Читать книгу The Road to Paris - Robert Neilson Stephens - Страница 8

"'There was a wind, it cam to me,

Over the south, an' over the sea,

An' it has blawn my corn and hay,

Over the hills an' far away.'"

Dick looked up from where he was sitting, by the legs of a skillet under which some brands were burning.

"Is that the tune it means when it says about Tom that was a piper's son, all the tune that he could play was 'Over the hills and far away?'" he asked.

"I don't know, son. There are a great many songs of 'Over the hills and far away.' Tom MacAlister used to sing them all."

Dick studied a moment, then asked:

"Who was Tom MacAlister's father?"

"A Highland man, and I've heard Tom say he was a great player on the bagpipe."

"Why, then," cried Dick, "maybe he was the Tom that was a piper's son!"

"I shouldn't doubt it in the least," replied Wetheral, with a wink and a smile at his wife.

But Dick's face, after glowing for a moment with the exultation of so great a literary discovery, soon fell.

"No," he said; "because Tom MacAlister could play hundreds and hundreds of other tunes, and Tom that was a piper's son could play only 'Over the hills and far away.'"

"Ay," said the father, "but then, you see, that song might have been about Tom MacAlister before he had learned any other tune than the one. I think he told me once that for a very long time he couldn't play any other."

Mrs. Wetheral smilingly shook her head in hopeless disapproval of the jocular deceit practised by her husband on little Dick; but the boy was too taken up with his discovery to observe her movement, and so from that day, to him, Tom MacAlister and Tom who was a piper's son were one and the same Tom.

But there came a time when neither singing nor fiddling was in season, and when reminiscences of past dangers in foreign lands gave way to fears of imminent dangers at home. This was in the spring of 1763, when Dick was five years old, but possessed of such strength and endurance as would be marvellous in a boy of that age nowadays. Almost as soon as the woods and fields were green again, and the orchards white and pink with fruit-blossoms, came news, from every side, of Indian surprises and alarms. The Pennsylvania tribes, such as the Delawares and Shawnees, once friendly to the English settlers, but rendered contemptuous of them by Braddock's defeat, had not ceased ravages against them, even after Wolfe's victory at Quebec in 1759 had made the English masters of the continent. It seemed now, in 1763, as if the redskins had mustered their strength for a decisive series of revengeful blows against the colonists. In from the west and down from the north they came, unseen, unheard, penetrating the whole frontier in small parties, striking without warning, often where least expected, destroying by rifle-ball, knife, tomahawk, and fire. No one knew when a painted band, armed for slaughter, might not suddenly appear as if by magic from the apparently solitary wilderness around. No settler's family could go to bed at night with the assurance that they might not be aroused before dawn by smoke and flames or by the unearthly shrieks of savages. Most of the settlers in the valleys south of the Juniata fled across the mountains to Carlisle. Some from the vicinity of the Wetherals took refuge in Fort Hunter, which consisted of a rectangular stockade, with a log blockhouse rising from the corner, and with cabins inside to serve indifferently as barracks for the Provincial soldiers and as temporary lodgings for the people of both sexes and every age who took refuge there.

Dick's grandfather, deciding to remain in his large and strong house on his island in the Susquehanna, invited the Wetherals thither, actuated in part, perhaps, by the consideration that his son-in-law would prove a notable addition to the home garrison. Wetheral accepted, for the sake of his family, although the reconciliation between himself and his stiff-necked father-in-law had never been more than merely formal. The Wetherals had no sooner joined the large family in the island mansion than there came word, by terrified refugees, of killings and burnings on the Juniata, quite near, as distances between neighbors then went, to Wetheral's house. Later came similar tidings up from Sherman's Valley. Houses of those who had fled were burnt, and, as summer advanced, a great deal of their grain was destroyed. When harvest-time came, several of the men who had fled returned in parties, well armed, to get in their crops. A party, strong in numbers, would go from farm to farm, taking in each harvest as rapidly, and bestowing it as securely, as possible.

