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Title: A spectre of power
Author: Charles Egbert Craddock
Release date: May 17, 2025 [eBook #76105]
Language: English
Original publication: Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1903
Credits: Peter Becker, Laura Natal and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A SPECTRE OF POWER ***
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HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY,
BOSTON AND NEW YORK.
A SPECTRE OF POWER
A SPECTRE
OF POWER
CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1903
COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY MARY N. MURFREE
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published May, 1903_
A SPECTRE OF POWER
CONTENTS
PAGE
Chapter I 1
Chapter II 23
Chapter III 49
Chapter IV 75
Chapter V 101
Chapter VI 118
Chapter VII 133
Chapter VIII 150
Chapter IX 175
Chapter X 192
Chapter XI 213
Chapter XII 227
Chapter XIII 255
Chapter XIV 279
Chapter XV 302
Chapter XVI 324
Chapter XVII 334
Chapter XVIII 344
Chapter XIX 357
Chapter XX 368
Chapter XXI 380
Chapter XXII 396
A SPECTRE OF POWER
I
IT so chanced that Eve, with all her primeval curiosity, dwelt in
the Cherokee town of Great Tellico. Hence came disaster. To the
inquisitiveness of the woman it was always imputed, although the
undisciplined heart of man, the turbulent impulses of ambition, and the
serpentine supersubtlety of a covetous political scheme were potent
elements. Little, indeed, such as she might seem concerned with matters
of high import. From afar, unindividualized among scores of the other
subservient Cherokee women standing on the banks of the glittering
Tennessee River, she had watched the approach of the herald of the
embassy. A Choctaw Indian he was revealed as he ran holding broadly
outstretched in each hand the great white wing of a swan, streaked with
symbolic lines of white clay. The headmen of Tellico, the warriors
of note, and the “beloved men” swiftly assembled in the “beloved
square” to greet the arrival of the ambassador himself, and with no
presentiment of personal significance in the event, she beheld the
entry of the splendidly bedight Choctaw chief, Mingo Push-koosh.
Through the forests he had elected to come, and as he advanced with
that wonderful, running gait of the Choctaw Indian, who could outwind,
it was said in that day, a swift horse, he sustained impassively the
eager, fixed gaze of the hundreds of Cherokees assembled in his honor.
The iconoclast, who was not born yesterday, was here and there in the
crowd, and had a word of covert scoffing at his neglect of the great
advantages of water carriage afforded by the numerous fine rivers of
the Cherokee country; for the Choctaws had but little familiarity with
navigation, owing to the few and very limited streams of their own
region, and notoriously, of all nations of Indians, they could not swim.
Envy, however, could hardly spare a fling at so imperious a figure as
the Mingo presented as he stood in the “beloved square” and delivered
in rapid, fervid, poetic diction his oration of greeting to the headmen
of Tellico. The afternoon sunlight glittered on the silver wrist-plates
on his muscular, bare arms, his gorget and “earbobs” of the same metal,
and a half dozen strands of the glossily white, fresh-water pearls of
the region, exceedingly large and regularly shaped, which hung about
the neck of his white, dressed doeskin hunting-shirt. His head was not
polled after the fashion of the Cherokees, and his hair grew thick
and long. A great cluster of scarlet flamingo feathers stood high in
the midst of the straight, black locks, and he wore a broad, silver
band on the backward slant of his forehead, artificially flattened
thus in infancy, according to the tribal custom. His leggings and
moccasins were also scarlet. He bore no arms except a pair of handsome,
silver-mounted pistols in his embroidered belt.
The gentle breeze carried his full, rich, guttural tones to the
uttermost outskirts of the crowd, and suddenly it was swayed by a new
sensation and a straining of necks to see. For although the Choctaws
beyond all tribes were most addicted to the punctilio of ceremonial
observances, and scorned and resisted innovation, the voice which
followed his words, substituting the familiar Cherokee equivalents,
was the voice of no Indian interpreter. It was suave and fluent and
easy of comprehension, but now and again an idiom occurred, a method
of construction essentially French. For beside the Mingo, and in front
of his escort of a dozen Choctaw braves, stood a glittering object, a
white man, a French officer in full uniform, and with his hair curled
and plaited and powdered.
The headmen of Tellico, all decorously listening to the ambassador,
all respectfully gazing upon his bright animated face, as he declaimed
his plea for welcome and his pleasure in beholding them, could not
altogether cloak their surprised interest and covert glances at this
resplendent apparition in the lowly functions of an interpreter. It
was a relief when Push-koosh openly alluded to his companion, and he
himself repeated in Cherokee the explanation of his appearance in this
capacity, and they were free to let their eyes rest unrestrainedly upon
him.
In his clear, ringing, military enunciation, he stated that the
official Choctaw interpreter with whom they had set forth on the long
journey from Fort Condé de la Mobile had sickened by the way, and
sinking very low they had been obliged to strangle him, death being
inevitable. But they had left his body on a scaffold out of reach of
wild animals, whither the official “bone-picker” should be sent on
their return to the southern country to perform the last sad rites
of the Choctaw religion (which seems to have had few rites other
than these frightful funeral observances). For these reasons they
were fain to crave the indulgence of the great Cherokee chiefs for
appearing without that essential functionary, an interpreter, since
the lieutenant, Jean Marie Edouard Bodin de Laroche, was but scantily
acquainted with the charming Cherokee language, so musical and of so
elegant a construction, and Mingo Push-koosh, to his infinite regret,
had of it no knowledge save a few scattered phrases.
The discerning and thoughtful Tanaesto, standing in the group of
brilliantly arrayed Cherokee headmen, silently eyeing them both, noted
naught significant in the face of the Mingo as the untoward fate of the
strangled interpreter was recounted. This assistance in shuffling off
the mortal coil would have been to the Choctaw a matter of course and
a national custom. But Tanaesto knew that the white man was not used
to so summary a disposition of the inconvenient dying. He was subject,
like all the Catholic French, to many stringent religious restrictions,
chiefly pertaining to the precise method in which he might take life,
and although he looked as stanch as steel, and as glittering, his
face was young and bland and as unmoved as if he were reciting a
fiction,--which indeed he was! The heart of Tanaesto weighed very light
with the thought,--there had been no interpreter to die.
“My brother,” he said in a low voice to Colonnah, to test his joyful
suspicion, “why does a French officer speaking but indifferent Cherokee
come to us with a Choctaw embassy without an interpreter from the
governor of Louisiana?”
The wary Colonnah replied instantly. “That the Choctaw embassy may go
back no wiser in certain things than the French officer may desire.”
The disclosure of a scheme within a scheme was thus promised. The
series of notable successes which the Cherokees had achieved in 1760,
in their war against the British, had been nullified in the campaign of
the succeeding year by the inability of the French to convey to them
adequate ammunition at the crisis of their final defeat. Doubtless
some new plan was now imminent, some fresh attempt in contemplation
to aid them to throw off the British yoke. Tanaesto’s heart leaped at
the thought, although a solemn treaty of peace had just been signed at
Charlestown with the Royal Governor of South Carolina, and a deputation
of Cherokee chiefs now, in the early spring of 1762, were on the way
to England as guests invited to visit his majesty King George in
London.[1]
The craft of the Indians rendered craft difficult to disguise, and
Tanaesto could but wonder if Mingo Push-koosh knew or suspected aught
of the limitations of his powers or the secrets of his mission thus
withheld from him.
His fine voice died away at last on the bland air; the oratorical
display in which the Indians all delighted and the Choctaws so much
excelled had been elaborately exploited; the stir of the wind, the
lapsing currents of the river, were barely audible in the silence that
seemed still to vibrate with the pulsings of his eloquent periods.
Then another voice arose, deep, full, impressive, as Moy Toy, the great
chief of Tellico, pronounced the stereotyped sentences of welcome and
protestations of a desire of friendship.
The Choctaw responded sonorously, “_Aharattle-la phena
chemanumbole!_”[2] (I shall firmly shake hands with your discourse.)
Whereupon Moy Toy, with eagle feathers upon his head and a splendid
garb of feather-woven fabrics, advanced and grasped with both hands the
Choctaw’s arm around the wrist; then seized him anew about the elbow;
and again with the like fervent pressure around the arm close to the
shoulder, as being near the heart. He drew back from the visitor for
one silent moment. Then he waved a great fan of eagle feathers above
the head of the ambassador, the plumes stroking him gently, and his
formal reception was complete.
The Choctaw turned smilingly to the crowd, which was presently in
motion dispersing along the river bank and among the scattered
dwellings of the town. The official group of headmen had broken up
into informal knots, and among them Push-koosh moved with a suave but
princely arrogation, as tolerating the adulation which was equally
his custom and his expectation. He had several claims to special
consideration, of none of which was he oblivious, and all of which
exerted a marked influence upon his personality. He enjoyed a certain
distinction because of his well-known acuteness, his employment in the
French interest, his war record, and his undoubted courage, which was
the more noted because the Choctaws were not always considered brave;
for although fighting furiously in defense of their own territory,
they were accounted half-hearted and even timorous in invasion and
aggression. Moreover, he had much family influence, having four elder
brothers, all noted warriors, who championed his every plan and took
that prideful, solicitous, censorious, half-paternal account of
him characteristic of the fraternal senior, and often resented and
ill-requited by the sophisticated Benjamins even of civilized tribes.
To this simple trait of family affection is doubtless due the name by
which he was known; for throughout his life and to the day of his death
he was called Push-koosh, “Baby.” If he had any other name, it is not
of record in the history of his times, in which, although cruel as
death, hard as steel, and cunning as craft itself, this Choctaw warrior
always incongruously appears as “Prince Baby,” Mingo Push-koosh.
The suavity and politic amiability of the carriage of the French
toward the savage, which had so marked an influence on the earlier
stages of the development of this country, were never more definitely
illustrated than in the face of the young officer, Laroche. Its
intelligence, its alertness, the military arrogance in the pose
of the head, rendered the sudden, bright softness of his smile as
flattering as a personal tribute. From an athletic point of view,
his slender, erect, sinewy figure coerced the respect of his hosts,
and in securing their friendship and confidence, he had a great
advantage in his very tolerable command of the Cherokee language. His
linguistic accomplishments were already considerable, but before he
left Fort Condé de la Mobile, he was set to work under the instruction
of the official interpreter, by the order of his superior officer,
and he had acquired a colloquial facility as a military duty with
the diligence which he would have manifested in mastering military
theories and tactical problems. He talked continually, with much ease
and good-fellowship, and a sort of elastic, volatile gayety. But he
showed a deeply emotional impressionability. He manifested great and
genuine pleasure in the aspect of the country. He gazed long and
silently upon the azure summits and infinite lengths of the Great Smoky
Mountains, as they received the last suffusion of the red, western
sunlight like a benediction, and glowed to purer, higher, finer phases
of color, becoming densely purple, then delicately amethystine, then
all transparent and roseate. As they grew so crystalline of effect as
to realize to the imagination the splendid jeweled luminosities of the
Apocalyptic jasper, he caught his breath, exclaiming, “_Nanne-Yah!
Nanne-Yah!_” (The mountains of God!) He declared to his entertainers
that in Old France he was born near mountains such as these (for he
was not of the Canadian French, who since the days of Iberville had so
heavily recruited the ranks of the soldiery in Louisiana), and that he
had no doubt that this mutual nativity to the heights was the reason
why he already felt toward them as to brothers. Yet he was not bent
upon flattery; for he was alone with Push-koosh when he said again and
again, as they walked beside the Tennessee River, and he noted the
swift flow of its currents all bedight in red and gold under the sunset
sky, “_Ookka chookoma intaa!_” (How the beautiful water glides
along!)
He broke presently from the pensive contemplation of its charms
and stopped short with a crisp ringing cry, “_Holà! là! là!_”
Push-koosh, glancing about for the cause of this excitement, perceived
at a little distance some Cherokee youths, who were leaping from the
heights of a craggy eminence and diving into the rippling depths with a
temerity and facility alike admirable. But Push-koosh had no affinity
with amphibian traits, being himself, in common with the rest of his
tribe, unable to swim. He resented the interest and approval which the
Frenchman accorded the divers, sundry of whom were now breasting the
current with great speed, strength, and skill, and declared that it was
beneath his ambassadorial dignity to waste the time in watching a half
score specimens of the Cherokee Ka-noona (bullfrog), as they called the
creature in their jargon, swim a race. He could not wait for this! Did
the officer not see that the fires of split cane were already alight
in the great state-house, whither they must at once repair to drink of
the cacina (“the black drink”) with the headmen, as became visitors of
distinction? Nevertheless, as they resumed their progress, Push-koosh
himself, with the interest which a man of an active, outdoor life must
needs feel in athletic feats, glanced again and again over his shoulder
at the expert divers.
“I wonder they don’t drown!” he said at last sincerely. Then perhaps
equally sincerely, “I wish they would!”
“_Mon tendre Bébé!_” cried the mercurial Frenchman in delight.
The incongruity daily illustrated between the cruel, savage traits of
the chief and his gentle, infantile sobriquet was of an unceasing and
engaging drollery to Laroche’s mind, and doubtless often proved of
service in keeping amicable relations between them.
Wending their way through the scattered dwellings of the town, and
skirting the rows of log cabins on each side of the “beloved square,”
they approached the state-house or rotunda hard by, built on the summit
of a high, artificial mound of earth. The circuit of the fifteen
Cherokee towns[3] burned by Colonel Grant, commanding the British
forces, in the punitive measures following his victory at Etchoee
the previous year, the Indians being powerless to resist, as their
ammunition was exhausted, did not extend so far as Tellico Great, and
therefore its aspect was as before the war, save indeed for the tokens
of the prowess of the Cherokees themselves--the great dismantled Fort
Loudon, still standing a massive, lonely shadow in the distance, which
they had blockaded and reduced, massacring the garrison, and here
and there down the river the stark chimneys of the burned dwellings
of the murdered British colonists. A white glimmer stole out of the
tall, narrow portal of the conical state-house, which showed dark and
solid against the ethereal shadows of the atmosphere. For the blue
dusk had fallen on the enchanted land. The wooded mountains loomed dim
and sombre on the clear horizon; the encompassing primeval forests
were thronged with glooms; the river was now a gray shadow, and now
an elusive, silver glister; the many lowly roofs of the dwellings of
the Indian town were dully glimpsed here and there in the light that
flickered out through the open doors from hearthstones all aglow;
and as the officer paused on the high mound at the portal of the
state-house, and looked back over the clare-obscure of the unaccustomed
scene, he caught the scintillations of a star a-glitter in the pallid
expanse of the pearly skies. It was like a signal to him. Aldebaran!
how long since he had seen it, poised over a craggy mountain summit,
sending its brilliant, red lustres down through the fringes of the
evergreen pine. Not thus, not thus had he seen it since the star and
he were together at home! It was like the sudden greeting of a friend
in a far and foreign land. He responded instantly as to a personal
appeal. He turned suddenly and airily kissed his hand, the brilliant
star shattered into a thousand stars among the tears in his eyes.
Push-koosh, accustomed to ebullitions of his emotional, susceptible
nature, gave him but one glance of superficial surprise, and together
they entered the dome-like building. The red clay walls of its interior
were illumined by the white light of the burning split canes, while the
dim, blue scene beneath the home-star lay outside in the darkness.
Only for one moment did Laroche realize the poignancy of exile,
although the homesick pang for the recollection of his kindred and
his far-distant birthplace was supplemented by another hardly less
acute, with a spurious domiciliary sense, for the scenes at the
fort, his quarters, the presence of his brother officers. The more
valid cause of troublous thought and sense of solitude,--that he
was apart from them all, alone among wild and bloody savages, the
Choctaws of the French alliance hardly less to be feared in their
alert dissimulation and treacherous habit than the open ferocity of
the Cherokees of the British faction, the only man of his country in
a hundred miles of these dense and sombre wildernesses, in a torn
and distracted region subject to a national enemy,--these practical
considerations did not smite him at all. Even his æsthetic griefs
were all forgotten in another instant, and with his swift, volatile
transitions he was absorbed in the interior of the building. It was
large enough to accommodate an audience of several hundred people, and
ample illumination was afforded by the split cane, which, arranged in
lines and serpentine convolutions along a low mound of earth in the
centre of the clay floor and burning only at one end, was consumed
very gradually, and would furnish light for a considerable time. The
cane gave out but little smoke, ethereal, hazy, vaguely blue, mounting
into the shadowy vault of the lofty dome above the heads of the crowd.
Around the interior of the building, some four feet distant from the
wall and supporting the unseen timbers of the roof, was a series of
columns, and in the space between this colonnade and the wall was a
continuous divan or bench, deftly made of cane, artificially whitened,
and extending all around the circular structure. Here on the further
side, opposite the door, were seated the headmen of the town, while
those of lower grade were ranged according to rank, to the right and
to the left. The more insignificant or younger tribesmen stood in the
open spaces nearest the entrance, and seated on the floor on either
side of the narrow portal were groups of women, admitted in lenient
indulgence of feminine curiosity.
The two strangers were conducted as visitors of distinction to seats,
one on either side of Moy Toy. The barbarous Choctaw, with his quick,
racial adaptation to all the minutiæ of ceremonial, peculiarly
elaborate in its observance, with his grace, his fitting words, his
proud yet affable demeanor, was hardly more acceptable to the Indian
scheme of etiquette than the Frenchman, foreign, white, strange,
though he was. There was something about this officer that appealed
singularly to the vivid imagination of the Cherokees,--the silken
softness of his courtesy, his easily stirred and obvious sentimental
emotions, his volatile pleasure in the passing moment, his quick
changeableness in every current of the air, and yet incongruously, a
certain bellicose keenness, and steadiness, and hardness in the glance
of his bland eyes. He was like a military butterfly, if one could
but attribute the potentiality of danger and venom and antagonism
to so aerial and brilliant a flutterer. His very gestures riveted
their attention as he expressively shrugged his shoulders or lifted
his eyebrows in gay surprise, or contracted them in frowning doubt.
These eyebrows were dark and distinctly marked, and he had long, dark
lashes, but his eyes were of a light brown tint such as gravel shows
when clear water runs above a sunlit channel. He wore his own light
brown hair in lieu of a fashionable wig, but the long queue and the
curls on the temples were heavily powdered, which was of complimentary
significance; for it was by no means the habit of the French officers
to submit to the _gêne_ of such vanities while on the march in
the wilderness, although in New Orleans the Marquis de Vaudreuil had
long sought to maintain some state, since indeed he had first succeeded
Bienville as governor of Louisiana, and fostered manners of ceremony,
as he afterwards did in Canada, whither he was now transferred. The
suggestion that Laroche was charged with a secret mission within a
mission added importance to his personality, which Push-koosh obviously
resented, now and again assertively flaunting his few Cherokee phrases,
even in addressing his _quasi_ interpreter, and more than once
essaying some very queer French. The men looked at the officer with
intense curiosity, and the women, as ever addicted to novelty, with
open-eyed admiration, as he smoked the “friend-pipe” while he sat
beside Moy Toy, who in his finest otter-skin robe was all a-glitter
with many swaying fringes of “roanoke,” with a broad, gleaming collar
of white swan’s down, and with streaks of white clay across his
forehead. If Laroche dreamed of the approaching ordeal, he awaited it
with the calm of a philosopher and the courage of a soldier.
Presently there entered two “beloved men,” each bearing a conch shell
high in the right hand. They first crossed the apartment, one going to
the right, the other to the left, singing mystic words in a low tone as
they came; then once more taking a transverse course, they met in front
of Moy Toy and the two guests of distinction, to whom they presented,
with both hands, the two shells full of the so-called consecrated
beverage. As these were lifted, with both hands, to the lips of
the guests, the two “beloved men” broke forth with a sonorous bass
note, “_Yo!_” then with a tenor effect they sang the syllable,
“_He!_” prolonged to the utmost possibility of holding the breath,
during which sound the visitor must continue to drink the cacina. It
required, perhaps, all the strength of mind and stomach which the
French officer could muster, but he did not desist nor lower the shell
till the gasping “_Wah!_” placed a period to his torments.
Others then partook of the black drink in turn, and presently amidst
the wreaths of blue smoke and the white flare of the burning cane,
while the earthen drums began to beat sonorously, sinuous, leaping
shadows were flung across the hard, clay floor and on the red walls of
the circular building; for the eagle-tail dance was in progress in the
presence of the honored guests, the great fans of feathers waving high
in the uplifted hands of the agile warriors, as they sprang elastically
into the air, exhibiting many intricate steps and difficult attitudes.
These solemn politico-religious ceremonies of welcome concluded,
the Cherokees gave themselves over to various devices to amuse and
entertain their guests, for this was a characteristic trait of their
hospitality. There would be horse-races on the morrow and dances
again, but without significance either political or religious, and
long and elaborate feastings, for they could set forth a table with
“fifty different viands.” The Cherokees had not at this period begun
the downward course,--the relinquishment of their national customs,
primitive manufactures, religion, method of government, habits of
extreme cleanliness,--the wholesale degeneration which seems inevitable
before new standards, new customs, new religion, a new nationality, can
be adjusted to a people in a state of transition. The night being as
yet but little spent, one of their ancient pantomimes[4] was essayed
for the entertainment of the guests; and during its performance the
frequency of the ringing laugh of the French officer, and the grunt of
approval of the Choctaw chief, brought the same expression of gratified
complacency and chastened thankfulness to the anxious faces of Moy
Toy and the other headmen of Tellico Great that sophisticated hosts
now wear upon the success of an entertainment upon which important
interests depend. It began with a surprise. Suddenly a bulky shadow
fell within the doorway,--the women clustering about the entrance
shrieked in a sort of delighted affright and scuttled aside. The
heavy, guttural laugh of the Indian--a merry soul at his sports--fell
iteratively on the air. A bear had entered, clumsy, heavily shuffling,
snuffing tentatively about, evidently to be imagined as ranging the
woods, and with now and then a glance over his shoulder to see another
bear ponderously lumbering in. So close was the imitation of the ursine
gait and ungainliness, so crafty the disguise in the beast’s paws and
hide, distended to full proportions by concealed wooden hoops, that
one might have believed the manifestation genuine but for a lamenting
“stage-whisper,” as it were, delivered in plaintive Cherokee, touching
a bit of the burning cane which had lodged upon the slant of a too
inquisitive snout nosing about the fire. It was hastily brushed off
by one of the young tribesmen of the audience, all of whom laughed
gleefully at the mischance and the helpless plight of the singed Bruin.
And now entered two hunters in full sylvan array. The bears skulked,
chiefly among the audience; the nimrods stalked them; the bears fled;
the hunters pursued; the beasts turned at bay,--when the hunters
themselves fled frantically, amidst howls of derision from the younger
people. This mockery seemed to restore the nerve of the hunters,
who presently returned to the effort and with such ardor that they
finally “treed” the bears, who nimbly climbed the sleek, round columns
that supported the roof of the edifice. Thence they were pulled down
forcibly, first by one foot, then the others; at last all fell, hunters
and bears together, in an undiscriminated heap on the floor, where
after a terrific mock struggle, the bears were dispatched by the
expedient of cutting their throats, with a vast effusion of blood and
howls of remonstrance from the beasts, expressed in excellent Cherokee.
The two vanquished animals as early as practicable crept out of their
skins, left weltering in the blood on the floor, and mingled with their
admirers in the audience, laughing a great deal and discussing the
play:--how the struggle might have been prolonged but for this and
that; how one bear, according to his own account, need not have been
killed at all, so expert a beast was he, except that he had yielded
himself at last a sacrifice to the popular entertainment; and how one
hunter could have easily slain this same boastful bear at the very
outset by a single blow on the head, to which his more than bearish
awkwardness exposed him, but was moved to spare him and thus extend his
career, also from the disinterested motive of promoting and conserving
the sport of the indulgent audience.
It was all indeed very cleverly done, as even Laroche thought, who had
seen pantomimes in Paris, and Push-koosh manifested as much hilarious
good will as the Choctaw “Prince Baby” ever permitted himself to
experience. The French officer, however, despite his absorption in
the histrionic display, had not been unmindful of the notables in the
audience either in Paris or here. More than once to-night his gaze
was caught by a pair of eyes large and gentle, luminous as a deer’s
and as untamed in expression, appropriately set in the face of one of
the Cherokee women. She was hardly in her first youth, although she
seemed singularly fresh, alert, spirited, enjoying the pantomime with
childish delight. She was evidently not less than twenty-two or three
years of age, and he being rather elderly himself,--some twenty-eight
years,--thought this well advanced in life and an age of wisdom. She
was slender and, like all the Cherokees, of notable height, and when
the crowd was out of the state-house he saw her again, glimmering with
willowy grace in the moonlight. The distorted, gibbous sphere of pearl
was high above the violet mountains and the gray and misty valleys, and
he thought the woman beautiful and picturesquely placed in the solemn
and splendid environment of the ranges, for he was accustomed to the
bizarre details of savage raiment. The skirt of her tunic-like garb
of white, dressed doeskin reached a trifle below the knee, and she
wore the long, white, doeskin buskin, fitting closely, that came half
as high; around each leg, below the knee, was tied a soft, dressed
otter-skin, hung with glittering, metal “bell buttons,” that tinkled as
she walked. Her hair, anointed and glossy in the moonlight, was tied
and dressed high on the head, and was stuck full of the quills of the
white pigeon. Her head was clearly defined against the dark blue of the
instarred sky, as she threw it backward and gazed at the moon as if to
verify some calculation of time, its light full in her lustrous eyes.
Then she turned, and running swiftly past, disappeared in the violet
shadows.
He did not soon think of her again. She was only a picturesque element
in this state of quaint barbarity, a momentary incident in the scenes
of an evening overcrowded with impressive grotesqueries. He had no
idea to whom Mingo Push-koosh alluded when he said suddenly, “_Eho
in-ta-na-ah!_” (The woman has mourned the appointed time!)
The two French emissaries were alone now; they had been conducted to a
building called the stranger-house, designed for the accommodation of
casual guests, and which was assigned to them to be their headquarters
during their stay. It too was furnished with the row of cane divans
around the walls, which served as benches during the day and as beds
at night. The house was the usual cabin of the Indians, built without
nails, or a hinge, or a bit of metal in any sort, yet “genteel and
convenient and so very secure, as if it were to screen them from an
approaching hurricane,” says an old British trader, who lived for
many years in one of them. The posts were of the most durable wood
and deeply set in the ground, the timbers were accurately fitted to
one another, the wall plates, rafters, and eave boards had been all
stanchly bound together with the elastic splints of white oak or
hickory, and with strips of wet buffalo hide, which tighten and harden
as they dry. A partition separated the room from another, wherein was
disposed the Choctaw escort. Within and without, the building was
whitewashed with the coarse, marly clay of the region, and the walls
sent back with responsive, silver glimmers the moonlight, falling
through the narrow door and into the face of the officer, who had
stretched himself at length in full uniform on the divan, to rest a bit
before divesting himself of his military finery and disposing himself
to slumber. The ceremonies and excitements of the evening, following a
day of exertion and hard marching, had resulted in making his eyelids
heavy.
“_Omeh!_” (Yes!) he assented, hardly hearing the remark, and
answering at random.
Push-koosh sat upright on the opposite side of the room as if he could
know no fatigue, and gazed loweringly across at the Frenchman.
“_Che-a-sa-ah!_” (I am displeased with you!) the Choctaw hissed
out. “What makes your lying tongue so strong?”
The French lieutenant roused himself. “_Mon cher enfant_,” he
declared, “I know you consider a lie no disgrace, it being your daily
food, but I have told you once, and I tell you again, that if you throw
it into my teeth I will beat that flat head of yours flatter than it
is!”
“You don’t even know of whom I am speaking--you answer like a child!”
said Push-koosh in a mollified tone.
Something had come to him out of the night, the moonlight, the soft
lustre of dark eyes,--something as intangible as the flickering
illusions of the heat lightning, as inexplicable as the fleeting wind,
as tenuous as the wing of a moth,--a fancy!--and he must needs talk of
it. Therefore he would concede. He would forego his resentment for this
cavalier inattention. He smiled as if he had been in jest.
“_Unta?_” (Well?) said Laroche interrogatively.
“_Eho in-ta-na-ah!_” Push-koosh repeated.
The versatile Frenchman was sore smitten with sleep. “What woman?” he
said drowsily. “What mourning?”
“Her husband is dead! The Muscogee killed him three years ago!” said
Push-koosh, with stalwart satisfaction in the fact. “And she has
mourned the appointed time. You could have seen, but that you are a
blind French mole, that her hair is no longer flowing loose, but is
anointed and tied and dressed full of white quills!”
Sleep suddenly quitted its hold on the French lieutenant. He lifted
himself alertly on one elbow and looked animatedly at Push-koosh.
“_Eho chookoma!_” (The beautiful woman!) he cried with enthusiasm.
“Not so much of a mole as you think! _Pas si bête, mon bijou. Pas
cette espèce de bête!!_”
He shook his wise head with emphasis and laid himself down again.
Push-koosh glowered at him with a sudden, angry fear. This fervor of
admiration on the part of the French lieutenant boded ill to that
ethereal fancy which had fallen about the Choctaw chief as lightly as
a gossamer web of the weaving spider, and now held him like a network
of steel chains. He said abruptly, with seeming irrelevance and his
infantile candor, “I wish you had killed yourself last week!”
For the mercurial Frenchman had often seizures of deep despondency, in
which he sometimes announced with sincerity that he designed to place
a period to his existence. Such a crisis had supervened on the journey
hither, in which, however, Push-koosh was concerned as little as might
be. True, there had been some peculiarly irritating incidents in their
relations; they baited each other, and bickered on slight occasion, and
argued violently on untenable grounds, for which neither cared an iota,
and conducted themselves generally as young men do when constrained
to work together with but scant personal sympathy. But Laroche’s
discontent had a far more serious source. He was disappointed of the
distinction which he had hoped to attain in this mission.
Apart from the diplomatic and secret details with which he was
intrusted, and the check that he was expected to maintain upon the
loyalty, or rather the suspected disloyalty of Push-koosh, whose
personal presence was necessary to reconcile certain ancient enmities
between the Choctaws and Cherokees, and thus facilitate and set forth
the special values of the French alliance, Laroche was charged with
an affair of professional importance which Push-koosh imagined was
the only reason that he had been ordered to accompany the Choctaw
embassy,--so crafty were the methods of the French with the crafty
savages. Laroche’s open instructions contemplated the investigation
of certain obstructions in the _Rivière des Chéraquis_ (since
called the Great Tennessee), which had hitherto proved an insuperable
bar to the continuous transportation of goods from New Orleans to the
Cherokee Nation by means of that great waterway. Not trinkets, the
Indians craved, not paints, nor beads, nor even cutlery, but those
costly treasures of arms, powder, and lead which the Cherokees valued
beyond all things, because without constant and adequate supplies of
such munitions of war they could never hope to take the field again,
eventually throw off the yoke of the British, and keep foothold on the
land which was their own, and which they loved with all the fervent
devotion of the mountaineer to his native heights. Therefore they
had hitherto listened to the counsels of the French, who were now
especially eager to meet all expectations, perhaps because they were
still involved themselves in hostilities with the English elsewhere,
perhaps because they still cherished that old scheme of so many
visionaries--from the logical plans of Iberville, futilely projected
so long ago, to the subtle intrigues of the German Jesuit, Christian
Priber, only twenty-five years previous--to invade the Carolinas and
Georgia at the head of twelve thousand warriors of confederated Indian
tribes.
But the transportation of supplies to the Cherokees by pack-train
overland was impracticable, since the intervening country was held by
the hostile Chickasaws, ever devoted to the British, and the French had
still a lively recollection of their defeats by this intrepid tribe at
the towns of Ash-wick-boo-ma, where D’Artaguette met his cruel fate,
and Ackia, the scene of the discomfiture of Bienville. Therefore in the
Cherokee War, a large pettiaugre laden with warlike stores was sent up
the Mississippi from New Orleans, armed with swivel guns to repress the
Chickasaws, who in flying squads nevertheless harassed the progress
of the boat by a sharp musketry delivered from the river bluffs.
This danger passed, the expedition failed for a different reason. It
returned bootless, having abandoned the attempt on account of the
insurmountable obstructions to navigation in the Cherokee River.
The French authorities at New Orleans had good reason to doubt the
report of the extent of these difficulties, for hitherto their boats
had ascended occasionally to Great Tellico,--perhaps in a different
stage of the water. They ordered a survey of the locality with a view
of such removal of the reefs as might afford a practicable channel
at all seasons,--a second earnest effort to meet the needs of the
Cherokees, with a systematic and continuous supply of stores, being in
contemplation.
Laroche, who had served as a lieutenant of engineers as well as of
artillery, had been charged with the duty of removing the obstruction
if practicable, and a pettiaugre laden with such means as were deemed
fitted to further this design had been dispatched up the Mississippi
and Ohio in advance of the expedition overland from Fort Tombecbé to
meet him at the point where the navigation of the Cherokee River became
difficult. The young officer had expected to encounter some reefs, a
goodish stretch of rapids perhaps, a few dangerous, troublesome rocks.
He found vast whirlpools, and endless vistas of maddened waters,
and shoals, shoals, shoals,--twenty miles of muscle shoals, three
miles wide. Even Push-koosh had cried out in amaze at the phenomenon
of the turbulent rapids, declaring that the devils, the _hottuk
ookproose_, were dancing under the waters, for he had heard for ten
miles the devil’s own song that they sung, _tarooa ookpro’sto_
(the tune of the accursed one).
As Laroche realized the total impossibility of the undertaking, and
saw vanishing all his hopes of distinction in this valid and valuable
service, he forthwith sat down on a rock beside the rioting waters,
bowed his head on his hands, and cried out to a “_juste ciel_”
that this was really too strong, that there was no use in trying to
live any longer, and that he was minded to kill himself.
Suicide is always more or less fashionable among Frenchmen. Perhaps the
passionate grief of his utterance was not wholly devoid of intention.
But as he lifted his dreary eyes, the animated interest and curiosity
to see him take his life which the face of Push-koosh expressed
effectually deterred him. The spectacle would be too delightfully
gratifying to the Choctaw! The humor of the situation appealed to the
mercurial French lieutenant, and the pendulum swung back again.
The thought of self-destruction had not recurred to his mind until
to-night, when Push-koosh mentioned his bootless threat.
“But why, _mon pauvre Bébé, mon petit chou_,--why should you wish
that I had killed myself?” Laroche demanded.
Push-koosh hesitated. He felt that his jealousy was a derogation, and
was glad that his hasty words had not betrayed it to the officer, whom
he esteemed a dull, inattentive fellow at best, continually occupied
with his little idols, which he carried in a box and would let no one
else touch,--his spy-glass, his spirit-level, his quadrant, and his
compass, which last he declared knew the north, and without which he
could not draw a map, as Push-koosh could on a gourd or a bit of bark
or a stretch of clear sand,--he knew little, very little, that French
officer, Laroche!
“_Unta--Illet minte!_” (Well--Death is coming!) the Choctaw said
casually, as if he spoke generally and at random.
“Not yet! not yet!” cried the officer, remembering the diabolic tumult
of the waters. “Let the devils dance! I can be merry too! I have a
scheme to outwit them. A great thing, my Baby, to outwit the devils!”
Twice he paused to think of it in laying aside his sword and drawing
off his coat. Push-koosh made no move toward preparing for slumber.
Long after the lieutenant was still, quite still, beneath the
delicately dressed and softened panther skins that sufficed for bedding
on the elastic cane-wrought mattresses, Push-koosh sat upright on the
couch on the opposite side of the room gazing steadfastly at him,--the
long, thin figure suggested beneath the folds of the drapery of the
primitive bed; the white powdered hair that had lost much of its frosty
touches streaming backward, long, loose, the ends slightly curling;
the eyes meekly closed; the moonlight in the white, tired, sleeping
face, youthful, but grave, pensive, saddened vaguely. That was the
way, perhaps, he would have looked had he taken his life as he had
threatened. And Push-koosh, still intently eyeing him, wished again
that he had.
II
TOWARD dawn the frogs, antiphonally chanting down by the water-side,
ceased their chorusing clamors. Now and again a croaking voice sounded
raucously alone,--then came silence. The moon was all solitary in the
“beloved square,”--not even an errant gust of wind to bear her company.
In broad, still, white effulgence the radiance rested unbroken on the
sandy stretch and the dark, narrow row of cabins, devoted to public and
official business, on each side of the quadrangular space. The more
remote dwellings cast shadows wherever the boughs of the overhanging
trees left the ground clear. Here too was silence, save in one hut
whence issued the voice of a wakeful infant, as boldly bawling as if it
were some cherished scion of civilization. Gradually, insensibly, the
world took on an aspect of gray dimness. The mountains looming around
began to definitely darken. The stars had all grown faint; for the
sun would not await the moon’s descent, and presently, driving hard,
his chariot was on the steep eastern summits; the song of birds, the
trumpet-blast of the wind, the whispering voice of rustling pines, the
dash of glancing waters, and human cries of joy and cheer were elicited
as if these matutinal sounds partook of the quality of light.
The French officer, dead beat, still slumbered, but Push-koosh rose,
stretched himself, and still arrayed in his splendid ambassadorial
attire went out into the freshness of the dawning day and the renewing
possibilities of the world. A man who hoped to make naught of dancing
devils should have been earlier astir.
There was a scene of activity down at the river bank. The pettiaugre
of their expedition, which had been brought to the Muscle Shoals of
the Cherokee River laden with powder to aid in the removal of the
barriers to free navigation, had been steered with great difficulty
and at considerable risk through the rapids, repeatedly grazing the
bottom, although it was a much smaller craft of the kind than was usual
for the conveyance of freight. Proceeding thence up the stream, it had
succeeded in passing safely the “whirl,” the “boiling pot,”--known
now to modern engineers as the “mountain obstructions,”--and albeit
somewhat the worse for the hard wear of its experiment, it had finally
reached the smoother waters of the Little Tennessee, and continuing a
placid progress along its curves, was coming in to land at the town of
Great Tellico.
It was the intention to present the cargo as a token of amity from
the French governor to the town of Tellico, such being Laroche’s
instructions from Kerlerec in case the powder could not be used in the
removal of the reefs.
Only a few of the Cherokees were on the bank, and in obedience to their
signaled advice, the Choctaws on the pettiaugre had sheered off from
the shallows, where a landing had been at first contemplated, and where
the craft would have gotten aground at an inconvenient distance from
the shore, to seek a deeper haven indicated by the Cherokees, who, as
they ran up and down, gesticulated violently in the sign language, and,
in lieu of comprehensible, articulate phrases, uttered wild cries,
curiously unmusical, like the voice of the dumb.
There on the bank was Eve (her Indian name was Akaluka, which signifies
“a whirlwind”). Overpowered with curiosity as to the arrival of the
boat, she had repaired to the scene. Being as elaborately appareled as
on the preceding evening, it is fair to conclude that the two handsome
strangers had not been altogether forgotten. They were now, however,
far from her thoughts. Like a frugal female, she was wholly absorbed
in anxiety,--not lest an awkward landing should endanger or submerge
many pounds of precious gunpowder, a princely gift from the French
government to its secret friend, the important municipality of Great
Tellico, especially at that time and in this region, but there were in
the cargo sundry trifles originally intended as presents to individuals
for the personal propitiation of certain warriors, and she was
solicitous as to the fate of one of these gauds. It was a scarf of thin
silk, a deep red, with a golden glimmer of broidery, and it had fallen
over the gunwale as the Choctaws, no great boatmen at best, awkwardly
shifted the cargo in the imminence of the peril of the precious
freight. All unheeded, the scarf, escaping from its flimsy wrapping,
was now floating away to deck the insensate wave.
Standing on the peak of a high rock, and distinct against the blue
sky, like some delineation in white crayon, arrayed in her white,
dressed doeskin garb, her white buskins, the white quills in her black
hair, she shrieked again and again to the laboring Choctaws, as they
wearily trimmed the boat, seeking to acquaint them with their loss,
and adjuring the rescue of the property. They heard her, doubtless;
but if they understood they did not heed. Their freight of gunpowder,
meaning much to the Cherokees of valiant alliance, and even the hope
of emancipation from the rule of the hated British, and always to all
Indians the equivalent of money, of food, of life itself, rendered
infinitely unimportant the gewgaws of the cargo, such as the red scarf
so rapidly floating away on the steel-gray water. Flesh and blood could
no longer endure the harrowing sight,--at least the flesh and blood of
Eve. She suddenly held up both arms above her head, the palms pressed
together; she brought them downward in a great, sweeping curve, as she
bowed forward, and with an alert spring plunged from the crag into the
deep water far below.
Push-koosh noted the resounding plash and held his breath for a moment,
so daring the feat seemed to the unaquatic Choctaw. He watched half
skeptically the successive silver circles elastically expanding over
the spot where the gray water had closed over her head, as if he
scarcely expected to see it rise again. Presently he caught a glimpse
of it, very black and glossy still, but far out toward the middle
of the river. She was swimming strongly in the silver gray floods
and approaching the red scarf, that had now a wanton wind astir in
its folds and threw up a curving edge like a sail. She carefully
intercepted its course on the current, and holding it aloft out of the
water, began to swim with one hand, still strongly and deftly but more
slowly, toward the pettiaugre.
Push-koosh’s dark, sombrely lustrous eyes followed her with admiration.
This method of progression seemed no longer the exercise of frogs. She
lifted her head and her body half out of the water as she swam almost
under the bow of the pettiaugre, and held the scarf aloft that one of
the Choctaw boatmen might take it. The one nearest at hand desisted
from his work and looked over the gunwale at her in surprise. Then
suddenly he lifted his head, for a sharp halloo came from the bank.
He understood the words shouted to him, recognized the authority of
Push-koosh, and giving the woman only a shake of his head, by way of
refusing to receive the bauble, fell once more to working the boat,
and Akaluka, with the rescued scarf still in one hand, was obliged to
paddle smartly to keep from being drawn under the pettiaugre by the
suction, as the craft once more drove swiftly forward, cleaving the
sunlit waves.
There was nothing further for the Cherokee girl but to swim for the
bank. She was bewildered, a little startled, full of wonder, for she
had just perceived the presence of Push-koosh upon the scene. She
laid her course for a point distant from the rock upon which he had
been standing while shouting his command to the boatman to refuse to
receive the scarf, but when, still swimming with one arm and holding
the delicate fabric out of the water with the other, she came alongside
a ledge above a deep, still pool, he was here, waiting for her, and
gazing down at her.
She threw her head far back as, all clad in white, she lifted her
body half out of the water, and looking up at him held up her arm and
offered the scarf.
He made no motion to take it. “_Ook-kak!_” (Swan!) he said.
“_Che awalas!_” (I shall marry you!)
He said no more, and walked away instantly. She scrambled out of the
deep water and stood on the rock, looking after him for a moment with
the scarf still in her hand. Then with it still in her hand she ran
home,--ran so fast, that with the wind and the sun and the speed, her
hair and garments were almost dry when she reached her house, and but
for the trophy there would have been little to confirm the details of
this strange event when she recounted it to the man who said afterward,
“You must blame the woman!”
Now this personage was one of the “mad young men” of the Cherokee
Nation who always craved war,--which, however, seems to be the
normal attitude of mind of the young officer even of civilized
armies and accounted sane. He perceived propitious signs in the
evidently impending proposition of a Choctaw-Cherokee alliance. This
combination aided by the French government would indeed be able to
strike a crushing blow to the British power in the Indian country. The
experiment was obviously to be made. Intermarriages would strengthen
the Choctaw-Cherokee bonds of amity. “You love the present,” he said in
definite affirmation.
But Eve, ever the woman, tossed her head. Was there no man in all
the Cherokee Nation to marry her, she asked in laughing mockery and
coquettish humility, drawing the scarf back and forth through her
hands, and looking far more beautiful than her wont with that curious
embellishment of beauty which a realization of admiration confers,--no
man at all, that she must needs marry a foreign Choctaw who spoke no
language that a sensible person could understand, and who lived far
away, who could say--indeed, where?--in the moon, perhaps!
Whereupon this mad young warrior, who was of her own kindred, the house
of Ahowwe, the Deer family, told her that she spoke as a fool, since
she was already committed, for she had taken the Choctaw’s present, a
sign that she loved it, which was according to inflexible etiquette an
acceptance of his suit.
Then she grew grave and a little frightened, and very voluble. She
explained that she had had no intention of taking his present, and had
kept it only because he would not receive it again, and she had no
words that he could understand. But she would not marry a man to whom
she could not speak her mind (one of the noblest prerogatives of a
wife) and live with him in the moon!
As she said this, she looked upward with her great, dark, liquid eyes
to the moon, still white in the western sky, but lace-like, tenuous, a
most unsubstantial presentment of a dwelling-place.
The young man of the house of Ahowwe would not follow her wandering
gaze as they stood together under a tree in front of her house,--no
longer her dead husband’s war-pole marked its entrance, the peeled
sapling, on the boughs of which the weapons of the warrior were hung
until the stake rotted in the ground and fell. The young kinsman was
experiencing a sudden and extreme agitation because of her perversity,
for if it became necessary to explain the misunderstanding to the
Choctaw at this crisis, before the proposals of the French authorities
were made to the headmen of Tellico, it would doubtless greatly
anger Mingo Push-koosh, and might frustrate the full disclosure of
the measures of his embassy. Essential details might be perverted or
entirely withheld in malice or revenge. And thus the French alliance,
long sought by both nations, might fall to the ground. It was a
complicated train of reflection that he followed, but he said quite
simply, and with a cheerful air, that after all it was no great matter.
To be sure she should have laid the scarf at the feet of the Choctaw
chief, as he did not receive it when offered, to show him that she did
not love his present and that his suit was rejected. But it was likely
that Mingo Push-koosh had half forgotten it by now; he was of so great
esteem in his own country, a prince and a most valiant red warrior! He
was even sent to the Cherokee nation by the great French father with a
splendid French officer as his interpreter! Such a man as that would
not care--he had too much to think of. He himself, her young kinsman,
would make it all right. He would see Mingo Push-koosh and return the
scarf, and explain that she was only one of those stupid people who
did not understand aught, and he would also lie and say that she was
shortly to be married to a man who had no war-title and had never taken
but a single scalp. Mingo Push-koosh would not care for her after such
a description as that!
As he offered to lay hold on the scarf she drew back, shook her head,
breathed very fast, and finally burst into tears. Whereupon this wise
young man, who was only called “mad,” demanded of her in affected
surprise why she wasted her tears. Surely she did not want to live in
the moon and marry a Choctaw chief, even though he had achieved the
distinction of a dozen “warrior’s marks” for his prowess in battle!
Why did she not give up the scarf?--he, her kinsman, would return
it for her, and the great chief would not care; for he would tell
Mingo Push-koosh of a handsomer squaw than she, and younger by four
years, more appropriate to make a splendid marriage such as this.
Then Eve gave herself to argument, as she always does, and smartly
demanded to be told the name of this squaw more beautiful than she,
and most pertinently required of him to disclose the reason, since her
attractions were so easily eclipsed, that the two strangers, the French
officer as well as the Choctaw chief, must always gaze at her in the
merrymaking last night,--why did not their eyes seek those younger and
more beautiful squaws, as all were present? She declared, moreover,
that she would not give her scarf to him. He doubtless desired to
make himself fine in it for the horse-races (in fact, it had never
been designed as a gift to a mere woman, but as propitiation for some
goodly warrior, to rivet his affections to the French interest, and to
be worn as a sash, or scarf, or turban, or in any way that his savage
fancy for decoration might dictate). As to the scarf, she averred that
it was hers, and she would keep it, and she would hear no more of his
sharp speeches, which made her heart very heavy. The day was wearing on
and her work was awaiting her. So she seated herself on the protruding
roots of the great tree in front of her dwelling, giving the final deft
touches to a large mat which she had been weaving.
The “mad young man” flung away, secretly satisfied, but with a
discontented and affectedly scornful mien, after the manner of his
kind, and meeting presently a congenial spirit he paused to detail the
demonstration of the Choctaw chief and its reception by the woman. The
listener, too, was of the Deer family, and not insensible of the value
and distinction of the proposed matrimonial alliance. But he forthwith
freely stigmatized the ambassador as a “mad young man” to be thinking
of women and marriage in a crucial national crisis such as this. As
he contemplated the political juncture, he could not sufficiently
applaud the wisdom of the other’s course in preventing the return of
the scarf and the consequent affronting of the Choctaw chief, for
since the present had been received his suit was accepted according
to etiquette. They agreed that she must marry him,--as at heart she
was no doubt willing to do, but must needs affect reluctance after the
tiresome fashion of women, and talk about living in the moon! And with
a scoff at such feminine follies, which they declared made their hearts
weigh[5] very heavy to contemplate, these “mad young men” separated,
each going his own way cheerfully,--neither of them being threatened
with a doom of living far away, among strangers in a foreign tribe, in
a speechless marriage.
As Akaluka sat under the tree and worked at her mat her own heart grew
heavier still, and in fact she hardly knew what to make of it. Now
and then the realization of the admiration of her suitor brought a
curve of pride to her lips, and then her eyes would fill with tears in
doubt, and dismay, and anxiety,--all those troublous vacillations of
sentiment which a woman naturally experiences in such circumstances;
for she was, perhaps, not the first woman, and certainly not the last,
who has accepted a suitor without intending to marry him, and cannot
perceive definitely how to recede from an engagement that has become
unexpectedly binding.
The man in her thoughts suddenly passed,--the Choctaw chief with
the French officer. Both paused as their eyes fell upon her. She
was tremulous, perturbed, appealing as she looked up from her lowly
posture. A mottling of darkness and sunlight was about the verges of
the shadow of the great, wide-spreading tree, but only a dim, green,
subdued atmosphere where she sat and in her white attire and with
her fishbone needle in her hand wrought an added embellishment of
embroidery in the borders of her painted mat.
Both men perceived her agitation. The officer, unaware of the incident
of the morning, did not comprehend it. With that suave Gallic civility,
always solicitous of the _entente cordiale_, he exclaimed aloud
in Cherokee his admiration of the fabric. It was one of those carpets,
described as “two fathoms long,” woven of the wild hemp, and painted
with indelible dyes and designs of the figures of beasts and birds,
always the same on both sides. Laroche expressed an interest in the
plan of its barbaric decoration and effort at delineation, while
Push-koosh stood and silently looked on. Here Laroche traced out a lion
(the panther or American cougar), which evidently signified strength,
and here were feathers, many and various, so dexterously imitated that
he declared they seemed real, which suggested softness, and love,
and nesting,--the symbolism was of the guardianship of home,--truly
an appropriate mat to lay before a hearthstone! Secure in his
interpretation, he looked straight at her with a smile in his handsome
brown eyes. She must needs speak in response; yet with Push-koosh
loftily looking on she sought by her phrase to include them both as,
gazing up, she faltered that she had kept it quite smooth despite its
complicated design,--it was quite smooth to walk upon.
It was too pretty to walk upon, the Frenchman declared in facile
compliment, and as she drew out the roll flat, to exhibit its
smoothness of texture, he dropped on one knee and tried its sleek,
evenly wrought fibres with his hand. But Push-koosh, turning away,
walked across it with a lordly air like a husband, and as the Frenchman
rose from his kneeling posture and joined him, Akaluka looked after
them both, with the fishbone needle motionless in her hand, extended to
the limit of its hempen thread, and destined to be very idle that day.
She was best accustomed to the attitude of mind of the Indian,--and
yet the Frenchman, how quick of interpretation he was!--how well he
understood all things! Strange, strange, that there should be such
difference in men! She would not have been afraid to go with him--to
the moon.
They conducted themselves at the horse-races that day like other “mad
young men;” they shouted, and bet more than they could afford to lose,
and argued much, and talked very loud, and were tumultuously and
heavily self-important. But that afternoon, seated in secret conclave
on buffalo rugs on the floor of the council-house, with half a dozen
chiefs of the towns of the vicinage summoned to join Moy Toy and the
headmen of Tellico at the conference, they seemed to have experienced
a sudden recurrence to sanity, a lucid interval, and each deported
himself much like a man of this world.
These deliberations, although expected to result in a treaty, were not
conducted as a formal council, since the will of the Cherokee nation
could only be expressed in a general congress, and much consideration
must needs precede so important a step as a renunciation of the
British alliance and firmly grasping the hand of the great French
father. The pipe was solemnly smoked, and although none arose as usual
in addressing the assembly, their habitual courtesy to one another
in council was observed, each speaking in turn, and punctiliously
refraining from interruption. When a subject was mentioned on which the
speaker desired a categorical reply from any one present, he handed
that person a small stick, at the end of the paragraph as it were, to
keep the remark in mind, and then went on to the other heads of his
discourse. When he had finished all he had to say, specific responses
to the details of his speech were made in turn by those to whom he had
handed sticks.
As Moy Toy thoughtfully canvassed the advantages proposed by the French
alliance, he remarked that Atta-Kulla-Kulla--a noted chief not present
at this time--had always advocated adherence to the British treaty,
since the trade which it provided and protected, albeit a monopoly,
afforded the Cherokees a means to keep under arms and adequately
supplied with ammunition, which was essential for hunting, and also in
view of war; even to enforce against the British with the arms they
themselves had supplied the observance of every jot and tittle of the
compact with the Cherokees. This advantage the French did not furnish
to the Indian tribes under their control.
He paused and solemnly handed a stick to Push-koosh, and then another
to Laroche.
It was the fashion, he continued, among the “mad young men” of the
nation, to comment upon Atta-Kulla-Kulla’s desire to avoid causes
of war with the British, calling him “an old woman;” but the great
chief was a wise man, for the object of prime importance was to keep
the warriors of the tribe under arms in the European fashion, since
bows and arrows were of no avail against powder and lead, and on the
supply of guns and ammunition actually depended the continuance of the
national existence of the Cherokees.
Push-koosh held his stick, attentively listening as Laroche interpreted
these words, and in answering said that it was even for such reason
the French father furnished the Choctaw tribe fully with arms and
ammunition only in times of war against a common enemy--so that, on
other occasions, their own “mad young men,” caviling thus at the
superior wisdom of their elders, might not have the means of embroiling
themselves and thrusting nations into hostilities when the great
warriors and “beloved men” were all for peace. But for chiefs and
headmen the armories of the great French father were always open.
He deftly touched the handsome pistols at his belt with a casual
gesture, and hardly seemed to listen to the voice of the French officer
repeating his words in Cherokee.
The Indian councilors experienced a tumult of excitement, which their
faces, however, stolidly repressed when Laroche, replying without
regard apparently to the presence of the Choctaw, said, as he held
his stick in his hand, that it was by no means the intention of the
French authorities to ignore the different status of the Cherokees
from the tribes under their control. The Cherokees, as the French
government well understood, were in effect an absolute integer in the
sum of nations, a free, independent, unified people, and they would be
armed and equipped in accordance with that fact. Whereas the Choctaws,
and Choccomaws, and others were nearly akin to the Chickasaws, all
sub-tribes of the Chickemicas of old; and although the Chickasaws,
always adhering firmly to the British and inimical to the French, had
often warred bitterly against their kindred Choctaws, still in view
of ties of consanguinity, similar customs, and above all a common
language, a friendly compact between them at some period, while not
probable, was eminently possible, especially when promoted by the
machinations of the British. Under these circumstances the French
father felt indisposed to keep the Choctaws fully under arms while
their brothers, the Chickasaws, held the knife at his throat. Surely
the great and wise chiefs could perceive a reason for a difference in
his attitude toward the Cherokees.
The great and wise chiefs could and did! They were also moved by a
recollection that the most notable of the Choctaws, the great chief
Shulashummashtabe (Red Shoes), long entertained designs to detach his
whole tribe from the interest of the French, being instrumental in
their defeat at the battle of Ackia, where he stood aloof with his own
command of Choctaw braves while the French troops charged to the cry of
“_Vive le roi_!” and afterward he fled in a simulated panic. He
later openly deserted to the English, and a reward being offered for
his head by the dear French father, he was treacherously slain by one
of his own tribe, during the governorship of the Marquis de Vaudreuil.
The Cherokee chiefs in council felt much as if they were treading on
mined ground, as they listened to the French officer’s voice while he
rendered into Choctaw his long speech for the benefit of Push-koosh;
for as the ambassador was blandly smiling, they must needs be sure that
the interpretation tendered him was to an entirely different effect.
The Indians were so crafty that they seemed to love a device for its
own shifty sake. They secretly admired this keen double-dealing of
the French authorities, without reflecting that a two-edged blade is
made to cut both ways. With a heightened sense of the sagacity of the
French officer, they all bent an attentive ear to his account of the
obstruction to navigation in the _Rivière des Chéraquis_ and his
disappointment to find that it was not to be overcome in the manner
expected by the French governor Kerlerec,--in fact it was there for all
time.
Mingo Push-koosh had been himself disappointed, both as a soldier and
a statesman, but his mien had an element of pride as he said that the
variegated merchandise--_al-poo-e-ack_--could not be forwarded.
Perhaps he resented the fact that he had been forced to discuss the
clipped-claw condition of the unarmed Choctaw tribe, whom Kerlerec had
nevertheless the art so to propitiate that he was called preëminently
the “Father of the Choctaws.” Mingo Push-koosh was evidently secretly
triumphant in the realization that the French alliance which he
possessed so easily, and the Cherokees coveted so strenuously, was
not to be had by them; for without the privileges of trade and a base
of supply, the Cherokees must adhere to the repugnant treaty with the
British to be able to keep under arms at all, even in war with other
tribes.
Moy Toy’s countenance fell.
“_To e u_?” (Is this true?) he asked sternly, as if he suspected
dissimulation, for from time to time there had been traffic more or
less by way of the Cherokee River.
“_To e u hah_!” (It is true indeed!) replied the French officer
definitely.
The chiefs looked from one to another silently, their countenances
expressing much that their pride would fain have hidden. If this
were true, a species of vassalage was the best hope of the free and
independent Cherokee people. Laroche begged to be permitted to explain
his views in reference to the obstructions to navigation.
Canoes, he went on to say, could pass of course, a few light craft
occasionally, perhaps even large pettiaugres at long intervals in
some especially favorable stage of the water, but for the free,
systematic transportation of the fleets of a great and continuous
trade, the passage was forever impracticable. In the distant future
the difficulties of navigation might be nullified by the construction
of a parallel artificial channel (he could find no Cherokee equivalent
for the word “canal”), the method of which he alertly explained with
that relish of technical details characteristic of the very young
in science,--all as carefully heeded by the Indian statesmen as if
entirely comprehensible. But at present he desired to lay before the
wise chiefs a plan of his own, which, should it meet their approval, he
would elaborate and submit to the governor at New Orleans.
There was an interval of silence as he arranged his thoughts. The
anxious, deliberative faces of the chiefs all turned toward him, their
eyes keenly studying his expression of countenance, seemed oddly
incongruous with the puerile decoration of beads and great earrings,
and feathers poised upright on each polled head. The vague light of the
smouldering council-fire flickered upon them; the sombre interior of
the windowless building was but dimly glimpsed in the deep red glow;
the glare from the brilliant day outside filled the narrow portal as
with some transparency, some illuminated segment of a painted landscape
unnaturally bright,--an emerald mountain aglow, a silver shimmering
river, a bit of sapphire sky, intense. Voices, faint in the distance,
of jovial intimations, came from where the young people were dancing
in three circles after the races and the feastings. The sound was
far alien to this atmosphere of thought and anxious care, this dim
council-house, where were concocted the measures of statecraft that
kept the people free and happy. Even Push-koosh, whom the envious
shadows could not bereave of the brilliant effect of his white raiment,
asserted albeit in the dimness, his glossy pearls, the glitter of his
silver ornaments, did not heed the joyous clamor. As to Laroche, he did
not hear it at all.
It was not to be contemplated, he said, that this perverse obstruction
to navigation should withhold the Cherokee nation from firmly
grasping the hand of the French father who loved them; but since it
was absolutely impracticable to send valuable cargoes of arms and
ammunition, as well as cloths, cutlery, tools, and paints, all those
necessities of the Indian trade, so expensive and difficult to be
obtained, through those twenty miles of roaring rapids, to say nothing
of the whirlpools further up the current, the merchandise might be
thence transferred, under strong guard, by land with pack-horses to
the comparatively near point of the reopening of easy navigation, were
there a barrier town settled at each extremity of the overland route to
receive and distribute the goods by the various waterways throughout
the Cherokee nation.
“_Seohsta-quo_!” (Good!) cried Moy Toy of Tellico.
The others in great excitement but in definite order, observing
their usual courtesy in deliberation, with much rapid bestowal of
sticks, bespeaking categorical answers on the various details,
began the discussion of this bold project,--the extension of their
settlements for more than a hundred miles rather than fail to secure
the advantage of the French alliance. The details of the diplomatic
scheme illustrated the Frenchman’s fertility in device, and Push-koosh
was not slow to perceive that Laroche presently had both hands full
of sticks, while he himself held but two, evidently tendered only as
an afterthought and _pro forma_. The Indian statesmen wished to
hear the French officer speak. The coherence and cogency of his plan
commended it. Indeed, afterward they contemplated the removal of the
town of Tellico Great itself, one of the “seven Mother Towns” of the
Cherokee nation, far enough down the Cherokee River to be within easy
access of the large French pettiaugres. Even as it was, the nation
subsequently extended its frontier on this basis, and a series of new
towns was settled below the “mountain obstructions,” the “whirl,” the
“boiling pot,” and still beyond, near the upper end of the Muscle
Shoals, serving as the “barrier towns” of the tribe. The Cherokees
craftily explained to the English the necessity for this move by
the statement that the site of some of their upper towns had become
infested with witches!--it may safely be presumed that they were
British witches!
The questions relative to the proposed new location,--the number of
warriors requisite for the barrier towns; the possibility that, if
supported by a sufficient force of braves in the neighborhood, the
French government would settle a garrison at the Muscle Shoals; the
number of horses and men necessary for the pack-trains and the guard
for the overland transportation; the most desirable point for the
resumption of the water carriage of the merchandise up the Cherokee
River, and thence by way of the Eupharsee (Hiwassee), the Tennessee,
the Agiqué (French Broad), throughout the Cherokee country; the
measures to be taken for the protection of French traders and their
mercantile assistants against the British,--all these points Laroche
intelligently discussed, continually receiving and returning sticks,
while the transparent landscape in the doorway shimmered to a change:
the blue sky grew red, the green mountain turned purple, the silver
river dulled to steel, and a star began to flicker in the west.
Moy Toy would have talked on through the descending darkness,
regardless of the night and the dying of the last ember of the
council-fire, save for the admonition of one of the minor chiefs,
on whom the duty of caring for the creature comforts of the guests
had devolved, and who contrived to intimate presently that it was
long since the strangers had eaten and drunk. On this account the
council was adjourned, Moy Toy still wearing a thoughtful aspect and
meditatively saying, “We will talk of this again to-morrow.” And as
they left him in the gloom of the state-house, and began the descent of
the steps of earth that led down from the high mound, they heard him
still mechanically repeating in the solitary darkness, “We will talk of
this again to-morrow.”
Now Push-koosh, like some other infants, even when not Choctaw chiefs
nor warriors, was of a proud, implacable, and pompous self-opinion.
It required little to wound his vanity and nettle his temper, but
indeed he had ample cause for affront in that this officer had talked
unceasingly in his presence to the Cherokee chiefs without pausing
to translate what was said, although in their excitement no one had
noticed the fact. At first Push-koosh had essayed to speak in Cherokee,
but his knowledge of the tongue would not sustain the subtleties of
his meaning. He had even humbled himself once to seek recourse in the
sign language, comprehensive enough for all needs, but every eye was
fixed upon Laroche, every ear intent. He felt his pride touched that
this absorbing interest, which the chiefs had manifested in diplomatic
matters, sprang from naught that he had disclosed in his ambassadorial
capacity,--in fact he did not even know the subject of their excitement
or its importance. He thought it derogatory to his position to inquire
of Laroche, or to seem to realize that he had been overlooked--he, the
head of the embassy! But the incident roused him to the assertion of
his own importance.
He saw, with pleasure in the contrast, that Laroche was exhausted by
the mental stress of the discussion, while he had been refreshed by
the long hours of rest in the quiet seclusion of the state-house.
When they were seated in one of the piazza-like cabins at one side
of the “beloved square,” where the banquet had been spread after the
races, Laroche was still absorbed and silent, ate little, and drank
only of the decoction from the “flint corn” made by boiling the grain
and straining the result, the beverage when cooled said to have been
refreshing and nutritive and “much liked even by genteel strangers.” A
fire was alight in the centre of the “beloved square,” but the other
public buildings were all vacant, and their open piazza-like fronts
showed dark and deserted in the deepening dusk. The festivities were
over for the nonce; the Indian guests from the neighboring villages
had departed; the strangers’ share of the evening banquet, with which
the merrymaking in their honor had ended, having been reserved for
them till the close of the protracted session of the council. The town
seemed drowsy, already half asleep; only a few occasional passers set
the echo of a footfall astir; an owl was hooting in the woods; a vague
sense of dreariness had descended with the twilight, and suddenly
Laroche became cognizant, with a start as if he had seen a ghost,
that there was a presence at the meal of which he had been hitherto
unaware,--Akaluka herself, meekly seated by the Choctaw chief while he
silently ate and drank.
There was a bold, open triumph in the face of Push-koosh, as he noted
the manifestation of surprise. He looked at the French officer as
arrogantly as if he had already that luxuriant Gallic scalp hanging to
his favorite pipe. Perhaps he himself had never seemed so assertive, so
lordly, as in the blended light of the bland moonrise and a flickering
pine torch with which the table was lighted by the old woman who
served it,--his strings of pearls, his glittering pistols, his white
and scarlet garb, the red flamingo feathers in his hair, the broad
silver band across his forehead, his perfect physical condition; while
Laroche, pale from mental exertion, the mathematical calculation, the
evolution of plans of public polity, the arrangement of intricate and
antagonistic details in the problems of the Indian trade, wiped his
forehead, felt his eyes ache, and was too tired to eat.
These plans were the more precious since they were suddenly beset with
a new danger; he realized the menace, although he did not appreciate
that he himself was an element in it; he did not know how admiringly
the girl had gazed at him the previous evening at the pantomime, while
Push-koosh, who could have killed him for it, gazed at her. Even
Push-koosh had noted his unconsciousness of this fact,--but Laroche had
not been equally oblivious of her attractions. “_Eho chookoma_!”
quotha. She might now gaze at her peril,--and so might he! Laroche had
not noticed this evening the Choctaw as he beckoned the girl to sit
beside him as he ate, but he knew enough of Indian etiquette to be
aware that this is the method by which the suitor formally recognizes
and emphasizes the fact that his addresses are accepted.
Laroche had learned that this woman was the sister of Moy Toy, and
while a Choctaw match for her might be approved by him as a means
of strengthening the alliance between the tribes, still there was
of necessity great doubt as to the completion of this national
compact, the Choctaws and Cherokees having many ancient enmities to
reconcile, and the offer of intermarriage must needs be approached with
precaution. And above all things at some future day! To hamper at this
crisis so important and promising a negotiation between the French
government and the Cherokee nation, so difficult of arrangement, with a
nettling trifle like this,--a personal matter of so alien and doubtful
a character,--Laroche trembled with impatience at the very thought.
He was once more all alert. When Push-koosh rose at last from the meal
and flung casually away, taking his path along the river bank where a
cool breeze was stirring, the lieutenant followed. For although the
woman must sit beside her suitor when he eats if he beckons to her,
still the match is not yet irretrievably made. He must needs give
her the foot of a deer as an admonition how brisk she must be on his
errands, whereupon she must bake and offer him a cake of rockahominy
meal, as token of willing subservience. He must also break an ear of
corn in half, and in the presence of witnesses give her one portion,
retaining the other himself, which completes the symbolic Indian
marriage ceremonies.
“Push-koosh,” said Laroche gravely, as he approached,--the Indian
slackened his pace, welcoming from his position of vantage as an
accepted suitor the prospect of a quarrel with a jealous lover,--“the
commandant did not send us here to make love to women!”
Push-koosh turned to glance aside at him. “Take care that you don’t do
it, then,” he admonished the officer.
“Our mission is a matter far too important to jeopardize with such
considerations,” declared Laroche. He slipped his arm through the
Choctaw’s in a friendly way and detailed at length his scheme, his
clever scheme, apologizing that he had not interpreted it at the
council. “But it was not a part of our instructions,--only a plan of my
own.”
“You did not want my suggestions,--I do not want yours,” retorted
Push-koosh, deeply angered to perceive the importance of the
discussion, through which he had sat silent, carried on over his head.
“But you can see surely that there must be no talk of women and
marriage till all this is settled,--wait till you come again,” urged
Laroche, holding his temper well in hand.
“_Eho chookoma_!” quoted Push-koosh significantly. “Meantime there
might be another man!”
That fatal “other man”--was ever a lover’s dream which he did not haunt?
“But, _Bébé_, Push-koosh,” argued the Frenchman suavely, “what
would you do hampered with a Cherokee wife if, after all, this tribe
continues to adhere to the British, and should take part in their war
with the French and their Choctaw allies?”
Push-koosh, animated with the jealous conviction, yet full of triumph
in the fact, that the French officer was himself in love with this
charming swan and therefore sought to interpose obstacles, retorted
as if to strike him to the heart, “Do?--comply with the tribal
custom! _Kill her!_ In the last war with the Muscogee, did not
the Choctaw braves who had married Muscogee wives kill the women and
their children, they being also Muscogee, for the children inherit the
nationality of the mother? I should, of course, kill her!”
He had turned to face the officer, who stood for one moment speechless,
realizing the strange world in which he was living, the curious medley
of devil and man, of savagery and civilization.
The moon was well up over the river, and where the light struck with
full effulgence the water was all a shining violet hue; the banks were
of an invisible green, too dark for color, but somehow still sensibly
verdant. All along the shore the frogs were piping, hardly noticed;
for in the budding rhododendron close at hand a mocking-bird sang with
wonderful _élan_ and elasticity, the multitude of exquisitely
sweet notes springing one from another with a definite effect of
rebound.
“Push-koosh,” the lieutenant said at length, “_mon Bébé
bien-aimé_, you always betray your tender infant heart!”
He seemed to laugh, but his hand trembled on the hilt of his sword,
as he stood as if irresolute and gazed at Push-koosh with a threat in
his intent eyes hardly less fierce than the look with which only last
night Push-koosh had menacingly, nay murderously gazed at him while he
slept. Suddenly the officer turned aside, and alone took his way back
to the Indian town.
Yet Laroche did not love the woman. Perhaps he was merely civilized by
virtue of his nationality and his religion; for although as a soldier
he would have coolly taken the life of a man and an enemy, he felt all
a coward in the secret danger that menaced the Cherokee girl, unaware,
doubtless, of her peril. He himself was not unaware of it, and therein
he perceived an irksome responsibility. The Cherokees were so far in
advance of the other Indian tribes in point of character, sentiment,
civilization, that Laroche doubted if this mode of ridding one’s
self of a wife, who, through no fault of her own, but for political
reasons, had incurred disfavor, would suggest itself to them more
readily than it had to him. With their evident intention to accept
the proffer of the French alliance, it was more than likely that the
Cherokee authorities, with their characteristic lack of foresight,
would treat the match with the Choctaw chief as if the compact with
the French were already made fast. Yet should it fail,--and from
Laroche’s post on the seamy side he saw many a rent in the web of the
probabilities,--Push-koosh had said it,--he had decreed her fate.
Laroche had so longed for the success of his scheme! It was so great,
so clever, so promissory of personal and professional advancement! He
felt that he would hardly hazard an item of its development for his
own life,--much less then for the life of a creature like this--hardly
more human than a deer! Besides, why should he interfere?--all might
yet go well with the alliance. When he began to argue thus, he suddenly
stopped short. Would he weigh a human life in the balance of his
personal interest--become, albeit indirectly, accessory to a murder
of the innocent? He grew a trifle pale at the thought and devoutly
crossed himself. He would assume no such responsibility. He would keep
no such secret. And then he began to see the matter in the light of
an official duty. He represented the French interest, and should the
Cherokees ever learn that he had been cognizant of this threat and had
withheld it from them, it would alienate them, as naught else could,
from the power that so earnestly sought their conciliation. In every
point of view he determined that he would not hesitate. He would lay
the matter before Moy Toy, as in civilization he would instantly report
a threatened murder to the police.
Now Moy Toy was a man of family affection. Years earlier, in 1730, he
had given indications of this fact when a Cherokee delegation, favored
by royal invitation, were on the point of setting forth to visit
King George II. in London; Moy Toy, although he was to be the chief
delegate, at the last moment relinquished the distinguished opportunity
because his wife had fallen dangerously ill and he could not leave
her. Therefore he remained at the little Indian village, while several
other chiefs made the wonderful journey to England, and had audience
of the sovereign at his palace, and were the recipients of innumerable
presents and attentions, being the lions of the day.
He now took instant alarm at this menace to his sister, and to
Laroche’s surprise presently summoned to his aid and counsel the other
chiefs of Tellico Great. The Indian scheme of succession follows
the collateral female line, and therefore Moy Toy’s possible future
nephew would inherit his office as chief of Tellico Great, to the
exclusion of his own son. Hence his sister was a personage of as
much consequence in Tellico Great as a mere woman could be, and the
council agreed that in view of this circumstance they would not trust
the Franco-Choctaw-Cherokee alliance until it was an accomplished
fact. Yet even now it was in jeopardy, for Mingo Push-koosh, the
French ambassador, bearing also the assurances of the Choctaw nation,
angered with so good a reason might work mischief. And then began the
accusation of the woman!
Why had she kept his present, and involved them in all this difficulty?
the sage councilors assembled in the state-house demanded of her when
summoned before them. For this very reason, she declared, had she kept
his present, although not loving it, for the young men had said that
she must not on any account anger the Choctaw ambassador of the great
French father. Then poor Moy Toy, roused from cogitation on such deep
and intricate problems as had occupied the day, to fill the dark hours
of the night with vacillations and agitations touching the political
effects of so ill-starred a flirtation, asked her bitterly had she
no more sense than to listen to the “mad young men!” Whereupon she
protested with tears that the “mad young men” had but spoken the words
that even now were on his own sage lips,--the ambassador must not be
angered!
With daylight came new resolutions. Moy Toy, arguing that the
ambassador was not empowered to treat for a Cherokee wife, and to exact
compliance with his demand as a condition of his mission, concluded
that he sustained no official affront in the ceremonious return of the
scarf with an intimation that so great and flattering an intermarriage
could only be made after the compact with the two tribes.
Now it is possible that Push-koosh might have acquiesced with
appropriate docility in this obviously just reasoning of his elders,
requiring, however, promises of Moy Toy on his sister’s behalf,
conditioned on the completion of the tribal compact, had it not been
for his jealousy of the French lieutenant. Akaluka, again summoned, was
also at the state-house, wild-eyed, tremulous, visibly terrified, eager
to return the present, which, having been made acquainted with her
possible fate, she was far indeed from loving.
As the Choctaw ambassador received the scarf which she tendered
him, the cogent reasons for delay that had been urged, the political
interests involved, so prominent in the apologies of the Cherokee
chiefs,--all were merged in a sense of sustaining the curious disgrace
of a personal and public rejection in the presence of a rival,--for
Mingo Push-koosh caught the eyes of the French lieutenant fixed
hopefully upon him.
Why then, the Choctaw asked quite calmly, had she received the present
if she did not love it? Why had she sat beside him as he ate? For
himself,--neither did he love the present!
He held up the gauzy red scarf and with sundry swift passes of a scalp
knife severed the fabric into dozens of shreds, sent lightly flying
about the state-house like a flock of redbirds. Then whirling on his
heel, he quitted the council-chamber and followed by all his tribesmen
ran across the “beloved square” to the river bank, where the pettiaugre
lay defenseless at his mercy. All the kegs of the precious powder were
emptied into the stream before his design was dreamed of, and still he
deemed he had sufficient margin for a running start from the pursuit
he expected, for he paused in the woods to hang up the “war-brand.”
This being, however, in a secluded place, it was not early discovered,
and the first intimation that the Cherokees received of the depth of
his resentment was the massacre almost to a man of a peaceful party
of their tribesmen, offering no resistance, taken wholly by surprise,
owing to the pacific character of the Franco-Choctaw mission to Great
Tellico. This exploit achieved, Mingo Push-koosh and his escort,
adorned with scalps and singing war-songs, made good their escape, with
the wonderful Choctaw speed in marching, leaving the deserted Laroche
alone and at the mercy of the frantic and infuriated Cherokees.
III
LAROCHE, abandoned thus among the Cherokees, was in the extremity of
peril. Apart from their spirit of tribal cohesion, the strongest of
national sentiments, all those more intimate ties of family affection,
of municipal unity, and of neighborly custom, in which they were
peculiarly bound, were insistently asserted in the calamity, as the
massacred braves were all of Tellico Great. When the gory figures of
the unarmed, unpainted youths, still limp and warm, not yet stiffened
into the starkness of death, were borne into the precincts of the town,
the wailing of the women and children, and the hoarse cries of fury and
despair and grief of the men, filled all the bland, sunlit spaces of
the morning, and were a heavy burden to the air.
It was with no definite sense of the wisest course that Laroche had not
moved from the portal of the great state-house whence he had beheld
Mingo Push-koosh, followed by all his braves, rush across the “beloved
square” to the pettiaugre and accomplish the destruction of the powder.
He was stunned, bewildered, as by the fall of a thunderbolt. Only
afterward he realized that he had no choice. The craft still lay at
her moorings, but his single strength could not have sufficed to float
her, even if in the confusion he had escaped. He had a shrewd surmise
of the secret source of the wrath of the Mingo, and he doubted if the
jealousy of the Choctaw, once unleashed and dipped in blood, were less
formidable than the wild frenzy of the Cherokees. Moreover, at their
freest pace, speeding for their lives, he knew that he could never have
sustained the gait of the marching Choctaws, and must eventually have
fallen by the wayside or lagged to certain capture.
He began to appreciate, as he stood, an aspect in the accident of his
posture which his craft recognized as savoring of more wisdom than
he could have attained by his own mental processes. His isolation
implied that he was no accessory to the crimes in which the mission had
terminated. The desertion of him by the Choctaws augured scant value
of his functions in the embassy, and still less friendship for him
personally,--his safety, indeed, they disregarded. He began to hope
preposterously, as his heart swung into more normal palpitations, that
his nationality, his secret mission within the Franco-Choctaw mission,
his obvious freedom from any conspiracy with the Indian ambassador who
had so conspicuously abused his trust, might serve to protect him.
Then he perceived suddenly that he was arguing from the probabilities
on a civilized system of ratiocination. For himself, he did not love
the spectacle of suffering nor the smell of blood, albeit so skilled in
the designing of lines of _tenailles_ and _en crémaillère_,
in which men were to lay down their lives in much agony. His own
development of barbarity was on a different basis and had a vocabulary
quite distinct and scientific, his jargon of _trou-de-loup_ and
_cheval-de-frise_ and _chausse-trappe_; and he watched with
a very definite sentiment of reprehension and mental disapproval, as
well as a deep and numb despair, the approach of a half dozen fierce,
lowering-eyed braves, full-armed, who stood for a moment looking up at
him and then seated themselves, obviously to remain, at the base of the
mound, assuming the functions of a permanent guard.
