Four days were spent with Joncaire, when abandoning both horses and Indians, Washington and Gist set out alone and afoot by the shortest course to the Forks of the Ohio. It was a daring alternative but altogether the preferable one. At Murdering Town, a fit place for Joncaire’s assassin to lie in wait, some French Indians were overtaken, one of whom offered to guide the travelers across to the Forks. At the first good chance he fired upon them, was disarmed and sent away. The two, building a raft, reached an island in the Allegheny after heroic suffering but were unable to cross to the eastern shore until the following morning. Then they passed over on the ice which had formed and went directly to Frazier’s cabin. There they arrived December 29th. On the first day of the new year, 1754, Washington set out for Virginia. On the sixth he met seventeen horses loaded with materials and stores, “for a Fort at the Forks of the _Ohio_.” Governor Dinwiddie, indefatigable if nothing else, had commissioned Captain Trent to raise a company of an hundred men to erect a fort on the Ohio for the protection of the Ohio Company. On the sixteenth of January the youthful envoy rode again into Williamsburg, one month from the day he left Fort La Boeuf. St. Piere’s reply to Governor Dinwiddie’s letter read as follows: “_SIR_, As I have the Honour of commanding here in Chief, Mr. _Washington_ delivered me the Letter which you wrote to the Commandant of the _French_ Troops. I should have been glad that you had given him Orders, or that he had been inclined to proceed to _Canada_, to see our General; to whom it better belongs than to me to set-forth the Evidence and Reality of the Rights of the King, my Master, upon the Lands situated along the River _Ohio_, and to contest the Pretentions of the King of _Great-Britain_ thereto. I shall transmit your Letter to the Marquis _Duguisne_. His Answer will be a Law to me; and if he shall order me to communicate it to you, Sir, you may be assured I shall not fail to dispatch it to you forthwith. As to the Summons you send me to retire, I do not think myself obliged to obey it. What-ever may be your Instructions, I am here by Virtue of the Orders of my General; and I entreat you, Sir, not to doubt one Moment, but that I am determin’d to conform myself to them with all the Exactness and Resolution which can be expected from the best Officer.