At a certain time in July, one such party of reapers was working on the farm of William White, who lived not far from Dick's grandfather. This party had been reinforced by some of the men now at the latter's place, one of whom was John Campbell. The nearness of White's house, the large force of men there, and the fact that the Indians were thought to have gone out of the neighborhood, had enabled Dick to get permission to go with Campbell to this reaping, at which there was a famous fiddler from Tuscarora, of whom the boy had often heard. On Saturday evening, after the work was done, Dick revelled to his heart's content in the scraping of this frontier virtuoso. The reapers made merry so late that night, that they were quite willing to observe the ensuing Sabbath by resting most vigorously.

All the warm sunny morning, they lay on the floor of the principal room. Dick alone showed any disposition towards activity. While the men slumbered, or turned heavily over on the floor, or stared drowsily at the wooden ceiling, or stretched and yawned, Dick amused himself by climbing up the ladder to the loft overhead.

He had reached the round next to the top one, and was about to thrust his head up through the opening into the loft, when he heard a slight creak from the door of the room below. He looked in time to see it swing open, and three painted, naked, feather-crowned bodies appear in the doorway, each one behind a rifle whose muzzle was instantly turned towards some sleeper on the floor. Terrified into dumbness, Dick's gaze involuntarily turned towards the window opposite the door. The oiled paper that had served instead of glass had been swiftly and silently cut away with a knife, and three savage heads appeared above the window base, each shining eye directed along a different rifle-barrel towards one of the prostrate reapers.

Dick opened his mouth to cry out, but he could emit no sound. Before he could form a thought, the six rifles blazed forth in concert, and an instant later the room below was filled with smoke, shouts of pain, and furious curses. A terrible chorus of piercing war-screams from outside the house showed that the redskins who had crept up so silently were in large number. Dick tarried no longer, but sprang up into the loft and ran wildly to a little window at the end of it. He supposed that he had been seen and would be followed up the ladder.

He thrust out his head and looked down. This little window was over the one through which three of the savages had fired into the room down-stairs. He saw three other Indians aiming in through the lower window, while the first three were reloading their rifles. Others were shrieking their war-whoop and brandishing the knives and tomahawks with which they were to complete the work begun with the rifles. Up from the ladder hatchway, amidst the noise of heavy bodies falling and of the men rushing to their arms and yelling and swearing, came the sound of another volley, fired probably through the doorway. Dick drew his head in and waited with wildly beating heart, wondering what to do, and fearing to look back towards the hatchway lest he might see savages rushing up after him, with gleaming knives and upraised tomahawks. But none came. The noise from the room below indicated that knives, tomahawks, and guns had business enough down there.

After what seemed a space of several minutes, Dick cautiously looked again out of the window. He saw now but one savage, and that one soon disappeared through the lower window, into the room where his fellows were completing the slaughter of the unprepared reapers. The hideous shrieks of triumph that came up through the hatchway told clearly enough that victory was with the attacking party, and that the scalping-knife was already in use.

Suddenly Dick's blood turned cold. A sound of sharp, eager grunting, detached from the general hubbub below, arose immediately beneath the hatchway. A red hand appeared through the opening, grasping the loft floor against which the ladder rested.

The little window at which Dick stood was neither glazed nor papered. He went out through it, feet first; hung for a moment by his fingers to the ledge, then dropped to the ground below, fell on his side, scrambled to his feet, turned his back to the house of shrieking slaughter, and ran across the field towards the nearest woods. Though the direction in which he went took him farther from his grandfather's, he nevertheless did not stop or turn, on reaching the woods, but ran straight on, as fast as the irregularities of the ground would let him, and for once with reckless disregard of possible snakes, his only thought being to put the greatest distance between himself and the yelling murderers behind him.

After a long run, he stopped for lack of breath, and began to consider his situation, as well as the rapid beating of his heart would allow him to do. He regretted that he had not taken Rover with him to White's,—if he had done so, he might now have at least the comfort of the dog's society. At last he decided to make for his grandfather's, by a détour which would take him far from the house where the savages were now holding their carnival of blood. This détour required several hours, as his bare feet suffered from contact with stones, thorns roots, and the rough bark of fallen branches. Finally, on hearing a sound as of a horse's foot crunching into stony soil, a little to the left and ahead, he stopped and stood still. The sound continued. Could it be that he was near a bridle-path and that this sound indicated some solitary traveller? As yet he could see nothing moving through the thick forest. While he waited, a slighter sound close at hand, that of an instant's movement among bushes, suddenly drew his glance. From a mass of laurel near the ground, gleamed a pair of eyes directly at him, on a level with his own. He started back, thinking they might belong to a wildcat or some other crouching animal.