In fact, Laroche had been unobserved at first in the clamors and
confusion of the disaster, the departure of the horsemen on the heels
of the flying Choctaw pedestrians, the ghastly return of the young
Indians of the massacre, who had gone forth with all the imponderable
lightness of life and joy in the morning and now were brought back
in weight with death and woe. The first vague suggestion of the
alleviation of the public calamity came with the stern thought of
vengeance and its opportunity. In that moment the eye of one of the
headmen chanced to be lifted to Laroche. The guard was dispatched in an
instant, and whatever might have been the issue of an effort to escape,
the possibility was now gone forever. He began to perceive that they
would take no thought of an absence of conspiracy. He was one of the
embassy--its accredited interpreter; he was also a Frenchman, and the
Cherokees were still in open alliance with the British. Moreover, he
was in their power, and _blood for blood_ was ever the Cherokee
rule.
For a time he made no effort to appeal to his guards, even by a glance
or a gesture. Hour after hour passed away. He heard the vague sounds,
in the distance, of the chanting of the funeral songs; he perceived,
undistinguished, colorless, meaningless, like shadows through a
dark glass, the passing of the funeral processions here and there
around the houses of the dead. Again and again there smote on the air
wild outbursts of the protesting woe of the mourning, the note of
incredulity, the appeal against injustice, and that pathetic plaint of
a heart all bruised and tender--and yet in a sense he heard naught. He
was conscious of a degree of quietude when the actual details of the
interment were in progress within the houses, for with the Cherokees
the dead were always buried deep, deep under the floor of their own
homes, and a sense of extreme fatigue ached in his muscles. He realized
how long he had maintained a standing posture there without a motion--a
sentinel who habitually mounted guard his eight hours out of the
twenty-four would hardly have been capable of such resolution. As his
eye met that of one of the guards, he saw in the inexpressive face of
the Indian a sort of appreciation of his strength of will that coerced
the endurance of the flesh, and at last he spoke:--
“Moy Toy cannot think me to blame--why does he guard me here?”
They all gazed at him with a sort of concentrated fury. The racial
hatred against the white man--ineradicable, unappeasable, now
and again only pretermitted for a time in favor of some special
individual--showed in their strongly marked, savage features, with the
primitive passions of the rule of force and the thirst for revenge
painted upon them in a breadth of expression that pigments could not
emulate.
“Blood for blood,” one of them said, and spat upon the ground.
“If I were one of the Choctaws--yes! But I am French. I have done
naught. They have deserted me. I am entrapped here. It would please
them that you should shed my blood.”
There was a momentary silence under this logic. Then another of
the Indians, always of a far greater intellectual pride than might
be readily imagined, and keen and quick in argument, came to the
spokesman’s rescue. He was the man whose eyes had applauded the
prisoner’s endurance--a mere tribesman, of the rank and file only; he
had a broad, animated countenance, a high, aquiline nose, a long, upper
lip, and a distinct accentuation of the lines of his features. He wore
the scanty raiment of the lower grades of the Indian, but the careful
and elaborate tattooing of blue, red, and green indelible paints
disposed about his limbs, in which he must have spent much arduous
labor, had almost the effect of long and elaborately embroidered hose
and gloves. He had a shirt of buckskin, devoid of beads or ornaments,
save a fringe about its edge, but which seemed remarkably plain in
contrast with the decorations of his arms and legs. He leaned upon
a gun of very doubtful intentions, unlike the smart, British “Brown
Bess,” with which the tribe, however, was generally armed. With
a vivacious air, he demanded of the Frenchman if he had forgotten
“Ablaham” so soon.
“Abraham?” said Laroche vaguely.
“The white man’s poor memory! It was his treaty he forgot, usually, but
now he had forgotten too his religion. He had forgot Ablaham--the great
white chief whom he was telling Moy Toy about yesterday!”
Laroche remembered, with a pang as for a folly, an effort at the
conversion of the ignorant savage. Yesterday--only yesterday!--he had
sought to explain to Moy Toy the plan of salvation and to enlist his
interest. He laughed aloud in bitter mirth--a short, hollow note,
and then must come contrition and a mutter of prayer. Abraham and
Isaac--how far away they seemed!
“But, my friend,” he said, “the injunction to shed innocent blood was
for a purpose--to test the faith of the great chief; and the blood of
the innocent was not exacted. I have done nothing. I only am deserted,
caught here as in a trap.”
“Likewise was the ram whose blood was shed,” declared the specious
Indian, his eyes flashing fire,--“caught as in a trap by the horns in a
thicket. And the ram had done nothing.”
The Frenchman was fairly silenced; the others, hardly comprehending
the discourse, not having burdened their minds with Abraham and his
experiences, conceiving him to be an Indian agent, or in some other
position near the governor of Louisiana, Georgia, or South Carolina,
only discerned from the facial expression of the two men that the
Cherokee’s keen wits had come off victorious in the encounter, and
despite their gloom, they made shift to smile at each other in
ostentatious amusement, and in derision of the purblind white man.
Laroche’s anxiety and apprehension were hardly assuaged by the
recollection of the blood-offerings among the religious observances of
the Cherokees, intimately connected with their system of government and
warfare, which had recalled strongly to his mind associations with the
Mosaic dispensation. Many minute requirements and ceremonies savored
of the Hebraic ritual, and in their distortions had impressed him as
survivals of actual customs, and were thus more significant than the
legends found among the tribes betokening Scriptural suggestions and
supposed to be the result, _disjecta membra_, of the teachings
and traditions of Catholic truths which Cabeza de Vaca left among the
Southern Indians.
Laroche sought to compose his mind. He was a soldier, and would muster
all a soldier’s courage,--a Christian, whose hope was in no help of
man. He would calm himself and await the worst or the best, as God
should choose to send it, with the serenity of one whose life is,
after all, not his own. As he stood there in the wide glare of the
sun, it seemed to have grown speedily and strangely very hot. His
eyes were on the mountains far away, that through the silvery, vernal
mists, forever shifting, belied their stanch and massive solidities
by a shimmer like some wavering, blue sea; not a breath of air was
in the deep, green shadows of the darkling ranges close at hand; the
river, a wide blade of steel without flaw, bore the polish of a mirror
and a blinding glitter. Suddenly a cold chill struck through him. At
first it crept along his spinal column, slight, insidious, vaguely
shivering; then in its icy thrall he shuddered again and again; the
drops that fell from his brow upon his hands were ice cold, and as he
looked down, wondering, at his long, thin fingers he saw that they were
blue under the nails to the first joint. Some change in his face had
attracted the attention of the Indians. They were all gazing up at him
in surprise, as shudder after shudder went over his features, pallid
even to blueness. He instinctively put up his hand to his brow, and he
found that even to his cold fingers its touch was like marble. He was
obviously very near death, done with the world and with worldly pride,
but he was still a soldier, and his pulses beat to a martial point of
honor. He could have died with shame, albeit the spectators were but
savages; for he thought this manifestation purported the subjection of
fear, and that thus the staring Indians recognized it.
Averse as they were, they accounted him no coward. In truth, his
stanch, compact physique and his bold spirit promised good sport at the
torture, and they had discussed with one another from time to time the
various details of the anguish which his strength and courage would
enable him to sustain, and which sometimes weaker and fainter hearted
men eluded and despoiled by dying prematurely. They could hardly
explain the change in his complexion and expression of countenance, and
only wondered while they looked, and presently it passed away, leaving
the flesh of a ghastly, uniform pallor, flabby and listless.
But Laroche had hardly recovered his normal temperature. He was
suddenly weak and tremulous. He could no longer sustain the standing
posture. In another moment he would have fallen. With his winning
affability and gay grace, that became his ghastly, stricken face as a
wreath of flowers might a death’s head, he remarked that since they
were all sitting he would take the liberty of sitting too, and ran down
two or three of the grassy steps of the mound and there dropped upon
the turf, half reclining, one elbow on the step above him, supporting
his head in his hand, and with his limbs stretched out at length
across the stairs below. The Indian guard at the foot of the mound
did not stir, save that the acquaintance of “Ablaham” placed a finger
ostentatiously on the trigger of his loaded gun. Laroche looked at him
with a laughing sneer that taunted him to do his worst. The slug of the
charge would have been too merciful.[6] There was no intention in the
threat, and the Indian laughed like a roguish child detected in a bit
of mischief.
The sky was reddening at last and Laroche, looking over to the far
west, felt as if that incarnadined glow in the heavens was rising
in his veins as the sun went down. It was not the red reflection on
his face, but the blood mustering close under the skin when he again
changed color. He felt it racing and rushing through his veins, ever
quickening, ever wilder.
His mood changed. He had been saying to himself that it was no
matter when or how painfully he died. He wished that he might see a
priest--the good Père François; he caught himself hastily, remembering
that piteous death of the father. Alas, when and how painfully have
died many, many of the Order of Jesus, here, there, in every clime!
He said to himself that he should be proud that it fell to his lot to
emulate the mortuary example of those undying missionaries, that yet in
the flesh died so hardily.
“_Quibus dignus non erat mundus_!” he declared in swelling phrase,
_ore rotundo_.
But with the sudden surging of his fevered blood he protested.
They,--God knew he wished to detract no whit from their credit,--but
they were spiritual-minded men, many convent-bred, ascetic, he had
almost said superstitious, solicitous for the martyr’s crown, with a
talent for dying, and a positive genius for remitting to everlasting
opprobrium throughout all the ages their misguided murderers.
He broke off from these reflections with a sudden, loud, hilarious
laugh that echoed far through the quiet town on whose death-stricken
ways the dusk was gradually descending, and brought his Indian guard
to their feet with an abrupt spring, staring at him with vague wonder
through the gloom.
His eyes, meeting theirs, were large, dilated, curiously bright. There
seemed no recognition in them. He did not answer when they spoke, but
shifting his posture slightly went on muttering to himself; his mind
thus beyond the control of his will, he formulated more candor than his
disciplined judgment was wont to recognize. They were spiritual-minded
men, he reiterated, the Jesuit martyrs. For himself,--he was a soldier,
not a martyr. Dying was the last thing a soldier should do,--and
once more his foolish, frivolous laugh rang through the melancholy
glooms of the bereaved town. He was not fitted to die thus,--the
prey of unreasoning devils called by complaisance savages, to whom
he had been sent on a mission of importance to French politics. His
grave, his honorable grave, awaited him on some stricken field of
battle. He had thought a hundred times how it might come,--in the
rebuilding of some destroyed bridge which the enemy--_peste_! he
always destroys the good bridges!--or perhaps in pushing a parallel
closer and closer to the lines of the doomed defenses,--a ball from
the _chemin convert_ of the fort might find a vital spot. Would
he shun it?--fear death?--“_Je te fais mes compliments_!” He
stood suddenly erect and saluted. Then he collapsed upon the ground.
A soldier’s hasty grave on the field of battle,--he coveted it. For
shrift,--the pressure of a good comrade’s hand might bid him Godspeed.
A soldier has few sins to confess. Little is required of him--he is
merely a soldier--all body and heart--a mere bit of a soul! But these
priests--these spiritual men--they who can profess so much, why should
they fail?
A light was presently glimmering in the dusk,--clear, luminous, a
pyramidal flare approaching rapidly, then pausing as in uncertainty,
flickering through the blue darkness, and once more drawing near.
“The lanthorns of the burial parties,” he said, contemplating with a
gentle melancholy the battlefield of his fancy. “Many a fine fellow
coming to-day that must be carried to-morrow.”
Then swiftly repeating a series of measurements and mathematical
calculations, he rose as the light paused at the foot of the mound and
the flare of the torch fell upon the face of Moy Toy, summoned hither
by the weird sound of that strange, hilarious laughter, and minded to
advance the hour for the prisoner’s torture and death, since he must
needs be so obtrusively merry in the face of their distresses and
disasters.
Laroche recognized him vaguely, but naught of the circumstances which
environed him. He lifted his voice as he pursued his train of remarks,
expressing the jumble of his ideas.
“Un bastion, Moy Toy, avec un ravelin,--et une fraise d’épine ne serait
pas inutile!--là,--là,--sur le bord de la rivière,--quatre-vingts
toises de distance,--pour enfiler les colonnes,--la fosse,--à la portée
du canon,--donnez dix-huit pieds de large au parapet,--et puis,--et
puis,”--
He ran down the steps and laid his hot hand upon the arm of the
Cherokee chief, who stared aghast at this manifestation of a strange
distemper.
It was well for Laroche that the Cherokees did not feel it incumbent
upon them to preserve the grace of consistency. If he had continued
in health, he would assuredly have been put to death with tortures,
in satisfaction of the iniquities of the embassy of which he was a
member, but his wandering mind, his evident delirium, precluded his
knowledge of his own fate, and thus robbed the torture of its choicest
delight, the fear and mental misery of the victim, as well as his
bodily agony. A postponement of the sentence was hastily agreed upon,
and the patient, still declaiming upon the advantage of one system
of fortification and contemptuously disparaging others, was gently
conveyed, for he could no longer walk, to the stranger-house which he
and Push-koosh had occupied, put to bed on the elastic cane-wrought
mattress, and the medicine-men were summoned to exorcise this strange
demon of fever which had possessed the guest.
The skill of these primitive people in the art of healing was said to
be very considerable. But in this instance the Cherokee physicians
found themselves at a loss. Laroche had duly absorbed the atmospheric
miasma of the swampy country near Mobile and New Orleans, which, had he
remained there, might have occasioned no trouble. But upon his sudden
removal it instantly manifested itself in a virulent type of malarial
fever, all its poison elicited by the pure, clear air of this mountain
region. Hence this salubrious clime has been called “the unhealthiest
country in the world” by suffering subtropical wights who would not be
at rest at home and could not be well elsewhere. This theory, exploited
long since those times, was not familiar to the two cheerataghe, who
rattled their calabashes at the fever demon with hearty good will.
They administered the varied decoctions of herbs famous as febrifuges.
They repeated aloud their ancient incantations, both mandatory and
contemptuous, bidding the malign spirit depart. They arrayed and
painted themselves in frightful guise to terrify the fever demon, and
decorated with buffalo horns and buffalo tails, they rushed roaring
from right to left in front of the bed, and when this proved futile,
from left to right. They subjected the patient to sudden immersion in
hot water, and then in cold, and again to a steaming process, placing
him in an oven-like structure of heated rocks, over which water was
poured,--all without avail. The Cherokee magicians began to look very
grave and ill at ease, for a dark cloud was ominously gathering on
the brow of Moy Toy. All at once Moy Toy had come to covet the life
of this man. It must be captured from death. He must be snatched from
the already open grave. Not for the satisfaction of exacting that
terrible penalty, as one of the treacherous Choctaw embassy; not for
the keen delight of the spectacle of his death by torture. Any unlucky
French wight captured from the Illinois country; or some helpless
English body, unknown or of scant note, wandering away from a kindly
colonial settlement and heard of never again; or even a stanch Indian
of one of the inimical tribes,--Muscogee, Tuscarora, Seneca,--any
mere man, in short, who had blood to spill, and bones to break, and
nerves to writhe might furnish this sport. With this man’s death
more was lost,--a subtle, keen brain, technical military knowledge,
practical military experience, a tongue of wondrous craft trained in
various speech, a secret cogent influence with the French authorities
at New Orleans,--all calculated to subserve the Cherokees, and this a
trifling kindliness would reinforce by the claims of gratitude, a claim
paramount in the Indian scheme of ethics.
So overwhelmed had been the wary Moy Toy’s brain by the surprise, the
fury, the grief attending the catastrophe of the massacre of his young
tribesmen, that these considerations were not even dimly presented to
his alert perceptions till the moment that Laroche dashed down the
stairs of the mound and impetuously flung himself into his host’s arms
with his delirious babble of military works and munitions of war. It
was at first but a vague impression, a doubtful suggestion. The crafty
Indian mind dwelt upon it in the days that came and went. Time seemed
to embellish, to perfect it. And now it had become the dearest boon of
fate, and the Indian could not, would not forego it. For this man could
design and build a fort that could withstand a British assault! He
could so dispose the Indian facilities as to enable them to defend it.
He could by reason of his connection with the French government secure
such munitions of war as would complete its armament. An impregnable
stronghold in the wilderness, with scientifically handled artillery,
could set at naught British aggression and hold the country.
Turned in whatever light, the idea presented a perfect symmetry.
It was like a many faceted gem. And thus the two magicians, men of
herbs and simples, found their equanimity shaken and their capacities
seriously hampered by the continual presentation of Moy Toy’s imperious
countenance at the door of the stranger-house, and the sight of his
agitation and anger that the cheerataghe had failed to exorcise the
demon of fever and work a cure. Therefore they besought him to leave
the sufferer to their ministrations; for his angry countenance caused
their hearts to weigh very heavy within them, and his sharp speeches
gave great offense to the demon of fever, who had never within all
their experience conducted himself in the wayward, troublous manner of
his present manifestations.
“But the man will die!” said Moy Toy, looking down in angry despair at
the wasted face and form, as the restless head of the patient turned
from side to side, always weary, vainly seeking rest.
“Is he the first?” asked one of the cheerataghe. For like a physician
of civilization, he by no means guaranteed the continuance of life by
virtue of his science.
It was very honestly and earnestly exerted, and both he and his
colleague felt all the virtuous rage of sustaining a grievous injustice
when Moy Toy said, with a rancor that surprised them (for quarrels and
unkindness to one another were almost unknown in the tribe, the utmost
placidity of temper and mutual forbearance being _de rigueur_),
“You promised rain,--and behold at this season of the year a drought
lasting six weeks, and the planting of corn delayed till a famine
threatens, and not a drop till to-day.”
“A visitation! a visitation! because of the sins of the people and
their hardness of heart!” cried the two magi in a breath.
Wherein they improved an advantage over the faculty of to-day.
Moy Toy silently gazed down at the rolling head and the fixed,
absorbed eyes bent steadily on some phantasmagoria of the fever. He
noted the weakness of the once clear, strong voice,--the definite,
trained enunciation had sunk to a husky mutter. Still Laroche babbled
of military operations, for now and again Moy Toy caught the phrases
“quatre mortiers--Coehorn--champ de bataille--barils de poudre,”
although the rest was unintelligible, for now he spoke continuously in
French.
“He must live! He must live for the Cherokee nation!” exclaimed the
chief, with the insistence of hoping against hope.
One of the cheerataghe had a fine, steady, acute eye, a hideously
painted face, with the aspect of a bedlamite, arrayed as he was with
buffalo horns and tail, and with his body stuck over with wings of
owls, the calves of his legs hung with a dozen garters of rattling bell
buttons, and a long-handled gourd filled with pebbles in his hands,
which were covered with bear’s paws. Perhaps the patient’s delirium
could present nothing more grotesquely, absurdly frightful.
“You, Moy Toy,” he said, in his grave, sonorous, sane voice, “you have
given offense to the demon of fever. For when the sun is rising the
man revives; he will take drink, although he cannot eat; he will speak
Cherokee, softly, softly; he will close his eyes and sleep. And then
come you!--with a troubled face, and a harsh voice, and an eager step,
and a fierce hurry! And the demon of fever is angered, and the fever
grows quicker, and more eager, and harsh, and angrier than you! And it
rises and rises till the man will not drink and cannot see, and has no
speech but a shred of French and screams for dreams that are without
sleep!”
He looked to his colleague, who gravely nodded his fantastic head in
corroboration.
Moy Toy silently studied the face first of one of the magicians, then
of the other. Although immeasurably superstitious and credulous, he
was yet grounded in craft and suspicion. And, in truth, perhaps he was
not without justification; the cheerataghe, like more modern disciples
of Æsculapius, doubtless often attributed to other causes disasters
consequent upon a lack of skill or its misdirection. In this instance,
however, the value of the stake at hazard, the imputation of the malign
personal influence of his presence, a vague indignation that he should
be esteemed obnoxious to any being--even a demon of fever--rendered Moy
Toy peculiarly alert, watchful, disposed to exact to the extremity of
the possibilities.
The two cheerataghe, as his glance once more sought the pallid face,
the ever-turning head on the pillow, looked anxiously at each other.
For the face seemed death-stricken. The next moment they took sudden
hope. A change, a vague, indefinable change, quivered over it. The
jumble of French words faltered on Laroche’s feeble tongue. With
unexampled resolution, he pressed firmly his silent lips together.
And in that silence the wary Indians heard what had come first to his
ears. Even in the dullness of fever and the frenzy of delirium, he
had interpreted its significance, so momentous it was to him. A voice
it was in the broad spaces of the “beloved square” without, a bold,
hearty, roaring voice, speaking the English language with a blatant
Scotch accent.
The three Cherokees gazed at one another in tumultuous and contending
emotions. They experienced much gratitude that the spark of perception
intimated they might still hope. They could hardly repress their
admiration of the finesse, the courage, the mental balance, that
enabled Laroche to perceive the crisis, interpret its meaning, and
meet it with a sane judgment,--his self-control, which even in the
thrall of fever could curb the infirmities of that weakly, babbling
tongue, and silence the self-betrayal of the French speech upon it. All
their excitement, however, was subordinated to the triumph in his craft
that stimulated their own emulous resources. He was indeed in great
danger. Emissaries of the French among the Indians, having done so
much to instigate and maintain the late Cherokee War, were peculiarly
obnoxious to the British authorities. In fact, rewards had been offered
for their scalps, and by the late treaty the Cherokees themselves were
pledged to arrest and surrender these enemies of the English. Moy Toy,
making a gesture imposing secrecy, stepped out of the door to meet the
visitor, who was clamoring as loudly and boldly in the “beloved square”
as if he were in his own byre.
“Hegh, Moy Toy!” he cried bluffly, breaking away from the “second men,”
as the subordinate authorities of the town were called, “how’s a’ wi’
ye, man?”
He was a tall, heavy, awkward fellow, with a boisterous, assured
address, a broad, red face, light almost flaxen hair, plaited and tied
with a leather thong in a queue, arrayed in buckskins but with long
cowhide boots, and enveloped in a great match-coat, for it had been
raining heavily, and the drops still clung upon the tufts and fibres
of the cloth. His cap of coonskin, with the tail as a pendant, was
pushed back from his brow, revealing remarkably straight, regular, and
well-formed features and shrewd, blue eyes. He held under his arm a
stout horsewhip as a companion rather than a weapon, for his pistols
were in the holsters on the saddle of his nag, which, drenched to the
skin, hung down its head where it stood unceremoniously hitched to a
stake whereto was sometimes bound a victim for the torture. The guest
made no pretense of adapting to the Indian ceremonials the manners in
which he had been bred, as was the custom of strangers and traders
generally, or of recognizing any princely arrogations on the part of
Moy Toy. He advanced with great, muscular strides toward his averse
host,--who visibly winced from the overpowering redundancy, as it were,
of his presence,--seized upon the limp hand of the Indian, and crushed
it in his cordial grasp as if Moy Toy had been also a bold Briton.
“How’s a’ wi’ ye?--an’ what d’ ye hear frae Charlestoun?”
There was scarce similarity between this hearty, warm-blooded entity
and a snake, but Moy Toy, of his own volition, would have touched
neither except upon necessity or in the way of business. The fibres of
his hand tingled with the consciousness of the detested impact long
after the trader’s unwelcome grasp had relaxed and his manual energy
was expending itself in aimlessly cracking his whip at the sand of the
smooth spaces of the “beloved square.” There was a spark of smouldering
fire in the eyes of the Indian, a tense restraint in the muscles of his
shoulders and his straight back, as if he would fain hold himself under
strong control. Albeit his interlocutor spoke English he understood
Cherokee, and Moy Toy replied in his native tongue; thus each talked
without solicitude, for each was comprehensible to the other. The
Indian said that he had no news from Carolina and inquired in turn, but
with scant show of interest, “as to the Muscogee?”
“I begin to think a’ thae carles are dead!” exclaimed Jock Lesly,
with a vigorous snap of the whip. “They were looked for to join the
Chickasaw and the English agen the French away yon to the south. But
deil ane o’ them hae minted a word yet!”
The Cherokee’s stately dignity, his cautious, reserved speech,
contrasted strongly with the Scotchman’s unsuspicious plainness, as
he waited with an air of expectation. If the Indian had had news,
he would not have bartered it with the trader, nor indeed had the
trader repaired hither for what he could hear. This mutual realization
embarrassed the pause, yet Jock Lesly still sharply cracked his whip at
the sand and hesitated as to what he should say.
With all the thrifty instincts of the canny Scotch pioneer of that day,
with all the bold, bluff courage of his vigorous personality, Jock
Lesly had been the first, and as yet the only trader to venture back
within the remote mountain region, whence the fury of the terrible
Cherokee War had driven all mercantile enterprise. Indeed, the treaty
was hardly signed before he was again in the place that had known him
of yore, his trading-house rebuilt, depending for his safety partly on
the treaty and partly on his utility to the savages, his popularity
among them, and his conscience void of offense against them.
“I hae had as muckle o’ the rack an’ rief o’ the war as ye,” he was
wont to say, “an’ the Lard kens I wad wuss to be canty and quiet enow.”
As he stood looking aimlessly about, he noted that the ranges were all
full of mist between the domes, and from the soft densities of its
white, fluffy masses those eminences rose in sombre, purple hues and
massive effects against a pale gray sky, along which lay horizontal
clouds, of a darker, denser gray. The river, with lace-like films of
mist hanging in the budding green willows and pawpaws of its banks,
had the tint of burnished copper. The great trees of the limitless
forests, and those gigantic growths around the town, dripped with
moisture as they hung down their sodden branches about the newly washed
boles, the bark so dense of color as to suggest the effect of being
freshly painted. A dull day it was, and the atmosphere, devoid of all
elasticity, seemed almost too lifeless to breathe. He broke at last
from his dubitation and began in his neighborly wise:--
“A-weel, a-weel, Moy Toy, there hae been a wheen idle, feckless loons
frae your toun o’ Tellico down to Ioco Town aboot my trading-house. An’
there they lifted a few trifles frae the stock,--but I’se no grudge
that,--a few bit duds. But then they slartered a couple o’ sheep,--an
auld yowe and a yearlin’.”
Moy Toy’s face grew dark with anger, and yet almost kind with concern.
The good-natured Scotchman hastened to qualify. “They never carried aff
the meat nor yet the pelts,--they scalpit the twa puir beastises first,
an’ then cut their throats. I’m no the waur for the lack o’ mutton,
but”--
Moy Toy’s countenance of amazed disfavor, astounded at the account of
this curious emprise, coerced sudden intelligibility.
“Jus’ a wheen feckless laddies aping their elders,” explained Jock
Lesly, doubtfully. Then with an uneasy laugh he added, “An’ the bairns
cam hame wearin’ the scalps at their belts. I chased them a’ the way
with the powney.”
Moy Toy did not laugh. Indian children play as do children of other
nations, reducing to the circuit of their narrow round--a juvenile
microcosm--all the methods and events of the elder world. But this
exploit transcended the limit of verisimilitude and entered on the
realms of the verities. The small banditti unchecked would soon venture
further and bring upon their elders anger, retaliation, embroilment,
with the trader, and premature fracture of the treaty.
“They shall be dry-scratched,” said Moy Toy promptly.
“Oh, wow, man!” exclaimed Jock Lesly sharply, as if he had been
suddenly pinched. “Na,--na,--not dry-scratched! Odd! I could na sleep
in my bed if the hempies were dry-scratched for me!--they ran sae
supple--the knaves! It is an unchancy, ugly thing, that dry-scratching!
Cuff the bairns weel--or gie them a flogging they’ll remember. Man
alive! flogging is healthy for boy or beast! I’ve had it a thousand
times frae my auld daddy, God bless him! Flogging is what’s made the
British nation what it is,--but dry-scratching,--I’d die of it mysel’,
now. Oh, man,--oh, man,--flog ’em a little,--but dry-scratched--oh,
wow, wow!”
He caught at the arm of the august Moy Toy, who was more accustomed to
order the torture and burning of Christian captives than the punishment
of a few children who had offended against the municipal law. He made
no sign and stood as adamant, but other Cherokees, who had joined them,
were smiling and looking at each other with the softened countenances
that express a gentle ridicule. Despite their friendly scorn, the
kindly trader’s deprecation of the punishment of the children and his
wild and earnest plea in their behalf could not fail to commend him to
their tolerance, and went far to explain a sort of popularity that he
had enjoyed among them. They knew that the little drama of the storming
of the sheep-fold and massacre of its inmates was too significant to
pass without notice, and for this very significance the punishment
decreed was to be immediate and sharp, to teach the youngsters where
fun ends and serious fact begins. Indeed Moy Toy himself saw to the
preparations for the capture and condign penance of the miscreants,
who, having returned from the war-path scathless, were now in full
swing of a mimic celebration of victory, the triumphant scalps in
evidence, and all the wide-eyed children of the town in joyful
participation.
“Deil hae ye, then, for a fause-hearted, unceevilized tyke as ever
lived!” exclaimed Lesly, as the chief drew off from his grasp. “Egad!
I can ne’er abide to hear ’em skreigh like that,--wow,--wow!” And
clapping his hands to his ears, the Scotch trader fairly ran off as the
first shrill plaint of protest rose upon the air.
Now it was a point of juvenile honor to bear this kind of punishment
as stoically as might be, and a severe dry-scratching, always carefully
adapted in ferocity to the age of the delinquent and his capacity to
support pain, usually drew forth a tear or two and sometimes only
murmuring sighs. The habitual gentleness of the savages with their
children doubtless convinced the rising generation that the punishment
was only intended for their benefit and no whit administered in anger
or tyranny. Therefore in submitting with a good grace they were
contributing so far as in them lay to their own moral culture, and were
ambitious of the stoical poise, perhaps to make the penalty as salutary
as possible and go as far in reform as it would.
The two little Indians were easily stripped of such semblance of
garments as they wore, and as they were being bound to the stake they
craftily set up a wild and poignant shriek upon seeing the Scotchman in
full flight across the “beloved square,” being apprised by the comments
of the laughing bystanders of his intercession in their behalf and his
aversion to the sight and sound of their woe. This had considerable
justification, for thus bound and helpless they were sharply scratched
from head to foot repeatedly with an instrument formed of snake’s teeth
fastened in the end of a stick.
Because of the unusual commotion with which the affair had been
invested, no one noticed that the refuge to which the Scotchman,
familiar enough with the place, bent his steps was the stranger-house.
He burst in, and started back astounded at the figures of the
cheerataghe arrayed to frighten the fever in such manner as might have
frightened the devil. Then the trader’s eyes fell upon the white man
lying helpless on the brink of the grave, as it were, the victim of the
fever.
“Lord save us!” exclaimed Lesly, with a sudden change of countenance,
“wha hae we here?”
The two cheerataghe, unaware of the very disconcerting effect of their
own professional appearance, themselves showed every sign of fear,
incongruous enough with their terrifying aspect. In fact they could
scarcely have been more alarmed had Satan himself appeared, for they
were unacquainted with him and his reputation, while quite well aware
who and what was Jock Lesly. The presence of the French emissary here
was a breach of the treaty lately renewed, under which the Cherokee
tribe traded with the British, and a menace to the privileges promised
to the Indians under its stipulations. They hardly knew how to reply,
and the abrupt entrance of Moy Toy was like a rescue from mortal peril.
The chief had bethought himself suddenly of the possible suspicion of
the stranger’s presence here that might be casually conveyed to Jock
Lesly’s perceptions, while free in the town unguarded and unwatched.
Anything so complete, so inexplicable, so irrefutable as his intrusion
and the evidence of his own eyes the chief had not anticipated for a
moment, and his ready resources of subterfuge failed him for the nonce.
“Puir chield! I doubt na he is in the dead thraw!” the trader muttered,
his compassionate instincts uppermost. Then impressed by something
unfamiliar in the cast of the features, he asked doubtfully, “Is he
frae the colonies,--or overseas?”
Laroche had been divested of his fine French uniform when he had been
brought here ill; it had been carefully put away in view of its future
use by his captors, being an official garb, for the crafty Moy Toy
fancied some occasion might arise when it would serve a diplomatic
turn. Moreover the gold lace and fine cloth were much too dazzling,
considered merely as booty, to be spared to the prisoner as habiliments
in which to be ill or tortured or buried. In the varied experiments
of the cheerataghe, contending with the rigors of the chill following
the fever, Laroche had been clad in buckskins, supplemented now and
then in the convulsions of the shudders and shivers by one of those
feather-wrought mantles that attracted so much attention from the
early travelers in this region, the effect of which was pronounced
“extraordinary charming.” There was naught to indicate his nationality
or his estate as captive. Every evidence of care and solicitude
environed the patient, and Moy Toy’s explanation seemed obviously
genuine.
The sick man had come to Great Tellico, the chief said, with some of
the Cherokee tribesmen who had been up to Virginia, and being taken
ill they had left him to recover while they went their various ways
homeward. He did not ask the man’s name of them, thinking to learn it
from himself. He had been only a little ailing at first, but now one
hardly knew what to make of him.
Jock Lesly seated on one side of the cabin on the divan, with his
hands on his ponderous knees, his head bent a trifle forward, gazed
thoughtfully across the room at the fevered patient, as not so long
ago the Choctaw Mingo had sat and glowered at the recumbent frame then
sunken in sleep.
“He is gaun to dee!” the trader remarked dolorously, at length, and the
words, bespeaking his own fear, fell with a crushing force on the hopes
of Moy Toy.
Jock Lesly drew a long and labored sigh. If the sorrows of the little
dry-scratched Indians--wicked varlets--could take such hold upon the
sympathies of that frank, compassionate heart of his, how the sight of
this tragedy racked him,--this valuable life going out in exile, among
savages, with not one intelligent, civilized effort made to save it.
“Gin I had him ance at hame!” he cried, in futile aspiration, “I doubt
but what Jeemes’s powder might wark a cure!”
“Carry him there! The demon of the fever may not dare to cross a
stranger’s threshold!” cried Moy Toy, with a sudden inspiration. He
was thinking very rapidly. If some untoward chance should reveal
the secret of the nationality of the man, which even in delirium
he instinctively guarded, why Jock Lesly and his household were
practically alone here, hundreds of miles from any English settlements,
and accidents were lamentably common in the distracted Cherokee
country at present,--so frequent, indeed, that the discovery might go
no farther! “The Cherokees will aid their guest. The brothers of the
tribe will rejoice to bear the burden of a litter,” he continued. “The
demon of the fever maybe does not know the way to Ioco Town and cannot
follow!”
Jock Lesly, heeding little of these hopeful schemes for confounding the
demon of the fever, sat doubtful nevertheless and dumfounded. A vague
sentiment of suspicion had been lurking in his mind,--first, that the
Indians had not expected him to discover so unusual an inmate of their
stranger-house as this white man, and that he and his status were not
as represented. Then as Moy Toy so freely and instantly relinquished
his custody, the trader experienced as vague a doubt if the patient had
had fair play among them, since they were eager to get rid of him and
of such responsibility as his care imposed.
“The puir Injun!” Jock Lesly said to himself reproachfully, “if I’ll
suspicion him o’ ane thing I’ll e’en doubt him o’ the contrary.”
The man lay as in a “dwam,” to use Lesly’s expression. The trader
crossed the room, felt the temperature of the forehead, noted the dull,
opaque eyes, and laid his hand almost paternally upon the light brown
hair of a fine, silky quality, dense and curling.
The trader was an unsophisticated man, unlearned and of a scanty
experience of the world, his life having been spent for the last ten
years in the treadmill round of a British factory in the Cherokee
country. He realized his responsibility and he shrank from it. He
looked at the impassive cheerataghe and received no light upon his
course. He glanced out of the door.
A change had come over the landscape. The wind was astir,--the clouds
were flying before it. Between their dense white masses the sky showed
intensely blue, inconceivably high. The sun shone with a vernal
brilliance,--it would not be unduly chilly by noon. Fragrance was in
the air, so fine, so fresh, so illusive. One might say that it was the
scent of the budding wild cherry; or, no,--the early blooming grape;
or, stay,--the delicate aroma of the bark of a tree, touched to this
distillation of incense by some happy combination of sun and wind and
rain. The whole scene beckoned, lured, besought.
“An’ what for no?” cried Jock Lesly, his resolution taken at last. “As
weel dee under the canopy o’ heaven as in an Injun’s cabin!”
Every precaution that could be devised was taken. The litter, fashioned
under his directions, was furnished by Moy Toy munificently, freely,
with the softest skins for mattress, with fine fur mantles for covering
that were impervious to water in view of sudden rain, and with others,
feather-wrought, light, and warm, to fend off all deleterious effects
of exposure. A dozen tribesmen bore it, stepping lightly, easily, on
their springy feet, unshod save for the elastic moccasins, and a dozen
more mounted men accompanied it to act as relays, and, thus relieving
one another, suffer no fatigue to retard their progress.
“A body wad think the creature was a Christian instead of a doited
heathen!” Lesly said to himself, impressed by Moy Toy’s liberality and
anxiety in this work of mercy.
For Moy Toy had despaired of the efforts of the cheerataghe to exorcise
the demon of fever and save this life to the utilities of the Cherokee
nation.
“It is some devil of the paleface that has taken hold of him,” the
chief said sagely to the cheerataghe. “Let him have the white man’s
charm worked on him!”
For if the French officer should die on the way to Ioco Town, would he
not also have died at Tellico?
IV
THE moment that Laroche was recalled to life was never very accurately
defined in his mind, so gradually did a full consciousness return. Nor
was he sure how entirely delirium had held him in its delusions. His
speculations were of a metaphysical tendency when he afterward dwelt,
with a microscopic scrutiny, upon those phenomena of involved cerebral
processes manifested in the sudden silencing of the French words upon
his dreaming tongue, as it vaguely shaped the confused thoughts of a
stupefied brain,--all upon one coherent impulse, on the sound of an
English phrase spoken in an English voice!
That salutary monition abode with him, whether he slept, whether he
waked, whether he lay in that dim border world of swoons between
sleeping and waking. He was stricken dumb, although he could hardly
be said to have heard, for he consciously heard naught. And if, he
argued, these perceptions could have been so alert to the mere vocal
vibrations of the air, the instinct of danger so keenly receptive,
the will so strangely responsive to the demands of those supersubtle,
unclassified faculties, although every voluntary function of the
muscles lay prostrate, and every recognized process of the brain
was paralyzed, did not this imply some curious duality of identity,
an absolute independence of the intellectual life, unrelated to the
bodily functions, since so complete a solution of continuity had
supervened? It might have been that, though he accounted himself a mere
blunt soldier and upbraided his mismanagement that had jeopardized
the interests of the French mission, he was so complete a diplomat
at heart that he could withhold with a nerveless hand, hear with a
deaf ear, plot albeit with a swooning brain, and hush the babblings
of delirium to keep a secret, of which at the moment he had no
consciousness!
Thus, although his pulses ran riot, he continued to maintain a tense
silence. When the tumultuous phantasmagoria of frenzy gave place
to visions as vain but calmer, he found himself still mute, quiet,
orderly, exact, mentally verifying with mathematical accuracy the
relative measurements of a line of field fortifications, so designed
that an attacking column might be enfiladed thence. “For nothing,” he
said to himself again and again, “can stop an attacking column that is
not enfiladed.” Later, he was considering the possibility of defending
effectively a certain salient angle of an imaginary redoubt.
To prevent the enemy from carrying the redoubt by storming this too
acute angle he began to mount a battery _en barbette_ in the dead
salient. The doubt that now and again seized him as to the necessity of
these labors was dispelled by the actual sight of the canvas walls of
his tent about him, and therefore he would busily absorb himself once
more in these duties, and actively prepared to defend the ditch of the
redoubt by constructing there a solid _caponnière_.
The placid peace of the man who is consciously doing his best in his
chosen vocation pervaded his whole system, mental, moral, and physical,
and brought refreshing, curative sleep to his pillow. So definite a
hold had this impression taken upon his mind, sleeping and waking, that
one morning he lifted his head with a start of alarm. There upon the
sloping canvas walls was a yellow streak, all the more vivid for the
white glare of the cloth in the rising sun,--and how had he not heard
the reveille? The echo of the bugle was in his ears, the molten, golden
notes of the old French call.
A strong tremor ran through the elbow on which he had supported his
head. Alack! no stirring, martial strain had summoned him. He lay back
on his pillow, realizing in dismay and yet in surprise that the walls
of the tent of his fancy were the dimity curtains of a bed, and he
began to remember vaguely the chances that had befallen him and to seek
the grace to be thankful.
“I will wait and see what cause for gratitude I may have,” said
the unsubdued inner man, while his lips framed the verbal show of
a thanksgiving. His state of mind might have furnished still more
suggestive details of the possibility of a dual life in one identity.
Nevertheless he recognized the fact that as far as the bodily entity
was concerned it was distinctly comfortable. Now and again he dropped
off into short, luxurious naps, even between the stages of his
investigation of his surroundings. In one waking interval he took
account of the furnishings of the bed: it bore sheets, a rarity of
the place and time so unexpected, so inexplicable, that it roused new
doubts and anxieties as to where he was, what had befallen him, and
what might yet betide. Still he could but finger them in pleasure and
with a childish relish of luxury;--snow-white they were, of a heavy,
fine linen smoothly woven, with the fragrance of the wood violets of
the bleaching ground, and the freshness of the wind yet in their folds,
as it seemed,--and once more he closed his eyes.
When he wakened again he had so far accustomed himself to the homely
opulence of blankets and bedding that he was prepared in a measure for
the night-rail in which he found himself clad, but not for its size.
As he stretched out the voluminous length of its great sleeve and took
account of its breadth of shoulder, “A big man in good earnest this was
made for,--I shall take care to be friends with the monster!” he said.
He bethought himself suddenly of the English words that he had
heard,--a mere sound and locution,--yet this was the only definite
recollection that had stayed in his mind since the moment he had
beheld the flying figures of the Choctaws speeding across the “beloved
square” to the pettiaugre. He must bear a caution,--a Frenchman, and
possibly liable to be accused as a spy! He lifted his wasted hands to
his head: it was enveloped in a red nightcap, with a gay tassel swaying
on its fez-like peak; and much he needed it, for the whole head had
been shaved, sometime since evidently, for delicate tendrils of a new
growth were starting there and he felt fibres moist and soft about his
forehead.
A step sounded suddenly outside, heavy but cautious; a stealthy hand
was laid upon the curtain; and as it was drawn aside the red face of
a man of middle age, tall, powerful, flaxen-haired, with high cheek
bones, a man whom Laroche had never before seen, looked in upon him.
Grave, astonished, delighted, the stranger seemed,--with a sudden
twinkle of comprehension in his blue eyes and an outburst of joy in his
big voice that made the bedstead tremble on the uneven puncheons of the
floor.
“Hegh, callant!” he cried, as their eyes met, “but this dings a’!
Lilias! Callum!” he began to call over his shoulder to other inmates
of the house in so stalwart a roar that it might have been heard half
a mile. It easily penetrated the flimsy partitions of the primitive
building, and the feet of those summoned were audible rapidly
approaching. “Here’s the callant!” he exclaimed, as the door opened.
“Here he is,--a’ himsel’ again!”
He had the manner of announcing the arrival of a guest, and Laroche
easily divined, from the hiatus in his recollections, that he could
hardly have been considered present hitherto, although visible in the
flesh.
A young man, with less enthusiasm, but still an air of proper pleasure,
partly induced by genuine gratulation upon so happy an augury of
the termination of a serious illness, and partly in propitiation of
the elder, whom it was evident he would have crossed upon no slight
occasion, advanced to the bedside and declared that he was glad to see
that the patient had recovered his consciousness and doubted not that
he would soon be on his feet. This young man wore the Highland garb,
from which Laroche inferred, somewhat quakingly, that he was of the
British soldiery who had been active in this region during the previous
two years, in the campaigns conducted by Montgomerie and afterward by
Grant against the Cherokees, in which the Montgomerie Highlanders (the
Seventy-Seventh Regiment) and others had participated, for at this time
the national dress was proscribed except for those enlisted in British
regiments. A barbarous garb the Frenchman considered it, hardly a whit
in advance of the savage decorations he had been called upon to note at
Tellico Great,--so strong were the international prejudices of those
days. For in truth it was a manly and graceful figure appropriately
bedight,--with swaying kilt, the short coat, the blue bonnet, with
its bit of bearskin decoration. The young Highlander’s fair hair hung
down thick and half curling from beneath this blue bonnet and lay in
an effectively contrasting tint upon the collar of the red jacket,
which constituted at that time part of the dress of the Forty-Second
Regiment, and was worn with a red waistcoat. The latter, we are
informed, was made over, in the governmental thriftiness, from the
red coat after a year’s wear, while the plaid, furnished biennially,
subsequently did duty cut down and frugally reconstructed into the
filibeg. But if the wildernesses of the Great Smoky of that day at all
resembled the tangled forest densities which still remain, the military
tailor who refashioned any garments whatever from the gear that
survived the marches through those brambly mountain jungles deserved
immortalizing above all other knights of the shears.
The dark blues and greens of the sombre “Black Watch” tartan in
Callum’s plaid and kilt afforded an added fairness to his locks. His
florid complexion showed a fluctuating red and white. His blue eyes
were large and well set, with lashes and eyebrows much darker than the
shade of his hair. He had high cheek bones and an expressive mouth,
with finely cut lips, red and mobile, often parted in the blithest
laughter for very slight cause, and exhibiting two unbroken rows of
strong, white teeth. His smiling face was as frank and honest as the
sun.
Laroche’s sudden dislike of this young stranger surprised himself and
dismayed him as well. For would he have experienced this emotion were
the third member of the little group that stood by the bed different
from what she was? Her likeness to her father might have served as an
illustration of the apotheosis of humanity in a spiritual miracle.
Jock Lesly’s flaxen hair, half gray, half tow, was golden in the
glistening soft skeins of silk that swept upward from her brow in heavy
undulations. The blue veins that showed so definitely in the temples
could not have vaunted their delicate tracery through a skin less fine
and fair. Here and there was a freckle, but a faint blush-rose bloomed
over the whole cheek as if it sweetened the air. Her figure, draped in
a sober, gray gown, was tall and strong, but a trifle angular, denoting
more bone and muscle than exuberance of flesh. In fact she was frankly
thin, although her face was so delicately rounded. No small rosebud
mouth, but shapely, dainty, red lips, the upper deeply indented in the
centre like the curve of a bow, opened over white, regularly formed
teeth,--a mouth of beauty but of character also, whence might proceed
sage household counsels, and words full of judgment, just reproof,
and deserved applause. She was the ideal of a helpmeet. She seemed to
Laroche the thought God had in mind when He made woman, before she so
whimsically refashioned herself after her own feminine ideal. And if
any man deemed that he needed help it was Callum MacIlvesty, and that
the woman to assist him on the path of life was Lilias Lesly.
If aught of the cynical reflections that this discernment of the
persons and predilections of the group afforded Laroche appeared in
his worn and wasted countenance it went undiscovered, so great was
their pleasure in the success of their ministrations and his happy
prospect of a speedy recovery. They were all aimlessly laughing from
sheer triumph; only there was a suggestion of moisture in the eyes of
Lilias,--or were they always so liquid, so luminous, so deeply blue, so
heavily lashed with those long, dark fringes.
“And ye’ll breakfast enow!” roared Jock Lesly heartily. “Lay the cloth
here, Lilias. We’se all take potluck wi’ him!”
The young Highlander pleasantly seconded the hospitable motion, and
the objection advanced by Lilias that the invalid was not equal to
entertaining so much company was drowned and overborne in her father’s
imperative orders.
“Aye, lass, ye ken how to care for a sick man, but this fallow is weel
now an’ a proper lad, strong enough. D’ye think ye’ll hae him doun on
spoon meat an’ gruel an’ sic like fripperies a’ his days! That’s aye
the trouble wi’ the wimmin. They want to master ye! If ye are weel,
they drive ye! An’ if ye are ill, they own ye! Na,--na,--lay the
cloth,--an’ we’ll hear him tell his name an’ business.”
This suggestion placed Laroche upon his guard, but being of a quick
and keen imagination and having a good sense of verisimilitude, he had
his account of himself ready long before he was called upon to render
it. In fact Jock Lesly was graciously disposed to be autobiographical
himself, and in the course of his prelection was explained the unusual
presence of a white woman in these regions at present; for the Scotch
or English traders did not risk their families here, but left them
far away in the safe precincts of the small white settlements or the
coast towns. His daughter, Jock Lesly said, had heard,--and who could
not hear anything “in sic a wild, ambiguous country” (to use his own
expression), “where the news is carried by wild Injuns, wha lie, it
seems, for the sheer purpose of provin’ themsel’s the children o’ the
deil, wha is the father o’ lies an’ liars,--an’ a monstrous progeny
he hae, to be sure!--a-weel, the lassie heard that her father--an’
that’s mysel’ an’ not the deil--had been ta’en doun wi’ the smallpox,
an’ the bairn was worrited out o’ her life, mair especially as sae
mony people--thae wild Injuns in particular--were deein’ wi’ the
distemper, havin’ nae proper sense how it suld be treated. An’ sae
the lassie started out for Ioco Town,--not that I hae forgiven
Lilias for puttin’ hersel’ in sic a danger, forbye makin’ a fule
o’ me, as weel as of Callum MacIlvesty also,--though _that’s_
a smaller matter. A-weel--Callum heard o’ her intention an’ hired
a wheen o’ young packmen in Charlestoun--they being mostly idle at
this season,--_he_ ca’s ’em ‘gillies,’--an’ started out with
her, havin’ leave o’ absence to veesit his ’Merican relations, Callum
bein’ a far awa’ cousin,--my mither was sibb to his mither,--an’ he
overtook Lilias as she was about to come alane frae Charlestoun wi’
the under-trader an’ a packman or twa, an’ a lot o’ dour red deils of
Injuns that could hae scalpit the haill party, gin the mind had ta’en
them. An’ I as hearty an’ thrivin’ as e’er I was in a’ my life!”
He paused to emphasize the incongruity.
“But, lad,” resumed the joyous host, “a’ the bairn’s preparations for
the sick that she fetched wi’ her on the pack-horse were na wasted at
last,--for the Jeemes’s powder an’ the pills an’ the lotions an’ a’
thae dinged things she meant for me hae a’ gane into your inside, man,
an’ the sheets an’ the curtains an’ sic-like were nae sooner unpacked
than we clappit ye intill ’em!”
“An’ now will ye no tak a dish o’ your ain chocolate?” said Lilias,
with a smile curving her red lips, “that we fetched a’ the way frae
Charlestoun for ye, expressly, Mr.--”
Her father remarked her hesitation.
“Aye,” he exclaimed, with his mouth full of bread and meat. “Gie us
your name, sir,--Maister--what?”
“Wilson,--Thomas Wilson,” replied Laroche, relying on the perfection
of his English. But albeit an excellent linguist, he rejoiced in the
discovery of their nationality as an additional pledge of safety,
realizing that his English would better pass muster since they
themselves spoke the language so ill.
“A proper name,--Tam Wilson,--I hae known a score of ’em,” said
Jock Lesly, setting down the glass in which, following the old
fashion, he drank something far stronger for breakfast than tea. He
interpolated at this crisis a remonstrance with his daughter against
the chocolate as a foreign kickshaw, protesting it “ower flimsy for a
gude British stamach;” but the foreigner was secretly truly grateful
for her persistence, for with the rising yet squeamish appetite of a
convalescent, he doubted his capacity, even in the interests of his
disguise, to forego the chocolate in favor of the ale and brandy with
which the two Scotchmen moistened the meal.
“An’ whaur do ye hail frae?” Jock Lesly asked.
The question was sufficiently difficult of reply. Louisiana or the
Illinois, in the French occupation, was obviously out of the question.
Yet should the guest say Georgia or South Carolina, he might be exposed
to conversation touching localities familiar to them which he did not
know: people--citizens, as well as officials--with whom he must needs
seem acquainted as were they; the names of ships or rivers or towns,
all necessarily household words to one of the more southern provinces,
yet of which he was densely ignorant.
“Virginia,” he said at a venture, “about Williamsburg.”
To his consternation Jock Lesly laid down his knife and fork, and he
knew instinctively it was no slight matter that could check their
activity. But for the fictitious glow that the hot chocolate had set up
in his veins he might have succumbed to a rigor that had no relation to
the vicissitudes of his disease.
“Now I hope ye are nane o’ thae Firginians[7] that latterly hae been
tampering wi’ our Injuns, an’ invitin’ ’em to come for their goods
to Firginia, an’ seekin’ to coup our trade out o’ our ain hands. Hae
ye seen Governor Bull’s letter--Lieutenant-Governor Bull o’ South
Carolina--Governor Bull’s ain letter to the governor o’ Firginia, man?”
It was well for Laroche that his cadaverous aspect, as he lay in bed,
propped by pillows into a half sitting posture, his face almost as
ghastly white as the voluminous folds of the night-rail--the scarlet
flannel nightcap, with its gay and flaunting tassel accentuating his
pallor--was ascribed altogether to the effects of illness. Much of
it was doubtless due to his perturbation of mind and the conscious
jeopardy of his position, although he managed to hold with a steady
hand the cup containing his chocolate and to maintain a quiet,
interrogative gaze as his eyes met the Scotchman’s eager blue orbs, and
he replied succinctly, but definitely, in the negative.
“A-weel, man,” said Jock Lesly, the importance of the subject
precluding the resumption of his knife and fork, “Governor Bull did
set forth and make known unto his Excellency of Firginia that we of
the king’s province o’ South Carolina had suffered much in the auld
Proprietary days with thae bloody loons o’ Injuns, an’ had warked
wi’ ’em an’ wrastled sair wi’ ’em, an’ had made unco gude friends
wi’ several strong tribes on our borders,--Creeks, Chickasaws, an’
mair especially the Cherokees, till this late war,--all through the
privileeges o’ the trade we had wi’ them an’ the restrictions an’
facilities of the licensed traders the government establishes an’
mainteens amang them, to furnish them wi’ a’ their needcessities, an’
powder an’ lead--a deal mair than is gude for them! An’ if Firginia
draws aff this trade frae these distant tribes, for the sake o’ the bit
profit to be had frae it, Georgia an’ South Carolina hae nae means o’
keepin’ thae blackguards o’ Injuns in order close on our settlements,
whilk will be left to their mercies. Thae provinces would like be
destroyed.”
He paused with earnest, convincing eyes, while the guest held his cup
motionless and listened.
“Cain in the old days jaloosed his brother an’ for rivalry killed him,
but I’se warrant even he wad na hae sold him fur a shillin’. It’s later
times hae taught us better--or waur!”
“My dear sir,” exclaimed Tam Wilson, “you may rest assured that I am
seeking no Indian trade for Virginia.”
Jock Lesly drew a long breath of relief.
“A-weel,” he said, easily placated, “his Excellency of Firginia
answered and promised to let the Injun trade be as it was built. He had
na seen the matter in sic a serious light, he said. No man could speak
fairer. But I thought--I dooted--leastwise--hegh, man, what errand did
bring you then to Great Tellico?”
“A matter of business,” said the French officer quickly. “Some of the
Cherokees sold a lot of horses to our neighborhood near a year ago, and
this spring most of them disappeared. It is said always that horses
bred in the Indian country go back yearly to their old grass.”
Jock Lesly nodded his head in confirmation, his mouth again full, knife
and fork plying.
“Is it true?--I doubted it. But I came with some neighbors as far as
Tellico. I fell ill at Tellico,--and I remember no more.”
“They went off and left you!” exclaimed the young Highlander, with a
touch of indignation.
“Wow, man,--what fearsome looking worriecows be thae
medicine-men,--thae cheerataghe! But Moy Toy was kind and helpful,
though fine he liked to get rid of ye! That was what made me jaloose
that mebbe you were meddlin’ wi’ the trade.” Lesly recurred to the
subject.
“How do thae Injuns come by sic prodigious fine horses?” demanded
Callum MacIlvesty, effecting a diversion with more delicate tact than
might have been anticipated from his lowly station and coarse garb as
a common soldier. Laroche began to understand that the Highlander,
despite his position and rude dialect, was of a higher social grade
in his own country than these compatriots of his, and that their “far
awa” connection with his family was a source of pride to them, albeit
the relation of wooer and wooed had compassed a certain reversal of the
natural order of precedence. It occurred to his quick mind immediately
that one of the many individual disasters involved in the national
calamities of the Scotch rebellions of 1715 and 1745 was represented
in the impoverishment and exile of this scion of a family of degree,
perhaps even of high birth, for the young man used their vernacular
evidently by reason of association and lack of education rather than
station. He had sundry unmistakable marks of a highly bred gentleman,
despite his evident poverty. Laroche knew that certain such, serving
as soldiers of fortune, held commissions in the foreign armies of
Europe, while a few others, more destitute of money and influence,
could be found as “private men” in those Highland regiments recruited
by the British government for service in America against the French and
Indians, and officered in several instances, strangely enough, by men
who had recently themselves been arrayed in arms against the dynasty
they now supported.
“Their horses come frae the Spanish barbs that De Soty an’ his men left
amang them--an’ I wuss we had naething waur frae the dooms meddlin’
Spanish than their cattle. Lord, sir, the lies they tell the puir
Injuns!--that the British are determinate to sweep them aff the face o’
the warld!”
“The Spaniards are na sae kittle as the French,” said Callum MacIlvesty.
“The French,” rejoined Jock Lesly, bringing his clenched fist down on
the table,--“the French are the deevil! Did ye notice, lad, how mony o’
the Cherokees can speak a little French,--nae mair than a ‘polly voo’
or sic like,--but sae mony!”
Laroche was conscious and out of countenance. So weak he was he could
ill resist the strain of anxiety. “I did not notice--I was there at
Tellico so short a time--what am I saying?--I do not know how long I
was there nor how you happened to find me!” But he could not divert his
host from the subject.
“As sure as you are an unsanctified sinner thae gabbling, blackguard
French bodies hae been again meddlin’ wi’ the Cherokees an’ their
trade,” declared Lesly solemnly. “Moy Toy was too polite by
half,--onything to be rid o’ me,--dry-scratchin’ the weans that kilt my
sheep till their screechings wad hae melted a heart o’ stane! An’ when
I begged him to let me ha’ the loan o’ ye for a while, he happed ye in
a’ his fine furs. I had to be gey carefu’ in returnin’ them a’.”
So they were within reach of Moy Toy and the town of Great Tellico
by an hour’s travel, perhaps, or two. Laroche felt his heart sink.
He had not counted on this possibility nor on the capacity of the
Indians to keep his secret. Nay, so capricious was the temper of the
Cherokees that he could not be sure of their will to conceal the fact
of his nationality and his connection with the Franco-Choctaw embassy.
Even his own mission, the confidential and private assurances of
the French government which he had conveyed to Great Tellico, might
now be maliciously divulged as a means of currying favor with the
British,--since the utility of the promises he had made seemed a thing
of the past and the prospect which they had presented had faded like
a mirage into thin air. His face, with these thoughts in his mind,
showed so sharp a change that Lilias, alarmed, rose with a protest.
Even Jock Lesly permitted himself to be convinced that the session of
breakfast should not be unduly prolonged, and Callum MacIlvesty shook
up the pillows and drew the curtains, and the Frenchman sank down in
silence--not to sleep, he stipulated within himself, but to ponder, to
devise, to plot.
He slept unaware, unadvisedly, peacefully as a three years’ child. And
he dreamed placidly and in satisfaction. Moy Toy came and drew the
curtains, he thought, and looked at him with keen and friendly eyes,
and with a significant finger on his lips. When he woke at length, so
far had the bodily man got the better of the intellectual entity which
led together a dual existence that he felt scant care for aught,--his
detention, the French interest, Moy Toy’s possible disclosures,--if
but he had a sup of that mutton broth, the enticing odors of which
permeated the whole house. As he himself, with his thin hand, pulled
aside the curtain that he might call to Callum MacIlvesty to beseech
a share in that delectable burden of the family board, he burnt his
wasted fingers against the hot bowl which Lilias was in the act of
bringing to the bedside, and he hardly could wait to join in the laugh
which the two Scotchmen set up in triumph on the recovery of his
appetite.
If it could make them happy to see another man eat, he ministered
lavishly to their felicity in the days that ensued.
At first he was unsteady enough on his feet when he was permitted to
quit the haven of the bed. He could only make short voyages, as it
were, from one chair to another, catching at everything that came in
his way for support. But although of no great strength or stature he
was of a good, compact physique, and once “on the mend,” as Jock Lesly
expressed it, he progressed rapidly. He developed to his surprise a
sort of luxurious inertia; he would fall asleep after dinner on the
shady porch, his head against the doorpost. Naught in Ioco Town was so
lazy save an old collie sleeping at his feet in the sun. His inaction
extended to his mental processes,--he revolted from thought. He would
not address himself to consider his plight, his jeopardy, the future of
his mission. In fact all his faculties were instinctively quiescent,
facilitating recovery. He felt even that he had joyfully dispensed
with his old troublous identity. As Tam Wilson he was a new man, with
no plans, no past, no obligations, no imperative military duty. The
pioneer garb of buckskin, with its many fringes and leather belt and
coonskin cap, that he was constrained to wear aided his release from
himself. It was like being in some new world, this freedom of the ways
of the household, this transition into the identity of a man who had no
past, no secrets, no duties, no future. A joyous, kindly fellow he was,
too, and all who looked on him liked him.
“This is what I should have been, uninfluenced, unhindered; Tam Wilson
is really I,--unhampered by circumstance,” he said to himself.
His haunts were chiefly about the dwelling, which was situated near
the trading-house and in the very centre of the Indian town. The
traders--of whom there had been but very few in the whole region, each
always in great isolation, none of whom had now returned except Jock
Lesly--were allowed by the Indian municipal authorities, so to speak,
the “second men,” the choice of erecting dwellings at a little distance
from the towns or in their midst, if this were deemed to conduce to
the greater safety of the white inmates of the house, thus under the
immediate protection of the headmen of the village, for whose behoof
the trader was licensed. The Indians being often at war with other
tribes, especially the northern savages, this method of hovering
under the wing of the Cherokee strength, both civil and martial,
commended itself to the prudence of the trading folk. But the aspect
of the little Scotch home, with all its suggestions of exile, devoid
of a loophole within or a palisade outside, with no defense save the
uncertain faith of the red savages who swarmed through the surrounding
village, was pathetic in its isolation, its unique dissimilarity, its
effect of captivity.
A vine, only a trumpet vine, hung luxuriant over the eaves and sent
tendrils astir above the lintels of doors and windows. Shining pans
were suspended to take the air and the sun against the posts of the
porch. Piggins, crocks--blue, brown, and yellow--ranged themselves
in vaunting cleanliness on a window shelf outside the sill. Motherly
hens pecked about the steps, and a coop of slats, built in the form of
a peak, restrained the activities of one who might have led too far
a brood of the newly hatched, mere balls of fluffy brown and yellow
down, endowed with motion, that flickered in and out of the crevices.
Often in her gray-green dress the golden haired Lilias sat here at her
homely flax wheel, while in the “beloved square” a company of braves
were marshaling for a northern expedition against the Shawnees, singing
their war-songs, painted for the war-path, the fullest expression of
the terrible upon which the eye might rest. Sometimes there would be
races or exhibitions of strength in the game of “ball play,” when
hundreds would assemble from other towns to witness these diversions.
The visitors, lured by the report of something uncommon at the trader’s
dwelling, would come after the more exciting events of the day and
stand outside and gaze upon her with insatiable curiosity. They would
watch the revolutions of the whirling wheel and the flying thread.
Her deft white hand, her unfamiliar, smiling face, her strange, golden
hair were all points of interest. They would listen to the whir of the
spinning and the vague sound of her voice, as she hummed low a weird
old song which she often sang about a “gyre-carline” and her witchlike
doings of “lang syne.” The men expressed no surprise, it being a point
of honor with the Indians to have known all things always. They would
invariably turn away without a word or a sign. Not so the women! The
fashion of attire it was that served in an instant to denationalize
them. From silent amazement they passed to whispered comments as
they stood in buzzing groups; then to open questions; to shrill
exclamations; to an unmannerly yet kindly frenzy of inquisitiveness.
Sometimes a girl would step gingerly forward, touch the slipper and
the stocking on the slender foot,--then fall back with a hysterical
twitter of mingled delight and ridicule. The vagaries of the mode, as
it was understood in Charlestown, the fashion of the white kerchief
about the shoulders of Lilias, the pleated folds of her dress, were of
endless interest to the young Cherokee coquettes, and kept them grouped
long about the porch, and Lilias’s pink and white dimples continually
playing in her cheek.
Somehow this curiosity concerning her was displeasing to Laroche.
He wished Lilias were at home in Carolina. This was no place for
the rooftree and the ingleside. He always distrusted the savages’
protestations of peace and professions of friendship. He was happier
when they were all gone and the little spinning wheel with its tuft of
flax stood close by the window in the “spence,” as the Scotch household
called the living-room. There the puncheon benches and the “creepies,”
as the stools of blocks of wood were dignified, had a gossiping way
of clustering around the hearth of flagstones, where an ember was
always kept alive in the great chimney place, being renewed night and
morning, as a fire was deemed salutary for the invalid. Its glamour
held gay Tam Wilson loitering there as long as the little wheel whirled
and the green shadows of the newly leaved trees without flickered
across the sunshine of her hair. Sometimes her knitting needles clicked
and shimmered in the firelight. Sometimes she compounded and stirred
with a long spoon and a burning red cheek the contents of saucepans
for his behoof, then laughed with frolicsome scoffings at the celerity
with which he disposed of them. He and the two Scotchmen exchanged
experiences and argued on political or religious themes, and throughout
Tam Wilson supported his character with a verisimilitude that would
have won him credit in the histrionic profession, and like the others
took in good part the trenchant remarks having a personal application
with which she saw fit to comment. He fell into the habit of holding
the skeins of yarn while she wound the thread for her knitting. So
adroit and persistent was he in thrusting himself forward for this duty
that he almost supplanted the young Highlander whose coveted boon it
had been. Indeed Callum MacIlvesty openly sulked, taking no blame that
he was the slower or the more inexpert swain of the two in the proffer
of assistance. And so far had the identity of Tam Wilson submerged that
of the diplomat, the soldier, the ambassador, that he felt a great and
irrelevant joy in the sight of the young Highlander, thrown back on
the opposite settle, each arm extended at full length along its back,
his eyes fixed dully, blankly, on the rafters, that he might meet
no glance of Lilias to win him from his just displeasure, his long,
muscular legs stretched out to the fire, his plaid, his sporran, his
belt, his kilt,--mentally designated “ses jupons” by Laroche,--all
in unpicturesque and careless disarray. So painful to Callum was the
spectacle of the dual industry that one day, unable to endure it
longer, he sprang up to leave the house, encountering Jock Lesly at the
door, where his horse stood saddled.
“Are ye gaen aff enow?” he interrogated Callum. “I am na willin’ to
leave the house wi’ Lilias.”
“Oh, Tam is there,” replied Callum impatiently. “An’ I am na goin’
further than the spring,”--which was scarcely ten steps from the door.
“Sae lang as there’s twa men about,” said her father, and he rode off
on his errand.
But Lilias had overheard Callum’s first phrase and no more, and Tam
Wilson’s quick ears were hardly less alert. Her face turned crimson.
The young Scotchman had won much sincere gratitude and a very tender
appreciation of his interest in her by his instant expedition to join
her in her journey hither to her father’s rescue from the smallpox,
a disease then so dreaded, his adequate, thoughtful measures for her
safety and protection, and yet the swift forwarding of the succor she
brought. Odd that a thoughtless phrase could work such wreck! It was
but a fancy, a freak that had taken him, she said to herself. She had
thought too much of it, rated its significance too high. As for the
distance, the danger, the fatigue--were the men not all and always
louping hither and thither through this wild country, like the ranting,
gangrel chiels they were, where five hundred miles seemed a less
journey to them than fifty at hame in the gude po’ shay. He came wi’
her because he maun aye be ganging--and now he was content to commend
her to the protection o’ Tam Wilson. She wad na gainsay him. She was
not seeking Callum MacIlvesty or his help, good sooth! Tam Wilson was a
welcome substitute for his presence and guard.
She held her head high and proud on her delicate, white neck. Her eyes,
half cast down on the skeins as she disentangled the thread, glowed
and flashed, and Tam Wilson, the personification of demure mischief,
gazed discerningly at close quarters at them. Her sensitiveness was the
keener for the fact that Callum on his father’s side, the MacIlvestys,
was kin to “gret folk,” and the relationship of Jock Lesly and his
daughter to the young Highlander’s mother was so distant as to baffle
any ordinary computation, despite their pride in the fact and its
frequent mention. At that time in the colonies women were few and much
in the ascendant, and Lilias Lesly felt all the importance of her
position and the strength of her power to make Callum rue the slight if
he really cared aught for her, and to show him her own indifference if
he cared naught.
Tam Wilson, in his idleness, his enforced inactivity, had developed a
domestic proclivity. He was seldom out of the house, and as the days
wore on the desire to go vanished. He was promoted to many domestic
duties. He was permitted to stem the wild strawberries that graced the
evening meal, and felt a stealthy joy to be berated that he should be
so slow, and to be accused of taking toll of the fruit too heartily to
solace his labor. It was he who went back and forth in pride to the
spring with the pail, who was set to guard the bannocks that they did
not burn, and when all was done who lounged on the settle and idly
watched her smilingly lay the cloth that he might dine. It was he who
beguiled the tedium of the sudden storms in the spring evenings when
the clouds shut out the stars and the door shut out the mists and
the roof rang with the marshaling of the hosts of the rain and the
wind sang like a trump. Then Tam Wilson would stir the fire and tell
wonderful stories and sing songs--military songs, gay clashes of the
cannikin, and stories of the camp and the field, showing a knowledge
so intimate as to cause the lowering Highlander to ask suddenly one
night,--
“Ye hae seen service, sir?”
“Aye, sir,” answered Tam Wilson, instantly on his guard. “Foreign
service, sir, some years ago. I was at Hastenbeck in ’57, sir, fighting
with the Duke of Cumberland.”
Which was true, but as one of the victorious French, and not, as the
phrase implied, among the defeated allied forces of the famous English
commander.
“And two years later,” Tam Wilson continued with less animation, “I was
at the battle of Minden. I have participated in several campaigns.”
Having thus unwittingly enhanced his rival’s consequence, the young
Highlander asked no more, but fell back to lower savagely and bite his
lips, as perhaps an outward figure of how he was eating his own heart
within.
But it was the glamour of the clear vernal moon that bewitched
the unstable Tam Wilson, himself with as many phases. He would
fall suddenly silent, as under a spell, when its rays aslant, just
discerned, would drop down through the window from the west, where it
hung little more than a crescent in a pink haze, and draw the outline
of a leaf of a chestnut oak, an acorn half developed, and a bare twig
upon the rugged puncheon floor of the spence. The girl’s fair face
would be vague, ethereal; her hair dimly a-glimmer; her white homespun
dress of linen a poetic suggestion in the gloom; her rich voice full
of undreamed-of vibrations that he could study with a quickened
perception lacking in the bold light of day. The ember faded to ashes;
the candles, with the canny Scotch thrift, were not lighted, since the
moon lent a torch; the sense of home, of simple, domestic habitudes,
was in abeyance with the eclipse of the visible exponents. With its
sights and sounds annulled, the abstract interpretations prevailed. The
mind rose to loftier conceits. One felt the forces of life--not merely
living; the endowment of absolute entity--not sheer individuality, with
its limitations, its crippled past, its doubtful, hampered, anxious
future. The wind stirred the foliage without and reminded one of the
wilderness, the vastness of the world that was made for man; the spring
floods of the Tennessee River lifted a voice into the air and thundered
primeval truths.
Through this window they could see the mountains--far, near, always in
massive majesty. Now a pearly, opalescent mist would glimmer among the
domes with the witchery of the moon, and again after it had sunk the
skies would be clear and densely instarred. Once a planet, so brilliant
as to annul all lesser glories, showed through a great chasm, whose
rugged, craggy slopes seemed illuminated in the surrounding gloom with
a weird, unaccustomed luster, so different from the familiar light
of the moon was the quality of the radiance shed by a star alone.
Poetry was in the night--no lyric, no vague, murmurous rune, but with
a splendid majesty of rhythm, with an epic grandeur and a meaning of
awe that might be felt by the pulses of the heart and suggested to the
brain--baffling language, never to be set forth in the paltry medium of
mere words.
In differing degrees they all felt its influence, perhaps. Jock Lesly,
smoking his pipe with an assiduity which he had learned from the
Indians, talked, it is true, but casually, fragmentarily; and Callum
heeded enough to respond in kind, with sedulous care for the respect
he always maintained toward his host and far awa’ kinsman, but often
the matter and manner of his replies showed that thought and heart were
not in them. For the others they were silent, save now and again at
long intervals a murmur of assent or negation,--a dangerous silence,
instinct with a meaning no words might adequately interpret. As one
night succeeded another and the moon waxed to fuller splendors and all
the woods without were pervaded with that magic sheen which showed
such silvery vistas in the dark umbrageous forest, which idealized the
aboriginal architecture of Ioco, which made the feathered head and
straight form of an Indian passing now and again adown the bosky ways
of the woodland town so meet, so apt an incident of the picture, even
the Europeans felt an irking in walls and restraint and longed for the
freer air, a moonlight stroll, to stand unbonneted beneath the zenith.
“Eh--the wearying wa’s!” exclaimed Lilias one evening, her elbow on the
sill of the window and the moonlight in her upturned eyes, with all the
wistfulness of a prisoner in their sweet longing. “How thae flowers
scent the air!”
“Whist--whist--bairn; oh fie! Ye maun bide here,” said her father in
gentle reproof. “The moon will last our time. They’ll hae the moon yet
in the lift at Charlestoun, an’ gowans to pu’, I’se warrant, by the
time we get there.”
What was this pang in Tam Wilson’s unmannerly heart! He dared not,
even in his most remote consciousness, attribute its pain to the
French officer, the Sieur de Laroche. And even as the Virginia drover
and herdsman he affected to be, did he expect Jock Lesly to keep his
daughter here indefinitely? He was almost stunned by the discovery
of the sentimental anguish occasioned him by the mere idea of her
withdrawal from his sight. He wondered now, however, since his mind was
drawn to the subject, that as the object of her wild-goose chase--her
father’s supposed illness--was removed she had not already returned.
So vital an interest he felt that he was moved to steady his voice,
which--oh, how preposterously--trembled in the first words, to ask of
her father a definite question concerning her departure, albeit his
inquisitiveness in his host’s family affairs ill accorded with his
position as a guest laden with many favors. And in fact the query gave
rise to some embarrassment.
“The lassie might hae gane back at once,” Jock Lesly said,
“but”--taking his pipe out of his mouth and glancing cautiously over
his shoulder at the dusky room, still in the brown shadow, although
the light of the moon lay in a broad silver square on the floor, so
high had it climbed into the sky--“but”--evidently he hardly dared
to put his prudence into words; only fragmentarily he explained that
Callum and he had agreed that it would be injudicious to suggest the
idea of fear or flight by leaving Ioco earlier than was the custom
every spring. The Indians--“thae dour deevils”--so delighted in the
terror they inspired that they could scarcely refrain from the exercise
of its power. The little guard could be easily taken, overcome; and
mischievous malice, originating perhaps with the mere intention of
giving them a fright, might with the realization culminate in a
massacre. The journey was fraught with much peril at best. The Indians
always requited every grudge with the utmost rigor, and certainly to
pass by those blackened charred skeletons of towns in the ashes of
Grant’s fires, still tenantless for the lack of hands to rebuild them,
would be a pertinent reminder. The bones of cattle and horses were
bleaching along the watercourses. Other and human bones were even yet
being slowly gathered from the débris of the battlefields, or on the
site of remote hand-to-hand conflicts, and identified and conveyed to
the town of their nativity, till one was forever in danger of stumbling
on communities in all the gloom of funeral ceremonies when no death was
recent--oh, there were grudges on every hand to claim requital, and
the Cherokees never considered the identity of the individual who had
wrought disaster.
Whereas, Jock Lesly reasoned, if Lilias remained here until the usual
time of his semiannual pilgrimage to Charlestown, with all his force
of packmen and pack-horses, laden with buckskins for the exchange of
British goods, any demonstration on the pack-train would be associated
with injury to the trade, the interests of which the Cherokees were
always solicitous to conserve; hence it was hardly to be anticipated.
The murder of an unofficial party, so to speak, would create scant
stir; but an assault upon the pack-train of a licensed trader in his
semiannual passage through the country would paralyze the trade for
years to come, and necessitate investigation and retribution at the
hands of the government.
And this result, the paralysis of the trade and the disaffection of
the Cherokees, was precisely what that scheming Laroche had come to
the town of Great Tellico on the Tennessee River in the earnest hope
of compassing for the French interest. Had he been as true to it as
he was accounted, he said to himself, he might have found means to
promote this emprise of pursuit and capture and massacre. But it was
with the sentiments that properly appertained to Tam Wilson that he
perceived the wisdom and applauded the prudence of the proposed course.
He resented that Callum MacIlvesty should have aught of weight in these
councils, and began to grudge him, with all a lover’s niggardliness,
the poor boon of having been her escort hither, and the torment of
anxiety Callum must have experienced in his prayerful care in planning
for her safety, and his generous courage, prepared to spill the last
drop of his blood in her defense.
“That’s why we no keep the door open after dark,” Callum briskly
explained. “The Injuns are used to seeing the door closed in winter,
an’ they’ll no wonder we hae only the window open now, an’ dinna gae
abroad.”
“An’ that’s why lassie Lilias hings here at the window sill, as wishfu’
as ony hempie ahint the bars at a tolbooth,” her father said, reaching
out his hand and passing it over the sheen of her golden hair. “I’m
thinking, Callum lad, its thae lint-white locks--the bairn’s tow
head--that aye gars the Injuns stare. Mind how auld Moy Toy stretched
his big black een?”
“Moy Toy?” said Laroche, with a sudden wrench at his heart. He felt as
one might, long ago sold to the devil, at the abrupt reappearance of
the fiend. “When was he here?”
“When ye were ailin’, lad. And now I come to think of it, the devil’s
no sae black as he’s painted, an’ forbye, no sae red.”
He chuckled as he placed the long stem of his pipe in his mouth and
talked on languidly as he drew at it. “The creatur seemed kindly, an’
wearyin’ to see you.”
Tam Wilson could have fallen from the settle.
“An’ when we wad na let him at ye on no account to speak till ye, he
begged he might hae ae look at ye, an’ when he drew the bed curtains
and he had just a gliff, he was satisfied, an’ went awa cannily enough.”
So it was no vision that Laroche had remembered amidst the disjointed
phantasmagoria of his delirium. In terrible reality this red savage,
with whom he shared the hidden, subtle scheme of the French government
against the Carolina colonies and trading interests, had come to his
bedside and sought through the mists of his wandering perceptions to
sign to him, to promise silence, to counsel secrecy. More distinct than
aught else of the images of his fevered brain had been the presentment
of that feathered head, that many-lined, keen-featured face, the
white curtain in the firm grasp, the intent, warning eye, the finger,
mysterious, menacing, laid upon the long, flat, compressed lips. More
distinct--since it was real.
Alack! of what avail the gay snatches of a soldier’s song; the tales of
the tented field; the kind, sweet, homely present of this simple cotter
life; the uplifting awe of nature that must needs follow that fine
sweeping of the horizon line of mountain crest against the blue; the
breath of the aromatic woodland; the mystery, the magic of the moon;
the sheen of the girl’s golden hair--Laroche could not escape his doom.
The past laid imperative hands upon the future. The reminder of Moy Toy
left him the realization that there was no choice. Moy Toy had come--he
would come again, bringing cogent influences of the Franco-Cherokee
scheme, the political promises, the actuality of identity, and all a
subordinate’s thraldom to the will of an official superior.
