LOVE COMES A CROPPER
"I am speaking of a war with England." These words of Colonel Lewis rang
in my ears as I rode to Salem. They had sounded fantastic when he uttered
them. Now that I was alone they repeated themselves most ominously. The
flying hoofs of my horse pounded them into my ears. War with England was
unthinkable, and yet the colonel's speech lifted me up to a dreary height
and I was gazing over into a new and very grim world.
For years, from my first connected thoughts, there had been dissension
after dissension between England and America. My father before me had
lived through similar disputes. But why talk of war now? Many times the
colonies had boiled over a bit; then some concession was made, and what
our orators had declared to be a crisis died out and became a dead issue.
To be sure another "crisis" always took the place of the defunct one, but
the great fact remained that none of those situations had led to war.
Perhaps if some one other than Colonel Lewis had indulged in the dire
foreboding it would have made less of an impression. At the time he spoke
the words I had not been disturbed. Now that I was remembering what an
unemotional level-headed man he was the effect became accumulative. The
farther I left Richfield behind and the longer I mulled over his sinister
statement the more I worried.
As I neared Salem my meditations continued disquieting and yet were highly
pleasing. I was on my way to meet Patricia Dale. I was born on the
Mattapony and left an orphan at an early age. I had gone to Williamsburg
when turning sixteen, and soon learned to love and wear gold and silver
buckles on a pewter income.
In my innocence, rather ignorance, I unwittingly allowed my town
acquaintances to believe me to be a chap of means. When I discovered their
false estimate I did not have the courage to disillusion them. My true
spending-pace was struck on my eighteenth birthday, and inside the year I
had wasted my King William County patrimony.
Just what process of reasoning I followed during that foolish year I have
never been able to determine. I must have believed it to be imperative
that I live up to the expectations of my new friends. As a complement to
this idiotic obsession there must have been a grotesque belief that
somehow, by accident or miracle, I would be kept in funds indefinitely. I
do recall my amazement at the abrupt ending of my dreams. I woke up one
morning to discover I had no money, no assets. There were no odds and
ends, even, of wreckage which I could salvage for one more week of the old
life.
Among my first friends had been Ericus Dale and his daughter, Patricia. To
her intimates she was known as Patsy. As was to be expected when an
awkward boy meets a dainty and wonderful maid, I fell in love completely
out of sight. At nineteen I observed that the girl, eighteen, was becoming
a toast among men much older and very, very much more sophisticated than
I.
She was often spoken of as the belle of Charles City County, and I spent
much time vainly wishing she was less attractive. Her father, engaged in
the Indian-trade, and often away from home for several months at a time,
had seemed to be very kindly disposed to me.
I instinctively hurried to the Dales to impart the astounding fact that I
was bankrupt. One usually speaks of financial reverses as "crashing about"
one's head. My wind-up did not even possess that poor dignity; for there
was not enough left even to rattle, let alone crash.
The youth who rode so desperately to the Dale home that wonderful day
tragically to proclaim his plight, followed by fervid vows to go away and
make a new fortune, has long since won my sympathy. I have always resented
Ericus Dale's attitude toward that youth on learning he was a pauper. It
is bad enough to confess to a girl that one has not enough to marry on;
but it is hell to be compelled to add that one has not enough to woo on.
How it wrung my heart to tell her I was an impostor, that I was going to
the back-country and begin life all over. Poor young devil! How many like
me have solemnly declared their intentions to begin all over, whereas, in
fact, they never had begun at all.
And why does youth in such juvenile cataclysms feel forced to seek new
fields in making the fresh start? Shame for having failed, I suppose. An
unwillingness to toe the scratch under the handicap of having his
neighbors know it is his second trial.
But so much had happened since that epochal day back in Williamsburg that
it seemed our parting had been fully a million years ago. It made me smile
to remember how mature Patsy had been when I meekly ran her errands and
gladly wore her yoke in the old days.
Three years of surveying, scouting and despatch-bearing through the
trackless wilderness had aged me. I prided myself I was an old man in
worldly wisdom. Patsy Dale had only added three years to her young life. I
could even feel much at ease in meeting Ericus Dale. And yet there had
been no day during my absence that I did not think of her, still
idealizing her, and finding her fragrant memory an anodyne when suffering
in the wilderness.
The sun was casting its longest shadows as I inquired for the house and
rode to it. If my heart went pit-a-pat when I dismounted and walked to the
veranda it must have been because of anticipation. As I was about to rap
on the casing of the open door I heard a deep voice exclaim:
"This country's going to the dogs! We need the regulars over here. Using
volunteers weakens a country. Volunteers are too damned independent.
They'll soon get the notion they're running things over here. Put me in
charge of Virginia, and I'd make some changes. I'd begin with Dunmore and
wind up with the backwoodsmen. Neither Whigs nor Tories can save this
country. It's trade we want, trade with the Indians."
I could not hear that any one was answering him, and after a decent
interval I rapped again. At last I heard a slow heavy step approaching
from the cool twilight of the living-room.
"Aye? You have business with me, my man?" demanded Dale, staring into my
face without appearing to recognize me. He had changed none that I could
perceive. Short, square as though chopped out of an oak log. His dark hair
still kinked a bit and suggested great virility. His thick lips were
pursed as of old, and the bushy brows, projecting nearly an inch from the
deep-set eyes, perhaps had a bit more gray in them than they showed three
years back.
"Ericus Dale, you naturally have forgotten me," I began. "I am Basdel
Morris. I knew you and your daughter three years ago in Williamsburg."
"Oh, young Morris, eh? I'm better at remembering Indian faces than white.
Among 'em so much. So you're young Morris, who made a fool of himself
trying to be gentry. Sit down. Turned to forest-running, I should say."
And he advanced to the edge of the veranda and seated himself. He had not
bothered to shake hands.
"I had business with Colonel Lewis and I wished to see you and Patsy
before going back," I explained. I had looked for bluntness in his
greeting, but I had expected to be invited inside the house.
"Pat's out," he mumbled, his keen gaze roaming up and down my forest garb.
"But she'll be back. Morris, you don't seem to have made much of a hit at
prosperity since coming out this way."
"I'm dependent only on myself," I told him. "Personal appearance doesn't
go for much when you're in the woods."
"Ain't it the truth?" he agreed. "In trade?"
"Carrying despatches between Fort Pitt and Governor Dunmore just now.
Surveying before that."
"Then, by Harry, sir! You could be in better business," he snapped. "What
with Dunmore at the top, and thieving, land-grabbing settlers at the
bottom, this country is going to the devil! Dunmore cooks up a war to make
a profit out of his land-jobbing! Settlers quit good lands on this side
the mountains to go land-stealing in the Kentucky country and north of the
Ohio. It riles my blood! I say you could be in better business than
helping along the schemes of Dunmore and that trained skunk of his, Jack
Connolly."
I smiled pleasantly, beginning to remember that Ericus Dale was always a
freely spoken man.
"Do you mean that there is no need of this war? You say it is cooked up."
"Need of war?" he wrathfully repeated. "In God's mercy why should we have
war with the Indians? All they ask is to be let alone! Ever see a single
piaster of profit made out of a dead Indian unless you could sell his
hair? Of course not. The Indians don't want war. What they want is trade.
I've lived among 'em. I know. It's Dunmore and the border scum who want
war. They want to steal more land."
I had no wish to quarrel with the man, but I, too, had been among the
Indians; and I could not in decency to myself allow his ridiculous
statements to go unchallenged.
"How can the country expand unless the settlers have land? And if the
Indians block the trail how can we get the land without fighting for it?
Surely it was never intended that five or more square miles of the fairest
country on earth should be devoted to keeping alive one naked red
hunter."
He fairly roared in disgust. Then with an effort to be calm he began:
"Land? Settlers? You can't build a profit on land and settlers. Why, the
colonies already refuse to pay any revenue to England. Line both sides of
the Ohio with log cabins and stick a white family in each and what good
does it do? Did the French try to settle Canada? No! The French weren't
fools. They depended on trade."
"But they lost Canada," I reminded.
"Bah! For a purely military reason. The future of this country is trade.
England's greatness is built up on trade." His trick of jumping his voice
on that word "trade" was very offensive to the ears.
"Pennsylvania has the right idea. Pennsylvania is prosperous. Pennsylvania
doesn't go round chopping down bee-trees and then killing the bees to get
the honey. What good is this land over here if you can't get fur from it?
Settlers chop down the timber, burn it, raise measly patches of corn, live
half-starved, die. That's all."
His crazy tirade nettled me. It was obvious I could not keep in his good
books, even with Patricia as the incentive, without losing my
self-respect. I told him:
"This country can never develop without settled homes. We're building
rudely now, but a hundred years from now----"
"Yah!" And his disgust burst through the thick lips in a deep howl. "Who
of us will be alive a hundred years from now? Were we put on earth to
slave and make fortunes for fools not yet born? Did any fools work and
save up so we could take life soft and easy? You make me sick!"
"I'm sorry, Mr. Dale, to hear you say that. However, the war is here----"
"The war may be here, in Virginia, among the backwoodsmen. It is also in
Dunmore's heart, but it ain't in the hearts of the Indians," he
passionately contradicted. "The Indians only ask to be let alone, to be
allowed to trade with us. Some canting hypocrites are whining for us to
civilize the Indians. Why should they be civilized? Do they want to be?
Ever hear of Indians making a profit out of our civilization? Did the
Conestoga Indians make a profit when they tried to live like the whites
near Lancaster, and the Paxton boys killed fourteen of them, men, women
and children, then broke into the Lancaster jail where the others had been
placed for their safety, and butchered the rest of them?
"Did the ancient Virginia Indians prosper by civilization? I reckon if the
old Powhatans could return they'd have some mighty warm things to say on
that score. Why shouldn't the Indians insist we live as they do? They were
here first. The only way to help the Indian is to trade with him. And when
you help him that way you're helping yourself. That's the only point you
can ever make a red man see.
"I know the Indians. I can go into their towns now, be they Cherokee,
Mingo, Shawnee or Delaware, and they'll welcome me as a brother. They know
I don't want their land. They know I'm their true friend. They want me to
make a profit when I trade with them, so I'll come again with more rum and
blankets and guns, and gay cloth for their women."
"You have the trader's point of view, and very naturally so," I said.
"Thank God I ain't got the land-grabber's point of view! Nor the canting
hypocrite's point of view! Nor a thick-headed forest-runner's point of
view!" he loudly stormed, rising to end the discussion.
But I was not to be balked, and I reminded him:
"I called to pay my respects to Mistress Dale. I hope I may have the
pleasure."
"She's in the field back of the house. I'll call her," he grumbled. "I
have a man in my kitchen, a white man, who has lived with the Indians ever
since he was a boy. He knows more about them than all you border-folks
could learn in a million years. He's the most sensible white man I ever
met. He agrees with me perfectly that trade is what the Indian wants; not
settlers nor Bibles."
"Your guest would be John Ward!" I exclaimed, remembering the governor's
errand. "I was asked by Colonel Lewis to find him and send him to
Richfield. The colonel and Governor Dunmore wish to talk with him."
"Ho! Ho! That's the way the cat jumps, eh? Want to milk him for military
information, eh? Well, I reckon I'll go along with him and see they don't
play no tricks on him. I've taken a strong liking to Ward. He's the one
white man that's got my point of view."
"He lived with the Indians so long he may have the Indians' point of
view," I warned.
"The sooner white men learn the Indians' point of view the better it'll be
for both white and red. Ward knows the Indians well enough to know I'm
their friend. He knows I'm more'n welcome in any of their towns. I'm going
to carry a talk to Cornstalk and Black Hoof. If I can't stop this war I
can fix it so's there'll never be any doubt who's to blame for it."
"I tell you, Dale, that no white men, except it be Ward or Tavenor Ross
and others like them, are safe for a minute with Logan's Cayugas,
Cornstalk's Shawnees, Red Hawk's Delawares, or Chiyawee's Wyandots."
"Three years ain't even made a tomahawk improvement on you," he sneered.
"You mean to tell me that after all my years of friendship with the
Indians I won't be safe among them, or that any friends I take along won't
be safe among them? You talk worse'n a fool! I can send my girl alone into
the Scioto villages, and once she gives belts from me she will be as safe
as she would be in Williamsburg or Norfolk."
"Such talk is madness," I cried. "The one message your cousin, Patrick
Davis' wife, on Howard's Creek, asked me to deliver to your daughter is
for her not to cross the mountains until the Indian trouble is over."
"An old biddy whose husband is scared at every Indian he sees because he
knows he's squatting on their lands. My cousin may not be safe on Howard's
Creek, but my daughter would be. I'll say more; once the Indians know I am
at Howard's Creek, they'll spare that settlement."
It was useless to argue with the man. It was almost impossible to believe
that he meant his vaporings for seriousness. With a scowl he walked to the
rear of the house and entered the kitchen. All the windows were open, and
his voice was deep and heavy. I heard him say:
"Ward, I want you. We're going to have a talk with two white men, who
don't understand Indians. Pat, that young cub of a forest-running Morris
is out front. Hankers to see you, I 'low."
My leather face was still on fire when I heard the soft swish of skirts.
Then she stood before me, more beautiful than even my forest-dreaming had
pictured her, more desirable than ever. She courtesied low, and the
amazing mass of blue-black hair seemed an over-heavy burden for the slim
white neck to carry.
She smiled on me and I found my years dropping away like the leaves of the
maple after its first mad dance to the tune of the autumn's wind. I felt
fully as young as when I saw her in Williamsburg. And time had placed a
distance other than that of years between us: it had destroyed the old
familiarity.
To my astonishment we were meeting as casual acquaintances, much as if a
chin-high barrier was between us. It was nothing like that I had pictured.
I had supposed we would pick up the cordiality at the first exchange of
glances. I stuck out my hand and she placed her hand in it for a moment.
"Basdel, I would scarcely have known you. Taller and thinner. And you're
very dark."
"Wind and weather," I replied. "It was at Howard's Creek I learned you
were here. I was very anxious to see you."
"Don't stand." And she seated herself and I took a chair opposite her. "So
nice of you to have us in mind. It's some three years since."
"I reckon your father doesn't fancy me much."
"He's displeased with you about something," she readily agreed. "You
mustn't mind what he says. He's excitable."
"If I minded it I've forgotten it now," I told her. I now had time to note
the cool creamy whiteness of her arms and throat and to be properly
amazed. She had been as sweet and fresh three years before, but I was used
to town maids then, and accepted their charms as I did the sunshine and
spring flowers. But for three years I had seen only frontier women, and
weather and worry and hard work had made sad work of delicate
complexions.
"Now tell me about yourself," she commanded.
There was not much to tell; surveying, scouting, despatch-bearing. When I
finished my brief recital she made a funny little grimace, too whimsical
to disturb me, and we both laughed. Then quite seriously she reminded me:
"But, Basdel, your last words were that you were to make a man of
yourself."
In this one sentence she tagged my forest work as being valueless. Had I
been the boy who rode through the May sunshine frantically to announce his
poverty, I might have accepted her verdict as a just sentence. Now there
was a calculating light in her dark blue eyes that put me on my mettle.
She was throwing down a red ax.
"I am self-dependent," I said. "I never was that in Williamsburg. I have
risked much. Before crossing the mountains, I did not dare risk even your
displeasure. I have done things that men on the frontier think well of.
When you knew me back East I only succeeded in making a fool of myself.
The carrying of despatches between Fort Pitt and Botetourt County is
considered to be rather important."
"But, please mercy, there's more important things for young men to do than
these you've mentioned," she softly rebuked.
"If the work of surveying lands for homes and settlements, if the scouting
of wild country to protect settlements already established, if keeping a
line of communication open between the Ohio and the James are not
important tasks, then tell me what are?" I demanded.
She was displeased at my show of heat.
"There's no call for your defending to me your work over the mountains,"
she coldly reminded. "As an old friend I was interested in you."
"But tell me what you would consider to have been more important work," I
persisted. "I honestly believed I was working into your good opinion. I
believed that once you knew how seriously I was taking life, you would be
glad of me."
"Poor Basdel," she soothed. "I mustn't scold you."
"Pitying me is worse," I corrected. "If you can't understand a man doing a
man's work at least withhold your sympathy. I am proud of the work I have
done."
This ended her softer mood.
"You do right to think well of your work," she sweetly agreed. "But there
are men who also take pride in being leaders of affairs, of holding office
and the like."
"And going into trade," I was rash enough to suggest.
With a stare that strongly reminded me of her father she slowly said:
"In trade? Why not? Trade is most honorable. The world is built up on
trade. Men in trade usually have means. They have comfortable homes. They
can give advantages to those dependent upon them. Trade? Why, the average
woman would prefer a trader to the wanderer, who owns only his rifle and
what game he shoots."
"Patsy, that is downright savagery," I warmly accused. "Come, be your old
self. We used to be mighty good friends three years ago. Be honest with
me. Didn't you like me back in Williamsburg?"
The pink of her cheeks deepened, but she quietly countered:
"Why, Basdel, I like you now. If I didn't I never would bother to speak
plainly to you."
Three years' picture-painting was turning out to be dream-stuff. I tried
to tell myself I was foolish to love one so much like Ericus Dale; but the
lure was there and I could no more resist it than a bear can keep away
from a honey-tree.
She had shown herself to be contemptuous in reviewing the little I had
done. She was blind to the glory of to-morrow and more than filled with
absurd crotchets, and yet there was but one woman in America who could
make my heart run away from control. If it couldn't be Patsy Dale it could
be no one.
"Back in Williamsburg, before I made such a mess of my affairs, you knew I
loved you."
"We were children--almost."
"But I've felt the same about you these three years. I've looked ahead to
seeing you. I've--well, Patsy, you can guess how I feel. Do I carry any
hope with me when I go back to the forest?"
The color faded from her face and her eyes were almost wistful as she met
my gaze unflinchingly, and gently asked:
"Basdel, is it fair for a man going back to the forest to carry hope with
him? The man goes once and is gone three years. What if he goes a second
time and is gone another three years? And then what if he comes back,
rifle in hand, and that's all? What has he to offer her? A home in the
wilderness? But what if she has always lived in town and isn't used to
that sort of life?"
"But if she loves the man----"
"But what if she believes she doesn't love him quite enough to take him
and his rifle and live in the woods? Has he any more right to expect that
sacrifice than she has the right to expect him to leave the forest and
rifle and make his home where she always has lived?"
"I suppose not. But I, too, like the scenes and things you like. I don't
intend spending all my life fighting Indians and living in the forest."
"If your absence meant something definite," she sighed.
"Meaning if I were in trade," I bitterly said.
The kindly mood was gone. She defiantly exclaimed:
"And why not? Trade is honorable. It gets one somewhere. It has hardships
but it brings rewards. You come to me with your rifle. You talk sentiment.
I listen because we were fond of each other in a boy-and-girl way. We
mustn't talk this way any more. You always have my best wishes, but I
never would make a frontier woman. I like the softer side of life too
much."
"Then you will not wait? Will not give me any hope?"
"Wait for what? Another three years; and you coming back with your long
rifle and horse. Is that fair to ask any woman?"
"No. Not when the woman questions the fairness. 'Another three years' are
your words, not mine. I shall see this war through, and then turn selfish.
What I have done is good for me. It will serve to build on."
"I'm sure of it," she agreed. "And you always have my best--my best
wishes."
"And down in your heart you dare care some, or you wouldn't talk it over
with me," I insisted.
"We liked each other as boy and girl. Perhaps our talk is what I believe I
owe to that friendship. Now tell me something about our backwoods
settlements."
In story-writing the lover should, or usually does, fling himself off the
scene when his attempt at love-making is thwarted. Not so in life with
Patsy. I believed she cared for me, or would care for me if I could only
measure up to the standard provided for her by her father's influence.
So instead of running away I remained and tried to give her a truthful
picture of border conditions. She understood my words but she could not
visualize what the cabins stood for. They were so many humble habitations,
undesirable for the town-bred to dwell in, rather than the symbols of
many, happy American homes. She pretended to see when she was blind, but
her nods and bright glances deceived me none. She had no inkling of what a
frontier woman must contend with every day, and could she have glimpsed
the stern life, even in spots, it would be to draw back in disgust at the
hardships involved.
So I omitted all descriptions of how the newly married were provided with
homes by a few hours' work on the part of the neighbors, how the simple
furniture was quickly fashioned from slabs and sections of logs, how a few
pewter dishes and the husband's rifle constituted the happy couple's
worldly possessions. She wished to be nice to me, I could see. She wished
to send me away with amiable thoughts.
"It sounds very interesting," she said. "Father must take me over the
mountains before we return to town."
"Do not ask him to do that," I cried. And I repeated the message sent by
Mrs. Davis.
She was the one person who always had her own way with Ericus Dale. She
smiled tolerantly and scoffed:
"Father's cousin sees danger where there isn't any. No Indian would ever
bother me once he know I was my father's daughter."
"Patsy Dale," I declared in my desperation. "I've loved you from the day I
first saw you. I love you now. It's all over between us because you have
ended it. But do not for your own sake cross the mountains until the
Indian danger is ended. Howard's Creek is the last place you should visit.
Why, even this side of the creek I had to fight for my life. The Indians
had murdered a family of four, two of them children."
She gave a little shudder but would not surrender her confidence in her
father.
"One would think I intended going alone. I know the Indians are killing
white folks, and are being killed by white folks. But with my father
beside me----"
"If you love your father keep him on this side of the Alleghanies!"
"You will make me angry, Basdel. I don't want to be displeased with you.
My father has known the Indians for years. He has warm friends in every
tribe. He is as safe among them as he is here in Salem. And if Howard's
Creek is in danger he can request the Indians to keep away from it."
"Good God! Are you as blind as all that?" I groaned.
"Forest-running, Basdel, has made you violent and rough in your talk," she
icily rebuked. "You hate the Indians simply because you do not understand
them. Now I'm positive that the best thing for you to do is to keep away
from the frontier and see if you can't start right on this side of the
mountains."
It would be folly to argue with her longer. I fished a pair of moccasins,
absurdly small, from the breast of my hunting-shirt and placed them on the
table. I had bought them from a squaw in White Eyes' village, and they
were lavishly embroidered with gay beads. The squaw had laughed when I
told the size I wanted.
"If you will forget these came from the forest and will let me leave them,
I shall be pleased," I said. "If you don't care for them, just chuck them
aside. I had to guess at the size."
"Oh, they are beautiful," she softly exclaimed, snatching them from the
table. "Basdel, why not stay on this side of the mountains? You're a very
clever young man if you would only give yourself a chance. Very soon you
could go to the House of Burgesses. If you don't care to go into trade you
could speculate in land. Father is against it, but if it will be done, you
might as well do it as to leave the cream for others."
"Even if I wished to stay, I could not," I replied. "I have much to do
over there. Unfinished work. I have promised Colonel Lewis to carry
despatches when not scouting. If they can send some one to Fort Pitt in my
place I shall serve as scout in the Clinch River Valley. The people down
there are badly upset."
"Well, giving yourself for others may be very Christian-like. One must
decide for one's self," she said.
"The people over there help one another. They stand together. If I can
help them, I shall be helping myself."
"I wish my father could go there and make them see how silly they are,"
she impatiently declared. "If they would only be friendly with the
Indians! It is so simple----"
"I know a fellow about your age," I broke in. "The Indians killed his
people on Keeney's Knob ten years ago and stole his little sister. He
doesn't know whether she is dead or a captive. His folks were friendly.
They were butchered after making a feast for Cornstalk and his warriors.
There are many such cases. It would do no good for your father to tell
young Cousin and others, who happened to survive, that they are silly."
"Do you mean they would resent it?" she demanded, her chin going up in a
very regal manner.
"He could scarcely change their opinions," I mumbled.
