THE CONQUEST
Book I
WHEN RED MEN RULED
I
A CHILD IS BORN
The old brick palace at Williamsburg was in a tumult. The Governor tore off his wig and stamped it under foot in rage.
"I'll teach them, the ingrates, the rebels!" Snatching at a worn bell-cord, but carefully replacing his wig, he stood with clinched fists and compressed lips, waiting.
"They are going to meet in Williamsburg, eh? I'll circumvent them. These Virginia delegates! These rebellious colonists! I'll nip their little game! The land is ripe for insurrection. Negroes, Indians, rebels! There are enough rumblings now. Let me but play them off against each other, and then these colonists will know their friends. Let but the Indians rise—like naked chicks they'll fly to mother wings for shelter. I'll show them! I'll thwart their hostile plans!"
Again Lord Dunmore violently rang the bell. A servant of the palace entered.
"Here, sirrah! take this compass and dispatch a messenger to Daniel Boone. Bade him be gone at once to summon in the surveyors at the Falls of the Ohio. An Indian war is imminent. Tell him to lose no time."
The messenger bowed himself out, and a few minutes later a horse's hoofs rang down the cobblestone path before the Governor's Mansion of His Majesty's colony of Virginia in the year of our Lord 1774.
Lord Dunmore soliloquised. "Lewis is an arrant rebel, but he is powerful as old Warwick. I'll give him a journey to travel." Again he rang the bell and again a servant swept in with low obeisance.
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