V
MOY TOY came indeed the next day and laden thus. In fact it was he who
had first thought of the design of falling on the trader’s pack-train
on their return trip to Charlestown and cutting them all off. Thus,
he argued, the country would be rid at one blow of the trade,--for
the others, here, there, everywhere, would never return,--and it was
the trade, the paltry bauble, that had bought the Cherokees, scot and
lot, alienated them from their own best interest, threatened them with
vassalage to the British, and with national annihilation. The vengeance
of the Carolina authorities would scarcely discriminate, scarcely even
seek out so elusive a prey as the immediate offenders; frantic and
furious it would alight like a bolt from heaven on whatever lay within
its orbit. Thus it would serve to unite the upper Cherokees, the Ottare
district, and the Ayrate towns in their own defense--the doubting
must needs be steadfast, the weak-hearted confident and strong, the
politic might scheme only from ambush, and Atta-Kulla-Kulla postpone
his strategic talks of statecraft till the council once more should
have time to heed his plotting and counterplotting. Then the way of the
French would be open. Then might its skilled officer bring the great
guns and build the forts and drive forever from the Cherokee borders
this perfidious foe who sought to enslave a free people by goods and
rum, at ruinous great prices and tolls of trade.
Despite Laroche’s experience of the inconsistencies and contradictory
traits of the Indian character, this precipitancy surprised him.
He began to see that the patience with which the savages were
credited, their long waiting and scheming for revenge, the illimitable
distances they traversed in war, the innumerable shifts and devices
they practiced, of almost inconceivable ingenuity, to attain their
object--all were exerted only when it lay beyond their immediate reach.
Once within the possibilities, and the leap to seize upon it was like
a panther’s, as swift, as bloodthirsty, and as unreckoning. For the
Indians’ policy of doubting and debating was only when impotence held
their revenge in bounds. Thus it was that their hasty, unguarded,
impulsive seizing upon an opportunity of massacre and robbery so often
recoiled upon the body politic, which suffered as a whole in the
vengeance of the colony, the withdrawal of the trade, and the cutting
off of supplies and ammunition, for the murderous enterprise of some
small band. More than once Moy Toy himself, both earlier and later,
headed a party of these independent warriors, for whose deeds the
Cherokee nation at large paid the reckoning.
It was well that Laroche had the futility of such raids in mind to
point the moral of the value of delay, of preparation, of acting with
due caution for the attaining of permanent effect. Press the British
back for a moment--that full-armed, embittered, more powerful still,
they might again overrun the Cherokee country! And thus bring to naught
the plans of the great French father to aid and abet the throwing off
of this heavy yoke--all these plans as yet in abeyance,--not a cargo of
ammunition _en route_.
“I care naught for the desertion of the base Mingo Push-koosh; it is to
me but the freak of a peevish child, as his very name implies,” Laroche
declared. “The Choctaws are ever loyal to the French; the Muscogees,
and their subordinate tribes, all are in amity, all preparing for the
great decisive blow, the simultaneous attack that shall some day drive
the English colonists east and south into the Atlantic ocean and the
Mexico gulf. But the moment must be propitious--the occasion ripe.
Time, Moy Toy, time is the great warrior. Time always wins the long
fight.”
He had walked out with the Indian, who had declined Jock Lesly’s
invitation to light his pipe at the hearth in the spence, this being
unsanctified fire, kindled by no cheerataghe, and had repaired to the
fire always alight in the centre of the “beloved square,” annually
kindled by the men of the divine fire, distributed amongst the
dwellings, and never suffered to die out till the last day of the
old year. The necessity had occurred to neither of the two men as a
subterfuge, but both eagerly embraced the opportunity that they might
speak apart--Moy Toy to communicate his scheme, and Laroche to contend
with it.
The spot was solitary at the moment. Rain was threatening; a great
slate-tinted cloud hung above the darkly green mountains in tantalizing
suspension, seeming weighted and surcharged with water above the
drought-smitten cornfields. Day after day they waved with the delicate,
newly sprouting blades, rustling and lisping in the capricious
breaths of the wind, but showing a far-spread yellow tint beneath
murky, purple glooms. Day after day the impending storm passed; the
lightning that had rent the heavens with a stroke like a flashing
blade, and a thunderous crash as of the rivings of a world asunder,
subsided to an aimless flicker with a vague and distant rumble. The
purple-black clouds of weighted portent would grow of lilac hue, and
presently one might see the tint of the blue sky through the fleecy
dispersal of their folds. The wind rushed down from the mountains;
the sun shone out; the cornfields lay parched and sere; and the heart
of a farmer of that day and generation differed in nowise from one of
the present, albeit more than a century apart in time and of an alien
race. Fortunately the laws now are kinder, and the weather prophets
are fended from the wrath of him who plants and does not gather, who
sows and does not reap, because of the rain that is vainly promised
and the thunderhead that deludes and deceives. The cheerataghe of Ioco
Town were playing in very hard luck. The luring of that particular
storm down upon these fertile fields along the Tennessee River devolved
immediately upon them, and although the tribesmen were assured that
the failure was to be attributed to the wickedness of their own hearts
and their frequent misdoings, a farmer at odds with the weather is the
least amiable of the brute creation, and there was an unmistakable
tendency to retort the fault upon the lack of skill of the cheerataghe.
Moy Toy cast a glance of indifferent interest at the group at the
further side of the square (recent rains had fallen at Tellico,
long, soft, satisfying--what is now known as a “season”), where
the cheerataghe of Ioco were plying their invocations and spells,
surrounded by a number of the agricultural sufferers and several of
the second men; their plumed heads and scantily covered, copper-tinted
bodies were all distinct in the weird, dun light under the purple
cloud, and against the white and gray fleckings of the tortuous river,
and the pallid expanse of the wilting corn. No one was alert to listen
to what might pass between Moy Toy and the foreign white man. What
would a drought-harassed farmer of that region to-day care for issues
of diplomacy if he fancied he had a chance of working a charm on the
weather!
“Will there be enough of the powder?” Moy Toy asked tentatively. His
experience was limited, but he knew enough of the world to be aware of
the folly of exchanging a small certainty for a large possibility--a
small massacre for a large war of doubtful outcome.
“Powder!” exclaimed the soldier with a scornful laugh. “I can teach
you to make powder! The country is full of the materials for its
manufacture.”
With the keen observation of the scientist and the alertness of a
schemer to turn every incident to account, he had taken note in his
short stay of the nitrous caves of the country, of its resources for
sulphur, of the infinite growths of dogwood and of willows along the
streams to furnish the requisite grade of charcoal. In later wars these
yielded their benefits to discerning labor, but even so early Laroche
fully appreciated these opportunities and projected thus using them.
Moy Toy, standing on the opposite side of the sacred fire, gazed at him
for one moment in blank wonderment, the curiously wrought stone pipe in
his hand, slipping through his nerveless fingers, shattered unheeded
on one of the steatite rocks that supported the fire. And he--Moy Toy,
the fool, the madman, but for an accident, a mere trifle--would have
laid in ashes this fine brain with its curious workings, its many
shifts, its convolutions of knowledge that exceeded the wisdom of all
the men he had ever known from far or near,--all would now be a mere
cinder, the sport of the wind, all lost to the Cherokee nation and the
aggrandizement of the great chief, Moy Toy! With the recollection he
became anxiously apprehensive. That night--that night of woe, while the
slaughtered braves were laid in their hasty graves, and the prisoner
awaited their fair passage to a world beyond in a bitter suspense that
was to inaugurate and augment his destined tortures--would the memory
of those anguished hours, guarded on the summit of the high mound, move
this Frenchman to withhold aught of this vital, this all-important,
this intensely coveted knowledge from the Indian warriors? Moy Toy’s
mental attitude, wistful, repentant, propitiatory, was distinctly meek,
as intently listening he stared at Laroche, who was a trifle surprised
at his agitation.
“Being a warrior, a soldier, I have learned many things, Moy Toy, that
you would like to know, during my service as an officer of engineers
and artillery,--and that would be of help to you against the English.”
One could hardly say how many months of work had gone into the
fashioning and polishing of that pipe, a fine bit of carved stone, a
unique specimen of aboriginal art, shattered on the ground, but Moy
Toy’s fingers were unconscious that it had escaped them.
He essayed some anxious phrases of apology.
They hardly knew what they did that night--surely they were sorely
tried--an embassy received in peace and honor, and ending in a murder
of unsuspecting and generous hosts--he feared Laroche had been
inconsiderately treated, but prayed he would forgive the ignorance of
the poor Cherokees, and help them against their foe.
The subtle Frenchman now stared hard at the subtle Indian.
“Oh,” Laroche said at last, airily, yet still at a loss, “you did the
best you could, no doubt, in turning me over to the care of these white
people who treated my ills in a way to which I and they are accustomed.
No, no; although they are British the quarrel would have been had you
persisted in keeping me at Tellico.”
Moy Toy shut his mouth so suddenly that his tongue was in some sharp
danger from his teeth. Evidently by reason of his delirium Laroche had
forgotten the aggressions upon his liberty, the length and torment
of his captivity, the preparations for his torture and death in
satisfaction of the crimes of his Choctaw colleague. The happy fantasy!
The blessed fever!
“There is one boon I shall exact for the service I have already
rendered you,” Laroche continued, seriously, weightily. “It is my
pleasure to ask it, yet it is also your interest to grant it, and as a
pledge of the future. I jeopardized my interest and promotion, I braved
the wrath of Mingo Push-koosh, that a woman’s life--your sister’s
life--should not be placed in peril. Much evil came of this,--but
_I_ risked most.”
Moy Toy, gazing fixedly at him, thought he little knew how much he had
risked.
“And now,” continued Laroche, “I ask in return a safe conduct for
another woman--the daughter of the Scotch trader.”
He paused with some sudden impediment of speech, his eyes seeming
lighter, clearer than their wont, cast upward at the lowering storm
cloud.
“This British family have saved my life by their care, and I owe them
their lives in recompense. They must go in safety, but--I promise
you”--once more that sudden hiatus in his fluency--“they shall not
return.”
He was not as observant as usual, or he must have discerned some
extreme and secret joy beneath Moy Toy’s calm exterior. That unique and
quaint phenomenon of knowledge so delighted the crafty Indian!--that he
should hold the key of incidents of great import in the experience of
this man who was himself unconscious of them! And in the excess of his
relief that Laroche remembered naught of his cruel perils, averted by
a mere accident, the chief could have cried out in sheer, inarticulate
joy. But he said, quite simply, that Laroche was his best beloved
friend, whose injunctions should be obeyed, that he loved every hair on
his head, that he should never forget the rescue of his sister, which,
indeed, he felt he should have remembered earlier, for it was his
nephew who should be his heir and hold the sway of Great Tellico.
“The life of the trader’s daughter, her safety, and the safety of all
the trader’s household I demand for that service,” Laroche repeated
solemnly. “And as it is assured to them so will I requite you. I will
promise you then all the aid that mind and heart and hand can give you
hereafter. I swear it.”
Moy Toy renewed his protestations of friendship and reiterated his
apologies. The tone and tenor of his remarks implied acquiescence,
and Laroche felt no lack. But Moy Toy looked after him cynically as
he took his way back toward the dwelling of the trader, for the first
large drops of the impending storm were falling slowly through the air.
A breathless cry, like a gasp, went up from the rain enchanters at
the other side of the square; then ensued silence, tense, expectant,
painful. The farmer, poor sport of the skies, was aware that this
limited manifestation of the obedience of the powers of the air rescued
the reputation of the cheerataghe, since rain had fallen at their
bidding, yet did not save the crop, and, reduced to the position of
the only sufferer in the event, hung in desperate suspense upon the
developments of the next few moments.
The trading-house, with its door broadly aflare, giving a glimpse of
an orderly assortment of merchandise within, had on the roofless porch
or platform a group of the young packmen who had accompanied Callum
MacIlvesty from Charlestown. They were wearying for their return
thither, since so many restrictions had been laid on their conduct and
language, lest they give offense to the Indians and bring down reprisal
while they had in their keeping the precious charge of the young lady,
“little lassie Lilias,” as auld Jock loved to call her. This restraint
greatly irked them, for they were accustomed to giving and receiving
hard knocks, speaking their minds without fear or favor and with a
very rough edge to their tongues. One, fallen a trifle ill, declared
that he would be well in a trice if he were not “just dying of all
these manners!” Sodden themselves in a thousand superstitions, they
had taken a keen interest in the weather bewitchments, in which, from
these motives, they had been forbidden to mingle. They had neither the
time nor the inclination to notice the invalid hastening away out of
the rain to shelter, but his disordered step, his pallid countenance,
his agitated mien did not fail altogether of observation. The door
of the dwelling opened as he approached it, and there stood Lilias
holding it against the wind. So incongruous seemed her fair face and
golden hair and whitely glimmering attire with the sullen aspect of
the approaching storm, the gloom-darkened woods on every hand, that
she suggested an affinity with a sunlit scene that glimmered along the
far perspective of the ranges where a rift in the cloud admitted a
suffusion of ethereal golden light, in which the mountains were azure,
the woods of a fine, intense jade hue, the flash of a cataract like
molten silver,--the very apotheosis of scenery, some transient glimpse
of the fair land of Canaan.
Laroche’s lip trembled as he looked at her--so beautiful, so good, so
cruelly endangered.
She noticed his pained expression, but misunderstood its meaning. With
the constant household anxiety as to his health--“Ye hae been lang awa
wi’ that dour carle, Moy Toy, an’ ye look pale. Set ye down by the
fire, an’ I’ll gie ye a posset, before the others get here to beg for
tae half o’ it.”
He loved to do her bidding, even if it were not blended with many odd
“sups an’ bites,” of a quality peculiarly acceptable to an invalid’s
capricious appetite. He would have drunk poison as readily for her
sake, he said to himself, and added with a grim smile that he might do
that yet. For he had come to a full realization of late. He consciously
recoiled from all his loyal plans, his secret orders, his duties,
his pride of intellect, of achievement, his past, his profession,
his future. He said to himself that he would have liked the life of
a poppet--he could have felt if he had been made of wood or wax--to
be placed thus in a corner; to gaze at her with unwinking eyes; to be
given a bowl of drink, withdrawn in a minute, as she must needs test
with her own lips whether it were not too hot. He sought with sedulous
care the section of the rim her lips had touched. Poison! but the cup
of the present held nectar! He would have been satisfied--would have
kissed the hand of fate had he been only her pet dog.
A great collie, old, cosmopolitan,--he had come across on the ship with
her father in the days “lang syne,” and exceedingly surprising did he
find the experience of a collie of degree on the ocean,--had deserted
the trading-house, since her arrival, repudiated his master, forgotten
his friends, the packmen, cut his Indian acquaintance dead, to lie by
her hearth, to follow her footsteps, to feed from her hand, to sit with
his head against her knee and his listless body, dislocated, weighing
against her, to whine in jealous disfavor and an effort to attract her
attention had she more than a sentence or two to exchange with any
interlocutor save him.
“Whist, whist, hinny,”--she would gently smite his lolling head--“ye’ll
talk soon, and then I’ll ken ye’re no canny!”
For this, even so little as this, Laroche felt at times that he would
barter his learning, his prospects, his identity, his duty. Sometimes
he sought to justify his long, unnecessary lingering here, despite his
consciousness of the fact that his very individuality was a dangerous
secret. Were it known or suspected that he was employed in the French
interest, he could not hope to escape arrest, and thereby injury to
the cause he represented. Whatever might be the will of personal
friends, should he retain them in the stress of these disclosures,
hard usage would he encounter at the hands of the British colonial
authorities--perhaps even death; nay, had there not been a reward
offered for the scalp of every Frenchman busy among the Indians? And
certainly in such an adverse development he could not count on the
adhesion of the fickle Cherokees, especially to their detriment!
But for this one rift in his loyalty, he was wholly devoted to the
Louisiana interests which he had so zealously sought to advance.
This--this was his own personal beguilement. He would have known how
to resist his wonted allurements,--the pride of intellect, the pampered
independence and security of life, the world, the flesh, and the devil.
He was full armed against them; the attack would have been met by hardy
resistance along those lines. But to divert him from his duty, his
loyalty to his political trust, his obedience to his officers by means
of a virtuous attachment to a being so gentle, so fair, so good that
“no man could think on evil seeing her”--this seemed a device worthy
of the devil, and very like him; for this attachment would have done
him honor in any station of life save this, harbored deep, deep in the
subtle, deceitful heart of an enemy in the guise of a friend, a spy
upon his benefactor, the destroyer of their simple and limited and
humble prosperity.
Not so subtle as he thought--for now the schemer was but the man. Worse
still, for his secret, he was a Frenchman. Sometimes as he looked at
her those keen, eagle-like eyes of his softened suddenly, with his
emotional French susceptibility, and filled with tears. These tears she
saw, and in responsive emotion her own would start, trembling, to the
eyelids. She was not used to the sight of tears in a man’s eyes. Callum
MacIlvesty had not trafficked with such gear since he had first gotten
afoot on his sturdy infant legs and began his long travels through this
weary world. Sometimes, taking a pinch out of the proffered snuffbox of
a merchant of degree in Charlestown, Jock Lesly, who could carry his
liquor well enough, would find this unaccustomed gentility of the mull
culminating in a sneeze and water in the eyes. But such tears as these
of Laroche’s--tears of sheer pleasure, of subtle sorrow, of hopeless
love, of the sweet emotion of looking upon her--she had not witnessed,
and yet, enlightened by a kindred sentiment, she could appreciate; and
the difference of the manifestation for her sake from aught else she
had ever known made it seem the deeper, the truer, the dearer.
Certainly it was more picturesque than the obvious signs of Callum’s
dissatisfaction in an unhappy love, though, to be sure, she took scant
heed of them. When “ses jupons” swished out of the room in his swinging
stride, she was cognizant neither of the cause nor the circumstance
of his sudden taking of offense. And this brought slowly to his
intelligence the fact that she was equally unmindful of his embarrassed
return, as he sat glowering at Laroche across the fire, well aware
that his watchful rival fully appreciated and rejoiced in the futility
of his show of anger. Once, in awkward inadvertence, Callum stepped
on the collie’s tail, and the shrieks that the doggie sent up to high
heaven would seem to imply that there was no other canine so ruthlessly
afflicted in the universe. Lilias rebuked MacIlvesty’s carelessness in
a tone which conveyed genuine indignation, and he could only protest
in a gruff monosyllable; while the beast, leaning against her knee,
causelessly sobbing for half an hour, would burst forth in a plaintive
yelp whenever his eyes met Callum’s, and her “Whist, hinny, whist”
had all the adverse sentiment that might have been expressed in an
admonition, “I wad not tak ony notice o’ him.”
Callum could not even mend the fire with wonted deftness, nor keep his
temper when the logs of wood would roll down, but would administer a
kick of such free force as to send the red-hot coals flying about the
puncheon floor and all the family scuttling to catch them up before
the whole “bigging suld be in a low.” Even in the assiduous comity of
his conversations with Jock Lesly he often seemed to forget names of
people and places in Scotland with which he was obviously familiar,
and he was curiously uninformed of all calculated to interest the
elder in the doings of the regiment. Sometimes, indeed, his sentence
broke off in the middle, and he would fall into a revery, from which
he was only roused by the sudden jocularly upbraiding voice of Jock
Lesly, and once more with galvanic earnestness he would essay his
method of propitiation. Matters went better with him when the simple
and unobservant Jock Lesly himself did the talking, which was usually
the case, in great fullness of detail and long, circuitous routes of
narrative, leaving his auditor scant duty save to murmur “Ou!” “Ay!”
“I’se warrant ye!” at intervals, these dicta being uncompromising
and calculated to be generally applicable to any situation. His
supplantation was definite and complete.
And still Laroche, despite his qualms of conscience, putting aside his
repentance as for indulgence at a more convenient season, interpreted
all the _indicia_ of the young Highlander’s state of mind, felt
the complacence of a favored rival, and experienced all the joys of
triumph over the poor young Callum, as if he had a full intention to
enter a contest against him for this prize. True he was touched with
the generosity of the young mountaineer, who had shown at the first
some definite proclivity to inquire into the stranger’s means as well
as local habitation and association, but becoming impressed from some
casual phrase with the idea that the guest was of meagre resources and
had experienced much financial hardship, he withdrew all his forces
along that line. The reverse, in fact, was the case, for Laroche’s
fortune was not inconsiderable and he enjoyed fair prospects. The
error of his magnanimous rival elicited that æsthetic sentiment, that
prepossession in favor of whatever is noble, which a certain type
delights to admire rather than to emulate. It stimulated a degree of
reciprocal interest in the young Highlander,--a sort of curiosity as to
his status which comprised several incongruities. MacIlvesty’s poverty
was obvious, not merely from his humble estate as a foot-soldier,
but often from allusions to it that escaped him. He had the manner
of a gentleman of a high type,--he was lofty, yet not assuming; kind
without condescension. He was often merry but never clownish, and
by turns grave and dignified without affectation. Yet his education
was most limited; he notably lacked the training appertaining to a
certain social rank, while possessing all its other worthy attributes
and inherent values; his experience of travel was the service of the
Forty-Second, the troop ship, and the forced march of the wilderness.
Laroche, in his idle interest, had had an intermittent intention of
inquiring directly of Jock Lesly concerning the inconsistency of the
young Highlander’s endowments and position, but the awkwardness of
this display of sheer curiosity was obviated when one day the trader
complained of a freak of taciturnity which he declared Callum had shown.
“I canna get muckle mair talk out o’ Callum now than when he kenned
naught but the Gaelic.”
Then in reply to a question which seemed to express but a civil
interest, “Ou, ay,--Callum was near grown when he had the meenister
for a tutor, an’ the callant got to his English. Ou, ay,--the family
hae had hard straits,--but, wow, man! the clan were a’ out in the
Fifteen, an’ then what was left o’ them went out in the Forty-five!”
Though not without sympathy, he spoke with obvious reprehension of this
clan’s misfortunes, for Jock Lesly was of the Lowland Scotch and had
always been well affected to government. “An’ they lost much blood,
an’ a head or twa amang them afterward,--an’ a’ the land was forfeited
to the crown--there were twa or three titles amang them, a yerl an’ a
baronet or twa--I wot na what, but a’ very fine--if it were not for the
attainder. Callum is kin to gre’t folk! But what’s a title--neither
fitten to eat nor to drink, I trow. I wad wuss, though, the callant did
own the land that the government took away from his father,--wha died
in hiding after the Forty-five,--an’ the rents, that he might hae made
a gentleman o’ himsel’ instead o’ just a buirdly foot-sodger.”
He was a gentleman even without the land or the rents, and the
Frenchman piqued himself upon his subtlety of discernment in having
perceived this fact in so untoward a guise as a “foot-sodger” who
shoulders a musket for pay.
For these reasons now and again Laroche experienced a compunction
that he should be destroying the prospect of the domestic happiness
of this man, when circumstances--nay, his life was at stake!--forbade
any serious intentions on his own part. And yet, and the thought was
subtly sweet, she loved him--he was sure of it--as he loved her. But
in the dark hours of the night, when the house was silent, all wrapped
in slumber, a certain wakefulness had begun to harass him, like a
Nemesis; a voice of reproof sounded in all his reflections, of warning,
of presentiment, the prophecy of the future. When thus repentance and
doubt fell upon him he would urge in extenuation that if he had idly
won her heart it was but in the interests of that disguise still so
imperative upon him. Yet the thought of their kindness was like coals
of fire. They had brought him back from the verge of the grave. They
had lavished their best upon him, the stranger, for aught they knew
humble of station and penniless. Still, and it was the trifle that
wrung his heart with the most poignant pang, the best room in the house
was his; the graces of the bed curtains; the luxury of the sheets;
the cleanly though rude furnishings; all the little comforts packed
with the view of her father’s illness, and brought so far through the
toilsome wilderness, were for the guest.
The heavy snoring of Jock Lesly would echo from one of the rooms on
the other side of the spence, but through the flimsy partition of the
adjoining chamber Laroche could often hear the creaking cords of the
bedstead as Callum MacIlvesty, sleepless too, flounced back and forth
in the instability of his feather bed, restless, anxious, reviewing
many trifles fraught with great moment to him, heartsore, weary, and
despairing. Laroche commiserated the young Highlander’s sentimental
anguish, but he had a sentimental anguish of his own, and he dwelt upon
it in alternate pain and pleasure, in an ecstatic torment.
One night as he lay thus, pondering the events of the day, his
attention was arrested by a stealthy step. He put his hand under his
bolster and grasped the handle of his pistol. He listened hopefully
for the stir of the tortured Callum MacIlvesty, but sleep at last and
some fond and peaceful dream held the young Scotchman, and naught but
the sound of his deep and regular breathing attested his proximity in
the next room. Laroche hardly dared cry out and alarm the house, lest
the impending demonstration be delayed and renewed at some moment when
no one was awake and on guard. Except for the possibility of firing
the building, it was in danger of no calamity that could fall upon it
without noise. The doors were locked, the batten shutters had heavy
bars; therefore he judged it prudent to wait and listen.
There came again the tread of feet, stealthy, quiet as before; the
impact of a bare sole upon the ground beneath the window was distinct
for a moment. In the blank interval that ensued he heard the continual
rise and fall of the breathing of the night; the chiming and chanting
of woodland cicada, in regular alternations; the rush of the Tennessee
River dashing over the rocks. Once more that sound, as of a bare foot,
and again beneath the window.
He was exceedingly deft and light and certain in all his movements;
when it had passed he slipped out of his bed and crossed the room
to the window, not a sound attesting his progress, save that once a
puncheon creaked. He stood for a moment motionless, then peered through
the rift between the shutter and the window.
Outside there was a glare--a sudden glare. He saw a figure so
grotesque as to recall for a moment the associations of his delirium;
then half a dozen figures came into view, all in Indian file, and
strangely bedight. They were making the rounds of the house again and
again, evidently working a charm. Perfect silence waited on their
movements, save always beneath his window the stroke of a bare foot
fell on a sleek and clayey space with that slight sibilance that gave
him warning. Heads surmounted by torches enclosed in great gourds,
hideously painted in the semblance of human faces, showed faces below
still more hideously painted; buffalo horns and tails adorned figures
grotesquely and silently dancing; others wore bears’ claws and hides;
a human panther ran on all fours, now and again leaping so high into
the air that he seemed some inconceivable triumph of mechanism instead
of a living creature. The soldier felt his heart sink. Seldom did the
Indians permit the presence of white strangers in their more national
customs, and thus often the depths of their savagery, their fantastic
barbarism, lay unrevealed. Some strange significance surely marked this
grim pantomime, enacted in the darkest hour of the night about the
silent dwelling, while its unconscious inmates slept. Their lives might
seem to hang by a hair. He bethought himself, with a pang of terror, of
the young packmen quartered in the attic of the trading-house--surely
the glance of a wakeful eye must prelude the crack of a rifle, for
could a sane man imagine this to be aught but the revelings of the
creatures in the midst of an assault. But while he gazed in a terror he
could hardly suppress yet dared not voice, in one instant, while the
panther was in the mid-air trajectory of one of its wild leaps, every
light was extinguished, every figure vanished; and lurk and listen as
he might for the impact of the bare foot upon the clayey soil which
would intimate that in darkness the strange procession continued its
rounds, he heard only the vague sighings of the melancholy woods, a
creak once of the timbers of the house, and again the voice of the
Tennessee River dashing against its rocks.
VI
THE next morning Jock Lesly positively refused to credit the reality of
the remarkable procession that had thrice encircled his house while the
dwellers within, all save one, had slept oblivious and unsuspecting.
His bushy eyebrows had drawn together in a big blond frown as he
listened, his eyelids contracted over his narrowed eyes, but he shook
his head when all was said.
“Na--na!--ye were dreaming, lad--just a bit of the fever on ye yet!”
The futility of the proceeding; its lack of precedent in his
experience; the clear, fresh, reassuring presentment of Ioco Town under
the vernal sky, so peaceful with the dewy matutinal woods hard by, the
flashing river, the mountain ranges suavely blue; the friendly denizens
of the vicinage coming and going in and out of the trading-house;
the clusters of headmen about the buildings of the “beloved square,”
perhaps discussing some point of interest in the cabin of the aged
councilors, or playing the endless but trivial sedentary game of “roll
the bullet”--all combined to discredit it; all was as sane, as seemly
as civilization itself, once adopt a different standard--how could it
be aught but a dream!
But Laroche continued pale, anxious, distrait.
“I thought I ought to tell you and Callum,” he said--the young men
affected a friendly familiarity of address. “I know what I know! It was
no dream!”
Jock Lesly rubbed his hands together as he leaned forward with his
wrists on his knees and looked up at the younger man’s face, with an
expression of kindly but superficial gravity--obviously humoring, as he
thought, a whimsey.
“If you have no objection, I should like to speak of it to Moy Toy,”
Laroche said.
“To no one else, then,” said Jock Lesly, for he accounted himself a
great proficient in the subject of Indian traits and manners. “The
Injuns no like to be keeked at an’ spied out when they are at their
high jinks and fandangoes. But Moy Toy’s a kindly soul an’ friendly. I
mind how he wearied to speak wi’ ye while ye lay in a dwam when ye cam
first to Ioco.”
The instant the revelation passed the lips of Laroche, he saw by the
change in the Indian’s face that the disclosure was unexpected. Moy
Toy, however, caught his features into their wonted stoical calm, and
the flicker of expression was as sudden and as transient as the flash
of light reflected from a bird’s wing on a pool of sombre waters.
Then he replied casually, almost in the words of the Scotchman,--
“It was but a dream!”
“But, Moy Toy,” urged Laroche, “dreams come true. All the Cherokee
nation believe the dreams that visit the sleep of their ‘beloved men.’”
The chief smiled with a sort of flouting contempt that the white man
should thus place himself and his paltry sleeping fancies on the
same plane with the “beloved men” of the great Cherokee nation and
the eternal truths, the veiled face of the future, revealed to them
in the sanctities of their priestly visions; he seemed angrier than
even the presumption might warrant. The paleface, he declared, was
not a Cherokee “beloved man,” nor even an adopted tribesman. Why
should Indian visions haunt his slumbers in the sincerities of truth?
Then, once more visibly repressing some secret, rising agitation, he
continued with a specious smile, “I myself have firmly grasped your
hand, and I do not speak with the lying lips nor the snake’s forked
tongue. I am Moy Toy! But these Indians of the dreams--beware of them.
They do not know you to be the best beloved friend of the Cherokee
chief. They may cheat you and deride! No man can lay hands on them--the
dream Indians,--and this makes their lying tongue so strong to the
paleface, even to the ‘beloved man’ of the French king. No Indian of
the vision should delude you to the wreck of your peace of mind.”
Laroche said no more, resolving that no Indian of the flesh should
delude him, whatever deceptions might be wrought upon his senses by
the immaterial Indians of dreams. He seemed to assent. No man could so
fashion the guise of appearances to the similitude of fact. He laughed
a little, with the suggestion of being a trifle out of countenance,
a little ashamed of his confidences. Moy Toy, from being keenly
observant, grew distrait, and answered presently at random. At length,
as if in justification of the foolish importance he had attached to his
vision, Laroche declared that he had great interest in the significance
of dreams, that he held them to be scenes, as it were, vouchsafed
from the border world beyond, peopled by those who have once lived
here, that he had always longed to be admitted to listen when he saw
the “beloved men” grouped under a tree, or in the “holy cabin” of the
“beloved square,” telling their dreams to each other and conning their
interpretations.
“And so you shall hear,” Moy Toy interrupted, “when you are adopted
into the Cherokee nation and made a great ‘beloved man,’ after you have
taught us to manufacture the powder, the spirit of death that comes
roaring and rushing with fire and smoke out of the mouth of the gun,
sending the leaden bullet to work his will.” He was still looking about
with a preoccupied mien and eager eyes, and suddenly he said that he
must be gone for a space, as he had matters of some import to discuss
with the headmen of Ioco Town, for he had been summoned from Tellico to
meet them in their council-house.
The wary Laroche, as he cast his eye over the spaces of the town,
noted that the headmen were presently being sought here, there, and
everywhere, and that a very considerable interval elapsed before,
congregated together, they repaired to the state-house; he inferred
from the fact that the meeting was no matter of previous arrangement,
but altogether impromptu. The coming of Moy Toy had had about it all
the _indicia_ of a mere personal visit to him to make sure of the
state of his health and the date of his possible return to Tellico,
where he was likely to be hardly less a prisoner because he was so
valued as a guest, the prospect of his services being held at so
high a rate. The conclusion was irresistible; the revelation of that
vision of the dead watches of the night, which in his fatuity the
Scotchman called a dream, and the Indian in his craft a delusion, had
a significance, an importance that warranted the exertion of Moy Toy’s
great influence in the nation to summon into council the headmen of a
town, not his own municipality, without the forms, the heralds, the
preambles so habitually required and accorded.
What did it mean, this dream? Oh for a soothsayer indeed!--for an
interpreter of the masked fact rather than the fantasy of fiction!
Laroche stood for one moment in despair, realizing that the lives
of the trader’s household hung upon the result of the debate now in
progress in that strange, clay-daubed, dome-shaped temple,--upon
the wild will of those malignant beings endowed, as it seemed to
him, merely with the semblance of humanity and yet with the mental
processes, the moral insanity, the malevolent spite of fiends. All was
the more barbaric, the more unholy, the more unearthly, because of the
recollection of the grotesque features of that weird, silent circling
and circling last night about the dwelling of their victims. Since
that dwelling harbored her, of whom Laroche could not think save with
a swelling heart, of whom he could not speak for the candor of words
crowding to his lips which his deceit must disallow him, whom he could
not thank for his life that he owed to her and hers, for gratitude was
all inadequate, he must act, he must seize upon some device. And still
he stood silent, inert, not knowing where to turn.
Was it as a penalty, he asked himself in sudden affright, that he was
to be called upon to witness without recourse the destruction of this
home, the hideous massacre of the hearthstone circle, to him now as the
treasure of all the earth? Would he, indeed, do no penance till the
leisure he liked awaited him? Was he to find what joy might be in the
hugging of chains till he should choose to rouse his will and smite his
soul free of its cherished shackles? Was he, unscathed, to steep his
consciousness in the intense, sweet delight of this selfish affection,
pure doubtless, but because of the unimpeachable, unapproachable virtue
and innocence of its object, and not because of any restraints exerted
upon himself by the dictates of honor or manly faith or kindness and
tenderness of heart,--he who knowingly, intentionally, had won her love
for naught, to cast away again, had, perhaps, wrecked her happiness,
had certainly supplanted the true, devoted, loyal man fitted and once
destined to be her husband.
Had he expected to decree his own punishment for his idle cruelty when
surfeited with the semblance of romanticism? Beshrew his leniency!--he
had devised a light one! To return to Great Tellico with an empty heart
and a drear sense of separation from all on earth he loved; to work at
the behests of the government that employed him; to obey the orders of
his superior officers for which even morally he was not responsible;
to dwell in a sad pleasure and a sweet pain upon the memory of a fair
face, a tender parting word--had he thought to hold in the sanctities
of his most secret heart the recollection of a kiss and tears of
farewell? This his prophetic vision had viewed as his unkind fate,--and
he had sighed in the anticipation of this romantic woe!
He now stood aghast between his trivial fancy of the future and its
harsh face coming so near that it seemed half revealed. Heaven, just
heaven, mindful of retribution, would so smite him, insensible though
he had become, that he should feel its wrath. Was the blow to fall on
him through the woes of others? Was he to see the brave and sturdy
Scotch trader, so kindly and generous, suspicious of naught in his own
open candor, smitten to the ground in his own house, gory, scalped,
disemboweled, the gross flout of what once he was? All a-tremble,
Laroche asked of himself should he who had inflicted much keen pain in
ingenious wise on his young rival be compelled to witness the keener
tortures of the stake? And how should he look on her golden hair that
he had loved--save the mark!--dabbled and dulled with brains and blood!
Laroche gave vent to a hoarse, inarticulate cry. For this, all this,
would result from his deception and his long lingering here in the
false guise of Tam Wilson. Had he returned to safety at Tellico the
machinations of the French among the inconstant Cherokees must have
been gradually divulged by the fact of his continued presence there,
and his identity as an emissary of that government suspected; thus this
handful of British subjects, warned in time, would have taken prompt
measures for their protection and have compassed their withdrawal from
the country. The menace that now hung over them was his fault, the
result of his treachery, his idle trifling.
He wondered if the fantastic threats of the previous night might be
explained by the fact that the headmen of Ioco Town were inflated by
the continued presence of the representative of the French government,
the large splendor of his promises transmitted from one council-house
to another, his secret mission to unify the tribes, organize and
command their army. Were they already feeling their emancipation from
the British rule; already emboldened by the knowledge of the great
French king’s strength, as if the promised munitions of war were in
store; already rejoicing in the blood of their earliest victims, even
while it yet coursed with calm pulsations through their veins?
Would heaven only in its omnipotent goodness avert the blow, turn the
time back, halt the sun in its irresistible march! He laughed in a sort
of bitter scorn that these miracles of mercy must needs be invoked to
undo what he had so willfully done. Yet he must know the full measure
of the menace--and once more the hideous, significant phantasmagoria of
that mystic midnight magic pressed upon his quickened consciousness.
This was a keen brain, essentially the schemer’s. Laroche was still
standing near the spot where Moy Toy had left him. Close by, hitched
to the bough of a tree, was the horse of the prince of Tellico,--a
fine animal, bearing in his mien and form strong suggestions of his
ancestors, the Spanish barbs. Though fiery he was as gentle, and he
only reared with impatience and displeasure when the Frenchman, with a
sudden thought, laid hold upon his mane, seeking to mount as usual from
the near side. Remembering the habit of the Indians always to mount
on the off side he was quickly in the saddle, and giving the spirited
charger a cut with a whip to which it was unaccustomed he was out of
the town like a flash and galloping at a breakneck speed along the
trading path through the wild woods.
It was high noon at Great Tellico when he drew rein on the banks of
the Tennessee River. Vernal languors were in the air; the richness of
the waxing season embellished field and forest, the velvet blue of
the Great Smoky Mountains, the intense, almost violet hue of the sky,
the redundancy of the flowering shrubs and the growth of the grass
and weeds underfoot. The river in the recent drought had shrunken
since he last had seen it, revealing here and there a stretch of fine,
amber-tinted sand, and again a rugged, shelving ledge of rock, and yet
again beds of muscle shells, numbers of which, opened and searched for
the fresh-water pearls, lay riven apart, giving an opalescent shimmer
to the casual glance and a whiter margin to the gray and glossy stream.
The shadows were limited, yet dense, so clear was the exquisitely
limpid and fresh mountain air. The sun was not warm, despite its
splendid effusions, yellowing with an effect of burnished glamour,
prophetic of ripening glories.
The Indians who had marked his arrival gathered in groups at a
distance, now sheltered by a shrub or a stump, now by the corner of a
house, occasionally peeping out at him in the covert way which they
affected to ascribe to their consideration toward guests. For, said
they, openly to study the mien and dress and person of a stranger
savors of discourtesy, but unobserved to mark all his qualities from a
screen gratifies the curiosity and gives no offense. In this instance
they were influenced by interests far deeper than sheer curiosity.
They were all well aware of his identity, the terrible fate for which
he had been destined, his reprieve and transference to the British
trading-station at Ioco, that by the European remedies to which his
system was accustomed he might be cured of his strange fever, which
had defied the skill and magic of the cheerataghe. For what purpose
he had been reserved, however, whether for the torture when his
unconsciousness should not rob it of half its terrors, or as a slave,
or as a hostage, or other ulterior view of Moy Toy and the rest of the
headmen, the rank and file were not informed. Therefore a very genuine
sensation pervaded the several coteries as they marked the free,
independent air, the erect carriage, the easy, deft step with which
Laroche, no longer splendidly arrayed in the dazzling French uniform,
but always of a point-device effect, even bedight in buckskins, crossed
the space in front of the mound where he had awaited his fate in such
weary suspense and dread. Perhaps he might not have been able to
maintain this valiant attitude if that hiatus of recollection had been
once bridged over. The event had passed to him as if it had never been,
and he sustained the gaze of the community as possessed of a unique
interest,--a man who, but for an accident, might now have been, instead
of a man, a handful of ashes, whirling about with no more substance or
identity or cohesion of personality than the grains of sand strewn over
the “beloved square.”
Laroche flung himself down upon the roots of the tree in front of the
dwelling of Akaluka, and took off his coonskin cap to let the cool
breeze refresh his throbbing temples. Akaluka, glancing suddenly out
of the door, was startled to see him sitting there--startled and not
pleased. She had had a great fright in the complication that had come
so near to the bestowal of her in marriage upon the Choctaw chief,
Mingo Push-koosh, who had slain in such grievous wise the unoffending
braves of the town, whom he had found peacefully spreading their
seines at the confluence of the Tennessee and the Tellico. Often with
a morbid fascination she went to look at the spot where he had hung up
“the war-brand,” a half-burnt stick swaying across the path, suspended
by a grapevine--an open declaration of hostilities, according to the
rules of Indian war. The cruel man! for as he had slain these he would
have slain her; and the trouble all began with the “mad young men” who
counseled the acceptance of the red scarf, and who cared for naught
save that the Mingo should not be angered and that they should soon go
to war again with the British. But they all blamed her, and they talked
and talked with many sharp words, and she was tired of all mad young
men, who were a vain and a vexatious creation, and she wished to see
none ever again, and here was one who had come and had laid himself
at her very door, as she still stood, barely discerned in the depths
of the cabin. Whereupon she lifted her voice in the extremity of her
disfavor and asked him why he was not burned long ago.
The tenor of the question roused Laroche to his normal mental attitude.
Perhaps, he said with affected humility in his ignorance that this fate
had seriously menaced him, it might have been that in view of the debt
she owed him she had seen fit to intercede for his life. Hence he had
not yet been burned.
This politic reply brought Eve at once to the door. “What debt?” she
asked, in frowning curiosity.
Her face wore a strong expression of racial ferocity strangely
incongruous with feminine physiognomy, which reminded Laroche of the
singular fact that in the crisis of the most exquisite anguish of the
torture, the women and children were permitted and rejoiced to flout
and buffet and sear and cut and aggravate in infinite ingenuity the woe
of the quivering victim. Even thus lowering however, she was not devoid
of beauty, and her dress betokened still a heedful eye to the values of
decoration. The wings in her glossy black hair were alternately the red
of the cardinal bird and the modest brown of his demure little mate.
Her doeskin _jupon_ was also red, dyed deep with the blood-tinted
madder-root. She had a great red sash, such as a pirate might wear or a
major-general. Moy Toy had been constrained by many pleas and domestic
tyranny, in a sort, to confer it upon her from the store of presents
of the French pettiaugre in lieu of the scarf she had been bidden to
restore to the Choctaw Mingo. She wore it like a voluminous cross-belt
diagonally about her body, then passed around her slender waist. Here
and there the silk had come in contact with her smooth, anointed skin,
and the unguents had streaked the sash with a darker hue. Around her
neck, which the arrangement of the sash made visible, being disposed
in what is now called a V shape, a string of white pearls lay against
the clear olive tint of her throat--the gems were large and for the
most part regularly shaped. She was stringing others, which had been
pierced for the purpose with a hot copper spindle--a practice which
the early traders sought to discourage--the application of the heat
discoloring the gem, diminishing its lustre, and spoiling its value
for the European market. Her feet were bare, of an exquisite shape,
small, slender, most delicately made. He had hardly dreamed that her
narrow, liquid, velvet-black eyes, with lashes so long, so straight,
they seemed to cast a shadow, could look upon any object with a stare
so repellent, so infuriated, so brutal.
Before he could answer she asked another question, so dissimilar that
he was at a loss and fumbled for a reply.
“Where is your hair?”
He had been accounted a logician, a mighty wrestler with arguments,
even a subtle trickster with words, but his facility was never so alert
that it could, without bewilderment, make a leap like this.
“Oh--ah--my hair? Oh--they took off my hair at the trading-station--for
the fever, you know.”
“You look like a baby--a grown-up baby,” she said, surveying with
objection his short ringlets.
“My hair is not like a wig. It will grow,” he said, with his gentle
gayety.
“Your beautiful clothes are at the state-house,” she observed. “Tinegwa
wears them at the dance.”
For his life Laroche could but change countenance. So is man, the
civilized creature, artificialized by his need and custom of clothes
that they seem actually a part of him. He felt the indignity as a
personal affront, the more acutely since he had not fully realized his
danger after the desertion of him by Mingo Push-koosh. His eyes rested
on the soft shining of her anointed sash.
“Then I shall wear them no more,” he protested, with covert meaning.
“Moy Toy and I,” he resumed, hastening to cloak his sarcasm lest her
keen perception discern it, “have exchanged all our clothes, in token
of our friendship.”
She gazed at him steadily. Such swift, radical reversals of policy were
not altogether unknown to the Indian scheme, and it might well have
chanced that beyond her knowledge the chieftain and his captive had
thus, in the formal and accepted manner, the exchange of every garment,
pledged and ratified a reciprocal fraternal bond.
Her mood was gradually softening. She came forward a few steps, pausing
once in the sun to gaze at the pearls she held in her slender, deft
hand; then, entering the overhanging shadow of the tree, she sank down
in an easy kneeling posture, carefully selected and threaded a pearl
upon a horsehair which she held in her right hand, half a dozen of the
gems dangling at the end of the string, and looking up straight into
his eyes, asked with sudden recurrence,--
“What debt?”
“Oh--ah--to be sure; why, the debt of your life,” said the wily
Laroche. “But for me, Moy Toy might have given you in marriage to the
Choctaw prince, who had boasted that he would slay you, would take your
life, being a Cherokee born, should the two tribes fall to war with the
English and the French. But for me--for I betrayed his counsels--the
Choctaw fiend!”
Her hand trembled; she let the pearl fall. She searched for it with
patient diligence and a deft finger in the green moss where it
glimmered with a lunar lustre. When she had found and threaded it she
desisted from her labor, although she still held the loose pearls in
one hand, the partially strung thread in the other.
“I will marry no one,” she said apprehensively. “It is very dangerous.”
“It is very dangerous to marry Mingo Push-koosh,” assented Laroche, who
had indeed paid dearly for his humanity.
“And the young men of the Cherokee nation,”--she shook her head
deploringly. “Oh, they are all mad, too,--all quite mad--all dangerous.
I will marry no more.”
She looked down at the pearls in her left hand, but did not resume the
stringing of them.
“The warrior I married once,” she continued,--“he was older and very
good--and brought much meat from the winter hunt. He would not scold
with a woman--that was beneath a warrior’s notice. And if a woman
wished to scold, she might go and talk to the Tennessee River. It
would do her good and not hurt the river, and her husband would not be
obliged to leave her. He was very good.”
She gave a vague glance over her shoulder into the open door of
his house. Laroche, hyper-sensitive with all his recent anxieties,
emotions, sufferings--even morbid--had an uncomfortable realization
that deep beneath the thick clay floor of the dwelling the dead man
sat, buried so close to the life he no longer lived, so intimately
associated with the possessions he no longer owned.
The Frenchman affected a gayer tone.
“But all young men are not mad. Am I not young? I am not mad.”
She evaded the answer. “At their gambols they may well seem mad. One
does not expect more then. But in war, in council, in marriage, it is
not well that young men should be mad.”
“The gambols of various nations are different, as with their other
customs,” remarked Laroche discursively. “But the young men
participating are much alike. I have seen a game of the Cherokees in
which the young men seemed mad--oh, very mad indeed.”
“What game was that?” Eve demanded; for in spite of her aversion to
those bereft young persons, and her stern determination to marry no
more, and her grateful recollection of the domestic placidity of an
elderly spouse, her interest in the “mad young men” was very fresh and
ever new, and easily stimulated to a discussion of their unruly traits
and peculiar manners.
“Why,” began Laroche, shifting his half reclining posture, that he
might support his head upon his hand, his elbow deep in the soft turf,
while he watched her listening face, “what would you say if I should
tell you what happened when I first came here to Tellico Great with the
Choctaw embassy?”
A slight contraction passed over her features always at the mention
of the delegation, a spasm of wrath, of reminiscent terror, of
indignant and wounded pride that she, a Cherokee princess, holding a
line of royal succession, should ever have been in danger of uncaring
slaughter, as if she were a beast, at the hands of a grossly arrogant
Choctaw, to whom she might have been given as a wife, and for no more
provocation than that she had been born a Cherokee.
“What would you say, I wonder,” he went on as she bent her dark eyes
anew upon him, “if I should tell you that one night I could not sleep;
I had had dreams that waked me. And if I should tell you that I rose
and walked a long time by the riverside--very quietly, wanting to wake
no one. And when at last, refreshed and the dream forgotten, returning
within view of the stranger-house--where the Mingo and his Choctaw
escort slept.”--He paused and affected to laugh, but the laughter stuck
in his throat. “The maddest, merriest game--the maddest game!”
She was leaning forward, her eyes shining strangely, the hand that
held the thread moved mechanically, beckoning, beckoning, as if to lure
forth the story; the other hand, holding the pearls, trembled like a
leaf.
“Around and around the house was circling the strangest procession of
‘mad young men.’ Some wore buffalo horns and tails, and all had gourds
cut like faces, with torches inside, on their heads; their faces were
painted--painted! And one like a panther ran on all fours and leaped
and leaped!”--
“Ah--h--h!” A sudden wild scream burst from her lips, which she
struck with the palm of her hand, producing a sound indescribably
nerve-thrilling, and which he had heard from braves on the war-path.
“The spring of Death!” she cried in exultation. And again the wild
scream split the air. “No game; no game!” she exclaimed in convulsive
precipitancy. “That was the mock-rite, the funeral procession, of those
they meant to destroy--and oh, I wish they had! Why did they not! why
did they not!”
Laroche’s face was as pallid as the baubles in her hand.
“The Choctaw embassy--was it intended to massacre them?”
“It must have been--though I know nothing of it. This is the invariable
prelude--the agreement--the seal of the compact. To circle three times
round the house of your enemy, if one rests in your town, as if it were
the house of the dead, and with mock and flout and spells to palsy
resistance, and with lights to prove the path, and with knives to cut
the pledge of friendship, and with the leaping Death to seize them by
the throat--ah--h!--ah--h!”
VII
HOW he fared on his return to Ioco Town, Laroche never knew. The
interval of his transit was a blank in his recollection. He was only
aware of the crisis when he plunged out of the encompassing woods,
still urging the horse to a wild gallop, lashing him at every bound
with his cap, in default of a whip, which he had lost, when or where he
could not say.
The town lay before him, idealized in a suffusion of roseate purpling
light as the sun was going down beyond those dark, heavily wooded
ranges in the west into which the mountain plateau, even then called
the Cumberland, splits at its southern extremity. The eastern loftier
heights, the Great Smoky, bore an almost visible sentiment of peace on
their slopes, which were of an etherealized azure with a reflection
of the red west in the suave sky above their domes. The Cherokee
dwellings were all solidly dark against the fine, delicate intimations
of color in the opalescent atmosphere. Where a fire was glimpsed in
the “beloved square,” the red and white and yellow of the blaze were
like a crude overlay of coarse pigment on some exquisite mosaic. The
figures of the Indians themselves in groups of varied aspect,--sundry
of them arrayed in aboriginal splendor, feathered and mantled; others
almost nude; still again others clad in the coarse and unpicturesque
buckskin shirt and leggings,--all stood as if petrified at the first
disordered sound of the wildly galloping hoofs of the horse. They
watched in blank surprise the equestrian apparition speeding across
the open spaces until, hardly pausing in front of the trading-house,
Laroche flung himself from the saddle. He took no heed to secure the
creature. With the reins loose on his neck the horse, amazed at this
unwonted liberty and lack of care, reared aimlessly once or twice.
Then motionless, with a gaze of obvious surprise, he turned to look
after his eccentric rider, who had burst into the trading-house with
his warning of the danger upon his lips, that all who cared might hear
and tremble. No more would he trust to the foolhardiness of the sturdy
trader, who had weathered many a gale of disaffection, signs of Indian
displeasure, rumors of massacres impending, and threats of reprisal;
nor to the young Highland soldier’s unquestioning reliance on the
superior judgment of Jock Lesly. The under-trader and the young packmen
responded as alertly with fears and precautions as Laroche could wish.
With his martial habitudes reasserted in the emergency, Laroche gave
the necessary orders with such dispatch, such decision, such obvious
discrimination, that the men, discerning their value and aware that
none other of the group could have originated the plan, as instantly
obeyed as if he had been a military superior entitled to the authority
he wielded. Jock Lesly, coming in at haphazard, found himself a mere
supernumerary in his own trading-house, where his word had been law. He
stared for a moment with stunned surprise, and then at last and after
so long a time, hearing the interpretation of the dream he had derided,
he began to admit to himself that perhaps more mischief was brewing in
the air than he wot of.
“It’s the French--thae kittle cattle!” he exclaimed; “I wad na vex
mysel’ if it were na for the lassie.”
He heard with deliberative calmness the preparations which Laroche had
projected for the defense of the little colony, which he instantly
began to detail, so eagerly, so urgently, that amidst the tumultuous
words there came to Jock Lesly’s absorbed sense a fact which he
remembered long afterward rather than noted in that moment of crucial
stress--a vaguely foreign accent. Now he only marked the features of
the plan, and his strong heart was buoyed up by its hopefulness.
“Eh, callant,” he cried; “it’s gey gleg ye are at this wark! Ye’ll no
hae seen foreign service for naething!”
The phrase went the rounds of the lads who stood with their lives in
their hands, and, though loath enough to yield them in this petty
strife that had not even a fair quarrel for its justification, were
still more loath to yield first their strong bodies, endowed with
stanchest nerves, to furnish sport to the Cherokees in the delights
of the torture. Foreign service! The words were like magic. It was a
trained mind, with a practiced eye and an experienced judgment, that
disposed their pitiful resources to the best advantage for defense. And
with this reassurance these resources hardly seemed so pitiful.
In two minutes the trading-house, a temple of peace and built without
the customary loopholes for musketry, had half a dozen sawn through
each of the stanch walls, save on the side nearest the dwelling, where
a dozen slits were fashioned. The emporium of commerce, being a long
and large building in comparison, commanded it on three sides. Around
the home in the early days of its occupation a ditch had been once
dug, intended to drain the slope. This was still deep but now dry, and
in it emergency mines were hastily constructed here and there after a
fashion which Laroche had seen in practice in his military experience
in Europe. There were still many kegs of powder in the store, a
quantity of tow, numerous rude bags and boxes and barrels, half emptied
or altogether thrown aside. Of these boxes and barrels he hastily
contrived fougasses, lining them with tar before placing in each a
heavy charge of powder. The energetic plying of a dozen spades soon
covered them over in the ditch, and several were sunken in deeper pits
with gravel and boulders to fill the space to the surface. He himself
worked diligently with great deftness upon sundry long, thin bags which
he called “saucissons,” fashioned from a bolt of Jock Lesly’s best
linen, filled with powder, tarred externally, to serve as fuses to
convey fire to the fougasses. He was a man of infinite expertness and
a genius in the way of resource, and barricades for doors and windows
were soon contrived of whatever material was at hand. He selected the
guard, the greater number of the packmen, who were to hold out the
trading-house, which, with its outlook and its loopholes, commanded
the dwelling. They were instructed to prevent any possible approach
by picking off the assailants by rifle fire, or, in case of a rush,
by exploding one of the fougasses, the saucissons of several of which
connected with the store, the others with the dwelling itself. The
under-trader, as vigorous, devil-may-care, hard-headed, hard-handed,
hard-hearted a backwoodsman as could have been found in those rude
days, was to take command of the detachment in the trading-house, Jock
Lesly himself, Laroche, Callum, and two of the packmen undertaking to
defend the dwelling. The two buildings were thus enabled to afford
mutual protection, and divide the numbers and break the force of the
assault by the Indians, each offering the garrison of the other, in
case of extremity, the chance of a refuge in flight.
So swift, so definite, yet so simple were these arrangements that when
Moy Toy was summoned from the perplexities of his consultations with
the headmen of Ioco in the great council-house, by the wild alarum
from the Indians without that warlike preparations were going forward
among the trader folk, he found these precautions already in a state
of completion. Laroche, a pickaxe in his hand; advanced to meet the
chief as he came toward the dwelling that now peered at him, as it
were, suspiciously from loopholes. The sounds of excitement from the
square, of wild cries and eager words, the disorder of swift, flitting
figures hither and thither, the clash of weapons and the hasty tramp
of feet, all implied an unusual activity among the tribesmen. They
too were getting under arms, but were distinctly dismayed to find
themselves surprised--the onset they had planned anticipated, crippled,
perhaps even to be repelled by forethought, adequate preparation, and
a valiant defense. In fact, without those tumultuous concomitants of
the sudden onslaught, the stealthy ambush, the surprise of treachery in
conference, the Indian hardly cared to fight. And although they were so
vastly superior in numbers that calculation of odds was impracticable,
they were aware that they must needs suffer severely from the fire of
the little garrison, whose bulletproof walls would hold a far stronger
force indefinitely at bay. Laroche fixed the period of the enterprise
when he warned Moy Toy and the chief of Ioco Town, advancing with him,
to come no further.
“The ground is mined with powder,” he explained. “No Indian shall come
one pace nearer.”
Moy Toy cast an upbraiding glance upon his companion. And Laroche knew
in an instant that his discovery of the inimical midnight mummeries and
the suspicions they had aroused had been the subject of the debate in
the town-house; but for the habitual forbearance of the Indians toward
one another, it might have caused an open rupture that this had been so
conducted as to betray their plans. He had not valued the pledge of the
Indian’s word, but he had thought that Moy Toy realized his interest
was involved in keeping his promise of immunity to the “trader folk.”
Now he would not trust to this.
“I have read my dream, Moy Toy!” he cried triumphantly. “Am I not a
soothsayer--even like unto an ‘old beloved man’ myself--simple as I
stand here?”
The very tones of his sarcastic voice, ringing so jauntily on the air,
daunted the Indians, so assured, so inimical, so subtly menacing his
laughter was.
From the loopholes of the barricaded trading-house interested
faces peered out to witness the dumb show of this colloquy, the
speakers being so distant that only the sound of their voices was
distinguishable; the men at their several posts commented loudly to
each other. “Eh, sirs, hear till him, now!” “Wow, he had best haud a
care!” “Moy Toy looks gin he wad bite, the fearsome auld carle!”
Laroche turned as the two Indians, cautious, mute, doubtful, playing
the waiting game, gazed at him. He lifted the pickaxe and struck it
upon the ground.
“Here,” he cried, drawing the implement along the earth as if tracing
the way, “walked the mock mourners--thrice--thrice around the house
of the living, as if they were already the dead. Following came
the bearers of cords and chains, with charms and spells to hinder
resistance. And so--the lantern bearer, with light to prove the
path. And him with the knife, to cut the bonds of plighted faith and
friendship. And then the leaping Death--quick--quick--to seize his
prey!”
Between each mystic sequence of this ghastly figurative array Laroche
lifted the pickaxe and drew a stroke along the ground.
The two chiefs gazed now and again at each other as this recital
proceeded, first with obvious agitation, giving way to sheer wonder,
increasing to awe, and, as the idea became more accustomed, to a fierce
anger that flashed in Moy Toy’s dark eyes like lightnings from out a
storm cloud.
“Do I not read the dream aright?” Laroche cried at last, leaning on the
pickaxe and surveying them with a smile of glad triumph, infinitely
taunting.
“The white man reads no Cherokee dream,” said Moy Toy. “You have been
told this.”
“The great chief knows all things,” flouted Laroche; “I have been told
it.”
The two Indians looked at him with a keen expectancy that meant woe
indeed to the traitor.
“The river whispered it in my ear. I read it in the clouds. The winds
are singing it in the pines--I can turn nowhere that it does not cry
out to me from all the voices of the earth. For all day I have been
in the woods--even as far as Great Tellico; your good horse may show
my speed, Moy Toy. All your Cherokee country tells it--the fair land
that was to have been rescued from the British, and with the aid of the
French made the head and front of an independent Indian confederacy of
a dozen tribes!”
The large scope of this harmonious scheme that, could it have been
realized,--the combination of the tribes, ever warring against each
other, into a union of massed strength against the colonies,--would
doubtless have worked mighty changes in the history of this continent,
appealed to the breathless hope of the Cherokee statesmen. The chief of
Ioco Town hastened to say that Laroche was the cherished friend of the
tribe; the town of Ioco loved to hold, to shelter his honored head; he
was indeed deceived if he imagined from his distorted reading of dreams
of Indians--for dream Indians were mischievous and would not appear
right to white men, and thus loved to delude them--that the Cherokees,
least of all the town of Ioco, sought to do him mischief; they valued
too greatly his promise of instruction, the assurances he had brought
from his government, and the prospects he had unfolded of that large
freedom and independence he would teach the nation to secure.
“Those prospects are as nothing--as a mere breath--as that mist before
the moon--even the moon’s light will scatter it.” Laroche glanced up
at the great disk slowly rising over the serrated summit line of the
gloomy Smoky Mountains, albeit the western sky was yet red and day
lingered, dusky and doubtful, among the wigwams, and in the opalescent
tints of the river, broken here and there with the tumultuous flashing
of the white foam against the rocks.
“Nothing will I promise--not even that I will remain amongst you.”
He detected a significant hardening in the faces of the Indian
chiefs--a sudden tyrannous gleam in the eyes of Moy Toy.
“You would say I have no choice, Moy Toy.” He took from his belt a
pistol--a fine new weapon, secured from Jock Lesly’s own armament
at the trading-house--primed and loaded. “I hold in my hand the
opportunities of life and death. Unless all at the trading-station go
in peace, go free, and I myself accompany them as far as the Keowee
River, I will not remain with you.” Once more that dangerous gleam in
Moy Toy’s eye. “I will place this at my temple,” he held the muzzle
amidst the loosely curling rings of his light brown hair and deftly
touched the trigger, “and in one moment your league with the great
French king is a thing of the past. His trusted officer, holding his
commission and acting by his authority, will have died in your country,
in your custody, as definitely, in his estimation, slain by your hand
as if your hand had sped the bullet.”
The two Cherokees, obviously at a loss, gazed at each other and
hesitated.
“Never will the pettiaugres ascend your demon-infested, rocky
rivers--never will the barrier towns rise above and below those
defiant, malign obstructions and secure the passage of merchandise.
Your vassalage to the British will be an accomplished fact, your
independence a dream; for I who am sent to organize your armies and
perfect your plans and equip your warriors for defense and legitimate
aggression in war--I will do nothing! My mission is at an end, unless
you comply with my conditions. I am a soldier and no murderer. I cannot
and will not be placed in a position to answer to the British colonial
authorities for the innocent blood, for murder, for massacre. I said
to you once as I say to you now--Let the traders go! They shall not
return! Then, with the aid of the French government, I will put into
the field an army of Indian braves, officered by French experts in each
arm of the service, and the very name of it shall strike more terror to
the hearts of the perfidious English than a myriad of border massacres.”
Laroche had already known something of the swiftness with which the
crafty savage could shift ground, but he was not prepared for the
sudden _volte-face_, without a glance at each other or a sign,
with which both Moy Toy and the chief of Ioco began to protest, albeit
in decorous fugue, notwithstanding their haste,--it being a standing
joke among the Indians, a matter of perennial ridicule, that the white
people would talk at the same time or interrupt one another so that
none could be distinctly heard. The two chiefs instantly declared that
they would respect his words and abide by his promises, which they
cherished like the blood of their own hearts. They admitted that they
ought earlier to have told him the truth--which for shame they wished
to conceal,--that only the mad young men of the town had conceived
the ignoble scheme of revenge for some trivial insults which they
fancied had been offered them by the young packmen--themselves hardly
less insane than the bereft young braves. They had been reproved for
their midnight mummeries and their threats thus expressed, and when
opportunity should offer, after the departure of the trader and his
pack-train, the offenders should be dry-scratched.
The Frenchman duly appraised the insincerity of all this. He well
understood that the plea of the misdoings of their “mad young men,” so
frequently urged, was now, as often before, merely their scapegoat,
designed to bear the burden of the mischievous device of the headmen,
which some change of policy or mischance in execution caused them to
abandon. He hardly cared, however, to challenge their motive, since
it tended to promote the result he desired to foster,--the peaceful
withdrawal of the trader’s household. He stood decorously listening,
with a face of suave acquiescence, until, in the midst of their
antiphonal series of excuses and explanations, the chiefs stated, among
their reasons for concealing the alleged comparatively innocuous source
of the demonstration, that they had refrained from telling him this
lest he might esteem his own life insecure among such an uproarious,
ill-conditioned troop as their mad young men, and thus desire to leave
them.
Laroche, at the imputation, could but laugh aloud in his martial
consciousness of courage. The tact of the Indians instantly perceived
the false step.
They knew, they protested, the great bravery of the French officer, for
no fear had he! His heart was so strong as even to make him contemplate
taking his own life, merely should his plans be crossed. This they
besought that he would consider no more, for they only desired to
know his mind, that they might comply with his every thought. Still
he might well deem that their wild young men could hardly be brought
under reasonable authority, that they could be made the instruments of
winning and wielding such an independence as he had planned for the
splendid future. If he would but observe, he should see how plastic to
command they could become, how rightful authority should reduce their
turbulence and their clamors.
And indeed as they swarmed over the dusky “beloved square” and through
the spaces among the shadowy cabins and wigwams and along the bank
of the river, still red under the vague dream light of the faintly
tinted sky, the wild excitement that had pervaded the tumultuous groups
subsided upon the instant on the reappearance of the chiefs among them;
whether a word, a look, a sign wrought the miracle one could hardly
say. Laroche, standing gazing after his late interlocutors, could but
admire the address with which they had selected the occasion of their
withdrawal,--not that they had been faced down by argument, nor that
their virulent threats were overborne by counter-threats, nor that
their scheme was again proved foolish, futile, fatal to their own
future prospects, but only to demonstrate how amenable, how subject
to lawful authority were these very “mad young men” when adequate
necessity caused it to be exerted. It seemed incredible how promptly
all the aspects of peace were renewed. The long, lustrous, slanting
rays of the moon, soon falling athwart the town, penetrating the dusky
aisles among the Indian dwellings under the drooping boughs of the
gigantic trees, flashing upon the foam of the river, or resting in
full, unbroken placidity on the “beloved square,” scarcely showed the
shadow of a quiver, or a firelock, or the flicker of a feathered head.
Now and again the quiet echoed to the measured footfall of a sedate
passer-by. An open door here and there might reveal a group about a
fire where fish were frying for supper, and gossip was still stirring
about the events of the day. Dogs clustered around the door and begged
with all the insidious canine wiles of their kindred of civilization.
The council-house, dome-like in its elevation on its mound above the
town, was lighted by a party of young people setting forward some of
their usual evening games or pantomimes for the general diversion. The
two chiefs, respectively of Tellico and Ioco, had parted as if nothing
more of importance were to be discussed, and Moy Toy, in the public
office, as it were, the cabin of the aged councilors, deserted but for
two or three of its frequenters, was talking over old times of hunting
and fishing and was telling a tale of piscatorial captures which could
hardly be matched even in these days of expanded imaginations,--his
civil hosts now and again constrained to laugh with guttural
remonstrance, or to interject an incredulous comment, “Ugh! Ugh!”
At the trading-house, lights flickered within, but the barricaded
doors continued closed. The little garrison were to sleep upon their
arms in view of possible treachery in some lapse of vigilance.
Even thence, however, came loud, jesting voices, and now and again
hilarious snatches of song; all were very mirthful and with a renewed
sense of security under the double safeguard of adequate precaution
against surprise and the apparent satisfaction and pacification of the
Cherokees.
In the next few days preparations for an early and orderly departure
were seriously inaugurated. It was not so much in advance of the usual
time for the semiannual journey to Charlestown for the demonstration
to augur undue fear of the Indians or to seem prompted by the recent
suspicious events. With an apparent hardihood, that was yet the craft
of caution, Jock Lesly more than once postponed the date for the
flitting, openly alleging the reason for the delay: now it was the
legitimate one of awaiting a consignment of deerskins which he had
been notified was to be sent from Toquoe; now it seemed that a purely
arbitrary wish of his own induced him to dispatch a messenger on a
long wild-goose chase for a conference with an Indian friend of auld
lang syne, for whom he had undertaken a personal commission to make
sundry purchases in Charlestown,--which gear, when described from the
aboriginal point of view, was found to have no counterpart in the
material world; indeed the demand for it was prompted in the full
faith that whatever wish the heart of man could fashion the great
mart could furnish forth. The remonstrances sent on a second trip by
the runner were productive only of very guarded modifications in the
requisites, and all Ioco Town, in its excess of sophistication, was
laughing both at the simplicity of the old Indian of remote Kanootare
Town--who had never been as far as the Congarees, and who looked upon
Jock Lesly as a master magician in the mechanical arts--and at the
kindly worry and fret of the trader himself.
“Heard ever onybody the like o’ that--the daft auld carle! And where am
I to find sic gear? And am na I a fule to try? A hammer, that suld hae
a gun, like a pistol, in the eend, wi’ a sharp knife for skelpin’ that
clasps under--sae he’ll be aye ready for wark or war. Ding it a’, I’ll
no fash mysel’!”
As he strode about the place and discussed the absurdity with the
various braves, all seeking to recognize some modern and simpler
invention in the mists of his elaborate instructions, and the Indians
came and went from the trading-house and loitered about its recesses
with the young packmen, all in complete and obvious amity, there was
not the vaguest suggestion of the antagonism that had threatened the
destruction of the little party. The idea seemed a flout to credulity.
Jock Lesly again doubted its reality at times. “Hegh, lad,” he said to
Laroche, “ye hae gie us an unco stirrin’. I wad na tak a gliff at a
potato-bogle. It’s ower easy to be frighted.”
For Laroche, albeit aware how thin was this crust of peace that overlay
the seething, fiery crater of conspiracy and murder, was forced to
run the gauntlet in some sort,--to be the butt of the ridicule which
the harbinger of danger that does not materialize always is called
upon to suffer. Now and again he encountered this among the young
packmen poking fun in a sly way. The high value which they had set
upon his views because of his experience in actual encounters in the
continental wars, in which he stated he had served, seemed suddenly
inverted, and for this very reason his measures were derided. It was a
point of almost religious exaction in those days, as indeed sometimes
in these, to decry the regular soldier in aggrandizing the militia
or the volunteer, on the somewhat absurd hypothesis that the entire
devotion of a man’s time to a pursuit renders him necessarily inexpert
at it, or that the more one learns of military science the less one
knows. Whether this comes about from the instinctive arrogation of
the civilian that he is as fit in a fight as any man, and knows by
intuition all that the soldier learns by hard knocks, it is one of the
dearest delusions of the popular mind and is not to be lightly trifled
with. Laroche must needs have been more the diplomat and less the
soldier than he was to have perceived this spirit without the usual
snorting indignation and sentiment of baffled wonder at the presumption
of the comparison. But it is of that grade of intimate persuasion
in which argument or any certainty of demonstration is futile, and
like other military men earlier and since he permitted it to pass
unchallenged, with a secret scorn and a mocking acquiescence. It was
only in the presence of Lilias that he winced under this derision,
knowing that but for him the whole trading-station would be in ashes,
its embers quenched with the blood of its inmates. Yet in the same
instant he was saying to himself that her presence should be naught to
him, and that this guying was a trifle.
How could her presence be naught, when across the supper table the tiny
flame of the candle showed her blue eyes kindling like sapphires?
“Ou, ay, ay,”--her father was answering Callum’s inquiry,--“Tam is gaun
wi’ us--Tam’s gaun to haud a care o’ us,--gin he no taks to dreamin’
agen!” He stopped his chuckle with half a scone.
Lilias had risen and turned away, for Callum MacIlvesty wanted more
parritch and Laroche had matter other than Jock Lesly’s clumsy jest
to canvass in secret agitation. That blue, jeweled light in her
starry eyes--was it set aglow because the day of parting seemed yet
distant?--how could he care for the trader’s flout!
The next day he had in some sort a revenge for his installation as
laughing stock. He had repeatedly cautioned the young packmen against
the lurking dangers of the fougasses which he had connected with the
trading-house for its defense. There had supervened so general a
scorn of the warning, the menace--even the sight of the Indian town
under arms had been apparently only the reflex of their own acts of
hostility--that the emergency mines seemed but a part of the whole
invalid hoax until a stout, red-haired young packman, striking his
flint hard by, communicated a spark to a saucisson, and upon the
consequent explosion of the fougasse he was tossed like a feather
into the air and had three fingers blown off. The ground for several
yards was ripped open as if the ditch had never been filled, and the
crags and chasms of the mountains rang and rang with the successive
reverberations of the detonation.
Great as was the commotion among the trading folk, the incident was
as a revelation to the Indians. Almost palsied by terror, as in some
stupendous convulsion of nature, they no sooner comprehended the
agency of the disaster than their anxiety was increased twofold. At
this period, although the use of firearms was general among them and
the ancient bow and arrow were superseded, save in cases of necessity,
gunpowder was as yet an unaccustomed force except as confined to
musketry. They still entertained great terror of artillery, and the
effects of powder in mining and in so large a quantity seemed little
short of miraculous. Seeing the trader’s band presently clustered
about the scene of the disaster, several of the savages ventured to
approach, suspiciously sniffing the sulphur laden air and eyeing the
deep chasm in the ground with a grave, tentative aspect and a sort of
serious disaffection, which was in itself a most portentous threat.
It seemed to argue that scarcely any advantage was to be neglected
against people who could bring to their aid so potent an auxiliary of
destruction as this. Evidently the town itself might be thus destroyed.
The Indians began to walk about the pit, gazing down at it with the
sort of averse appropriation which one feels toward aught of menace
designed with a personal application. They measured the inimical
capacities of the fougasse, dwelling upon the intention of its device,
and obviously felt that anger experienced when one heartily takes the
ill will for the deed. Their state of mind was all at once so rancorous
that albeit the explosion of the fougasse was only another indication
of the strength of the defenses and the value of the resources of the
white man, and thus would seem to reinforce the dangers of attack, the
fact that it was planned to carry death and destruction to them, who
had as yet given no overt cause of offense and failed in naught of open
friendship, was as a challenge to strategy, invited reprisal, and made
vain all protestations of good will.
“Eh, we maun be gangin’ the morn’s morn,” said Jock Lesly, wiping his
brow with his great red handkerchief, and gazing down from the window
of the spence at the curious crowds that came and looked silently upon
the snare--riven and exploded and harmless now--that yet had been laid
for them.
“An’ what for no?” cried Lilias impatiently. “Ye’re aye sayin’ ‘we maun
be gangin’ an’ we maun be gangin’,’ an’ we aye bide here!”
“Whist, whist, my bairn.” Then perceiving some inconsistency, “The
deil’s in the wimmen folk!” Jock Lesly cried indignantly. “’Twas only
yesterday sennight that ye sat greetin’ on your creepie an’ said your
heart was sair to leave thae grand mountains,--an’ go ye wad na!”
The girl laughed slyly. So dull he was! So well, too, for a father to
be dull, when he had “sic a fule” for a daughter. She suddenly grew
grave and blushed with a deep, serious, conscious glow. She had caught
MacIlvesty’s eyes, bright, alert, with a world of speculation in them
as they were fixed upon her face. Could it be that he connected her
sudden change of will with the fact that on that tearful yesterday
sennight she had not known that mad Tam Wilson was to join their march?
For he had since announced that, designing to return to Virginia, he
would accompany the trader’s cavalcade as far as the Keowee River,--a
great detour and much out of his way.
VIII
NOR only Tam Wilson, but Moy Toy himself, Quorinnah, a dozen braves
from Tellico, and as many more of Ioco Town joined the escort, the
Cherokee headmen having become impressed definitely with the idea that
their interest was essentially involved in keeping faith with Laroche.
An early start was made the morn’s morn. The night had not yet revealed
the aspect of the day, whether fair or foul; the world was sunk in
darkness and swathed in mists. Now and again, glancing upward, one
might see a star, augury that the sky was clear, and then the web of
vapor annulled the scintillation and portended the gathering of clouds.
Torches were here, there, everywhere, flaring through the gloom. The
gable of the little home would show for a moment as one sped past,
and anon would collapse into the similitude of a burly shadow. The
trading-house stood forth with continuous distinctness; the light
within streamed through the open doors as the final preparations of
departure were in progress. It gave bizarre glimpses of the heavily
laden train of horses standing--shadowy equine figures--outside, with
now and again one of the packmen moving in the midst, readjusting a
burden or examining the strength of the girths. In the chill matutinal
air the bells on the animals gave out a keen jangling,--all the clamors
of the raucous voices of the packmen crying here and there; the noisy
movement of bales and boxes scraping upon the floors or against each
other; the thud of pawing hoofs; the swift beat of human footsteps to
and fro were punctuated by this continual, metallic vibration, which
somehow was jarring to the senses and added a distinct element of
confusion. Albeit, with the expectation of immediate departure, the
preparations were deemed complete the night before, still, when the
actual moment was at hand, it seemed that all was yet to be done--after
the perverse manner of a journey’s start. Trifles developed into
obstacles; obstacles became immovable; the impracticable asserted its
inelastic limitations; and throughout was heard, from time to time,
Jock Lesly’s half paternal, half petulant, admonitory upbraiding, “Oh
fie!--oh fie!”
Occasionally he quitted the precincts of the trading-house, leaving
the solution of its problems to his lieutenants, and plunged into the
more dusky and shadowy domain of his own dwelling, where, however,
he acquired no placidity, for now and again his favorite adjuration
issued thence, invested with a sort of pathetic intonation of futility
and associated with the name of Lilias. “Callum,” he would yell from
the door in despair, “Lilias winna ride ahint ye on the pillion!” Then
his stentorian roar, relaxing to domestic exhortation to the rebel of
the interior, seemed in the distance a mere rumble of “Oh fie!” in
conscious defeat; he would lift his voice anon as he was beaten back
from one line of defense to another, “Callum, Lilias winna ride ahint
me on the pillion!”
Callum’s face, half seen in the flare from the door, grew set and hard,
as he stood saddling with his own well-descended hands the palfrey
destined to bear the weight of the trader’s daughter. His action was
significant, whether or not it was observed. He had begun to take the
pillion off--since she would accompany neither him nor her father she
should not ride behind the saddle of Tam Wilson, if that were her
object. The other men looked at one another, laughing slyly, with a
certain relish in the paternal discomfiture and the hardiness of the
young insurgent, rejoicing in the ultimate victory of “little lassie
Lilias,” after the manner of those who are indulgent to the whims and
desirous of forwarding the power of a spoiled and imperious child--out
of their own household. They discerned nothing more serious in the
discussion, but Tam Wilson, busy in the group, was obviously expectant.
A longer interval of argument and remonstrance ensued. Then the great
voice, with a hapless quaver in its tones issued forth anew.
“Callum, Callum! Lilias winna ride on the pillion at a’. Lord save us!
The lassie vows she maun hae a tall horse all for her nainsel’--oh fie!
oh fie!”
