Erskine Dale—Pioneer

“Tut, tut, my boys,” he said, with pleasant firmness, and led Hugh away, and when General Willoughby would have followed, the colonel nodded him back with a smile, and Hugh was seen no more that night. The guests left with gayety, smiles, and laughter, and every one gave the stranger a kindly good-by. Again Harry went with him to his room and the lad stopped again under the crossed swords.

“You fight with ’em?”

“Yes, and with pistols.”

“I’ve never had a pistol. I want to learn how to use them.”

Harry looked at him searchingly, but the boy’s face gave hint of no more purpose than when he first asked the same question.

“All right,” said Harry.

The lad blew out his candle, but he went to his window instead of his bed. The moonlight was brilliant—among the trees and on the sleeping flowers and the slow run of the broad river, and it was very still out there and very lovely, but he had no wish to be out there. With wind and storm and sun, moon and stars, he had lived face to face all his life, but here they were not the same. Trees, flowers, house, people had reared some wall between him and them, and they seemed now to be very far away. Everybody had been kind to him—all but Hugh. Veiled hostility he had never known before and he could not understand. Everybody had surely been kind, and yet—he turned to his bed, and all night his brain was flashing to and fro between the reel of vivid pictures etched on it in a day and the grim background that had hitherto been his life beyond the hills.

VI

From pioneer habit he awoke before dawn, and for a moment the softness where he lay puzzled him. There was no sound of anybody stirring and he thought he must have waked up in the middle of the night, but he could smell the dawn and he started to spring up. But there was nothing to be done, nothing that he could do. He felt hot and stuffy, though Harry had put up his windows, and he could not lie there wide awake. He could not go out in the heavy dew in the gay clothes and fragile shoes he had taken off, so he slid into his own buckskin clothes and moccasins and out the still open front door and down the path toward the river. Instinctively he had picked up his rifle, bullet-pouch, and powder-horn. Up the river to the right he could faintly see dark woods, and he made toward and plunged into them with his eyes on the ground for signs of game, but he saw tracks only of coon and skunk and fox, and he grunted his disgust and loped ahead for half an hour farther into the heart of the woods. An hour later he loped back on his own tracks. The cabins were awake now, and every pickaninny who saw him showed the whites of his eyes in terror and fled back into his house. He came noiselessly behind a negro woman at the kitchen-door and threw three squirrels on the steps before her. She turned, saw him, and gave a shriek, but recovered herself and picked them up. Her amazement grew as she looked them over, for there was no sign of a bullet-wound, and she went in to tell how the Injun boy must naturally just “charm ’em right out o’ de trees.”

At the front door Harry hailed him and Barbara came running out.

“I forgot to get you another suit of clothes last night,” he said, “and we were scared this morning. We thought you had left us, and Barbara there nearly cried.” Barbara blushed now and did not deny.

“Come to breakfast!” she cried.

“Did you find anything to shoot?” Harry asked.

“Nothin’ but some squirrels,” said the lad.

Colonel Dale soon came in.

“You’ve got the servants mystified,” he said laughingly. “They think you’re a witch. How did you kill those squirrels?”

“I couldn’t see their heads—so I barked ’em.”

“Barked?”

“I shot between the bark and the limb right under the squirrel, an’ the shock kills ’em. Uncle Dan’l Boone showed me how to do that.”

“Daniel Boone!” breathed Harry. “Do you know Daniel Boone?”

“Shucks, Dave can beat him shootin’.”

And then Hugh came in, pale of face and looking rather ashamed. He went straight to the Kentuckian.

“I was rude to you last night and I owe you an apology.”

He thrust out his hand and awkwardly the boy rose and took it.

“And you’ll forgive me, too, Barbara?”

“Of course I will,” she said happily, but holding up one finger of warning—should he ever do it again. The rest of the guests trooped in now, and some were going out on horseback, some for a sail, and some visiting up the river in a barge, and all were paired off, even Harry.

“I’m going to drive Cousin Erskine over the place with my ponies,” said Barbara, “and——”

“I’m going back to bed,” interrupted Hugh, “or read a little Latin and Greek with Mr. Brockton.” There was impudence as well as humor in this, for the tutor had given up Hugh in despair long ago.

Barbara shook her head.

“You are going with us,” she said.

“I want Hugh to ride with me,” said Colonel Dale, “and give Firefly a little exercise. Nobody else can ride him.”