Instantly the owner of the eyes swiftly rose, and stood erect from the bush,—a naked Shawnee, daubed yellow, and carrying knife and tomahawk. Dick turned and ran, casting back one look, in which he saw the Indian hurl the tomahawk after him. The boy fell forward on his face just in time to feel the wind of the hatchet instead of the hatchet itself, which cleft the air directly over his head and lodged in a tree-trunk in front of him. The Indian, abandoning his intention of remaining in the bush, for which he had doubtless had his own reason, now glided after Dick, who had not half risen when he felt the Shawnee's fingers grasp his long hair, and saw the knife describe a rapid circle in the air in preparation for its descent upon his scalp. The boy cast one despairing look up towards the Indian's implacable face.

The stillness of the woods was suddenly broken by a loud detonation. Something dug into the Indian's breast, a horrible grimace distorted his face, a fearful cry came from his throat, his knife-blow went wide, and he leaped clear over Dick, retaining some of the boy's hair in his clutch as he went. The next moment he lay sprawling, face downward, some feet away. He stiffened convulsively, and never moved again.

Dick looked towards the direction whence the shot had come. In a little opening among the trees he saw a horse standing; on its back a tall, gaunt, brown-faced stranger, from whose rifle-muzzle a little smoke was still curling. The newcomer was apparently about forty years old; wore an old cocked hat, a time-worn blue coat, whose long skirts spread out over the horse's rump, a red waistcoat, patched green breeches, and great jack-boots that had known much service. His long brown hair was tied in a queue, and, besides his rifle, he carried before him an immense pistol. A long, projecting chin gave a grotesque turn to his features, whose grimness was otherwise modified by amiable gray eyes.

"Sure, sonny," he called out to the astonished and staring Dick, "it's the part of Providence I played towards ye that time; in return for whilk favor, tell me now the way to one Alexander Wetheral's house, if ye ken it."

Not sufficiently learned in dialects to note the stranger's mixture of Scotch and Irish with the King's English, Dick eagerly proffered his services and said that Alexander Wetheral was his father.

"What, lad! Gie's your hand, then, and it's in front of me ye shall ride hame this day. It's a glad man your father 'ull be, when he sees ye bringing in Tom MacAlister as a recruit, and no such raw one, neither!"

"THE NEWCOMER WAS APPARENTLY ABOUT FORTY YEARS OLD."

Dick almost fell off the horse, to whose shoulders the stranger had lifted him.

Such was his first meeting with Tom that was a piper's son.

The two reached Dick's grandfather's without molestation, and the newcomer was duly welcomed. Lack of occupation in Europe, and the desire to be always enlarging his experiences, had brought him again to the New World, and in search of his early friend.

He had immediate opportunity to employ his courage and prowess. A few days after Dick's adventure, there came to his grandfather's house a settler named Dodds, with an account of how the same Indians who had shot the reapers at White's had thereupon gone to Robert Campbell's on the Tuscarora Creek, found Dodds and other reapers there resting themselves, and first made their presence known by a sudden deadly volley of rifle-balls. In the smoke and confusion, Dodds had made, unseen, for the chimney, which he had ascended by great muscular exertion while the massacre was proceeding in the room below. He had dropped from the roof and fled to Sherman's Valley, where he had given the alarm, which he was now engaged in spreading.