He was fairly beaten, for time was against him, and he must needs come
out and see to the getting of his convoy together. Again and again in
the extremity of his despair he protested that night would find them
still hirpling about Ioco Town. But the first long slant of the sun met
the pack-train in full march, descending one of those steep defiles
among the mountains and the swirls of the Tennessee River, and the wind
itself was not more blithe and free and fain to travel. The pack-horses
swung in single file along the familiar ways of the old trading-path,
now at a brisk trot, now carefully treading a ledge whence a false step
would precipitate the creatures into the torrents below, without rein
or guidance selecting their footing and balancing their burden with
that strong animal intelligence and good will in labor which might seem
to entitle them to be considered conscious factors in the commercial
enterprise. Their chiming bells, blithely echoing from the crags, now
loud, now softly vibrating, as the tones of those in the vanguard or
far away in the rear came to the ear, made no dissonance in the free
open air in their diversity of quality, and smote upon the dash of
waters with the effect of sudden cymbals in the flutings and stringed
vibrations of orchestral music. The mist had taken wings. Far and near
the airy essences were rising from the mountains. The morning star,
luminous, splendid, in her amber cloud, exhaled like a dewdrop in the
glance of the sun. The spirit of May was in the air. The alert breeze
had a keen, matutinal reviviscence, despite the languors of spring,
and upon the mountains was a vague, blue presence, an efflorescence of
haze like the bloom on a grape, that made their tint deeper, richer,
softer, whether it were the azure of the furthest reaches of vision or
the sombre purple of the nearer ranges, or the densely, darkly verdant
slopes closing about the immediate vicinage of the series of cup-like
coves.
In the distinct light the convolutions of the train became easily
discernible to the eye, as from lower ground one could look back up the
winding slopes of the ravine, so narrow at times as to leave a passage
but for two or three abreast. Several of the stoutest men, fully armed,
rode in the vanguard, and after the pack animals and their drivers
came another close squad of horsemen, for owing to the packmen that
Callum MacIlvesty had brought with him, the guard of the pack-train was
more numerous than it was wont to be. A salient feature of the long,
winding troop was the waving feathers of the braves, themselves riding
together, for albeit most friendly of aspect, it was deemed meet that
they and the young packmen should have as scant opportunity as might be
to fall at loggerheads.
“They can’t talk thegither, praise God!” said Jock Lesly, who had had
little thought he should ever be in case to be thankful for the impiety
of the builders of the Tower of Babel, that had brought about the
confusion of tongues. “But they are a’ kittle cattle, and I’se no trust
them thegither.”
As he himself rode between the packmen and the Cherokee braves, his
own companions were Moy Toy and Quorinnah, who had attached themselves
to the chief of the expedition as their only equal in point of rank.
He had anticipated this and had directed Callum to ride at the bridle
rein of Lilias, whose station was between the squad of extra packmen
and the drivers of the pack-train. Tam Wilson had no place assigned to
him in the line of march. He was aware, when he took up his position
on the other side of her palfrey, that he might seem animated by a
sentiment far alien to the spirit of resignation and renunciation
that had lately possessed him, but in reality he was influenced by
the knowledge of the added protection his proximity afforded her.
Nevertheless, with the satisfaction of their safe departure, which
he knew his own exertions had secured, the keen edge of exhilaration
and expectancy that dangers still unmasked may give, the necessity
to support the character he had assumed, the delirious joy that her
presence and his knowledge of her preference could but diffuse through
mind and heart, all overcame for a time his sense of regret for his
idle delay, his disloyalty, his duplicity. He forgot the futile cruelty
to Callum MacIlvesty, and the deceit practiced toward her; and the
identity of Tam Wilson, which he claimed as his own true character, was
never more definite, more consistent than as he fared gayly by her side
down the devious ways of the mountain wilderness. The tinkling of the
bells and the chiming of the echoes were in his ears. He breathed the
fragrance that the herbs of the earth distilled into the rare air; the
colors of the landscape glowed so rich, so fine, so fair; and all the
heart of a beautiful woman who loved him was in her eyes as she looked
at him.
It was plain to Callum MacIlvesty, and Lilias scarcely cared that it
was. She had no realization of him save that his words, his face, his
very existence irked her, and she would fain be rid of him--being
in the nature of an interruption of the free thought of another. He
wondered afterward that he could be so patient--to watch her fair face
cloud as even casually she turned; to hear the inflection of annoyance
in her voice when she spoke to him, and she did not speak unless she
needs must answer; to mark her appeal to Tam Wilson for the buckling of
her rein anew, and the readjustment of her saddle; for a flower growing
beside the way; for a cluster of wild strawberries, which she ate to
the manifest danger of life and limb, the reins falling on her horse’s
neck as he gingerly picked his way, stumbling now and again down the
rugged descent, until Tam Wilson himself gathered up the lines and
guided the animal. And when the strawberries were eaten she rode on,
laughing like a child, her head bare under the sun, her golden curls
hanging down on her shoulder, and her milk-white face burning red,
although her riding mask swung by its string to her belt.
Sometimes Laroche was summoned back by the requisition of Moy Toy, Jock
Lesly, and Quorinnah, to give opinions or arbitrate on some moot point
of the trading privileges as established by the treaty, the Cherokees
secretly delighted that it was to a Frenchman, actively employed in the
French interest, to whom the unwitting British trader was appealing, by
whose decision he professed himself willing to abide, and that these
fine-spun theories were to be of consequence no more.
Then--the two young Scotch people left together--Lilias would gravely
grasp the reins and ride slowly along, gazing up continually at the
massive ranges, for their aspect shifted as the route of the travelers
deviated. When one majestic dome, always in view from the little window
of the spence, seemed on the very border-land of vision, the turn
around a crag about to cut it off forever, she checked her horse and
paused to look her last upon it.
“I’ll never see it mair!” she cried, in accents of positive pain. “I’ll
ne’er be sae happy again as I hae been, living in the sight. Fare ye
weel, sweet friend. May the warld gae cannily wi’ ye!”
The blue dome still towered like a mirage in the distance above the
purple of nearer heights and the green of the foothills; then the crag
intervened, and suddenly she laid down the reins on the horse’s neck
and began to tie on her mask.
“Ye’ll see mountains agen. There’s mountains enough elsewhere, Lilias,”
said Callum, in awkward consolation, as he caught up the reins and held
the horse to a steady gait.
“Nane like these,” she protested in a husky voice. “There’s mountains
enough in Scotland, an’ that’s nae joy to you nor to me.”
And this was very true, as the poor exile realized; his heart might
ache vainly for the rugged mountains he remembered and loved, and as
for these mountains of this new land she, whom he loved best, loved
them well for another man’s sake. He gazed upon them with dreary
eyes and an inward protest against them. Happy in their shadow! in
magnitude, in multitude they typified woe, unceasing, immeasurable,
ineradicable. So these two rode on together in silence, save that she
murmured now and again, “Thae sweet mountains!”
He was none the happier when Tam Wilson came spurring up again, and
Lilias was suddenly blithe and bonny once more. She was as gay as a
child when they reached the first unfordable river, where the singular
methods of ferriage of those days came into requisition. Through the
shallow waters of the fords the knowing pack animals had cheerfully
trudged, scarcely needing and certainly not noticing the halloos and
cracking of whips with which the packmen beguiled the passage. Here,
however, was a river deep enough to threaten damage to the packs and
to require swimming, and the horses lined up on the margin, still with
their tinkling bells fitfully jingling, and staidly awaited, more than
one with expectant whinnies, the removal of their burdens. A delay
ensued, as always, and each section of the guard coming up, kept apart
to this time for reasons of policy, halted in a medley on the high and
rocky banks which resounded and reëchoed with the various calls in
Cherokee and English and braid Scots, with the jangling of bells and
stamping of hoofs. Here and there an active and agitated search was in
progress for the boat, constructed of buffalo skins and always hidden
among the willows or rocks on shore when not in requisition by the
traders and packmen and their Indian coadjutors,--the headmen of Ioco,
the town where the station was situated, being admitted to the secret
of the cache.
“Gone! gone!”--a frenzied exclamation arose. “Stolen! Carried away!”
Perhaps hidden anew! A score of active figures dashed hither and
thither, now bursting out of the willows with exclamations of dismay,
now plunging down the bank to a new point of search. Some as they sped
up and down showed above the rocks heads polled and feathered, others,
most genteel, with cocked hats, and again the coonskin cap or Callum’s
Highland bonnet was in evidence. Lilias, in the flickering, glinting
shade of a low-hanging beech tree, her head bare and golden, her face
so fair, looking as some dryad might, captured by this wild and varied
rout, waited like one apart, without a pulse of the impatience that
swayed the whole cavalcade. She was living in the present. For aught
she cared the journey might last forever. The past, it was naught to
her; the future was so strangely veiled--and somehow she trembled at
the thought. To-day! to-day!
The disaster threatened a long delay; a new boat must be built, new
hides procured, all suitably tanned, and the incident itself suggested
treachery and fomented suspicion. More than once the eyes of Callum
MacIlvesty and Tam Wilson met in secret comment, an interchange
of inquiry, a fraternal interdependence, all other considerations
forgotten in the realization of a common danger. But Moy Toy’s face
was frankly clouded, and Quorinnah was already suggesting ways and
means by which, going into camp here, help might be fetched from Ioco
Town. Only Jock Lesly gave no outward sign of his inward perturbation
as he strode up and down the bank, save that now and again he
admonished his cohorts with a shake of the head and a vehement “Oh fie!
oh fie!”
And at last and suddenly, quiet descended on all the disordered crew,
bating a word or two of rancorous upbraiding and a retort of raucous
yet sheepish protest, for the boat was found where first it had been
presumed to be. It had been overlooked, so well had it been hidden,
and once declared to be missing the place of its usual and most
obvious bestowal was not searched again till desperation suggested
the retracing of all the various steps that had been taken. And so
it was presently launched. A queer craft we of to-day would deem it,
and perhaps would prefer something more stanch and less picturesque,
seeing how swift and deep and rocky was the river. But the capsizing of
such a boat meant only some slight injury of the goods and the swift
swimming of the hardy passengers ashore, none the worse for the plunge
into the clear waters of the mountain stream. The hides stretched
between stout saplings, serving as gunwale and keel and tightly bound
at each end, were distended toward the centre by crosspieces of the
same fashioning, holding the boat in the conventional canoe shape,
and the structure would convey ten horse loads at once. The method of
progression was still more singular--no oars nor poles were used in
its propulsion. The hardy packmen of the day, being lightly clad in
buckskins, were wont boldly to fling themselves into the river and swim
across, pushing the pettiaugre before them, their horses all gallantly
swimming in the rear. When the first boat’s load had been piled upon
the craft, Lilias was conducted down the steep bank and seated in the
boat, the only passenger, upon the bales of fine dressed deerskins.
Callum MacIlvesty and a number of other young men were instantly in the
water, wading first, then swimming, with the liberated horses following
after. The girl liked the novelty. She smiled down from her high perch
at each strong stroke that sent the curious structure throbbing and
quivering on its way, with its silver wake and a little ripple of foam
at the prow. The river was crystal clear, smooth, and shining in its
centre under the sun, deeply, duskily green beneath the shadow of the
trees on the further shore. Beyond, where the stream rounded a sort
of peninsula, a great glittering stretch of water seemed to extend
indefinitely in a haze that hung about a flat margin and there met the
sun in a vaporous shimmer, dazzling yet soft. All the group on the
hither shore gazed at the progress of the boat, but only the cultivated
imagination of the French officer suggested similitudes of aught that
it was not. Against that green and white and misty background the
shell-shaped craft and the still and smiling golden-haired figure
recalled some legendary sea nymph, some Venus in the gliding shallop;
the sleek heads of the attendant train suggested dolphins and sea
horses, gleaming in the sunset as they swam swiftly after.
There was scant space for the flattery of illusions, for the deep
shadows of the leafy bank opposite were falling upon this misty
presentment of myths, the necromancy of the sheen and shimmer, and
obliterating it as the little craft was pushed in to the land. Those of
the packmen who had crossed were shaking the water from their dripping
garments with no more care for a drenching than so many shaggy dogs,
and presently were resaddling their horses, while Lilias, quite dry and
fresh, stood apart on a little promontory of rock and with a scornful
wave of the hand bade Callum in his saturated kilt keep his distance.
It seems incredible that such a man as Laroche should fear a little
guying, but perhaps it was only the spectacle of Callum’s discomfiture
that reconciled him to the knowledge of the scoffs at him, covert and
otherwise, which he knew he should receive from the other young men
when with Jock Lesly and the Indian headmen he should cross in the
boat on its second trip, his condition as a recent invalid entitling
him to share their honors and ease. It was barely possible, however,
that Lilias would have found no occasion, even were he also dripping
from the short swim, to place an embargo on his near approach. Why it
was that this watery quarantine should have roused Callum MacIlvesty’s
spirit of revolt, of self-assertion, of pride, it is difficult to say.
Perhaps merely the limit of his endurance was reached when he was cried
out upon like a too affectionate and dripping water dog.
“I winna sprinkle your kirtle,” he said with some dignity, despite the
triviality of the theme. And he withdrew himself--not merely till the
hot sun and the reflected heat of sand and rocks should dry off his
garments, which, aided by the swift running to and fro on the errands
of the pack-train, the brisk wind, and the warmth of his own body, was
shortly effected.
The whole train was in motion again incredibly soon, considering the
abnormal difficulties which these primitive methods of ferriage would
seem to present. The young packmen, by reason of being detailed to
the earliest crossing, were kept separated from the braves, the “mad
young men,” with whom it was feared some quarrel might arise through
their perverse ingenuity, independent of verbal communication. These
tribesmen came last of all, after the dignitaries of both factions, and
thus when once more on the march the original formation of the little
cavalcade was preserved.
Only Callum MacIlvesty had shifted his position. He no longer rode at
the right hand of Lilias, but ahead with the squad of packmen, and Tam
Wilson succeeded to the position he had occupied; but Lilias appeared
hardly to have noticed Callum’s absence, and certainly did not waste
a thought upon it. Her radiant spirit seemed to shine through her
eyes--she was gay, whimsically, childishly fascinating one moment;
soft, serious, deeply emotional the next; now showing her more earnest
traits, careful, womanly, unselfish; and again the veriest flutterer
of a butterfly. She had never been so protean of mood, so beautiful,
so charming. And yet Laroche looked upon her with changed eyes, a
newly aroused and upbraiding conscience. The frightful bodily danger
in which they had all recently stood from the murderous Cherokees,
his triumphant scheming to avert their impending fate, had been as a
reprieve to thoughts that now in this leisure again clamored for a
hearing. His long, idle lingering amongst them and enforced concealment
of his identity had brought this menace upon them. He had not yet
annulled all its evils. And now--whither was he tending? Daily he
considered the question.
He was a man of education, having had superior facilities and both the
talent and the will to avail himself of them. He was not without social
culture, and he moved in coteries of refinement. While not of the
higher nobility, he was still a man of good birth, of degree, and of
some fortune, and this had enabled him to tolerate the more kindly the
bourgeois, nay the peasant-like aspect of the Lesly household, since
it was but a matter of contemplation, and by no means of assimilation.
He had regarded it with all its homely traits and habitudes as
impersonally as if it were a scene on a stage.
In addition he was consumed by professional ambition; he had always
been accounted an efficient, superior officer; he believed that his
military abilities were great. Upon the successful issue of his plans
among the Cherokees and other tribes high preferment would await him
in the gift of the French government. To hamper by a _mésalliance_
with a simple Scotch girl, the daughter of a bourgeois trader, his
future, his pride of diplomatic achievement, his opportunity to render
great services to his government--he was appalled by the very thought.
He promised himself that he would make no such sacrifice for any woman
on earth! Seriously contemplated, he could not raise her to his level,
and he would not sink to hers. All must be renounced should he dream
of her in any sense but to kiss her hand in gallantry and bless her
goodness in gratitude.
Yet what was he doing? Separating forever two young people whose
kindness had been so largely instrumental in saving his life. Lapsed
in the luxury of a sweet, delicate, almost abstract emotion, flattered
by the consciousness of her love, he had supplanted her true suitor
by this ghastly simulacrum of a lover, and was wrecking the happiness
of both. He was sentimental enough, in the abstract, to care much
for a sentimental woe. He was conscientious enough to appraise the
unjustified intermeddling of the course he had pursued, and sensitive
enough to shrink from bearing the consciousness of it all his days.
With the policy of the confessional of the faith in which he had been
trained, that restitution must accompany repentance and peace only
follow penance, he was canvassing how to undo in days all that he had
wrought in months. It should not be, he declared arbitrarily. He cared
honestly, kindly, too much for her, loved her too truly, for herself,
as a friend! And toward Callum himself he was not indifferent. Yet how
could he bring them together again? Difficulties hedged him about. He
feared the English in his character of French emissary. Now, daily, he
was approaching the Englishman’s country. He adventured, indeed, much
for the sake of her and hers. Knowing his prejudice, he would not trust
Jock Lesly with his secret. But the girl loved him. He would trust
Lilias! She would doubtless expect him to follow her to Charlestown.
She would watch and wait for him. She would pine. But should he
disclose his nationality, his employ, it must appear that their parting
was final; in all probability, so divided by distance and prejudice,
they would never meet again. It would be a poignant pang to them both,
and Lilias he could never forget! If thus unhampered she could find her
happiness in Callum MacIlvesty--he sighed--but he would not grudge it.
At all events he owed her this: she must not waste her sweet young life
in devotion to an illusion.
In reaching this resolution he was far too acute, too accustomed to
introspection, not to perceive that he had postponed the shattering of
the romance that had delighted him until its enchantment had at the
most but a few days’ lease. He took some credit, however, that he had
determined to submit to the ordeal and the jeopardy it involved before
these were passed, that he might have space for an earnest effort to
bring the young people to their former understanding. Besides, he
argued, he might easily, in the interests of his own safety, hold
his peace. Surely it was not a part of his duty, in going about the
country, to warn susceptible maidens against losing their hearts to him.
Notwithstanding the stress of this absorption, he conducted a dual
train of thought, listened to her talk, answered in character, followed
the manifold changing theme, commented on the varying aspects of the
country,--all the region being new to him,--found even space for a keen
notice of her flattered consciousness that it was for her sake that
he made this long and laborious detour in his journey to delay their
parting--if ever they should part again; and only once did he answer at
random, and only once did he fall into silence, to be merrily rallied
and asked when and where did he see that wolf.
One day the camp was pitched about sunset, the blue twilight yet in
abeyance. This, too, was the first halt since breakfast, dinner having
been eaten on the march. A substantial meal, therefore, was this supper
_al fresco_. Kettles were swung gypsy fashion; venison was broiled
on the coals; some wild ducks, brought down by a volley in the course
of the march, were split and toasted on a long stick at the general
camp, but brandered at the fire of the “gentlefolks” as the contingent
of Moy Toy and Jock Lesly was called,--it boasting a branding iron. The
“gentles” also rejoiced in a case bottle of brandy, while the lower
grades were content with rum, and only Lilias and the Frenchman drank a
“dish of chocolate.” By a watercourse, necessarily, the halt was made
and in the neighborhood of one of those exquisite springs for which the
region is noted.
It seemed illimitably deep as Laroche and Lilias stood amidst the
sweet-scented ferns on its rocky verge and then sat down on one of
the fractured fragments fallen from the great crag beetling from the
mountain slope above their heads.
Lured by the fascination that this sort of fountain in the wilderness
seems to exert on all travelers, each of the cavalcade had come to gaze
upon the crystalline depths which were like topaz in the lucent tints
imparted by the golden gravel beneath. The hewing of the circular basin
was almost as symmetrical as if wrought by hand. The down-dropping
branches of the sycamore and beech nearly veiled the crags closing
about them, and the far-away mountains across a stretch of valleys and
lesser ranges were purple and sombre under the light of the sinking and
vermilion sun. Only these two lingered here, quite silent at first, and
Laroche wondered if he could speak at all. He glanced about doubtfully.
“Lilias,” he said slowly, “I have something to say to you.”
The shadow of a homing bird sped across the sunlit valley. Down the
current of the river was visible a red reflection that was not a cast
of the western sun, but was caught from a camp-fire on the bluff. At
these he looked, not at her, lest the sight of her face disarm his
resolution; yet somehow he was aware of the sudden flutter of her heart
and the quickening of her pulses, and he knew that for all his art and
all his tact he had begun amiss. He hastened to nullify the impression
she might have taken, nay, nay, must have taken from his words.
“It is a secret,” he said hurriedly. “You must promise that you will
tell no one--not even your father.”
He wondered, his eyes still fixed on those furthest western mountains,
if her heart had ceased to beat, so still she suddenly was; then he
realized rather than saw the slow motion of surprise, of protest, as
her head turned toward him on its long and slender white neck.
“Not even your father,” he reiterated, for he must needs go on.
So sudden had been the revulsion of feeling, so complete, so
paralyzing, that she could not trust her voice. And this was well, for
he perceived that even in these few steps he had stumbled into a second
pitfall. Exclude the paternal idol, know a secret forbidden to that
paragon of wisdom and crown of creation, Jock Lesly! In another moment
he would have a downright refusal of the trust. He must quickly involve
her in the safety, the confidence of another, and even filial fealty
would not warrant her in breaking faith with him.
“No,” he qualified hastily, “don’t promise. I will throw myself on
your honor--in the fullest assurance of safety. Lilias, I am not what
I seem; I am an emissary of the French government, an officer of the
army!”
She recoiled violently, suddenly shaken, shocked; and albeit ghastly
pale she fixed a challenging stare upon him.
“A spy?” she demanded in a husky voice, impressive with its deliberate
tone and weighty yet incredulous rebuke.
Laroche hastily collected his faculties. This untoward trend of his
disclosures must needs be checked in sheer consideration of the safety
of his neck.
“Ah, Lilias, _bien aimée_,” he cried, in half petulant, half
affectionate protest. “How can you misunderstand? Remember how I came
to you--was it of my own intention, my own volition?”
The recollection of those weeks of illness, of helplessness, when he
lay under their roof unconscious, brought thither by her father, was
supplemented by the thought of the simple domestic routine in which he
had grown a factor and had made the dear sense of home in these savage
wilds so doubly dear, his eager care for their safety, his suspicions
of the Indians, his precautions for the defense of the trading-station,
his oft ridiculed anxieties and prognostications of savage treachery
that had at last proved stern truth,--only foiled by his foresight and
ingenuity and sagacity. As these reflections flitted through her mind,
his eyes read the changing expressions of her face like an open book.
He spoke as if in response.
“Remember,” he said with emotion, “for believe me I can never forget,
dear heart”--
Suddenly, seeing the roseate color at the word beginning to return, to
deepen, to glow in her cheek with a subtle, conscious emotion, he was
admonished of that far more significant secret of his mission which
must be disclosed, and that quickly, for the sake of both.
“No, not a spy,” he declared deliberately, seeking to quell the wild
plunging of his own heart, as though one should find a gentle palfrey
suddenly metamorphosed into a mighty charger. “My mission was primarily
to survey and report the character of the obstructions to navigation of
the Cherokee River--far away, a hundred miles or more; but I feared to
say as much to your father, because of the international jealousies,
that yet need hamper no friendship between him and me. May we not think
kindly of each other as man to man, even though the nations are at war?”
He turned questioning eyes upon her--and she, her face so sweetly
flushed, her eyes so gently luminous, looking all her love for him, all
her soft faith in his love for her, silently acceded, for she could not
trust her voice in the consciousness of what she looked to hear, what
his words next promised.
Oh, how could he speak? Yet how could he dally and delay and torture
both himself and her? The look in her face nearly routed his resolve.
With an effort he went on almost at random, blurting out his revelation
by piecemeal.
“My mission was primarily merely diplomatic--but I foresaw the
opportunity here and, representing it to the government, I volunteered
for the service; my authority was accordingly extended, and I will
command an army of Indians when it is put into the field in the French
interest.”
He had plucked off a frond of the fern that grew by the margin and was
tearing it to bits and throwing them from him in the pause. They could
hear the water of the spring softly gurgle. The voices of the camp
beyond sounded distant and a-dream, like half heeded calls to drowsy
ears; the reflection of the camp-fires in the river had mustered a
deeper glow, as if recruited from the crimson clouds so lately parading
through the sky. Now the sky was vacant, a clear, pure, faintly tinted
blue, and in its midst a star gleamed with an incomparable whiteness
above the darkly bronze green of the mountains. And yet the night had
not come. The world was full of this gentle, limpid clarity of light.
He could have seen every line of her face as she sat upon the rock had
he dared glance toward her.
If the girl had been an image, craftily wrought of stone, she could
have shown no more semblance of life than that silent, motionless
figure.
She doubtless heard. She could but understand.
The reserve of her attitude overwhelmed the alert expectation of
the Frenchman, whose mental posture had been, by long and agitated
anticipation, braced for expostulation, for reproaches, for tears, nay
even appeals,--for she loved him as he loved her, and he knew it. This
absolute nullity as the result of a revelation so momentous to them
both reacted on his nerves. Oddly enough he experienced the tumult of
feeling in which he had thought to see her whelmed. He even called out
to her in his agitation, as heretofore he had prefigured her appeal to
him. He had utterly lost his artificial poise--he had become once more
the natural man.
“Lilias! Lilias!” he cried with a poignant accent. “It is true, lassie,
to my sorrow--to my sorrow! I am a French soldier, but no enemy of you
or of yours, and, God help me, I love you!”
She lifted her head suddenly and looked at him with stern eyes, which,
even despite the dusk, he could by no means misunderstand.
“Do you mean,” she said, “that you volunteered to spirit up these
fiends of Indians to fall upon the frontier and massacre women and
children?”
He drew back, affronted and wounded.
“Nay, Lilias, war is war, and never play. If women and children suffer,
’tis the fortune of war, and the responsibility is on the men who have
the care of them. And do not the English march savages against the
French? And have not Frenchmen also wives and children, and even hearts
and souls?”
“If it were your bounden duty,” she stipulated.
“It is, being my country’s opportunity,” he argued.
“If it had been that ye could na turn back--that your help had been
pledged--your honor engaged--your own and your hame to defend! But to
_seek_ the foul employ--to lead into the field these merciless
fiends against the peaceful hunter and the patient husbandman, the wife
and the daughter, the grandame and the babe! And for what price, Judas?
Is it gold--or is it place?”
He could kiss her hand, even if it dealt a blow.
“Nay, Lilias,” he said, wincing at every thrust. “It is justifiable by
all the rules of war; no honorable soldier need evade the duty. But
I will not have you think of me thus. I mean”--taking the plunge of
irrevocable revolt, to his own amazement--“I will renounce it; I will
resign. I will return to civil life. I will be a planter--a--what you
will, and you shall be my wife.”
“Your wife!” she exclaimed, and her voice, although steady, rang
uncertain of intonation. “Your wife!”
She seemed, to his alert receptiveness, to dwell lingeringly, fondly,
on the words. But after a moment she went on unfalteringly,--
“Oh, man! you’d break faith with king and country to win favor with a
woman!”
He was staggered for an instant.
“It would be no loss to the government. They would only send another
officer to fill my place.”
He hesitated in a sudden jealous speculation as to who might succeed
to the result of his careful work and the rewards of his hard-earned
opportunity. Then he resumed with eager urgency, “But you think my
orders are revolting and the service unholy. You account my engagements
with the French government inconsistent with my honor”--
“It is na what _I_ think, but what are they to
you--naething?--naething?”
“Nothing in comparison with my love for you; nothing in comparison with
my gratitude for your love for me. For, Lilias, you love me; surely you
love me!”
She had risen, and still standing, she suddenly put both hands before
her eyes.
“Oh, puir Tam Wilson!” she cried, and burst into a tumult of tears.
The irrelevance stunned him as he stood staring at her.
“But you are na Tam Wilson!” She turned upon him in a sort of fury,
throwing out one hand at arm’s length with a gesture of repudiation.
“Oh, you are na Tam Wilson! Oh, the leal heart _he_ had! He wad
na gie ower his trust and renounce his pledges and quit his country’s
wark for ony lassie alive! He could na be balked by fear, an’ he could
na be bought by favor. And if God prospered him he thankit Him for
his mercies! And if God denied him he thankit Him for his chastening!
And when in the gude time his wife suld come to him, ’t would be as
a helpmeet, as ’t was ordained,--to go hand in hand in an honorable
path, to work together, building up, not throwing down, keeping faith,
not breaking it,--open as the day, hiding naething and with naething
to hide. And she would be dear, but his honor would be dearer! He wad
na win a woman’s heart wi’ vain protestations an’ false names, and wi’
terrible secret military orders to haud him back,--and then tell her
that his engagements were naught to him for _her_ sake! For she
might tell him, as I tell you, an oath’s an oath, and ill to break! And
I will hae naught to do wi’ a man wha wad break it for the blink o’ a
lassie’s eye! _He_ wad na do that--oh, puir Tam Wilson!”
He stood aghast, arraigned, conscience-stricken. But she had leaned
against the crag, her soft cheek pressed on the stern gray rock,
relinquishing her reproaches and bewailing her bereavement.
“Oh, puir, puir Tam Wilson!” she cried again and again. “To think
_he_ never lived! He isna you! He is naebody--naething! Puir Tam
Wilson--to think he never lived!”
She would not hear remonstrances. She would not look at Laroche. He was
fain presently to leave her in the closing dusk, lest the others might
join them when neither could well explain her emotion. As he slipped
away in the elusive gathering gray shadows, he still heard her sobs
from their midst, bewailing the tenuous estate of puir Tam Wilson,
quite as elusive as they.
He did not see her again till the next morning. She was pallid as
the result of a sleepless night. Her eyelids, although swollen from
persistent weeping, were still heavy with unshed tears. Her face was
stern, hard, even sullen. She seemed averse to speech and answered her
father’s expressions of alarm because of her grief-stricken manner and
Callum’s eager solicitous inquiries as to her well-being with a curt
explanation, “I hae had dreams.”
Laroche, who had had time for reflection, appreciated an undercurrent
of a more subtle sincerity in the response than was obvious from the
surface. Dreams indeed--mere dreams! Puir Tam Wilson!
He was glad of the relief which this apt reply afforded him, for he had
suffered some mundane and most personal anxieties, in view of her youth
and inexperience in diplomatic matters, as to her capability to guard
his disclosure. Indeed he was doubtful of her disposition to shield
him since her emotion had been so strongly elicited and the unexpected
resultant repulsion for him had so completely offset her prepossession
hitherto in his favor, on which he had relied for protection. His
liberty, and even his life, were in her hands, and he could hardly
contain his regret that he had confided aught to her.
There is no repentance so sharp as that which arises from a mistake
made in a presumable excess of conscientiousness. He told himself now
that acting in the discharge of his political and official duty he
might well have left events to take their own course. If he had parted
with her, revealing naught of the true identity of puir Tam Wilson,
she could hardly have pined more for the man himself than for the
figment of her fancy. Callum had scarcely a more definite rival in the
substance than in the shadow. If the two young people could not come to
an understanding with the memory of the man between them, they could
hardly now have a unity of interest separated by the myth.
But the dreams that she had had, of which he was acutely conscious of
being a visionary part, and her fractious, imperious temper served
to account for much childish petulance in her conduct toward all who
approached her. She waved away the horse on which she had hitherto
ridden, when the animal was brought forward, ready saddled for her use.
She would not speak, nor would she mount.
“Oh fie! oh fie!” exclaimed Jock Lesly, as in duty bound. Then in
dulcet solicitude, “Winna ma poppet ride her pillion? Hey, Duncan,
Dougal,--Miss Lilias’s pillion!”
And then it became evident that on this pillion she would in no wise
ride behind Callum, who was only too officious to proffer his services;
nor Tam Wilson, whose proposition, despite a secret reluctance, was
made with all needful show of alacrity. Therefore the pillion was
strapped behind Jock Lesly’s saddle, and when mounted there Lilias
leaned her head against his broad shoulder and wept silently from time
to time and desisted to clasp both arms as tightly as possible around
his broad girth with a childish but joyless hug, feeling, nevertheless,
that here was the only stanch heart in all the world, the only one
whose love was of any value. Then she would fall to weeping again, and
pause to take pleasure in wiping her eyes on the gray and flaxen wisps
of his plaited hair, hanging down on his shoulders within her reach.
So often was his hair devoted to the sad duty of drying her tears that
the locks came unplaited and escaped from the leather thong that tied
them, so that she needs must plait them over again. This she did, using
both hands and sustaining her weight on the pillion by holding to the
hair of the suffering scalp of her father, who, much tormented lest she
fall, punctuated the performance with adjurations--“Oh fie! oh fie!”
Presently he would feel her head, once more lying against his shoulder,
shaken by the tumult of her sobs, and in a bewildered effort at
consolation he would admonish her, “Whist--whist, hinny! Dreams are
naething! but maist like sour sowens for supper. Dreams are naething!”
“Naething!” she would respond ambiguously. “Naething! Oh, that I suld
say so! Dreams are naething at a’!”
She did not speak to Laroche again except upon the day of his
departure, which he had expedited as far as he might without incurring
comment. She was riding her own horse again, and when she pressed the
animal up abreast with him in the cavalcade, he felt his heart glow
within him. He had loved her, truly and purely, and with a sort of
tender lenient admiration, and he warmed to the thought of bearing
away with him some word of friendship that would make the remembrance
of her less like a flagellation than a grief both sad and sweet and to
be tenderly cherished. For she could not be aware that he had revealed
his military and national status without intending to confess his love
merely to stem the tide of her own.
There was a touch of pride in the poise of her head. Yet it was always
carried high, in truth. Her eyes flashed. They were always at their
brightest when they looked out thus, gleaming like sapphires upon the
variant blue of the distant mountain ranges. The day was fair, the wind
went by with a rush, and her smile was as bland as the sun on the
expanse of vernal foliage in the valley beneath the verge of the path
as they rode adown the rugged ravines.
“They tell me you are gaun to quit us the day,” she said suavely.
“Aye, and sorry am I,” he replied with polite alacrity.
She made a gesture as of flouting a triviality.
“Why suld mortals be glad or sorry?” she said. “Their fate is a’ fixed,
whether they will or no. And they go to meet it--ane might a’most
say--without mair knowledge o’ its nearness than kyloes hae o’ the
shambles.”
She paused for a moment. Then quickly resumed as if she neither
expected nor desired response.
“But mony folks try to speer out the future, and tak muckle heed o’
signs an’ sic-like, especial o’ ill luck. Ye hae heard us speak o’ thae
strange warnin’s that appear in the likeness o’ a man’s nainsel’--but
I misdoubts these are only auld wives’ clavers; I misdoubts. I want to
tell you this,”--she turned upon him a casual but radiant smile,--“if
e’er you hap to see a man comin’ till you that looks like yoursel’,
_ye_ needna be frighted, for it winna be Tam Wilson. Tak my word
for it--it winna be Tam Wilson!”
She reined in her horse and fell back among the others, while he rode
on feeling his heart thrust through with the stabs of her deliberate
cruelty; and these were all the farewell words that passed between
them.
IX
PERHAPS no man ever lived a tragedy of thought and feeling, unrelated
to the conditions and professions of his merely material life, more
consciously than did Laroche. Flung back perforce on his military
character, every pulse ached with the straining against those
professional chains, the fragments of which, had they broken in the
stress, he would with loyal perversity have hugged. Yet since they
held fast, he pined for Jock Lesly, for the simple household, for
the humble domestic habitudes and the hearthside atmosphere, for the
chaste yet alluring presence of Lilias. Many a day after he had seen
the trader’s cavalcade fare downward through the bosky ravine, becoming
dim and diminishing as it went, flickering among the shadows seeming as
immaterial as they, finally vanishing indistinguishably in their midst,
he could behold it anew in freshest tints and near at hand whenever the
wish--or alack, the unruly fancy--brought it to mind again. Long after
the echoes had ceased to repeat the hearty halloo of farewell, the last
of many regretful tokens of parting, he was wont to hear these voices
in song or breezy talk or affectionate greeting as of yore.
Yet he had scant time for this as he rode back to Ioco Town, for it is
needless to say the projected detour to Virginia was never really in
contemplation. Moy Toy was obviously jealous of his self-absorption
and silence, and had become captious under the enforced relinquishment
of the trader’s party as his lawful prey. He was more impatient still
of the necessary delays that must ensue before the Cherokees could
be in case to strike a blow in revenge for all their disasters,
plainly registered in the charred tenantless towns here and there on
the face of the ravaged landscape. Laroche sought to divert his mind,
to placate him anew, to excite his interest. In devising subjects of
talk the Frenchman often attempted to sound the depths of the Cherokee
character and definitely gauge the capacities of the tribe to receive
and assimilate the values of civilization, that thereby he might deduce
something of the force that their national traits would exert in the
destinies of this great continent. For instance, he would argue with
Moy Toy upon the Indian aversion to the stability and permanence of
architecture.
“The white man like the Indian can live but a day--why should his house
outlast him?” the chief would protest stolidly.
“For those who come after,--since houses congregate into cities, and
cities erect nations, and nations continue throughout ages, and ages
are aggregations of strength. What is done in a day lasts but a day,”
retorted the soldier.
Thus speculatively disposed he would seek to measure the extent and
divine the catastrophe of that ancient prehistoric civilization
of which his keen instinct read much in the scattered fragments
along the shores of Time: in the aboriginal traditions, unique and
indefinitely antique; in the ceremonials, of which the significance
was lost in degeneracy, retaining but the manner without the matter,
the shapeless shadow of an unimagined symmetry; in the language,
absolutely individual, he thought, with copious verbal forms and facile
locutions, with orderly construction, with subtle shades of minutely
diverse meanings, with large and sonorous adaptation to high themes;
in the religion, with its elaborate theory of symbolism without the
vital spark. He wondered how far this definite cult, seeming almost
inherent, would deter the Cherokees from a conversion to Christianity.
He doubted this result because of their earnest observance of the
ritual of their ancient religion and implicit faith in its sanctities.
Yet Moy Toy was himself the suavest of postulants, the most promising
of catechumens. So eagerly he listened to the French officer who
explained the grounds of his own belief and its revolutionizing effects
upon the nations of all the world--not failing to turn and scan the
number of tribesmen in the band from time to time, to make sure that
none had followed with treacherous intentions the trader’s train--that
many another man as discerning as Laroche yet less crafty might have
been deceived.
Over the camp-fires at night especially Moy Toy seemed to delight in
repeating some of the more simple and discursive details of the day’s
talk, often startling Laroche by his powers of memory, the accuracy
of his comprehension, and his gift of mimicry. Laroche wondered if a
preference which he noted for biographical details might be ascribed
to that fraternizing instinct to realize the conditions of the life
of man in whatever age or country, despite the lapse of time and the
barriers of distance, that attests the universal brotherhood, and if it
was this which had served to invest the narrations with such reality
and had so strengthened the grasp of his mind upon them. The officer
found, however, a curious flavor of speculation in the fact that try
as he might he could not enlist this vivid interest in the incidents
of the New Testament. The sanguinary histories of the Old Testament,
dealing oft with force and fraud, met with no skeptical reservations
or evasions from Moy Toy. The motives they adduced were eminently
comprehensible to him, the result credible, and his attitude of mind
applausive. But with the gospel of love and meekness, the forgiveness
of injuries and succor of enemies, the dictates of self-sacrifice and
self-denial, the savage had no pulse in unison. Moy Toy listened as
his obvious policy required. Sometimes he commented.
“Christianity is to make the red men good? Then tell me, why has it not
made the white men good?--they have had it so long--seventeen hundred
years, you say, and more!”
And the French officer, fairly routed, could only answer that the race
had not lived up to its best opportunity.
The chief’s interest in the ethical phase of the subject often flagged,
however, beyond the power of simulation. It was only held to a pretense
of attention by the inexorable etiquette of the Cherokee, however
prolix his interlocutor, and an occult intention to master certain
knowledge by the ruse of surprise, as it were. But inborn subtlety is
no match for the ratiocination of cultivation, and Moy Toy’s instinct
was fatally at fault when with a child-like blandness and irrelevance
he casually demanded, “How was it, did you say last night, that the
good San Quawl made his powder when he journeyed down to the city of
Damascus?” or “I have forgotten how many pounds of powder you said the
brave chief Samson put under the gates of Gaza when he blew them up to
carry them off.”
The trail of the earnest dominant desire to discover that seigneurial
secret of civilization that made it the lord of the world, the
conqueror of force, the despot of right, the annihilator of
numbers,--the simple formula for the manufacture of gunpowder, the
materials for which Laroche had already assured him abounded in the
Cherokee country,--lay through all the devious windings of their talk,
and divulged the springs of self-interest in Moy Toy’s affectations of
the dawnings of faith.
On each occasion the revulsion of the officer’s feeling was so great
that the betrayal of the Indian’s motive in searching the Scriptures,
and his conviction that the ultimate value of the white man’s religion
lay in his superior knowledge of destructive explosives, failed to
excite any cynical amusement in Laroche, and roused in him a very
genuine indignation. For the demonstration always came as a surprise in
its devious methods, half incredulous though he was as to the eventual
conversion of the Indian.
“Let it be accounted to me for righteousness that I do not instantly
give you over!” Laroche would cry angrily.
It was essentially the pulse of the church militant which animated the
soldier. His patience was scant, his summons imperative. “Become a
Christian, or I’ll be the death of you!” might be a just translation of
his urgency.
And in good sooth his easily excited anger was so obviously genuine
on each recurrent presentation of the lure to entrap him into the
disclosure of the secret which he had promised in his own good time to
communicate, that Moy Toy experienced a very definite alarm lest by
his precipitancy the precious knowledge that gave the white man his
supremacy might be snatched from the Indian forever. With his naturally
keen faculties thus whetted, Moy Toy evolved with countercraft a
diversion that appealed irresistibly to the speculative phase of
Laroche’s intellect and for a time led him captive, although he
appreciated fully the trickery of the intention and the treachery of
the heart of his interlocutor.
This was the recital of the Cherokee traditions of the more ancient
Scriptural events,--the creation, the flood, the exodus,--knowledge of
which the earliest travelers in this region found already implanted
among that singular people, and, with certain analogous customs,
serving to add so much plausibility to the theory of its Hebraic
origin--even yet to be accounted for by vague hypotheses such as the
teachings of Cabeza de Vaca among the more southern tribes, thence
transmitted northward. If this be the source of these traditions, it
is singular, to say the least, that there should be among them none
of the essential truths of the new dispensation nor Roman Catholic
legends of the saints. Laroche could but lend heedful attention to
the variant details of the Cherokee version of the Patriarchal and
Mosaic dispensations, and now and again pointed out to Moy Toy their
divergencies from the true and only word, and much he meditated upon
this strange disclosure as he rode along the woodland ways, listening
in his turn.
Sometimes he sought to modify or adjust the sacred writings of the
old dispensation to the interpretative temper of the new, always
held in check by the Cherokee version which Moy Toy would repeat
with controversial relish, keeping pace _haud possibles æquis_.
For the savage, obdurate to the wile of civilization, was yet more
steeled against the advance of the Christian religion; and indeed
modern instances are not wanting, sufficiently dispiriting to the
student of human progress, in which after a lifetime of the profession
of Christianity the Cherokee in his dying hours openly discards the
religion of his adoption and departs to the happy hunting-grounds in
the faith of his fathers, going out of the world the pagan that he
entered it.
Serious as was the subject that absorbed Laroche’s thoughts, the
deep significance of his speculations, comprising the origin of
this race, its perverted destiny, the intentions of the Deity, this
strange glimpse into the mystic past, the darker mystery of the veiled
future,--these mighty interests could not suffice to sustain that human
heart of his when they passed once more the trading-house, silent and
deserted at Ioco Town, and the cottage hard by, where he had lived out
the sweets of the little romance snatched from untoward conditions. He
smiled sadly and tenderly at the thoughts conjured up by the evening
glow so red on the gable against the blue sky. Never again would the
fire flash forth from that deserted hearthstone to lure the wanderer
home. Never again would the gleam of the candle rejoice the hospitable
board that welcomed the stranger. The ingleside was cold and bleak,
and would soon be a wreck, for the Indians were now giving the roof
to the torch, and he watched the blaze with many a sentimental pang,
but did not offer remonstrance. Better thus! Far better thus! It was
well that Jock Lesly should not be tempted back by the knowledge that
his old nest still awaited him here, for the stout heart of the Scotch
trader would credit no less definite a portent of continued danger than
charred timbers and sacked dwelling. And Laroche honestly believed that
the day of the great British trade on the Tennessee and its neighboring
streams was over-past now and forever.
He did not hesitate when once more at Tellico Great to inaugurate
the scheme, the progress of which had been delayed months ago by the
defection of Mingo Push-koosh. For it was here on the banks of the
Tennessee that he at last recovered his old identity, lost in that
sweet and soft thrall of a hopeless love. He felt again a free man,
albeit the glamours of the evening star in the saffron west moved him
strangely. He threw himself ardently into all those plans so long in
abeyance of equipping an army of the confederated tribes,--the Choctaw,
the Muscogee, the Cherokee, and many minor bands,--and the problems
of securing munitions of war, of the transmission of supplies, and of
the apportionment of forces absorbed his every faculty. Continually
his messengers were going to and fro in the Indian country, and his
pettiaugres dared the currents of those swift difficult rivers, now and
again running the gauntlet of the musketry of the inimical Chickasaws
from some high bluff. Secretly, silently, the preparations went on like
the gathering mute menace of a sullen storm whose ferocity must burst
with an added fury from its long repression. All unsuspected it might
have been, although the expectation was so widely extended, save for
the arrogant boastfulness of some far-away Indian, drunk perhaps, in a
British trading-house or the bloody culmination of an individual feud
between a warrior and a white settler, the savage unable to restrain
his vengeful anticipation and abide the accepted time.
Fantastic and impotent as this tenuous scheme may seem now, long ago
shredded by the mere wind of the flight of time, a forgotten fantasy,
not to be more considered than the snares of any humble spider of
to-day throwing its fragile enmeshments from crag to crag on the banks
of the Tennessee, it struck cold terror to the hearts of the royal
governors of the adjacent British provinces. The Spaniard, insolent and
powerful, openly menaced them on the south, and with the combination of
the French and Indians they were surrounded and without recourse. They
had little to hope from one another, save perhaps an unacknowledged
aspiration on the part of each that the other might first tempt the
attack of the designing projector of the new Indian alliance and serve
as a sop to Cerberus. Each was in terror of a plea of assistance from
the other, for the colonies themselves lacked that strength which comes
from union and which Laroche sought to instill into the policy of the
tribes. Each province being incapable of self-defense with its weak,
untrained militia, its inadequate supplies of munitions of war, its
vast wildernesses and stretches of unfortified frontier, was averse
to dividing its slight resources. Roused, however, to the terror lest
immediate massacre of outlying stationers ensue, a consultation was
held and a remonstrance, adroit, sugared, promising yet threatening
withal, addressed by the Governor of South Carolina to Cunigacatgoah[8]
of Choté, now the nominal head of the Cherokee government, was framed
and sent by the hand of one of the Kooasahte Indians, who chanced to be
in Charlestown, with whose tribe the Cherokees were now at peace.
He returned after a swift journey with a most pacific answer,
protesting and reproachful, Cunigacatgoah demanding to be informed
of a single infraction of the terms of the treaty, bating, of course,
wild, irresponsible rumors. If the governor could cite one such for
which the nation could be fairly considered responsible, he would
himself come down to Charlestown to answer for it in person.
Governor Boone, surprised yet reassured by the unexpected character of
this reply, sought to further assuage his anxiety by catechising his
messenger as to the state of matters in the Cherokee country. He found
the mind of the Kooasahte, never forceful at best, in that flighty,
agitated state to be described as all agog. Obviously the man had been
immensely impressed by what he had seen and been able to learn. By
no means willing to disclose all, still his eyes were opened to new
possibilities of savage ascendancy. Under adroit cross-examination
he divulged extraordinary suggestions of the suddenly developed
magnificence of Moy Toy of Tellico and of the wonderful powers of a
strange magician who was Moy Toy’s friend, yet whom he affirmed was a
white man, and whose nationality he accidentally disclosed as French.
Whereupon Governor Boone grew more mystified than before. Finally
he bethought himself to send for Jock Lesly as one who, having been
intimately acquainted with the personnel and conditions of the Cherokee
country for years past, might perchance explain the inconsistency of
all these antagonistic details.
The doughty Scotch trader had accounted the burning of his buildings
and the plunder of his goods, of which he had been informed indirectly
by rumor, as but an accident or a bit of unwarranted and wanton
mischief, and by no means as the definite threat that Laroche had
supposed he would perceive therein. His daughter, however, had insisted
that the demonstration was inimical and in no wise to be braved. Jock
Lesly enjoyed much domestic oratory in these days which his “Whist,
whist, my bairn!” was powerless to silence, and feminine logic won
the battle when she persisted that if he returned, to Ioco Town she
would accompany him, for if it were safe for him it was safe for her!
Thereupon he hauled down his flag; and now as he needs must rebuild
wherever he should go, he was idly awaiting in Charlestown a propitious
opportunity of reëstablishment elsewhere under more permanent
conditions.
Jock Lesly, cocking his sharp blue eyes at the cringing Kooasahte, a
degenerate specimen of a warlike tribe, obviously regarded the whole
history of his visit as a fable.
“Gin your excellency wad forgie the freedom, the man is a beautiful
liar!”
“Was there no white man there when you left?”
“Nane, sir--that is--forbye a bit chiel o’ a Firginian on his way
hame--he had cam doun wi’ a wheen o’ neighbors to herd up some stray
horses that had been sold to the Williamsburg region and had gane back
to their auld grass in the Cherokee country. He fell ailin’, an’ his
friends went on wi’ the horses an’ lef him amang the Injuns,--an’ he
foregathered wi’ us. He cam part o’ the way hame wi’ us, but struck aff
a considerable way aboon Fort Prince George to go aff to Firginia.”
“He could not be this man, you think? Does he speak French?”
“He? Tam Wilson speak French?” exclaimed Jock Lesly, with a hearty
rollicking laugh in his enjoyment of his superior discernment. “Your
excellency disna ken thae carles out on the frontier! Tam Wilson ha’
enow to do to speer his wull in English,--puir fallow!”
This seemed definitive; Jock Lesly therefore was presently dismissed,
and the gratuity which the Kooasahte received was of limited value
and quality, which he had not expected nor had the governor intended,
because he had told the truth, which chanced to be unwelcome and
discredited. He went away, his heart hot within him, sending forth
fumes of rum, which the present sufficed to procure, and sedition,
which the present was not adequate to annul.
Meanwhile life on the banks of the Tennessee at Tellico Great flowed on
as gently as the river. Laroche had received orders to seek adoption
into the Cherokee tribe, according to the wont of the intriguing
French, that he might thereby recruit his influence and improve his
control. Thus he could better restrain their bellicose demonstrations
till the time was ripe for revolt, lest precipitancy annul its values.
Hence he became officially a Cherokee.
That singular atmosphere of fraternity peculiar to the Indian method
of adoption encompassed Laroche like a native element. It seemed no
longer inspired by self-interest. He was as one of the nation,--theirs
in success or defeat, theirs in weal or woe! He had polled his head
and painted his face and donned their garb. He had been initiated into
their mysteries and had accepted their religion; for the Cherokees
were no idolaters, and without mockery he could bow in worship to a
Great Spirit, albeit with many a mental reservation and evasion in
the ceremonies in which he participated. His suspicions were never
allayed,--but they were in his mind, not in theirs,--and he was not
the more content. Now and again as he danced with the braves in
three circles on the sandy spaces of the “beloved square” to the
shrilling of a flute, fashioned of the tibia of a deer, and to the
thunderous drone of the earthen drums, while strange figures such as
might grace pandemonium whirled about him,--hardly human figures;
some with grotesquely frightful masks of gourds hiding faces scarcely
less hideous; some almost nude; some smeared over with unguents as a
groundcoat to make adhere a medley of feathers and foster the semblance
of gigantic birds,--a great repulsion would seize him; every civilized
pulse would clamor against these uncouth follies, against the sacrifice
of time and identity and wonted usage in this cause; and he would
feel that the destruction of all the British colonies, could it be
compassed, was not worth the price which he paid. The recollection
of the sane, orderly customs of the life to which he was native rose
up before him with a sentiment of reproach, as one might feel in
ascertaining the realities in the lucid interval of some tormenting
mania. He was abashed by the mere contemplation of the mountains rising
on every side, silent, austere, as majestically aloof from the farce
which he enacted as the sky above or the world--the civilized world
that he had known and loved--far, far away.
To add to his discomforts the interval which he was to spend thus was
destined to be longer than had been anticipated. Aggressive measures
were again postponed, and his activities suspended by orders which he
received from New Orleans. For it had latterly been developed that the
British government contemplated securing a considerable cession of land
from the Cherokees, thinking that in thus increasing its holding in the
Indian country to keep the tribe more definitely under its domination
and influence, and to quiet the title to certain territory, on which
they claimed the government had encroached. The French, with their
resources much exhausted by the Seven Years’ War, now slowly dragging
its length along, were almost crippled in America for the lack of
ready cash, and their plans for the Cherokees would be considerably
recruited by the purchase money of the land thus poured into the tribal
coffers. The wily Indians were enchanted with so hopeful a prospect of
securing the means to purchase sufficient arms and ammunition to repel
the British and attain their old independence anew. Though they had
never doubted the will of the French government in Louisiana to forward
these measures, its capacity to furnish adequate ammunition had failed
signally more than once.
At this period, while Laroche was awaiting decisive advices from New
Orleans, the progress of events seemed suspended. Hope, anxiety, fear
were in abeyance. He spent much time in the perfecting of the details
of his plan and in the correspondence incident to the enterprise. As he
grew more wearied with the monotonous association with the Indians, he
took advantage of his leisure to send long discursive letters to his
comrades in the southern forts whenever he chanced to have a messenger
going that way,--to Captain Pierre Chabert at Fort Tombecbé or the
Chevalier Lavnoué at Fort Toulouse.
Cold, wet weather set in late in the summer, a long, dreary,
unseasonable interval. When the rains came down in thin, persistent,
fibrous lines, and the surface of the river palpitated and throbbed
beneath its multitudinous touches, and the gathering gray mists half
shrouded then half revealed those endless lengths of dark-hued solemn
mountains, and the trees dripped drearily, and the wind surged and
sobbed amidst their boughs, the susceptible Frenchman reached the
lowest ebb of his isolation, his dissatisfaction, and his yearning wish
to feel again the throbbing pulse of civilization.
Thus it was that for many hours of those chill nights in the quaint
winter-house, without window or chimney, while the rain would pour down
the conical earthen roof, resounding like a drum, he would seek for
solace in writing those long letters to his military friends describing
his plight, and commenting on the news of the day received chiefly
through their responses.
All unmindful of him and his occupations, the other inmates of the
house lay sleeping, stretched in a line, on the couch of cane that
ran along the red clay walls of the circular room, behind the row of
pillars which upheld the conical roof. Even the heads were covered with
the wolfskins and bearskins that formed the drapery of their elastic
cane mattresses. All unmindful of him they were--all except Moy Toy.
The fire would flare up now and again, showing the colonnade of
pillars, the cane couch, and above, the circular wall of the rich red
hue of the clay of that country, with here and there upon it quaint
hieroglyphics in parti-colored paints, or a decorated buffalo hide
suspended, or a curiously carven pipe of stone with some famous scalp
attached, while the scroll-like thin blue smoke eddied overhead,
pressing closer and closer to its exit at the smoke hole. All gradually
flickered and dulled and blurred into a dusky red glow in which
naught was distinguishable but vague reminiscent shadows, the mass of
smouldering coals in the centre of the floor, and the spirited blond
Gallic face of Laroche with his incongruous Indian garb, bending
intent, eager, absorbed, above the page as he wrote. Not till the
page also grew dim would he rouse himself and throw off the gathering
ashes. Then as the responsive flame leaped up white and vivid, he
would look back along the paper to review the last paragraphs, and
with a freshened brightness of aspect apply himself anew to his task.
Moy Toy’s keen eye had grown to distinguish a certain difference of
expression when the military expert wrought upon the problems of his
enterprise,--the alert, elevated look, puzzled now and then, but
intellectual, powerful, confident, and in contrast the twinkling eye,
the sarcastic curving lip, the sly, devil-may-care, gibing nod, and
yet sometimes the plaintive dejection with which he made those “black
marks” which he sent away to his correspondents in the southern forts.
“You are my friend, the friend of my heart, and you know everything,”
Moy Toy once said suddenly out of the dreary midnight, when the
dizzy rain was whirling abroad in a witch’s dance with the wind, the
mountains were lost in the density of night, and the river had become
but a voice in the vast voids of the outer atmosphere.
Laroche looked up suddenly from where he sat on a buffalo rug before
the red glow of the coals. He wrote upon one knee, but the inkhorn
was close by on the floor, and he placed one hand over it, in careful
forethought, that a friendly dog, nosing about with the conviction that
it held refection of worth, might not overturn it. However Laroche’s
hair was clipped it sprang anew and there was a curling fringe under
the edge of his cap, which was fashioned of otter fur and bordered
with white swan’s feathers. His hunting-shirt was of otter fur and
his leggings of buckskin heavily fringed and terminating in a pair of
buskins; these were dyed scarlet and gayly decorated with quills. His
face, with its expression of intellectual absorption, was inconceivably
at variance with his attire and the place. He said nothing, but his
hazel eyes looked an expectant inquiry, and seeing him silent Moy Toy
spoke again.
“Wonderful friend! though your knowledge is no more to be moved or
shaken than the mountains, yet you have the changeable countenance.”
“It is you who know everything!” said Laroche, laughing, but very
distinctly embarrassed.
Moy Toy, encouraged by this appreciation, began to put his impressions
into words. “When you make black marks on those papers which you
treasure, and which I am sure must belong to your beautiful artillery,
or else to make powder, or perhaps to the fine plans for the great fort
which we are to have here one day, your face is the same it has always
been, and as those who love you must love to see it. But when you write
the black marks which you send to the commandants of the forts in the
south, your eyes grow little, and they twinkle, and your mouth is
pursed for lies, and you nod your head with a risky air, and you look
more wicked than clever!”
Laroche listened in silence. Then suddenly he burst out laughing. He
hastily suppressed the tone of loud hilarity, for one of the sleepers
stirred and turned, but fell a-snoring again.
“It is the commandants who are wicked,” he said, smiling
retrospectively. “I answer them only in their own vein--sardonic,
witty, half-malicious fellows.”
“And what makes them so wicked?”
“They are so close to the English, perhaps,--they learn all they know
from the English.”
Moy Toy gazed at the smiling face with a doubtful anxiety, some
withheld thought, a half formed purpose in abeyance.
Laroche had had occasion to note that jealousy of the “black marks”
of civilization which seemed to animate all the Indians of that day,
powerless to restrain this mysterious opportunity of communicating the
most secret thought a thousand miles by the stroke of a pen. He had
been somewhat irked to discover in addition a sort of pettish tribal
jealousy on the part of Moy Toy toward this interest in the southern
forts. The chief desired that the officer’s entire attention should be
concentrated on the welfare of the Cherokee nation, and deprecated that
any advancement or opportunity should be afforded through his means to
the various Alabama tribes congregated about those forts. Laroche was
an adopted Cherokee, and why should he so delight in writing to the
forts _aux Alibamons_!
It had always seemed to Laroche that the intercepting of a letter was
essentially a civilized emprise, but the process was invented, as it
were, in the brain of this specious Indian. As the commandants of Fort
Tombecbé and Fort Toulouse knew so much about the wicked English,
perhaps it was not well to keep longer between the folds of the soft
panther and wolf skins that formed the furnishings of the couch of the
chief a missive addressed to Lieutenant Jean Marie Edouard Bodin de
Laroche, and sealed with a big official splash of wax.
“Here,” said Moy Toy, without the least confusion as he produced it, “I
thought too many times you nodded your head toward Fort Toulouse and
you might soon speak with the forked tongue of Lavnoué. But perhaps he
may tell the truth when his heart weighs heavy with the thought of the
English.”
Laroche stared with amazed displeasure. The color rose indignantly to
his cheeks. He was about to utter a vehement remonstrance, but paused
to break the seal which should have parted under his fingers three
weeks earlier. Then he forgot this encroachment upon his vested rights.
For the letter was a warning, heralding the approach of British
soldiers.
X
THERE stood a quaint, grotesque figure in the midst of the level spaces
about Chilhowee, Old Town. It maintained its stiff, stanch pose alike
through shadow and sheen; oblivious of night or day; unmindful of
the rain that the sudden mountain storms now and again sent surging
down from over the summit of the Chilhowee Range, looming high above;
disdainful of the wind that fluttered the fringes of its buckskin shirt
and leggings and slanted the feathers of its war-bonnet askew, and
flouted and buffeted its aged, painted, fantastic face.
So like a grim old warrior in good truth was the adroitly constructed
effigy that Callum MacIlvesty long remembered the day when first he
beheld it upon entering the Cherokee town of Chilhowee, and was moved
to wrath because of its surly, important, inimical attitude and fixed
aggressive stare. Only the closest scrutiny enabled him to realize
that it was but a scarecrow, albeit the cleverest of its type, with
a painted gourd for a head and a gaudily arrayed body of fagots and
straw. But he did not then even vaguely divine that he was ever to hold
a closer association with the image, or that years afterward and far
away the mere recollection of its aspect in his sleeping fancies would
wake him to a breathless fright and dreary reminiscences of a most
troublous episode in a chequered history.
The scene was bright with the varying luminosity of the azure tints of
the mountains of the distance; nearer the hue of the wooded heights
deepened to the richest autumnal crimson and bronze as they drew
close about the gap where the Tennessee River flows through the
Great Smoky Mountains and pierces the Chilhowee Range to the very
heart. The metallic lustre of the water was now like silver, now like
steel, and again showed a burnished copper glister where its surges
had washed a bank of red clay; occasionally a white drift of swans
was on its current, or a deer swam gallantly across; and once a group
of buffaloes, pausing to drink at the margin, lifted their heads,
apparently as unafraid as tame neat cattle, to gaze with a dull bovine
curiosity at the party of equestrians and the detachment of British
foot-soldiers on the opposite shore.
All the ancient Cherokee customs were still in vogue, although
destined soon to fall away with a suddenness that confounds history
and almost baffles tradition, suggesting, indeed, the instantaneous
transition to dust of some prehistoric skeleton at the first touch of
the disintegrating air. Even at that date, however, with the obvious
doom of evanescence upon them, a certain curiosity concerning them was
very general among those equipped for the archaic speculations in which
Laroche had found an interest; there was a general quickening of the
pace of the horses as several riders closed about a sedate, middle-aged
personage, spare and tall, of great length of limb and evident strength
and toughness, who wore a suit of buckskin and was a surveyor of long
experience on the frontier, and who proceeded to explain the reason for
the extraordinary _vraisemblance_ of the effigy.
“The Indians have aye a crafty turn,” he said. In illustrating this
fact he narrated how the “second man” of the town, “a bailiff belike,”
induced the young people to believe that the scarecrow was the
reincarnated spirit of an ancient warrior, an ancestor, who had come
back to overlook their work. Keeping them at a sufficient distance,
the “second man” was wont to tell wonderful stories of the exploits of
the mythical warrior of Chilhowee, the evil influences of his anger
against the idle, and the benefits of pleasing him by industry. The
women and girls would believe this, and thus to song and story the work
would go merrily on.
The gentleman directly addressed by the surveyor was apparently of a
higher and more fastidious grade. He was sprucely arrayed in brown
cloth of a trim cut and a fine texture, with a cocked hat, dapper yet
sober. His fresh pink cheek and chin were smoothly shaven, the first
slightly wrinkled, the latter cleft with a line that duplicated its
contours. His black “solitaire” was accurately adjusted about his neck.
His bag-wig was the most decorous appendage of that fantastic sort that
ever swung behind a well-furnished and elaborately trained brain. That
he was the exponent of some kind of careful scientific learning was
apparent to the most undiscerning wight at the first glance. Indeed,
the English surveyor in offering this bit of information as to Indian
customs was making but a scant return for the largess of botanical
lore that had strewn the way from Charlestown full five hundred miles
thicker than ever were leaves in Vallombrosa.
As the botanist contemplated the broad fields in cultivation he
began to speak. “This pompion, now,--the variety of _Cucurbita
Pepo_,--that the Indians grow,”--and at the phrase a British officer
resplendent in scarlet coat, white breeches, cocked hat, and powdered
hair, with a look of shocked revolt checked his horse so suddenly
as to throw the animal back upon the haunches and to discommode the
advance of the infantry escort that followed, consisting of thirty
English soldiers of his own company and a detachment of twenty Scotch
Highlanders.
If Lieutenant John Francis Everard could, he would have banished from
the memory of man all Latin plant names, for before he was fifty miles
out from Charlestown he was glutted with information concerning the
vegetable products of the earth on which he lived. He felt that had he
a retroactive power in cosmogony this world should have been created
a leafless ball. From the beginning of the march his spirit quailed in
the presentiment of the tortures of learned converse that were destined
to wreck the pleasure and almost the possibility of the expedition.
Indeed, it was only the second day out that he summoned Callum
MacIlvesty from the ranks of the marching Highlanders and bending
down nearly to the saddle bow said in a bated voice of consternation,
“Callum Bane, do you see that old man? Why,” in an appalled staccato,
“he is almost as bad as ex-Governor Ellis of Georgia!” By which he
meant to imply almost as learned, member of almost as many scientific
associations, perhaps even a fellow of the Royal Society, almost as
acute in making observations, atmospheric, botanic, geologic, almost as
industrious in jotting them down, almost as oblivious of the gayer and
more frivolous interests of life.
To Lieutenant Everard was intrusted the command of this small
military force to escort certain commissioners appointed by the
government to the Cherokee country for the purpose of treating with
the Indians concerning the projected cession of land, which was not
made, however, for several years thereafter, because of an incident
of much significance here chronicled--in fact not until 1768. In view
of the doubtful temper of the Cherokees and the unsettled state of
the country, it was exclusively and comprehensively his duty to see
to it that the heads of these gentlemen were unmolested, with their
brains securely inside and their scalps securely outside, nor were they
expected in return to minister in any degree to his entertainment.
But it is not too much to say that Lieutenant Everard would have
regarded a brisk brush with Indian enemies with less awe, despite his
slight numerical strength, than the ponderous themes, the weighty
presence, the worshipful gravity of the commissioners of the crown.
There was not a conversable person among them, in the estimation
of the gay and dapper lieutenant, and the march thither and back,
with the negotiations at Choté, was calculated to occupy a matter of
many weeks. The surveyor was of the same ultra-sober type, and the
subordinate attendants he considered as unbefitting his society. Of
course familiar association with the men of his company, having only
their noncommissioned officers, was inappropriate, even if their ruder
breeding had not rendered them unacceptable.
Thus it was that after a day or two of floundering out of his element,
he was thrown upon Callum MacIlvesty for solace. For he knew that
MacIlvesty, although serving in the ranks, was a man better born and
better bred than himself. Of course he was aware that the train of
woes, the attainder for treason and forfeiture of estates, following
the rebellions of 1715 and 1745, wrecking a number of noble families,
brought to the ground the branches as well as the parent stem; and in
this instance Callum’s commanding officer had acquainted Lieutenant
Everard with the “gentleman ranker’s” name and condition just before
their departure from Charlestown, when this small detachment of
Highlanders was ordered to reinforce the escort, as they were familiar
with the wild country, a number of them having served with the British
troops in this region the two preceding years during the Cherokee War.
The forlorn young officer, so grievously solitary in this expedition,
soon ceased to ride with the commissioners, and fell into the habit
first of riding near the Highlander as Callum MacIlvesty, alert,
active, with a vivid interest in life, strode along in the marching
column whose fluttering tartans played tag with the wind and whose
burnished accoutrements set up a bright kaleidoscopic glitter at the
vanishing point of many a winding woodland perspective. When the talk
grew more animated and the interest keener, Lieutenant Everard would
throw the reins to an orderly and march on foot beside his new-found
friend in his lowly place; whereat the first sergeant of the English
detachment would glance at the nearest corporal with meaning eyes, and
all adown the column the scarlet elbows of the fours called “battle
comrades” would give each other the touch with more emphasis than the
effort to march in due alignment necessitated. Often, however, in
fact most usually, the whole force marched with the route step, when
conversation was admissible and comment freer than before. For it was
obviously a derogation from the dignity of a commissioned officer to
continue this familiar association with a common soldier and in so far
subversive of discipline, and when the crisis came there were those
amply prepared to say “I told you so!”
“The lieutenant wouldn’t demean himself by walkin’ an’ talkin’ familiar
with a non-com like me,” the first sergeant of the English contingent
averred. “An’ I can’t see as I am a worse man or a less loyal subjec’
’cause I ain’t got fine, titled kin taken in open rebellion an’
attainted o’ treason--one of ’em, Callum’s great uncle, was executed
for treason and his head perched up over a city gate--there yet, for
aught I know!”
For this was the fate of many of the good and noble who had adhered to
the political faith of their fathers.
The Highlanders of the escort, however, some of whom were rescued from
imbroglio on this theme by a simple incapacity to speak or understand
a word of English, and who clattered away cheerily enough together
in Gaelic, deemed this association no sort of condescension on the
part of Lieutenant Everard. So well aware were they of the claims
to distinction of sundry ancestors of Callum MacIlvesty that this
penniless scion of a line of half mythical Highland princes, extending
back in dim procession into the mists of ages, seemed far superior in
social status to Lieutenant Everard, whose best prospect was some day
to represent a comparatively modern but well-endowed English baronetcy.
Perhaps Everard might have justified his course by the plea that
the expedition was not strictly military, and thus permitted some
abrogation of strictly military rule. Every detail to insure safety,
however, was rigorously observed. When the tents were pitched sentinels
were posted, the various guards mounted, all the discipline of a
military camp preserved. When on the march scouts were thrown out, and
a baggage and rear guard maintained. But, he argued, surely he could
not be expected to live so long a time without a being with whom to
exchange a congenial word. And if he saw fit to single out a man near
his own age, of his own station in life, only constrained to serve in
the ranks by reason of poverty because of political misfortunes, he did
not conceive that Callum MacIlvesty was lifted out of his place as a
soldier and absolved from the duty of obedience because thus admitted,
unofficially, to the society of his superior in military rank.
Although both men felt the irking of the anomalous situation, their
mutual relish of congenial companionship rendered them adroit in
nullifying the difficulty. When Everard gave an order he addressed
the Highlander as “MacIlvesty,” who simply and implicitly obeyed it
as a soldier should. But if Everard spoke to him as “Callum Bane,” he
received the request as from a friend and complied or not as he chose,
for the sobriquet had come to be a mark of friendly familiarity, as
it was not necessary on this expedition as a means of identification.
While the regiment had not the disaster in nomenclature that beset
the corps of the Sutherland Fencibles, in which one hundred and
four men answered to the name of “William Mackay,” seventeen being
in one company, still in the Forty-Second there was much patronymic
repetition, and in one company there were three Callum MacIlvestys
severally distinguished as “Callum Roy” (the red-haired) and “Callum
Dhu” (the dark) and “Callum Bane” (the fair).
This fair-haired Callum seemed an attractive personality to Lieutenant
Everard, who felt a compassionate regret that a youngster of such
good parts should have no better prospects, for these were the days
of the purchase of commissions, and this serious thought was often in
Everard’s mind as they sat alone beside the camp-fire, making so far
as opportunity favored them a convivial night of it. Callum had been
grateful for the recognition of his true quality in the humble guise
of the private soldier and in the coarse tartan. It was as a salve
to his wounded spirit and sense of exile. It had been with a great
effort at self-assertion, as a rallying of forces after a defeat,
that he had been able to regain in a measure his normal poise, a
semblance of his wonted brave cheerfulness, subsequent to his obvious
supplantation in the favor of Lilias. Her indifference had pierced him
with a pain all the keener because of his ardent sincerity. Perhaps
because he had already suffered so much from untoward fate he was
endued with the strength to suffer more without succumbing utterly.
He was fortunate in the stubborn resources of his indomitable pride.
He would not pine like a love-sick girl, he said to himself. He would
nerve himself to bear this latest and bitterest fling of fortune like
a man. He was the better enabled to meet it with a bold front since
the continual exactions of Everard occupied his attention, and left
him little time for that silent brooding so pernicious yet so precious
to the youth crossed in love. There was an element of humiliation
in the situation which seared his sensitive pride like actual fire.
Jock Lesly had found his account in the Indian trade, and thus Lilias
would have no inconsiderable inheritance, while Callum had naught
to offer but his heart, which seemed no great matter after all, and
the hand of an ordinary foot-soldier. He had roused himself with a
loyal feeling that he owed it to his ancestry, his name, his sense of
honor, and of honorable achievements in those who had gone before,
his own unimpeachable record, not to think so meanly of himself; and
thus the warm appreciation of his personal qualities and high descent,
irrespective of his incongruously humble station which Everard had
manifested, the admitted equality of their association, had aided to
restore his mental calm and self-respect, and seemed at this crisis
more valuable than it could be at any other time.
The responsibility and anxiety consequent upon escorting the party
of the commissioners through the country of savages, so inimical and
treacherous as Everard had discovered that the Cherokees still were,
weighed very sensibly upon the officer’s consciousness. Therefore the
relaxation at intervals afforded by congenial companionship was all the
more acceptable. The tension of the situation augmented the nervous
stress of his intolerance of the learned and inopportune disquisitions
which the botanist forced continually upon him. He sought to dissemble
his displeasure and irritation, however, for he was essentially a
gentleman, according to his lights, notwithstanding his repudiation
of bigwigs and botany. For all their dullness and slow decorum he had
shown every respectful observance to the elderly civilians whom it was
his duty to escort, and they, being civilians, thought his choice of
a companion very appropriate. They all looked upon Lieutenant Everard
with much favor. They could not know, of course, how often he would
pause in his talk with Callum, when the two were alone beside the
camp-fire, and shake his head with an unutterable thought even to hear
the voice of the botanist, the well-known Herbert Taviston, as it was
raised in his guarded tent to call out a string of Latin plant names of
the growths of the Great Smoky region to another of the commissioners
already abed under his own canopy, while the Highlander, whose ills
in life were so much grimmer than boredom, laughed in glee at the
officer’s dismay and disaffection. So often Everard shook his head for
this cause that its decorous powder suffered, and that is saying much.
For so perfect of accoutrement was he, so point-device, so solicitous
in every detail of dress, that one can hardly think of the fop’s dying
save in full uniform, as befitting the importance of the occasion. The
fact that extremes meet is suggested in the thought that the savages,
when going out to battle with another tribe, often importuned the
white traders for such attire as would enable them to “make a genteel
appearance in English cloth when they died.” That the highly civilized
Everard would die in his boots was a foregone conclusion, but one is
sure that they were elaborately polished whatever the emergency, his
burnished sword in his hand, his neckcloth richly laced about his
throat, his hair curled according to its graceful wont. It was a very
fine head of hair, and for that reason he did not wear the fashionable
wig. Of a rich brownish auburn hue, his hair rose up from his forehead
in a natural undulation that gave all the fashionable effect; it curled
crisply at the sides; it was thick, long, and lent itself with every
address to be plaited in a queue at the back. He had brown eyes, darkly
lashed, a large aquiline nose, a curling, disdainful, discontented
mouth, and a complexion sunburned a permanent scarlet, for despite
his fripperies he had seen much service and was by no means a tin
soldier. The dashing young officer was a somewhat dazzling exponent of
a position and a status which Callum felt to be his own by right, and
the simply educated and much denied Highland youth listened greedily to
the stories with which Everard sought to beguile the tedium: stories of
cosmopolitan life, society, the gay world, the gossip of the times in
high circles, London, Paris, Vienna,--for Everard had seen life,--he
had seen the world! Sometimes these choice narratives were military,
and Callum’s pulse would quicken, for he was ambitious of deeds of
valor and the opportunity of command. Sometimes the chronicle of
Everard’s experiences became boastful and coxcombical, and adroitly
suggested other conquests than those of the battlefield.
Nevertheless to Everard the tedium was intolerable. They could not
gamble at cards, the reigning vice and pleasure of the day, for the
extremity of the poverty of Callum Bane precluded this, and Everard
would have been both ashamed and sorry to win his meagre pay. Now and
again they played a dreary game without hazard, merely “for the fun of
the thing,” but Everard found more genuine amusement in object lessons
with the cards, in which he elucidated the methods and mysteries of
sundry new games, the latest rage, which he had picked up when he was
last in London or Paris. This interest palled too after a time, and
in reverting to the chronicle of his experiences he was even fain to
elaborate questions of the cuisine; he described queer dishes of which
he had partaken in out of the way quarters of the world whither his
military duties had chanced to carry him; he learnedly compared the
abilities of the cooks of different inns and coffee-houses in divers
cities; and he vaunted the discrimination and keen discernment of
his palate as a judge of wines till the “bouquet,” of which he spoke
so knowingly, seemed to dispense an actual fragrance to the alert
senses of the imaginative listener. None of these subtle refinements
appertained to the beverage of which Everard invited Callum’s opinion
one night as the two boon spirits lingered long about the camp-fire,
now and again mending it as it sank, for the hour wore on to the chill
of midnight.
“You have to go on guard duty anyhow presently, Callum Bane,” the
officer said, “so you might as well stay here till the corporal goes
out with the relief.”
They had been in high glee, and the lieutenant was loath to lose his
merry company.
The camp was now pitched at Ioco Town,--by Callum, alack, so well
remembered,--west of the Chilhowee Range, and the English surveyor
had offered the lieutenant some particularly fierce tafia, doubtless
originally distilled for the Indian trade (against the law), the
“fire water” that wrought such woe among the tribes. The sober-minded
civilians had not cared to deviate from their usual refreshment of
brandy and water or wine which they had brought for their consumption
during the journey, but the officer was disposed to experiment. Neither
Everard nor Callum was accustomed to this particular drink nor pleased
with it, and now and again reverted to the officer’s Scotch whiskey,
wherein they demonstrated the fact that they were both Britons and
compatriots. Then once more they essayed the contemned rum, and again
to take the taste out drank the home-brew.
“My certie! it’s got the smell o’ the peat ontil it!” cried the
Scotchman in his simple joy and bibulous patriotism.
Despite his exaltation of the Scotch product, however, the rum had no
cause to complain of him when some criticism of the beverage by Everard
required that it should be sampled anew, and then they once more sagely
conferred together.
That Everard was more irritable than usual was amply manifest in the
expression of his uplifted eyes and the cant of his eyebrows when
suddenly the learned Herbert Taviston issued forth all nightcapped from
his tent, and, snugly wrapped in a gaudy floriated dressing-gown, once
more sought the solace of the fire.
“You seem very comfortable here, my dear sir,” he said with complacent
sweetness and self-satisfaction, all unaware of the piteous spectacle
his nightcapped well-informed head presented in the estimation of the
military man, who was already alienated by a surfeit of botany, and
whose hair, blowsing in the chill wind about his high forehead, was not
even sheltered by his hat. “I find my tent quite cold. We should have
done better to take up our quarters in this vacant house hard by, as it
seems to be abandoned.”
He nodded the tassel of his nightcap toward the slumbering town of
Ioco, the nearest conical-roofed houses showing dimly against the
densely black night. Some residue of light seemed held in the Tennessee
River, for now and again came a sidereal glimmer from the reflection
of the stars on the invisible surface, and a mysterious vista opened
between the towering forests on either bank, where the unseen stream
led like some great shadowy roadway into regions of deeper darkness
beyond. Ioco Town, long and narrow, stretched along the bank, still and
silent. Only the wind was abroad. Of the nearest dwellings all seemed
alike, but one quite apart from the others, close at hand in fact, was
vacant, according to the adroitly waving tassel,--doubtless impelled by
previous knowledge rather than present assurance of the circumstance.
