d.i.c.k 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."
d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k, "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 d.i.c.k"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 d.i.c.k; 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 d.i.c.k 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 a.s.surance 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 s.e.xes and every age who took refuge there.
d.i.c.k"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 d.i.c.k"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 d.i.c.k 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 Sat.u.r.day evening, after the work was done, d.i.c.k revelled to his heart"s content in the sc.r.a.ping 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 princ.i.p.al room.
d.i.c.k 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, d.i.c.k 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, d.i.c.k"s gaze involuntarily turned towards the window opposite the door. The oiled paper that had served instead of gla.s.s 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.
d.i.c.k 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. d.i.c.k 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. d.i.c.k 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 s.p.a.ce of several minutes, d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k"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 d.i.c.k 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 detour which would take him far from the house where the savages were now holding their carnival of blood. This detour 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 ma.s.s 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.
d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k, 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 d.i.c.k, 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.
d.i.c.k 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 c.o.c.ked 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 d.i.c.k, "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, d.i.c.k 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!"
[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE NEWCOMER WAS APPARENTLY ABOUT FORTY YEARS OLD."]
d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k"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 d.i.c.k"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-b.a.l.l.s. In the smoke and confusion, Dodds had made, unseen, for the chimney, which he had ascended by great muscular exertion while the ma.s.sacre 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.
d.i.c.k"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 a.s.sertions 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 p.r.o.nounced boyhood, and then to st.u.r.dy youth, d.i.c.k Wetheral grew, to the constant accompaniment of Tom MacAlister"s fiddle. d.i.c.k 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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, d.i.c.k 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 a.s.sociation with the raw youths of the neighborhood, and from succ.u.mbing 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 d.i.c.k 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, d.i.c.k 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."