The Kentucky boy turned a challenging eye, as did every young man at the table, and Hugh felt very comfortable. While every one was getting ready, Harry brought out two foils and two masks on the porch a little later.

“We fight with those,” he said, pointing to the crossed rapiers on the wall, “but we practise with these. Hugh, there, is the champion fencer,” he said, “and he’ll show you.”

Harry helped the Kentucky boy to mask and they crossed foils—Hugh giving instructions all the time and nodding approval.

“You’ll learn—you’ll learn fast,” he said. And over his shoulder to Harry:

“Why, his wrist is as strong as mine now, and he’s got an eye like a weasel.”

With a twist he wrenched the foil from his antagonist’s hand and clattered it on the steps. The Kentuckian was bewildered and his face flushed. He ran for the weapon.

“You can’t do that again.”

“I don’t believe I can,” laughed Hugh.

“Will you learn me some more?” asked the boy eagerly.

“I surely will.”

A little later Barbara and her cousin were trotting smartly along a sandy road through the fields with the colonel and Hugh loping in front of them. Firefly was a black mettlesome gelding. He had reared and plunged when Hugh mounted, and even now he was champing his bit and leaping playfully at times, but the lad sat him with an unconcern of his capers that held the Kentucky boy’s eyes.

“Gosh,” he said, “but Hugh can ride! I wonder if he could stay on him bareback.”

“I suppose so,” Barbara said; “Hugh can do anything.”

The summer fields of corn and grain waved away on each side under the wind, innumerable negroes were at work and song on either side, great barns and whitewashed cabins dotted the rich landscape which beyond the plantation broke against woods of sombre pines. For an hour they drove, the boy’s bewildered eye missing few details and understanding few, so foreign to him were all the changes wrought by the hand, and he could hardly have believed that this country was once as wild as his own—that this was to be impoverished and his own become even a richer land. Many questions the little girl asked—and some of his answers made her shudder.

“Papa said last night that several of our kinsfolk spoke of going to your country in a party, and Harry and Hugh are crazy to go with them. Papa said people would be swarming over the Cumberland Mountains before long.”

“I wish you’d come along.”

Barbara laughed.

“I wouldn’t like to lose my hair.”

“I’ll watch out for that,” said the boy with such confident gravity that Barbara turned to look at him.

“I believe you would,” she murmured. And presently:

“What did the Indians call you?”

“White Arrow.”

“White Arrow. That’s lovely. Why?”

“I could outrun all the other boys.”

“Then you’ll have to run to-morrow when we go to the fair at Williamsburg.”

“The fair?”

Barbara explained.

For an hour or more they had driven and there was no end to the fields of tobacco and grain.

“Are we still on your land?”

Barbara laughed. “Yes, we can’t drive around the plantation and get back for dinner. I think we’d better turn now.”

“Plan-ta-tion,” said the lad. “What’s that?”

Barbara waved her whip.

“Why, all this—the land—the farm.”

“Oh!”

“It’s called Red Oaks—from those big trees back of the house.”

“Oh. I know oaks—all of ’em.”

She wheeled the ponies and with fresh zest they scampered for home. She even let them run for a while, laughing and chatting meanwhile, though the light wagon swayed from side to side perilously as the boy thought, and when, in his ignorance of the discourtesy involved, he was on the point of reaching for the reins, she spoke to them and pulled them gently into a swift trot. Everybody had gathered for the noonday dinner when they swung around the great trees and up to the back porch. The clamor of the great bell gave its summons and the guests began straggling in by couples from the garden. Just as they were starting in the Kentucky boy gave a cry and darted down the path. A towering figure in coonskin cap and hunter’s garb was halted at the sun-dial and looking toward them.

“Now, I wonder who that is,” said Colonel Dale. “Jupiter, but that boy can run!”

They saw the tall stranger stare wonderingly at the boy and throw back his head and laugh. Then the two came on together. The boy was still flushed but the hunter’s face was grave.

“This is Dave,” said the boy simply.

“Dave Yandell,” added the stranger, smiling and taking off his cap. “I’ve been at Williamsburg to register some lands and I thought I’d come and see how this young man is getting along.”

Colonel Dale went quickly to meet him with outstretched hand.

“I’m glad you did,” he said heartily. “Erskine has already told us about you. You are just in time for dinner.”

“That’s mighty kind,” said Dave. And the ladies, after he was presented, still looked at him with much curiosity and great interest. Truly, strange visitors were coming to Red Oaks these days.

