Fright overcame fatigue.  The fugitives toiled on all night, pursued by spectres of horror and despair; hearing still the war-whoops and the shrieks; possessed with the one thought of escape from the wilderness of death.  In the morning some order was restored.  Braddock was placed on a horse; then, the pain being insufferable, he was carried on a litter, Captain Orme having bribed the carriers by the promise of a guinea and a bottle of rum apiece.  Early in the succeeding night, such as had not fainted on the way reached the deserted farm of Gist.  Here they met wagons and provisions, with a detachment of soldiers sent by Dunbar, whose camp was six miles farther on; and Braddock ordered them to go to the relief of the stragglers left behind.

At noon of that day a number of wagoners and packhorse-drivers had come to Dunbar’s camp with wild tidings of rout and ruin.  More fugitives followed; and soon after a wounded officer was brought in upon a sheet.  The drums beat to arms.  The camp was in commotion; and many soldiers and teamsters took to flight, in spite of the sentinels, who tried in vain to stop them.[230] There was a still more disgraceful scene on the next day, after Braddock, with the wreck of his force, had arrived.  Orders were given to destroy such of the wagons, stores, and ammunition as could not be carried back at once to Fort Cumberland.  Whether Dunbar or the dying General gave these orders is not clear; but it is certain that they were executed with shameful alacrity.  More than a hundred wagons were burned; cannon, coehorns, and shells were burst or buried; barrels of gunpowder were staved, and the contents thrown into a brook; provisions were scattered through the woods and swamps.  Then the whole command began its retreat over the mountains to Fort Cumberland, sixty miles distant.  This proceeding, for which, in view of the condition of Braddock, Dunbar must be held answerable, excited the utmost indignation among the colonists.  If he could not advance, they thought, he might at least have fortified himself and held his ground till the provinces could send him help; thus covering the frontier, and holding French war-parties in check.

[Footnote 230:  Depositions of Matthew Laird, Michael Hoover, and Jacob Hoover, Wagoners, in Colonial Records of Pa., VI. 482.]

Braddock’s last moment was near.  Orme, who, though himself severely wounded, was with him till his death, told Franklin that he was totally silent all the first day, and at night said only, “Who would have thought it?” that all the next day he was again silent, till at last he muttered, “We shall better know how to deal with them another time,” and died a few minutes after.  He had nevertheless found breath to give orders at Gist’s for the succor of the men who had dropped on the road.  It is said, too, that in his last hours “he could not bear the sight of a red coat,” but murmured praises of “the blues,” or Virginians, and said that he hoped he should live to reward them.[231] He died at about eight o’clock in the evening of Sunday, the thirteenth.  Dunbar had begun his retreat that morning, and was then encamped near the Great Meadows.  On Monday the dead commander was buried in the road; and men, horses, and wagons passed over his grave, effacing every sign of it, lest the Indians should find and mutilate the body.