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.