That night the subject of Hugh and Harry going back home with the two Kentuckians was broached to Colonel Dale, and to the wondering delight of the two boys both fathers seemed to consider it favorably. Mr. Brockton was going to England for a visit, the summer was coming on, and both fathers thought it would be a great benefit to their sons. Even Mrs. Dale, on whom the hunter had made a most agreeable impression, smiled and said she would already be willing to trust her son with their new guest anywhere.

“I shall take good care of him, madam,” said Dave with a bow.

Colonel Dale, too, was greatly taken with the stranger, and he asked many questions of the new land beyond the mountains. There was dancing again that night, and the hunter, towering a head above them all, looked on with smiling interest. He even took part in a square dance with Miss Jane Willoughby, handling his great bulk with astonishing grace and lightness of foot. Then the elder gentlemen went into the drawing-room to their port and pipes, and the boy Erskine slipped after them and listened enthralled to the talk of the coming war.

Colonel Dale had been in Hanover ten years before, when one Patrick Henry voiced the first intimation of independence in Virginia; Henry, a country storekeeper—bankrupt; farmer—bankrupt; storekeeper again, and bankrupt again; an idler, hunter, fisher, and story-teller—even a “barkeeper,” as Mr. Jefferson once dubbed him, because Henry had once helped his father-in-law to keep tavern. That far back Colonel Dale had heard Henry denounce the clergy, stigmatize the king as a tyrant who had forfeited all claim to obedience, and had seen the orator caught up on the shoulders of the crowd and amidst shouts of applause borne around the court-house green. He had seen the same Henry ride into Richmond two years later on a lean horse: with papers in his saddle-pockets, his expression grim, his tall figure stooping, a peculiar twinkle in his small blue eyes, his brown wig without powder, his coat peach-blossom in color, his knee-breeches of leather, and his stockings of yarn. The speaker of the Burgesses was on a dais under a red canopy supported by gilded rods, and the clerk sat beneath with a mace on the table before him, but Henry cried for liberty or death, and the shouts of treason failed then and there to save Virginia for the king. The lad’s brain whirled. What did all this mean? Who was this king and what had he done? He had known but the one from whom he had run away. And this talk of taxes and Stamp Acts; and where was that strange land, New England, whose people had made tea of the salt water in Boston harbor? Until a few days before he had never known what tea was, and he didn’t like it. When he got Dave alone he would learn and learn and learn—everything. And then the young people came quietly in and sat down quietly, and Colonel Dale, divining what they wanted, got Dave started on stories of the wild wilderness that was his home—the first chapter in the Iliad of Kentucky—the land of dark forests and cane thickets that separated Catawbas, Creeks, and Cherokees on the south from Delawares, Wyandottes, and Shawnees on the north, who fought one another, and all of whom the whites must fight. How Boone came and stayed two years in the wilderness alone, and when found by his brother was lying on his back in the woods lustily singing hymns. How hunters and surveyors followed; how the first fort was built, and the first women stood on the banks of the Kentucky River. He told of the perils and hardships of the first journeys thither—fights with wild beasts and wild men, chases, hand-to-hand combats, escapes, and massacres—and only the breathing of his listeners could be heard, save the sound of his own voice. And he came finally to the story of the attack on the fort, the raising of a small hand above the cane, palm outward, and the swift dash of a slender brown body into the fort, and then, seeing the boy’s face turn scarlet, he did not tell how that same lad had slipped back into the woods even while the fight was going on, and slipped back with the bloody scalp of his enemy, but ended with the timely coming of the Virginians, led by the lad’s father, who got his death-wound at the very gate. The tense breathing of his listeners culminated now in one general deep breath.

Colonel Dale rose and turned to General Willoughby.

“And that’s where he wants to take our boys.”

“Oh, it’s much safer now,” said the hunter. “We have had no trouble for some time, and there’s no danger inside the fort.”

“I can imagine you keeping those boys inside the fort when there’s so much going on outside. Still—” Colonel Dale stopped and the two boys took heart again. The ladies rose to go to bed, and Mrs. Dale was shaking her head very doubtfully, but she smiled up at the tall hunter when she bade him good night.

“I shall not take back what I said.”

“Thank you, madam,” said Dave, and he bent his lips to her absurdly little white hand.

