Page:The Conquest.djvu/52

 yond us lies Vincennes. Cross that plain and you shall see it."

On February 22, Washington's birthday, fatigued and weary they slept in a sugar camp. "Heard the evening and morning guns of the fort. No provisions yet. Lord help us!" is the record of Bowman's journal.

Still without food, the 23d saw them crossing the Horseshoe Plain,—four miles of water breast high. Frozen, starved, they struggled through, and on a little hill captured a Frenchman hunting ducks.

"No one dreams of your coming at this time of year," said the duck-hunter. "There are six hundred people in Vincennes, troops, Indians, and all. This very day Hamilton completed the walls of his fort."

Clark pressed his determined lips. "The situation is all that I can ask. It is death or victory." And there in the mud, half frozen, chilled to the marrow, starved, Clark penned on his knee a letter:

":

",—Being now within two miles of your village with my army, determined to take your fort this night, and not being willing to surprise you, I take this method to request such as are true citizens to remain still in your houses. Those, if any there be, that are friends of the King, will instantly repair to the fort, join the hair-buyer general, and fight like men. If any such do not go and are found afterwards, they may depend on severe punishment. On the contrary, those who are the friends of liberty may depend on being well treated, and I once more request them to keep out of the streets. Every one I find in arms on my arrival I shall treat as an enemy.

""

"Take this. Tell the people my quarrel is with the British. We shall be in Vincennes by the rising of the moon. Prepare dinner."

The messenger flew ahead; upon the captured horses of other duck-hunters Clark mounted his officers. It was just at nightfall when they entered the lower gate.

"Silence those drunken Indians," roared Hamilton at