Dick's father and grandfather, with all the aroused settlers who could be summoned, speedily organized a party to make war on the savage invaders. In the expedition this force made, MacAlister was in his element. He was one of the detachment of twelve who overtook twenty-five Indians at Nicholson's house and killed several, at the cost of five of the white men. The chasing of Indians, and the fleeing from them, continued all summer. William Anderson was killed at his own house, depredations were committed at Collins's, Graham's house was burnt, and in September five white men were killed in a battle at Buffalo Creek. Finally a hundred volunteers, including Wetheral and MacAlister, went up the Susquehanna to Muncy, encountered two companies of Indians that were coming down the river, killed their chief, Snake, and drove the others back from the frontier. In the fall, the Wetherals, with their guest, went back to their own house, but not at the first waning of summer. Too many settlers, deceived by the earliest signs of winter, had in times past returned to their houses, thinking themselves safe from further Indian ravage; but, with the brief later season of warm weather, the Indians had reappeared for final strokes, and hence that fatal season received the name of Indian summer.

Tom MacAlister, impelled by his friendship for Wetheral, and by the charm that he found in the still wilderness, took the place formerly occupied in the household by John Campbell, who had been killed at White's. If not in the field, at least at the fireside and in the dooryard, he was a vast improvement upon his heavy-witted predecessor. With a fiddle, bought from a settler, Tom soon verified all the assertions Wetheral had made about his musical ability.

As 1763 was the last year of general Indian outbreaks in the neighborhood, the arts of peace thereafter had full opportunity to thrive in the Wetheral household. From childhood to pronounced boyhood, and then to sturdy youth, Dick Wetheral grew, to the constant accompaniment of Tom MacAlister's fiddle. Dick became, in time, a fairly capable tiller of the soil, an excellent horseman, a good hunter, a comparatively lucky fisherman. He was a straight shot at a distant wild turkey, a quick one at a running deer, and a cool one at a threatening bear. He was a great reader, not for improvement, but for amusement and because books gave him other worlds to contemplate. When he had read and re-read all the volumes of his father's little stock, he took means to learn who else owned books in the neighborhood. The owners were few and far between, and fewer still were the books possessed by any one of them. But what books there were, Dick hunted down, taking many a long ride in the quest, buying a volume when he could, or trading for it, or borrowing it.

Thus he made the acquaintance of Fielding's novels, and one or two of Smollett's, and of Shakespeare's plays, and from all these he acquired standards of gentlemanly conduct and manners, and ideals of feminine beauty and charm, which standards and ideals kept him alike from close association with the raw youths of the neighborhood, and from succumbing to the primitive attractions of any of the farmers' daughters. Slowly and imperceptibly, by his reading and his thoughts, he was, if not fitting himself for a vastly different world from the one about him, at least unfitting himself for the latter. One cause of his strong attachment to Tom MacAlister, after he had come to regard that worthy in a more accurate light, and no longer idealized him as the half mythical hero of his childhood, was that Tom represented the great world of cities and courts.

Tom was the son of a Scotch father and an Irish mother, and one of the two had a sufficient streak of English blood to account for Tom's length of chin. To his mixed ancestry was due his unique intermingling of brogues and accents. It was a question which was the greater, the severity of his visage or the drollery of his disposition. It was looked upon as a caprice of nature that a man of so sanctimonious an aspect should on occasion swear so hard, and that he who could drink so enormously of liquor should retain such meagreness of body. He advocated strict morality, though he admitted having himself been a sad lapser from virtue. He testified frankly to having broken "all the ten commandments and half a dozen more." He had been a great patron of the playhouses, could perform conjuring tricks, and was able to oppose a card-cheat with the latter's own weapons. As for religion, wherever he was, he took that, as he took the staple drink, "of the country," a practice which, he said, gave him in turn the benefit of all faiths, and saved him from a deal of inconvenience where piety ran strong. He had fought in 1743 with George II. against the French at Dettingen; "been out" with the Young Chevalier in 1745; followed Braddock to defeat in 1755; served under Frederick of Prussia, at Prague, Rossbach, and elsewhere; and had been under Prince Ferdinand, at Minden, in 1759. The disbandment of his regiment at the end of the Seven Years' War had put his services out of demand.