Colonel Dale escorted the boy and Dave to their room. Mr. Yandell must go with them to the fair at Williamsburg next morning, and Mr. Yandell would go gladly. They would spend the night there and go to the Governor’s Ball. The next day there was a county fair, and perhaps Mr. Henry would speak again. Then Mr. Yandell must come back with them to Red Oaks and pay them a visit—no, the colonel would accept no excuse whatever.

The boy plied Dave with questions about the people in the wilderness and passed to sleep. Dave lay awake a long time thinking that war was sure to come. They were Americans now, said Colonel Dale—not Virginians, just as nearly a century later the same people were to say:

“We are not Americans now—we are Virginians.”

VII

The capital had been moved from Jamestown to the spot where Bacon had taken the oath against England—then called Middle-Plantation, and now Williamsburg. The cavalcade wheeled into Gloucester Street, and Colonel Dale pointed out to Dave the old capitol at one end and William and Mary College at the other. Mr. Henry had thundered in the old capitol, the Burgesses had their council-chamber there, and in the hall there would be a ball that night. Near the street was a great building which the colonel pointed out as the governor’s palace, surrounded by pleasure-grounds of full three hundred acres and planted thick with linden-trees. My Lord Dunmore lived there. Back at the plantation Dave had read in an old copy of The Virginia Gazette, amid advertisements of shopkeepers, the arrival and departure of ships, and poetical bits that sang of Myrtilla, Florella, and other colonial belles, how the town had made an illumination in honor of the recent arrival of the elegant Lady Dunmore and her three fine, sprightly daughters, from whose every look flashed goodness of heart. For them the gentlemen of the Burgesses were to give a ball the next night. At this season the planters came with their families to the capitol, and the street was as brilliant as a fancy-dress parade would be to us now. It was filled with coaches and fours. Maidens moved daintily along in silk and lace, high-heeled shoes and clocked stockings. Youths passed on spirited horses, college students in academic dress swaggered through the throng, and from his serene excellency’s coach, drawn by six milk-white horses, my lord bowed grimly to the grave lifting of hats on either side of the street.

The cavalcade halted before a building with a leaden bust of Sir Walter Raleigh over the main doorway, the old Raleigh Tavern, in the Apollo Room of which Mr. Jefferson had rapturously danced with his Belinda, and which was to become the Faneuil Hall of Virginia. Both coaches were quickly surrounded by bowing gentlemen, young gallants, and frolicsome students. Dave, the young Kentuckian, and Harry would be put up at the tavern, and, for his own reasons, Hugh elected to stay with them. With an au revoir of white hands from the coaches, the rest went on to the house of relatives and friends.

Inside the tavern Hugh was soon surrounded by fellow students and boon companions. He pressed Dave and the boy to drink with them, but Dave laughingly declined and took the lad up to their room. Below they could hear Hugh’s merriment going on, and when he came up-stairs a while later his face was flushed, he was in great spirits, and was full of enthusiasm over a horserace and cock-fight that he had arranged for the afternoon. With him came a youth of his own age with daredevil eyes and a suave manner, one Dane Grey, to whom Harry gave scant greeting. One patronizing look from the stranger toward the Kentucky boy and within the latter a fire of antagonism was instantly kindled. With a word after the two went out, Harry snorted his explanation:

“Tory!”

In the early afternoon coach and horsemen moved out to an “old field.” Hugh was missing from the Dale party, and General Willoughby frowned when he noted his son’s absence. When they arrived a most extraordinary concert of sounds was filling the air. On a platform stood twenty fiddlers in contest for a fiddle—each sawing away for dear life and each playing a different tune—a custom that still survives in our own hills. After this a “quire of ballads” was sung for. Then a crowd of boys gathered to run one hundred and twelve yards for a hat worth twelve shillings, and Dave nudged his young friend. A moment later Harry cried to Barbara:

“Look there!”

There was their young Indian lining up with the runners, his face calm, but an eager light in his eyes. At the word he started off almost leisurely, until the whole crowd was nearly ten yards ahead of him, and then a yell of astonishment rose from the crowd. The boy was skimming the grounds on wings. Past one after another he flew, and laughing and hardly out of breath he bounded over the finish, with the first of the rest laboring with bursting lungs ten yards behind. Hugh and Dane Grey had appeared arm in arm and were moving through the crowd with great gayety and some boisterousness, and when the boy appeared with his hat Grey shouted:

“Good for the little savage!” Erskine wheeled furiously but Dave caught him by the arm and led him back to Harry and Barbara, who looked so pleased that the lad’s ill-humor passed at once.