The officer spoke up with only half masked acerbity. He felt
responsible, as he was indeed, for the conduct of the expedition to the
best advantage, and all details as to transportation, lodgment, the
commissariat, passed under his direct supervision. No slight matter
was such a march in that region in those days. Now a river had risen
out of fording depth, and ferriage was to be improvised, from whatever
materials could be had in the dense wilderness, and safely achieved;
now an accident occurred to the baggage train, a horse going hopelessly
lame, or getting astray; now a shortage supervened in certain
provisions for the commissioners that had proved more acceptable than
others which thus outlasted them. All the time the discipline of a
military camp was to be maintained, the soldiers provided for after
their kind, the thousand maladroit incidents of a march of five hundred
miles to be severally met and adjusted, without assistance or advice,
and reconciled to the comfort and safety of an official party of
elderly civilians.
“You will do me the favor to remember, sir, that since the change in
the weather I have urged you and the other civilian gentlemen to accept
the invitation of the chiefs of Ioco Town and quarter yourselves in
their ‘stranger-house,’ a very commodious lodging and vastly superior
to yonder tumble-down hovel.”
Everard pointed with the stem of his pipe toward the stove-like
“winter-house,” a mere shadow crouching low in the night and only
revealed because of the far-reaching flare of the freshening camp-fire.
The yellow flames sprang cheerily up with a roar and a jet of leaping
red sparks. The boughs of the tall hickory trees high over their heads
showed fluctuating glimpses of the amber and scarlet hues of the still
redundant leafage; a star scintillated through the fringes of a pine;
the tents of the little encampment glimmered white at regular intervals
in the dusky aisles of the woods; now and again the dull red glow of
a fire at some distance, about which was grouped the guard, asserted
its fervors, “lights out” being an order held not applicable to it nor
to the fire in front of the commissioners’ tents; and continually,
regularly, the tramp of an unseen sentry, walking his beat, smote on
the air with a dull mechanical iteration like the ticking of a clock.
“I should have placed a strong guard about the building,” Everard went
on, “and as the rest of the escort lies so near Ioco you would have
been as secure certainly if not safer than here as you are.”
For Everard, not unnaturally, considered the complaint of the
discomforts to which the commissioners were subjected as a reflection
upon his conduct of the march.
The tassel on the learned nightcap wagged in deprecation. “My dear sir,
most true, most true, but”--
“I remember you insisted that you preferred the camp because of
possible infection from smallpox in the Indian dwellings,” the
officer mercilessly went on, with a curl of the upper lip, already
so disdainfully disposed. He had that flouting scorn of the fear of
contagion which a man naturally acquires whose life is in continual
jeopardy from epidemics, constrained to dwell in hordes, and subject
every hour to the chances of the times. “For myself,” he protested,
“except that I am obliged to keep the escort in camp to avoid brawls
between the soldiers and the young Cherokee braves, I should prefer
to billet the whole force upon the town, in the good, cosy, dry
winter-houses, since this unseasonable chilly change in the weather.
There is no more danger from smallpox for you in sleeping in their
‘stranger-house’ than in the handshaking that went on in the powwowing
over the terms of the cession at Choté with the headmen. Shoot me, sir,
but you ought to see an epidemic in an army--something to be afraid
of! Gad, sir, the men died with cholera in India like sheep--and with
scurvy, too, on board ship, both going and coming.”
The tassel on the nightcap had lost its pliant urbanity. Be a man ever
so scientific, so civilian, so intrusted with peaceful commissional
powers, he cannot admit an inference of fear, even of disease, in
taking ordinary precaution.
“All, my good sir, within the scope of civilization and the best
deterrent effects of a scientifically applied materia medica. The army
chirurgeons do good service--excellent, excellent. But here, among the
savages, no disinfectant processes obtain, and no intelligent effort
to prevent the spread of the dread scourge. Why, sir, in 1738 the
Cherokees lost almost half their number by the ravages of the smallpox
and their ignorance in dealing with the disease.”
“And if they had lost _all_ their number I should not hesitate
to sleep in one of their winter-houses twenty-four years later. Ha,
ha, ha!” The rum was evidently getting in its work. “Hey, Benson,” the
lieutenant called to his servant in the one illumined tent hard by,
“make up my bed in that vacant winter-house, and hark ye, build a fire
in the middle of the floor, Injun-wise! Gad! I’ll not be diddled out of
the comforts of life for fear of a Cherokee distemper twenty-four years
gone!”
The nightcap wished itself where it belonged, on its pillow. To
retire with dignity became the most definite motive in the brain that
it surmounted, and in this emprise it conceived that some aid might
be secured by a few words of casual conversation with the officer’s
companion, who was therefore civilly addressed.
Now the worshipful Herbert Taviston would have been excited to a frenzy
by a false classification of the meanest herb of the earth, and would
have repudiated it as an unrighteous pretension and a mischievous
effort to subvert the accepted grades and relations of a careful and
accurate system. But if aware that such elements and considerations
existed in matters military, they were in his estimation of no
practical moment, and he turned toward the Highland soldier with as
pliant a grace of his tasseled crest as erstwhile it had borne in
bending before the commander of the force. And in fact he might well be
oblivious of distinctions of rank. The young Highlander had a handsome,
kindly, intelligent face and a manner of refinement and dignity, and
bating his coarse garb and rustic dialect he might have easily seemed
a man of degree. Moreover, he was here hobnobbing familiarly with his
officer.
“Do you find your pipe a solace, my dear sir?” Mr. Taviston blandly
demanded, for smoking was not then the universal habit that it was
sometime earlier and has been since.
“Aye, sir,” the Highlander replied politely, a trifle embarrassed by
the obvious mistake as to his rank rather than his quality. “But it
isna sae cantie a crony as a queigh o’ gude browst, neither,” he added
blithely, with an effort to reëstablish the _entente cordiale_.
The young officer, with sullen, attentive eyes, that held a spark of
red fire in their brown depths, glowered at them.
“Ah, so indeed!” suavely commented the elderly nightcap. “But have
you observed, sir, that the Indians have another kind of tobacco than
that which is commonly smoked,--which is of course the _Nicotiana
Tabacum_? Now this other tobacco plant is a small-leaved, green,
bitter species which they use exclusively in their religious
ceremonies, their incantations, their necromancy, known as”--
“As _Nicotiana diabolica_,” suggested the officer.
Now had the nightcap housed but a modicum of tact and permitted a
laugh at this fling, all might yet have gone well. But trust a man of
scientific hobbies for serious denseness.
“Not at all, sir,” he said with asperity. “That name is unknown to
the herbalist. The plant is _Nicotiana rustica_ with us. With
the Cherokees it is _Tsalagayuli_, and the Muskogees call it
_It-chau-chee-le-pue-puggee_, ‘the tobacco of the ancients,’
and the Delawares, _Lenkschatey_, ‘original tobacco,’--showing
an interest parity of signification; with the coast Indians it is
_Uppowoc_; the Tuscaroras call it _Charho_; the Pamlico
Indians, _Hoohpau_; and the Woccon Indians, _Vucoone_. Now,”
turning back to the Highlander with an air of excluding the ill-starred
jester on subjects of such grave moment, “there is a so-called tobacco,
not even related to the genus _Nicotiana_--it is the _Lobelia
inflata_--which furnishes the Indians with a powerful medicinal
infusion. Have you noticed in your march hither, and perhaps in your
previous campaigns in the Cherokee country, the amazing expertness of
the Cherokees in the matter of simples?”
“He is too simple himself,” put in the officer, with an airy laugh.
The Highlander’s face was flushing painfully. He was carrying a goodly
quantity of mixed liquor of the fiercest description, and it had not as
yet shaken a nerve; but the consciousness of his false position between
his two companions was aiding its potency, and his equilibrium was
beginning to tremble.
The botanist, touched in his sensitive pride, calmly ignored Lieutenant
Everard at his own camp-fire; and the officer, who had borne much from
his idiosyncrasies and had assiduously sought to promote his comfort
and security on the weary march hither, gazed at him with a deepening
glow of that fiery spark in his eyes.
“The Cherokees’ expert knowledge of toxicology in plant forms is
amazing,” continued the botanist. “They excel all savage nations in
their discoveries of vegetable poisons and their application. And then
their botanical nomenclature--how happy--how apt! Are you conversant,
sir, with their generic plant names?”
“The title of the parent stem, do you mean?” said the unlearned
Highlander hesitating, fumbling in his mind as to what Cherokee plant
names were considered applicable as to a parent stem.
“He doesn’t lay much nowadays on the title of parent stems,”
interpolated Everard flippantly. “His own branch has lost its head,
through that head having been so heady as to lose his head.”
A keen steely glance, as significant as the drawing of a burnished
blade, flashed from the Highlander’s eyes and was received full in the
gaze of the facetiously fleering officer. The subject of the forfeiture
of estates, the loss of titles, the attainder of treason, was not fit
for jesting with one who had suffered so fiercely by them, and except
in his cups no man would have been more definitely and respectfully
aware of this than Everard. And yet the fiery liquor was not altogether
to blame. He was as cruelly hampered by the false position as his
lowly friend, who nevertheless in every essential that he reverenced
was his equal if not his superior. To be ignored, to be talked down,
and meekly submit to keep his mouth closed was more than his patience
could admit. But he was practically helpless. He could not seize that
egregious nightcap by the tassel and punch that learned head. He could
only assert himself by interjecting scoffs and fleering laughter, and
because of the fiery cup these were ill advised.
“It is singular how very fitting and descriptive is the Cherokee
plant nomenclature!” chirped the botanist. As he sat on a block of
wood beside the fire, his face seemed ludicrously small in its strait
toggery, in comparison with its enlarged and bewigged aspect by day,
and he looked like an elderly infant, if such an anachronism can be
pictured. His gaudy gown was drawn close about his spare figure, but
he had forgotten to be cold, and his smiling eyes were fixed absently
on the face of the young Highlander, as fitting the fingers of his
delicate hands daintily together he continued to speak of the accurate
niceties of Cherokee plant names.
“_Atali kuli_, ‘the mountain climber,’” he translated, his
lingering tones almost chanting, so great was his pleasure in the
definition; “the mountain ginseng, my good sir.” Then, fairly intoning
the Latin like a priest, he added, “_Panax quinquefolium_, of the
order _Araliaceæ_, also a native of China, sir.”
“_He_ is not a native of China, sir. He was made out of a peat
bog,” put in Everard flippantly.
Naturally the nightcap addressed the civil Highlander.
“Then there is _Ahowwe akata_, ‘deer-eye,’--yes, the word
_ahowwe_ signifying deer,--with us the _Rudbeckia fulgida_.
And again,” dropping his voice now in deprecation of the suggestion
of indelicacy, as if a lowered tone made the allusion more seemly,
“there is _Unistiluisti_, meaning ‘they stick on,’”--in a whisper,
“beggar’s lice,”--then at full voice, as if the Latin would mend the
matter, “_Myosotis Virginiana_.”
The lieutenant looked ostentatiously disgusted. He had indeed never
heard of the plant, and the Latin did not impose upon him, but the
mention of the insect from which it took its name was an insult to ears
polite. “Oh fie, sir!” he said rebukingly, for he was indeed aweary of
it all.
The nightcap turned hastily toward the Highlander, who was heavily
harassed between the two, the double discord of their moods jarring
upon his nerves and bringing them more under subjection to his
previous potations. “Then, my dear sir, there is the Indian shot, the
_Canna_,--as you are aware the Celtic word for ‘a cane,’--with us
the ‘headache plant,’ and”--
“Come, come, sir, enough of this,” cried Everard, scarcely listening,
and forced to rise. “We have nothing to do with headaches. It grows
late, and your hearer cannot meet your phrase nor match your learning,
although as to the question of heads he knows more about them than you
can ever teach him. Nothing fixes them in the memory like having them
grinning from a city gate.”
The Highlander had risen too. He had a pictorial imagination, and
there still lingered upon its sensitive retina, so to speak, images
of the night’s talk, before the botanist had come to the fireside:
the aspect of London, the castellated Rhine, the glitter of Paris,
and many a suave and southern scene beneath a blue and tropic sky.
Suddenly these were all obliterated. That woeful land upon which the
cruel hand of Doom had rested so heavily, the sequestered estates, the
beggared gentry, the starving peasants, the scattered clans, the hunted
fugitives, the proscribed national garb, the hopeless exiles, the
prison, the scaffold, the gibbet--all rose up before him as elements in
a stricken gray landscape, in ghastly wintry guise. For one moment he
hesitated. Then stepping aside from the fire, he reached out and struck
the flippant mocker full in the face.
The officer, taken all unaware, reeled as if he would lose his
balance. Then, for he was of a fine, alert physique, he recovered the
perpendicular, and it seemed as if he would spring like a panther upon
the Highlander, who had thrown himself into a posture of defense. The
next moment Everard’s military identity was fully reasserted, and the
proud Highlander writhed under the realization that the officer would
not return the blow. He would not demean himself by striking so low a
thing,--a man of the ranks. His voice rang out crisp and steady as he
called the corporal of the guard, placed Callum under arrest, and named
the manner and locality of his detention and the details when he should
be brought up “at orders” the following morning. Then wholly sobered,
Everard turned with dignified courtesy upon the botanist, who was now
protesting and squawking like some fluttered fowl instead of a refined
and elegant gentleman in the discharge of a public trust.
“I must beg your favor, sir,” the lieutenant said, by way of denial of
a wild plea for clemency for the culprit. “I understand my duty and I
shall do it. And may I beg that you will now retire to your tent, as
all this stir may rouse the camp to the prejudice of discipline and
good order? I wish you a very good-night, sir!”
And the nightcap with a depressed and lankly pendent tassel and the
floriated gown disappeared under the flap of the tent and enlivened the
spaces around the fire no more.
XI
POOR Callum Bane! Sober in good truth and sad as well! As soon as his
guard had quitted his side, he flung himself down on the earth floor
of the Indian winter-house, to which he had been conducted, with his
cheek pressed to the clay. He wished that the day had come when it
might cover him. Then he recoiled with the thought that this might
not be far distant. Striking an officer was a most serious military
offense. Even apart from its military aspect it was an insult for which
only blood could atone. He knew that Lieutenant Everard could never
face his world, the officers of his regiment, his mess, if they were
aware that as man to man he had tamely submitted to receive a blow in
the face. And since he could not challenge one of so low a station as
a common soldier, he had let the matter revert to its normal aspect of
insubordination, and the military law would take its course.
Yet Callum could have shed the tears that stood hot and smarting in his
eyes for this sad finale to their gay young friendship. He had felt
that it augured a certain magnanimity in Everard to ignore what he was
in station in the knowledge of what he was by descent. Callum would
never have admitted, not even in his most secret thoughts, that he
found aught lacking in Jock Lesly, whose instincts rendered him a man
of intrinsic worth; but this association on equal terms with Everard, a
man of refined manners and gentlemanly phrasings and careful nurture,
was to Callum like a return to the companionship of his earlier life,
and a relief after the ruder comradeship of the boisterous common
soldier and the dull routine of mechanical duty. He had taken a certain
pleasure, too, in the realization that his society was the young
officer’s only solace in the long and dreary march with its peculiar
personal isolation. But it was a pleasure fraught with much pain,--the
contemplation of this man in a position which but for an untoward fling
of fate might have been his own also. The thought often lent a sharp
edge to the close and intimate observation of Everard’s opportunities
and their development, but Callum was not of a jealous temperament,
and did not visit upon the individual, even in secret meditation, the
disasters which national circumstances and conditions had wrought.
Despite the difference in station and habits, wealth and education, the
two had grown fraternally fond of each other, and now there was that
between them which could be washed out only with blood, and the officer
in the direct discharge of his duty had chosen that it should be with
the blood of the soldier.
The sentinel still stood at the doorway, for there was no door,
but gradually his glances within, prompted by curiosity, had grown
infrequent. There was no guard tent. The men were of the best class,
picked for the expedition, and so far not even a trifling misdemeanor
had sullied the record of their good conduct. Punctual, alert,
efficient, cheerful, invaluable each had seemed in every emergency,
and thus the only unoccupied shelter that might conveniently hold
a culprit was the clay-constructed winter-house, which stood aloof
and vacant on the edge of Ioco Town. The preparations which Everard
had ordered, with the intention of occupying it himself, had gone no
farther than the kindling of a fire on the clay hearth in the centre
of the floor, before it was diverted to the uses of a prison. The
smoke, in thin, shifting, scroll-like forms, circled gray and blue
about the red clay walls without an exit save such crevices as the
wind and rain and neglect had wrought. As Callum had dropped down
on the inner side, the vapors served to screen him somewhat from
the observation of the sentinel, who, he now began to notice, had
become absolutely oblivious of him. This matter riveted his attention
presently. There was evidently some strange stir in the encampment, an
odd circumstance, and Callum reflected in sudden affright that he had
been bound, needlessly and cruelly he considered. The handcuffs, always
carried _pro forma_, were among the baggage, and, it being deemed
unmeet to rouse its custodians to overhaul it at that hour, a stout
rope had been substituted. A vague clamor of voices came to his ears.
He observed that the sentinel at the doorway had become rigid with
suppressed excitement. Could it be that an attack by the Indians was
threatened? Remembering his bonds, Callum’s blood ran cold. The force,
while strong enough for protection against unauthorized vagabonds or
possible bands of robbers, could not resist successfully an organized
assault by the braves of this great tribe. He might well be forgotten
in such a crisis--left here bound and helpless, to be captured and
tortured and burned. The next moment, listening with every pulse tense,
he realized that the voices were those of the soldiers in altercation
or extenuation. One shrilly clamoring in Gaelic, as if the strength
of his lungs and the pitch of the tone could render his gibberish
intelligible to Lieutenant Everard, revealed to Callum’s practised ear
the cause of the disturbance.
An Indian horse-race had been held in a neighboring town, and albeit
this amusement was one which appealed especially to the tastes of the
pleasure-loving lieutenant, so grievously debarred and deplorably dull
on this uncongenial expedition, he would not attend it himself and
issued positive orders that no man of the force should be present. Nay,
he went so far as to see to it that none had leave of absence from the
camp on any pretext on the day when this diversion took place. He very
definitely appreciated the perils which menaced his little command in
case of any antagonism or open quarrel with the tribesmen of the towns.
Had his mission been strictly military, to make a stanch defense or a
brisk onslaught, it would have been far simpler, in his estimation,
whatever dangers or disasters hostility might involve. But the success
of his mission depended upon the preservation of a strict peace. Apart
from the safe-conduct and guardianship of the commissioners and their
attendants, fully one third of the party being non-combatants,--and no
man believes so implicitly as does the British regular in the absolute
incapacity of the non-professional to do battle in any behalf, or to
be of any belligerent value even in his own defense,--the interests
of the government were at stake. Nothing could so quickly sow the
seeds of dissension, the acute officer argued within himself, as the
winning of the Indians’ money and valuable furs and other choice
gear at the projected horse-race. He did not doubt that charges of
fraud would arise, a fracas ensue, the security of the commissioners’
camp be placed in jeopardy, and the cession itself imperiled. Hence
his self-denial, for he was a good judge of horseflesh himself, and
dearly loved a show of speed, and the Cherokees of that day owned some
extraordinary animals.
Everard had felt himself extremely ill used by fate, as he was turning
away from the camp-fire, after his dismissal of the astonished corporal
with the prisoner, and his low bow to salute the disappearance of Mr.
Herbert Taviston. His face was smarting with pain from the blow, his
heart burned hot within him, his pride upbraided his condescension to
this man of low estate, who had so ungratefully requited recognition
of his real quality as a born gentleman. While Everard was beginning
to revolve troublous doubts as to how the course of action upon which
he had resolved in these unprecedented circumstances would be regarded
by his mess and superior officers, a new and unprovoked disaster
was presented. One of the corporals in the functions of officer of
the day appeared, and with a mechanical salute and a look of abject
despair reported that several of the men, three English soldiers and
one Highlander, had run the guard that afternoon and had attended the
horse-race, in which they had found their account. They had smuggled
into camp after dark a quantity of valuable furs, some strings of the
fresh-water pearls of the region, and the Highlander had jingling in
his sporran some French money, several louis d’ors. So successfully
indeed had they managed their enterprise that its discovery was made
only through the anxiety of the Cherokees to repossess themselves of
these pieces of French gold. By no means adepts in banking principles,
they had, nevertheless, with an unassisted natural intelligence evolved
the idea of a premium. As soon as the headmen learned the fact of the
loss of this money, they secretly offered to redeem the louis d’ors
with English currency and pay a guinea extra for the exchange. The
“mad young man,” Wahuhu by name, who had been grievously deprived
by fate of his money, browbeaten by his elders upon discovery of
the circumstances, and sent upon this secret errand to retrieve the
disaster, was greatly perturbed by the unaccustomed restrictions of
the camp. He had himself sought to run the sentry, and being taken in
charge by the officer of the guard, naïvely demanded to see and confer
with a certain Highland soldier. By adroit cross-questioning the facts
had been elicited by the corporal--little by little because of the
Indian’s reluctance to disclose aught and the linguistic deficiencies
of the Highlander.
“Lord, sir, he is a poor creature!” said the corporal, laying the
matter before his superior officer. “He cannot talk at all.”
“An enlisted man cannot be dumb,” said the officer with asperity.
“No, sir, but he can’t be understood, sir. He can talk no English, nor
even the gibberish they call ‘braid Scotch,’ nor yet Cherokee. He has
nothin’ but the Gaelic, sir.”
“And yet he can run the guard and bet at a horse-race?”
“Yes, sir; an’ win his sporran full o’ louis d’ors!”
And with true Scotch thrift the accomplished personage in question
would not be parted from them. Thus it was that his voice was presently
lifted in the midnight. He spoke on his own behalf. He mistrusted
the interpretation of his Scotch comrades, for his ear discerned the
difference in their accent from the speech of the English soldiers and
the lieutenant, and he cherished the conviction that were the Gaelic
but addressed directly and distinctly to the commanding officer, he
being a sensible man could not steel his comprehension against it.
Wherefore the Highlander yelped and shrilly piped into the night air
until the very hem of his kilt quivered with his vocalizations, and the
lieutenant stood as if bewitched before him, gazing at the spectacle he
presented.
The whole camp was astir. Lights gleamed in sundry tents, all white
and translucent in the darkness. Military figures had ventured out and
stood in the shadows, some bearing weapons on the pretext of having
fancied the tumult a summons to arms. The officer of the guard had
attended with the Indian negotiator, who was instantly set at liberty
by the order of the lieutenant, but who still lingered with wild eyes
and a constant keen turning of the head to and fro to see and to hear;
that he was not altogether unsupported might be inferred from vague
vistas that the camp lights flung down the aisles of the forest, where
shadowy faces and feathered crests showed, flitting like a fancy. And
of all, the central figure was Eachin MacEachin, his red hair rough
from his pillow and his well-earned dreams of wealth; his dress in
disarray, one stocking well-braced and gartered, the other hanging
over his shoe and showing his shapely sturdy leg and his great bare
rough red knee; his kilt fluttering in the wind; his freckled face
eager and distorted with his vociferations to his discerning commander.
And in truth, aided by adroit gesticulations, his words were not so
far from intelligible. He spurned the proposition of an exchange. As
he opened his sporran of badger skin and took therefrom a glittering
gold piece and exhibited it to the lieutenant, then with an ecstatic
leer put it between his strong white teeth and bit hard on it to prove
it genuine, there was no need for a mortified compatriot, who had
volunteered to interpret to the officer, to say,--
“She aye threepit she ha’ gotten ta gowd, sir. She mistrust ta English
guinea.” Then with a look of blank distress, “She’ll aye mainteen she
saw muckle French gowd in ta Forty-foive. She’ll no be so well acquent
wi’ ta guinea.”
The object of his aid, desirous of speaking for himself, now and
again turned upon his interpreter with a furious Gaelic phrase of
repudiation, to which the better soldier, who had run no guard and
consequently had won no money, vouchsafed no retort, only commenting
indirectly by shaking his head and exclaiming, “Hegh, sir, she’s but a
puir creature!”
“I am not so sure of that,” said the lieutenant dryly, “unless I can
count what he has got in that sporran!”
Suddenly something in the aspect of the glittering coin which the
Highlander still held in his fingers struck Lieutenant Everard’s
attention. His face changed sharply. He asked for the coin, and calling
for a candle keenly scrutinized the piece by the flickering taper, as
the corporal held it, screening with his hand the feeble flame from the
wind. In another moment the lieutenant demanded the transference of the
remaining five louis d’ors to his custody, sternly insisting, despite
the wild plaintive protests of Eachin MacEachin.
All this, the Gaelic being as intelligible to Callum as the English,
came to him on the chill night air, and he marveled at Everard’s
persistence in taking custody of the coins, for although it was the
habit of the Highland soldiery to make their officers their bankers,
this trust was altogether voluntary, and not by duress, as in the
case of poor Eachin MacEachin and his ill-gotten “gowd.” As it was
the favor of chance, like fairy gold, its possession may have seemed
equally precarious; or as it was won in direct disobedience of orders,
he may have even entertained doubts of the lieutenant’s intentions
in the matter of its ultimate return to him, for the Highlanders
were as a rule peculiarly averse to the control of any officers save
those of their own regiments and more than once mutinied rather than
serve under strangers. For whatever reason, so valiantly indeed did
Eachin MacEachin resist Lieutenant Everard’s orders that force at
last became necessary, and his voluble insubordination in the pain of
parting with his gold made Callum acquainted with the fact that he
might presently expect company in his imprisonment. This recalled his
mind summarily to his own plight. He realized the importance of the
officer’s efforts to avoid a clash with the Indians, and wondered what
effect this circumstance would have in the discipline of the military
offenders. Suddenly he turned sick and his blood ran cold. The corporal
punishment, then in vogue in the British army, was regarded by the
better class of soldiers as so great a degradation that a man once
brought to the lash was practically ruined, socially and morally. The
indignity came all at once into Callum’s mind as a possible solution
of Everard’s difficulty in his case. He knew that he could not be
shot without a regularly organized court-martial, which, necessarily
delayed, in view of the personnel and conditions of the force, until
their return to Charlestown, would also publish far and wide the
officer’s derogation of his dignity in associating on equal terms with
a private, who had struck him over their drink as an equal might have
done. Everard would flinch from this disclosure, for it would impugn
his fitness for his position. And yet he could not challenge a private
nor submit as man to man to the ignominy of a blow in the face. The
summary punishment of a flogging at the head of the line would dispose
of the matter with the utmost contempt and amply avenge the indignity.
Callum was terrified lest Everard’s authority in this independent
command of a detachment, so remote from superior military jurisdiction,
gave him such latitude, or could be so stretched in view of his
dilemma. With the mere thought Callum sprang from the floor with a
suddenness that loosened every taut strand of the ropes that bound him.
His breath was short; he gasped; the blood almost burst from his veins
as his heart plunged and the arteries throbbed. He must be quick; the
little makeshift prison would soon be recruited; and of captives, one
was a spy on another. He could scarcely see, through the blue swirls
of smoke, the sentry at the door, whose attention was still riveted on
the excited scene without. Callum had caught at the first wild scheme
of release, hardly canvassing its practicability. He did not reckon
with the pain or the danger when he thrust his bound hands into the
flames to burn off the cords. The thought in his brain, the ignominy
that threatened him, seared far tenderer perceptions than appertain to
the flesh. The fire caught at the hemp, and he set his teeth hard. The
ligaments had at last fallen away when discovery suddenly menaced him.
“Look out for your plaid in there, Callum,” said the sentry abruptly.
“I smell something burning.”
“’T isna wool,” rejoined Callum promptly. “My plaid isna even
scorching.”
And the sentinel, thus satisfied, once more turned his attention
without.
Callum looked about him wildly. His first impulse was to throw himself
upon the sentinel’s back, overturn him, and fly down the dark aisles of
the woods--to what? Certain recapture, and an ignominy that overawed
his proud spirit more than death.
“Gae cannily--gae cannily,” he said to himself, as he crouched
uncertainly behind the flare of the fire and the veiling tissues of the
smoke.
The house, like all of its kind, had neither window nor chimney. It
seemed to him of far ampler proportions than such as were used for a
single family, and yet it did not approach in dimensions the great
assembly rotunda, which could contain an audience of several hundred
persons. It occurred to him that it might have been used as a fort at
some date long previous, when perhaps Ioco had served as a barrier
town, and this was its outlying defense. He remembered having noted
the vestiges of an ancient stockade outside, and with the idea that it
might have once held an Indian garrison, his keen eyes searched the
interior. The old cane-wrought divan, that once perchance encircled
the clay-plastered walls, had long ago vanished, leaving only a mark
to suggest it. But above this, on a level with the ground outside, for
the floor was fully two feet lower than the surface of the earth, he
detected a series of vague circles of white chalk. These white circles
indicated where loopholes were concealed beneath the clay of the wall,
to be utilized by the forted party in firing on an approaching enemy.
He rushed to the nearest in a sudden frenzy. The clay gave way in
his blistered baked hands; and suddenly, with an inrush of the sweet
woodland air without and a glimpse of the black night beyond, was
revealed the loophole, adroitly fashioned by savage skill how many
years agone! A limited opening it proved, however, barely sufficient
to admit of the flight of an arrow thence, and just above the surface
of the ground, but it gave a purchase to the frantic clutching of his
strong hands and for the use of a clasp knife of an ordinary sort that
had been stowed in his sporran; for although he had been searched for
concealed weapons, it had been but a cursory investigation, as his
wrists were bound. The blade broke when the work was nearly completed,
but his fingers, although almost nailless and lacerated to bleeding,
finished the enlargement of the aperture, and he dragged himself
through the narrow horizontal space and stood, breathless, exhausted,
in the dark woods without.
Only for one moment did he pause. The clamors at the scene of action
warned him that a crisis had supervened. Wild cries of “Ohon! Ohon!”
betokened the despair of the erstwhile lucky gambler, the fact that the
five louis d’ors were temporarily transferred to the custody of the
officer, and that the Highlander and his fellow culprits who had so
gallantly run the guard and played the races were being hustled along
to the half demolished prison, which they would find empty. The thought
lent wings to Callum’s feet, for in another moment discovery would
ensue and the pursuit come hot upon his track.
Yet his spirits revived as he felt the fresh wind, cool and pure upon
his face; his muscles, supple and strong, responded to the demand upon
their activities. Like a deer he sped straight through the town and
along the sloping bank of the watercourse. At that hour he encountered
not a living creature. Only the currents of the Tennessee came to meet
him. All was silent save the flow of the water and the flutter of the
wind. So definite were these sounds in the night as he went that he
began to take heart of grace and hope rebounded anew. The pursuit,
he reflected, had probably gone in the opposite direction, since the
camp lay on the edge of the town. This gave him time to scheme, to
secure some place of concealment, for horsemen, once on his heels,
would soon run him down. For this reason he left the river bank and
took his way among the fields. His pace grew slower, for the rugged
cultivated ground and now and then great masses of weeds in ill-tended
and neglected spaces made the going difficult. Twice he caught his foot
in the vines of pompions and came heavily to the earth, where he lay
for a time stealthily listening before he dared to rise again. He had
great fear of the Indians--the fear of the straggler. They hated the
soldiers now more than ever heretofore, and above all the Highlanders,
so conspicuous in the recent Cherokee War. A wreaking of many grudges
they would find should he fall into their hands while fleeing from the
wrath of his officer. A terrible fate this! a sly, treacherous capture,
torture, the stake, a mysterious and unavenged disappearance from the
knowledge of all the world! Military discipline could threaten no
such horrors save to a man of his proud temperament. Once or twice he
slackened his speed to a walk, swinging onward with a good long stride,
but he could not now continuously run; his strength was spent. Suddenly
he came to a full pause, with the weight of doom on his heart. There
in the space between two rows of corn the figure of a man stood not
three paces distant! Callum in a panic marveled how he had not noticed
this approach. Above, the night was silent, and high over these alien
mountains glittered stars that he had known of yore, that still shone
over the mountains in far, far Scotland as placidly as before ever Woe
came in to sit by her hearth and her sons went forth to exile forever.
Nothing stirred save their palpitant scintillations. He could hear
naught except the pulsations of his own heart beating like a drum. The
figure of the man stood motionless and gazed at him, as motionless,
fascinated, helpless, he stood and stared.
“_Canawlla!_” (Friendship) Callum at last said softly, although in
the dense darkness he could not have stated why he thought it was an
Indian.
A moment of suspense passed leaden-weighted.
There was no response. The world was so silent that he heard the almost
soundless flight of a bat winging past.
The next instant a strange doubt entered his mind. He put forth his
hand gingerly, and laid it on the figure’s arm. There was no quick
stroke of a tomahawk, as he had half feared. The man’s arm, as he stood
so stiff and silent, was all unresponsive. In fact, it was but a couple
of fagots, and Callum realized that he was in Chilhowee, Old Town, and
that this was the image of the Ancient Warrior he had noted in the
fields.
“Take that for the leein’, fause face o’ ye!” he said, striking the
gourd in sudden wrath, his cold fear growing hot anger, as he thought
of the waste of time that the fright had cost him, and the imminence of
the danger in which he stood.
The gourd wavered and dropped suddenly to the earth, and as he
mechanically stooped and picked it up, a strange idea struck him. It
was a great gourd; he lifted it with its bedraggled war-bonnet to his
head, and it slipped easily over and down to his neck. He began in a
fever of haste to disrobe the effigy. It had been of gigantic stature,
and the hunting-shirt even concealed the kilt of the big Highlander;
the leggings went on over his stockings and hid his bare knees; the
sleeves came down over his hands. Half supported by the stake which
had upheld the scarecrow, he took the stiff pose that he remembered.
And why, he asked himself, should he not stand here as safely, thus
masked, as lie all day in some Indian hut, if he could gain admission?
Doubtless every house on the river bank would be searched by Everard’s
orders, and most probably he would be delivered up by treachery to this
demand, if not murdered to settle old scores. At nightfall he would
array the figure anew and slip off, traveling by dark and hiding by
day, and returning thus to Charlestown, surrender to his own captain.
He fancied the officers of the Highland regiment could understand the
situation, and would relish the allusion to scaffolds and grinning
skulls scarcely more than he. If he had been left in his station as a
private soldier, he argued, all would have been well. But he had been
admitted to familiarity and friendship with the officer as a gentleman,
and when over their liquor he had repelled an insult with a blow, as an
equal might, he was suddenly relegated to the status and penalties of
a private soldier. If the members of the court-martial were minded to
account his escape under these circumstances desertion, they could make
the most of it: he would rather choose to be shot on this charge than
flogged for the blow.
Punctures in the egregious painted physiognomy of the gourd served for
sight and breath. The nostrils, the eyes, the mouth, the ears, had
all been curiously and faithfully delineated by the Indian artist,
according to his lights. Callum tasted the dawn even before he saw that
the night was turning vaguely blue. When in this dim medium figures of
Indians began to appear, he experienced a sudden elation to perceive
that none cast a second glance at the effigy of the Ancient Warrior in
the cornfield.
XII
A FINE outlook at life the Ancient Warrior enjoyed. The sun came
splendidly up from over the blue and misty domes of the Great Smoky
Mountains, and the beautiful Chilhowee Range suddenly sprang from the
nullity of darkness into all the chromatic richness of autumnal color.
A wind went chanting blithely through its dense woods, as if it were
fitting there to be happy where all was so gay. The river, a trifle of
fog blurring its silver sheen here and there, reflected the gorgeous
tints of the red and gold forests on its banks and caught the light
with an added glister. The world was so fresh, so misty sweet, so newly
created! The rocks echoed the barbaric notes of the blasts blown on the
conch shells, as with the joyful cries of the ritual of their ancient
religion the Cherokee braves went down into the water in their symbolic
ablutions.
Smoke had long been curling up from the hearths of the houses, and
presently the brisk “second man” of the town was marshaling out his
cohorts of women and girls to work in the fields. Callum was surprised
to see the placid and smiling faces that they wore, for field work in
these rich soils is held to be far less drudgery than housework, and
even now a feminine farm laborer is hardly to be found to exchange
willingly. The Indians always protested that their division of labor,
which allotted field work to the woman, favored the weaker vessel, and
by no means implied that indifference and scorn of her attributed to
them by the white people.
The “second man” in a civilized community would have been accounted a
wag or a buffoon. So very funny he made himself as he sat on the ground
near the effigy of the Ancient Warrior that Callum was more than once
diverted from his own troublous thoughts and moved to wish for a few
additional phrases of Cherokee, that he might more fully understand the
quip and song and tale with which this genius of the field beguiled
the labor. The elder women listened with slow and languid pleasure;
the children sometimes interrupted with a breathless inquiry. He did
not lack his critic to remark, in the course of a twice-told tale,
that last year the fox had not thus replied to the admonition of
the Ancient Warrior, whereupon, with the privilege of response, the
_raconteur_ doubled like the animal in question and averred
that it was not that same fox! One of the women, a girl of eighteen,
perhaps, showed a brilliant, imaginative face as, at the crisis of each
story, she turned toward the Ancient Warrior and gazed spellbound upon
him with dark, lustrous, liquid eyes, until the “second man” had seen
him safely through an adventure of a series for which, had he lived
from the days of Noah, the centuries scarcely held space. Then with a
long-drawn sigh she would fall to work again, reaching up with lissome
ease for the ears of corn which she gathered. Only the children picked
the peas and beans and other small crops that the corn had sheltered.
For the working force comprised all the laborers of Chilhowee, these
being the public fields destined for the common granaries filled for
emergencies, and not the individual gardens adjoining each domicile.
She was notably expert despite the patent fact that her thoughts
were oft so far away; although obviously strong, she was tall and
delicately slender, which made picturesque her garb of ordinary
doeskin, so fashioned as to leave her arms bare; her buskins were
dyed scarlet; and a cascade of red beads, the valueless trinkets of
civilized manufacture, bought at a round price from an English trader,
fell from her neck. But she was not in gala attire, by reason of her
occupation. Her fingers were long and deft and exquisitely shapely; her
feet slender and small. She was endowed with a sort of stately bloom
and a consummate grace, that justified the sobriquet by which she was
distinguished, the “Cherokee Rose.” She obviously cared less for what
was done and said here yesterday than for the discourse of the fox and
the Ancient Warrior some two or three hundred years before, according
to the elastic chronology of the “second man.” For when other Indians,
evidently of a high grade in the tribe, came up and began to discuss
together the commissioners’ expedition, she worked on with far greater
industry, and only occasionally paused to lift her head from where she
stood, half shrouded in the tall maize, to gaze meditatively upon the
Ancient Warrior,--the hero of so many fancies, for she was of the type
of woman who loves the renown of exploits,--with a patent admiration
embarrassing to the fair-haired Callum, even although masked by the
gourd. At times he experienced a more formidable embarrassment. He
was in terror of a strong inclination to cough. As the day had worn
on the smoke and smell of distant burning forests suffused all the
currents of the air, for the weather had lately been singularly dry.
Sometimes he was almost suffocated by the acrid vapor, collecting in
the restricted compass of the gourd mask, and again it was dissipated
by the freshening of the wind.
As the headmen lingered and talked, the laborers were rapidly moving
on under the directions of the “second man,” for the Cherokees never
permitted women or boys to hear aught of political machinations or
import. Callum began to understand that a runner had brought to
Chilhowes the details of the unlucky winning of the French gold by the
Highlander, and the ineffectual attempt by the Cherokee headmen to
buy it back out of notice with English guineas. So important did the
Chilhowee warriors consider this circumstance that they evidently had
half a mind to assemble in council in their town-house to debate the
matter, but they were deterred by the remonstrances of the runner, who
seemed to give also warning of an approach. Thus Callum was apprised
that Everard was in the saddle and on the road hither. It would never
do, the messenger argued, for the English officer to find the Chilhowee
headmen in solemn consultation,--in effect an official recognition of
the importance which they attached to the incident. While admitting
the justice of this reasoning, they were nevertheless fain to secure
at least a hasty word together as to how they should meet the officer.
Therefore it was that the “second man” urged forward the laborers,
and the councilors gathered about in the field as if they had been
participating, as they often did, in relating the traditions and
legends of the tribe, that were thus handed down from one generation to
another.
They grouped themselves near the Ancient Warrior, whose pedestal stood
in a heap of fodder that usually concealed certain ungainly posturings
to which his straw-filled moccasins were prone, but that now served
to hide the strong, stanchly planted feet of the hardy infantry-man.
Had Callum’s knowledge of the Cherokee tongue been more complete and
accurate,--in fact it consisted but of sundry fragments caught up at
haphazard in his campaigns in this region the two previous years, and
from the Indian guides of the present expedition, and his short stay
at Jock Lesly’s trading-house,--he might have comprehended all the
subtleties of which this secret discussion was rife. Even as it was,
however, he understood that the Indians feared much from the discovery
of the French money here.
“The French coins must be taken from the officer--if they were his
eyes, if they were his heart; they must be taken from him,” a fierce,
straight, stiff warrior, Yachtino, the chief of Chilhowee, was
continually saying as he stood pacifically in the midst of the corn,
his feathered crest, his quiver and bow, his garments decorated with
fringes seeming not unlike the growth itself, as if he had been thence
incarnated.
Another Indian, with a swift, furtive step aside, ever and anon bent to
gaze down the trading-path, interjecting from time to time the phrase,
_“Usinuli! Usinuli!”_ (Quick! Quick!), which agitated the course
of the deliberations, usually so slow and decorous, like the sudden
striking of a flaw of wind on the surface of placid water.
They all stood in silence and looked stolidly at the ground.
“But how?” said Tlamehu, the Bat, at last. And then another, “How
_can_ the coins be taken from him?”
Callum, noting the dismay in their countenances, fumbled mentally for
the significance of the French money. That this currency should be
common among them seemed natural enough, as their intercourse with
the French had been great, even before the Cherokee War against the
British government. During its progress, indeed, it was believed that
in several engagements the Cherokee forces were commanded by French
officers.
The next words let in the light.
“And so the coins that had the king’s head, pictured in the fine gold,
spoke with a deceitful forked tongue, and tells the English that it was
made in sixty-two?”
“The date is stamped on the metal--all, all!” impatiently responded the
informant.
The words were echoed with an intonation of perplexed despair. Then a
despondent silence ensued until Yachtino, the warrior who had first
spoken, reiterated: “The coins must be taken from the officer--if they
were the breath of his life!”
“But how?” the question came again.
Callum wondered no longer at their agitation. The louis d’ors were
of the coinage of 1762, and therefore revealed the fact of renewed
machinations with the French, in direct contravention of the terms
of the treaty of peace of 1761 between the Cherokees and the British
government, which expressly forbade all trade on the part of the
Indians with other nations, especially the French, who, being still
at war with Great Britain, were to be denied admission to any of the
Cherokee towns and intercourse with the tribe, the Cherokees pledging
themselves to surrender or kill such intruders. The Indians, indeed,
had much to fear from the discovery of this breach of the treaty. They
gloomily foreboded therefrom the collapse of the favorable phases of
the cession. This secret hope on their part was to effect from the
purchase money the speedy supply of the tribe with powder, and thus
perpetuate their national existence. The ammunition must needs be
secured before any intimation of renewed hostilities, and thus the
British government actually would furnish the money for another attack
upon its own frontiers. The French would doubtless afford the Cherokees
substantial aid, but despite the fairest promises, they were unable
to fully supply the savages with ammunition in the last campaign of
the furious Cherokee war against the British, failing the Indians at
their utmost need. Thus at the critical juncture all their previous
fierce and bloody successes were brought to naught. For as a nation
the Cherokees were now practically disarmed and at the mercy of any
demand made from a basis of powder and lead. It was a new point of view
from which to contemplate the proposed cession of land, and Callum
felt as if the gourd on his head had spun quite round, since from the
English standpoint the cession was designed to bring the Cherokee tribe
more definitely under the domination of the British government by
strengthening its occupation among them, and thereby monopolizing their
trade.
And here, in the British officer’s keeping, was the unfortunate French
money of the coinage of 1762, that told so straight a tale amidst
all these subtle and devious windings of savage statecraft. Callum
recognized an imprudence on Everard’s part, against which, however,
only superhuman wisdom could have guarded, in having overlooked, in
the agitation of the moment, the presence of Wahuhu, who had lost the
coins at the races,--the sad Screech-owl, who yet perceived with great
keenness, and argued with an impeccable ratiocination, and witnessed
the transference of the money to official keeping after the lieutenant
had scrutinized the date of the coinage. The mere transference of the
louis d’ors Callum regarded lightly. Their equivalent in “ta guinea”
would undoubtedly be returned, when the force should reach Charlestown,
to the man who had at so many risks won the money, and who would easily
be reconciled to the English currency in the bliss of the exercise of
its purchasing power. Everard intended to reserve the coins themselves
to be shown to the royal governor, with the significance of date and
freshness of mintage, and these facts would be made a part of the
lieutenant’s report to his superior officer, offering in support of his
account of the matter ocular demonstration of the louis d’ors. Anything
that touched upon French machinations among the Cherokees, from whose
atrocities the English had suffered so severely in the Cherokee War,
and who had been subdued at so great a cost of blood and time and
treasure, was of paramount importance in this year of grace 1762, and
not to be lightly argued aside.
As Callum watched the fiercely reflective faces of the group, he
realized that they contemplated more in the enterprise to serve their
object than the mere recovery of the coins. An accident might adroitly
account for the event. Some opportune misfortune often befell men
charged with disaster to others.
“But how?” the question came again, as if it voiced a common train of
thought. In fact they all seemed to think in unison, until one of the
group, suddenly looking up, said,--
“But the tongues of the ugly commissioners are strong. They eat much
food, they drink much wine, and the British government pays them money
for their wisdom. The many black marks that they put on paper will
report the French money, the coinage of this year, to the governor. And
yet the wings of the eagles overshadow the commissioners, and for the
sake of the cession they must not be touched.”
“_Usinuli! Usinuli!_” urged the voice of Time, as once more the
self-constituted lookout scanned the reaches of the path.
“The commissioners have never shaken hands firmly with the speech of
the lieutenant,” replied an authoritative voice, “and the lieutenant
tells _nothing_ to the commissioners.”
Canting his eye askew, to look through the orifices of the ear of
the image painted on the gourd, Callum saw--to his surprise and
indignation, for his heart was still in the undertaking--the Cherokee
guide of the commissioners’ expedition, whose utilities as a spy for
his own people must have been very marked and duplicated his services.
He went on with great animation to discuss the mutual relations of the
personnel of the expedition.
“The commissioners have never tied fast the old beloved friend-knot
with the lieutenant, and the lieutenant despises the commissioners.
They are not soldiers, and they look very small in his eyes. And they
talk till his ears are tired. When he is scornful he speaks of them as
‘lady-like old men,’ and when he is angry he calls them ‘gentlemanly
old ladies’! He trusts them not at all--with nothing!”
“_Usinuli! Usinuli!_” The sound of doom!
“But though the lieutenant has taken the coins into his own keeping the
soldiers have seen them,” said the Indian, who seemed to evolve all
the objections for the others to combat, that the scheme might thus be
battered, as it were, into solid shape.
“Only the bird that flies high sees far,” retorted Yachtino quickly.
“The flock of pigeon soldiers see nothing--they would never notice
the date of the coins--the man in command keeps his eyes open and his
thoughts awake. Besides, what are rumors among mere soldiers,--the
chatter of grasshoppers! The French gold that they have seen--what
does French gold signify? It may have been here for years for all they
know,--those years when the true emblem of the French was the white
dressed doeskin, and the British the long scalping knife. Now those
conflicts of the past are wiped out by the treaty, and its strong lying
mouth has said that our tears are dried and our wounds closed. But the
coinage of 1762--that is a far different matter! It proves a direct
breach of the treaty, and that once more we have taken the great French
Father fast by the arm and close to the shoulder. And the path is
straight no more! If the French coins of 1762 were hidden in the heart
of the officer they must be cut out!”
“_Usinuli! Usinuli!_” The sound was like the beating of a muffled
drum in the ears of Callum MacIlvesty, for he realized that the life
of the officer was forfeited to the knowledge, which he alone had
acquired, of the date of the coins. Should he be permitted to reach
Charlestown, whether with or without the fatal pieces, his disclosure
of the facts would mean added punishment and renewed restrictions for
the Cherokees, already so heavily chastised, the cautious hampering of
the Indian trade, and the rupture of the terms of the land cession,
through the purchase money of which they hoped for ultimate freedom.
It was too plain: the officer with this knowledge in his possession
would be prevented from ever again reaching Charlestown.
But how--that suspicion might impute naught to the agency of the
Indians? they asked again of one another. How could he be found
accessible and alone? How could he be secured without an attack upon
the whole party, which was not to be contemplated, since this would of
necessity involve the destruction of the proposed scheme of the cession
of land and its financial value to the Cherokee nation--possibly
resulting in the extermination of the whole people. Therefore still,
“But how?”
“Already they have lost a man,”--once more the current of the common
thought flowed in words,--“this is a wild country. Many paths lead
far--far--with no return. All our little brothers--the panther, the
wolf, the wildcat--are many, many--and they none of them are the little
brothers of the white man. Should he offend the little brothers he
would hardly know how to hide from them! Then there are many wandering
Indians from the French settlements, and knowing that the great French
Father is still at war with the English king, they would rejoice to
slay a man in the British uniform. The British have already lost a man
on this expedition--they may well lose another.”
Yet how to compass this that the force of the blow might have no
recoil! And once more an interval of deep and silent meditation fell
upon the group.
The Cherokee spy and guide, whose sensibilities had been evidently
ruffled by the manner of the man who employed and paid him, suddenly
threw himself into an attitude mimicking Everard’s stiff military
carriage.
“_Agiyahusa asgaya! Agiyahusa asgaya!_” (I have lost a man!) he
cried in Cherokee, but marred with a queer English accent. A slow
smile pervaded the grim circle. “_Agiyahusa asgaya!_ the Capteny
bleats this through every town. His redcoats search every house and
field.”
The Ancient Warrior trembled.
“‘Capteny, _asgaya gigagei_?’” (Captain, a red man?--meaning a
British redcoat.) The spy rehearsed this with an affectation of the
bated breath of extreme solicitude and a crouching mockery of his
own manner of respect. Then with a perfect reproduction of Everard’s
petulant arrogance, despite the broken English, “No, no, my good man!
I have lost no red soldier, but my plaid soldier, my tartan man, my
MacIlvesty! Five guineas reward to the man who brings him to the
guard-house before nightfall!”
The officer evidently would pay roundly for the privilege of the lash.
His vengeance was indeed afire, and Callum’s cheek burned with a flame
to match. They should never take him alive he swore beneath his breath.
“_Usinuli! Usinuli!_” The words swung back and forth like a
pendulum chronicling the passing of the moments; and suddenly Callum
recognized, blended with the iterative chant, the regular throb of the
hoof-beat of horses approaching along the trading-path at a fair pace.
In another moment there issued from the forest a dozen of the English
soldiers all mounted, and with Lieutenant Everard riding at their head.
Beside him was Mr. Herbert Taviston, bland, smiling, perceiving in the
stir and the difficulty that beset the officer only a fine opportunity
to browse about a bit in the woods safe from Indians and panthers--the
unique advantage of botanizing with a military escort. The lieutenant’s
keen eyes, falling upon the group around the Ancient Warrior, discerned
at once in them men of station and authority, judging merely from the
expression of their countenances, for the occasion being unofficial,
they wore no insignia of rank. He at once halted his party, and called
out in his crisp, peremptory tones a request to be allowed to search
the town. His guide interpreted, and as the chief, Yachtino, gravely
and ceremoniously assented, Everard thanked him curtly and turned to
admonish the corporal.
“See to it that the varlets give no offense, Baker,” he said. “If the
man is taken bring him before me at once.”
“Oh, the poor young man, to be sure!” exclaimed the botanist, his eyes
gloating the while upon Chilhowee Mountain; every leaf of the myriads
it flaunted, red and amber and purple and brown, he could call out of
its name with Latin equivalents as flamboyant as the foliage. “Not
found yet!”
He had utterly forgotten the provocation that occasioned the arrest
and the object of the search, that it held aught more serious than
the acquisition which he had made of a certain parasitic plant, the
Indian pipe--or let us imitate Mr. Taviston and say _Monotropa
uniflora_--delicate, wax-like stems of which he now held tenderly in
his spare white fingers, not altogether devoid of similarity to that
unique growth.
“I wish to God I could lay my hands on him! I can give my mind to
nothing else till I take him,” declared the officer fervently, all
unaware that as he looked casually at the effigy he was gazing straight
into the eyes of the man whom he sought, and who returned a look of
fire.
It was a somewhat fluctuating scrutiny that Everard gave the scarecrow,
as he sat upon his fine bay horse, for the animal, in spirited
impatience of the detention, shifted his position continually, pawing
the ground and tossing his head, despite the rein and spur and curb.
Thus splendidly mounted, Everard presented a gallant aspect, his showy
scarlet coat, white breeches, cocked hat, and polished boots as perfect
and precise in this wilderness as if worn on parade. His fine dark
eyes and expressive features only needed in general a cast of gravity
and dignity to render them imposing, and this his anger and sense of
responsibility had compassed.
The Indians of the group gazed fixedly at him. They had their own
reasons, intimately associated with the louis d’ors in his pocket, to
regard him with a deep morbid curiosity--very shocking to a civilized
mind--as a living man who must soon in their interest be dead. And once
more the question stirred every brain, “But how?” The Highlander saw
his enemy resplendent in all the regalia and rank equally appropriate
to his own condition by right of descent, and remembered and repeated
in his sore consciousness every word of the foolish, half drunken,
brutal fleer of the night before. And the Indian girl, the Cherokee
Rose, still at her work hard by, unobserved in the midst of the
standing maize, hearing yet unheeding all that had been said, gazed
upon the officer with a dazzled reverence, as one might behold the
glittering martial vision of the archangel Michael.
Nothing so glorious had ever blazed in her wildest dreams. All her
imaginings of the graces and glamours of the Ancient Warrior in the
charm of his youth and the heyday of his achievement paled and grew dim
and faded out of comparison with this magnificent palpitant reality.
Her hands rested petrified upon the ear of corn which she was about to
wrest from its stalk. Her eyes, dilated, fascinated, glowed upon him.
She scarcely dared to breathe, and for one moment silence encompassed
the group. The breeze only vaguely rustled through the crisp, sere
blades and stalks; the usual sounds of the town were annulled now, with
its “beloved square” vacant, its council-house still, and its women and
girls all away at their labors in the further fields. It sent up a mere
murmur that came drowsily to the ear on the perfumed suave air of this
sunlit autumnal day, for the search, orderly in its conduct, was not
resisted, and made scant stir. The officer’s horse broke an interval
of almost absolute stillness when it once more lowered its head and
fretfully beat the earth with its high-stepping, impatient forefoot.
Suddenly the elderly commissioner started from his saddle with an
exclamation of bland delight.
“Found, sir, found at last!”
The officer’s horse executed an abrupt demivolt as its bewildered rider
looked hastily around, expectant of seeing the fugitive. The Ancient
Warrior himself crouched appalled in his flimsy disguise.
The amiable Mr. Taviston went on in his address to the lieutenant. “Do
you remember last night?” he sweetly queried, while Everard mentally
asked himself would he ever forget it. “I had then the pleasure to
direct your attention to it--the _Nicotiana rustica_.”
The learned man was afoot now and in the path, and it may be doubted if
a person of his quality, so dapper, so sprucely clad in his fine brown
cloth and silver buckles, ever sustained a glance so surcharged with
contempt as the look which the officer bent upon him, albeit Everard
had just had a sharp lesson touching undue intolerance, and Mr. Herbert
Taviston was of far more worshipful presence in his worldly minded wig
and cocked hat than in his intimate, reclusive, betasseled nightcap.
His trim legs were carrying him briskly into the field, and a beatific
smile of scientific satisfaction was upon his serene, smoothly shaven
cheeks and his slightly doubled chin. He paused where a row of plants
of the “old religious tobacco” had once flourished and one or two had
chanced to escape the garnering knife. Before plucking a leaf he said
with punctilious courtesy to the nearest astounded Cherokee, “May I?”
The stolid Indians were obviously thrown into confusion by this
unexpected demonstration. It seemed to them that the white people,
even those of the same nationality, were infinitely various, and that
there was no reasoning on the basis of the common customs and traits
of a gens. Here were two Englishmen as unlike, as far apart in every
pulse and every phase of character, as if no national tie bound them
together. The inherent courtesy of the savage aided the botanist,
however, and the nearest Indian vouchsafed a bewildered mutter of
assent. With “A thousand thanks, my dear sir--monstrous obleeged, I’m
sure,” Mr. Taviston plucked some leaves of the old religious tobacco
and still happily ambling, retraced his way to the side of the horse of
the officer, who had hardly yet recovered from the impression that the
sudden cry of discovery heralded the finding of the fugitive and the
appropriate finale of his dilemma.
“Now, my dear sir,” said the botanist, holding up to the lieutenant a
few of the leaves, “let me beg that you will do me the favor to taste
these. My own tongue is still tingling with the pungency of mint, and
the discernment of my palate thereby blunted.”
And once more he offered the leaves.
It is possible that the officer had no fear of a probable tobacco worm
in the unwashed foliage, still lush and green, and he was also strongly
conscious of the inscrutable, attentive faces of the Indians. He had
always given orders that his men should observe caution in the presence
of the savages to show no divisions, no discourtesies, no quarrels
among themselves, thereby bringing each other into contempt or ridicule
which might be shared among the Indians, and the opportunity improved
by their machinations. Therefore, mindful of the observation of sundry
of the soldiers, he practiced his own admonition. Albeit infinitely
against his will, he thrust the leaves, possible tobacco bug and all,
between his strong white teeth, which he brought crunching down upon
them.
“And how does it compare? how does it taste?” demanded the botanist,
smiling his soft, white shaven benevolence.
“Nasty, sir, very extremely nasty,” said the disgusted lieutenant.
“And as I am not a browsing animal generally, sir, I have no other
experience of green forage with which to compare it.”
As, despite his intention, some of the juice went down his throat, he
was suddenly reminded of the botanist’s laudation of the skill and
extraordinary knowledge of the Cherokees in the matter of vegetable
poisons, and felt that he was relying too implicitly upon the
scientific learning and plant identification of this gentleman, of the
justice of whose pretensions he had no means of judging. For aught he
knew the stuff might be poison. It was certainly unlike any tobacco
that he had ever seen. He at once thrust the leaves from his mouth, and
then several times spat copiously upon the ground, the action of the
saliva being stimulated by the tobacco.
At that moment the corporal came up with the report that the search had
resulted fruitlessly. Everard took leave of the Indians merely with
a ceremonious bow, and the party rode hastily off, straight down the
river and once more toward Choté.
For one instant the Cherokees stood silent and motionless, watching the
flying horsemen, the sun glittering on their red coats and burnished
arms. Then to Callum’s amazement an elderly Indian, with a sudden sharp
cry such as an animal might utter in seizing upon its prey, sprang
forward, dropped upon his knees in the path, and caught up the dampened
tobacco leaves and the clod of clay upon which the saliva had fallen.
Half articulate exclamations of guttural triumph rang upon the air from
the group, and Callum, glancing from one fiercely joyous illuminated
face to another, felt as if his senses were in the thrall of some
fantastically horrible nightmare. For the possession of the man’s
saliva gave them, according to their savage creed, power over the man’s
life. It would end when the spell should be worked.
Perhaps because of the superstitions of his native land, in which his
childhood had been deeply imbued and which his nerves still accredited,
while his mind resolutely repudiated them, Callum watched with a sort
of sickened fright the preparations for the necromancy. Far away the
laborers in the fields were working now, even the girl who had lingered
so long, and the sere stalks of the tall corn concealed the secret
ceremony of the schemers from the other denizens of the town. Only
the Ancient Warrior, who had seen so much of yore, was to behold the
calling down of the curse.
Suddenly--Callum could not believe his eyes--there issued from among
the tall cornstalks the figure of a man, a familiar figure, a face
that he knew well, or was he bereft of his senses? For here was Tam
Wilson, arrayed in buckskin, fantastically beaded and fringed after
the Indian fashion, his head bare and polled like a Cherokee’s and
decorated with feathers. Yachtino, stepping hastily toward him, greeted
him in the Cherokee language, and pointed out the preparations for the
necromancy. Tam Wilson, also speaking in Cherokee, questioned minutely,
and stood for a moment gazing after the cheerataghe. Then as he turned
away--miracle of miracles!--he spoke to himself in French.
“_Tant pis pour lui!_” he commented upon the working of the spell.
“_À bon chat, bon rat!_”
He was gone in another moment among the corn, and Callum understood at
last the mystery of his continued presence here,--that this was the
arch-plotter whose machinations threatened the peace of the Cherokee
country.
Callum was dizzy with the significance of the discovery, the thoughts
of import, that crowded upon him. Only as in a dream he beheld the
group of the scheming headmen of Chilhowee, eager, breathless,
expectant, standing close at hand while one of the cheerataghe, a man
with the frenzy of a fanatic in his eyes and the fury of a savage, came
slowly down the space between two rows of the corn. He was clad in
the usual buckskin garb, but draped above it was a large dressed hide
decorated with painted symbols and strange hieroglyphics. Upon his head
he wore the horns and head of a buffalo, and as Callum listened to the
incantation, delivered in a weird, chanting undertone, with frequent
interpolations of a sonorous, exclamatory “Ha!” and anon pauses of
impressive silence, he felt his blood go cold.
“_Usuhiyi nunahi wite tsatanu usi gunesa gunage asahalagi. Tsutu
neliga._” (Toward the black grave of the upland in the Darkening
Land your paths shall tend. So shall it be for you.)
The increasing excitement of the moment showed in the attitude of the
other Indians, motionless, yet with an electrical energy of pose,
as if on the point of springing forward. They looked on, fiery eyed
but silent, from among the cornstalks, save that now and again an
inadvertent “Ku!” breathed out from surcharged lungs, and once Yachtino
muttered “_Nigagi!_” (This ends it!)
As the magician paced along he carried in his hand, like a sceptre,
a hollow reed of the poisonous wild parsnip, filled with a paste
compounded of earthworms and the spittle-moistened clay, to be buried
at the foot of a lightning-scathed tree in the forest.
“_Tsudantagi uskalutsiga. Sakani aduniga. Usuhita atanisseti,
ayalatsisesti tsudantagi, tsunanugaisti nigesuna. Sge!_”[9] (Now
your soul has faded away. It has become blue. When darkness comes your
spirit shall grow less and dwindle away, never to reappear. Listen!)
The wizard had reached the gloomy shades of the dense woods, and the
terrible words of the spell came floating back on the air, dwindling
with the distance like the diminishing thread of the life which it
affected to attenuate and reduce and finally cut short.
Listen! not even an echo now of that weird voice! Only the river’s
song; the sound of the wind blaring about Chilhowee Mountain; the
vague, far-off tones of the “second man” still at his quips and quirks
in the field; and suddenly the shrill, callow laughter of happy
children.
But for the icy drops starting on his brow Callum might have thought
he had been dreaming. Yet he stood in the burning sun, and so shivered
that had now the Cherokee Rose gazed upon the hero of her fancies, she
must have deemed the Ancient Warrior stricken with the palsy. He was
alone, however, none near to mark his lapse from the verisimilitude of
deportment. A bee came buzzing by, and crawled up and down the quaint
lines of the gourd vizard for a time, making the Highlander tremble
for a possible entrance through ear or eye spaces, but at last it took
droningly to wing. A lizard basked in the sun, as doubtless it had
done for many a day, on a stone at the feet of the scarecrow. A blue
jay, the sauciest of feathered rufflers, even alighted on the crown of
the dingy old bedraggled war-bonnet, and there preened his brilliant
blue and white plumage, and clanged his wild woodsy cry, and so off
again to the splendors of Chilhowee Mountain, gold and red above the
silver river and against the azure sky. And these wights were all the
passers-by, while Callum shivered and trembled from head to foot and
scarce could stand. He had no need of knowledge of the Indian character
to be aware that the savages would not fail to assist the workings of
the charm by non-magical powers. Everard, undoubtedly, by some crafty
device would be lured to his destruction.
The tempter, ever present, did not fail to suggest thereby the solution
of Callum’s own problem: with Everard gone, his accuser had vanished.
Even the corporal supposed his incarceration was but the result of some
slight insubordination, or perhaps Everard’s own hasty and arbitrary
whim while in liquor. As to the bewildered Mr. Taviston, his incoherent
impressions were hardly to be considered, so confused was he by the
sudden altercation. Thus Callum might escape the shame of the lash
that he dreaded more than death itself, and also save his own life. He
put the thought from him. He would return now willingly, willingly; he
would in this cause face aught that might menace him--and not for sheer
conscience’ sake, for at heart he loved the fop like a brother.
Yet should he issue forth and return to camp, he well knew that Everard
would laugh the threat to scorn, and fancy the whole adventure feigned
to win his gratitude and save the culprit from the lash. Callum’s
invention would respond to no goading. How could he forecast and thwart
the strange, savage lure which the Indians would devise? That it would
be apt, efficient, and bold withal, on the strength of their faith in
their own necromancy, thus crediting the spell with the result of their
own efforts, he was sure. And yet strive as he might, he could not
rouse his jaded faculties to divine, to baffle, to counterplot.
Some time had passed thus, when a sudden movement close at hand caused
him unthinkingly to turn his head. Fortunately the gourd vizard was
so ample as to permit the motion without stirring the mask. There
again was the Indian girl who had gazed so lovingly upon the effigy as
almost to disconcert the fair-haired Callum that it masked,--not gazing
upon him now, however. The same girl it was, he was sure, although
she passed by her ancient hero with so fickle an unconcern. But for
bewitchments! the Cherokee Rose was metamorphosed by a simple splendor
into the rarest bloom. White beads were twined in her long black hair,
where they glistered like pearls. A strand of the large, beautiful,
genuine pearls, still found in the rivers of the region, only slightly
discolored by the heated copper spindle which the Indians used to
pierce them, encircled her round, roseate-tinted throat. Her dress of
fawnskin dappled with white had a belt of many rows of white beads and
a low collar or cape of swans’ feathers. Above her high white buskins
two small skins of otter fur, worn like garters, were each trimmed
with straight stiff swan’s quills that stood out horizontally, and
gave the suggestion of wings to her feet, if one were open to poetical
imagery, or a bantam-like decoration, if prosaically inclined. Her
face was turned toward the road with a wistful, fascinated expression
in her soft, liquid eyes that would have been charming to view if any
but the supplanted Ancient Warrior had beheld her. Now and again, with
an incomparably graceful, lissome gesture, she lifted one bare arm and
silently beckoned the unseen.
The expectation of an approach along the path reminded Callum of the
sinister consultation of the headmen here to-day, and suddenly the
Ancient Warrior spoke.
“_Higeya tsusdiga! Higeya tsusdiga!_” (Oh little woman! Oh little
woman!)
Instantly she was palsied, stricken dumb. Faithfully as she had
believed in the Ancient Warrior, she had never thought to hear him
speak. Human credence has ever its reservations. She gazed wide-eyed at
the image, her lips parted, her hand on her plunging heart.
Sunset was on the face of the effigy; the soft red light freshened
the effect of his tattered old war-bonnet and gilded the stalks of
the high Indian corn amidst which he stood. Whether or not Callum was
conscious of his enhanced comeliness, the awe and respect in her face
and the obvious simplicity of her mental endowment nerved the young
daredevil to venture further speech. And indeed something must needs be
risked in view of the unwelcome knowledge that had come to him and the
restrictions that hampered its use. He mustered his best Cherokee.
“Who are you waiting for, little woman?”
“No Chickasaw, oh good grandfather,” she cried hastily; for one of
the best stories of the “second man” chronicled the hatred which the
Ancient Warrior had cherished against that tribe, and his valor,
which had nearly exterminated them from the face of the earth. His
sentiments were pointed by the fate of a Cherokee maiden who married a
Chickasaw and went to his tribe to dwell, and daily the Ancient Warrior
dispatched the magic messenger bird that lived among the Tuckaleechee
towns in the Cherokee country, on the banks of the Canot River, to
remind her of her home; and as the memories she could not shake off
clung about her, she finally became imprisoned in their convolutions;
and to this day she can be seen in the Chickasaw country, where they
think she is nothing but what she seems,--a tangle of grapevines!
The Ancient Warrior said nothing in reply. He was making a strenuous
mental endeavor to adjust another Cherokee sentence. His silence
terrified her. His anger was full of spells, as the “second man”
well knew; an _ageya_ lost her garters, for instance, and none
would ever again stay on, and thereafter she presented an appearance
painfully undecorated. The Cherokee Rose abruptly cut short the silent
linguistic toil of the Ancient Warrior by hurriedly explaining of her
own accord.
“A strange British warrior, oh good grandfather,--a splendid red
captain, most beautiful and brave, who will come up the path and pass
the mountain to-night on the way to Talassee Town. The same, oh good
grandfather, that made the road bright and shining to-day. And even if
he should come after the sun has gone down, one could never miss the
light of the day, but could see him yet ride his horse along the river
bank. For he is like the sun in splendid red, and his hair shines with
a white glister, and the look in his eyes warms the heart.”
The Ancient Warrior marked how the mental image she had summoned
up diverted her attention from him, for the fascination of the
supernatural had waned as she spoke, and she turned half away from the
effigy, which she had once so reverenced, to gaze along the curving
westward path for the vision of her anticipation. The Ancient Warrior,
all sullen and serious, gazed calculatingly and doubtfully at her.
The ranges were purpling along the perspectives of the background;
the forests of Chilhowee Mountain flamed gorgeously gold and red in
the middle distance; the sky above was all radiant with a uniform
amber tint. As she stood amidst the sun-suffused Indian corn, the
sere hues of which so harmonized with the deeper shade of her garb of
white-dappled fawnskin, and the dense white of the swan’s feathers
about her shoulders, she looked as might some primeval ideal of the
mystic harvest moon. Half mechanically she still beckoned, as if thus
she might bring the sun of her fancy to meet her upon the horizon line.
“_Ha, Capteny Gigagei!_” she cried. “_Usinuliyu! Usinuliyu!_”
(Oh great red captain! Haste! Haste!)
The Ancient Warrior suddenly spoke sternly. “_Higeya, hatu
ganiga!_” (You, woman, come and listen to me!)
Once more with that unquestioning subjection to the superstitions of
the cult in which she had been reared,--oh wily second man!--she turned
submissively toward the Ancient Warrior, albeit her docile obedience
might cost her eyes the first resplendent glimpse of the Capteny
Gigagei, riding his gallant war-horse straight out of the red west
and the illumined amethystine mountains, whither that humbler scarlet
splendor, the god of day, was now slowly disappearing. She lifted her
appealing child-like eyes to the gourd vizard of the young Highlander,
and well it was that he wore this impassive mask, for his own face
was pallid with exhaustion from a sleepless night and the exertion of
standing all day without food, drawn with the stress of much anxiety,
and lined with the many perplexities of his thoughts. The gourd face,
however, acquiring naught by propinquity, looked as it always did,
as its Indian draughtsman intended that it should,--arrogant, surly,
threatening, and very majestic.
“Oh good grandfather!” she faltered.
“_Higeya tsusdiga_ (Oh little woman), how do you know he comes?”
“Oh, he comes, he comes without doubt!--the headmen said late, but I
hoped early, so that I might see him as he rides his splendid horse
along the river bank. The headmen know he comes; they are ready for
him; he will be received at the house of the chief of Talassee. He
comes because a wicked man--one of his own soldiers--has fled, has
deserted the great red Capteny, and is in hiding at Talassee Town,
and the headmen have sent him the message that he may come and take
him with his own hand, lest the plaid soldiers, the comrades of the
runagate, wreak vengeance on Talassee, should the town deliver him
up to penance. The headmen have only _secretly_ sent messages
where the fugitive can be found. Oh good grandfather, the Capteny
comes, he comes! To-night he will abide at the house of the chief of
Talassee, where a great feast is made in his honor, and the braves
will dance the eagle-tail dance, and then the young girls will dance
in three circles with the braves, and I, too, I am to dance. And
there will be good store of wine at the feast (lowering her voice
mysteriously)--_French_ wine, oh good grandfather, but surely the
Capteny Gigagei cannot taste its _French-ness_! And to-morrow the
army of the commissioners will start back to the Carolina country and
overtake the great red Capteny at Talassee, and he will march at the
head like the king of his tribe.”
The heart of the Ancient Warrior turned cold and seemed to cease to
beat. The ingenious scheme was thus unwittingly outlined before
him. He knew that the thought of personal danger would never occur
to Everard as the result of the French coins in his keeping and his
knowledge of their significance, since any personal violence offered
to a man of his note would result in instant discovery and speedy
vengeance. From the beginning of the negotiations there had been more
or less interchange of friendly courtesies and mutual hospitalities
between the Cherokee headmen, the commissioners, and the commander of
the military force. Although Everard kept the rank and file close in
camp, in view of the disastrous possibility of clashing between the
boisterous young soldiers and the “mad young men” of the tribe, he
himself went about the country freely enough. He would not hesitate,
Callum was sure, to leave his orders with the first sergeant for the
march of the troops on the following day, and accompanied by a single
orderly, or perhaps by only the Cherokee guide, proceed to the tryst of
the headmen, where he would expect to capture the runaway Highlander,
and rejoin the escort when its vanguard should come in sight from
beyond Chilhowee Mountain.
No prophet need one be to foretell how the lines would straggle past;
how the sergeant in command would hourly expect his superior for a
while; then being without orders to halt would proceed for a day or so,
Everard’s lingering stay being of course within his own discretion. And
at last anxiety would develop, increase to troublous forecast, to panic
fear; a halt would be called, a detachment sent back, to find--nothing!
A mysterious disappearance,--some crafty, subtle, convincing story to
account for it innocuously. Callum did not dream what this could be;
only afterward its details were made clear to him by another, more
discerning.
What fate? he speculated--the river? No. The first sergeant, quailing
under his awful responsibility, would drag it for miles and miles in
search of the body. The stake?--a handful of ashes could tell no
tale. Surely the magic compound of earthworms and spittle-moistened
clay, mysteriously potent, buried at the foot of the lightning-scathed
tree, might spare room for the sepulture of so trifling a residuum of
all that gay spirit exhaled in smoke. Perhaps a more stealthy method
still--Everard might be drugged into quick insensibility by some
mysterious poison mixed with the French wine, and buried forever out of
sight somewhere in the infinities of the illimitable wilderness.
The Ancient Warrior trembled till the pole which aided to support him
shook in the ground.
One by one the schemes of possible rescue of his erstwhile friend and
his present enemy, and above all and before all his commanding officer,
fell to shreds as he sought to hold up the fabric in contemplation of
its feasibility. He said again that he would surrender himself now most
willingly; he would resign himself to any punishment rather than this
disaster, this treachery, this cowardly massacre, should ensue. But how
would surrender now avail? He could not regain the camp without the
danger of passing Everard, coming hither on another path. He resolved
that as soon as the first beat of the horse’s hoofs should herald an
approach he would rush out from his hiding-place, seize the officer’s
bridle, and compel him to listen.
Alack, the sun was already down; the dun shadows were on the land; far
away the dim stretch of the sere cornfields held all the fading light
between the slate-hued clouds, coming up from the south over the Great
Smoky Mountains, and the deep purple ranges that loomed close about
and limited the horizon. A dark night was at hand, without a star. How
should he distinguish the hoof-beat of one horse from another? Everard
might well pass without a word.
As thus the difficulties of the situation baffled his flagging
invention, the Ancient Warrior unwittingly lifted his hands and wrung
them together in the hard stress of his contending emotions. His
grotesque vizard was upturned appealingly to the darkening sky, and he
uttered a deep sigh.
The Cherokee girl, with a sudden look of appalled discernment on her
face, stepped back abruptly in affright, then stood in the shadows of
the denser stalks of corn, all writhen and twisted about her, and gazed
through the deepening dusk at the effigy.
In this crisis, this emotional revulsion of loyalty to his officer and
affection to his friend, Callum would not have grudged the sacrifice
had he rushed out blindly in the night and by mischance revealed
himself to Indian horsemen and certain capture, if it would not also
entail the success of their treachery in decoying Everard to his death.
“Eh, gude God--he maunna come--he maunna ride at a’ the nicht,” he said
aloud in a strained, poignant voice, all oblivious of the Indian girl,
who still stood hidden in the dusk and the tall stalks of the maize,
and silently, breathlessly, stared.
Much accomplished as she had known the Ancient Warrior to be, not even
his vaunting biographer, the “second man,” had ever claimed that he
spoke English.
The poor Ancient Warrior! His head drooped quite low, despite the
arrogance of the expression of his vizard. There was something in
his eyes that scalded them, for the Highlander was still very young,
and had been gently reared in a household of sisters; and his great
proficiency in the use of the broadsword, which made him so valued
a soldier, was superimposed upon simple, tender-hearted, ingleside
habitudes. In fact he must needs slip a hand up under his roomy vizard
to wipe off the very genuine tears which were burning his cheek--not
that he acknowledged these tears, no, not even to himself.
“Hegh, sirs,” he exclaimed, “this singeing reek is fair blindin’ me!”
As he spoke a new thought struck him. He lifted his head once more and
snuffed the odor of the distant burning woods.
It was dark now, quite dark. The color of the cloud and the mountain
had blended indissolubly in densest invisibility. Not a star was alight
in the sky. Only to one standing in the cornfield, hardly a yard away,
and with a discernment keenly whetted by previous sight and accurate
knowledge of the surrounding objects, could aught have been perceptible
as Callum straightened himself, and turning, looked carefully around
him.
“The bit lassock ha’ flitted awa’,” he said, quite satisfied.
But close at hand, still screened by the darkness and the tangled
growth, she watched the Ancient Warrior fling his vizard into the peas,
strip off his buckskin shirt and leggings, and emerge in the kilt
and plaid of one of the Highlanders of the escort. With the quick,
keen wits of her race she made no doubt that here was the wicked
renegade who had incurred the displeasure of the splendid red sun-god
of a captain, and who was falsely reputed to be lurking in hiding at
Talassee.
Callum, without a moment’s hesitation, struck off in a long, rapid
stride through the corn. Silently, stealthily, she followed him--not
like a shadow, for not even a shadow could follow thus through the
densities of that dark night.
XIII
AT camp an unusual activity had characterized the closing hours of
the afternoon. It was the eve of the day fixed for the departure of
the commissioners and their escort. The official business had been
concluded. The survey of the land to be ceded was completed. The
last feigning objections on the part of the Cherokee headmen and
the final devious doubtings of the commissioners had been merged in
mutual concession and compliant acquiescence. The gifts brought to
propitiate the Indians had been presented and graciously accepted, and
the official farewell taken with much smoking of the friend-pipe and
saltatory agilities of the eagle-tail dance.
That no unforeseen mischance might hamper the early start, Everard,
with military prevision, had caused every preparation to be so
completed as to leave as little as possible to be done on the morrow.
The pack-horses had been ranged in due order and tethered, and had but
to be loaded, the fardels of the pack saddles being already made up and
strapped on; the travel rations for several days had been issued to the
men; the personal luggage of the commissioners was also ready, owing
to the repeated insistence of Everard; the final orders had been given
the first sergeant, left in command in his stead till he should join
the line of march at Talassee. He himself in his tent, with hardly a
hand’s turn left to be done, was on the point of setting out to ride to
Talassee Town with his Cherokee guide to capture Callum MacIlvesty.