In winter evenings, before the flaming logs in the great chimney-place, when Tom was not recounting adventures he had experienced, or some he had imagined, or playing the fiddle, or taking huge gulps of hard cider or hot "kill-devil," he was singing songs; and of these the favorite in his list was one or other of the versions of "Over the hills and far away." First, there was the song with which Dick had been familiar since his infancy, and which for a long time he thought alluded to MacAlister himself, beginning thus:

"Tom he was a piper's son,

He learnt to play when he was young,

And all the tune that he could play

Was 'Over the hills and far away,'

Over the hills and a great way off,

And the wind will blow my top-knot off."

Then there was the one which, when it was sung by Tom, Dick took to be a bit of veritable autobiography:

"When I was young and had no sense,

I bought a fiddle for eighteen pence,

And the only tune that it would play

Was 'Over the hills and far away.'"

But what was the song itself to which these verses alluded? Tom knew and sang several, but was cloudy as to which was the particular one. That mattered little, however, as all went to the same tune. There was one artfully contrived to lure recruits to the king's service, thus:

"Hark how the drums beat up again

For all true soldiers, gentlemen;

Then let us 'list and march away

Over the hills and far away."

Then there was one that Tom had heard at the play, sung by a gay captain and a dare-devil recruiting sergeant, and of which the latter half would fill Dick's head with longings and visions:

"Our 'prentice Tom may now refuse

To wipe his scoundrel master's shoes,

For now he's free to sing and play,

Over the hills and far away.

"We shall lead more happy lives

By getting rid of brats and wives

That scold and brawl both night and day,

Over the hills and far away.

"Over the hills, and over the main,

To Flanders, Portugal, or Spain;

The king commands, and we'll obey,

Over the hills and far away.

"Courage, boys, it is one to ten,

But we return all gentlemen;

While conq'ring colors we display,

Over the hills and far away."

And there was a duet, which Tom had heard at the opera in London, and which he sang, imitating the respective voices of the highwayman and the adoring Polly.

The tune took a lasting possession of Dick, and the sweet-sounding recurrent line exercised upon him a witchery that increased as he grew. He chose for his bedroom the rear apartment of the loft over the kitchen, because its window looked towards the east, and his first glance at dawn, his latest at night, was towards the farthest hill-tops. There were hills to the west, too, a great many more of them; mountain ranges, from the straight ridge of the Tuscaroras, to the farthest Alleghanies; but Dick's heart looked not in that direction, where he knew there was but savage wilderness all the thousands of miles to the Pacific Ocean. Towards the east, where the live world was, he longed to wing. Strangely enough, so had circumstance directed, he never, till he was seventeen years old, travelled as far as to the farthest mountains in sight southward or eastward. His father had turned his back on the Old World, thrown his interests heart and soul with those of the new land, built up a well-provided home on the outer verge of civilization, joined irrevocably the advance guard of the westward march of men. What little business he had with towns could be done through the pack-horse men and wagoners. So Dick had only his imagination on which to call for an idea of the level country towards the sea. What was behind the hills? How he envied the birds he saw flying towards that distant azure band that backed the green hills nearer! Should it ever be his lot to follow them?

At seventeen Dick was a strong, lithe youth, five feet eleven inches tall, and destined to grow no taller; with a thoughtful, somewhat eager face, whose sharpness of feature and alertness of expression had some suggestion of the fox, but with no indication of that animal's vices; brown hair that fell back to its queue from a wide and open brow; and blue eyes both steady and keen. Such was his appearance one sunny spring morning when he started from the house to join the men in the field, from which the sound of his father's "whoa," and of Tom MacAlister's chirping to the plow-horses, could be heard through the blossoming fruit-trees in which the birds were twittering. He returned his mother's smile through the open kitchen window, at which she stood kneading the dough for the week's baking. As he went towards the lane which ran up in front of the house from the so-called road, he could hear her voice while she half unconsciously sang at her work:

"'Over the hills, and over the main,

To Flanders, Portugal, or Spain;

The king commands, and we'll obey,

Over the hills and far away.'"

He took up the tune and hummed it, and, though the cheerful solitude around him seemed ineffably sweet, he sighed as he followed with his eyes the course of a tiny white cloud towards the high blue eastern horizon. It was Saturday, next to the last day of April, 1775.

As he leaped over the rail fence, from the houseyard to the lane, he saw a horse turn into the latter from the road. He recognized the rider, a good-looking young man, one of the few in the neighborhood with whom Dick was intimate.

"Good morning, M'Cleland," said Dick, heartily. "Where from?"

"From Hunter's Mill, and I can stay only a moment to give you the news, if you haven't heard it." He stopped his horse.

"What news?" queried Dick, wondering whether it might be of another Indian war, like that of Lord Dunmore's in Western Virginia the preceding year; or whether there had been a renewal of the old feud between the Pennsylvanians and the Connecticut settlers up in the Wyoming Valley; or whether the English government had repealed or reinforced the Boston Port Bill. These were matters in which Dick and M'Cleland had both taken interest,—especially the last one, for nowhere had the difference between King and colonies, which quarrel had been growing ever since the passage of the Stamp Act ten years before, been more thoroughly discussed than in the Wetheral household, and nowhere was the feeling for resistance to the King more ardent.

"Great news," said M'Cleland, controlling his voice with difficulty, while his eyes sparkled with excitement. "On the nineteenth the King's troops marched out from Boston to take some ammunition the people had stored at Concord. At Lexington they met a company of minutemen, and there were shots and bloodshed. The whole country around rose and killed God knows how many of the regulars on their way back to Boston. When the messengers left Cambridge, there was an army of Massachusetts men besieging the King's soldiers in Boston. There's no doubt about it. At Hunter's Mill I saw the man who met at Paxton the rider that talked in Philadelphia with the messenger from Cambridge, who had affidavits from Massachusetts citizens. Tell your people. I'm off up the river. Get up!"

Dick never went any farther towards the field. He called in his father and Tom, and there was a long discussion of the situation. Wetheral said that Pennsylvania would be organizing troops, in due time, to back up Massachusetts, and that the only course was to wait and join such a force. But Dick would not hear of waiting. "Now is the time men are needed!" was his answer to every counsel. First make for the scene of war; it would be time to join the Pennsylvania forces when these should arrive there. The father gave in, at last, and the mother had nothing to oppose to the inevitable but the protest of silent tears. To her, the whole matter was as lightning from a clear sky. It was settled; the boy should go, the father should stay. The mother had a day in which to get Dick's things ready. As for Tom MacAlister, who was subject to no man's will but his own, his first hearing of the news had set him preparing for departure. As he tied his own horse to the fence rail the next day, to wait for Dick, he bethought him how of old his motto had been always "up and away again," and he marvelled that he had remained twelve years contented in one place.

It was not yet Sunday noon when Dick, who it was decided should share with Tom the use of the latter's horse on the journey to Cambridge, according to the custom known as "riding and tying," mounted for the first stage. He wore a cocked hat, a blue cloth coat altered from one his father had brought from England, a linsey shirt, an old figured waistcoat, gray breeches, worsted stockings, home-made shoes, and buckskin leggings; carried a rifle, a blanket, and a change of shirts; and had two gold pieces, long saved by his mother against the time of his setting up for himself. Tom MacAlister was dressed and armed exactly as at Dick's first meeting with him, his clothes having been temporarily supplanted by homespun during his years of farm service.

There was a lump in Dick's throat when he put his arms around his mother's neck, and felt against his cheek the tear she had striven to hold back. The last embrace taken, he gave his horse the word rather huskily, and followed Tom MacAlister, who was already striding down the lane. Turning into the road, Dick looked back, and saw his father, his mother, his aunt, and Rover, the last-named now feeble and far beyond the age ordinarily attained by dogkind, standing together by the fence. His father waved an awkward military salute, his mother forced a smile into her face, and the old dog made two or three steps to follow, as in the past, then stopped and looked somewhat surprised and hurt that Dick did not call him. One swift glance from the puzzled dog to his mother's wistful face, and Dick's home in the Pennsylvania valley passed from his sight forever. He cleared his throat, swallowed down the lump in it, and turned his eyes forward towards the east. Tom MacAlister's grim face wore a look of quiet elation, and he could be heard softly whistling, as he trudged on, the tune of "Over the hills and far away."