University of Virginia Library

LEGEND TENTH.
THE DEATH OF BRADDOCK.

Braddock was dying.

At the foot of a sycamore, whose white
trunk glared like a ghost among the dark pines,
was stretched all that remained of the brave
General, who, five days before, had gone forth
so proudly to gather laurels from the wild hills
of Monongahela.

His throat was bare; his face pale as a
shroud, and imbued with the apathy of despair,
that neither hopes nor fears, was illumined by
eyes that shone more brightly as the night of
death came on. Sometimes he lifted his hand
to the fatal wound near his heart; sometimes
he rolled his eyes around the faces of the dismayed
spectators, and then, turning his own
face to the shadows, he bit his nether lip, and
longed for death.

It was in a glen, whose northern side was
bathed in sunlight; while the southern side
was wrapt in shadow.

A glen, strewn with broken arms and fragments
of artillery, with here and there the
body of a wounded man. Crowds of panic-stricken
men were scattered in groups over the
sward, talking with each other in low tones,
and speaking with livid lips the name of the
fatal massacre — Monongahela.

It was the fourth day of their flight from that
terrible field. For four days and nights they
had pursued their way, stricken with panic,
and only nerved to exertion by the example
of their leader, a Virginian youth of twenty-three;
and as they bore the body of their
wounded General, now in a rude tumbril,
now on horseback, and last of all in their
arms.

But five days ago he had gone forth so
proudly on his war horse, bearing the commission
of his king; and now, at the foot of a
sycamore, alone in the dark wilderness, he was
looking death in the face.

While a group of soldiers, whose tattered
uniforms and scarred faces bore traces of the
fight, gathered near him, and watched his
dying face, the valley or glen, only seven miles
from Fort Necessity, became the theatre of a
strange and varied scene.

These soldiers had paused only for an hour,
— paused that Braddock might die — but still
possessed by the panic which had maddened
them since the fatal day, they gave their baggage
to the flames, buried their cannon in the
bushes or underneath the sod, and stood panting
for the moment when they might resume
their flight.

Therefore the glen was dotted by groups of
affrighted soldiers, who talked in low tones with
each other; therefore, through the shadows of
the woods arose pyramids of flame; therefore,
no man thought of meat or drink or repose.

The only thought was this — When Braddock
is dead and buried we will fly as we
have fled, these four days and nights.

The day was fast declining.

Only two men, in that dreary valley, seemed
to keep firm hearts within their breasts: —
The man who was dying at the foot of the
sycamore.

— The young Virginian who stood near
him, watching his agony with fearful eyes.

The General reached forth his clammy hand:

“George,” he said, and his voice was husky
with death, “Let all but you retire. I would
be alone with you before I die.”

Washington took the offered hand, and the
pale spectators retired in silence, gazing from
afar upon the white sycamore.

For some moments there was silence, while

the living and the dying gazed steadily into
each other's faces.

Braddock's face, pale with death; clammy
on the brow and glassy in the eyes — Washington's
visage, pale from fever and fatigue
but lighted by a soul whose fire never for a
moment grew dim.

It was a sad, a meaning contrast.

At last the silence was broken by the husky
voice of Braddock —

“George, in a little while I shall be dead”
— his lip did not quiver, nor his eye wander
— “When I am dead let me be buried in my
uniform, and let my body be protected from
dishonor.”

Washington pressed the cold hand, and
answered in a subdued voice —

“It shall be as you wish.”

“George,” continued Braddock — and a last
throb of pain distorted his face — it was only
for a moment — “I have a last word to say
to you. It is not of friends, now far away —
I may have those who love me, who long for
my return. But why speak of them? Before
the sun is low, I shall be dead —”

He paused and turned his face to the
shadow.

“Speak! If you have a message, I will
fulfil it!” whispered Washington, bending over
the dying man.

“These weary days of our retreat have
brought strange thoughts home to me!” said
Braddock in a calm voice. “I scorned your
advice — I did more — I scorned that instinct
of a heroic sould which fills your bosom, and
which is worth all the experience in the world.
Behold the result!— An army cut to pieces —
my name given out to dishonor — seven hundred
corpses out of twelve hundred living
men!”

His eyes grew brighter — his voice rose.

“Do not speak thus!” faltered Washington,
wrung to the heart by the last words of the
death-stricken man.

“And for myself, a dishonored name, an
unknown grave!”

“No! no!” cried Washington.

“There is no need of flattery at this hour.
The truth, if never seen before, comes up
terribly to us in the hour of death” — and the
eye of the dying man suddenly brightened into
new life. “Young man, I marked you in the
hour of battle. I saw you resolved and calm,
while all the rest were mad with rage, or
palsied by dismay. That battle, which to me
is dishonor, which to seven hundred others
means only defeat and an unwept grave, to you
— to you — is life and fame!”

He dropped the hand of young Washington,
and sank back against the tree, pale, and cold,
and trembling.

Washington could not speak.

Bending near the dying General, one hand
still extended, while the other shadowed his
face, he felt the memories of his boyhood come
over him — suddenly — like a burst of sunshine
through a thunder cloud — and a thought
of the Future took shape before him, and
panted with life.

