the air.
“What is it, Chief?”
“Wood smoke.”
They proceeded on again, only slackening their pace for the sake of caution. All at once a sharp cry cracked at them like a pistol shot and they lurched to a halt in the snow.
“Stop right there! Who are you?”
A small, heavily bundled, booted man stepped from behind a tree and leveled a musket at them. His eyes were perfectly round and steel blue. He was bearded and, somehow, Matt thought, ferocious-looking.
“It’s all right,” Matt called. “We’re friends—Americans.”
“Who’s that Mingo?” the man wanted to know. “He looks like a Laurel Ridger to me.”
“Who gives a hoot what he looks like to you?” Shad shouted peevishly. “ ’Course if he ain’t good enough for you, why then we’ll just take him away with us. I guess you don’t want to hear about the Abenaki that’s been skulkin’ your trail. No, you wouldn’t care to hear nothing about that. Come on, Matt. We’ll go mind our own business.” And, turning, he pretended to take off in a huff.
“Hold on!” the small man cried. “There’s no call to take offense. This is touchy territory. A man can’t afford to take chances with Mingoes who have a yen for scalp lifting. What’s that you say about an Abenaki on our trail?”
“A man can afford to take a moment to see if the other white men around him is still wearing their hair afore he starts calling every Injun he sees a scalper. Do I look scalped to you?” Shad demanded.
“Be quiet, Shad,” Matt said. He walked up to the small man, ignoring the pointed musket. “We’ve been on your trail ever since you crossed Slippery Rock. An Abenaki was also on your trail. We jumped him a few miles back.”
“Yes,” Shad said, coming up to them, “but it was nothin’ much. That Abenaki was only trying to run you and your friend down. He was only dolled up in his war paint and armed like a French fort. Matt here shot him dead after he’d bowled me’n Chief over like reeds in a high wind. You talk about scalpin’! That Abenaki would’ve had my scalp on his hip right now if it hadn’t been for Matt here!” He began to pound Matt’s shoulder with sledgehammer blows of admiration.
Matt dodged to one side and frowned at the big fellow.
The little man looked confused and slightly embarrassed. He tried to smile at Matt and cock a dubious eye at Shad at the same time.
“I don’t want to appear ungrateful,” he mumbled hesitantly. “I didn’t know that—”
“Gist!” a sharp voice called from somewhere beyond them; a voice that managed the difficult feat of sounding both pleasant and commanding. “Bring the gentlemen in here. I think you’ve kept them out in the cold long enough.”
2
MURDER TOWN
Two men, an Indian and a white man, were in a small secluded rock-ribbed glen. The white man sat on a log warming his hands before a fire in the snow. The Indian stood aside, slightly in the rear, and watched the newcomers without a hint of expression.
The white man stood up, moving with an abrupt gracefulness, showing Matt that he was tall, well-proportioned, and neatly clad in winter garments that strangely enough would be accepted in the best of Tidewater homes or in the heart of a howling wilderness. He was a man who would fit in, anywhere.
He was obviously a gentleman, yet not of the stiff self-important English breed. He was quite young: about Shad’s age. His face was both bluff and handsome. He smiled, showing bad teeth, and said:
“Welcome, sirs! Come closer and warm yourselves. I gather from what little I chanced to overhear”—turning his warm smile on Shad—“that I owe you my thanks. I’m Major George Washington of the Virginia militia. This other gentleman is Christopher Gist, my friend and guide. And this”—with an easy wave of his hand toward the silent Indian—“Half King, my friend.”
Matt and Shad shook hands with Gist and the major and inclined their heads to Half King; and Chief, who liked to imitate Shad, shook hands also, but ignored Half King, who in turn ignored him, there being no love lost between a Seneca of one tribe and a Seneca of another.
The major studied Chief closely, then turned to Matt. “Is he a Laurel Ridge Seneca? Do you trust him?”
“Do you trust Half King?” Matt countered.
“I have reason to. Half King sees that the French are taking his lands from him. He has turned to me for help.”
“Well, major,” Shad rumbled heavily, “we got a better reason to trust Chief. Chief here don’t care a hang about land, nor the French or English neither. Chief just likes me’n Matt.”
Washington canted his head slightly toward Shad, saying, “That’s a reason for trust that’s hard to beat. So be it. Now what about this Abenaki I heard you telling Gist of?”
Matt quickly repeated his tale, thereby cutting Shad’s opportunity to embellish the facts, and finished with—“Why would the French want you murdered?”
Washington was silent for a moment. He stared at the fire reflectively, then seemed to come to a carefully weighed decision.
“I see no harm in telling you that I am acting on behalf of the Ohio Company. Being trappers, you probably know that the Company has penetrated the Ohio country to the domain of the Miamis and beyond.
“But the French view this trangression with alarm, fearing they will lose their influence with the tribes of the upper Ohio Valley, and presage the ultimate destruction of their fortified line of communication between Canada and the Gulf of Mexico. That is why they have erected forts at Presque Isle, at le Boeuf, and at Venango.
“Naturally the Company complained of these hostile demonstrations; their lands lay within the chartered limits of Virginia . . . so Robert Dinwiddie, one of the Company, and now Governor of Virginia, decided to send a letter of remonstrance to M. de St. Pierre, the French commander at Fort le Boeuf, asking the French, politely, to remove themselves. I was elected to carry that letter.”
Shad whistled his admiration. “From Williamsburg, major? That’s nearly four hundred miles!”
Washington smiled. “As the crow flies. However, to a man on horse it is perhaps double. There were eight of us in the beginning, and the journey to le Boeuf was accomplished in forty-one days. After leaving Venango on our return, we found our horses so weak that we left them and their drivers in charge of Vanbraam, a friend of mine. Gist, Half King and I have been afoot ever since.”
“How did St. Pierre receive you and your demand, major?” Matt asked.
Washington appeared amused. “Much as you would expect a French officer and gentleman to do. He thanked us, entertained us for four days, and then delivered into my hands a sealed letter for Governor Dinwiddie.”
Shad hunched forward on his haunches, his fat face working with curiosity. “Well, what did the letter say? Ain’t you opened it yet?”
Washington looked sharply at Shad. “Opened