We were interrupted by a colored woman bustling in with Colonel Lewis'
servant in tow. The man bowed profoundly before Patsy and then informed
me:
"Please, Massa Morris, de c'unel 'mires fo' to see yo' at de house right
erway. I 'spects it's business fo' de gun'ner. De c'unel mos' 'tic'lar dat
say he wants to see yo' to once. Yas, sah. Please, sah."
I dismissed him with a word of my immediate attendance on the colonel.
Then I gave my hand to Patsy and said:
"This ends it then. Patsy, my thoughts of you have helped me out of many
tight places."
"If you'd only be sensible, Basdel, and stay back here where you belong.
Just say the word and father will place you in his office. I'm sure of
it."
"So am I sure of it, if you asked it. No, Patsy, it can't be that way. I
thank you. I may be an awful failure, but I can always fool myself with
hoping for better things. If I was pushed into trade, that would end me."
"Of course you know your limitations better than I do," she coldly said.
"Thanks for the pretty moccasins. I may have a chance to wear them soon."
"Do not wear them over the mountains," I begged. "You were never meant for
the frontier. Good-by."
I had mounted my horse and was galloping back to Richfield almost before I
had realized how definitely I had separated from her. There was so much I
had intended to say. My thoughts grew very bitter as I repeatedly lived
over our short and unsatisfactory meeting. I recalled patches of the
bright dreams filling my poor noodle when I was riding to meet her, and I
smiled in derision at myself.
I had carried her in my heart for three years, and because daily I had
paid my devotion to her I had been imbecile enough to imagine she was
thinking of me in some such persistent way. Patsy Dale was admired by many
men. Her days had been filled with compliments and flattery.
My face burned as though a whip had been laid across it when I recalled
her frank skepticism of my ability to support a wife. I had a rifle.
Several times she had thrust that ironical reminder at me, which meant I
had nothing else. I came to her carrying my rifle. It was unfair to tie a
girl with a promise when the wooer had only his rifle.
The damnable repetition kept crawling through my mind. She wanted to
impress the fact of my poverty upon me. I worked up quite a fine bit of
anger against Patsy. I even told myself that had I come back with profits
derived from peddling rum to the Indians, I might have found her more
susceptible to my approach. Altogether I made rather a wicked game of
viewing the poor girl in an unsavory light.
With a final effort I declared half-aloud that she was not worth a serious
man's devotion. And it got me nowhere. For after all, the remembrance of
her as she stood there, with her slim white neck and the mass of
blue-black hair towering above the upturned face, told me she must ever
fill my thoughts.
I reached Richfield early in the evening. Governor Dunmore had retired
against an early start for Williamsburg. It was Colonel Lewis' wish that I
ride without delay to Charles Lewis' place at Staunton, something better
than eighty miles, and confer with him over the situation on the
frontier.
"My brother has recently received intelligences from Fort Pitt which state
the Indians are anxious for peace," explained the colonel.
"A parcel of lies," I promptly denounced.
"So say I. But the written statements are very plausible. They have made
an impression on Charles. It is very important that he know the truth. It
will be much better for you to talk with him than for me to try to send
him your statements in writing. Haste is necessary. Leave your horse and
take one of mine."
"Have your man bring out the horse. I will start now."
"A prompt response," he said. "And most pleasing. But to-morrow early will
do. Spend the night here."
"To-night. Now," I insisted. "I need action."
He gave me a sharp glance, then called his man and gave the order. While
my saddle was being shifted he informed me:
"Ericus Dale and John Ward paid us a call. Dale and His Excellency had a
rare bout of words. The fellow Ward didn't say much, but he agreed to
everything Dale said."
"I know about the way Dale talked," I gloomily said. "I talked with him
before he came here. He thinks that Virginia is made up of fools, that
only Pennsylvania knows how to handle the Indians."
I swung into the saddle and the colonel kindly said:
"I hope this business of mine isn't taking you away from something more
pleasant."
"I thank you, Colonel, but I am quite free. All I ask is action and an
early return to the frontier."
I knew the colonel knew the truth. He knew I had paid my respects to the
girl and had been dismissed. He stretched out a hand in silence and gave
me a hearty handshake; and I shook the reins and thundered up the road to
Staunton.