you couldn’t find the trail or the hills or the swamp. I was crowded up to my arms in water and mud for the last part of the time. Once the smoke lifted a little, and I saw what I thought to be a mission Indian, not five yards away, in the same fix. I called to him to help me, and he turned out to be a Seneca chief. Our muskets were wet,––at least mine was, and I saw that he dropped his when he started for me,––so we had it out with knives.”

“Did he get at you?”

“Once. A rib stopped it––no harm done. Well, I was tired, but I got out and dodged around through the smoke to find out where 377 our boys were, but they were mixed up worse than ever. I was just in time to save a coureur from killing one of our Indians with his own hatchet. Most of the regulars scattered as soon as they lost sight of their officers. And Berthier,––I found him lying under a log all gone to pieces with fright.

“I didn’t know how it was to come out until at last the firing eased a little, and the smoke thinned out. Then we found that the devils had slipped away, all but a few who had wandered so far into our lines––if you could call them lines––that they couldn’t get out. They carried most of their killed, though we picked up a few on the edge of the marsh. It took all the rest of the day to pull things together and find out how we stood.”

“Heavy loss?”

“No. I don’t know how many, but beyond a hundred or so of cuts and flesh-wounds like mine we seemed to have a full force. We went on in the morning, after a puffed-out speech by the Governor, and before night reached the village. The Senecas had already burned a part of it, but we finished it, and spent close to ten days cutting their corn and destroying the fort on the big hill, a league 378 or more to the east. Then we came back to La Famine, and the Governor took the whole column to Niagara,––to complete the parade, I suppose.”