Erskine Dale-Pioneer Part 8

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 c.u.mberland. 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. n.o.body 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 c.o.c.ked 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 s.p.a.ce 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 das.h.i.+ng under them and past him. They could not see him for the s.h.a.ggy bodies rus.h.i.+ng by, but when they pa.s.sed, 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, pa.s.sing 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 c.u.mberland 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 Beargra.s.s 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 c.u.mberland that ran with frowning inaccessibility on their right gathered its flanks into steep gray cliffs and dipped suddenly into c.u.mberland 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 b.l.o.o.d.y ground."

Before sunrise next morning they were dropping down the steep and rocky trail. Before noon they reached the beautiful c.u.mberland 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 ma.s.ses 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-gra.s.s 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 s.h.a.ggy 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Four more days," he cried, "and we'll be there!"]

"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.