Erskine Dale—Pioneer

“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

Dave talked to the lad about the enormity of his offense, but to Dave he was inclined to defend himself and his action. Next morning, however, when the party started back to Red Oaks, Erskine felt a difference in the atmosphere that made him uneasy. Barbara alone seemed unchanged, and he was quick to guess that she had not been told of the incident. Hugh was distinctly distant and surly for another reason as well. He had wanted to ask young Grey to become one of their party and his father had decisively forbidden him – for another reason too than his influence over Hugh: Grey and his family were Tories and in high favor with Lord Dunmore.

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.

“Now I know it was Indians,” said Dave; “that hoss o’ mine can smell one further’n a rattlesnake.” The boy nodded and they took turns on watch while the two boys slept on till daylight. The trail was broad enough next morning for them to ride two abreast – Dave and Erskine in advance. They had scarcely gone a hundred yards when an Indian stepped into the path twenty yards ahead. Instinctively Dave threw his rifle up, but Erskine caught his arm. The Indian had lifted his hand – palm upward. “Shawnee!” said the lad, as two more appeared from the bushes. The eyes of the two tidewater boys grew large, and both clinched their guns convulsively. The Indian spokesman paid no heed except to Erskine – and only from the lad’s face, in which surprise was succeeded by sorrow and then deep thoughtfulness, could they guess what the guttural speech meant, until Erskine turned to them.

They were not on the war-path against the whites, he explained. His foster-father – Kahtoo, the big chief, the king – was very ill, and his message, brought by them, was that Erskine should come back to the tribe and become chief, as the chief’s only daughter was dead and his only son had been killed by the palefaces. They knew that in the fight at the fort Erskine had killed the Shawnee, his tormentor, for they knew the arrow, which Erskine had not had time to withdraw. The dead Shawnee’s brother – Crooked Lightning – was with them. He it was who had recognized the boy the day before, and they had kept him from killing Erskine from the bushes. At that moment a gigantic savage stepped from the brush. The boy’s frame quivered, straightened, grew rigid, but he met the malevolent glare turned on him with emotionless face and himself quietly began to speak while Harry and Hugh and even Dave watched him enthralled; for the lad was Indian now and the old chief’s mantle was about his shoulders. He sat his horse like a king and spoke as a king. He thanked them for holding back Crooked Lightning’s evil hand, but – contemptuously he spat toward the huge savage – he was not to die by that hand. He was a paleface and the Indians had slain his white mother. He had forgiven that, for he loved the old chief and his foster mother and brother and sister, and the tribe had always been kind to him. Then they had killed his white father and he had gone to visit his kindred by the big waters, and now he loved them. He had fled from the Shawnees because of the cruelty of Crooked Lightning’s brother whom he had slain. But if the Indians were falling into evil ways and following evil counsels, his heart was sad.

“I will come when the leaves fall,” he concluded, “but Crooked Lightning must pitch his lodge in the wilderness and be an outcast from the tribe until he can show that his heart is good.” And then with an imperious gesture he waved his hand toward the west: