Erskine Dale—Pioneer

“Our Kentucky cousin is not very polite – he is something of a barbarian – naturally.”

“He doesn’t understand,” said Barbara quickly, who had noted the incident, and she turned to her cousin.

“Papa says you are going to live with us and you are going to study with Harry under Mr. Brockton.”

“Our tutor,” explained Harry; “there he is across there. He is an Englishman.”

“Tutor?” questioned the boy.

“School-teacher,” laughed Harry.

“Oh!”

“Haven’t you any school-teachers at home?”

“No, I learned to read and write a little from Dave and Lyddy.”

And then he had to tell who they were, and he went on to tell them about Mother Sanders and Honor and Bud and Jack and Polly Conrad and Lydia and Dave, and all the frontier folk, and the life they led, and the Indian fights which thrilled Barbara and Harry, and forced even Hugh to listen – though once he laughed incredulously, and in a way that of a sudden shut the boy’s lips tight and made Barbara color and Harry look grave. Hugh then turned to his wine and began soon to look more flushed and sulky. Shortly after the ladies left, Hugh followed them, and Harry and the Kentuckian moved toward the head of the table where the men had gathered around Colonel Dale.

“Yes,” said General Willoughby, “it looks as though it might come.”

“With due deference to Mr. Brockton,” said Colonel Dale, “it looks as though his country would soon force us to some action.”

They were talking about impending war. Far away as his wilds were, the boy had heard some talk of war in them, and he listened greedily to the quick fire of question and argument directed to the Englishman, who held his own with such sturdiness that Colonel Dale, fearing the heat might become too great, laughed and skilfully shifted the theme. Through hall and doorways came now merry sounds of fiddle and banjo.

“Come on, cousin,” said Harry; “can you dance?”

“If your dances are as different as everything else, I reckon not, but I can try.”

Near a doorway between parlor and hall sat the fiddlers three. Gallant bows and dainty courtesyings and nimble feet were tripping measures quite new to the backwoodsman. Barbara nodded, smiled, and after the dance ran up to ask him to take part, but he shook his head. Hugh had looked at him as from a superior height, and the boy noticed him frowning while Barbara was challenging him to dance. The next dance was even more of a mystery, for the dancers glided by in couples, Mr. Byron’s diatribe not having prevented the importation of the waltz to the new world, but the next cleared his face and set his feet to keeping time, for the square dance had, of course, reached the wilds.

“I know that,” he said to Harry, who told Barbara, and the little girl went up to him again, and this time, flushing, he took place with her on the floor. Hugh came up.

“Cousin Barbara, this is our dance, I believe,” he said a little thickly.

The girl took him aside and Hugh went surlily away. Harry saw the incident and he looked after Hugh, frowning. The backwoodsman conducted himself very well. He was lithe and graceful and at first very dignified, but as he grew in confidence he began to execute steps that were new to that polite land and rather boisterous, but Barbara looked pleased and all onlookers seemed greatly amused – all except Hugh. And when the old fiddler sang out sonorously:

“Genelmen to right – cheat an’ swing!” the boy cheated outrageously, cheated all but his little partner, to whom each time he turned with open loyalty, and Hugh was openly sneering now and genuinely angry.

“You shall have the last dance,” whispered Barbara, “the Virginia reel.”

“I know that dance,” said the boy.

And when that dance came and the dancers were drawn in two lines, the boy who was third from the end heard Harry’s low voice behind him:

“He is my cousin and my guest and you will answer to me.”

The lad wheeled, saw Harry with Hugh, left his place, and went to them. He spoke to Harry, but he looked at Hugh with a sword-flash in each black eye:

“I don’t want nobody to take up for me.”

Again he wheeled and was in his place, but Barbara saw and looked troubled, and so did Colonel Dale. He went over to the two boys and put his arm around Hugh’s shoulder.

“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

It was a merry cavalcade that swung around the great oaks that spring morning in 1774. Two coaches with outriders and postilions led the way with their precious freight – the elder ladies in the first coach, and the second blossoming with flower-like faces and starred with dancing eyes. Booted and spurred, the gentlemen rode behind, and after them rolled the baggage-wagons, drawn by mules in jingling harness. Harry on a chestnut sorrel and the young Kentuckian on a high-stepping gray followed the second coach – Hugh on Firefly champed the length of the column. Colonel Dale and Dave brought up the rear. The road was of sand and there was little sound of hoof or wheel – only the hum of voices, occasional sallies when a neighbor joined them, and laughter from the second coach as happy and care-free as the singing of birds from trees by the roadside.

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: