Erskine Dale-Pioneer Part 12

Like a shadow the girl Early Morn stole before him and like a shadow he followed. The loose snow m.u.f.fled their feet as the noise of the wind had m.u.f.fled his escape from the lodge, and in a few minutes they were by the riverbank, away from the town. The moon rose and from the shadow of a beech the white woman stepped forth with his rifle and powder-horn and bullet-pouch and some food. She pointed to his horse a little farther down. He looked long and silently into the Indian girl's eyes and took the white woman's shaking hand. Once he looked back. The Indian girl was stoic as stone. A bar of moonlight showed the white woman's face wet with tears.

Again Dave Yandell from a watch-tower saw a topknot rise above a patch of cane now leafless and winter-bitten-saw a hand lifted high above it with a palm of peace toward him. And again an Indian youth emerged, this time leading a black horse with a drooping head. Both came painfully on, staggering, it seemed, from wounds or weakness, and Dave sprang from the tower and rushed with others to the gate. He knew the horse and there was dread in his heart; perhaps the approaching Indian had slain the boy, had stolen the horse, and was innocently coming there for food.

Well, he thought grimly, revenge would be swift. Still, fearing some trick, he would let no one outside, but himself stood waiting with the gate a little ajar. So gaunt were boy and beast that it was plain that both were starving. The boy's face was torn with briers and pinched with hunger and cold, but a faint smile came from it.

"Don't you know me, Dave?" he asked weakly.

"My G.o.d! It's White Arrow!"

XIV

Straightway the lad sensed a curious change in the att.i.tude of the garrison. The old warmth was absent. The atmosphere was charged with suspicion, hostility. Old Jerome was surly, his old playmates were distant. Only Dave, Mother Sanders, and Lydia were unchanged. The predominant note was curiosity, and they started to ply him with questions, but Dave took him to a cabin, and Mother Sanders brought him something to eat.

"Had a purty hard time," stated Dave. The boy nodded.

"I had only three bullets. Firefly went lame and I had to lead him. I couldn't eat cane and Firefly couldn't eat pheasant. I got one from a hawk," he explained. "What's the matter out there?"

"Nothin'," said Dave gruffly and he made the boy go to sleep. His story came when all were around the fire at supper, and was listened to with eagerness. Again the boy felt the hostility and it made him resentful and haughty and his story brief and terse. Most fluid and sensitive natures have a chameleon quality, no matter what stratum of adamant be beneath. The boy was dressed like an Indian, he looked like one, and he had brought back, it seemed, the bearing of an Indian-his wildness and stoicism. He spoke like a chief in a council, and even in English his phrasing and metaphors belonged to the red man. No wonder they believed the stories they had heard of him-but there was shame in many faces and little doubt in any save one before he finished.

He had gone to see his foster-mother and his foster-father-old chief Kahtoo, the Shawnee-because he had given his word. Kahtoo thought he was dying and wanted him to be chief when the Great Spirit called. Kahtoo had once saved his life, had been kind, and made him a son. That he could not forget. An evil prophet had come to the tribe and through his enemies, Crooked Lightning and Black Wolf, had gained much influence.

They were to burn a captive white woman as a sacrifice. He had stayed to save her, to argue with old Kahtoo, and carry the wampum and a talk to a big council with the British. He had made his talk and-escaped. He had gone back to his tribe, had been tied, and was to be burned at the stake. Again he had escaped with the help of the white woman and her daughter. The tribes had joined the British and even then they were planning an early attack on this very fort and all others.

The interest was tense and every face was startled at this calm statement of their immediate danger. Dave and Lydia looked triumphant at this proof of their trust, but old Jerome burst out:

"Why did you have to escape from the council-and from the Shawnees?" The boy felt the open distrust and he rose proudly.

"At the council I told the Indians that they should be friends, not enemies, of the Americans, and Crooked Lightning called me a traitor. He had overheard my talk with Kahtoo."

"What was that?" asked Dave quickly.

"I told Kahtoo I would fight with the Americans against the British and Indians; and with _you_ against _him_!" And he turned away and went back to the cabin.

"What'd I tell ye!" cried Dave indignantly and he followed the boy, who had gone to his bunk, and put one big hand on his shoulder.

"They thought you'd turned Injun agin," he said, "but it's all right now."

"I know," said the lad and with a m.u.f.fled sound that was half the grunt of an Indian and half the sob of a white man turned his face away.

Again Dave reached for the lad's shoulder.

"Don't blame 'em too much. I'll tell you now. Some fur traders came by here, and one of 'em said you was goin' to marry an Injun girl named Early Morn; that you was goin' to stay with 'em and fight with 'em alongside the British. Of course I knowed better but--"

"Why," interrupted Erskine, "they must have been the same traders who came to the Shawnee town and brought whiskey."

"That's what the feller said and why folks here believed him."

"Who was he?" demanded Erskine.

"You know him-Dane Grey."

All tried to make amends straightway for the injustice they had done him, but the boy's heart remained sore that their trust was so little.

Then, when they gathered all settlers within the fort and made all preparations and no Indians came, many seemed again to get distrustful and the lad was not happy. The winter was long and hard. A blizzard had driven the game west and south and the garrison was hard put to it for food. Every day that the hunters went forth the boy was among them and he did far more than his share in the killing of game. But when winter was breaking, more news came in of the war. The flag that had been fas.h.i.+oned of a soldier's white s.h.i.+rt, an old blue army coat, and a red petticoat was now the Stars and Stripes of the American cause. Burgoyne had not cut off New England, that "head of the rebellion," from the other colonies. On the contrary, the Americans had beaten him at Saratoga and marched his army off under those same Stars and Stripes, and for the first time Erskine heard of gallant Lafayette-how he had run to Was.h.i.+ngton with the portentous news from his king-that beautiful, pa.s.sionate France would now stretch forth her helping hand. And Erskine learned what that news meant to Was.h.i.+ngton's "naked and starving"

soldiers dying on the frozen hillsides of Valley Forge. Then George Rogers Clark had pa.s.sed the fort on his way to Williamsburg to get money and men for his great venture in the Northwest, and Erskine got a ready permission to accompany him as soldier and guide. After Clark was gone the lad got restless; and one morning when the first breath of spring came he mounted his horse, in spite of arguments and protestations, and set forth for Virginia on the wilderness trail. He was going to join Clark, he said, but more than Clark and the war were drawing him to the outer world. What it was he hardly knew, for he was not yet much given to searching his heart or mind. He did know, however, that some strange force had long been working within him that was steadily growing stronger, was surging now like a flame and swinging him between strange moods of depression and exultation. Perhaps it was but the spirit of spring in his heart, but with his mind's eye he was ever seeing at the end of his journey the face of his little cousin Barbara Dale.

XV

A striking figure the lad made riding into the old capital one afternoon just before the sun sank behind the western woods. Had it been dusk he might have been thought to be an Indian sprung magically from the wilds and riding into civilization on a stolen thoroughbred. Students no longer wandered through the campus of William and Mary College. Only an occasional maid in silk and lace tripped along the street in high-heeled shoes and clocked stockings, and no coach and four was in sight. The governor's palace, in its great yard amid linden-trees, was closed and deserted. My Lord Dunmore was long in sad flight, as Erskine later learned, and not in his coach with its six milk-white horses. But there was the bust of Sir Walter in front of Raleigh Tavern, and there he drew up, before the steps where he was once nigh to taking Dane Grey's life.

A negro servant came forward to care for his horse, but a coal-black young giant leaped around the corner and seized the bridle with a welcoming cry:

"Ma.r.s.e Erskine! But I knowed Firefly fust." It was Ephraim, the groom who had brought out Barbara's ponies, who had turned the horse over to him for the race at the fair.

"I come frum de plantation fer ole ma.r.s.e," the boy explained. The host of the tavern heard and came down to give his welcome, for any Dale, no matter what his garb, could always have the best in that tavern. More than that, a bewigged solicitor, learning his name, presented himself with the cheerful news that he had quite a little sum of money that had been confided to his keeping by Colonel Dale for his nephew Erskine. A strange deference seemed to be paid him by everybody, which was a grateful change from the suspicion he had left among his pioneer friends. The little tavern was thronged and the air charged with the spirit of war. Indeed, nothing else was talked. My Lord Dunmore had come to a sad and unbemoaned end. He had stayed afar from the battle-field of Point Pleasant and had left stalwart General Lewis to fight Cornstalk and his braves alone. Later my Lady Dunmore and her sprightly daughters took refuge on a man-of-war-whither my lord soon followed them. His fleet ravaged the banks of the rivers and committed every outrage. His marines set fire to Norfolk, which was in ashes when he weighed anchor and sailed away to more depredations. When he intrenched himself on Gwynn's Island, that same stalwart Lewis opened a heavy cannonade on fleet and island, and sent a ball through the indignant n.o.bleman's flag-s.h.i.+p. Next day he saw a force making for the island in boats, and my lord spread all sail; and so back to merry England, and to Virginia no more. Meanwhile, Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton had reached Boston and started his duties under the Cambridge elm. Several times during the talk Erskine had heard mentioned the name of Dane Grey. Young Grey had been with Dunmore and not with Lewis at Point Pleasant, and had been conspicuous at the palace through much of the succeeding turmoil-the hint being his devotion to one of the daughters, since he was now an unquestioned loyalist.

Next morning Erskine rode forth along a sandy road, amidst the singing of birds and through a forest of tiny upshooting leaves, for Red Oaks on the James. He had forsworn Colonel Dale to secrecy as to the note he had left behind giving his birthright to his little cousin Barbara, and he knew the confidence would be kept inviolate. He could recall the road-every turn of it, for the woodsman's memory is faultless-and he could see the merry cavalcade and hear the gay quips and laughter of that other spring day long ago, for to youth even the s.p.a.ce of a year is very long ago. But among the faces that blossomed within the old coach, and nodded and danced like flowers in a wind, his mind's eye was fixed on one alone. At the boat-landing he hitched his horse to the low-swung branch of an oak and took the path through tangled rose-bushes and undergrowth along the bank of the river, halting where it would give him forth on the great, broad, gra.s.sy way that led to the house among the oaks. There was the sun-dial that had marked every sunny hour since he had been away. For a moment he stood there, and when he stepped into the open he shrank back hastily-a girl was coming through the opening of boxwood from the house-coming slowly, bareheaded, her hands clasped behind her, her eyes downward. His heart throbbed as he waited, throbbed the more when his ears caught even the soft tread of her little feet, and seemed to stop when she paused at the sun-dial, and as before searched the river with her eyes. And as before the song of negro oarsmen came over the yellow flood, growing stronger as they neared.

Soon the girl fluttered a handkerchief and from the single pa.s.senger in the stern came an answering flutter of white and a glad cry. At the bend of the river the boat disappeared from Erskine's sight under the bank, and he watched the girl. How she had grown! Her slim figure had rounded and shot upward, and her white gown had dropped to her dainty ankles.

Now her face was flushed and her eye flashed with excitement-it was no mere kinsman in that boat, and the boy's heart began to throb again-throb fiercely and with racking emotions that he had never known before. A fiery-looking youth sprang up the landing-steps, bowed gallantly over the girl's hand, and the two turned up the path, the girl rosy with smiles and the youth bending over her with a most protecting and tender air. It was Dane Grey, and the heart of the watcher turned mortal sick.

XVI

A long time Erskine sat motionless, wondering what ailed him. He had never liked nor trusted Grey; he believed he would have trouble with him some day, but he had other enemies and he did not feel toward them as he did toward this dandy mincing up that beautiful broad path. With a little grunt he turned back along the path. Firefly whinnied to him and nipped at him with playful restlessness as though eager to be on his way to the barn, and he stood awhile with one arm across his saddle. Once he reached upward to untie the reins, and with another grunt strode back and went rapidly up the path. Grey and Barbara had disappeared, but a tall youth who sat behind one of the big pillars saw him coming and rose, bewildered, but not for long. Each recognized the other swiftly, and Hugh came with stiff courtesy forward. Erskine smiled:

"You don't know me?" Hugh bowed:

"Quite well." The woodsman drew himself up with quick breath-paling without, flaming within-but before he could speak there was a quick step and an astonished cry within the hall and Harry sprang out.

"Erskine! Erskine!" he shouted, and he leaped down the steps with both hands outstretched. "You here! You-you old Indian-how did you get here?"

He caught Erskine by both hands and then fell to shaking him by the shoulders. "Where's your horse?" And then he noticed the boy's pale and embarra.s.sed face and his eyes s.h.i.+fting to Hugh, who stood, still cold, still courteous, and he checked some hot outburst at his lips.

"I'm glad you've come, and I'm glad you've come right now-where's your horse?"

"I left him hitched at the landing," Erskine had to answer, and Harry looked puzzled:

"The landing! Why, what--" He wheeled and shouted to a darky:

"Put Master Erskine's horse in the barn and feed him." And he led Erskine within-to the same room where he had slept before, and poured out some water in a bowl.