Well was it that the shadowing hand hid the
agitated face of young Washington from the
gaze of the dying General.

And over the dreary glen the fires were
brightly burning, and through the thick foliage
great pillars of cloudy smoke rose in the evening
sky, and here and there, collected in
groups of two and three, the dismayed soldiers
watched the dying man from afar, and talked
of the fatal day of Monongahela.

It is a terrible thing to see one man ridden
by the nightmare fears of insanity, but the
most terrible insanity is that which throbs at
the same instant in the breast of a large body
of men, palsying and firing every heart by
turns, and overwhelming the individuality of
every man by one universal terror.

A panic like this swayed the fugitives from
Braddock's field. They were fresh from the
scenes of massacre; they feared the war-whoop
of the Indian might startle the silence of the
pass before another moment was gone; they
turned from side to side, in expectation of the
rifle shot and yell of murder.

And all the while Braddock was dying at
the foot of the sycamore, with the young
Washington kneeling near him.

“George, had I won the battle, your name
would have been lost to fame. But the battle
lost, it was your glorious part to save the living
from the dead, and bear the torn flag from
the grasp of the enemy. Therefore the battle
lost for me is a battle gained for you, a battle
won for your country — for the day will come
when your countrymen, remembering Braddock's

fight, will call for their young hero, and
demand his sword in a more glorious field.”

Few words were spoken after this, between
the dying and the dead.

With the declining day, the life of Braddock
faded fast away. When the sunset lingered
on the top of the loftiest oak — it rises yonder
on the northern side of the dell — there was no
longer a dying man stretched at the foot of the
sycamore.

There was a corpse, clad in scarlet, with a
deeper scarlet near the heart — a corpse, resting
on the sod with leaden eyes, turned toward
a glimpse of the sunset sky — and a group of
silent and dismayed soldiers, standing near the
dead, the form of young Washington rising
over all.

Some few paces distant, hardy backwoodsmen
with spades in their hands, flashed the
earth aside, and made a grave for Braddock in
the centre of the road. A dreary road leading
through the wilderness from Fort Necessity to
Fort Duquesne, which had felt the hoof of his
war-horse five days ago, and now was to embosom
his corpse.

Mournful, and yet sublime in its very desolation
was the funeral of the dead General.

The grave was sunken — a cavity yawned
in the centre of the road — while the fresh
earth lay piled in brown heaps on either side.

The evening shadows were upon the scene.
Still trembled sunset upon the lofty tree, and
the golden sky began to deepen into night.

They wrapped the dead man in a tattered
flag. The red cross of England was laid upon
his breast, and the folds of the torn banner
shut him out from the light forever. They
held his body over the grave; two rough backwoodsmen,
one convulsed with rude emotion,
the other calm and tearless as stone.

The fearless man held the head of the General,
and every eye remarked the giant stature,
the broad chest and scarred face of the uncouth
backwoodsman.

“My Brother!” he said, as he gazed on
Braddock's face — it was his rifle that had
dealt the death to the General, on the fatal hill-side
of Monongahela.

At the head of the grave, his form erect and
his forehead bare, stood Washington, his torn
attire showing the bullet marks of Braddock's
field The shadows gathered thicker — his
face and its varied emotions were not visible
— but through the stillness and the gloom they
heard his voice, speaking some words of hope
over the body of the dead.

The form of those words, their exact memory
has long since passed away, but Washington
never till his latest hour forgot the twilight
of that lonely glen, when standing at the
head of the rude grave — dug in the centre of
the road — he gave the body of Braddock to
grave-worm and the clod.

They lowered it into the grave — the rugged
backwoodsmen, one trembling, the other
firm and tearless.

And as the last glimpse of light left the treetop,
and the first star came out from the world
of Heaven, they heaped the earth upon the
dead, and levelled it like a floor, passing the
men and horses and heavy wheels over the
road where the hero slept.

For they wished to save the corpse from
dishonor, from the white man's scorn and the
red man's steel.

Thus, without one sound of funeral music
— neither the roll of drum, or the shrill peal
of musquetry — they buried Braddock, at the
twilight hour, in the centre of the road. The
tramp of foosteps, the tread of horses' hoofs,
the groaning of the cumbrous wheels — these
echoed sullenly over the grave, as the silent
procession passed along — these were the only
sounds which broke the silence of the General's
funeral.

Soon the fugitives were on their way again
— through the forest, from the direction of Fort
Necessity, came the murmur of their dreary
march.

Two figures lingered still — one near the
grave, leaning on a sword, and the other near
a tree, cutting some rude characters into its
rough bark.

And the one who leant upon his sword, and
with a swelling heart stood over Braddock's
corpse — for there was no traces of a grave —
was Washington.

The other; a giant hunter, grimly clad, with
many a scar upon his face. You may guess
his name. He traced with his hunting knife
upon the bark of the tree, two crosses, one in
memory of the place where Braddock lay —
the other in memory of the hand which winged
the fatal bullet, or, perchance, in memory of
“Brother Arthur.”