“Whut you reckon I c’n do with this hat?”

“Put it on!” smiled Barbara; but it was so ludicrous surmounting his hunter’s garb that she couldn’t help laughing aloud. Harry looked uneasy, but it was evident that the girl was the one person who could laugh at the sensitive little woodsman with no offense.

“I reckon you’re right,” he said, and gravely he handed it to Harry and gravely Harry accepted it. Hugh and his friend had not approached them, for Hugh had seen the frown on his father’s face, but Erskine saw Grey look long at Barbara, turn to question Hugh, and again he began to burn within.

The wrestlers had now stepped forth to battle for a pair of silver buckles, and the boy in turn nudged Dave, but unavailingly. The wrestling was good and Dave watched it with keen interest. One huge bull-necked fellow was easily the winner, but when the silver buckles were in his hand, he boastfully challenged anybody in the crowd. Dave shouldered through the crowd and faced the victor.

“I’ll try you once,” he said, and a shout of approval rose.

The Dale party crowded close and my lord’s coach appeared on the outskirts and stopped.

“Backholts or catch-as-catch-can?” asked the victor sneeringly.

“As you please,” said Dave.

The bully rushed. Dave caught him around the neck with his left arm, his right swinging low, the bully was lifted from the ground, crushed against Dave’s breast, the wind went out of him with a grunt, and Dave with a smile began swinging him to and fro as though he were putting a child to sleep. The spectators yelled their laughter and the bully roared like a bull. Then Dave reached around with his left hand, caught the bully’s left wrist, pulled loose his hold, and with a leftward twist of his own body tossed his antagonist some several feet away. The bully turned once in the air and lighted resoundingly on his back. He got up dazed and sullen, but breaking into a good-natured laugh, shook his head and held forth the buckles to Dave.

“You won ’em,” Dave said. “They’re yours. I wasn’t wrastling for them. You challenged. We’ll shake hands.”

Then my Lord Dunmore sent for Dave and asked him where he was from.

“And do you know the Indian country on this side of the Cumberland?” asked his lordship.

“Very well.”

His lordship smiled thoughtfully.

“I may have need of you.”

Dave bowed:

“I am an American, my lord.”

His lordship flamed, but he controlled himself.

“You are at least an open enemy,” he said, and gave orders to move on.

The horse-race was now on, and meanwhile a pair of silk stockings, of one pistol’s value, was yet to be conferred. Colonel Dale had given Hugh permission to ride Firefly in the race, but when he saw the lad’s condition he peremptorily refused.

“And nobody else can ride him,” he said, with much disappointment.

“Let me try!” cried Erskine.

“You!” Colonel Dale started to laugh, but he caught Dave’s eye.

“Surely,” said Dave. The colonel hesitated.

“Very well—I will.”

At once the three went to the horse, and the negro groom rolled his eyes when he learned what his purpose was.

“Dis hoss’ll kill dat boy,” he muttered, but the horse had already submitted his haughty head to the lad’s hand and was standing quietly. Even Colonel Dale showed amazement and concern when the boy insisted that the saddle be taken off, as he wanted to ride bareback, and again Dave overcame his scruples with a word of full confidence. The boy had been riding pony-races bareback, he explained, among the Indians, as long as he had been able to sit a horse. The astonishment of the crowd when they saw Colonel Dale’s favorite horse enter the course with a young Indian apparently on him bareback will have to be imagined, but when they recognized the rider as the lad who had won the race, the betting through psychological perversity was stronger than ever on Firefly. Hugh even took an additional bet with his friend Grey, who was quite openly scornful.

“You bet on the horse now,” he said.

“On both,” said Hugh.

It was a pretty and a close race between Firefly and a white-starred bay mare, and they came down the course neck and neck like two whirlwinds. A war-whoop so Indian-like and curdling that it startled every old frontiersman who heard it came suddenly from one of the riders. Then Firefly stretched ahead inch by inch, and another triumphant savage yell heralded victory as the black horse swept over the line a length ahead. Dane Grey swore quite fearfully, for it was a bet that he could ill afford to lose. He was talking with Barbara when the boy came back to the Dales, and something he was saying made the girl color resentfully, and the lad heard her say sharply:

“He is my cousin,” and she turned away from the young gallant and gave the youthful winner a glad smile. Just then a group of four men stopped near, looked closely at the little girl, and held a short consultation. One of them came forward with a pair of silk stockings in his hand.

“These are for the loveliest maiden present here. The committee chooses you.”

And later he reported to his fellow members:

“It was like a red rose courtesying and breathing thanks.”

Again Hugh and Dane Grey were missing when the party started back to the town—they were gone to bet on “Bacon’s Thunderbolts” in a cock-fight. That night they still were missing when the party went to see the Virginia Comedians in a play by one Mr. Congreve—they were gaming that night—and next morning when the Kentucky lad rose, he and Dave through his window saw the two young roisterers approaching the porch of the hotel—much dishevelled and all but staggering with drink.

“I don’t like that young man,” said Dave, “and he has a bad influence on Hugh.”

That morning news came from New England that set the town a-quiver. England’s answer to the Boston tea-party had been the closing of Boston harbor. In the House of Burgesses, the news was met with a burst of indignation. The 1st of June was straight-way set apart as a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer that God would avert the calamity threatening the civil rights of America. In the middle of the afternoon my lord’s coach and six white horses swung from his great yard and made for the capitol—my lord sitting erect and haughty, his lips set with the resolution to crush the spirit of the rebellion. It must have been a notable scene, for Nicholas, Bland, Lee, Harrison, Pendleton, Henry, and Jefferson, and perhaps Washington, were there. And my lord was far from popular. He had hitherto girded himself with all the trappings of etiquette, had a court herald prescribe rules for the guidance of Virginians in approaching his excellency, had entertained little and, unlike his predecessors, made no effort to establish cordial relations with the people of the capitol. The Burgesses were to give a great ball in his honor that very night, and now he was come to dissolve them. And dissolve them he did. They bowed gravely and with no protest. Shaking with anger my lord stalked to his coach and six while they repaired to the Apollo Room to prohibit the use of tea and propose a general congress of the colonies. And that ball came to pass. Haughty hosts received their haughty guest with the finest and gravest courtesy, bent low over my lady’s hand, danced with her daughters, and wrung from my lord’s reluctant lips the one grudging word of comment:

“Gentlemen!”

And the ladies of his family bobbed their heads sadly in confirmation, for the steel-like barrier between them was so palpable that it could have been touched that night, it seemed, by the hand.

The two backwoodsmen had been dazzled by the brilliance of it all, for the boy had stood with Barbara, who had been allowed to look on for a while. Again my lord had summoned Dave to him and asked many questions about the wilderness beyond the Cumberland, and he even had the boy to come up and shake hands, and asked him where he had learned to ride so well. He lifted his eyebrows when Dave answered for him and murmured with surprise and interest:

“So—so!”

Before Barbara was sent home Hugh and Dane Grey, dressed with great care, came in, with an exaggeration of dignity and politeness that fooled few others than themselves. Hugh, catching Barbara’s sad and reproachful glance, did not dare go near her, but Dane made straight for her side when he entered the room—and bowed with great gallantry. To the boy he paid no attention whatever, and the latter, fired with indignation and hate, turned hastily away. But in a corner unseen he could not withhold watching the two closely, and he felt vaguely that he was watching a frightened bird and a snake. The little girl’s self-composure seemed quite to vanish, her face flushed, her eyes were downcast, and her whole attitude had a mature embarrassment that was far beyond her years. The lad wondered and was deeply disturbed. The half overlooking and wholly contemptuous glance that Grey had shot over his head had stung him like a knife-cut, so like an actual knife indeed that without knowing it his right hand was then fumbling at his belt. Dave too was noticing and so was Barbara’s mother and her father, who knew very well that this smooth, suave, bold, young daredevil was deliberately leading Hugh into all the mischief he could find. Nor did he leave the girl’s side until she was taken home. Erskine, too, left then and went back to the tavern and up to his room. Then with his knife in his belt he went down again and waited on the porch. Already guests were coming back from the party and it was not long before he saw Hugh and Dane Grey half-stumbling up the steps. Erskine rose. Grey confronted the lad dully for a moment and then straightened.

“Here’s anuzzer one wants to fight,” he said thickly. “My young friend, I will oblige you anywhere with anything, at any time—except to-night. You must regard zhat as great honor, for I am not accustomed to fight with savages.”

And he waved the boy away with such an insolent gesture that the lad, knowing no other desire with an enemy than to kill in any way possible, snatched his knife from his belt. He heard a cry of surprise and horror from Hugh and a huge hand caught his upraised wrist.

“Put it back!” said Dave sternly.

The dazed boy obeyed and Dave led him up-stairs.

VIII

As yet Dave had made no explanation or excuse for his young friend, but he soon made up his mind that it would be wise to offer the best extenuation as soon as possible; which was simply that the lad knew no better, had not yet had the chance to learn, and on the rage of impulse had acted just as he would have done among the Indians, whose code alone he knew.

The matter came to a head shortly after their arrival at Red Oaks when Colonel Dale, Harry, Hugh, and Dave were on the front porch. The boy was standing behind the box-hedge near the steps and Barbara had just appeared in the doorway.

“Well, what was the trouble?” Colonel Dale had just asked.

“He tried to stab Grey unarmed and without warning,” said Hugh shortly.

At the moment, the boy caught sight of Barbara. Her eyes, filled with scorn, met his in one long, sad, withering look, and she turned noiselessly back into the house. Noiselessly too he melted into the garden, slipped down to the river-bank, and dropped to the ground. He knew at last what he had done. Nothing was said to him when he came back to the house and that night he scarcely opened his lips. In silence he went to bed and next morning he was gone.

The mystery was explained when Barbara told how the boy too must have overheard Hugh.

“He’s hurt,” said Dave, “and he’s gone home.”

“On foot?” asked Colonel Dale incredulously.

“He can trot all day and make almost as good time as a horse.”

“Why, he’ll starve.”

Dave laughed:

“He could get there on roots and herbs and wild honey, but he’ll have fresh meat every day. Still, I’ll have to try to overtake him. I must go, anyhow.”

And he asked for his horse and went to get ready for the journey. Ten minutes later Hugh and Harry rushed joyously to his room.

“We’re going with you!” they cried, and Dave was greatly pleased. An hour later all were ready, and at the last moment Firefly was led in, saddled and bridled, and with a leading halter around his neck.

“Harry,” said Colonel Dale, “carry your cousin my apologies and give him Firefly on condition that he ride him back some day. Tell him this home is his”—the speaker halted, but went on gravely and firmly—“whenever he pleases.”

“And give him my love,” said Barbara, holding back her tears.

At the river-gate they turned to wave a last good-by and disappeared in the woods. At that hour the boy far over in the wilderness ahead of them had cooked a squirrel that he had shot for his breakfast and was gnawing it to the bones. Soon he rose and at a trot sped on toward his home beyond the Cumberland. And with him, etched with acid on the steel of his brain, sped two images—Barbara’s face as he last saw it and the face of young Dane Grey.

The boy’s tracks were easily to be seen in the sandy road, and from them Dave judged that he must have left long before daylight. And he was travelling rapidly. They too went as fast as they could, but Firefly led badly and delayed them a good deal. Nobody whom they questioned had laid eyes on the boy, and apparently he had been slipping into the bushes to avoid being seen. At sunset Dave knew that they were not far behind him, but when darkness hid the lad’s tracks Dave stopped for the night. Again Erskine had got the start by going on before day, and it was the middle of the forenoon before Dave, missing the tracks for a hundred yards, halted and turned back to where a little stream crossed the road and dismounted leading his horse and scrutinizing the ground.

“Ah,” he said, “just what I expected. He turned off here to make a bee-line for the fort. He’s not far away now.” An hour later he dismounted again and smiled: “We’re pretty close now.”

Meanwhile Harry and Hugh were getting little lessons in woodcraft. Dave pointed out where the lad had broken a twig climbing over a log, where the loose covering of another log had been detached when he leaped to it, and where he had entered the creek, the toe of one moccasin pointing down-stream.

Then Dave laughed aloud:

“He’s seen us tracking him and he’s doubled on us and is tracking us. I expect he’s looking at us from somewhere around here.” And he hallooed at the top of his voice, which rang down the forest aisles. A war-whoop answered almost in their ears that made the blood leap in both the boys. Even Dave wheeled with cocked rifle, and the lad stepped from behind a bush scarcely ten feet behind them.

“Well, by gum,” shouted Dave, “fooled us, after all.”

A faint grin of triumph was on the lad’s lips, but in his eyes was a waiting inquiry directed at Harry and Hugh. They sprang forward, both of them with their hands outstretched:

“We’re sorry!”

A few minutes later Hugh was transferring his saddle from Firefly to his own horse, which had gone a trifle lame. On Firefly, Harry buckled the boy’s saddle and motioned for him to climb up. The bewildered lad turned to Dave, who laughed:

“It’s all right.”

“He’s your horse, cousin,” said Harry. “My father sent him to you and says his home is yours whenever you please. And Barbara sent her love.”

At almost the same hour in the great house on the James the old negress was carrying from the boy’s room to Colonel Dale in the library a kingly deed that the lad had left behind him. It was a rude scrawl on a sheet of paper, signed by the boy’s Indian name and his totem mark—a buffalo pierced by an arrow.

“It make me laugh. I have no use. I give hole dam plantashun Barbara.”

Thus read the scrawl!

IX

Led by Dave, sometimes by the boy, the four followed the course of rivers, upward, always except when they descended some mountain which they had to cross, and then it was soon upward again. The two Virginia lads found themselves, much to their chagrin, as helpless as children, but they were apt pupils and soon learned to make a fire with flint and even with dry sticks of wood. On the second day Harry brought down a buck, and the swiftness and skill with which Dave and the Kentucky boy skinned and cleaned it greatly astonished the two young gentlemen from the James. There Erskine had been helpless, here these two were, and they were as modest over the transposition as was the Kentucky lad in the environment he had just left. Once they saw a herd of buffalo and they tied their horses and slipped toward them. In his excitement Harry fired too soon and the frightened herd thundered toward them.

“Climb a tree!” shouted Erskine dropping his rifle and skinning up a young hickory. Like squirrels they obeyed and from their perches they saw Dave in an open space ahead of them dart for a tree too late.

The buffalo were making straight for them through no purpose but to get away, and to their horror they saw the big hunter squeezing his huge body sidewise against a small tree and the herd dashing under them and past him. They could not see him for the shaggy bodies rushing by, but when they passed, there was Dave unhurt, though the tree on both sides of him had been skinned of its bark by their horns.

“Don’t do that again,” said Dave, and then seeing the crestfallen terror on Harry’s face, he smiled and patted the boy on the shoulder:

“You won’t again. You didn’t know. You will next time.”

Three days later they reached the broad, beautiful Holston River, passing over the pine-crested, white-rocked summit of Clinch Mountain, and came to the last outlying fort of the western frontier. Next day they started on the long, long wilderness trail toward the Cumberland range. In the lowland they found much holly and laurel and rhododendron. Over Wallen’s Ridge they followed a buffalo trail to a river that had been called Beargrass because it was fringed with spikes of white umbelliferous flowers four feet high that were laden with honey and beloved by Bruin of the sweet tooth. The land was level down the valley. On the third day therefrom the gray wall of the Cumberland that ran with frowning inaccessibility on their right gathered its flanks into steep gray cliffs and dipped suddenly into Cumberland Gap. Up this they climbed. On the summit they went into camp, and next morning Dave swept a long arm toward the wild expanse to the west.

“Four more days,” he cried, “and we’ll be there!”

The two boys looked with awe on the limitless stretch of wooded wilds. It was still Virginia, to be sure, but they felt that once they started down they would be leaving their own beloved State for a strange land of unknown beasts and red men who peopled that “dark and bloody ground.”

Before sunrise next morning they were dropping down the steep and rocky trail. Before noon they reached the beautiful Cumberland River, and Dave told them that, below, it ran over a great rocky cliff, tumbling into foam and spray over mighty boulders around which the Indians had to carry their bark canoes. As they rode along the bank of the stream the hills got lower and were densely thicketed with laurel and rhododendron, and impenetrable masses of cane-brake filled every little valley curve. That night they slept amid the rocky foot-hills of the range, and next morning looked upon a vast wilderness stretch of woods that undulated to the gentle slopes of the hills, and that night they were on the edge of the blue-grass land.

Toward sunset Dave, through a sixth sense, had the uneasy feeling that he was not only being followed but watched from the cliffs alongside, and he observed that Erskine too had more than once turned in his saddle or lifted his eyes searchingly to the shaggy flanks of the hills. Neither spoke to the other, but that night when the hoot of an owl raised Dave from his blanket, Erskine too was upright with his rifle in his hand. For half an hour they waited, and lay down again, only to be awakened again by the snort of a horse, when both sprang to their feet and crawled out toward the sound. But the heavy silence lay unbroken and they brought the horses closer to the fire.