Erskine Dale-Pioneer Part 6

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 c.o.o.nskin 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 astonis.h.i.+ng 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 l.u.s.tily 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 hards.h.i.+ps of the first journeys thither-fights with wild beasts and wild men, chases, hand-to-hand combats, escapes, and ma.s.sacres-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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 pa.s.sed 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 advertis.e.m.e.nts of shopkeepers, the arrival and departure of s.h.i.+ps, 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 pa.s.sed 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 c.o.c.k-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 hors.e.m.e.n 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 s.h.i.+llings, 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 pa.s.sed 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.