The Indians had made a mystery of their information. They had first
sworn Everard to secrecy and then held back as if to disappoint
him finally. They affected fear of the Highland contingent. Oh,
the plaid-men were very terrible warriors! Were the horrors of
Montgomerie’s campaign and the slaughter and the fire-raising of Grant
ever to be forgotten? And since the Cherokees did all in love for
the great red Capteny, it would not be wise or kind of him to allow
the wrath of the plaid-men, for the surrender of their brother, to
fall on Talassee Town, which the Highlanders might sack or burn--well
remembered were their sackings and burnings!--as they marched through
on the morrow upon the peaceful trading-path, which was now so white
and bright from end to end. If the great red Capteny did not wish this
path to be stained with the blood of the Indians, and perhaps of the
plaid-men also, it would be well if he came to Talassee Town himself.
There he might meet his tartan renegade as if by chance, and take him
with his own hand.
Everard was troubled beyond expression by MacIlvesty’s continued
absence; first, because of a genuine and humane fear that he would
suffer a horrible death at the hands of the treacherous Indians,
especially as the imminent departure of the troops could not be
postponed on the desperate hope of a still further search for the
willful runagate, and Callum would necessarily be left alone and
at their mercy in the savage wilds. Nevertheless, the anger of the
officer burned with great rancor. He believed that he would not have
suffered the least pity had a court-martial gone the extreme length
of sentencing MacIlvesty to be shot. That he should be brought to the
degradation of the lash seemed to the lieutenant most meet and fitting
whenever he felt the smart of that scarlet diagonal line, beginning
to turn slightly blue, across his cheek. Punishment MacIlvesty had
richly deserved, but the accident of torture by savages could not be
accounted retribution for the crime of striking his officer. Nor could
Everard, as his officer, feel justified in abandoning the Highlander
to such a fate except at the last extremity, although he would not
have regretted the righteous exaction of every pang of the penalty to
which a court-martial might sentence the culprit. Therefore, impatient
of the mysterious locutions and doubts, and alternate promises and
withdrawals, by which the Cherokees sought to magnify the importance
of their disclosure, Everard took no heed of personal prudence and
was ready to put foot in the stirrup when suddenly there appeared at
the flap of his tent one of the commissioners, fresh from an outing,
clad in a long and dapper riding “Joseph,” his head cowled with a
comfortable “trot cosy,” a suave smile upon his lips, and a bland “May
I?” upon his tongue.
Everard in another moment had cause to curse his folly that he did not
refuse the commissioner entrance; but he imputed much importance to a
request which he anticipated, and therefore seated himself upon a stump
of a tree, which had been sawed off smoothly to serve as a table, and
resigned the single camp stool to the guest.
“The _Magnolia auriculata_,” Mr. Taviston said with a sigh of
pleasure, “the most pompous beauty of the forest.”
He held forth a leaf of a tree, which a greater botanist has since
rapturously described as “superbly crowned or crested with the fragrant
flower representing a white plume, succeeded by a very large crimson
cone or strobile.”
The officer gazed at it with uninterested and unrecognizing eyes. The
only magnolia which he could identify was the growth which we call
_grandiflora_, and which he had seen farther south.
“I have spent the day among the magnolias,” said the botanist, smiling
consciously and with a sort of gloating reminiscence, as if Daphne
herself had entertained him in the boskiest bowers. “And here,”
presenting a gigantic leaf, “is the _Magnolia tripetala_--and
this, the _Magnolia pyramidata--foliis ovatis, oblongis, acuminatis,
basi auriculatis, strobilo oblongo ovato._”
“Good God, sir!” the petulant officer interposed, hastily rising in
desperation. “I cry you mercy! My duties”--he hesitated, then stopped
short.
For the trip must needs seem of his own choosing,--to attend a feast
made in his honor by the Cherokees because of his seeming interest in
Indian life and ceremonial. The thought of the postponement of his
ride and its important object greatly perturbed him. He had hoped
to avoid delay by admitting his tormentor. Twice, nay thrice, after
the botanist’s baggage had been consigned to the locality where the
pack-train was to be loaded had the quartermaster sergeant, who
officiated as chief of transportation, reported to the commanding
officer various vexatious requests of the worshipful Herbert Taviston
to be allowed another deposit therein of trophies of bark and leaves,
and, for aught I know, caterpillars and beetles,--natural specimens,
which he did not hesitate in the interests of science to insert amongst
his immaculate and high-minded toggery. The lieutenant, anticipating
the renewal of such requests, had intended to peremptorily refuse
another overhauling of the baggage, because of the confusion entailed
upon the somnolent and orderly camp, and possible delay on the morrow.
Hence he was thrown out of his calculations, and flushed and bit his
lip with vexation. Nevertheless he could not rid himself perfunctorily
of the presence of his unwelcome visitor by the plea of the pressure of
official duties. The preparations for the morrow’s march were obviously
complete, the camp asleep; moreover, his spurs jingled at his heels
and his horse pawed at the door of the tent. The pretext of his own
diversion was necessary to protect or satisfy his Cherokee informants
and to furnish a reason for his quitting the camp. He looked with
sudden hopefulness at Mr. Taviston, who also rose, but the motion was
merely mechanical, without a parting instinct. The smile yet resting
upon the botanist’s face was inattentive, undiscerning. The officer was
a natural specimen the study of which did not allure him in the least.
He scarcely listened to the lieutenant’s words, so absorbed was he in
the subject.
“The soil of this region is rich, sir, incredibly rich for mountain
slopes. This redundant example of the _Magnolia acuminata_, sir,
hangs positively over a precipice, craggy steeps, imposing and horrid.
If you would but give yourself the trouble to step with me to the door,
I could point out to you, even in the darkness, the height of the
location where I found it,--an altitude of fully two thousand feet. The
precipice is distinctly imposed upon the sky against the constellation
Perseus, which must be well risen now if the clouds--ah--ah--ah!”
The officer, moving alertly toward the door, following his guest in
the hope of ultimate release outside, had held up the flap that the
botanist might emerge, and frowned heavily as he heard Mr. Taviston’s
voice rising into a quavering exclamation of surprise.
“What cracker next!” Everard cried impatiently.
In a moment the words died upon his lips, and he stood staring out into
the night, half dazed with his sudden revulsion of feeling and the
extraordinary sight that met his eyes.
For the woods of Chilhowee Mountain were not invisible in the purple
night and under the black cloud, but splendidly agleam in the shadows.
All red and gold they showed, and wreathed about with scroll-like
involutions of blue smoke. Volleying here and there at wide intervals
were jets of flame, vivid white, tinged with red at the verges. Now and
then strange meteors flew through the dense forests in airy arabesques,
lace-like in their tenuity, where the blazes caught at sparse series
of dead leaves still hanging sere and dry in wind-denuded areas. The
ranges in the distance were suddenly evoked from the darkness and
stood as in a trance, motionless. Further still, in the ultimate scope
of vision, vague, illusory suggestions of mountain forms continually
trembled and flickered as the flames rose and fell. The fire was fierce
and furious along the lower reaches of Chilhowee where the trading-path
crossed, for much light wood of undergrowth was among the great
trees, and the elastic blazes that could only leap hound-like about
the huge boles, as if seeking to seize their prey in the branches,
easily enveloped the slender saplings, which now and again sent forth
cracklings as of a sudden volley of musketry. All the black cloud above
looked down in sullen dismay at the aghast earth, thus roused out of
the abyss of darkness and night, with a strange, unnatural aspect upon
the familiar contours of the landscape.
The Cherokee towns along the river were all astir. Here and there upon
the banks flitted scantily clad Indian figures, gazing at the mountain
and speculating upon the mystery of the ignition of the woods; for the
Chilhowee Mountain is many miles in length, and it would seem that
some region nearer to the distant burning forests, unseen and far to
the north, must have been first fired. Although because of the recent
drought the woods were dry, they would never have burned without
extraneous kindling.
Everard had turned instinctively to his horse, with the intention of
riding forth to investigate. His Cherokee guide checked him.
“No can ride to Talassee--no can cross mountain fire--fire--all fire!”
The amazement, the dismay, and something more--the deep, cogitating
speculation on the man’s face--fixed Everard’s attention. The light of
the burning scene was full upon it, glimmering upon the feathers on the
top of the Indian’s head as he bent forward to gaze, but the shadow
annulled the rest of his body, and his aspect in the weird effects of
the flicker was as if he had been decapitated. When Everard next turned
to speak to him the man had disappeared. Inquiry revealed the fact
that he had quitted the camp. For the first time Everard experienced a
sudden doubt of him. What significance did he perceive in the fire? And
why should he look so downcast, so defeated, so despairing--as at the
end?
The camp had been roused by the crackle and roar of the flames and the
wide, blaring illumination, as if the world were afire. The officer
doubled the camp guard by way of precaution against any disturbance,
lest the kindling of this conflagration be attributed to the agency of
the soldiers as a bit of bravado on their part, and rouse the wrath of
the Indians to reprisal. Then he went back into his tent and sat down
on the camp stool beside the table, rudely fashioned of the stump of a
great tree, and tried to think out some new solution of the problem of
the capture of MacIlvesty. The candle was still burning with a timid,
white, pearly lustre, all pallid and dim against the great yellow
flare outside, which showed through the translucent canvas walls. The
gigantic leaves of the _Magnolia tripetala_ still lay on the
improvised table, and he had his elbows among them and his head in his
hands, when suddenly he was aware of the corporal of the guard standing
and saluting in the doorway.
“Ready with some new foolery?” Everard demanded tartly.
“Yes, sir,” the corporal replied with anxious deprecation. “Here’s a
messenger, sir. I can’t make out who she comes from. But she seemed
possessed to get a word with you, sir. She was so excited and hasty
that, though I had no orders, I was afraid of letting important news
slip if I sent her away.”
“What’s her name?” demanded Everard, in frowning haste. The moments at
this crisis were important.
“I don’t know the Injun lingo, sir, but they call her the ‘Cherokee
Rose.’”
“Then hale her off!” cried Everard, bringing his hand down on the
table with a force that made the candle jump in its socket. “I want
no rosaceous specimens here, native or foreign. No--_the Cherokee
Rose_--I have done with botany forever, I swear!” He spoke as if
he had given many years of unrequited and fruitless study to that
ungrateful science. “Send the baggage about her business! _The
Cherokee Rose_, forsooth!” he repeated fleeringly.
He turned suddenly, hearing a slight scuffle without, and the next
moment the flap of his tent was drawn back and the girl stood in the
doorway, the flaming night behind her, and all her amber and white
attire showing in soft splendor and full detail in the refined,
subdued, pearly light of the single candle. The discomfited corporal,
who had sought to detain her by as much force as he dared to exert,
was vaguely glimpsed in the background, sullenly resigning himself to
wait to conduct her out of camp, as he saw that Everard had a mind now
to give her an audience. Her first words had arrested the lieutenant’s
attention. He could not have constructed the sentences that issued from
her trembling scarlet lips, but the sound of the Cherokee language had
grown familiar in many weeks’ sojourn here, and he understood its drift
and made shift to reply.
“I have found your plaid-man,” she cried. “Oh, the wicked one!” casting
up her liquid eyes in aspiration. “Cut off his head! Cut it off clean!”
“But where? when was he found?” Everard exclaimed eagerly.
“Oh, now you have lent your ear to listen!” she cried triumphantly. She
glanced warily over her shoulder to make sure that the corporal had not
also lent his ear for the same purpose. Then leaning forward, the flap
of the tent still in one hand, her finger now and again cautiously
laid on her lips, she detailed the strange metamorphosis of the Ancient
Warrior into a Highland soldier which she had witnessed, and every word
that he had said she repeated in English as she had heard it, with a
faithful duplication of accent and gesture.
“You were to come to Talassee, and he would not let you,--you the great
red Capteny, and he the dust of the earth!--where a feast was made
for you, and the headmen waited, and many young and beautiful were to
dance, and I was to dance. See!--was I not to dance?”
Her anklets of white beads jingled in unison as she moved her slender
restless feet in their buskins of fine white dressed doeskin.
“And he wept--the plaid-man! and cried for the French gold! and said,
‘He maunna ride at a’ the nicht! He maunna ride--he maunna gang to
Talassee wi’ the French gowd o’ saxty-twa! Ohonari! Ohonari! He maunna
ride at a’ the nicht.’ And then this plaid-man he sobbed much, and
straightway said to himself that the smoke of far-away burning woods
hurt his eyes--when it is because he is a squaw-man that he sheds
tears, and is no great red Capteny and soldier. And does he not wear a
petticoat every day of his life, like the woman that he is? _He sheds
tears!_ And then he crept out, saying all the time, ‘Oh, gude God,
he maunna ride to Talassee--he maunna ride at a’ the nicht!’ And I, all
unseen, followed him like his shadow, like his soul, through the night
to the foot of the mountain where the trading-path skirts Chilhowee,
and there he struck a flint and set the dry leaves afire, and then with
a lighted torch he ran--ran like a deer--firing the woods here, there,
everywhere! Two Indians, coming from a hunt, saw him, but he gave them
the slip. And the headmen are having the woods scoured for him. And
I--I lost him in the night--for he ran very fast!”
As he stood listening Everard more than once changed color, and finally
sat down, looking very grave.
The girl with only a momentary pause recommenced: “And then I knew that
you could not go to Talassee through the fiery woods, although the
feast was made, and the headmen waited, and many were to dance, and I,
too, was to dance, because that creature, in his plaid petticoat, said
you had his French gold. Was it his, forsooth? I do not understand!
And I lost him, but I went back from the mountain to Chilhowee Town,
and there--oh, joy!--there he stood once more in the likeness of the
Ancient Warrior,--who must be very wroth, if there ever was any Ancient
Warrior,--in his hunting-shirt and war-crown. And softly, very softly,
like the mist slipping down the mountain-side I crept away here, and
left him there, that the great red Capteny may descend upon him, and
capture him, and wreak vengeance upon him, and break his great ugly
bones, and give his woman’s petticoat to the dogs to tear!”
“And is he there yet?” demanded Everard eagerly. “Is he unaware that he
is discovered?”
Her animated diction had left her breathless and speechless. She could
only bow her head in assent, her lustrous eyes still fiery, her lips
trembling with her panting breath.
Everard sprang up, tense and alert, keen and quick to see his error.
“You shall have the French gold as a reward for your story if I find my
tartan man as you say at Chilhowee. Say nothing to any one till I send
you the French gold by the hand of Yachtino, the chief of Chilhowee,”
he said, hoping that thus the headmen might think that he had failed to
notice the significant date of the coinage of the louis d’ors, since
he parted so lightly from them. Thus he would avoid further dangerous
machinations, for of course the pieces were not themselves essential to
the validity of his report.
He was calling out hasty orders to the corporal in the pauses of his
sentences to her, and in the next few moments he rode out of the camp
at the head of a dozen mounted infantry-men, their red coats and
burnished accoutrements showing in the flames still rioting along the
mountain-side.
A sense of dawn was presently in the air,--the vague, undiscriminated,
indescribable perception of the awakening of nature. It was not night,
let the darkness gloom as it might. It was not night, let the light
delay as it would. It was a new day, and every nerve acclaimed the
fact with a revival of power. Everard met this new day in emerging
from the forests near Chilhowee Town. The flames were dying out upon
the mountain. A thin rain was falling, and misty moisture enveloped
the higher slopes, where nevertheless here and there a pennant of fire
waved through dull gray involutions of vapor. The smell of charred
timber was rife on the air. The slate-tinted sky, the darkly looming
purple mountains of the distance, the black, fire-swept steeps closer
at hand, the Indian town as yet silent and still, the long, level
stretches of the pallid, sere cornfields dimly striped with fine lines
of the misting rain,--all were visible in the dull gray light as the
party halted on the verge of the woods. Everard dismounted and went
forth alone into the cornfields.
Callum MacIlvesty, facing in the opposite direction, heard naught,
and saw naught but the dreary fire-smirched scene before him and the
rain slowly descending with a steadiness which promised to make a day
of it. He was too exhausted to think, to scheme further. He only knew
that his ruse had succeeded; that Everard had not been decoyed to a
terrible death; that the commissioners and their military escort would
march to-day. But when he sought to forecast how he would fare, left
alone and helpless in the country of the savage Cherokees, the puzzling
problem so baffled his tired brain--without food, as he was, aching
in every muscle, and drenched to the very bones by the persistent
rain--that he would fall asleep, still standing half supported by the
pole, his war-bonnet and gourd head nodding after a fashion which must
have revealed the sham that he was, had any discerning Indian chanced
to pass that way. He dreamed strange things in these meagre snatches
of sleep,--so strange that he thought he was still dreaming when,
recovering his balance with a start and lifting his heavy eyelids, he
saw Lieutenant Everard striding across the wet cornfield and heard his
friendly voice calling, “Callum Bane! Callum Bane!” as of yore.
Callum’s heart plunged and then stood still, as he perceived the
reality of his impressions. Before he could decide upon his course the
voice sounded anew, with a queer tremor in it:--
“For God’s sake, Callum Bane, don’t hide from me! I wouldn’t hurt a
hair of your head for all the Cherokee country!”
In his rough, young-man fashion Everard had begun to tear off the
Ancient Warrior’s war-bonnet and gourd vizard and hunting-shirt that,
long subject to the weather’s hard usage, had grown ragged and rent
with the climbing in and out of it by the stalwart Highlander, and
before the transformation was complete the story of each was elicited.
As they faced each other, Callum, conscience-stricken at the enormity
of his offense and overwhelmed by the magnanimity of his friend, albeit
debtor for his life, in forgiving him, suddenly burst into tears,
exclaiming, “Ohon! Ohon! I wish you would kill me!” and cast himself,
in all his smoke-grimed, rain-soaked tartans, into the arms of the
smart officer.
Everard chose to consider the blow as delivered under the extremity
of provocation and in the quality of friend over a convivial bowl,
and therefore his own personal affair. He was willing to risk the
carping comment of his mess, should it ever come to their knowledge
that he had received this insult without requital from a man who had
saved his life with so much forethought and ingenuity, and danger to
his own,--a man who deemed he would have profited immeasurably by the
officer’s destruction, thus escaping the death which menaced him, or an
ignominious punishment more terrible to him than death itself.
Everard, however, with his larger experience of life and wider outlook,
saw the plot differently, perfectly rounded and in its entirety. He
knew that the Cherokees would not dare to lure him to Talassee had they
not some innocuous device by which to account for his disappearance
thence. Their subtle intelligence had doubtless seized upon the
fortuitous escape of the Highlander from custody as a thread to work
into their web. For it was most natural that to this man, who had
offended the officer and had cause to fear him, should be attributed
his murder and consequent disappearance. The Highlander himself, easily
found, seized, and destroyed after the departure of the troops from the
country, could gainsay naught.
The lieutenant’s military conscience, however, would not permit
him to forgive so easily the escape from the guard-house and the
lurking in hiding, these being notorious offenses of evil example
and to the prejudice of good order and discipline. For not even the
corporal who had had the custody of the prisoner knew that Callum had
struck the officer, and the only witness, Mr. Taviston, had utterly
forgotten the blow as a matter of no consequence,--being frantic with
excitement concerning a new species of _Stuartia_, here found and
at that time unknown to any catalogue, but since called _Stuartia
montana_. The corporal and the other soldiers supposed only that
Callum had become intoxicated in the society of his superiors and had
drunkenly and foolishly contrived a troublesome escape from custody.
For this breach of discipline, Callum was destined to undergo in due
time extra guard duty.
Everard was explaining this to him as being a part of his military
obligations and not to gratify a personal grudge. “You are still under
arrest, you know, Callum Bane!” Everard reminded him.
“I care na, I care na--onything ye will! Only I maun hae a word wi’ ye
the noo, lad.”
This word, albeit he was faint from fatigue, both ahungered and
athirst, cold and shivering, having been drenched for hours with the
keen chill rain, Callum so clamored to be allowed to speak that Everard
could not constrain him to wait till after he should have been fed and
warmed and clad anew.
“Na, na!” Callum persisted, waving away the flask which the officer
pressed upon him, but still clutching his friendly hand, “if I tak
but ae sup ye wad say I am drunk when ye hear what I hae to tell ye!”
He paused for a moment to add weight to his words. “I hae seen that
Frenchman wha hae made sic clavers an’ turmoil amang the Cherokees.”
“Where? when?” Everard asked breathlessly, his face suddenly grave.
Callum pointed down at the Ancient Warrior lying at his feet in all
the dreary dislocations of disillusionment,--the tattered, befringed
garments, the quaintly painted gourd head, with its ghastly effect of
decapitation, its glorious war-bonnet bedraggled and forlorn. “When I
was that daft gomeril,--that big Injun,” he replied.
“A white man?”
Callum nodded and leaned against the officer. He could hardly stand. He
felt too weak almost to speak, unless indeed he must.
“A Frenchman, Callum Bane?” Everard asked again, vaguely incredulous.
“How did you know he was French?”
“By the lingo, man!” said Callum impatiently.
“Did he speak to you?” demanded Everard, looking keenly into the
Highlander’s pale face, all wet and shining with the rain.
In the mists on one side were vaguely glimpsed the tall cornstalks
of the far-stretching fields, all writhen and bent by the wind, and
with the gleams of sleet on their sere, pallid blades, but despite
their motion he was aware that among them there were other tall,
befringed, betasseled figures not dissimilar, something too distant for
recognition, where doubtless the ever wily Indians were watching the
conference. At the edge of the woods on the other side of the clearing
stood the mounted detail of English soldiers, the glimmer of the sad
gray day flashing back with a live, alert glitter from the burnished
steel of their arms and their scarlet coats, all quick to note the
fraternal, familiar attitude of the officer and soldier, and internally
to comment on this condescension, which had already resulted in a
breach of discipline and threatened continued insubordination.
“Did the Frenchy speak to me? Na! I was that big Injun, I tell ye!”
pointing at the prideful gourd face now staring up at them from among
the straw. “Na! nane minted a word at me, except yon _ageya_,--the
Injun lass ye know,--an’ she ca’ me ‘Gude-sire!’ _Gude-sire!_”
Callum laughed dreamily, then suddenly put his hand up to his head, in
the effort to recall the importance of the disclosure.
“A nip of brandy now, Callum,”--the officer pressed the flask, eager
for the detail,--“and then you’ll remember.”
“I winna taste it,” Callum rejoined sternly, “for then ye’ll say I was
drunk an’ telled ye but idle clavers. What’s your wull?” he added, as
if bewildered.
“How do you know the man is French?” demanded Everard.
“He spoke in French,” replied Callum.
“To the Indians?”
“He spoke in Cherokee to the Injuns, and then to himsel’ in French,”
responded Callum definitely.
Everard was silent for a moment. Important interests of the government,
the peace of the colonies, the policy of the cession of land, the
possible permanent repulse of the French, and on the other hand the
triumphant enormous extension of the French empire in America hung
upon this slight incident. Therefore to make sure, to prevent the
possibility of deception or mistake, he asked, thinking the words that
Callum had heard might have other signification, “What did he say,
Callum? What did he say to himself?”
“_Tong pee per lee. A bong char bong rar_,” Callum solemnly
repeated.
Everard burst out laughing hysterically. He was convinced. He was all
tremulous at the momentous discovery that it had chanced to one of his
command to make, eager, nay frenzied, to take instant advantage of it;
yet the accent of the solemn Highlander, to which the French of the
Stratford-atte-Bowe variety would have had an eminently Gallic tang,
outmastered his risibles, and he laughed with that curious duality of
entity when he was never so serious before in his life.
The first duty, however, in putting into execution the plan which had
instantly shaped itself in his mind, with a dozen variant details,
was to take such order with the Highland soldier as should restore
him to his normal mental and physical fitness. He shouted for aid to
the soldiers, and presently Callum, mounted on a horse behind one of
them,--for he was in no condition to guide the animal or even to retain
his posture, save for a horse girth passed around his waist and the
body of the man in the saddle,--was escorted back to camp, and still
under arrest, bestowed in the snug winter-house devoted to the uses of
a military prison. There was no lack of hot lotions applied externally
and internally, and good food and warm clothing; but the surgeon in
attendance upon the party reported a fever, with a touch of delirium
and a “sair hoast,” as the patient himself described the measure of
cold that he had caught.
To the surprise of all the force and the suspicious dismay of the
Indians, the return to Charlestown was unaccountably delayed. The
soldiers, wearying of their long inaction, the monotony of life
in the Indian country, hampered as they were by the many unusual
restrictions imposed upon conduct and camp to avoid all possible
cause for clashes with the young Indian braves, had been in high
spirits at the prospect of a speedy change, and their hopes were
suddenly dashed by the countermanding of the orders to march. The
commissariat fell into gloom, and as far as they dared remonstrated
with the commander, predicting a famine ere Charlestown could be
reached; and the quartermaster sergeant and his subordinates of the
baggage contingent, foreseeing all the undoing of the more permanent
arrangements of the baggage train, felt that never again could such
triumphs of transportation be achieved--the stowage of large and
unwieldy commodities in small compass, _multum in parvo_--as a
lucky inspiration in packing had permitted in this instance.
Moreover, the fine days seemed gone. The weather offered an
incalculable menace. Already the air was full of the misting autumnal
rains, and the many turbulent rivers of the country would soon be out
of their channels beyond even the deep crag-girt banks, rendering
fording impossible and ferriage dangerous. Even snows might fall,
early though it was in the season. In fact, one or two domes of the
Great Smoky Range already showed glittering white against an ominous
slate-tinted sky, as the soft, gauzy tissues of the mists parted before
them, and again impenetrably veiled those frigid altitudes.
The commissioners themselves had grown obviously disaffected and
doubtful; they were disposed to remonstrate, and one of them
reproachfully coughed from time to time, occasionally from genuine
affection and again from patent affectation. Only the meteorologic
and botanic Mr. Taviston welcomed the lengthened opportunity, and
since the flowers had all fallen under the repeated frosts and an
unseasonable nipping freeze, he found a solace in investigating the
climate itself, going about, a comfort to himself, and eke to say a
wellspring of joy to others, with an umbrella above his head, to the
ribs of which was suspended a thermometer at the height of his nose,
taking acute scientific notes of the extraordinary variability of the
temperature and the swift fickleness of the atmospheric changes. He was
even disposed to climb the mountains to the snow line, to press his
inquiries among the white domes of the great range, accompanied only by
an Indian guide; but the stern interdiction of this enterprise by the
commander precluded his wandering so far afield, and he was compelled
to content himself with such specimens of weather as he could collate
nearer at hand.
To the prevalent dissatisfaction Lieutenant Everard accorded only
the most casual attention, obviously preoccupied, intent on his own
thoughts, sternly determined, but sharing his conclusions with no
adviser.
The civilians of the party naturally distrusted these _indicia_
of changes of moment evidently impending, and felt some qualms as to
his comparative youth and heady traits, some curiosity as to possible
details of his instructions to which it might be they were not privy,
some helpless anxiety lest for reasons satisfactory to himself, which
they could not divine, he should venture to deviate from his orders.
The commissioners were in the nature of things more or less men of
consequence, accustomed to command, and to the habit of determining and
shaping their own course in life as the eventuation of circumstance
should seem to require. They had not had the military training to an
unquestioning obedience, the suppression of natural curiosity, the
relinquishment of all responsibility and individual identity, in the
existence of a corporate body, subject to the volition of a superior.
They chafed in the sense of helplessness, and from time to time eyed
him greedily in hopes of catching from his manner some intimation as to
his ultimate plans. In response to more open expressions of curiosity,
he had flatly refused to gratify it, and the courtesy and apparent
consideration in his phrase made him seem only the more inscrutable.
“You will pardon me, I am sure, but Gad, sir, my duty does not permit
me to be explicit. The march is postponed, but you will not be required
to move without information,” he replied suavely, but with a flash of
the eye which intimated that he would tell them when he could no longer
avoid it, and when all the rest of the world must know.
While the camp thus settled down to its former routine, grumbling
and speculating variously as to the causes that had necessitated the
countermanding of the orders to march, the Cherokees were alarmed for
the interests of the projected cession of land. Their earlier fears had
been quieted in great measure by the recovery of the French gold, the
louis d’ors of the coinage of the current year, thus falling readily
into the trap which Everard had warily set for them. They concluded
that since he had given the gold pieces so casually to the Indian
girl as a reward for her detection of his runagate soldier he had not
noticed the date with its cogent significance, having them so short a
time in his possession. Certainly it was great munificence, but this
was the more easily accounted for as the louis d’ors really belonged
to another man, and the officer seemed generous without loss, for the
Cherokees did not understand that their value must needs be returned to
Eachin MacEachin. As the Indians were not admitted familiarly within
the camp, and the soldiers were not free to wander without, there could
be only futile surmises as to the reasons for the postponement of the
march. Secret observations of the camp taken from the river and the
opposite bank intimated much activity among the farriers. Perhaps the
horses were all to be reshod. But surely such a necessity could not be
in the nature of a surprise to the Capteny Gigagei. Another day ensued
a great overhauling of the baggage for clothing of heavier weight, in
anticipation of severe weather. The commissioners bargained with the
Indians for some furs fashioned into match-coats, and the lieutenant
himself, being obliged to wear the hated British uniform, ordered
blankets of the fine dressed otter and panther skins, for which he
paid in English guineas: he had no more louis d’ors. The postponement
gradually came to be accepted as the result of the sudden unseasonable
spell of cold weather.
Therefore it fell like a thunderclap upon the headmen, when suddenly
one day Lieutenant Everard took advantage of a personal visit which the
great chief Tanaesto was making to him in his tent, to declare that
he had certain knowledge that the Cherokees harbored amongst them a
Frenchman who sought to spirit them up against the British government,
despite the fact that they had so lately firmly shaken hands anew with
it. He protested that unless they instantly surrendered to him this
miscreant, chargeable with he knew not how many of the crimes laid at
their door, he would report to the royal governor the fact that he had
ascertained his presence here in the heart of the Cherokee country, and
this would annul the privileges they expected to enjoy under the treaty
thus rendered void, and destroy the possibility of the cession itself.
But for that single phrase, but for the interests dependent upon the
cession, but for the fact that this purchase money for the lands would
enable the Cherokees to secure the munitions of war to wrench not only
this limited territory but their whole country from the encroaching
British grasp, as well as sustain them in a certain independence in
their relations with their expected French allies,--but for these
obvious dictates of policy, the commissioners’ train and military
escort would have been set upon by unnumbered hundreds and destroyed in
the instant.
Even as it was, however, their safety was in a great part assured by
the fact that this episode took place only within the knowledge of
the wily chiefs. The populace--those “mad young men,” so difficult
to restrain, whose impetuosity so often cost the nation dear--could
not have been held back had this demand been suddenly publicly urged.
And indeed the chiefs themselves were between two fires; for if aught
should befall the French officer through their pusillanimity or
treachery, it was obvious they could hope for no further aid from the
great French king, without which they could not save their national
existence.
Admire the collected Tanaesto’s aplomb! Without one moment’s hesitation
he denied the accusation,--utterly oblivious of the future,--so
definitely, so instantly, that Everard himself, closeted in his tent
with three or four Indians who had accompanied Tanaesto, felt a
momentary doubt. Could Callum have been dreaming?--the vision of the
Frenchman only a figment of the fever then laying hold upon him, the
words an echo?--some reminiscence sounding anew in his delirium?
“But you have a white man, a Frenchman, here in the nation,” Everard
sternly persisted.
“A white man in the nation? Several here and there in the lower towns.
Oh, yes, the Capteny says the gracious truth. But these are English or
Scotch, never French. Some there are who like the Cherokee methods and
settle in the tribe. But here in the Overhill towns only one white man,
an Englishman--that is to say, a Virginian.”
Everard, staring fixedly at Tanaesto, shook his head, and the Indian
interpreter mechanically repeated the gesture, as if the parties for
whom he served as a means of communication were blind as well as deaf
to all but him.
Most unlikely did Everard consider it that an Englishman would dare to
linger here alone in the present disorganized state of the Cherokee
country and the inflamed public sentiment against the British.
“This man--who I fear is no Englishman--sojourned in Moy Toy’s town of
Great Tellico,” Everard persisted. “This I know. The great chief will
perceive there are no limits to my knowledge.”
With this corollary, confirmatory of his proposition, the Indians
hardly dared to further deny. A sudden stillness ensued; and this
desperate silence, long unbroken, was an invisible appeal one to the
others, each waiting for some intrepid invention of some one else that
might serve to rescue the situation.
Everard smiled grimly as his sarcastic eyes traveled the rounds from
one confused, downcast face to the other. “Since he is a Virginian, as
you say, an Englishman so far, I should be glad to see him,” persisted
Everard, relishing their discomfort. “I should not like it to be said
that I left an only countryman in this remote wilderness without an
effort to exchange a word with him, a homelike greeting.”
“If he is now at Great Tellico, I know not; it has been long since I
saw him,” Tanaesto qualified. Then realizing that this belated negation
could not nullify all that had gone before, “Doubtless he will be glad
to take you by the hand,” he concluded falteringly.
“Doubtless. I shall do myself the honor to wait upon him there, and
shall also take this occasion to pay my respects to the great Moy Toy.”
Everard smiled sardonically, grimly triumphant, for the leave-taking
of the graceful, ceremonious Indians was like the hasty scuttling away
of a group of culprits evading the clutch of custody.
The camp had been hastily broken; all was now gleeful stir and
activity. Everard had waited long, but he had reached the limit of his
patience and the necessity to exercise it simultaneously. MacIlvesty
was sufficiently recovered to have regained the full use of his
faculties, and he depended upon the Highlander’s identification of the
man, whom he had seen in familiar conversation with the Indians at one
of their most secret ceremonies, speaking Cherokee to them and French
in soliloquy. Everard would take no substitute for this man! Lest some
dull under-trader, some runaway apprentice, finding it easier to turn
Cherokee than work at a trade in the colonies, be palmed off on him in
lieu of this forked-tongued schemer, he had awaited the Highlander’s
recovery, despite his impatience. He realized that should he miss his
grip at the opportune moment the chance would be gone and forever. He
would confront Callum MacIlvesty with this sojourner at Tellico whom
he doubted not to be the French emissary who had occasioned a world of
trouble in readjusting the Cherokees on their former basis with the
British government. Unless opportunity should prove amazingly elusive,
he would arrest this man and carry him to Charlestown, where the
consideration of the problems which he embodied could be shifted upon
those more qualified to undertake it, the colonial diplomats.
Everard’s determination to proceed further into the Cherokee
country necessitated the detail of some portion of his plan to the
commissioners whom he must needs drag with him, since his force was
too slight to divide, and he could not leave them without a guard at
Ioco. Though firm as adamant and steeled against any remonstrance,
he had dreaded their efforts to deter him, their insistence that he
was transcending his instructions, that he was merely the commander
of their bodyguard, and required to act only in the interests of
the cession. The fluttered squawking of the botanist, the deep
basso-profundo rumble of the commissioner whose fad was geology, the
appeal to his official conscience and his oath by the diplomat proper,
the politician, the piercing fife-like note of the surveyor’s voice
in protest,--all sounded coherently in his imagination long before
he made the disclosure, and sooth to say, sounded nowhere else. For
the “gentlemanly old ladies” showed unexpected mettle; they applauded
his determination, belittled the possible danger they might incur,
commended his discretion, and urged the instant setting forward of
the force before the man could be spirited away and the Indians make
head in their schemes to conceal all evidences of his identity and
machinations.
XIV
LAROCHE, however, as far as his safety was concerned, was more secure
at Tellico Great than he could have been elsewhere, and he appreciated
this, for both Moy Toy and he had been speedily advised of the untoward
discovery of the secret of his presence here and the lame and futile
effort of Tanaesto to account for it innocuously. Where the Cherokees
were in force, as in one of the greater “mother towns,” he could more
effectually claim the national protection than if, seeking refuge in
flight, he should be apprehended in some secluded outlying region
where only a few scattered tribesmen would be receptive to his appeal.
Therefore at Tellico he determined to stand his ground, albeit he
doubted both the will and the capacity of the Indians to hold out
against the demand of the English officer. He argued that with so small
a force as the escort of the commissioners, coercion was manifestly
not contemplated, and the British commander was risking the dangers of
the Indian country, disaffected though it was, with no protection save
the ostensible comity of the already jeopardized treaty. Unassisted
reason and logic were hardly to be relied upon in Indian negotiation.
Reproaches for a broken faith needs an unimpeachable counter-record to
render them practicable. Laroche feared, as the last resource, bribes,
large, tempting, irresistible.
At that moment his stanch scheme of empire, rebuilt on the ruins
of a score of fantastic projections of old, braced and held to
interdependent cohesion in a thousand details, seemed to him also a
mere phantasm, the immaterial outline of the functions of a state, a
spectre of power, to dissolve into nullity at the first cockcrow of
the lordly realities of established rule. He had but expended himself,
his time, his efforts, his liberty, it might even be his life itself,
that the crafty Moy Toy should have the opportunity of driving a more
thrifty bargain with the British interest because of the formidable
character of the threatened defection; or mayhap, indeed, only for the
sake of a personal gift,--a finer rifle, or a trifle of embroidered and
gold-laced suits of apparel,--he would consent to bring anew the nation
under British domination until such time as the yoke grew cumbersome to
his fitful ambition and he was minded to throw it off again.
Naturally Moy Toy could not read these thoughts in the face of his
friend, but he marked his changing color and partly interpreted his
agitation. Because of the stress of his religion,--a very queer and
inconvenient restriction the savage deemed it,--never would Laroche
lift a weapon against his fellow man, except in legitimate warfare.
And yet he was eminently a proper man, to use the language of the
day, light, active, with muscles like steel wire and strong with a
latent staying power. When personally threatened he would offer no
aggression, save in self-defense, and even now, in this stress of
realized jeopardy, he insisted with all his arts of persuasion that Moy
Toy should give over the idea of a massacre of the advancing party,
with several delectable items of the horrors of a surprise and friendly
lure to merge at last into fierce and wholesale murder, which the chief
planned with many a sly and furtive smile, and which met with open and
applausive assent from his councilors assembled.
“They come in peace, relying on your honor; let them go in peace,”
urged Laroche, as in duty bound, from the standpoint of soldier,
Christian, and patriot.
“They have not my honor in their keeping,” Moy Toy lowered. “I do not
love your ugly religion!”
Nevertheless, he suffered himself to be gainsaid in the paramount
interests of the land cession, and Laroche felt at the end of all
things.
If Moy Toy were to have no fun out of the rash adventure of the
embassy, the embassy would certainly profit at the expense of the
interloper. He it was who must suffer between the two. He knew
that this sudden unforeseen demonstration against him personally
was obviously fraught with too great danger to the government’s
commissioners for the military commander of the escort to lightly
undertake it or to relinquish it without advantage. Nothing less could
it portend than the arrest of the French emissary and his removal in
the British interest from the Cherokee country. Laroche’s experimental
resourceful mind became suddenly blank in the contemplation of the
vista of long days, nay years, in prison, at the will of a British
colonial magnate or on a quibble of British law. And then this
suggestion opened a new speculation. What if, being without his
uniform, without command, in the discharge of no specific military
duty, he should be held as a spy or as a civil prisoner, and
responsible for certain murders which the Cherokees had committed on
British subjects either with the sanction of Moy Toy or on that system
of personal individual warfare which in modern civilized times is
called feud, and which the Cherokee autonomy countenanced. Brave though
his spirit was, Laroche quailed at the imputed instigation of these
horrors which he had sought to avert and had openly condemned at much
personal risk.
He was keenly reminiscent of the day when a previous expedition had
arrived at the town of Tellico Great and he had then been of the
embassy. With that strange dual capacity of the mind, albeit his
every faculty might seem otherwise absorbed, he was conscious of all
the details of the event which he now watched as it were from the
inside,--the placing of the appurtenances of the town to the best
advantage, the gathering of the warriors and braves, as well as women
and children, arrayed each in the finest toggery. The “beloved square”
had been swept and resanded, the public buildings were painted anew.
There in each of the four open, piazza-like cabins the incumbents of
the high municipal offices were ranged on the tiers of seats in the
wonted order of their relative rank,--the medicine and religious men,
the war-captains, the aged councilors, and Moy Toy in the place of
chief. Always an impressive figure, he had assumed an added dignity
in the doubly conferred imperial title, from both British and French
powers,[10] superimposed upon his hereditary municipal chieftaincy,
though the latter distinction was the only point of supremacy in which
the Cherokee nation itself now acquiesced. He sat in his place upon
the white divan, his iridescent feather-woven mantle glittering in the
sun, his polled head plumed with eagle quills, about his neck a single
strand of those glossy fresh-water Tennessee pearls, almost as large
as filberts, a size then rare, but even yet taken occasionally from
the _Unio margaritiferus_ of our sandy river banks. A great bead,
which he valued far more, wrought painfully with years of labor from
the conch shell, ivory-like in its polish and tint, was suspended in
the middle of his forehead. His guard of immediately attendant warriors
was about him, and Laroche sat at his side.
Arrayed too in aboriginal splendor was the French officer. This was
hardly bravado on his part, for he had long ago lost sight of that
uniform which he had worn to Great Tellico, for Moy Toy had sequestered
it, lest it remind him in some inscrutable way of those events when
he had so nearly lost his life at the stake, and thus by exciting
resentment diminish his utility to the nation. This garb would scarcely
have much commended him to the Englishman whose advent he momently
expected, but with that acute Gallic self-consciousness he winced from
the anticipated wonder at his attire, averse yet scornful. But Moy
Toy was not to be withstood, and the adopted tribesman was nearly as
fine as the prince. He too wore a necklace of pearls, that set off the
fairer tints of his throat with less barbaric effect than the Indian’s
own bauble. His face was fantastically streaked with paint, yet its
keen lines and the fine expressiveness of his eyes were definitely
asserted. His trim figure was encased in a shirt and leggings of white
dressed doeskin with long fringes wrought with scarlet feathers; his
buskins were dyed scarlet, and he wore scarlet feathers mounted high
on his blond hair. It seemed to him now, as he sat silent thus and
waited, that the agonies of suspense were decreed to him as a portion.
He could hear the beating of his heart in the absolute stillness of
the assemblage as, with the stoicism of Indian patience and endurance,
the Cherokees, motionless and silent, awaited the appearance of the
commissioners’ party.
The bland blue sky seemed waiting too, so still it was. Here and there
were cloud masses of a dazzling whiteness and variant density and
depth of tone, as if to illustrate the infinite scope of the possible
interpretations of this tint, technically an absence of color. Bright
as they were, as they swung motionless in the sunlit air, wherever
their shadows fell on the velvet azure of the distant mountains the
hue deepened and dulled to a violet, subdued as with the expunging
of light. The snow on the mountain domes near at hand showed a sharp
contrast to the red and yellow and brown of the brilliant leafage still
on the steep slope below. The haze in the intermediate valleys was
like a silver gauze--of a consistency that suggested a fabric. Even as
close as the willows along the river bank it preserved this illusion,
and now veiled them from sight and now withdrew, revealing their slim
idyllic wands, all leafless and whitely frosted and trembling in some
imperceptible pulsation of the currents of the air. Many a bare bough
with the distinctness of some fine etching was reflected in the
shimmering water, here a smooth and silver expanse, and here a rippling
steely sheen. Upon its surface a flock of swans, glittering white
in the sunshine, floated into view, and then like a fantasy drifted
suddenly into the invisibilities of the mist and the shadow. Far away
the booming note of a herd of buffaloes came to the ear and was silent,
and again one could not so much as hear the throng of waiting Cherokees
draw a breath. It might seem that a spell had fallen upon the town, the
silent assemblage, the loitering clouds, the still mountains, and that
they had thus stood waiting for unnumbered ages till some magic sound
should break their bonds.
It came suddenly. The dreaming swans lifted their heads to listen, then
with an abrupt unmusical cry began to swim swiftly down toward the
confluence with the Tellico River. A dog barked and was silent once
more. Then distant though it was, indeterminate, merely a pulsing throb
in the air, Laroche recognized the far-away beating of a drum, and
could hardly distinguish it, save by its steadier, more rhythmic throb,
from the agitated beating of his own heart.
Perhaps it may have been due to the influences of mental solitude,
as it were, and much introspective brooding, always averse to the
prosaic mundane atmosphere; perhaps to that undefined fascination
which the life of the Cherokees of the earlier epochs of our knowledge
of them exerted upon certain temperaments among the strangers who
sojourned with them; perhaps merely to personal antagonism and national
prejudice, but the sound of the British fife and drum, now distinct,
playing a foolish air, the sight of the British flag, the appearance of
the embassy, half military, half civilian, some mounted, some afoot,
partly English, partly Scotch Highlanders, the progress accommodated
ill enough to the beat of the quickstep, affected Laroche as singularly
crass and uncouth.
The undisguisable contempt of the commander for the Indians and all
that appertained to them, the absolute lack of comprehension of the
subtler elements of their character, the determination to secure the
object he sought without any recognition of the complicated details
of the environment, gave a certain effect of ignorance to the address
and standpoint of the highly civilized man that by contrast made
the aboriginal, with his mystery of antiquity, his symbolism, his
ceremonial, his inscrutability, the gravity of his courtesy, seem to
have profited by the lack of modern education and to be endowed with
learning by inheritance and intuition.
Without any embellishment of ceremony in his presence, Everard
sauntered casually across the “beloved square” toward the Indian chief,
wreathing his unwilling features into such a smile as he deemed might
answer for the occasion, but he stretched out his hand benignly. In the
service of the king it could not hurt his dignity to shake hands with
an Injun.
Moy Toy, his beaded and braceleted arms folded across his bosom, took
no notice of the proffered hand, but bowed halfway to the ground.
Everard, in no wise disconcerted, cared no more for the declination
of this courtesy--nay, not half so much--than if his favorite hound,
Brutus, whom he was training to the observance of this gentility of
greeting, had withheld his paw; for sometimes Brutus would shake, and
sometimes in the exercise of canine freedom the paw of Brutus was his
own, since Everard’s cuff of disappointment was but a half hearted
demonstration, and no dog or horse stood in much fear of cruelty from
him.
That Everard was a fine, handsome man, and by his profession
accustomed to etiquette and parade, gave additional point to his lack
of ostentation and formality in the present instance. He evidently
did not think it worth his while. But he wagged his well-shaped
head eagerly in serious argument when he forthwith entered upon the
subject of his mission without preamble, dispensing with the usual
ceremonials of eating, drinking, and smoking among the Indians.
Perhaps he truly thought that in view of the slightness of his force
the hospitality of the savages was not to be trusted at so inimical
a juncture. The commissioners, all mounted, looked on at a little
distance, and the soldiers were hard by, drawn up in close order just
without the “beloved square.” Some were in the scarlet gear of the
British foot-soldier and others in the dark blue and green tartan of
the Forty-Second Regiment, and this variation of costume, albeit they
were ranged separately in their respective ranks, gave a sort of motley
guise to the command and impaired the effect of their number. But in
truth, all told, the military escort mustered scarcely threescore,
for the demonstration was essentially a pacific one, and Everard but
expected to wield the weapons of right reason rather than brute force.
He might, however, have done better execution with the latter, for he
was no diplomatist.
It was Everard’s faithful conviction that the government’s emissaries
habitually treated the Indians too seriously in seeking to adopt their
social methods in conference, and that thus the civilized ambassador
was a fool from his own point of view and a butt of ridicule to the
Indians, who could but mark his failure in aboriginal etiquette in a
thousand undreamed-of details. Simplicity, candor, directness, he held,
became a bold Briton, and he would make no concessions to please the
Indians and foster their sense of their own consequence by letting
them see him play the condemned monkey, aping their fantastic savage
ceremony.
Wherefore he stood, for he was not invited to sit, but he cared no
more for the implied derogation than for the courtesies of such as
they. He leaned negligently one hand on his sheathed sword, its
point on the ground, and did not even maintain an erect attitude, as
one obviously should in addressing a prince, nay, an emperor twice
crowned by British and French authority. But this dereliction was not
intentional. In truth there was a good deal of Lieutenant Everard in
one piece, and in common with many other tall people he was disposed
at times to loll and make his superfluous length comfortable. Not
thus, however, did he conduct himself on parade or in the presence of
a military superior or his excellency the royal governor, and well
aware was Moy Toy of this. Moreover, his beautiful hair was not so well
powdered as it was wont to be, and even his hat, which he still wore,
was cocked casually askew.
Perhaps the consciousness of these facts, trivial yet significant,
rendered Moy Toy the less capable of being pricked in conscience by the
long list of fractures which the old treaty had suffered at his hands.
“And now,” said Everard, stooping to metaphor, “the path, so red with
the blood of the English colonists and British soldiers and the slain
Cherokee braves and made so crooked by the wiles of the pestiferous
Louisiana French, has been whitened and straightened out by the
magnanimity of the great British sovereign, his majesty King George.
He has forgiven the treachery of the Cherokees because like children
they could not reason aright, and like the blind they could not walk
straight. He has intended to purchase large quantities of land from
the tribe, that they might have the means to build up all the former
prosperity of the nation which their wickedness caused to be pulled
down. He expects to send traders once more to the Cherokee country,
that the Indians may be furnished with goods for their necessities
at a low and uniform price. He will maintain a system of weights
and measures amongst them to which the traders will be required to
conform. Armorers will he send to mend their guns free of charge, one
gunsmith to every town, and artisans to instruct them in the methods
and manufactures of civilization. And in return for so much clemency
what did the Cherokees promise in the articles of the new treaty? A
fair and firm friendship, a forbearance of murder and fire-raising on
the frontier, the surrender of any white men of whatever nationality
who aided them in the war against Great Britain, and the solemn promise
that they would not suffer any Frenchman to come into their country to
trade, to plant, or to build, lest they be again spirited up against
the English to subvert this new treaty so faithfully signed and sealed
and witnessed.”
He paused and silence fell suddenly, save for the far-away booming of
the buffaloes, the murmurous monotone of the river, the vague stir of a
breeze from the mountains beginning to clash the bare boughs together
and lift the folds of the British flag.
“Moy Toy,” Everard resumed with a weighty manner, “the ink of that
signature is hardly dry, and yet so early I find a Frenchman installed
amongst you. And there,” he threw out his hand at arm’s length, “there
is the man!”
His eyes roaming around had singled out Laroche and now dwelt upon him
with an expression at once scornful and upbraiding. Then his attention
traveled fleeringly up and down the barbaric details of the garb of the
splendidly decorated white man, who winced under the voiceless jeer
of the “perfide Albion,” and whose gorge rose within him while yet he
quaked to encounter this enmity.
Moy Toy, visibly hesitant, replied at length.
It was his desire, he stated, to be at peace with the British king,
although he would not or could not protect from the encroachments of
the colonists the Cherokees whom he had once called his children.
Moy Toy held himself, in fact, as the friend and brother of that
king,--which statement reached such a point of sensitiveness in
Everard’s organization as to cause him to snort suddenly in surprise
and indignation.
But Moy Toy, although maintaining his dignity of port, was hardly
equal to himself. He could play a double part easily enough, but to
adjust the multiplicity of deceits requisite for this emergency in
good relation to the interest of the tribe, to forfeit nothing of
the expected French support and yet avoid the jeopardy of the price
of the lands to be ceded to the British, passed even his measures
of duplicity. He sought to adopt the wile that Tanaesto had earlier
essayed.
The stranger was English--so he said; for himself he did not know;
he could not pretend to decide; he was no linguister; he was all for
peace; but the Great Spirit in his unfathomable wisdom had given men
many tongues, with which indeed they talked too much.
“Ha!” Everard exclaimed sardonically, “they have been at that since the
days of Babel!”
He paused that the interpreter might repeat his words, the while
Everard transferred his flouting gaze from Laroche to the noble figure
of Moy Toy, with no sort of appreciation of the dignity of its aspect,
the subtle force of its facial expression, the picturesque barbarity
of its ornament and garb. To him, in common with many of the British
soldiers and colonists of the day, Moy Toy represented merely “old
Injun” or “greasy red stick.” Everard had, however, an especial relish
for the perplexity that looked out from among the wrinkles of his eyes,
wrought by many a problem of statecraft, and his pondering, anxious,
outwitted despair. The officer waited for a moment, expectant that Moy
Toy would advance a new argument; then, as the chief remained silent,
Everard proceeded with his own solution of the problem.
“Perhaps in Charlestown they may know how to tell a Frenchman from an
Englishman. If this man is a loyal subject of King George he will not
grudge the detention in so good a cause, and I pledge my honor that
he shall be put to no charges for the expense of the journey; if a
Frenchman, the colonial authorities may take him in hand then and I
shall be free of him.”
Whatever his deficiencies as a diplomat, Lieutenant Everard certainly
did not lack courage. He lifted his head suddenly; his sword swung back
with his left hand on its hilt; tense, erect, he strode forward a dozen
resolute paces, and, that the intention of the act might be obvious to
all who witnessed it, struck the cowering Laroche on the shoulder with
the stern cry, “In the king’s name!”
The sound seemed a spell to raise the devil withal. Elicited like
an echo, dependent on the tone, yet magnified a thousandfold, an
inarticulate cry broke forth from the tribesmen, protesting, frantic,
but menacing. The crowd surged this way and that, and Lieutenant
Everard, suddenly mindful of the safety of his soldiers, turned,
his chin high in the air, and his head still haughtily posed, to
glance where they stood, a thought more compact than before, a scant
threescore, with the savages circling in hundreds tumultuously about
them.
“You would not dispute his majesty’s authority!” Everard stiffly held
his ground; for Moy Toy, irate, commanding, although visibly agitated,
ordered him in no set phrase to desist. “He is a Frenchman and an
enemy!” urged Everard. “He is no Cherokee!”
“He has been made a great ‘beloved man’!” protested Moy Toy. “He is a
Cherokee by adoption!”
The words roused the populace to renewed clamors. No heed took the “mad
young men” of the frowning faces of their elders, the silent gestures
of Moy Toy beseeching a hearing.
There is in that inarticulate murmur of the wrath of a mob something
so menacing, so daunting, so indefinably terrible, that even Everard
was receptive to an admonition so growlingly enforced. He took his hand
from the Frenchman’s shoulder lest in having it removed for him he
might be torn in pieces. The implacable murmur still rose, the crowds
still surged, and Laroche, half ashamed yet wholly reassured, feared
that he looked as smug as he felt, while a glitter of satisfaction and
triumph shone in Moy Toy’s eyes. They narrowed as he gazed steadily,
threateningly, with a latent devilish thought, at Everard, so entirely
at his mercy. A corner was a very tight fit for Lieutenant John Francis
Everard, but he was fairly in it. He was accustomed to disport himself
freely in the open, and the wriggles incident to a confined space did
not suit his muscles, his size, or his temper. He made an effort to
wrench himself from it.
“Mighty fine! mighty fine!” he said sneeringly to the Frenchman. “You
are sane enough, sir, and sober enough, to know what poor stuff this
is,--what pitiful dupes you are befooling and befuddling! Faugh! your
deceits sicken me!”
He looked with a snarl, which he designed to be a withering smile, over
the fantastic apparel of the Frenchman, but Lieutenant Everard was as
much out of countenance as a man of his stamp could well be.
“Zounds!” he resumed, still seeking to recover the control of the
situation, and shaking off Moy Toy’s restraining hand laid upon his
arm, “we’ll hear the fellow himself. Since you are English, give us
your name, sirrah!”
He was consciously and blatantly rude, rejoicing in his capacity to be
independent of the varnish with which such occasions are sleeked over.
Laroche’s blood began to rise, his eye to sparkle. Despite his awful,
imminent jeopardy,--for who could say how the scene might even yet
result,--the spirit of the fray quivered through his blood. “If it may
please your excellency,” he said in his usual clear tones and precise
enunciation, “yonder stands a man in your ranks to whom I am personally
known. Your excellency might prefer to believe his account of me rather
than my own.”
Everard stared blankly and secretly winced. The man’s politeness had a
whetted edge, that cut like ridicule. The title of “excellency,” so far
above the usage of the lieutenant’s rank and deserts, might have been
conferred in ignorance or propitiation, but taken in conjunction with
his own rude address seemed as apt as a fleer.
Everard was at once doubtful and bewildered. The stranger’s English,
so far as the construction of his sentences and choice of words went,
was perfect. There was, however, something in his intonation which
grated on the Briton’s ear. Nevertheless, there were many variations
of provincial accent, especially in the colonies. Everard, in fact,
believed that no one here could speak the language with purity, as if
it had suffered a sea change in coming over the water.
Turning toward the ranks, he perceived a touch of consciousness on
Callum MacIlvesty’s face, and was startled to remember that it was his
original intention to confront the two, that Callum might identify
this man as the French-speaking familiar of the Ancient Warrior of
Chilhowee. By a gesture he summoned the Highlander to his side, and
simultaneously the Frenchman stepped forth and stood beside Moy Toy.
The Indian’s eyes were all a-glitter, and a tremor agitated the
feathers stiffly upright on his polled head.
“MacIlvesty, did you ever before see this man?” demanded the officer,
while the two eyed each other.
“Aye, sir, mony a time,” replied Callum MacIlvesty.
Everard stared. “And where?”
“At one Jock Lesly’s trading-house at Ioco Town, sir.”
Whither was this tending? The expression of the officer’s face became
amazed, concerned, intent. The flutter among the head feathers of Moy
Toy was suddenly stilled.
“When was this?” the military catechist demanded.
“Nigh on a year ago come Easter, sir.”
The triumph in the man’s face, its suggestion of covert ridicule,
nettled Everard. Into what fool’s play had he been lured?
“_Why, Callum!_” he said in a reproachful murmur aside; then
aloud, “What’s his name?”
Callum shook his head. “I dinna ken, sir; I misdoubt.”
“What was he called?” the lieutenant mended the phrase.
“Tam--Tam Wilson.”
“Oh Callum--Callum Bane!” once more the officer’s admonitory whisper
reached him. “And where was he said to hail from?” Everard added aloud.
“Firginia, sir,” faltered the Highland soldier.
It was becoming definite in Everard’s mind that Callum, all agog about
the French, as the Highland soldiery, who had often triumphantly
encountered them, forever were, and hearing much of suspected
machinations among the Indians, had but dreamed of the French enemy
beside the effigy of the Indian Warrior and had heard only in fancy,
perhaps in the inception of the fever, the words that he repeated. For
evidently this man was not only well known to him, but was also long a
familiar of the English trading-station in the Cherokee nation. Perhaps
even yet the young fellow’s mind was not quite clear.
Nevertheless, since the ordeal had been in his defense and for his
sake, Everard was minded to be gentle with him, although the false
position into which Callum had involved him burned the officer’s pride
like fire.
“Why did you think he was French, MacIlvesty?” he asked openly.
“Because,” said Callum, with a keen resentment against himself, the
officer, the arch-deceiver, the untoward facts themselves, that he
could not make the truth as he knew it now, as he was sure of it,
appear as aught but a falsehood or a folly, “he spoke French--he spoke
it to himself!--when I saw him last, a fortnight ago, amang the Injuns.”
“And, Callum,” said Laroche familiarly, “did you never hear an
Englishman speak French? Why, lad, I myself have e’en heard a
Scotchman’s tongue waggling into it!”
His eyes twinkled as if in reminiscence, and Everard, remembering the
peculiarities of the Highlander’s accent, was minded to mark anew the
familiarity of this Tam Wilson with him. He himself had not spoken his
Christian name aloud, but the stranger knew it, and with no prompting
called him “Callum.”
Bewildered, raging internally, humiliated, Callum was ordered to his
former place in the ranks, having only succeeded, because of the
artifice of this arch-strategist and the intractability and paucity of
the perverse facts, in identifying this Frenchman as an Englishman, to
the satisfaction, or rather dissatisfaction, of his superior officer.
Of all people incompetent to use power without its abuse the Cherokees
were preëminent. The turbulent mob had been quick to discern in the
result of the conference that their adopted tribesman, the French
officer, was obviously triumphant; that Moy Toy, although standing
like a statue, was overjoyed, with gleaming wide eyes and an elated
port. They could ill afford magnanimity toward these people, so many
grudges as a nation and as individuals did they owe the English,
consequent on the slaughters and fire-raising and punitive famine they
had suffered at the hands of the British troops in the warfare of the
preceding years. Their note of comment had lost its tone of appeal, of
indignation, of protest. It was swelling now and again into a savage
roar of awful import, of reprisal, of scorn, of eager brutality.
Laroche heard in it the knell of all his hopes. This precipitate
action would forever frustrate the fruition of his work here,--the
gathering and organization of the tribal forces, the transportation
of supplies, the plan of his campaign,--and with this, his success,
his promotion, his hard-earned guerdon, for which he had labored so
diligently, so discreetly, so valiantly. He was not ready to strike
yet--not yet! A premature blow now would preclude all those sequences
of aggression so carefully planned, for the forces of the campaign were
as yet unprepared; the English would be first in the field, and the
tribal remnants of the Indian nations taken in detail and succession
would be overwhelmed, intimidated, scattered, before the carefully
aggregated resources of the French expedition could be made effective
and available.
It was necessary that he should think very fast. And yet when he
spoke his words seemed quite casual, almost irrelevant. “As to Callum
MacIlvesty,” he said to Everard, “why, I hardly know what to make of
Callum! He always seemed jealous of me on account of Jock Lesly’s
beautiful daughter, Miss Lilias,--who was much too good for either of
us!” he stipulated gallantly. “But I should never have suspected Callum
of an invention like this!”
Everard looked at him keenly. This added another point in favor of his
identity as a Virginian,--his familiarity with the names of the members
of the trader’s household; another reason why his image should intrude
into the troubled delirium of the Highland soldier,--an old romance,
with heart burnings and rivalries. Little wonder that in the distorted
mental images of fever the hated figure of perhaps the fortunate suitor
should appear invested with the added opprobrium of the national enemy.
The buoyant airy grace of this figure, even in the Indian garb, the
volatile but bated aggressiveness of manner, the joyous, yet capable,
intellectual expression of face, the handsome eyes and regular features
suggested that he might appear to no contemptible advantage in the
estimation of a girl as contrasted with the grave, reserved, proud, and
exacting Highlander, with many an inherited sorrow to make him serious
and many a personal privation to make him bitter. With his youth and
strength and the natural amiability of his nature Callum could on
occasion throw off the consciousness of these weights and be merry.
But this fellow’s element was the air itself, and the necessity to be
serious was like the clipping of wings.
“Come, sir, let us have an end of this,” said Everard. “Being English
you cannot object to go to Charlestown and make your standing clear to
the authorities. I pledge my honor that you shall be put to no expense
and shall be indemnified for any financial loss you may sustain by
reason of your absence.”
“If I should agree these people would regard it as if I were taken by
force,” Laroche protested. “Your life would be the forfeit. Indeed, I
am already concerned for your safety. I cannot control the Cherokees.
You know what they are! You must admit that your errand here is futile!”
It was so contrary to Everard’s temperament to accept defeat in any
form that he could only accede metaphorically. “I’m not half blind!” he
said.
Laroche pressed the point. “The effusion of blood is threatened. You
must perceive it.”
“The knife is at my throat,” assented Everard debonairly, as if
scornful of his peril.
Laroche tried him on a more vulnerable topic. “The commissioners’ party
would never get out of the country. But to save the lives of your brave
soldiers and the civilian commissioners, who have no quarrel with any
one, if you will at once draw off your force I will use what influence
I have with Moy Toy to let you go scot-free through the country.”
The eyes of Everard were large, but the astonished white showed all
around the iris. He gasped once or twice and caught his breath,--that
the man whom he had come to arrest under the authority of the British
government and bear away captive should engage to see him clear of the
Cherokee country!
Only after many stormy wrangles with Moy Toy, however, and the other
headmen, did Laroche, secretly urging upon them the jeopardized
interests of the cession and the disastrous effects of precipitancy in
the imminent emprise of the united tribal armies, secure acquiescence
in this plan of permitting the expedition to depart in peace. It was,
nevertheless, a perilous time. The air seemed freighted with treachery.
Along the route among the Overhill towns lying on the Tennessee River,
always reputed the most warlike and implacable and powerful of the
Cherokee nation, through which they must needs pass to retrace their
way, hardly an hour elapsed in which some inimical demonstration did
not seem impending. Now the march was checked by a deputation from some
more remote town desiring to send by their hand a memorial or a present
to Governor Boone. Now a formidable group of savages, splendidly armed
and mounted, rejoicing in the terrible suspicions of sinister designs
and lurking ambuscades in force, which their presence must foster,
begged to take personal and individual leave of the notables of the
expedition.
Everard, in all his military experience, had never known such anxiety.
He could not have watched a father’s danger with more tender and
self-reproachful solicitude than he felt for the elderly civilians,
with their wrinkled countenances and bewigged heads wagging affably
under the ceremonious ordeal of parting from these friends, who might
at a wanton blow bloody the one and break the other, and account the
deed righteousness and patriotism. Alas, for the point of view!
“I can never forgive myself for extending and increasing your
jeopardy,” Everard said to them in uncharacteristic dismay one night,
as he sat with the commissioners around the camp-fire, each man with
a sort of automatic motion of looking over the shoulder at intervals,
to descry, perchance, in the shadows something more dangerous than the
green shining of a panther’s eyes or a wolf crouched ready to spring.
The sound of the sentry’s tramp, as unmolested he walked his beat hard
by, was a reassurance that naught else could bestow. “I ought to be
court-martialed, I ought to be broke, I vow and protest!”
He cared little for the military views of the polite and “lady-like
old men,” but the chorus of indignant negation that rose upon the
suggestion was as salve to a wound. He had moved with the entire
sanction of the commissioners themselves, one of them argued.
“And if the man had been that fellow Laroche or Louis Latinac, think of
the repose his capture would have insured the frontier!” exclaimed the
member of the council, the diplomat.
“Either one is worth a regiment to the French cause,” growled the basso
profundo of the geologist. “The mere chance was not to be neglected.”
“We are not required to achieve the impossible. We are all held down to
metes and bounds, course and distance,” said the surveyor.
“And the _best_ of us are subject to mistakes. Think of me,”
exclaimed Mr. Taviston, fitting together his waxen-white, knuckly
fingers and casting an aquiline smile at Everard, on one side of the
fire. “I actually sent a misdescription of a specimen to the Botanical
Society, and the mistake, when discovered--so overwhelming, so
important, so humiliating--I took to my bed!”
Lieutenant Everard did not in his contrition seek this refuge in
recumbency, but as Mr. Taviston entered upon a long, minute, and
learned account of how the error had occurred, and the exact points
of difference, and all the bewigged heads leaned together to hear, to
compare, to comment, to condole, Everard, on the pretext of visiting
the guards, which he did himself at close intervals, quitted the
group. He looked back at them once as they sat around the flare in
the darkness, oblivous for the time of danger, regardless of night,
impervious to cold, eager, agitated, curious, utterly absorbed; and
yet the point of interest, as well as he could make out, was that Mr.
Taviston had actually said by strange inadvertence _filiform_
instead of _filamentose_.
“But,” he commented to himself, “if a gang of Cherokees should tomahawk
that party, strange as it may seem, brains would be spilt as well as
blood!”
Among those denizens of the nation who took ceremonious farewell of
the commissioners’ expedition was gay Tam Wilson, arrayed still in
white dressed deerskin with its flaring fringes, wrought with scarlet
feathers, all floating to the breeze, gallantly mounted, fully armed,
and with a crest of scarlet feathers on his curling light brown hair.
This demonstration impressed Everard as only another intimation that
Tam Wilson was naught but what he seemed,--some colonial wight who had
rather idle and hunt and play among the Indians than work at a more
suitable vocation at home. Callum, however, accounted it the height of
insolent bravado. Albeit his conviction was not susceptible of proof,
he had no doubt that this was the long-sought French emissary who
fomented the discontents of the Cherokees. He was sure that trouble
indeed would soon be brewing along the frontier.
Laroche had perceived at a glance that the situation was a revelation
to Callum MacIlvesty, who had no thought to find Tam Wilson a French
emissary. Lilias had indeed kept her promise. It was not she who had
betrayed his secret, but only through his own inadvertence had the
Highlander been permitted to discover it.
He read in Callum’s face the proud indignation that he felt in the
knowledge that for this man, this arch-deceiver, his love had been
scorned, his loyal heart cast aside,--this man, who had accepted their
tendance which brought him back from the verge of the grave, and
who yet burned, by the hand of his myrmidons, the kindly roof that
had sheltered him,--this man, who won a woman’s love under a false
name, a false semblance, a false nationality, a false tongue, idly,
purposelessly, to beguile the tedium of convalescence, slipping cannily
back to his old life again and leaving her to pine,--this man, their
old familiar Tam Wilson, the French emissary who with wily and wicked
instigations spirited up the mischievous Cherokees against the British
colonists.
The change in his position here, his acceptance of the customs of
barbarism, his amity with the Indians, his adoption into the tribe,
his assumption of the Cherokee garb, had always impressed Laroche
as a military necessity, but he winced as he fancied how the grave,
deliberative, listening face of Lilias would relax to scornful laughter
and contemptuous pity when Callum MacIlvesty should detail to her these
grotesque details in the discovery of Tam Wilson’s identity with the
malignant destroyer of the peace with the Indian tribes. He had never
been so conscious of the tawdry savage foolery of beads and feathers
and paint as when the party were all climbing a steep ascent afoot to
rest the hard-traveled horses, and chance brought him near to Callum
MacIlvesty. Yet it was in bravado, as he strode along with the reins of
his steed thrown over his arm, that he greeted the Highlander.
“Barley! Barley!” he quoted, smiling. “A truce, lad! Be sure that you
remember, when you tell Miss Lilias of how you found me here still,
the same yet not the same, and of my high place in the esteem of the
imperial Moy Toy, and of my suspected efforts to shake the footstool
of the British throne, to tell her also that but for me you and your
blundering braggadocio of a lieutenant would never have got home alive.
So between us it is even--a life for a life!”
“Maister Wilson,--though that is not your name,--you may e’en find some
other to bear your messages. I shall tell that young leddy naething;
and but for that you do bestir yoursel’ to save the lives of the
commissioners, I wad strike ye on the mouth for so much as calling her
name!”
Laroche winced as from a veritable blow; then, with one of his sudden,
mercurial reactions, he cried impulsively, “Tell her all, Callum! Let
her know how it stands now! It will make it the better for you! For
myself, I never hope to see her again!”
The Highlander doggedly trudged along the verge of the steeps, his
shadow gigantic in the leafy valley below, his picturesque figure with
kilt and plaid and bonnet and long firelock imposed on the varying
azure of the ranges of mountains that she had so loved. He had been
gazing at them all day and for many a day past with that thought in his
mind,--that she had loved them!
“I sall tell her naething!” he said implacably. “If it makes it better
for me that another man isna what he seemed she is no for me.”
And then he closed his lips fast.
In Laroche’s heart blossomed forth suddenly a deep secret joy to know
that in all this time the young lovers were not reconciled. His vanity
plumed itself in the thought. No transient fancy it was that he had
inspired. And this proud fool!--he could have laughed aloud to see the
Highlander, solemnly stalking among his bitter memories and her “sweet
mountains,” resolved to hold his peace and eat out his heart because
he would not deign to profit by the fact that the lady of his love had
cared for a man who proved unworthy, thus liberating her preference, to
be captured anew by himself, catching her heart in the rebound.
“Choose, you proud peat!” Laroche said to himself, repeating a gibe
that he had often heard at Jock Lesly’s fireside. And when he mounted
anew he rode away right merrily.
XV
THE method in which Lieutenant Everard had compassed his retreat
from the Cherokee country gave rise to much discussion in that day,
especially among military and _quasi_ military men. Particularly
was this of interest at those remote and feeble posts at which small
detachments were stationed on the verge of the Indian country and
among conditions likely at any time to duplicate his dilemma. It was
variously contended that he should have stood his ground even had
his heart been cut out still pulsating, and _per contra_ that
his course was amply justified,--nay, that the obligation to save
the civilian commissioners as well as the men of his command was
imperative, and that it would have been criminal folly to fail to take
advantage of the opportunity to make off thus with something less than
the full honors of war, more especially as the expedition was not of a
strictly military character.
The licensed British traders, plying their vocation among the Catawbas,
Creeks, and Chickasaws, entertained the high and sanguinary view of
Lieutenant Everard’s duty in the premises, seeming to think that
blood spilled in their interest was well spent, and to resent any
precautionary measures that tended to hoard it. Whereas the officers of
the little flimsy forts believed the effort to protect the mercantile
monopoly of the Indian trade by the British government was not worth
the sacrifice of life and the effusion of blood when it came to the
hopeless odds of a thousand to some threescore.
The discomfiture of the British embassy to Great Tellico and the
inglorious return of Lieutenant Everard, failing to compass the
arrest he demanded, seemed to have imparted a certain assurance to
Indian prestige. A new and subtle arrogance of mind, covert and yet
perceptible, distinguished the attitude of the warriors toward the
British traders who had the opportunity to observe them. This did
not characterize individuals only, but appertained to a generally
diffused spirit among the tribes. It was peculiarly marked among the
few Cherokees seen in these days beyond their own boundaries, but
extended to the Muscogees and their sub-tribes, also the Choctaws, the
Choccomaws, and went even so far as to touch their inimical kindred
the Chickasaws,--always hitherto friendly to the British and averse
to the French. It suggested some treasured consciousness of latent
strength. As a portent of the quiet biding of an ultimate time of
reckoning, instances of patience and lenience on the part of Indians
under provocation became more menacing than open protest or violent
wrath. A subtle lurking triumph could be discerned, nevertheless,
in their manner,--the proud glance, the arrogant carriage, the
crafty turn of a phrase, charged with a double meaning. Especially
prominent and perceptible were these _indicia_ when many of
various nationalities, some of the tribes now extinct, chanced to be
congregated together at a trading-station such as the one beginning to
be organized anew under the guns of Fort Prince George.
As yet public confidence in the restoration of peace in the Cherokee
country had not been reëstablished. An outbreak seemed imminent at
any moment, albeit indeterminate, vaguely in the air. Constant rumors
of the machinations of French emissaries, especially the two officers
Latinac and Laroche, deterred capital, always conservative, and the
hideous character of Indian vengeance daunted the hardiest British
trader from essaying a premature effort. Up to this time, therefore,
no trading licenses had been applied for or issued for the towns of
the upper country since the burning of Jock Lesly’s trading-house
on the Tennessee River. In the neighborhood of Fort Prince George,
however, a degree of reassurance was felt since a military defense was
possible and a refuge at hand. Moreover, in case the fort itself should
be besieged, as it lay on the southeastern confines of the Cherokee
country, relief could be sent out from Carolina before famine would
compel a capitulation. It is true that in the war just concluded the
blow fell here first of all, fourteen white men being suddenly murdered
within a mile of the fort. However, the advantages of trade were now
peculiarly great by reason of this absence of marts in the upper
region, and for a season or so the Cherokee village of Keowee, within
gunshot of the fort, attracted a great concourse of Indian hunters bent
on the barter of deerskins, furs, and pearls.
Jock Lesly, one of the most experienced of the early traders, had
foreseen and seized this advantage, and albeit he still ostentatiously
sighed for his old home on the Tennessee River and fondled his sorrow
as an exile, and was wont in financial pride and vainglory to recount
the value of his stock and “gude will,” on the last of which he laid
particular stress, being so well acquainted with the country,--to use
his phrase, “wi’ baith man an’ beast, wi’ ilka buck on twa legs or
four that roamit the woods,”--he had ample opportunity in the lack of
competition to recoup himself for the losses that he had sustained.
Moreover, he had the trade of the officers and men at the fort, for
those days in no wise differed from these in the necessities suddenly
developed as soon as one is out of reach of the usual sources of supply.
The trader was cheerful in these fair prospects, rosy and jocund, and
in this connection said “oh fie” many times to call his daughter’s
attention to the fact how “fat and well-liking he was,” needing none of
her care, and to urge her return to the colonies.
“I’ll e’en bide here,” she averred firmly. “There’s but the twa o’ us.
I maun hae my hame where ye be, for ye are gettin’ auld; your pow is
fu’ gray!”
“Ye are a graceless bairn to say as muckle!--oh fie!--I was born wi’ a
tow head!” exclaimed Jock Lesly, who although flattered by her filial
affection felt that she would be safer in Charlestown. “I to be ca’d
gray an’ auld!--when I hae ne’er been sae weel-favored,--comelier, I
trow, than ony o’ thae young lads at the fort, though a’ dressed out in
their flim-giskies.”
He sometimes wondered vaguely if any of them could be the attraction
that held her here, and then reflected sagely that there were more
lads still in Charlestown. He had experienced a vague regret to
notice--and he had often tried to recall when it had first arrested his
attention--that there had been a gradual averse change in her manner
toward MacIlvesty and a certain glum dourness in his reception of it.
“That’s no the way to win a high-sperited lass like Lilias,” he
reflected impatiently. “I wonder that the callant has na mair sense. He
suld be sonsy an’ gay, an’ mak a braw show wi’ his Hieland coats an’
kilts that he thinks sae fine, an’ that set off sae weel his buirdly
round handsome legs. Sic a spindle-shanks as that chiel Tam Wilson now
wad aye be glad o’ the fringed leggings.”
And then he paused again. For why must he be always thinking of Tam
Wilson presently when his mind was busy with the subject of the
differences which he vaguely perceived had arisen between Callum and
Lilias? He frowned heavily to note anew the connection of ideas.
Surely, surely, the Highlander could not think that she preferred this
man,--this stranger, of whom they knew naught save that his name was
Tam Wilson, and that he hailed from some far-away region of Virginia.
Adventurous, experimental himself, Jock Lesly, in common with many
of the empiric temperament, was the most conservative of men in his
views controlling others. He had scorned and contemned a title as
“fitten neither to eat nor drink,” but he was exceedingly tenacious
of the fact that he himself came of good honest folk, who could trace
their ancestors, although of humble station,--farmers, fishers, and
traders,--for many and many a generation without a reproach or blemish,
and thus he had perceived no incongruity that Callum MacIlvesty with
his gentle blood should become the husband of Lilias. He knew, of
course, that the Highlander’s inherited right to lands and lineage
was in these days of attainder and forfeiture absolutely valueless,
disregarded, and forgotten, but it was a secret delight to him that
these immaterial honors should elevate and embellish the young
soldier’s attachment to Lilias and render him in her father’s eyes
more worthy of her. Being a widower with an only child, Jock Lesly
could afford to care little for Callum’s lack of fortune or prospects.
As he was fond of saying to himself, “Auld Jock hinna warked for
naething!--the little lassie isna sae tocherless!” and in this view he
would redouble his haste to be rich in the increasing opportunities of
the Indian trade. It was this belated realization of a change in the
sentiments of Callum and Lilias that made Jock Lesly observe the young
fellow somewhat keenly when Callum returned from the upper country with
the commissioners’ force and found that she had been domiciled here
with her father.
It was late on a gray and misty afternoon when the expeditionary
force, pushing on with added speed in the fear of being belated in
such close proximity to the intermediate station in their long march
to Charlestown, came at last within sight and sound of Fort Prince
George,--a grateful sight, the block-houses looking stanch and burly
in the angles of the four bastions, the ramparts surmounted with
tall palisades, all the works trig and stout, having been put in
repair by Colonel Grant the previous year while he lay here with his
army awaiting the overtures of the vanquished Cherokees for peace.
The fife and drum resounded from the works; the light glanced on the
steel bayonets and scarlet uniforms of the men drawn up to welcome
the commissioners with fitting ceremony, for it was but seldom that
the commandant had the opportunity to greet aught but wild Indians,
and he made the most of the occasion; the little cannon, of which
there were four on each bastion, thundered a salute, and the troops
presented arms as the commissioners rode through the gate. The honors
concluded, the escort and the soldiers of the garrison, breaking ranks,
surged this way and that about the parade, interchanging the news from
Charlestown for reports from the Tennessee River, and the gossip of the
barracks for the details of the various chances of the march, while the
officers of the fort, with evident convivial intent, took charge of the
commissioners and Lieutenant Everard.
Although the barracks of Fort Prince George had accommodations for a
hundred men, the garrison often fell short of the complement. Therefore
it was no surprise to Everard to meet here orders, in view of the
disquiet of the upper country, to leave to reinforce the garrison such
men as he could spare from his command, since the commissioners were
now on the border of the frontier, and the region through which they
were yet to pass was more or less settled with a white population and
with friendly Indian tribes, the Chickasaws and Catawbas. Everard was
instructed to select for this purpose those of the soldiers who could
not soon rejoin their regiments from which they had been detached for
service in the Cherokee country. Into this category fell the Highland
contingent, for the Forty-Second had just landed in New York,--a
winter in garrison at Fort Prince George seemed a bitter contrast.
Everard was reminded of Callum and his equivocal position as he was
going over the roll, and he felt a qualm of regret. It was not merely
because of that partisan Damon-and-Pythias-like friendship to which
young men are prone, soldiers most of all, and that this change would
necessitate their parting, but that upon the lieutenant’s restoration
to the fitting companionship of his brother officers the man of the
ranks had of course sunk back out of notice and into his proper place.
Everard could not feel himself to blame, yet the incongruity pained
him. Despite Callum’s intrinsic equality with the best of the officers,
Everard knew that it would be futile to urge upon them his own example
in the exceptional circumstances, and indeed this had been fraught with
much discomfort not to say danger in his instance.
Nevertheless, recollecting the episode of the Ancient Warrior’s
disguise and the tender solicitude which the soldier had shown for
his friend’s safety at so great a jeopardy of his own, risking not
only death but the torture, the lieutenant felt very kindly to Callum
and was minded to bestow upon him some parting gift. As he was
canvassing in generous thoughts the character of this testimonial, he
was beset by a sudden monition of the concomitant pride and penury
of the Highlander. Everard would not wound him on either account for
the world. He congratulated himself as on an escape, and as he was
strolling from his quarters to the mess-hall, suddenly meeting Callum,
he abruptly turned about and passed his arm fraternally through the
soldier’s.
“Come, Callum Bane,” he said gayly. “I’m off to-morrow. Let’s go to the
trader’s and get a keepsake. I’ll give you an Indian pipe if you will
give me one, and as long as the _Nicotiana Tabacum_ holds out to
burn we will never forget the big Injun at Chilhowee.”
Callum had no sense of supersedure or resentment upon his sudden
dismissal from his friend’s society. He was too entirely the soldier
to cavil at the obligations which the gradations of rank necessarily
impose. He had himself some sharp experience that these restrictions
cannot be ignored without involving a corresponding subversion of
military subordination. Therefore he was not grudging nor envious, but
accepted as the natural sequence of events the fact that Everard should
be happily carousing with the young officers of the garrison while he,
so lately the lieutenant’s chosen friend, stood guard on the ramparts
in the chill midnight. Hence he cordially and smilingly assented, and
the two, arm in arm, set forth together.
The weather still held lowering and gloomy. On the rampart at Fort
Prince George one could scarce see through the chill mists, and beyond
the bare space encircling the works, to the dense, leafless wilderness.
At the verge of these woods, and looking backward, one could only make
out the fort like a sketch in sepia, with its shadowy block-houses, its
blurred barrack roofs sleek with sleet, its tall palisades surmounting
the rampart with their pointed summits serrating the gray sky. The only
note of color amidst all the dreary neutral tints was the red uniform
of a squad of soldiers returning with several deer from the hunt that
kept the post in fresh meat.
The trading-house was well within sight of the works and close on
the river bank. The boughs of several leafless trees, white with the
morning’s rime, although it was now past noon, swayed above its high
peaked roof; within this seemed to hold great merchandise and store of
shadows, for however the light might stream in at the broad barn-like
door, or the fire flare on the hearth at the further extremity, only
vague outlines of struts and rafters and interdependent timbers could
be seen, while from the beams below swung various goods appropriate
to the time and trade,--saddles, bridles, ropes, chains, blankets,
cloths of various bright tints of red and yellow, all interwoven and
rich of effect. Arms glittered on the shelves and racks below, and
axes, hatchets, knives,--all sending out a metallic glitter here and
there as the firelight flickered. Always about this fire stood or
crouched at least half a dozen braves of various tribes, reveling in
its luxury, albeit so well inured to the cold elsewhere, their presence
necessitating cautious surveillance from the under-traders. For the
Indians of the lower grades, it is said, considered it no derogation
to steal, but infamy to be caught in stealing. A variety of articles
calculated to attract the favorable regards of the officers and men at
the fort were displayed,--buttons, hose, buckles, brushes, snuffboxes,
ribbons, candlesticks and snuffers, mirrors, gambadoes,--even books,
over the slow sale of which Jock Lesly often shook his head. “The
carles at the fort are no readers.” Some exquisite feather-wrought
mantles, Indian baskets, hemp-woven rugs, and quaint pottery were
offered. There were a number of stone pipes showing an extraordinary
skill in carving, for the material, soft when quarried, hardened on
exposure to the air. The Cherokees excelled all other tribes in this
branch of aboriginal art, and some of their work of this date may now
be seen in museums or decorating the rooms of historical societies.
Before the trader’s collection of pipes the two friends paused.
Jock Lesly had met Callum with no apparent diminution of their earlier
cordiality when first he had returned to the fort. But it nettled
the proud Highlander now to observe how obsequious was the trader’s
manner to Everard, taking scant notice of his “far awa’ kinsman.”
And why indeed should he not be attentive to the officer? Jock Lesly
cared naught for him but to sell him an Indian pipe, and if the one
found for him did not please him to diligently persuade him that it
did. “Surely, surely, sir, a bonny bauble. Here, sir, is a fearsome
cur’osity if you favor the heejus in Injun carving. That, sir,--why it
stays in a corner, bein’ broken. An’ here, sir--look at this--a braw
specimen, a real bit of sculpchur.” As far as Jock Lesly was concerned
John Francis Everard was born and brought into this world expressly
to buy that pipe, for Jock Lesly was essentially a trader--so superior
a salesman, in fact, with an eye so keenly and accurately adjusted to
the main chance, that without the least ceremony he abruptly deserted
them for a matter of more moment, and Callum, angered but an instant
since by the adroit pressure of these small wares by a man able to
care naught whether the sale was made or lost, was inconsistently
irritated, affronted, when Jock Lesly’s attention wavered. A couple
of Indians bargaining their peltry for gear had become embroiled in
rancorous words with the under-trader, who was about to lose his temper
under great provocation and, what was worse in the estimation of Jock
Lesly, the advantages of the trade. As he stepped swiftly to the
rescue, suavely inquiring into the point at issue, the Cherokee words
embellished with his Scotch accent, the two military men at the counter
where the pipes were laid out, in the design of which they each sought
something reminiscent of their experiences together, hesitated, at a
loss, and a trifle out of countenance. Callum trembled lest by reason
of this cavalier treatment aught disrespectful of auld Jock Lesly pass
the lips of the officer, whom he supposed to be entirely ignorant
of any concern or interest that he had in the trader’s household.
But Jock Lesly was amply competent to maintain his own standing, and
Everard, exacting as he might be, was no man to quarrel with a trader
for postponing the sale of a trifle lest he lose the bargain for a
hundredweight of choice peltry.
As they idly waited the firelight flickered in their faces; the steel
of the weapons in the racks flashed in long, slender lines about the
building; the wind, wet, fragrant with the odor of bark and dead
leaves, came in from the wilderness without at the open door, and set
all the gloomy dusk awavering; and suddenly, as if evolved from the
necromancy of these immaterial elements, a slight shape compounded of
light and shadow, of the sheen of golden hair and a dull brown dress,
a pink and white face, with dark blue eyes and eyelashes still darker,
stood on the other side of the counter with a submissive “What’s your
wull?”
Everard stared speechless. Doubtless the girl was uncommonly pretty,
but it had been full three months since he had seen a fair white brow
in a woman, a blue eye, and a wealth of curling blond hair. She looked
in the shadow an angel for beauty, a princess for dignity, and a nun
for ascetic gravity. Yet she was only the trader’s daughter, ably
seconding her father, whose heart she knew must be fairly rent for
failure of the opportunity to sell the pipes. “John, Duncan, Malcom,”
he had roared, and they came not; therefore gliding out from some
hidden recess appeared Lilias.
Once more Callum trembled for the false position, for instantly the
handsome Everard must needs seek to commend himself personally, and
essay the language of gallantry.
“This represents, you say, an Indian queen with black locks,” he said,
turning over in his hand one of the pipes curiously tinted that she had
offered. “I should not care for that. It seems to me that the only hair
for beauty is yellow, gilded as if with refined gold.”
He boldly lifted his handsome eyes to her fair tresses devoid of the
concealing cap of the fashion and rolled, richly waving, high up from
her forehead and held with a blue ribbon.
She did not even change color. It seemed that the image carved on the
stone pipe might have smiled as readily. She only laid it aside with
supreme gravity as a rejected commodity, and he was at once ill at
ease, for he would have liked well to own it.
“May I ask you to choose one for me and one for my friend,” he
persisted in the personal note, partly to cover his confusion. Then he
added, “You understand the degree of aboriginal art they represent and
what is most worth while.”
If he had expected to prolong the interview by reason of her
vacillations in the discharge of this commission, he was mistaken. In
two minutes he was furnished with an effigy of the head of a warrior
crowned with a war-bonnet. Through its rudely simulated circle of
feathers the smoke would curl as if merely an extension of their
flamboyant glories. Callum had assigned to him a similitude of a
bird, curiously wrought and with an elaborately decorated stem. Then
she suddenly vanished, as if a vision of such delicate consistency
could hardly withstand the freshening of the breeze. As it came in,
flaring the fire and fluttering the fine show of fabrics swinging from
the beams and circling about the building, it seemed as if it had
extinguished the fair and dainty fancy that she must have been.
“The trader’s beautiful daughter, Miss Lilias, no doubt,” said Everard
to Callum in a low voice, as they turned to settle for the pipes with
Jock Lesly.
Although so low a voice, her father heard it.
“And I should be glad to know, sir, from whom you had her name so pat
upon your tongue?” he demanded surlily.
He could not have said why, but he was angered by the phrase, “the
trader’s beautiful daughter,” although he was not expected to
overhear it. With his mind averse to Callum as it had lately grown,
he speculated upon the possibility that it was he who had descanted
upon her beauty to this young lordling, and that Everard, perhaps, had
caused himself to be brought here that he might judge for himself.
For once Callum subjected himself to no misapprehension. “I hae never
mentioned her name,” he said stiffly.
“No, no, indeed!” protested Everard hastily; for although he revolted
at the pother over so slight a matter as he esteemed it, he wished to
occasion no awkwardness to Callum, whose position seemed to bristle
with unexpected difficulties. “I never heard of her from Callum--nor
from any one at the fort. She--your daughter, Miss Lilias--was
mentioned to me by a Virginian whom we saw in the Overhill towns--who
claimed to be well acquainted with you. His name was--Tam Wilson--was
it not, Callum?”
“I dinna ken his name,” said the dour Callum shortly.
“Ou, ay--Tam Wilson--I mind Tam Wilson weel enow,” said the trader
curtly, his red face now blotched with white.
He took his money for the pipes, and as the two young men trudged
away in the closing mist he took himself to task. He did not know
what he would be at, he said to himself. He could not expect the
trader’s beautiful daughter Lilias never to be mentioned among young
men--why, the girl was celebrated for her beauty wherever she went.
But somehow he knew that if Callum had been seriously in love he was
of that earnest, reserved nature that would have guarded her name from
other lips as if it had been a sacred thing; that her beauty would
have been to him only an incident of her personality, dear because it
characterized her, and never to be vaunted abroad by him.
Analyzing thus his anger, Jock Lesly discovered that he was not excited
because her name was mentioned, but because he thought that it had come
from Callum. This marked the measure of disappointment and discontent
he experienced, to suspect that Callum’s attachment to Lilias was not
of the serious nature hitherto supposed.
“But hegh, sirs,” he said to himself, “it’s no for the puir callant’s
betterment that the lassie’s father hae aye a kind heart till him when
Lilias hersel’ looks so glum an’ dour at him. I marked the glance o’
her eye whilst I was dealin’ with thae carles o’ Injuns. Lord--Lord!”
he exclaimed in dismay, “man is but mortal an’ fitted for mortal wark!
I canna trade wi’ the Injuns an’ yet hae the wisdom an’ leadin’ to
guide the luve affairs o’ that freakish Lilias, that I’se warrant dinna
ken her own mind! I’se e’en commit it a’ to Providence, that dootless
hae mair experience than this puir tradin’ body, that disna even ken
what will become o’ the station if they still hand otters at the price
they are askin’ the noo!”
Having thus discharged his mind of the responsibility, although now
and again he sighed heavily because of the soreness that the stress of
his anxiety had left in his consciousness, he busied himself in the
multitude of his duties, ever and anon returning to the haranguing of
Duncan and Malcom and John, that they should have all been out of the
way and left him with no one to wait on a wheen o’ callants frae the
fort, it requiring both himself and Dougal to drive a bargain with the
discerning chief of Nequassee.
This line of thought bringing up again the recollection of Callum’s
offended face and wounded mien because of his ungracious and groundless
suspicions, Jock Lesly grew pricked in conscience and desirous to be
reconciled formally.
“Zounds!” he muttered, “I maun hae my friends, Lilias or no Lilias, an’
the man is my far awa’ cousin--sae far awa’ it canna be counted--but
that’s neither here nor there. Hegh, Duncan,” he called out, “ye can
gae ower to the fort an’ ask Callum MacIlvesty if he’ll no sup wi’ me
the night if he isna on duty.”
It had been Callum’s impression during the few days that he had
now been at the fort that the trader’s domicile must be one of the
unoccupied cabins within the works, for he knew that during the
earlier alarms of the Cherokee War certain houses had been placed at
the disposal of the settlers’ families flocking there for safety. In
his opinion this would have been much the safest method of sheltering
the trader’s family, but his invitation to the domestic board at the
trading-house itself was a definite negation to this supposition.
“Surely auld Jock is clean wud,” he said to himself as, furnished duly
with leave, he went out from the fort and crossing the bridge of the
fosse took his way over the glacis beyond the fields and those broad
spaces filled with the stumps of the trees which Grant’s troops had
felled while the army lay in camp outside the works.
He stumbled over one of these, so dim was the light of the chilly,
misty dusk. As he regained his footing he turned to look back at the
fort. It was but dimly outlined against the dreary evening sky; a
steady gleam of light came from the window of the guard-house near the
gate, while hovering above the works was a vague suffusion of rays
that doubtless issued from various undiscriminated sources,--doors
ajar, unseen windows, a lantern perchance swinging here and there,--all
combining in this faint, dimly discerned aureola beneath the dense,
overpowering weight of the blackness of the night. He heard the
sentinel challenge the officer of the day on his rounds and then the
measured tramp as the guard turned out. The lonely wind was sighing
among the sad, rifled woods; the river’s dash over the rocks that
fretted its currents came distinct to his ears; and just as he was
thinking that without more guidance in the darkening gloom he might
walk off its steep bluffs he perceived suddenly a light in front of him
and heard the opening of a door. He was already at the trading-house,
and here was Jock Lesly coming out to speculate on his delay, but
seeing him at hand, he pretermitted this to reprove his tardiness.
“Hout, man! ye’ll get no sic vivers at the fort as I sail set before
ye! My certie, when I was your age the board ne’er waited for my teeth
to be sharpened.”
There was, however, no convivial board spread in the trading-house,
where Callum now expected to see it. While he waited for Jock Lesly
to rearrange a barricade at the door which could not be removed from
without except with great clamor, he noted instead that the fire had
died down almost to embers. Only now and again a feeble white flare,
starting up from a mass of red coals, showed the proportions and usage
of the trading-house, and set up such a flicker among the glancing arms
and swaying fabrics as gave an uncomfortable suggestion of half seen
figures lurking and ready to spring.
“Hegh, callant,” cried Jock Lesly’s voice with a tremor of relish and
triumph in the disclosure he meditated. “Come along, and we’se see
what we’se see!”
Lighting a lantern he pulled aside a secret door in the counter, and
as he crept into the box-like place, Callum MacIlvesty heard the sound
of another door opening in the flooring. The swaying light in the
hand of the host began to slowly descend, and the young Highlander,
following closely, bidden to slam the door of the counter behind him,
found with his feet the rungs of a ladder but dimly discerned as the
lantern swung. Presently, however, there was scant need of this humble
illumination. A gush of red light from below revealed the long extent
of the ladder, a stone floor at the bottom, the walls of a grotto of
impenetrable unbroken rock, and naught besides. A projection of the
rugged wall like a buttress shielded the apartment from view, while
they themselves were fully visible throughout their descent. Jock Lesly
barely gave the young fellow time to leap down without touching the
last half dozen rungs, and lowered the ladder swiftly by means of a
rope and pulley; the door which it had held open shut quickly, and if
a man should seek to lift it or to descend thence, he could be picked
off by a rifle from below before he could gain a glimpse of the place
beneath or the group in the chamber beyond. If an intrusive foot should
be placed on the ladder when in position, a mere touch from below
would dislodge that structure, and the invader, falling from the great
height, pay for his temerity with his life.
This was a device put into practice by those constrained to dwell among
the inimical Indians in Tennessee, both before and afterward, but to
Callum it was an undreamed-of expedient, and he must needs pause to
admire the completeness of its features before Jock Lesly, pointing
them out in detail, would permit him to turn to survey the subterranean
home.
“The conies are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the
rock,” the trader quoted.
A lofty but narrow chamber had its elements of comfort. Hickory logs
were flaring in a great fireplace, and remembering the plan of the
building above Callum realized that the flue connected with the chimney
of the trading-house, and thus no smoke or light betrayed the cavern
to the Indians or, if it were already known to them, this usage of it.
The walls, roof, and floor, of rock of unimaginable thickness, were
without a break, save that on the side next the river, in a passage
like an anteroom, was a series of apertures high among the shadows and
round like portholes, affording ample ventilation,--a curiosity that
occurs here and there among the bluffs of this region, relics of some
forgotten cataclysmal period when the outbursting waters sculptured
the rocks. Beyond another arch or tunnel seemed a more limited chamber
adjoining the main grotto, whence a golden glow of lamplight betokened
occupation, and a wooden partition and door added to its seclusion. “A
cubby hole yon where Lilias sleeps an’ keeps her bit duds, an’ rins
awa’ to sulk, an’ here on this end is a passage where the gillies
foregather an’ ane always is on watch to guard the door. An’ this
big room is the parlor, an’ we sit here to receive our company like
gentles. Hegh, callant, if we had only had sic a ha’ house on the sweet
Tennessee River!”
Before the fire now Lilias sat as if she were indeed in some safely
guarded and softly lined parlor. She was arrayed in a brilliant yet
dainty gown of striped sarcenet, blue and white, with pink roses
scattered at intervals down the white stripe. Her shining golden hair
was rolled high from her forehead and a long thick curl hung to her
shoulder at one side. An embroidered cape of sheer cambric made visible
the white neck that it affected to shield. Her feet were cased in
high-heeled red slippers, over one of which the old collie had put a
restraining paw, that she might not move without his knowledge, as he
lay on the rug beside her spinning wheel. She was now busy with this
little flax wheel, while the supper was cooking under the ministrations
of an elderly wrinkled Scotch dame, the mother of one of the gillies,
who officiated in the household in many capacities,--cook, laundress,
dairy woman,--and not the least valued by Jock Lesly as his adviser how
to manage the fractious Lilias, whose nurse she had been.
“Gude guide us!” she would exclaim. “Maun ye always be harryin’ the
bairn’s life out? Let her alane! Let her alane! or else since ye are
sae cruel jus’ tak your big fist an’ knock her harns out at ance!”
Thus berated Jock Lesly would feel that he was indeed a disciplinarian
and must needs moderate his severities, or Luckie Meg, as she was
called, would be telling at the fort and elsewhere how he tyrannized
over his household.
Here Lilias, in the unbounded wisdom of eighteen years, had elected
to set up her staff, and hither had she transported the bulk of her
effects. She ordered her life much as she would if yet in Charlestown,
and seemed incongruously content. If the sight of her in her plain dark
brown serge had been overwhelming to Everard, what would be the effect
of this vision of dainty loveliness Callum wondered.
Very serious she was when she sat at the table, with a sort of absolute
impervious dignity that was not even impaired when the collie stood
up on his hindlegs beside her chair with his forepaws on the cloth,
looking about him with eager curiosity, and betraying like an ill-bred
child that there were more elaborate “vivers” for this occasion than
he was in the habit of seeing. Callum could hear the rushing of the
river so close outside that he thought their cavern of refuge must
be lower than the surface of the water. The flames flared and roared
up the chimney; the young packmen or gillies laughed and talked with
muttered gibes and boyish sniggers and chuckles in their anteroom;
the shadows flickered over the lofty vault; Jock Lesly was once more
his old genial self, and Callum felt that the fort was so far away
that it was garrisoned in another existence, that the Indians were
extinct, that sorrow and pain and loss were but the untoward incidents
of an old dream called life, and that he had entered into Paradise,--a
bit doubtful, a bit tremulous, a bit prayerful, and very humble, for
Lilias, though quite casual, though only carelessly kind, had smiled at
him!
“Tam Wilson, now,” said Jock Lesly.
And all at once this grim old world of troubles and fears, of grief and
gloom, had whisked back again.
“Now that chiel, Tam Wilson!” reiterated Jock Lesly.
He was amazingly comfortable, the trader, still sitting at the table
thrown back in a seat, cleverly constructed to imitate a cushioned
armchair, drinking Scotch whiskey till the smell of the peat of the
still fires seemed to fill the room, and then a fine French brandy that
but inflamed his patriotism and insular prejudice. “What’s that callant
doing all this long time in the Cherokee country?”
Callum glanced down at the firelight flashing through his own glass,
now like a ruby and now like a topaz. He dared not meet the eyes of
Lilias. But when he looked up at last, as he needs must at a repetition
of the question, she was busied with a comfit.
“I hae my ain thoughts,” he said.
Jock Lesly was beginning to nod. It had been a long hard day, and now
warmth and comfort and “vivers” and brandy were telling on his powers
of discrimination.
“Seems strange! Remember Callum,” he said suddenly, “how afeared o’
Moy Toy the callant was!” He laughed sleepily. “He fairly pined to get
us out o’ reach o’”--He paused, nodding.
Once more Callum glanced furtively at Lilias. She sat idly toying with
her spoon in the red glow, her blue and white apparel, her golden
head, her glimmering neck and shoulders, half revealed by their sheer
broideries, all indescribably dainty, fairy-like of effect amid
these rude surroundings. Her soft and delicate countenance was calm,
inexpressive, inscrutable.
“Hegh, Callum,” said Jock Lesly, seizing the subject again in a waking
interval, “that captain-lieutenant--what’s his name? Everard? Aye,
Everard! A-weel, Everard was saying that chiel was bein’ passed off
on him for a Frenchy. Hegh! my certie! Tam Wilson a Frenchy--Johnny
Crapaud”--
His head fell more definitely forward--he was gone at last; the low
luxurious susurrus of his breath, almost a snore, filled the room at
regular intervals.
Afterward Callum could not appraise the impulse, the instinct, that
animated him. The room had dulled to a deep crimson glow; in the waning
light of the fire the gray walls of the cave showed without shadows,
for the light was not so strong as to duplicate an image. Luckie Meg
slept on her stool by the hearth, the collie snored under the table,
the gillies were silent in the antechamber; the only suggestion of the
world outside was the sound of the river rushing on like life to its
ultimate destination, to be lost in the tides of the sea like eternity.
In the red gloom Callum was hardly aware if her face were yet so
distinct, or because in his memory never a shadow could rest upon it.
He gazed directly into her eyes and beheld them dilate expectantly.
“_You_ knew that he was French, Lilias. _You_ knew it all the
time!”
She replied as to an accusation. “No--not all the
time--_no_--Callum!”
“And you knew how I loved you--so long--so true--never one else--never
another thought! And to cast me aside for him--for _him_! A spy,
an emissary, sent to spirit up the Indians against the frontier--for
the hideous massacres of women and children.”
“He declared it was not for that. He said his government only sought
to utilize the Indians in the same way that the English hae used them
in our armies, as soldiers. He only obeyed his orders, as you do
yours--being a soldier, forbye an officer.”
“An officer! O Lilias, war is one thing and this is another!”
“I think like you, Callum; though after I heard him tell his plan it
didna seem the same; that is--forbye”--Lilias hesitated, sore beset--“I
could see how it all had a different face to him. An’ he was na cruel
to us--he keepit the Injuns aff us.”
“Because the French plans were not ripe enough for our murder then--and
Lilias, you knew it! And let your father warm this serpent by his
hearth--in his bosom!”
“I didna ken it at first. No, Callum,” exclaimed Lilias, eager in
self-defense, her own fealty to the hamely ingle-neuk in question.
“No, and not till the last,” she protested, her voice trembling as she
remembered that he had offered to renounce king and country, duty and
honor for her. This was not Tam Wilson, however. Tam Wilson would never
have done this. And it was Tam Wilson who had been so dear!
“He told me at the last!--the last day but twa or three!--or else I
couldna hae abided him!”
Callum, fingering his glass, looked off drearily into the glowing
mass of red coals. He was recalling the details of that memorable
journey,--those days when she declared that she had had dreams.
Dreams, dear indeed, since their tenuity warranted the bitter realities
of those hot despairing tears. Dreams, alas, which could not come true!
Callum doubted if his persistence had won for him much of value,--the
certainty that she had wept for Tam Wilson, because he was not--Tam
Wilson!
Jock Lesly was beginning to stir. He snorted, yawned, stretched his
arms, then sat up straight and opened his eyes. The walls of the
cavern first caught his attention. “Hegh, Callum lad, this is like
thae auld days fowk are sae fond o’ talkin’ about, the Feifteen an’
the Forty-five, when the attainted Jacobites hid about in caves an’
hollows, an’ limekilns an’ cellars. Remind ye o’ it?”
Callum slowly appraised the glowing dream-light, the luxurious warmth,
the comfortable “vivers,” the half emptied decanters, and thought of
the ditch in the moorland and the crevice in the mountain, the cold and
the starvation, the loss of fortune and favor, the end in exile or on
the scaffold. No--he could not just say that he was reminded of it.
And as Jock Lesly was about to demonstrate the points of similarity in
the situation a sudden iterative throbbing shook the earth, and the
Highlander sprang to his feet, recognizing the vibrations of the drum
beating the tattoo, and saying that he would have a run for it to reach
the fort, the barracks, and bed by taps.
XVI
THE detachment of Highlanders that Lieutenant Everard left to
reinforce Fort Prince George proved of no great interest to the troops
already stationed there pining in the weariness of long inaction. The
natural expectation of the revival of zest in life incident to new
companionship, fresh experiences, stories still untold, and songs as
yet unsung all fell flat in the reality; for few of the newcomers could
speak aught but the Gaelic, and they clung together with a pertinacity
and a suspiciousness of the “Sassenach sidier,” with whom they were
thus unequally yoked, that threatened faction in the little garrison.
Hence, to accustom them to their new comrades and break up the clique
whenever it was possible, the Highlanders were separately detailed to
duty among the English, although on parade, at roll call, and at drill
they were segregated and kept within their own ranks.
Callum MacIlvesty was one of the few who could speak English; but
although, being a “gentleman ranker,” his lowly station involved
association with his military equals, he seemed hardly likely to
contribute notably to the mirth of nations. He was preoccupied, gravely
brooding much of the time, and even when roused showed a temperament
averse to the familiar horseplay of the jocund Britisher. Among his
Scotch comrades he was little subject to the irksome constraints of
his position as a common soldier. They could gauge and realize his
claims to a higher station, and, more than conceding them, showed him
a consideration and respect to which he had been accustomed from his
earliest youth. He returned their kindness, which thus manifested
a touch of the magnanimous, with earnest fellow feeling, and his
relations with them were affectionate and even fraternal. To the
English contingent at the fort, however, he was merely “a bare-kneed
Sawney who held his head stiff and stepped high,” with no justification
that they could discriminate, for he, like them, shouldered a musket
for pay.
Even in this humble station it seemed to him that fortune was
singularly adverse, and that his enforced absence from his regiment
had cost him the signal opportunity of his life to achieve distinction
or aught of value. Recovering from a wound, but yet unfit for duty,
he had been granted a furlough early in the year, which he had spent
at Jock Lesly’s trading-house, and afterward, at the moment of eager
expectation of sailing to join the Forty-Second in the West Indies,
he had been ordered with the small detachment of Highlanders in
Charlestown to reinforce the commissioners’ escort because of previous
familiarity with the Cherokee country. While he was engaged in this
distasteful pacific duty, Moro Castle had been carried by storm and the
city of Havanna had capitulated, and the Forty-Second, returning to
America, was flushed with victory and elated with glory. There was to
be no more fighting, it seemed, and in this tame inaction the winter at
Fort Prince George was but a dreary prospect.
The inglorious return of the commissioners’ force from the Cherokee
country, and the futile arrest which Everard had attempted, were
matters of great moment to the garrison, lying as it did within the
borders of the Cherokee possessions; but since the event had been all
bloodless, the defeat had been esteemed something of a farce. The
English soldiers of the escort, who could understand the fun poked
at them, one of the essential constituents of mirthful ridicule, had
been mercilessly guyed before their departure for Charlestown; and one
memorable night the subject came up anew in the guardroom, when, in
pursuance of the plan of detailing the Highlanders to duty separately
among the English, Callum chanced to be one of the main-guard.
The firelight from the great stone chimney place flashed on the
whitewashed walls and with a metallic glitter was reflected from the
stack of arms, in the centre of the puncheon floor, ready for instant
use, although the cry “Guard, turn out!” seemed many hours distant down
the watches of the night, unless indeed some unforeseen chance should
betide. There were several bunks against the wall, which were somewhat
superfluous at this hour, for at night the guard were not permitted
to seek repose thereon, although not a vigilant eye should be closed.
A large door led without to the parade, and a smaller one gave upon
an inner apartment which bore the huge lock common to that day and a
curiosity in this. The key was evidently turned upon some wight who
had found liberty joyous while it lasted, and who now and again sent
forth drunken snatches of song, occasionally varied with vociferous
affectations of woe, weeping and sniffing and groaning by merry turns,
till a freshened joyous impulse would set the catch trolling once more.
The group about the guardroom fire took slight note of these
aberrations from the regulation deportment appropriate to the
rôle of melancholy prisoner. They were all used to these frequent
incarcerations of their jolly comrade, and realized that the rigor
of his punishment would befall him when he should be sober enough to
profit by it.
A heavy rain beating tumultuously against the walls and splashing from
the eaves added zest to the luxury of the great blazing logs and the
talk of the group ranged around on the broad hearth of flagstones.
“An’ d’ ye mean to say, Callum,” began a leathern-visaged,
weather-beaten soldier, the corporal of the guard, leaning his elbows
on his knees as he sat on a great billet of wood, “that as soon as
old Moy Toy sneezed three times your Lieutenant Everard give the word
‘_Double-quick while ye can! For’ard, by the rear!_’ and the whole
command faced right about and footed it out of the Cherokee country?”
He winked jovially at the others as the big Highlander, half reclining
on the floor at one side of the hearth, turned his head slowly and came
gradually to a realization of his surroundings.
“I said naething o’ the sort, an’ ye ken it full weel,” Callum replied
gruffly.
“That’s not the way to answer your s’perior officer,” the jolly
corporal admonished him, with a leer.
“Ye never asked no sic a fule question as my superior officer,” Callum
deigned to respond after a pause. “Ask me now if my firelock is clean
an’ my cartouch box is ready, an’ I’se gie ye a ceevil answer; but my
superior officer hae naught to do wi’ Moy Toy’s sneeshin’.”
“There!” exclaimed the corporal with the affectation of delighted
triumph and discovery. “He have said it! He said that Moy Toy sneezed
and fairly frighted Lieutenant Everard out of the Cherokee country!”
A roar of laughter rewarded this pleasantry, and hearing the gay sound,
the incarcerated soldier struck up with rather a dreary quaver, “‘I’ll
ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross!’”
“You will ride a wooden horse as soon as you are sober enough to mount
one!” called out the corporal.
A great whining and wheezing and affectations of lamentation ensued on
the other side of the door, at which all the guard laughed uproariously.
One of the English contingent, a short, stocky fellow, who had been
carefully greasing a pair of feet always kept in the prime order for
marching essential to the regular infantry-man, now presented those
members glistening and perfect on the edge of the hearth, that the
unguents might take full effect by aid of the heat of the fire. He had
just been admonished by the corporal of that regulation which forbids
the guard to lay aside any of their clothing or accoutrements. He first
argued that stockings were neither arms nor garments, then pleaded with
the corporal for a momentary respite that the grease might soak into
the flesh instead of the fabric of his hose. To take full advantage of
the official clemency he sought to create a diversion by resuming with
animation the previous subject.
“I wonder,” he said, “if that furriner up there in the Cherokee country
is French or a Spaniard. When I was stationed at Gibraltar I learned a
deal o’ the lingo of that country.”
A long silence ensued. No surprise was intimated at the extent of the
soldier’s service, for so often had he recounted the details of his
experiences at Gibraltar and the observations he had collated from
Spain that they had grown a burden and had earned for him the sobriquet
of “the Señor,”--appropriately, perhaps, mispronounced “the Sinner.”
The recent hostilities between England and Spain gave additional and
phenomenal interest to his prelections now.
“The Spaniards are a great people for all that’s come an’ gone,” he
resumed presently. “’Twas them strengthened the fortifications at
Gibraltar so they are now what they be,” he added significantly.
“They did so! An’ they done it well, begorra!” retorted a big Irishman.
“An’,” with a rollicking laugh from his full red lips, “bedad, by the
same token we tuk it away from ’um.”
“The Sinner” took no notice of this pertinent corollary of his
proposition. He was looking reflectively at his feet, stretched out
straight before him as he sat flat on the hearth. His hair stood up
straight from his brow and was tied in a thin queue behind. He had
small bright eyes, heavy-lidded and downcast now. His face was clear
and youthful, with a large jowl, that narrowed toward the mouth, and
a short blunt nose. He was a good soldier by line and rule, and of a
particularly clean aspect. In fact he had so fresh, scraped, washed
an appearance that with his porcine resemblance he suggested, as he
sat with his plump pink and white feet and shins bare of hose to the
knee, some punctual pig that had accommodatingly cleaned and scalded
himself--if such a process were ever possible in the lifetime of swine.
The flames flared furiously up the chimney. Outside the roar of
water that intimated the swift flow of the Keowee River could be
differentiated from the sound of the rain in a fusillade on the roof
and its splashing sweep from the eaves. A roll of thunder far away
shook the earth, unseasonable, seemingly irrelevant to the occasion,
hardly appurtenant to this steady torrent of wintry rain.
“If that furriner is one of them Dons,” said “the Sinner,” resuming his
speculations, his eyes critically on the contour of his great toe, “he
knows what’s what. He ain’t there among them Injuns for nothin’. They
are the strategists--them Spaniards.”
“Arrah,” exclaimed the Irishman, blowing out his contempt with a cloud
of strong tobacco as he smoked his little cutty pipe, “it is just as
well, thin, that they have got nothin’ I want. Cubia will contint
me--that is, for the presint,” he added, with a bland air of moderation.
For this was before the treaty restoring “the Havannah” to Spain.
“I’m talkin’ about the hold they are takin’ on this country,” argued
“the Sinner.” “They are surrounding us”--an apprehension at that time
entertained by wiser men than he--“amongst all these wildernesses an’
with no defenses but two or three flimsy mud forts. They will retaliate
for the Havannah an’ Manilla on the frontier of the British colonies
in Ameriky. _Diablo!_ I tell you now, if that man in the Cherokee
country is one o’ them caballeros, what between the Spaniard an’ the
French an’ the Injuns the southern colonies is crushed.”
He brought his two shining feet together with a clap, the smart impact
denoting the small chance that aught intervening would have of escape.
The other men looked reflectively at the fire. They were as brave
as soldiers need to be, but the conditions of the frontier were of
various adverse interpretations. While they could march against an open
enemy readily enough, the chances of traps and massacres, of torture
and slavery in captivity, supplemented by the wiles of a civilized
power coalescing with the savages, and the ever recurrent doubt of
the ability of distant superior officers to cope with these untoward
circumstances so far removed from their observation, all combined to
give the soldiery many a more serious thought than appertained to their
humble functions as the hands that execute rather than the brain that
devises.
The corporal eyed “the Sinner” rancorously.
“Ye must be gittin’ them feet ready to gallopade up an’ down on extra
drill,” he said. “I’ll report you for spreading discontent among the
troops with your tomfool talk about them Dons.”
“Why,” said “the Sinner,” with a look of innocent surprise, “I was just
thinkin’ about all this talk o’ silk wums in Carolina an’ Georgia--when
in Spain--why you ought jus’ to see the wum farms amongst the
mulberries on the”--
“No--no--ye were talkin’ about that fellow up in the Cherokee country!”
persisted the corporal.
“Oh, yes,” admitted the wily “Sinner,” perceiving the evasion was
useless. “I was wonderin’ if the lad was a Spaniard to be stirrin’ up
such a commotion. There’s a deal too many o’ them on the continent now
to make it surprisin’ if he is one too!”
“I’ll tell ye, thin, me bye! ’tis Oirish he is,” declared the Hibernian
genially. “One o’ me own pattern. Whenever ye meet a distinguished
compatriot an’ don’t know wher he comes from, set him down for an’
Oirishman, bein’ a man o’ ganius!”
“He is a Scotchman I’ll wager,” said a native South Carolinian, for
already the leaven of disaffection against that nationality that had
helped to make the province strong and thrifty was beginning to work.
“A Scotchman, and not just one too many, either. A Scotch trader, I’ll
be bound, turned Cherokee. Some o’ the French get regularly adopted
into the tribes. I know some Scotch fellows among the Chickasaws that
are trying it, to trade the more handily, and I dare be sworn that this
makebate among the Cherokees is another Injun Sawney!”
This stirred Callum’s patriotism, the master key of a Scotchman’s heart.
“The man’s a Frenchman,” he said curtly.
“Did he sneeze in French?” demanded the jocose corporal.
Callum did not laugh. His eyes were fixed on the masses of red coals
beneath the flames of the fire that cast their continual flicker over
his dreamy retrospective face.
“I wad hae thought mysel’ he had been an Englishman, that is, a
Firginian,” he said reflectively, as if speaking to himself. “But no,
the man is French!”
The corporal scarce drew a breath. “Hey, Callum lad,” he contrived to
say with a casual intonation, “had ye ever seen him afore that day?”
“Ou, ay, many a time,” replied Callum, intent on his memories.
“Where, lad? where?”
Callum roused himself in returning consciousness.
“In the Cherokee country, man! At Ioco Town, at Jock Lesly’s
trading-house. We a’ took him for a Firginian.”
“And why do you think now he is French? Lieutenant Everard gave that
p’int up, they tell me.”
Callum hesitated. “I hae my ain reasons,” he said, but with such
finality of tone that the corporal pressed the matter no further.
When the guard was relieved the next morning, the officer of the day
found a point of importance noted in the written report of the officer
of the guard, and as a consequence Callum was surprised by a summons to
the presence of the commandant of the fort, to reply to a very queer
and childish question, as it seemed to him.
“How do you know that that man in the Cherokee country whom Lieutenant
Everard was--about to arrest”--Captain Howard put it as euphemistically
as possible, out of respect to a brother officer--“how do you know that
he is French?”
“I heard him speak French, sir, to himself--when he thought he was
alane.”
“But you know that an Englishman, any one who can learn the language,
can speak French.”
“Not like a Frenchman, sir,” persisted Callum.
Captain Howard hesitated. Of all things he would like to secure this
makebate, this formidable influence among the Cherokees, nay among
all the tribes, that had rendered the costly peace which had been
so difficult to secure, so long sought, but a hollow semblance, a
menacing sham. Moreover, he would be very glad to succeed where Everard
had failed. A very close clutch on distinction had the dapper young
lieutenant let slip. And here was the man who in the first instance had
afforded information.
“Have you no other reason for your belief?” Captain Howard asked
anxiously.
“Aye, sir, I ken he is French frae himsel’,” Callum replied calmly. “He
tauld a woman, sir, an’ she tauld me; but you will no ask me to mention
her name.”
“Certainly not,” said the officer, thinking that he wished to avoid
implicating others in responsibility; “a noncombatant in any event.
But,” eagerly, “would you know the fellow if you should see him again?”
“I wad, sir.”
“In any disguise?” the officer persisted.
“I wad indeed, sir, fu’ weel.”
“That is all for the present,” said Captain Howard. Callum gave him
an amazed stare, then saluted and withdrew, wondering at this puerile
futility. Would he know the man indeed!
XVII
WITH all its advantages civilization bears also its disadvantages to
the postulant of culture. Perhaps no one has adequately appreciated
the stress of that period to the mental and moral nature of the Indian
when, detached from his _ancien régime_, its methods and manners,
growing scornful of its sanctities and questioning its values, he was
yet unaccustomed to the new order of things, unversed in its utilities,
incompetent of its comprehension--alienated from the one and not
acclimated to the other.
Many an Indian roamed about the little mart, beginning to gather under
the guns of Fort Prince George, alike surly with contempt for the old
and aversion for the new, unsettled, dissatisfied, dull, and dangerous.
Now and again, with a dark, restless eye, one would pause and look out
unallured to the forest and river--not the same, never again to be the
same! Then he would turn his gaze, with loathing disgust, to the busy
mercantile Europeans, with their quick trading talk, their bearded
faces, their knee breeches, and the long woolen stockings on their
stout, thick calves. A queer and odious presentment of humanity they
seemed. Even the military did not impress the Indians as the soldiers
whirled and ranged about to the sound of fife and drum in that close
order so favorable to being mowed down by the very musket and ball
with which they themselves were armed. A strange mental atmosphere it
was--charged with the fumes from the embers of the burned-out past and
the miasma exhaled from the poisonous present. No wonder their outlook
was beclouded and drear.
All the conditions of life hitherto were reversed for many of them.
Never had they met the representatives of certain tribes, immemorial
enemies, save with weapons in their hands. Now, because of the
intrusion of the white man and the diversion of interest that he had
effected, a hollow peace or a simulated indifference had been patched
up. Between many the semblance was fast growing into reality under
the influence of that secret hope, nay, that earnest, triumphant,
almost holy expectation of national independence that had been
held in abeyance of late and which the colonists perceived without
interpreting. It made for a universal friendship among them, and the
traders chafed at its result, for intertribal war sold gunpowder,
utilized the venomous activities of the savages against each other, and
thus gave immunity to the white settlers. This almost visible bond in
the unity of friendship of these hereditary enemies was a menace to all
the English colonies from the mountains to the Atlantic, outnumbered
by their negro slaves, and with the threatening Spaniard on the south
and the inimical French on the west. The frontier traders scanned the
horizon that showed so strange a portent, and muttered much together
and shook their heads.
To Mingo Push-koosh this prospect of universal brotherhood among the
tribes promised little. He wandered drearily about the world, a vagrant
indeed, almost an outcast. There had been much ill blood between the
Cherokees and Choctaws on his account, although no definite national
war was inaugurated, since the French influence had been exerted
to maintain intertribal peace and secure satisfaction. However,
sundry individual reprisals for the iniquities that celebrated the
_congé_ of Mingo Push-koosh at Great Tellico had resulted in
counter-reprisals till, when two braves of the respective factions
chanced to meet in the settlement about Fort Prince George, nervous
people instinctively dodged in expectation of the smartly sped arrow or
the impulsively hurled tomahawk, and prudent people sought the nearest
shelter. Indeed Mingo Push-koosh would not have ventured here within
the borders of the Cherokee country but for the protection of the guns
of the British fort. He was not safe inside the French boundaries, his
wonted sphere, for he had been bereft of all the honors and privileges
he had once enjoyed. In fact he had been sought with a view to condign
punishment, a price being placed on his head when the authorities at
New Orleans had learned of his betrayal of trust and desertion of
Laroche, leaving him after the massacre in the hands of the Cherokees,
which must have proved fatal to him and the interests he represented
but for his own perseverance and address.
An exile thus, Mingo Push-koosh affected the English settlements, an
avowed deserter to the British interest, protesting that his eyes were
opened to the French wiles and that the French spoke with the tongue
of a snake _seente soolish_, the mere sound of which made his
heart weigh very heavy within him. These statements were received with
a certain indifference, for by reason of his exile he could not bring
any great personal following to the English flag; in fact, but for the
hope that his presence might decoy others of his tribe to imitate his
example, Mingo Push-koosh[11] would scarcely have been regarded at
all. Proud and ambitious, he realized the necessity of pressing more
efficaciously his own cause, and would have embraced the opportunity of
any military service--but how? and whither?
Poor Push-koosh! Disregarded by the English, and in actual danger
from the French, the pompous Prince Baby had now naught in hand of
more import than the mercantile venture of selling a dozen or so fine
horses, which he had caused to be driven from his old home at Yowanne,
through the southern country, to Jock Lesly, who desired them for
use in his pack-trains to Charlestown in the spring, laden with the
skins from this winter’s hunt. The sale accomplished to-day, Mingo
Push-koosh strolled about, forlorn, friendless, among the boxes and
bales on the platform of Jock Lesly’s trading-house at Keowee Town.
His thick long hair floated in the breeze; his silver arm-plates and
headband were as bright as of yore, but a deep dejection showed in his
large surly eyes, and he had the effect of a drooping crest, albeit the
flamingo feathers still flaunted high.
“_Ish la chu, angona?_” (Are you come, friend?) A Chickasaw who
passed offered the conventional salutation, knowing of the Choctaw’s
defection from the French interest, for the sub-tribes (including the
Choccomaw) of the ancient Chicimecas have almost a common language.
“_Arahre-O angona!_” (I am come indeed, friend!) Push-koosh
replied, although he could hardly refrain from springing upon the
Chickasaw as he passed and tearing the scalp from his head with his
teeth, if need were.
The incident concluded, he continued to idle about the trading-house,
standing on the platform and gazing at the gray river under a gray sky.
The water was dark--all the light in the landscape seemed concentrated
in the icy flicker in the leafless forests near the Indian town of
Keowee which lay on both banks. Then he shifted his position and stood
on the other end of the platform and gazed silently at the bastions of
the fort. Whenever he saw the British flag he could not refrain from
spitting his disdain openly, obviously, on the ground. Fearing lest
this demonstration be observed, as the flag flaunted from the fort,
he once more turned impatiently and changed his position to the other
end of the platform, as before. He was absorbed in the reflection that
the great coalition of Indian tribes would at last become a triumphant
fact and that he would have no share in it. This fair prospect he had
forfeited, with the favor of the French; as for the English, they would
have none of him, would trust him with no opportunity of value.
So long he stood there that the under-trader grew a trifle solicitous
as to his designs. The degenerate among the Indians had become most
expert thieves, and it is recorded that while engaged in conversation
with the merchant they could abstract what articles they would from
under his eyes. Alas, poor Push-koosh--whose thoughts were of empire!
Dougal Micklin, the under-trader, a pursy, unimaginative man, all of
whose mental processes could be discerned in his round face and his
merry dark eyes, with his round, burly body encased in buckskins and
wearing a coonskin cap set rather far back from his placid brow, was
loath to take his eyes from the Choctaw, visible through the wide
barn-like door, and therefore mentioned his identity to Captain Howard,
the commandant of the fort, who chanced to be in the house purchasing
some buttons for his own personal use.
“Aye, sir, three and sax the dozen, sir,” Dougal Micklin said, as he
glanced again out of the door; then, as if to excuse his evidently
wandering attention, he continued, “That Choctaw buck is an unco gret
prince, Captain,” his red lips curling with good-natured sarcasm at the
idea. “He used to be in high favor wi’ the French, but he fell out wi’
the mounseers at Tellico Gret, and now seems to have his finger in his
mouth.”
Captain Howard turned suddenly and surveyed the figure of the Indian,
as Push-koosh, unconscious of this keen scrutiny, stood sullen and
dreary on the platform. The fringes of his saffron-hued buckskin shirt
and leggings were all borne backward in the breeze, his stiff scarlet
flamingo feathers and his long black hair were aslant also without
other stir, as if he might have been pictured thus on a canvas. His
heavily embroidered belt, shot pouch, and tobacco bag, his silver
headband and bracelets, his necklace of pearls and many strings of
“roanoke,” the fine silver-mounted pistols at his side, all seemed to
confirm the truth of the trader’s representations as to his high rank.
“’Tis Mingo Push-koosh!” the trader added.
“Call him in,” said Captain Howard. Then with an afterthought, “No,
I’ll speak to him myself!”
The officer striding out confronted the Choctaw just as again, catching
a glimpse of the British flag, Mingo Push-koosh was about to spit his
disaffection upon the ground.
“How?” said Captain Howard, smiling agreeably.
Push-koosh was visibly surprised, but looked inconceivably haughty.
“How?” he returned with half covert, scornful disapprobation, and
waited in doubt.
Now Captain Howard’s education was lamentably defective as far as the
Choctaw, practically the Chickasaw language was concerned, although the
latter Indians were those with whom he had had most dealings, as they
had repeatedly served in the campaigns in this region with the British
troops. Nevertheless, in the delicate and tentative bit of business
which he had in contemplation, he did not desire the offices of an
interpreter lest a bird of the air carry the matter.
Lending himself to the effort to compass speech as it were without
words, he smiled again blandly with a distinctly mollifying effect.
“Big Mingo!” he said, waving his hand with a free gesture to impart
added grace to his compliment.
He was a tall, bony, angular man of forty-five, and the demonstration
ill suited the stiff military dignity of his habitual carriage and the
impressive effect of his scarlet uniform.
“_Capteny Humma Echeto!_” (Great red captain!) responded the
Mingo, complimentary in turn.
Then they both paused and stared hard at each other.
“Mingo love British?” demanded the captain at length.
Nothing could have been more sardonic than the languishing smile with
which Push-koosh laid his hand upon his true heart.
“Mingo hate French?” the political catechism proceeded.
The face of Push-koosh suddenly darkened. He spat his contempt on the
ground.
“_Hottuk ookproose!_” (The accursed people!)
“Why hate French?” the inquisitor proceeded.
The heart of Push-koosh swelled. His eyes burned hot in their sockets.
The veins of his throat were distended and tense as cords. He could
hardly speak even fragmentarily, and but for the straining of every
sense to hear, to distinguish, to interpret, Captain Howard might have
made but little of the jargon of broken English that the Choctaw hissed
out in the intervals between his gasps of rage.
The ugly French “beloved man” had betrayed him, had ruined his
prospects! He had slandered him to the headmen of Great Tellico! And
because he had quitted the Cherokee country on account of their ill
usage, and left the French ugly “beloved man” there,--who had sustained
no harm whatever!--the indescribably ugly French governor in New
Orleans was angry.
Captain Howard had caught so eagerly at the words “Great Tellico” that
although his ears were not of such a conformation and flexibility that
they could be described as “pricked up,” his countenance had that vivid
accession of intelligence that seems concomitant.
“Mingo go Tellico?”
Push-koosh’s face, gradually brightening in the expectation of a
commission of some important sort, fell suddenly. He remembered that
fierce onset upon the unoffending Cherokee tribesmen, that bloody
massacre! No, not to Tellico, as he valued his life! Never again to
Tellico, never again!
“Capteny much wants Mingo go Tellico!” urged Captain Howard
persuasively.
The passionate mobile countenance of Push-koosh, with naught firm in
its lines save the determination to go no more to Tellico, was turned
toward the river, the wind blowing backward his long loose hair, so odd
of effect here among the Cherokees, whose heads were all polled, his
great eyes absent and anxious, his earnest hope of employment in the
British interest slipping beyond his reach. But not to Tellico--never
again!
“Capteny much wants French ‘beloved man’!” Captain Howard murmured
plaintively.
Push-koosh brought his small even teeth together with so sudden a snap
and gasp that the officer instinctively drew back a step.
“Does the beast bite?” he said to himself.
“Fort Prince George? Bring ‘beloved man’? Capteny wants?” Push-koosh
asked, the words coming one after another, one upon another, in the
joyous turbulence of sudden comprehension.
Push-koosh could do this for the _Capteny Humma Echeto_ without
the necessity to repair to Great Tellico. In that secret knowledge
of the scheme of the now almost united tribes, many details, seeming
of but scant significance, were obvious to those who had with them
but little concern. For instance, the gossip brought by the tribesmen
who had driven hither his horses had not till now seemed of moment
to Push-koosh. A conference was in contemplation, to be held at
_O-tel-who-yau-nau_ (Hurricane Town), in the country of the Lower
Muscogees, and several noted chiefs were to be present, especially
certain disaffected spirits who desired to lay their views before the
French governor through the medium of his “beloved man,” Lieutenant de
Laroche, who with an escort of Cherokees was to come down expressly
from Great Tellico. The choice of Hurricane Town had been in honor and
placation of Padgee (the Pigeon), its mico, for he was well known to
have hesitated and to be grievously ill at ease at the renunciation
of British favor and British trade. The journey of the “beloved man”
Laroche would lie, it is true, through a country especially friendly
to him and his plans, but Push-koosh knew when the fleet of canoes and
pettiaugres would be expected on Flint River, and it might be--lurking
near--some opportunity--
His deft fingers trembled upon the trigger of his fine pistol.
Captain Howard touched his arm.
“No!” the officer said with the ringing tones of authority. “Alive!”
“Alive?--the French ‘beloved man’?” Push-koosh faltered.
Captain Howard was thinking very fast. In those days when rewards were
offered for the scalps of various nationalities of Indians and white
men one could hardly be more certain of the genuineness of a head of
hair than if it were a wig. Captain Howard had some knowledge of a
flaxen scalp riven from the head of an unoffending German colonist and
of the effort to make it pass current for a Spaniard’s jetty hair by an
Indian more disingenuous than discerning. The astute Push-koosh would
never so far disregard the probabilities, but Captain Howard wanted no
cheap English auburn locks from the nearest convenient British station.
He must needs be sure of that subtle brain beneath the thatch. The man
in person--naught else would satisfy him. “Alive--well--the ‘beloved
man’ all in one piece!” he declared slowly, definitely.
He took his netted silk purse from his pocket and began to
significantly count the golden guineas from one hand to the other.
Push-koosh seemed scarcely to notice. For a moment he was as if in a
daze. The breath came quick from between his parted lips; his teeth
showed slightly, giving him a strange savagery of aspect; his eyes
glanced hither, thither restlessly, as if he were seeking to gauge the
various points of difficulty in the undertaking. He had not moved, but
the wind still fluttered in the fringes of his saffron buckskin suit
and in the crest of scarlet flamingo feathers, and the light of the
dull day gleamed with a white metallic glister upon the silver headband
above his dark flat forehead.
His eyes seemed suddenly afire when Captain Howard, eager that there
should be no mistake in identity, asked abruptly, “Are you sure that
you would know this French ‘beloved man’ of Tellico if you should see
him again?”
Push-koosh stared for a moment motionless. Then he bent himself
suddenly backward as if struck by a flaw of wind. He caught both hands
to his lips as if to intercept the cry that escaped,--a fierce, shrill,
tremendous note expanding through all the heavy silence of the gray
day, and seeming to strike with the clamors of its savage joy against
the gates of heaven.
XVIII
WHEN very quietly in the sombre depths of the midnight Callum
MacIlvesty, according to orders communicated abruptly to him by the
commandant, groped down to the river bank, the vague current barely
glimpsed by the scintillation of some star in the ripples soon obscured
by the scudding clouds, he took his seat in a boat with only two dark
figures, motionless, unknown, invisible, for traveling companions. The
river under the shadow of the banks was as black as Styx, and as silent
as Charon was the boat’s crew. On the opposite side, the Indian town of
Keowee lay hushed and absolutely still. Once a dog barked, apprised in
some subtle manner of the enterprise going forward, for there was no
noise of movement, no word spoken. At the fort only the window of the
guardroom was alight, and one listening might hear or fancy the vague
footfall of the sentry walking his limited beat. The gleam from the
window was but a twinkle in the gloom, and only now and again a star
shone out responsive from the clouds. The muffled oars did not rattle
in the locks; there was hardly a perceptible impact as the blades were
immersed in the water. The vague sense of gliding in the darkness away,
swiftly away, from all the familiar world, from all that represented
his experience hitherto and civilized life, whither he hardly knew,
with whom he could not imagine, impressed Callum MacIlvesty’s mind with
a very definite repugnance for his errand, and for all the secrecy and
mystery with which it had been invested. He wondered, as the sense
of distance increased, as the shadow that marked the site of the
town merged indistinguishably into the darkness, as the twinkle that
indicated the fort glimmered afar off, then was extinguished utterly,
whether his invisible and silent companions knew more of him than he of
their identity.
“Captain Howard needna hae feared I’d set mysel’ a-talkin’,” he said
to himself, realizing that the party had been thus unexpectedly and
silently hustled off in order that naught might transpire of their
mission, nay, that their absence might not even be noticed at the fort,
till the scheme was well on its way to execution. “I’m nane o’ the sort
to be given to idle clavers.”
His companions might have this failing, however, he reflected, and thus
he drew his plaid about him and wrapped himself in silent cogitation as
in the garment.
Each of the party was himself too surly, or perhaps too proud, or
it may be too doubtful of the others to express curiosity. Without
a whisper, hearing each other breathe, now and again touching one
another, a knee, an elbow, in moving in the strait quarters, they
slipped like a phantom craft, a crew of shadows, past the wharf and the
trading-house, past the group of canoes and pettiaugres anchored or
beached there, past a great Indian camp of the peltry hunters, down and
down the river, the current aiding the regular strokes of the oars and
bearing them swiftly on.
Naught was roused along the banks except an owl, that hooting after
them sent a gibing echo full of quaint vocables far along the reaches
of the darkling river; and once a great splash in the water close
at hand startled the oarsman, and the craft shot further out toward
the centre of the stream. It was a wolf marauding in the woods and
springing into the water’s edge, but although he howled for a space
naught seemed to hear save the solitary night and the stars now
venturing forth and now lost in the tumult of the unquiet clouds. The
dank wind grew chillier; the darkness more dense; then came a semblance
of vision in which one realized rather than saw great gusty bursts of
rain and erratic flaws of wind striking across the surface of the river.
At length two vague pallid strata of dull clear sky revealed to Callum
an old cornfield, a vast plain whose evidence of agriculture was but
a memento of the past; a charred skeleton of a burnt Indian town, now
without a tenant, a relic of the Cherokee War; the brown rain-soaked
forests beyond with voluminous clouds bulging down among the treetops;
the steely expanse of the river swirling under the fall of the torrents
and the rush of the wind; and opposite to him, crouching in the bottom
of the boat, Mingo Push-koosh!
The Choctaw, too, had been keenly watching for the earliest glimmer
of dawn that should discover to him the faces of his silent comrades,
and Callum, although knowing naught of the name or rank or nature of
the man, recoiled from the look in the Indian’s eye. Push-koosh stared
angrily yet maliciously at his changing expression, then daunted a
trifle by the arsenal of arms which the Highlanders of that day bore,
dirk, claymore, pistols, musket and bayonet, marking the stalwart
strength evinced by the soldier’s attitude as he lay at his ease in the
bow, the Mingo smoothed his ruffled crest, as if he would treacherously
bide his time.
“Does Captain Howard count me no human that he suld send me campaigning
wi’ a panther?” Callum asked himself in amazement.
“The big Capteny thinks the two white men will make short work of poor
Prince Baby,” Push-koosh reflected, and when he addressed himself to
rearranging his arms, as he shortly did on the pretext of protecting
them from the weather, he reloaded his pistols with balls previously
dipped in poison and thus rendered deadlier than before, by reason of
the extraordinary aptitude which the Indians possessed in toxicology.
Only one other was of the party,--the English soldier floutingly
called, from his oft-told experiences in Spain, the Señor,--“Sinner”
Kenney. To him the Highlander seemed hardly less savage than the
Choctaw. The vast wilderness, in this strange and solitary duty,
impressed him as appalling; the character of the hardships and dangers
to be encountered was not what he had expected; his spirits had sunk
immeasurably low.
All day long they held their course in the chill invisibilities of the
mist and rain, two now rowing continually, with the third to lighten
the labor by alternating regularly with the others. The night passed
in the same dreary fashion, each sleeping by turns, that the craft
might make all the speed possible. Little good-fellowship prevailed.
The Choctaw hated them both alike with the rancor of his race and his
prejudice against aught that was British, which he had acquired from
his service with the French; and yet they were formidable soldiers, and
their prowess awed him. “The Sinner” scorned the Choctaw as altogether
beneath his notice, although he repented swiftly any word or act that
might be accounted overt aggression, for the Indian was obviously
dangerous. Connected conversation was practicable only between the
two white men; but “Sinner” Kenney resented the Highlander’s repute
of superiority to his station, and was by turns flippantly offensive
in manner or surlily rude. There being no solid substratum of
good-heartedness and comradeship in him, Callum felt that there was no
pulse in common between them that might atone for the English soldier’s
boorishness and coarse manners, repugnant to a man of refined breeding.
MacIlvesty therefore had little or nothing to say except as regarded
the expediting of their progress, and “the Sinner’s” alternating
jocularities and impertinences failed for the most part to take effect
by reason of the impassiveness of the Highlander and the lack of
comprehension on the part of the Choctaw.
After they had entered the Savannah River “the Sinner” began to
flatter himself with the prospect of meeting other river craft--this
broad stream being a highway of trade--and of seeing denizens of
the world hailing from the region below; but his hopes of social
interest and cheery converse were dashed by the rain and the mist
which closed down impenetrably. More than one settlement they passed
wrapped in invisibility in the cloud, as if they themselves were some
undiscriminated element of the atmosphere. When at last the vapors
began to shift and the sun to shine with a warmth all at variance
with the calendar, as it was interpreted at Fort Prince George, where
November, chill and drear, had worn away, they were once more in the
density of the wilderness; and suddenly one day, Push-koosh, who was
steering, gave the boat a deft turn, sent it swiftly shooting in to the
bank, letting it run up a little inlet. Then he sprang out; and as it
was lightened of the weight of Callum, who had stepped on shore, the
Choctaw pulled the craft up on land with the amazed “Sinner” sitting in
it.
He protested. “_Diablo!_ Are we to leave the boat here?” he cried
aghast, looking about him at the pathless subtropical wilderness.
“This gude man kens the way,” said Callum with frigid staidness. “Here
is the captain’s chart he gied me his nainsel’.”
The round head of the experienced English foot-soldier bent over the
paper. There was no mistaking the place. The inflowing of a little
tributary on the Carolina side, the proximity of a ridge hard by, a
series of prehistoric tumuli at no great distance, all sufficiently
identified the locality. And what was that indicated toward the
southwest, across the breadth of what is now the State of Georgia--a
path marked out in red ink? But there was no corresponding suggestion
on the face of the tangled wooded country.
“_Voto á Dios!_ I wish his ‘nainsel’ was in perdition! An’ this
is the ‘gude man’ who knows the way! He looks ‘gude’ enough to guide
us to hell! _Dios mio!_” suddenly catching himself, “the Injun
doesn’t understand the lingo, does he? _Cielos!_ he is a fearsome
beast!”
Callum imperiously cut short his complaints by striking off through
the swamp. Push-koosh, whose outlook at life had brightened since
discovering that his comrades were each as obnoxious to the other as
to him, and that all three were of a mind only in antagonism to the
personnel of the expedition, did not hesitate to imitate the example.
With the peculiar easy gait of the Choctaw he set out at a speed that
bade fair to try the mettle of the tall Highlander.
“Sinner” Kenney lingered. He looked up the broad, sunny expanse of the
brimming river, then over to the Carolina side, noting the bright,
soft aspect of the wintry world that would fain emulate the tender,
restful peace of early spring. The flowers were not dead, it seemed
to say, only asleep, and this bland zephyr might well rouse them with
its sweet blandishments. The ripples played within an oar’s length of
the boat. He could with his single strength slide it down into the
water and in five minutes be rowing briskly on his return trip to Fort
Prince George. He would doubtless be able to devise some plausible
explanation that would pass muster; for instance, that he had been
accidentally separated from his companions; that the Highlander carried
the chart and compass; that thus lost in the trackless wilderness his
only possibility of extrication had been to take the boat and forthwith
return up the river to Fort Prince George.
And indeed as he gazed adown the shadowy region of the swamp on the
Georgia side, he thought it looked much like a country in which a man
might easily disappear never to return. Albeit heavily wooded, it was
in great part submerged with water of varying depth. At the nearest
verge he marked a long loglike protuberance, which he realized was an
alligator half sunken in mud and ooze. A white heron gleamed amidst
the dusky aisles, standing motionless among those curious roots of the
cypress called “knees,” which projected high above the dim surface
of the black water wherein they grew. The long stately stems of the
tall trees themselves were reflected, pallid and columnar, by myriads
from the glimmering dark expanse of the swamp, thus duplicating the
densities of the half submerged forests, funereally draped with hanging
gray moss in endless festoons. It seemed to stretch out illimitably,
this nondescript world that was neither navigable nor yet practicable
as dry land. And what might be the result of a failure to compass a
fair passage?--and what were the conditions of the region on the other
side? All were dependent upon the accuracy of Captain Howard’s chart
of this untried, unknown world, and the good faith and fair dealing of
Mingo Push-koosh! And still gazing, motionless, intent, “the Sinner”
hesitated.
Down the vistas of the forest the soldier’s eye was suddenly caught
by the vanishing figures of the Highlander and the Choctaw, and the
extraordinary speed and ease of their gait struck his attention and
roused his emulation.
“Do they think they can beat me on a forced march--that Sawney,
stepping like a crane, and the Choctaw with his little bandy dogtrot?”
He critically appraised their powers. His professional pride was
enlisted. He suddenly set his hands one on each side of his trig little
body, and like machinery fell the sure even lengths of the military
double-quick; and so, speedily overhauling his companions, he went with
them down into the depths of the dank forests.
The sun rose high above the river and gilded the tip of every lustrous
dark wavelet and illumined the live oaks with an emerald splendor.
In the shadowy swamp where the “snowy” heron stood among the cypress
knees, the hanging wealth of gray moss caught the enriching beams and
glistered, fibrous and silver, from the branches of the tall white
marble-like pillars of the trees. The little boat still lay empty,
motionless, within an oar’s length of the dancing water.
“Sinner” Kenney thought of the craft many times afterward, and sighed
for its relinquishment as for a folly; for the dreary, mutinous,
fatiguing experience set at naught all the numerous previous hardships
of his chequered career. The physical stress in itself was great. The
Choctaw, who set the pace, could keep the same gait all day and cover
the same great distance day after day, a task under which the two
white men languished and flagged and almost succumbed. It would have
been impossible to support the contempt of Mingo Push-koosh in their
failure, and his triumph in his own superiority, had it not been for
the counter-opportunity to jeer in turn, which was afforded them by the
oft recurrence of the watercourses in the Creek country; for Push-koosh
could not swim. Sometimes an opportune tree uprooted by a storm
afforded a footbridge for crossing a stream. More frequently the rivers
were of a breadth that rendered this impossible, especially since the
autumn floods from the mountains had swollen them beyond all precedent.
Push-koosh must have drowned or turned back but for the assistance of
his comrades, unwillingly given, by no means a friendly service, and
only in the interests of the expedition.
With a hand on the shoulder of each stalwart swimmer, Push-koosh, limp
with terror and horror, was propelled through the water. He was spared
much, however, in that he could speculate only vaguely on the meaning
of “the Sinner’s” fleer while in transit, half intended to frighten the
Choctaw and half from natural and involuntary malice. “_Vamos poco
á poco, amigo!_ Let’s drop him now, Sawney! Here is a deep hole!
_Porqué no?_”
They suffered much from the weight of their arms and provisions,
for Captain Howard had wisely decreed that each should be his own
commissariat and none the burden bearer of the others, and when
the Highlander lost his salt in the river neither of the other two
would give him of their store, and the food of Callum MacIlvesty was
bitter for a more æsthetic reason, as he ate it unsalted beside the
fire at night, each man cooking for himself. They wrangled much,
despite their lack of verbal facilities; they quarrelled over their
chart, their compass, the possibilities of shortening the way by
deviating from their instructions and essaying a more direct route,
and sometimes their relations during the day would become so strained
that as they lay down by the camp-fire at night, they were fairly
afraid of one another, lest malice develop into menace. The Scotchman
had his national quarrel with the Englishman, and called him “pock
pudding,” and threatened to “knock his harns out.” The Englishman
derided the poverty of the Scots, and told gleeful tales of the lack
of sophistication of “Highland recruities” in his experience, in
comparison with whom, he declared, Push-koosh, the Choctaw, was a
man of the world. Push-koosh laughed alike at the Highlander’s kilt
and the English soldier’s scarlet breeches. “The Sinner” twitted the
Choctaw for his artificially flattened head; and they all would decline
to mend the camp-fire to keep off the wolves until green eyes would
be glistening close at hand in the underbrush, and the growl that
heralds the pouncing spring would sound threateningly on the chill
night air. But the preëminent triumph of Push-koosh came when they
encountered more savage denizens of the woods than wolves. His was the
craft to detect the approach of other Indians; to avoid rencontre; to
erase all trace of their passage through the woods; to slip like a
ghost, invisible as it were, between camps under cover of darkness;
to skirt with infinite skill the verges of Indian towns. Once they
were followed by a dog, baying discovery at every step, at last coming
so close that only the discharge of an arrow stilled his telltale
cry. Once, strangely enough, a little child tottered along the deer
path after them, with some vague mistake of identity in its infantile
brain, and Push-koosh, being minded to thus effectively stop its
approach,--“’Tis but a Muscogee,” he said,--Callum placed his pistol
at the Mingo’s temple, and even “the Sinner” threatened reprisal. In
the midst of the wrangle some aboriginal instinct of danger stirred in
the adventurous three-year-old, and after one long dismayed, open-eyed,
and open-mouthed stare, it turned about on its fat legs and took its
tottering flight homeward, too young to recount what it had seen or to
understand what it feared.
As they neared the southern confines of the Muscogee country the Indian
towns became more frequent, and detection by bands of Creeks coming
and going through was imminent. This was the extreme crisis of peril,
for naught could save the lives of the two British soldiers and their
Choctaw guide if captured in this expedition through the country of
the inimical Muscogees, who now were impatiently awaiting the signal
of their French liberator to rise with all the united Indian tribes
against the English rule.
Now it was that the individual traits of each of the party were
asserted in such wise as to demonstrate the wisdom of the commandant’s
choice of the personnel of the expedition,--the long-headed Callum’s
cool and adroit adaptation of even disasters to the common advantage,
and his steady endurance in the face of dangers; the resources of
the pluck and experience of the English soldier; the woodcraft, the
knowledge of Indian wiles and Indian counterwiles of the Mingo. The
hardy, invincible courage of all three animated them like a common
pulse, and they clung together now with a unanimity of sentiment that
might hardly have been expected from their earlier lack of all the
sterling qualities that make up good comradeship. Howard had expected
only one of the two white men to endure to the end, to survive the
hardships of the march, the inimical chances of environment, or
internecine strife amongst the three; but the trio were still together
one afternoon when they emerged from the woods on a bluff overhanging
the Flint River on the east, and there lay prone upon the ground,
silent, not so much as moving a muscle, invisible, save to the floating
American vulture circling high in the air in the majestic curves of its
strong flight. The opposite banks were low and fringed with woods, and
beyond and above, the red sunset of the lonely aboriginal days deployed
through the sky like a pageant. Naught broke the infinite stretch of
the wilderness, no shadow of cloud impinged on the glister of the
river. That the foot of man had ever touched these deep reclusive
solitudes only a great mound, artificially constructed, silent,
imposing, surmounted with forest growths nurtured by the summers of a
thousand years, attested his presence, his hopes, his griefs, and the
futility of all. Somehow its outline, imposed with such significance
against the range of purple hills in the distance, stretching afar
off under the red and amber sky, added a melancholy to the languorous
burnished haze, the slow down-dropping of the royal sun, so splendidly
vermilion, and bespoke a mysterious past and a future to come as
unrevealed.
The air was bland with all the suavity of a southern winter. The
foliage had changed as the successive stages of their journey had led
them on, as though they bore with them some benignant, embellishing
secret that blessed the world as they advanced. No more the ice-girt
bare bough, the sere leaf flying before the blast. The live oak, the
magnolia, the laurel, lifted splendid redundant foliage to glitter
glossy in the sun’s last rays, and the flutter of the paroquets made
the pecans merry. At a distance a palmetto tree stood out against the
sky, all solitary, as if some invisible sandy beach stretched below.
The subtle, alluring fragrance of the anise-tree was filling the air,
and the mocking-bird sang in the eternal spring, elated, even though
the night was coming on apace.
The woods had grown a gray purple; the river chanted a sylvan rune; a
star came out in the vermilion sky and shone aloft with a clear white
glister; and suddenly in the red and gray and green crystal lines of
the stream an alien sound was borne.
A sound it was as of paddles, rythmically striking the water. As it
grew nearer, louder, a deer that had led her fawn down to drink on the
opposite shore lifted her head, snuffed the air, stamped with her feet
all together, and with a bound was off, her fawn beside her, a mile
away, while still the concentric circles that her muzzle had stirred in
the water widened to larger circumference, while still the echo of the
fawn’s vague bleat of alarm and surprise floated softly to the bluff on
the summit of which the three emissaries lay silent.
And at last, rounding a point, came a fleet of canoes, gaudily
decorated, an incident of vivid color beneath the flaring sunset, and
as vividly reflected in the smooth water, tinged with all the secondary
splendors of the evening glow. Beneath an umbrella-shaped fan of
eagle feathers artificially mottled with crimson reclined the French
officer Laroche, recognizable by his keen Gallic features, his arrogant
military alertness of pose, albeit painted and arrayed with all the
aboriginal splendor appertaining to his adoptive state as a great
“beloved man” of the Cherokee nation. His weapons were a silver-mounted
dirk and ivory-handled pistols, while fully armed stalwart Cherokees
officiated as bodyguard and paddled the boat. The fleet shot so swiftly
along that three cautious heads, craftily lifted, with cautious eyes
keenly peering, could with difficulty distinguish the fact that the
other canoes were manned by Muscogees; the song that they half chanted,
half recited, was a pæan of greeting to the beloved officer of the
great French king and compared him with favor to sundry celebrities of
much note and value of their own tribe.
The three barely waited till this incident of the sunset was past,
seeming in its swiftness, its unreality, some shimmering illusion
of the haze-freighted air; in its wild chromatic grotesquerie, some
necromancy of the gorgeous zenith of amber and red, and the responsive
dream of the mirroring water. Then without one word they rose, struck
off by a short cut through the dank and darkening woods, and night
had hardly fallen before the chief of Hurricane Town, individually
averse to the French interest, was amazed by the trooping in of these
incongruous and irrelevant figures announcing themselves as the
accredited emissaries of Captain Richard Howard, and producing letters
from that officer in support of their assertion, duly confirmed when
read by the interpreter.
XIX
THE crash seemed afterward to Laroche like the fall of a castle of
cards, like the wreck wrought by the wind in the gossamer symmetries
of a cobweb, like a sudden awakening to the conditions of reality from
the allurements of a dream, so potent seemed the force, so tenuous the
fine-spun scheme when all its fibres were rent apart.
So unprescient had he been!
It was at _O-tel-you-yau-nau_ (Hurricane Town) that he met his
fate.
Following the many windings of the river, pausing at sundry villages
by the way to receive the protestations and rivet the adherence of the
gladly harkening Muscogees, he came to his objective point late the
next afternoon. A great black cloud seemed to have accompanied him; in
its midst were vivid darting lightnings, frequent and menacing for a
time, ever and anon showing convolutions of the vapor lighter in hue
and texture, superimposed, as it were, upon the denser darker masses.
Then all was dulled to a uniform consistency of tone and portent. The
huts of the town, the public square, the _chooc-ofau-thluc-co_,
or rotunda, the fields, whence the late harvests had been gathered,
all were overshadowed thus, and the forest surrounding them seemed to
support this canopy amongst its branches.
From out the town the mico and headmen had come to greet him when as
their heralded guest he had approached. With white swans’ wings they
had gently stroked his face on either side a hundred times or more
as he entered the public square; they had placed him beside the mico
on the great white seat of the chief’s council-room, _mic-ul-gee
in-too-pau_; they had smoked with him the friend-pipe, and the
cacina was brewed. Now and again sudden peals of thunder shook the
earth, and the yellow lightnings illumined the dreary gray stretches
of the forest and cloud and river and the humble little town, all
crouching, as it were, amidst these harbingers of the wrath of the
great elements.
So confident, so thoroughly at ease was Laroche that he could
not afterward remember when those vague _indicia_ of mental
disquietude first became perceptible in the manner of the mico Padgee
(the Pigeon). The French officer had known that this chief entertained
doubts as to the policy of an intertribal peace, as a constructive
constraint upon the powers and independence of the Creek Confederacy.
Laroche’s mission to Hurricane Town was partly to set at rest these
doubts and to present in contrast the great advantages which the
Muscogees would secure in the aid of all the tribal forces against
the English. Only united strength and united action could avail aught
against British encroachment. The national heads of the Muscogee
Confederacy had formally acceded to this view, but Padgee was a man
of influence, and his unreserved support was desired. A scrupulous
heed the mico seemed to give to Laroche’s talk of the advantages of
the great Indian coalition, which was to be the subject of official
discussion on the morrow upon the arrival of two other chiefs of the
vicinity, whose wavering allegiance he desired to confirm by personal
influence. Padgee seemed to ponder in dubitation upon every head of the
discourse when, the ceremonies of welcome concluded, the two talked
the matter over as they sat apart in the great assembly rotunda. Once
the Indian said that the plan of Iberville many years ago was not then
new. The Muscogee was a union of many adoptive tribes, the great Creek
Confederacy, long before Iberville’s idea of the force of a united
people was ever promulgated. It was the Creek policy,--absorption and
consolidation. It was also the policy of the Six Nations, the Long
House.
“It is unique and new in its aims and power,” Laroche argued, “the
union of all the tribes for common aggression and common defense, to
maintain aboriginal independence against European intrusion; whereas
the scheme of the Creek Confederacy was to protect Creek interests
only.”
Padgee made haste to nod his feathered head with a mutter of
acquiescence; then he fixed his eyes attentively upon the circling
figures of the tadpole dance, _Toc-co-yula-gau_, performed by four
Indian braves and four squaws on the hard-trodden floor of the great
assembly rotunda. The shadows duplicated their feathered heads upon the
red painted earthen walls, and beyond the mad whirl of substance and
semblance Laroche could look forth through the great portal opposite
and see the night lowering, purple and black, and note how the storm
gathered and bided its time, while the yellow lightnings now and again
keenly flashed. He began to fancy that some deft hand had sown seeds
of dissatisfaction more formidable in their upspringing than dragon’s
teeth. He was sure some English suggestion had drawn the parallel
between the limited policy of the Creek Confederacy and the universal
brotherhood promised by the union of all tribes. Still more definite
was the echo of an intrusive voice in the councils when Padgee opined,
with many an involution, that he loved old times and old ideas best.
Said they of earlier years,--wiser than the men of to-day,--that it
was well that the British and French should fight each other. Thus the
Muscogees between, courted by both, had much peace--except when it
pleased them to conquer and absorb smaller tribes.
This was impossible now, Laroche argued, since the Cherokees had joined
fortunes once and for all with the French, who also commanded the
Choctaw allegiance. The Muscogees could not alone maintain neutrality.
He spoke sharply, and then checked himself that he should be so
definitely nettled. Hurricane Town was at best inconsiderable. Padgee
was not a representative man. To-morrow would bring the important
chiefs whose suspected dissatisfaction could be obviated by conceding
their reasonable desires. This was no official occasion, and Padgee
doubtless was taking advantage of the _tête-à-tête_ to bring
forward his discontents that he might be remembered when lubricating
presents were in order, to make the project run the more smoothly. He
was obviously talking to hear himself talk! Nevertheless, Laroche was
conscious of an increase of impatience when the voice of Padgee, more
like a hawk than a dove, was once more rising on the air with a queer
blending of plaint and discontent and apology.
He meant no harm, said Padgee. He loved the officer of the great French
king like a brother. But the British goods were well named, being good!
And he sighed, as being loath to relinquish the values of a trade so
long enjoyed.
Floutingly, as if he hardly cared to reply at all, Laroche averred that
French merchandise was famous for its quality all the world over, and
more than that, it was cheap.
Once more Padgee caught himself and protested that it was not for him
to say; the Creek national headmen would decide the question.
“They _have_ decided it long ago,” Laroche interrupted him.
Certainly, Padgee was aware of that, but he felt the loss.
_O-tel-you-yau-nau_ (Hurricane Town) had been a favorite stand of
the British traders in times past, and the people loved them.
The long serpentine lines of the lighted cane burning upon the floor
were growing dim, flickering, dying out gradually. The dreary night
without in the quick keen flashes of the lightning was brighter, more
distinct, than the dome-shaped rotunda sinking into shadow. The dance
was over, the place nearly empty of people. Laroche rose suddenly with
a more indubitable monition of treachery. He looked about him for his
Cherokee bodyguard. Secure among friends, he had dismissed them to
enjoy the hospitalities and return the courtesies of their coadjutors
of the new alliance. Padgee, noting the movement, rose too, speaking
very rapidly, as if there were scant time to be lost, while the great
spaces of the _chooc-ofau-thluc-co_ darkened yet more duskily
and the vague lights of the cane trembled to extinction. Outside, the
lightning unsheathed its vivid blades, flashing athwart the sky, and
the thunder pealed and burst explosively and rolled away, muttering, to
the further hills.
It was a long time, said Padgee plaintively, since a British trader had
been able to ply his kind and beneficent vocation in Hurricane Town for
fear of the martial French at Fort Toulouse; and since the French sent
no traders to the villages, save now and then a mere peddler, slipping
back and forth from his fort, afraid of his shadow, the Indians of
Hurricane Town were often utterly destitute of all those artificial
supplies which they needed, so civilized had they come to be. They were
fit to die of shame should any one observe how far behind the fashion
of the day had they trailed. Only very recently a Chickasaw chief had
come to Hurricane Town in a splendid embroidered suit from a British
trader, and he, the great mico, Padgee, had naught in which to meet him
that was of European manufacture but a cocked hat and a pair of silver
shoe buckles.
He paused impressively. Doubtless he felt, as one might say in the
artistic jargon of this day, that these articles did not “compose well”
with the rest of his attire, a shirt of bead-wrought buckskin and
leggings decorated with turkey-cock spurs and fawn’s trotters. Laroche
made no reply. Somehow the crisis tingled in his nerves like some
electrical current before the event was precipitated.
Therefore, Padgee resumed very swiftly, some folk of a town far off--he
could not just say where--had come up to-night to meet the great French
officer and--confer with him concerning the condition of the British
trade.
Laroche turned upon him.
“Padgee!” he exclaimed, “is this well? I have eaten your bread, I have
eaten your salt!”
The mico hesitated at the last moment, but half hearted in his deceit.
Perhaps the appeal to the sanctions of his rude hospitality might have
availed even now, but its force was abrogated by the possibilities. The
British soldiers awaited no longer the preconcerted signal. Military
figures, barely distinguishable in the gloom from other shadows of
the darksome place, were climbing down from behind the tiers of seats
of the primitive amphitheatre; and although one, “the Sinner,” lost
his footing and fell rolling down the descent with great thumps, the
Highlander was upon Laroche so quickly, so powerfully, that his strong
hand stifled the cry for help.
It was managed with infinite address and secrecy, for the two British
soldiers would have fallen victims to their own temerity had they dared
to show themselves openly and alone, among the Indians, if unprotected
and at their mercy. As to the Choctaw, the mere revelation of his
personality, with a price upon his head, would have meant his death.
Therefore Padgee, armed with his authority as mico, headed the guard
of Muscogee braves, his own attendants, whom he designed to send with
the captors to Fort Prince George, and accompanied them several miles
on the return march. As he had long been inimical to the coalition
so earnestly advocated by the French, this fact was the reason that
Laroche had appointed Hurricane Town as the rendezvous of the lukewarm,
that he might be sure of gaining the ear of Padgee and confirming his
allegiance by argument and the example of others. It had needed but a
word from Push-koosh to acquaint Captain Howard with this important
circumstance, and the British officer in treating with the chief of
Hurricane Town had held out prospects of high advancement. Thereafter
Padgee had no need to complain of the lack of gold and European gewgaws
when visited by strangers; in fact, he was in case to disport himself
with a pride in apparel that might better befit a peacock than the
humble pigeon whose name he bore.
When the populace outside of the rotunda learned that the great
French “beloved man” had been arrested mysteriously in the British
interest, they received the news with a wild outcry of despair and
muttered threats and even efforts at rescue. More than one, especially
in the neighboring towns, suspected that the indifference of Padgee
to the success of the French schemes might have contributed to the
catastrophe, but none dreamed that the hospitality of Hurricane Town
had been violated, that Padgee had renounced the guest within the gates
and delivered him up to his enemies, to be dragged away by force to a
cruel doom. Hours had passed--indeed it was near day--before the news
transpired, and although the Cherokee bodyguard set out at once upon
the trail of the captors, they soon found that time itself could not
overtake the party. For themselves they were few, unprepared, in a
country bristling with hostile conditions, for the commandant at Fort
Toulouse, as soon as apprised of the catastrophe, sent out a detachment
to attempt a rescue, and the Cherokees feared to be held accountable
for the capture of the French officer as for a lapse of vigilance. They
therefore relinquished the effort, took moodily to their boat, refusing
the tearful condolences of Hurricane Town, and pulled up the Flint
River again, lamenting loudly all the way, to the Cherokee country.
What thoughts came to Laroche that stormy night as he half toiled and
was half dragged among his captors through the tangled ways of the
wilderness! A thousand vain regrets tortured him. The recapitulation
of events that might have been ordered otherwise trailed in long
sequences through his mind. A vision constantly recurred of a result
so different, seeming so real, that only a slight wrench of will would
be requisite to tear him from this oppressive dream which surely must
needs presently dissolve in obvious fact.
Nevertheless his intellectual faculties, heedful of cause and effect,
perceived that the flight was ordered with a craft that bade fair
to eliminate all chance of rescue or escape. That they should take
their way to the north or diagonally across Georgia was so obviously
their proper policy that Padgee turned their steps directly to the
south, whence none would dream of following. To increase the distance
more effectually and obliterate the traces of their passage through
the country, he availed himself of his own boat, hidden among the
saw-grass of the marshy borders of a neighboring watercourse, down
which they rowed and drifted out of all calculations of pursuit. Indeed
this deviation took them so far to the south that they could discern
the tang of salt water on the breeze, and hear the voice of the surf
singing the iterative song of the sea. Only then did they disembark and
take up the line of march toward the Savannah River once more.
Their progress was infinitely laborious; the weather had clouded,
and rain filled the marshes and overflowed the streams. Often a fire
was impracticable, and without shelter, short of food, in terror of
capture, and now and again endangered by faction, the sufferings of the
captors were hardly discounted by the anguish of the prisoner. Only
once did a chance of escape present itself.
Laroche had observed that the Highlander, now taking command of the
party, according to his orders, studiously prevented any opportunity
for the prisoner to speak apart with any single individual. MacIlvesty
had of course disarmed Laroche and taken from him all such valuables
as might tempt the integrity of the others.
“Is this a’ your gowd?” he asked.
“Untie my hands and receive my parole, or else run your own risks,”
retorted the French officer.
“An’ fine wad I like to do that, but it is contrary to my orders,” said
Callum kindly, “sae I maun e’en look to you mysel’.”
This he did with a vigilance that showed no possibility of relaxation
till one stormy night when they gained once more the banks of the
Savannah River and found their further progress barred; for their boat,
left there, to serve their return, had vanished.
It was near dawn when they made this discovery. The rain had ceased
at last, though the clouds were still scudding through the gusty
sky. A late waning moon showed in the east, infinitely melancholy in
the cloud-rack of the tempest. The simple voices of the denizens of
the swamp, overawed to silence by the violence of the storm, resumed
their vague indiscriminate nocturne, the shrilling of a screech-owl,
at intervals the noisy clangor of cranes, and once the bloodcurdling
scream, of a catamount. The party had halted on the crest of a ridge
overlooking the swollen watercourse, lashed to a swifter current
by the turbulence of the wind. The boat, which they had left with
every security in this solitary place, had been yet more definitely
concealed. A tricksy gust had upset it, and in the glimmering light, as
it floated bottom upward, it was not recognized.
As the two British soldiers patroled the banks, and now consulted
together, and again hastily resumed the search, Push-koosh, standing
near the prisoner, looking backward over his shoulder again and again,
murmured against this loss of time. Then once more he scanned the
woodsy track by which they had come, all glistening with moisture,
and illumined by the drear light of the waning moon. He so obviously
feared a rescue, that Laroche’s heart could but plunge at the prospect.
A heron cried out dismally from the dense cane and marshy tangles
beside the river, attesting the solitude. If but the rope that bound
his hands were cut! The two men on the margin below passed the boat and
repassed it, as held by its sheet-chain tangled about the submerged
roots of a tree, its capsized bottom seemed but a boulder washed by
the ripples as it lay in the shadow. As once more Push-koosh glanced
warily, impatiently, over his shoulder, Laroche suddenly bethought
himself of the peculiarities of his character and the details of their
long service together. There was no mistaking his identity,--it was
sufficiently attested by the contour of his head, with the silver band
on his flat forehead, the red flamingo feathers all tipped with silver
by the moon, and the beautiful tones of his velvet voice as he muttered
his Choctaw imprecations.
“Ah, Push-koosh,” cried Laroche softly, a vibration of hope and joy
in his tone, “_mon Bébé, mon petit chou! Je reconnais bien ton bon
cœur._”
Push-koosh turned instantly and looked straight at the French officer.
The moonlight was full in the Indian’s dark inscrutable eyes.
“There is gold in the bottom of my tobacco bag, Prince Baby,--much
gold. Cut this rope and it is yours!”
An instant of doubt, and then the Choctaw approached with that sly
supple motion so like the step of a catamount. One stroke of his knife
and Laroche would be free to flee through the marshy forests, while the
two British soldiers and the Muscogee tribesmen hunted for the boat
that was before their eyes, and wrangled till the echoes were loud and
discordant.
The Choctaw’s touch was laid, not upon the pouch with its treasure
amidst the tobacco that had escaped the search of the Highlander, but
upon the bound hands held out to him with a piteous eagerness of
entreaty. Then looking the captive directly in the eye, Push-koosh
said with an indescribable fullness of significant reminder, “_Eho
chookoma!_” (the beautiful woman!)
XX
THE snow lay deep at Fort Prince George when they returned.[12] The air
was now clear of flakes, invested with that strange absolute funereal
stillness characteristic of the muffled world, but the sky was still
darkly gray and with a menace in its motionless solemnity. The roofs
of the block-houses and barracks showed densely white against the
slate-colored clouds; not even about the great smoking chimneys was a
trace of thaw. The palisades that surmounted the unbroken white walls
of the rampart upheld fluffy drifts lodged among the sharp-pointed
stakes. The glacis was only such a faint outline as might remain in
vague traces of a prehistoric work. The prickly branches of a strong
abatis on two sides of the fort thrust out darkly from the overwhelming
banks like the protest of a buried forest. The thousand stumps, relics
of the encampment of Colonel Grant’s army here the preceding year, were
utterly submerged, and gave more than one of the approaching party a
headlong fall as the two British soldiers, the Choctaw Mingo, and the
Muscogee guard, with their prisoner, all half frozen, dead beat, and
nearly starved, came within view from the gates. The ditch was half
full of ice, solid as a rock, but the heart of the sentry was all aglow
to behold them at a distance, and his jubilant call, “Corporal of the
guard!” reached them as they struggled across the intervening spaces
with the grateful realization that they were not to be kept waiting for
identification, while the last resources of endurance gave way at the
moment of rescue and the portal of refuge.
A clangor of weapons, keen and clear on the icy air, the tramp of
marching feet, the glitter of steel and scarlet cloth, came to them
through the great gate, following hard on the cry to turn out the
guard. In less than five minutes the red glow of great fires, ardent
spirits unsparingly administered, hot food, and the comforts of
beds and blankets invested the recollection of the struggle through
the snow, the tramp of more than two hundred miles, the dangers and
vicissitudes of the journey with a certain unreality, seeming rather
something they had wildly dreamed, were it not for the testimony of
each to reinforce the memory of the others.
Exhaustion limited their capacity for expression, but the whole fort
rejoiced in their stead. The news flew abroad like the flocks of
snowbirds all undaunted by the temperature. The tale of the notable
capture was told over and again in the guardroom, in the officers’
mess-room, in the barracks, and the farrier’s smithy; over the making
of the clumsy cartridges of that day for the little cannon on the
bastions, and around the mending of guns in the armorer’s forge; in the
wigwams of the Indian hunters and camp followers of whatever sort whose
temporary habitations were on the outside of the works; in the Cherokee
town of Keowee, hard by, and at Jock Lesly’s trading-house. Even down
into the depths of the earth to the Scotchman’s subterranean ingle-neuk
it penetrated, and there it found Lilias sitting on a buffalo rug
before the red fire, her hands clasped tightly, her eyes wildly
dilated, pale to the lips, and with her heart fluttering frantically,
painfully, hopelessly, like one of the many birds perishing without,
whose wings, swift though they were, had beat futilely against the
infinite forces of destiny embodied in the storm; for she--and she
only--saw aught beyond cause of gratulation in the capture of the
turbulent French emissary, the destroyer of the peace of the frontier,
the arch-plotter, the organizer of Indian armies, the reconciler of
Indian feuds, the confederator of all Indian tribes into one great
united, potent structure of government financed and armed through
Spanish and French aid, before which British colonial occupation could
hardly stand for a day.
“Callum took the man! It was Callum, and he maun hae the credit!” Jock
Lesly jubilantly declared as he sat rubbing his hands by the fire, his
snowy match-coat sending up a steam as the drifts melted from it, for
he was just returned from the fort. “Captain Howard is as gleg as a
grig! He hae won his majority by this bit o’ wark, I mak nae dout!”
“What will be the Frenchman’s name?” demanded Lilias, her lips dry as
she stared, dismayed, startled, forlorn, into the fire.
“A-weel--a-weel--hinny, and that’s the curious part of it! It’s that
Tam Wilson, the loon we nursed clear of the fever! And I misdoubts it’s
misprision o’ treason, or some o’ thae unchancy crimes--only we kenned
naught aboot him!” And Jock Lesly’s rich rollicking laughter filled the
room.
“He helped us out o’ the kentry, an’ kep’ Moy Toy frae takin’ our
scalps!” she replied reproachfully.
Jock Lesly paused to look down at her gravely, his big eyes round.
“Hout, fie!” he ejaculated. “Ony French chiel protect _me_! An’
frae auld Moy Toy, that I have foregathered wi’ ever since the kentry
was built! Mair likely he spirited up the chief to trouble us an’
to burn my tradin’-house an’ a’ my gear! It seems to me I jaloosed
su’thin’ o’ the sort at ane time! Na, na, Lilias; if he helped us at
a’, it was lest our murder hurt the French interest an’ set the British
at the Injuns afore the chiels were ready for their bluidy wark.”
She gazed, deeply serious, at the fire. She too thought this more than
likely, in the light of what she had known earlier, and knew more
certainly now. She gave a long sigh of pity for the captive; but these
were the fortunes of war that every soldier must needs risk, and with
which women had no concern.
“Na, bairn, na!” her father boasted. “Auld Jock Lesly can tak care o’
his ain, an’ hae dune it this mony a day! He needna hae Tam Wilson
cluttered up wi’ heed o’ him an’ his! But, lass!” he broke into a roar
of jovial laughter, “to see up yon at the fort the major--hegh, sirs,
it’s for luck that I suld sae miscall the captain--ter see him gloat
ower Everard. He canna be quit o’ glorifying that he tuk him in sae
hard a measure when Everard had him like a bird in a trap.”
“What for did Lieutenant Everard let him slip?” she asked, turning her
head upward to look at her father’s face.
“A fule needs no reason, lass, for bein’ a fule, but he wadna believe
Callum, because the lad could urge naething except that the man spoke
French--which Callum himsel’ can do, though that wad never prove him a
toad.”
“An’ how is it that this captain was sae muckle wiser?” persisted
Lilias. “Lieutenant Everard is a finer lookin’ man than Captain Howard,
an’ his hair curls amaist as weel as mine.”
“Oh, ho!” shouted Jock Lesly, smiting his thigh in the fervor of his
relish, “that only proves he has the better thatch, not the bigger
house! A-weel, now--a-weel--ilka man suld hae his due! ’Twas not
till lately--an’ Lieutenant Everard was gone--that Callum learned
for _sure_ that the man is French,--for you see the fallow
himsel’,--and he is a fule too, for all his hair curls,--he tauld a
woman that he is French and gave her his name and employ, and the woman
tauld Callum! My certie, in ilka mischief there’s aye a woman at wark!”
Then with a changed note, “Hegh, Lilias!” he exclaimed sharply.
For Lilias, screaming, had sprung to her feet. It was she--and she saw
it now--who had delivered him bound and helpless into the hands of
his enemy! She cared not for him now as Tam Wilson, but for the awful
responsibility she had taken. Her habitual candor was beaten back
upon her lips by the untoward effects of her recent disclosure. She
restrained with difficulty the child-like impulse to reveal the mystery
to her father, who was alarmed, amazed, agitated. She protested that
the fire had burned her, flinging out a spark, and demanded peevishly
why he must needs be always sending such crackling and splitting
varieties of wood to their hearth in the cave-house. With wisps of his
frowzy light hair falling over his florid face as he bent his head,
he was presently stepping about to find the blazing splinter in the
buffalo rug, and although he now and again desisted, with the comment
“A-weel, it will no set _this_ biggin’ in a low!” he shortly, with
the force of habit, commenced the search anew.
It was the custom of Lilias to avoid the trading-house, for she was
more fastidious and exacting than her simple opportunities might seem
to imply. But Jock Lesly was by no means poor, and it had been his
delight to lavish such luxuries as in his limited apprehension he
accounted desirable upon his only child, and thus she had been reared
in a degree beyond her station. To-day, however, she was here, there,
and everywhere, listening to the loud jocular comments of a few of
the soldiers from the fort, who were now and again in the store and
disposed to talk of the capture. The transition thence was obviously
to gossip about the prisoner. A hearty, well-favored lad he was, so
they understood from the detail that had captured him. He had given
them little trouble, and they liked him well. He was a proper lad and
active afoot, and bore the hardships of the march finely. They hardly
knew what to do with him at the fort till he could be sent forward to
Charlestown. They thought Captain Howard himself was puzzled as to the
method of his disposition. Certainly,--in reply to a question from
Jock Lesly,--military prisoners, that is, French officers, had been
in times past kept in the hospital, and giving their parole had been
permitted occasionally the freedom of the parade ground. This fellow,
however, was captured out of uniform and without ostensible military
employ, and would be held as a civil prisoner, though they had him
now hard and fast in the guard-house. The talk of peace negotiations
with France would do him no good,--the stirrer-up of savages on the
frontier, just subdued by the English at so great a cost of blood and
treasure, and at peace with the colonies, would never lack for a charge
in Charlestown that would stick. He would be accused of murders, and of
the instigation of those massacres that had already violated the peace
negotiated with the Cherokees. And then one of the soldiers passed his
hand across his throat with an ugly gesture, rolled up his eyes with a
leer, and gave a click of the tongue inexpressibly loathsome, at which,
unaccountably, they all laughed.
Lilias, hovering about among the swaying fabrics depending from the
beams, turned sick and faint. She it was who had done this, in her
foolish inadvertence thinking that all was now known to Callum,--she,
who had the man’s secret that she had promised never to tell--nay, he
had voluntarily trusted himself to her honor!
Her face was drawn and white. The chill of the day was in her heart. As
one of the Indians whisked a hand mirror into which he was gazing with
gurgling rapture at his hideous countenance, she caught sight of her
own reflection, so wan, so appealing, so agonized, that she braced her
nerves anew that her face might not betray her grief, although she felt
at the end and hoped naught.
A number of the braves of the Muscogee escort who had participated
in the march subsequent to the capture of the prisoner had repaired,
although exhausted and half drunk, to the trading-house as inevitably
as the needle to the pole, and were engaged in delightedly rummaging
such of its trifles as were accessible. They were meeting with special
welcome at Fort Prince George, at the officers’ quarters, the barracks,
the kitchen, the trading-house being generously treated, their
services having proved available in so serious an emergency. Naturally
with such subjects, their instinct was to impose upon this disposition,
and to magnify the obligations it betokened.
“Haud a care, Dougal,” Jock Lesly charged the under-trader. “Thae
chiels covet ilka bawbee’s worth in the house, an’ Providence
permittin’ I suld like fine to save the roof!”
Perhaps it was this absorption that caused him to be more oblivious of
Lilias to-day than usual, though even in its midst he had a heedful
notice of her. “Hegh, lass,” he stopped her once in passing, “but ye
hae a’ the snaw in your face the day, an’ your bonny blue e’en are a
wee dreary. I misdoots the climate here wi’ a’ its changes an’ cantrips
isna suited to ye like Charlestoun. Gae doun to the fire in the ha’
house; it’s warmer there.”
When she quitted the trading-house he did not know. She was all alone,
attended only by the old collie, who would not be driven back, although
she childishly pinched his ears and pulled his tail and put him to all
the pain she could. Her visit to the fort was a very distinct surprise
to Captain Howard and contravened his impressions of her hitherto.
Being a man of about forty-five years of age, and having daughters of
his own far away, he entertained rather strict ideas of the becoming
in maidenly conduct. It may have been her own natural dignity, or the
arrogance of a girl reared beyond her station, or the indifference of
one perceiving the raw material of suitors apparently inexhaustible
in the garrisons of the frontier, but she had been hitherto somewhat
unapproachable by the men at the post, averse to those of the ruder
social level of her father’s daughter, and suspicious and cold to
those above. Therefore when she cast upon Captain Howard a smile, the
radiance of which might have thawed out all Fort Prince George, he was
mystified and expectant.
Her first words, however, put him at ease as he sat at the table in the
orderly room with an ensign opposite and two or three noncommissioned
officers with their reports standing at attention.
“I’m fu’ glad to catchit you at your wark, Captain,” she said with her
most dulcet intonation, swaying the half open door, and looking against
the snowy expanse of the parade without like some clear fine painting
on a pearly surface. “I wad like ill to harry ye out o’ your hour o’
ease, wi’ a’ thae bodies,” she glanced about at the orderlies and the
sentry and a squad of men outside, “to weigh sae heavy on your mind.”
She hesitated as she stood in her puce-colored serge skirt, from which
the snow dripped, a heavy red rokelay thrown around her, and one of
those “screens,” half shawl, half veil, worn by women in the lowlands
as well as the highlands of Scotland, brought over her head in the
muffling manner usual in wintry weather. Beneath its loosened folds
her golden hair, her pink and white dimpled face, her glittering teeth
and red lips, showed captivatingly, and Captain Howard must have been
something more than military and human had he not offered her a chair.
“I canna sit, for I hinna a moment,” she replied, but she came toward
the fire, and an orderly, mindful of the blast, promptly shut the
door as she relinquished her hold upon it. “I wad hae sent somebody,
but thae chiels of Injuns are fair crowding out the packmen at the
trading-house, and my daddy winna spare a man to leave there till the
Muscogees are far awa’--twal mile or more.”
Her eyes twinkled alluringly, in ridicule of auld Jock’s thrifty bent,
and Captain Howard smiled responsively.
“Sae fur the lack of a better messenger I maun e’en do my ain errand.
You see, Captain,”--she leaned against the back of a chair, and he
opposite, having taken a seat with the anticipation of her acceptance
of his proffer, gazed at her expectantly,--“the soldiers are making
much o’ Callum, an’ my daddy is looking after the Muscogees, an’ I was
minded to consider that naebody is like to care much for the prisoner.
So knowin’ you hinna too much beddin’ gear at the fort, an’ the weather
bein’ freakish cauld, I thought I wad roll up a blanket or twa an’ some
furs for the creatur’s bed.”
He was surprised for a moment, vaguely suspicious, doubtful.
“Just for a loan, ye maun understand,” she stipulated primly. “When the
weather breaks I sall look to hae them a’ again.”
This thrifty afterthought was so characteristic of Jock Lesly and his
household that the officer’s mind instantly cleared. He remembered
previous instances of such thoughtfulness on her part, but manifested
then toward the hospital. Indeed in a passing illness he had himself
been the pleased recipient of wine whey, arrowroot gruel, mulled port,
chocolate, and calves’ foot jelly.
He hastened to express his appreciation of the timeliness of her
offering. “The usual arrangements are somewhat scant for such weather,
and I have no doubt it is needed. The guard-house prison has no fire,
and it must be pretty chilly there, though there is a great chimney in
the next room.”
“Will ye no look at the gear?” She produced from under her cloak a
bundle compactly made up, from the edges of which otter fur showed.
The officer politely waived the precaution.
“Not at all necessary.” Then somewhat wearied with these details, which
the fairest face could not commend for indefinite contemplation,--at
least to one having attained forty-five years,--“Will you be so good as
to give them to the orderly? Nevins, take them to the guard-house.”
But Lilias, turning upon the advancing soldier, clasped her bundle in a
closer clutch. “I’m no sae clear that the prisoner-body will e’er see
them--an’ sall I get them a’ again? Thae bit duds are unco gude,” she
added, as if loath to part from them.
The soldier reddened to the eyebrows under this imputation, and the
officer, disillusioned of his admiration by this crafty, untimely,
ignoble, unfounded suspiciousness, sought to rid himself of the whole
affair.
“Take them yourself to the prisoner, then, and count them before
leaving them, so that you may be sure of having them all returned.
Baker, see to it that the sentry at the guard-house passes her.”
As she went out, “‘Aye be getting and aye be having,’” he quoted, “a
chip of the old block.” He said this as if to himself, but aloud,
partly to assuage the lacerated feelings of the man whom he had called
Nevins, and as if her suspiciousness were not a personal flout, but
merely appertained to the cautious thrift of her canny Scotch nature.
The guard had turned out upon the advance from the woods of a
considerable body of Indians, who, however, proved to be only
neighboring tribesmen without organization, but eager and curious
concerning the excitements at the fort, of which they had heard in the
adjacent Cherokee town of Keowee. They were not to be permitted to
enter, as they evidently desired, but their pertinacity to this end
detained the officer of the guard for a few minutes, while he sought
to pacify them by giving them authentic details on those points about
which they were most inquisitive. Meantime the guard, lined up, stood
in a glittering rank of scarlet and steel on the snowy spaces just in
front of the gate.
The guardroom was thus empty when Lilias, admitted by the sentry at the
outer door of the building, made her way with hasty, disordered steps
through the apartment. She hesitated at the inner door for an instant,
not recognizing the beating of her own heart, which at first she
mistook for some turbulent alarum outside, drumming the whole garrison
to arms. The next moment she plunged into the room, and there was Tam
Wilson! oh puir Tam Wilson! so pinched, so blue, so cold, sitting in
this frostbound cell, with his head upon the table, and his face in his
hands,--all his plans congealed in this hard freeze of fate and dead
like other transient blooms of the year under the snow.
As he looked up at the sound of her step, he recognized her upon the
instant. A faint wan smile quivered in his face. He was about to
speak, but she laid her finger warningly upon her lips. Then with one
hasty glance at the closed door behind her, she tore her bundle open
and rushed at him. She had another skirt such as she herself wore--of
brown serge, but little to choose between the shades--and slipped it
over his head in one moment. Then as she vainly sought to make her
slender waistband meet about his middle, although he too was slim,
she commented in a whisper, “My certie! to be built like a cask! I’ll
een pin it in the plaits, but it will no hing straight in the hem!”
She doffed her red cloak to throw it about him; her screen was on his
head, and realizing her intention, he could but kiss her hands as she
adjusted it under his chin, muffling his face and shoulders as she had
herself worn it, and taking the precaution to pin it here and there.
“For ye’ll get it aff afore ye are to the woods if I dinna haud a
care; an’ once in the woods by the river ye’ll find under that big
crag a canoe, an’ below the seat a gude store of food an’ wine. An’
to Charlestoun, lad, straight down the Keowee River and the Savannah
an’ out to sea! Some French ship will tak ye up, I mak nae doubt. The
pursuit will set the other way--to the Cherokee country.”
“And you?”
“Never fear! I’ll bide here--safe--amang my friends. Walk like me if ye
can; but be aff, callant, if ye luve your life!”
She sank into his chair; and mercurial though he was, he could
scarcely take up the rôle with the spirit with which she had laid it
down. As he opened the door into the guardroom he saw that the soldiers
had not yet returned. He barely glanced at the sentry whom he passed
on the outer step; and although the notice of the soldier was but the
casual attention of recognition and expectation, he felt the man’s
look as if it had been red-hot steel laid on a tender nerve. He walked
down slowly into the snow, blessing its depth that should make any
eccentricity of gait, except a long stride, seem the incident of its
impeding medium. In meeting the guard halfway returning from the gate,
he had but to mince modestly along, not lifting his eyes, the screen
drawn quite over his face; and since Miss Lilias was an uncommonly tall
woman and the Frenchman of but medium height, the difference was not
immediately apparent.
A sudden swift rush behind him just before he reached the gate--that
great envious portal that barred him from all his world, from safety,
from life itself--and he felt that he must drop here in the snow and
die, if so happy a fate as a death thus he might crave.
He had not had time to cry aloud in terror, in nervous stress, in
absolute despair, when the pursuing presence whizzed past, then
returning, leaped and fawned and wheezed about him with such evident
blissful recognition that if Miss Lilias Lesly had no other point of
identification to the eye of the sentry it would have been supplied
in the jovial manner of her companion, the faithful old collie. The
soldier presented arms as her semblance passed, to which extravagant
compliment the figure returned a bow of marked courtesy, and then
followed over the snow the frantically bounding collie, that was fairly
frenzied with joy to see and recognize anew, despite his feminine
frippery of attire, his friend of auld lang syne, Tam Wilson; for
the instinct of the collie was not so limited an endowment as the
intelligence of the sentry and the main guard.
XXI
IN her after life Lilias often reviewed her sentiments as she sat
there in the blue cold, with that curious suggestion of grit in the
air common to a low temperature, the repulsion to the dust of the
place more pronounced and apparent to the sensitive finger-tips than
if it were summer. She had wrapped herself in the otter-fur mantle
that she had carried in view of the relinquishment of her red rokelay
to the fugitive. Presently she put both feet on the rungs of the chair
and crouched forward like some tiny animal, her golden hair barely
glimpsed beneath the light brown tints of the fur. Sometimes she put
her blue hands to her mouth to feel how chill they were, and blew her
warm breath upon them; then again she clenched the trembling fingers
and drew her mantle closer. How cold it was! How had he endured it! It
might be colder still on the river, but he was speeding toward freedom,
and there was genial warmth in the mere suggestion. How cruel men were
to each other! And he was but obeying the behests of his government, as
Captain Howard regarded as sacred every scrawl that reached him from
headquarters.
Now and again the sounds from the guardroom caught her attention,--a
tramp of feet with a measured swinging gait, a snatch of song, and
presently a droning deep voice going on and on, as one should say for
an hour or more, with but little interruption, telling a long story.
How cold it was! how cold! She wondered how long she could sustain
it. The longer she sat here in her wrap of otter fur the farther he
would be on his way down the Keowee River. If only she could know
that he had made good his escape! that she had atoned for the dreadful
evil she had wrought in revealing his secret! Then indeed she would
be happy! In liberating him, she argued, she had promoted no massacre
of women and children. If aught that he had planned threatened them
it was frustrated, for he was off and on his way out of the country,
and she had aided his flight, nay, made it possible. If only she could
know that he had won the river bank and found the canoe! Down and
down the Savannah he would paddle the canoe, and a man in buckskins,
the usual garb of the country,--for he would soon doff the woman’s
habiliments,--would attract no attention from casual observers on
the banks; and some night--some dark night soon--he would float
out of Charlestown harbor, and finally be picked up by some French
man-of-war or merchantman, so many there were then in the southern
waters. The pursuit would undoubtedly take head in the opposite
direction. Few would imagine it safer to flee directly toward the
enemy’s stronghold rather than from it. They would follow him back
into the Indian country, where he had friends, influence, the French
prestige--a thousand reasons to command succor and concealment. But to
Charlestown--into the lion’s mouth? In this instance the lion slept
with his mouth open. Somehow she was sure no one would think of this
resource but herself. She would give him all the time she could, a good
start ahead of all possible pursuit. Six hours it might be, if she
could so long endure the cruel cold, before the noise of his escape
should be bruited abroad. The noonday meal was just concluded. The
British soldier was presumed to eat no supper; at least, only two meals
were furnished him, except on the frontier, where to content him the
better, perhaps, on the theory that the road to his heart lay through
his stomach, a third was served. This came a little before the hour of
retreat. She wondered if the prisoners shared in this extra refection.
She had an idea that then at all events she must needs call in the
guard; she would be able to endure it no longer.
As she sat crouching and still in the only chair of the bleak and
bare apartment, her attention was attracted by a crystalline tinkle
against the glass of the window. She thought it must be snowing
afresh. Presently she rose, stood upon the chair, for the window was
exceedingly high, to be out of the reach of any enterprising prisoner,
and then she stepped noiselessly upon the table. Looking upward through
the grimy glass she could see the whirl of dizzy flakes against the
sky. A tumultuous storm it was. A man fleeing through it would be
invisible. It would render pursuit impracticable, so long as it should
continue. Her heart gave a great throb of triumph. The afternoon was
wearing on. The light was dulling fast, and unless a barricade of ice
should impede the flow of the river these few hours’ start would mean
freedom to a man fleeing for his life!
Reassured, invigorated, she stepped slowly, softly down from the table
to the chair, and then from the chair to the floor. She seated herself
anew in silence, in loneliness, muffled to her eyebrows in her otter
furs, and listening to the gay snatches of song about the great flaring
hearth in the guardroom.
And it was cold, it was very cold!
During the afternoon Jock Lesly decided to tramp over to the fort.
He had a desire to compare views with Captain Howard and expatiate
on the incident of the capture, so full of import to them both,--to
the soldier as representing the military element, and the trader
the mercantile interests of the post. He had scarcely stretched out
his smoking boots to the fire, seated in the officer’s comfortable
quarters, than Captain Howard introduced the subject of the weather
in reference to the prisoner, intending to thank the trader for the
consideration he had manifested in sending blankets to the fort, in
view of the arctic temperature.
“We ought to consider our obligations to the helpless,” said the
officer, “but, as far as I am concerned, Gad, sir, I’m kept so short
for funds that it is often like letting a faithful soldier and servant
of the king go cold in order to house and blanket and warm some
miscreant enemy to the whole community.”
“Ou, aye, weel,” said auld Jock, a trifle out of countenance, “I’m
obleeged for your sarmon, sir. D’ye mean ye think I ought to blanket
an’ mainteen the king’s prisoners at bed an’ board?”
“No, oh no,” exclaimed the officer. “I only meant to thank you for the
blankets and furs and so on that your daughter brought over to-day,
kindly bethinking herself of the likelihood that the prisoner would
be neglected. In truth we have been surprisingly short, and if the
soldiers were not young and strong and had not a good deal of red blood
in their veins, I should expect to hear that some of them had frozen
stiff.”
“Wow, man, to be plain, I never heard o’ thae blankets afore!” Jock
Lesly confessed. “The lassie helpit her nainsel’, as she has a perfect
right to do, and I sall ne’er say her nay. All my gear an’ hoardings
will be hers ane day. An’ I doubt not she’ll find some feckless
ne’er-do-weel of a husband ter fling it a’ awa’. But it’s hers, it’s
a’ hers. I wark for nane else, but,” with an anxious pause and a keen
glance, “did ye notice whether it was the lamb’s wool or the yowe’s
wool blankets that the bairn had?”
“I did not see them at all,” said the officer hastily. “I only assured
her that she should have them all back safe, and bade her distribute
them to her own satisfaction.”
Jock Lesly rose to his feet. This was a topic on which he could not
rest in uncertainty. She might give away the blankets as she would, but
his curiosity as to which quality she had seen fit to take actually
burned him. He presently went tramping across the parade, and Captain
Howard, looking after him smilingly, little dreamed of the errand that
was to bring him back again.
The dull dreary evening, with the snow still dizzily whirling, was
closing in. Indeed but for the ghastly illumination of the reflection
from the snow on the ground, it would now be dark. The peaked roof of
the trading-house looming up among the flakes before Jock Lesly knew
that he was near it, so stanchly he strode through the deep drifts, was
of a benignant aspect to his mind, and he loved it. As he sounded a
whistle, that Duncan or Dougal or whatever henchman awaited his coming
should perceive his arrival and admit him to the domestic fortress,
he noticed how the smoke was flaring up from that flue of the chimney
devoted to the hearth so craftily hidden below. His heart warmed at the
thought of his ingleside in his subterranean home.
“I hinna seen my bairn a’ the day but by a wee gliff here awa’ an’
there awa’. If the lassie were in Charlestoun now I couldna believe
it,” he said to himself as he heard the clatter of the bars falling
within. “I’ll mak her sing some o’ thae auld sangs the nicht, when her
voice sounds sae like her mither’s, an’ then me an’ the gillie-packmen
an’ Luckie Meg will a’ sing the chorus an’ drink some flip. An’ it can
snaw an’ sleet, an’ the wind can blaw an’ bleat, an’ awa’ doun there by
the red ingle-neuk we’se never ken it at a’.”
Nevertheless when he was inside and the door secured anew, he said to
the under-trader, who stood swinging the lantern, “Dougal, whilk o’
thae bales o’ blankets did Miss Lilias open the morn,--the lamb’s wool
or the yowe’s wool? An’ how mony did she send to the fort?”
Dougal Micklin opened his eyes wide. “Neither the ane nor the t’
other!” he exclaimed jealously. “An’ what for suld she send blankets to
the fort?”
But Jock Lesly would not believe this. Had he not the word of the
recipient of her bounty, that is the commandant of the fort,--and he
truly thought that Howard must have suggested it!--that she had given
him the trader’s blankets to wrap up his prisoner?
“For whether it’s the lamb’s wool or the yowe’s wool, they are baith
verra gude, and ower gude to be given awa’ gratis,” Jock Lesly
argued. “For sic-like emergencies we brought them out frae Carolina,
not for the summer time! We forecast that cauld weather might catch
thae carles at the fort without kiver, and Captain Howard might buy
them, not beg them. He is the commandant of his majesty’s fort, not a
gaberlunzie man! It’s his bounden duty, even suld it cost him a wee
penny o’ thae short funds he bleats about, to protect his captives
frae suffering frae the inclement weather as a humane man, and as a
commandant it’s in the reg’lar way o’ business. I never heard o’ sic
a request onless it was made o’ Providence. We’se a’ ask Providence
for _onything_,--even to forgie us our debts that we made
oursel’s,--an’ I’ll be bound Captain Howard wad say, ‘Forgie us our
debts, _an’ interest on same_!’”
He began to laugh satirically, then became suddenly silent, for as the
lantern swung before a row of shelves, the light revealed the blankets
in question, duly baled, with not a cord cut nor a fold shaken out.
He did not wait for the under-trader to complete a laudatory account of
them, upon which Dougal had launched out as if he sought to sell them
to auld Jock himself, but which was purely mechanical, declaring that
they were of a fine quality and a heavy weight and could not be had
cheaper in Charlestown, notwithstanding the great expense of carriage
to the trader; that they were no designed for the Indian trade but for
such gentles as might--
“Be at the fort an’ afeard o’ freezin’,” interrupted Jock Lesly
sardonically. “But thae gentles would rather warm their taes at a
guinea than in a blanket that they have to pay for, man! ‘Forgie us
interest on same!’” And down Jock Lesly went upon the rungs of his
ladder and into his ain ha’ house.
Very cheerful it looked. The supper was already on the board, the
hearth swept, and the fire flaring. The little flax-wheel at which
Lilias sat so often at night was at one side, silent and motionless,
and great buffalo-skins lay before the hearth. No lamp glowed from the
little chamber beyond, and Jock Lesly stopped short at the sight of the
black darkness within.
“Where is Miss Lilias, Luckie?” he asked of old Meg, busied in brewing
the tea.
“I dinna ken,” she replied casually; then looking up, she added, “In
the tradin’-house maist likely. She has been flittin’ in an’ out a’ the
day, except for the last twa hours or sae.”
“There is not a soul in the trading-house!” cried Jock Lesly, with a
sudden cold clutch at his heart.
Snatching a candle from the table he quickly searched her little
chamber, the passage, the anteroom, all in vain! It was but a small
place after all, this ha’ house, and easily traversed.
Then he called her, his great rich resonant voice sounding from ceiling
to floor, from wall to wall, evoking a train of echoes, and alack with
so grievous a tremor in it that in listening the tears could but start.
The gillies, the under-trader had scoured every nook and cranny in the
trading-house and found naught. They looked at each other with white
scared faces, each repeating in astonishment at intervals, as if they
could not credit the marvel, “She isna here! She isna here!”
Jock Lesly, with an awful sense of responsibility, thought of his wife,
dead so long ago,--had he thus discharged the sacred trust of the care
of their only child!
There was not a moment to be lost, although perhaps hours had
already been wasted. Jock Lesly’s stanch courage rallied to meet the
emergency. All his life hereafter he might expend in grief, but the
present belonged to Lilias, and every force it could compass should be
consecrated to her service. He plunged through the whirl of snow, still
falling in the dense darkness; the tears that had poured unrestrained,
unheeded, shed unconsciously down his white cheeks, froze upon them,
and tiny icicles trembled upon his eyelashes. But he did not sob; his
breath held steady; his teeth were set, his every nerve was tense,
controlling his great physical strength that it might better seize
any opportunity of her rescue. The under-trader distinctly remembered
having seen her early in the afternoon returning from the fort and
walking with her collie toward the river. The collie had since reached
home, and with this testimony that she was no longer in the securities
of Fort Prince George they gathered the little group of packmen
about them in a close squad, and looking grimly to the priming of
their pistols they forcibly searched the Muscogee camp just outside
the works, thinking those troublous half-drunken wights might have
intercepted her as she came from the fort with the intention of holding
her for ransom when the terror at her disappearance should be at the
maximum.
Although taken by surprise and obviously astounded by the accusation,
the Muscogees could furnish no information, and their camp betrayed
not a trace of her presence. This hope dashed, the party followed
successively every glimmering _ignis fatuus_ of a possibility that
each could suggest; one remembered that a settler’s wife had a child
named in compliment “Lilias,” and as it was suddenly ill and near to
death, she might have visited it; another recounted the fact that an
old Indian woman near Keowee fascinated her with antiquated fables,
which she valued and loved to hear; another, upheld by superstition,
insisted on repairing to Keowee to consult the cheerataghe and have
them work a spell to reveal her whereabouts; and while this was in
progress Jock Lesly required the headmen to search the town and the
adjacent series of Cherokee habitations, once almost consecutive,
from Kulsage (Sugar Town), about a mile above and even at that time
extending far down the valley, toward the site of Sinica, burned by
the British during the Cherokee War. Hours passed in these fruitless
efforts, and at last, when each lure had finally flickered out in the
darkness of despair, Jock Lesly turned again as a final hope to the
fort. He would consult the last man who saw her there, the sentry at
the gate, for perchance she might have expressed to him some inkling
of her intention to go elsewhere than home. The gillies all eager,
zealous, plunging through the drifts followed him; now and again
they fell over the submerged stumps of the clearing and wandered out
of their course and far afield, but Jock Lesly as if by instinct
avoided every impediment, and albeit the whirl of flakes obscured all
intimation of that blended glimmer and hazy aureola that were wont to
mark the site of the fort by night, he reached the gate as unerringly
as if the bastions, the barracks, the flag on the tower of the
block-house were flaunting in the bold light of day.
None was so swift as he of all the light young fellows, but a moment
after the sentry’s challenge rang upon the chill night air he heard the
ice of the broad moat crack with a great splash, as Duncan, mistaking
the direction of the gate, fell into the frozen water of the ditch,
and much splutter and torrid exclamations as he scrambled out. The
noise attracted the attention of the sentinel in the tower of the
block-house, and the sharp report of his musket, as he fired a warning
into the air, brought out the main-guard before the corporal could
reach the sentry at the gate.
In another moment there was a great commotion upon the parade,
erstwhile so dark and silent. A shifting of lanterns here and there
threw long cone-shaped shafts of light down the snowy expanse,
illuminating in limited sections a log building near at hand, with its
drift-laden eaves and window-sills, and all the atmosphere a silent,
palpitating mysterious motion as the flakes still whirled. The glitter
of the scarlet and steel of the armed guard, its expectant aggressive
mien, its quick tramp and alert bearing might seem to offer a sort of
reassurance with its note of ready confidence. And indeed Jock Lesly’s
hope revived, albeit the jaunty military manner of the young officer of
the day was at variance with his anxious intent troubled face, revealed
by the lantern held aloft that he might descry his visitor’s care-worn
white lineaments.
“Help you to find a trace? See the last man who saw her? That must be
the sentry at the gate--and the next, the prisoner himself.”
As to learn from the officer of the guard the name of the sentinel
who had been posted at the gate at that hour and since relieved was a
work of more or less time, the interval could obviously be employed
in interrogating the prisoner himself as to the possible intimations
of her immediate intentions that Lilias might have expressed when
she quitted his cell. The permission of the commandant would be
necessary,--but here suddenly was the commandant himself, roused from
sleep by the stir, and with his voice kind and reassuring.
“Never fear, dear fellow,” he said, passing his arm fraternally through
the quaking Lesly’s, “we’ll find her if we have to search the Indian
country inch by inch. They’ll never dare to harm her, for they will
hold her for ransom. I can feel for you, for have I not two daughters
of my own?”
But as they strode together through the guardroom, with its flaring
fire and its tramping, thronging, military inmates, and opened the
inner door to the dark and chill military prison beyond, Captain
Howard’s sentiments fell far the other side of friendly, for there, her
golden head pillowed on the hard table, her mantle of otter fur drawn
close about her ears, her feet perched upon the rung of the chair,
sat fast asleep the trader’s daughter, while the great flakes of snow
jingled crystalline and keen against the glass of the window, and the
dark hours merged deep into the mid-glooms of the night.
And Captain Howard’s valuable prisoner was gone! His prisoner--whom
valiant men had risked their lives to secure. His prisoner--whom
hundreds of miles of cruel forced marches, privations incredible, and
dangers unnumbered had brought at last to his door. His prisoner--whom
other commanders had tried in vain to take, for whose capture many
other plans of specious wiles had failed and fallen short. His
prisoner--on whose triumphant delivery to the military and civil
authorities in Charlestown his majority depended. This prisoner--gone,
gone! And in his stead, in his secure cell with not a bar broken, not
a sentry bribed, no vigilance relaxed, was a girl, just awakened, half
frozen, all bewildered and beginning to cry.
Jock Lesly caught the officer’s first outburst of dismay and surprise
and rage as a man might a blow, putting up his arm to guard his face.
“Hegh, Captain,” he said, his hand clasping the girl’s as she cowered
and blinked before the light that coldly fell upon the bare walls, the
high window, the dusty floor, all infinitely bleak and gloomy. “I’se
gae nae furder in a’ this gear! Let but the bairn get to the fire! I
confess! I’m bound to confess! My heart can haud sic a care o’ deceit
nae langer! ’Twas me that planned to liberate the callant! I sent the
lassie here to win ye by a trick an’ to turn him loose drest in sic
gear as hers an’ to tak his place. ’Twas _me_, Captain, an’ I
surrender!”
Great as were the variant urgencies of the situation, the cold coerced
the group mechanically toward the fire in the guardroom, and they stood
on the broad hearth, the soldiers withdrawing a few paces to give them
space. The glittering muskets had been all stacked anew; the open door
showed a broad lane of light gleaming down the snowy parade outside,
the flakes still madly whirling. Captain Howard in his hastily assumed
military uniform, with his ungartered hose wrinkled and loose, and
evidently unconscious that he still wore a red flannel nightcap with
a queer tassel, had a touch of the grotesque, in contrast with the
dapper perfection of the ensign’s regimentals with his up-all-night
expectation as officer of the day. All looked in dismay, in growing
anger, in gathering doubt at Jock Lesly.
The trader stanchly returned their gaze. The shoulders of his great
match-coat were covered with snow, which was beginning to drip as it
thawed with the heat of the fire, and he held pressed close to his side
his golden-haired daughter. She was fully awake now, and looking out
with alert, wide-eyed expectation from her mantle of otter fur drawn
partially over her head.
“Jock Lesly,” cried the captain, “you are lying! Why should you, always
a loyal subject, with the interest of your trade dependent upon the
preservation of the peace with the Cherokees, set free this turbulent
Laroche, this stirrer-up of strife along the frontier?”
“Ou,--ay,” said Jock Lesly, holding up his chin and gazing about him
speculatively as if he looked for his inspiration in the air, “a’ that
is verra true; but this lad hae eat o’ my salt up in the Tennessee
country, an’”--
“You are lying!” cried the officer angrily, “and if you were not, it
would be as much as my life is worth to tell you so, even with my guard
around me! You know, and I know, that the child did it of her own
accord,--and for what, missy? Why did you liberate the man?”
“Ye’ll no ask the bairn questions, Captain Howard!” interposed Jock
Lesly angrily. “I stand here ready to tak the responsibility an’ answer
for the deed! The lassie is no accountable for what she says! She’s
cauld, half starved! I surrender! I surrender! It’s no the lassie’s
will that brought her here! I sent her! ’Twas me, her cruel father! She
is cauld! I surrender! I”--
“I let the prisoner out!” said Lilias suddenly, and her voice rang in
that grim guardroom like some sweet string of a harp, keyed so high
above any vibrations to which it was accustomed, yet rich and resonant
with its fullness of tone. “I let him out because he was betrayed by my
word. I tauld Callum MacIlvesty that he was French, for he had avowed
it to me; but I was thinkin’ then ’twas known to a’ the warld, an’ sae
Callum MacIlvesty tauld you, Captain Howard, that he was no Tam Wilson,
as Lieutenant Everard took him to be, but French, and ye sent to tak
him. An’ now since I hae nae treachery to answer for,--for _I_’m
no keeper o’ the guard-house here,--I’ll gae to gaol or where ye will
wi’ a free heart. I care na for naught!”
She turned her face and golden head against her father’s great snowy
coat as he once more futilely ejaculated, “The bairn’s cauld! it’s gey
cauld weather! and she disna ken what she is sayin’!”
But Captain Howard, after an eager consultation aside with several
officers of the garrison, summoned by the unusual commotion, and
a survey of the conditions of the raging storm, returned to the
questioning of Lilias.
“And at what time did this happen, mistress? What hour was it when you
saw fit to turn the king’s prisoner loose upon the country?”
“Five minutes scant after you gave me leave to speak wi’ the callant;
an’ after he was gone I stude the cauld as lang as I could, thinking
to gie him a fair start, an’ then I drapped aff in a wee bit nap. It’s
ower cauld comfort ye gie to your puir prisoners, Captain Howard.”
“And what direction did he take?” the officer asked eagerly.
“Ah-h!” she cried, her red lips showing her white teeth, her nodding
head setting her golden hair to glimmering beneath the brown otter fur,
her eyes shining with triumph, “it’s _him_ that didna say! He is
the sodger-man to keep his plans in the sole o’ his boot.”
Her father pressed her head smotheringly against the folds of his great
coat. “Whist, hinny, whist!” he exclaimed vacuously; “I surrender,
Captain! I surrender! The bairn’s but a bairn when a’ is said! She kens
na what she is sayin’; an’ I mak nae doubt, too, she is tellin’ lees.”
“I make no doubt that _you_ are telling lies!” said the captain in
despair.
For with full ten hours’ start, the escaped prisoner, himself a
military man of much experience, of tried courage, of crafty resource,
and moreover singularly well acquainted with the conditions of the
country, could set at defiance any pursuer who should enter upon the
chase in darkness, in intense cold, in a furious snowstorm, and in
absolute ignorance of the direction which the fugitive had taken. The
passage of the night with the late wintry dawn would add some seven
hours to the fair start she had contrived for him. The commandant
was nettled by the consciousness that this advantage might have been
somewhat abridged by a trifle more precaution; for although no supper
was served the prisoner, he being expected to reserve such portion as
he desired from his dinner for that purpose, as was the habit, for
which an allowance was duly made, the cell had been visited by the
officer of the day when making his rounds. The girl was still soundly
sleeping, and doubtless did not hear the opening of the door as the
officer of the day unlocked it and glanced in. It was already dark, and
by the faint glimmerings of the lantern held outside for him by the
corporal accompanying him upon his rounds, he saw the bare walls and
floor, and in the single chair a muffled figure leaning upon the table,
presumably asleep or plunged in deep dejection, the head bowed upon the
arms. It never occurred to him that this shadowy presence in the bleak
gloom could be other than the exhausted and travel-worn prisoner, whom
he did not wish to rouse unnecessarily. The officer’s duties were many
and pressing at this hour and called him elsewhere. Therefore, closing
the door and turning the key, he thought no more of the captive till he
saw the golden head of the changeling when the mystery was revealed.
Captain Howard, who had given the girl access to the cell, could ill
accuse the subaltern of neglect of duty, and the commandant himself
could hardly have been expected to guard against masterly strategy in
the quarter whence it had emanated.
Messengers were presently ready to start out with the first intimation
of a lull in the storm or the peep of day to warn all the Cherokee
towns of reprisal should they dare to harbor the fugitive, for that
Laroche would return to the friendly Cherokee strongholds hardly
admitted of a doubt in the mind of Captain Howard. He had not
sufficient troops at command to awe the Indians into surrendering the
fugitive, but he hoped that the passive force of the treaty and its
advantages, otherwise annulled, might avail.
Captain Howard was a man of magnanimity. Even with the cup of
well-earned success dashed from his lips he had the good feeling to
pity the father,--his own daughters were far away in England,--as Jock
Lesly continually ejaculated, “_I_ surrender, Captain! The wean’s
no responsible! _I_ surrender!”
“Jock,” he said, “you need not forswear yourself. We all know that
you would not have jeopardized the fair interests of the Indian trade
for all the Johnny Crapauds who ever passed the tongue of a buckle
through a sword-belt,--not even if instead of your salt he had eaten
your whole station! Miss Lilias Lesly here, for reasons seeming to
herself good and fitting”--he cast upon her an acrid glance--“set the
man free,--for which she is under arrest, and”--intercepting a wild
bleat of paternal protest--“will remain so in your ain ha’ house under
your watch and ward; and we have no doubt she will be produced when
summoned, and you will give your faithful recognizance to that effect.”
He was reflecting that it would answer every purpose to detain the
girl thus, for while her punishment might result should the matter
continue of importance, it would otherwise hardly be contemplated by
the colonial authorities in view of the unpopularity of such a step.
Jock Lesly was in such haste to sign and seal a paper betokening this
clemency that he could hardly hold the sputtering quill; and during
this solemn ceremony the irrepressible Lilias broke out laughing with
hysterical glee, and requested Captain Howard to put into a wee corner
o’ that paper the promise he had given her that she “suld hae a’ thae
blankets that were ne’er brought to the fort, afore the sodgers suld
steal them a’.”
“Thae bit duds were unco gude duds,” she remarked fleeringly of these
immaterial comforts.
XXII
CALLUM MACILVESTY had been soon at Jock Lesly’s side to afford him
such succor and countenance as was possible under the circumstances.
He asked for leave to aid him in transporting Lilias, so stiff with
the cold was she, back to the cave house, where she sat on the buffalo
rug before the flaring fire, her glittering hair all tumbling about
her shoulders, her eyes shining with triumph, and laughing with gay
outbursts of flattered joy to learn how wretched they had all been
because of her absence, and how wrong and wicked they esteemed her
sudden arbitrary release of the prisoner.
“_I_ amna sorry,” she protested, “except for that the callant hae
on my gude red rokelay, an’ my best puce-colored serge gownd, an’ my
gude murrey screen, wi’ only ae wee tear in the weft o’ it,--an’ I’se
warrant I’ll no see a’ that braw gear again!”
It was Callum who sought to impress her with the magnitude of the
offense that she had committed, for Jock Lesly cared for naught else on
earth save that she was safe and sat once more on the rug before the
blazing fire of the ha’ house.
“An’ what care I how far ye went an’ how hard ye fared to tak him,
Callum!” she cried indignantly. “Gin I hadna tauld you the callant
was French, you wad ne’er hae kenned it. An’ ye tauld yon Captain
Howard--that bluidy-minded chiel! I wuss he was in his ain cauld
tolbooth to freeze stiff like my nainsell!”
“Whist, whist, hinny!” remonstrated Jock Lesly. “Callum wadna hae tauld
the lad was French had he kenned you wad wuss to keep it secret; wad
ye, Callum?”
With this direct appeal the Highland soldier, sitting in his armchair
opposite Jock Lesly at the fire, with Lilias between them on the rug,
gazed steadily into the glowing coals. He could not evade the question.
“Yes,” he answered, “I wad! I wad ha’ tauld e’en if Lilias had bid me
keep a quiet sough aboot it!”
“Na, Callum! surely na!” exclaimed Jock Lesly irritably. “Ye wadna vex
the bairn!” For Lilias had lifted her head with its wealth of flaring
hair, and was gazing at Callum with intent, questioning, speculative
eyes. “Ye care too muckle for Lilias for that!” Jock Lesly prompted him.
“I care more for my oath, for my duty, than for any lassie alive!”
protested the blunt soldier.
There was a moment’s silence, while the fire roared and the smoke
rushed up the chimney into the wild wintry storm without, of which they
here heard naught. Jock Lesly, with a knitted brow, filled his pipe and
said no more. Callum, his glass poised upon his knee, gazed steadfastly
into the flames, and Lilias, with dewy, gleaming eyes fixed upon him,
suddenly exclaimed, as if in delighted reminiscence, “Ou, ay, that was
what Tam Wilson said! His oath, his honor aboon a’! No woman’s wile, no
woman’s smile could win him awa’! Ah, the leal heart he had! That is
what Tam Wilson aye said!”
“I care na for Tam Wilson, nor for what he said!” declared the dour
Callum glumly.
“Not the ane you kenned!” cried Lilias. “_This_ Tam Wilson ye
never saw!”
The Highland soldier thought the cold and excitement and anxiety had
shaken her balance a trifle.
“But Callum,” she persisted, “suppose it wad gar me like you better if
you had hid that the puir lad is French?”
“I wadna hae dune it! I wadna hae hid it!” He shook his head sadly,
and her father stared at him in amazement. Inch by inch he teemed
renouncing his chance for the girl’s good graces.
“A-weel, a-weel,” she said slowly. “But since a’s come an’ gane, an’
the march was for naething, an’ the prisoner is flitted, an’ I was
frozen wi’ cauld an’ misery, an’ am like to be sent to Charlestoun to
answer for my crimes, ye can say now, lad, that ye are verra sorry that
ye disclosed my gossip to your officer, an’ ye wadna do it again if it
were to be done anew! Ye will say that?” She looked at him with keen
expectant eyes.
“I wad do it all the same,” he protested deliberately. Then, “Lilias,
why wad ye torment me wi’ a’ these questions? They tear out my heart!”
“I sall ne’er forget it!” she cried. “Ye did it against my wull. An’
now ye say that if ye had the chance anew ye wad e’en do it agen,
though I suld _hate_ ye for it!”
“It’s my oath, Lilias! My duty! I canna look to you instead o’ thae
great obligations. I suld do it again an’ again, whate’er ye might say
or feel, an’ keep my oath till death!”
She suddenly broke out laughing afresh, in shrill sweet ecstatic joy.
“That Tam Wilson! Wha wad think! That Tam Wilson at last!”
She seemed enigmatic to them both, but they hardly had space to read
the riddle, for Callum, recognising the passage of time, sprang up to
return to the fort before his limited leave expired. He ran briskly
up the ladder with Jock Lesly clambering after him to take down the
barricade to let him out, and to secure the bars subsequent to his
exit. There was still fire upon the hearth of the great trading-house,
and a dull red glow suffused its dusky brown spaces. It was only as
Lesly turned to close the door of the counter that he noticed that
Lilias, agile enough despite the congealed condition she so graphically
described, had followed also, and after the soldier had sprung down
the front steps and strode off through the snow the two, father
and daughter, stood for a moment gazing into the vast dark stormy
wilderness, permeated by the sense of silent unseen motion in the
whirling flakes, of which only the nearest were visible in the red glow
of the dying fire from within.
“Hegh, come, bairnie, we’se e’en steek the door,” Lesly said.
The lantern in his hand showed her face to be all sweetly smiling. She
was looking into the blank voids of the snowy gloom and carrying first
one hand and then the other to her lips with an engaging free curve and
tossing each toward the wilderness.
“And what now?” he demanded, staring owlishly down at her in amaze.
“Just throwing a wheen kisses to Tam Wilson,--oh puir Tam Wilson! Wha
wad hae thought he wad e’er win hame agen!”
“Wow!” said her father glumly. “Tam Wilson!--drat Tam Wilson, I say! We
hae had an unco pother ower Tam Wilson, now!”
But she ran in ahead of him laughing in great glee, and he overheard
her in her little chamber while she disrobed for bed talking about Tam
Wilson and Tam Wilson to Luckie Meg, who answered acquiescently to
whatever she said, “Ou,--ay! I’se warrant!” and apparently gave scant
heed, even if she heard at all.
For some weeks Callum MacIlvesty felt anew that he was admitted into
a sort of Paradise in frequenting the ha’ house, albeit his heart was
sore. The rescue that she had planned and achieved for the prisoner
at such risk and suffering to herself argued much for the strength of
her attachment to Laroche, and this forbade hope even when hope seemed
most possible. She herself was so gay, so whimsically cheery, so blithe
about the hearth, where the Highlander loved to sit as of yore with her
father. She noted Callum’s depressed mien, and ascribing it to the
fruitless result of the long laborious march and triumphant capture,
argued that he had done all that he could and more than any other man
would, his whole duty, and the sequence was the affair of Captain
Howard,--and then remarked most pertinently that if she were that
officer and had no better a tassel to a nightcap than that frayed thing
he sported in public at the guard-house, she would resign from the army!
In order to prove that Captain Howard had himself sustained no
damage in the loss of his notable prisoner, she cited the fact that
the war with France was now over, cessation of hostilities had been
announced on the 21st of January, and since the treaty had been signed
in February, it had become known that the French forts, Toulouse,
Tombecbé, Condé, were to be surrendered as early as English officers
could be detailed to receive the transfer. All prisoners were to be
released,--among those specially demanded she had seen in the Gazette
the name of Lieutenant de Laroche,--already escaped though he was!
But all this, though so prettily urged, did not suffice to lift the
gloom that weighed on Callum’s mind. He was soon to say farewell, to
rejoin the Forty-Second, to go he knew not whither, nor when to return!
It was one day when he was thus a-mope, as Lilias was wont to describe
his state of mind, that Callum discovered her secret, if so candid an
emotion can be so called. The ha’ house had fallen into its ancient
habitudes cannily enough, as if sorrows had never menaced it, and
Lilias in her brilliant blue gown with roses scattered adown its white
stripes sat at her wheel spinning as heedfully and dexterously as if
she had never fashioned toils of more significance. Callum on the
settle, his arms folded, his head a little bent, gazed into the red
coals. All that he had once hoped, nay expected, was annulled by the
sentiments implied in her release of Laroche, and the resentment she
had expressed toward himself for revealing aught that she had told
him, albeit she had not bespoken secrecy. Therefore he experienced
a revulsion of feeling so complete, so acute, as almost to resemble
pain in its breathless keenness. He had suddenly lifted his eyes and
caught hers fixed upon him with an expression he had never seen in
them before, wistful, smiling, yet serious, and deeply tender. His
heart gave a great plunge and every nerve was tense. He rose, and
still looking at her, as if he feared she might vanish like some
lovely dream, advanced across the hearth. He sat down beside her in
her father’s chair, still seeking to read--the dullard!--the obvious
mystery of the sapphire light in her eyes.
“Lilias,” he said clumsily and all tremulous, “have you something to
tell me?”
“I trow not!” she exclaimed, her face roseate with smiles and blushes,
but giving a lofty nod of her golden head. “I was thinking, man, you
may hae something to tell to me!”
“Ah, Lilias, I hae tauld it sae often!” he cried bewildered.
“An’ sae you are tired o’ telling it?” she retorted. “Eh, sirs, to be
tired sae early!”
“I can never be tired of telling it, Lilias, if only you will listen to
it,--how I love you more and more day by day!”
“It’s just as weel, then,”--she cast a radiant smile upon him as
she bent anew to her wheel,--“for I expect to listen to it--that
is--whiles--at orra times--when I hae naething better to do--as lang as
I live.”
It was not in Callum’s scheme of love-making to suggest the suddenness
of this acceptability of a suit so long urged. Luckie Meg herself could
not have assented more acquiescently than he in every detail that
Lilias chose to propound. It was only once, in the course of those long
sunless afternoons in the cavern, with the red glow of the fire about
them and the impenetrable walls to fend off the alien world so far
away from their consciousness, when all their talk was of their mutual
experience of the sentiment that swayed them, what each had felt and
thought, that Callum showed symptoms of rebellion--being informed that
she looked upon him and he might consider himself as “Tam Wilson.”
“But I will not!” cried Callum, ready to put the question to the
torture at once. Jealousy is not so easily vanquished. Indeed it hardly
dies even under the heel of victory!
“Not the ane that you knew,” she stipulated. “Just ane auld love o’ my
ain! He wad put his oath before all. An’ he loved a woman well, but
honor mair! an’ he had no deceit nor guile in his heart (though I hinna
forgot about your report to Captain Howard, neither, an’ I’ll sort ye
weel for it some day), an’ he had no false nations nor false tongues
(he had mickle ado to speak his ain), an’ no false names (‘Tam Wilson’
bein’ laid to him because he was sae like ‘Tam Wilson’). An’ I suld hae
kenned ye earlier for him,--though your hair hae aye got a place that
is streakit wi’ brown an’ lighter brown an’ I think it wadna show gin
it were brushed backward,--but I aye loved the look o’ ye, only I never
saw ye put to the test, and sae I thought ye were just plain ‘Callum
McIlvesty.’ But now I ken ye are Tam Wilson!”
And smiling at him with lips so joyous, so red and sweet, Callum
yielded the point and assumed in this wise the sobriquet which
personified her girlish ideal.
Still it nettled him grievously. She might have called her ideal
“Callum.”
“Whist, lad, whist,” said her father to him one day, “an’ I’se tell ye
something ye will ne’er find out frae her.”
Then with much solemnity, with circumspection, he pulled out a paper
from his wallet, to which he could not have paid more respectful and
close attention if it had been a schedule of prices current. It was a
letter from Laroche, dated on the French man-of-war L’Aigle, and was
addressed jointly to Jock Lesly and his daughter. It was an offer of
marriage to Lilias, and begged that they would fix a date to meet him
in Charlestown, where the ceremony might be performed by both Catholic
and Protestant clergy. It set forth his rank, means, and expectations,
which were very considerable, and gave references which were both
accessible and unimpeachable.
“An’, lad,” said Jock Lesly, looking owlishly at Callum while leaning
over the counter at the trading-house where he had driven so many
bargains, “seeing that she is my only child, and that ensigncy of
yours is gey far to seek, and this man is a sure enough lieutenant,
not o’ red Injuns but of the French army, and is a chevalier or a
sieur,--there’s no rebate on that,--and has lands an’ a château and
some income, and the lassie seemed fond o’ him on the Tennessee, and
here she set him free when they had him by the heels at the fort,--why
I downa say, but I advised her--weel, to marry the fallow, when we go
down this spring, an’ gae to live in France. It’s far awa’, is France,
but they hae gude glimmerings o’ sense about their weaving there. I hae
seen some gude camlets frae France, an’ ye ken there’s no place like
Lyons for silk--though that’s na for my trade neither.”
Callum’s heart sank for the mere consciousness that his happiness had
trembled in such jeopardy. “And what did she say?”
“Lilias?--why, she said ae sentence, ‘He isna Tam Wilson!’ Sae, lad, if
ye will be advised by me, ye’ll be Tam Wilson as near as ye can find
out how!”
About this time an ensigncy was secured for Callum through his family’s
influence, and when he returned shortly to Charlestown he met there
Everard, who was in a state of exuberant and facetious triumph in the
manner of the escape of Captain Howard’s prisoner, having earlier
eluded him also, and who was the first to congratulate the young
Highlander upon the attainment of his commission and the near approach
of his wedding day. For in the early summer Callum and Lilias were
married in Charlestown and sailed away, leaving auld Jock still deeply
immersed in the problems of the Indian trade. These problems became
much simplified by the withdrawal of the French from the country,
and soon the Cherokees began to present those curious symptoms of
degeneracy which seem the inevitable incident of the first stages of
civilization, an interregnum, so to speak, which ensues upon the last
vestiges of the ancient status. Thereafter they were only formidable
locally and in small predatory bands, and represented no more a
definitely organized menace to the British provinces. In the course of
some years a great happiness and source of pride fell to the lot of
Jock Lesly. The reversal of the attainder had restored the chief of the
ancient house of MacIlvesty to his pristine position with others of his
kinsmen of minor rank. By reason of several deaths Callum MacIlvesty
succeeded to a baronetcy, and Jock Lesly, despite his quondam bluff
expressions of scorn of a title, found its taste exceedingly sweet as
applied to his daughter; he was proud too of Callum’s rise in the army
through successive promotions for gallant conduct in the field.
“He smacks his lips ower ‘Captain Sir Callum an’ Leddy MacIlvesty’ as
if the words were fitten to eat,” Dougal commented dourly, “an’ somehow
he says ’em fifty times a day!”
There was another who heartily rejoiced in this advance of fortune when
it came to his ears, for Lady MacIlvesty’s beauty and what were called
her “eccentricities” made her of some social note in her day. Laroche
had loved the girl very truly for herself, and although he had sought
to look upon her rejection of his suit as in a certain sense an escape
for himself, in view of her humble station, her plebeian father, her
simple education and limited experience, and their incongruity with his
objects of ambition and the sphere of his association, he could not
entertain the reminiscence without a keen sentimental regret, albeit
blended with tender pleasure to know that the world had gone well with
her. He too had reached, as he deserved, promotion, and at no small
danger, as the sabre slashes received in the hand-to-hand warfare of
that day, and which disfigured his bland handsome face, might betoken.
He lived several years after his retirement from active service. One
who had known him in those halcyon days on the Tennessee River might
hardly have recognized him later, so scarred, gray-haired, wrinkled,
and very thin he had become,--a mere rack on which to hang his
decorations and the ribbons of his orders. He had always been esteemed
a man of unique ability, and his conversation was long valued by the
judicious in the cafés and salons of Paris which he frequented. When he
reached the discursive and reminiscent stage of advancing age, often,
as the night would wear on in a choice company, he would discourse
of high themes of national possibilities, and regretfully rehearse
disastrous phases of the country’s past that had fallen within his
personal knowledge,--of the great territories that France had developed
and forfeited; plans of empire that she had failed to utilize; strange
peoples of martial values who had sought her protectorate in vain. Then
he would revert to his own life among them,--reciting details of their
curious customs and mysterious antiquity; telling thrilling stories of
personal adventure, now of an escape from the menace of the torture and
the stake, and now of his release from the trebly guarded stronghold of
a British fort by the aid of a beautiful English lady of rank who loved
him and whom he adored.
And although as he grew older and his audiences younger they believed
this unnamed English lady of rank to be entirely apocryphal, the tear
was obviously genuine with which he sweetened his glass as he told that
she was dead now,--years ago--ah yes--dead!
“_Il y a une autre vie! C’est une belle espérance!_” he would
sigh, for he was always deeply religious. “But alas, that the sweets of
this life are transitory!”
And presently he would be talking of the triumphs of engineering
possible in that vast America. Sometimes he would trace out on the
tablecloth with the aid of the scroll-like pattern of the damask the
outline of the great bend of a river which he affirmed had singly
saved that country to the English and reft it from the French, as
its extraordinary obstructions to navigation prevented all adequate
conveyance of munitions of war to the Cherokees, who held the balance
of power. He would mark off the canal which he had purposed to
build in the fullness of time, and the site he had selected for the
barrier towns to guard the region of the portages, necessary to evade
the obstructions, as a temporary substitute. The technical terms
of the oft-told tale, the abstruse calculations of the elaborately
demonstrated problem, would finally wear out the interest of his
auditors; they would slip away one by one, and leave him bending over
the table, gloating upon the symmetrical possibilities of his plan,
bewailing its untimely frustration, seeing, instead of the blank cloth,
that rich new land with its gigantic growths of primeval forests and
those dizzy whirls of turbulent waters, that stretch out miles and
miles impassably, where even now, despite the advance of modern science
and the exorcising appropriations of Congress, the devils, _hottuk
ookproose_, still dance in the riotous rapids and sing tumultuously
as of yore.
NOTES
NOTES
[Footnote 1: Page 4. A detail of the incidents of this visit to the
king in London and the consequent impressions made upon the minds of
the Indians would be of much interest to the student of civilization.
It is to be regretted that Lieutenant Henry Timberlake of Virginia,
who accompanied the Cherokees to England, should have devoted so great
a space in his “Memoirs” of that event (published in London in 1765)
to plaintive accounts of his wrangling with governmental officials
concerning his reimbursement for sundry expenses on their account,
with which it seems he burdened himself without sufficient warrant,
and to the effort to repel the insinuation that he undertook the
enterprise of conducting them thither for his own personal profit, as
impresario so to speak; for the people of that city pressed in hordes
to see them, many of the nobility as well as citizens of lower rank,
and some, evidently without the knowledge of Lieutenant Timberlake,
paid for the privilege. Beyond the strange dirge-like chant which
Ostenaco sang on landing; their indifference to the architecture of
the Cathedral of Exeter; their terror of the statue of Hercules with
uplifted club which they saw at Wilton (they begged to be taken away
immediately); their relish of the entertainments at Ranelegh, Vauxhall,
and especially of the pantomimes at Sadler’s Wells; their admiration of
the youth, personal beauty, and affability of the king, there is naught
to indicate their attitude of mind. A contemporary account, however, in
the “Annual Register” for 1762 gives a personal glimpse of them.
“Three Cherokee chiefs, lately arrived from South Carolina, in order
to settle a lasting peace with the English, had their first audience
of his majesty. The head chief called Outacite or Man-killer, on
account of his many gallant actions, was introduced by Lord Eglinton,
and conducted by Sir Clement Cottrell, master of ceremonies. They were
upwards of an hour and a half with his majesty, who received them
with great goodness, and they behaved in his presence with remarkable
decency and mildness. The man who assisted as interpreter on this
occasion, instead of one who set out with them, but died on his
passage, was so confused that the king could ask but few questions.
“These chiefs are well-made men, near six feet high, their faces and
necks coarsely painted of a copper colour, and they seem to have no
hair on their heads. They came over in the dress of their country,
consisting of a shirt, trowzers, and mantle, their heads covered with
skull-caps and adorned with shells, feathers, earrings, and other
trifling ornaments. On their arrival in London they were conducted
to a house taken for them in Suffolk street, and habited more in the
English manner. When introduced to his majesty the head chief wore a
blue mantle covered with lace, and had his head richly ornamented.
On his breast hung a silver gorget with his majesty’s arms engraved.
The other two chiefs were in scarlet, richly adorned with gold lace,
and gorgets of plate on their breasts. During their stay in England
of about two months they were invited to the tables of several of the
nobility, and were shown by a gentleman, appointed for that purpose,
the tower, the camps, and everything else that could serve to impress
them with proper ideas of the power and grandeur of the nation; but it
is hard to say what impression these sights made upon them, as they had
no other way of communicating their sentiments but by their gestures.
They were likewise conducted every day to one or another of the places
of amusement, in and about London, where they constantly drew after
them innumerable crowds of spectators, to the no small emolument of
the owners of these places, some of which raised their prices to make
the most of such unusual guests. Here they behaved in general with
great familiarity, shaking hands very freely with all those who thought
proper to accept that honour. They carried home with them articles of
peace between his majesty and their nation, with a handsome present of
warlike instruments and such other things as they seemed to place the
greatest value on.”]
[Footnote 2: Page 5. The Indian phrases given in this volume are
studied from sources as nearly contemporaneous as may be with the
events herein narrated, both for the sake of verisimilitude and because
of the multitudinous changes to which the aboriginal languages have
since been subjected, for the purpose of classification in view of
the diverse orthography of the earlier philologists, which varied, of
course, according to nationality, French, German, or English.
It is interesting to note the differing estimate of the value which
the learned place on this singular jetsam and flotsam of the seas of
Time. The study of the aboriginal languages, apart from historical
considerations, possesses great interest in the revelation of “new
plans of ideas,” as Monsieur Maupertuis felicitously phrases methods
of grammatical construction. “The Greek is admired for its compounds,
yet what are they to those of the Indians!” exclaims the eminent
philologist, Mr. Duponceau. “What would Tibullus or Sappho have
given to have had at their command a word at once so tender and so
expressive--_wulamalessohalian_, ‘thou who makest me happy’? How
delighted would be Moore, the poet of the loves and graces, if his
language, instead of five or six tedious words, had furnished him with
an expression like this in which the lover, the object beloved, and the
delicious sentiment are blended and fused together in one comprehensive
and appellative term. And is it in the language of savages that these
beautiful forms are found!”
And yet in the learned work on America by Mr. Edward John Payne of
University College, Oxford, still in course of publication, it is
stated that “the majority of these languages, if not absolutely
the lowest in the glossological scale, are as near the bottom as
the student of the origin of speech could well desire.” Of their
polysynthetic features, which Mr. Duponceau so much admires, Mr.
Payne speaks as of merely bunched words, regarding the holophrase as
the primitive and simplest form of ignorant language, which in the
development and weight of meaning is broken finally, producing in its
disintegration parts of speech.
Lord Monboddo, in his “Origin and Progress of Language,” founding his
opinion partly on the testimony of Father Sagard’s work, “Le Grand
Voyage du Pays des Hurons,” says of the Huron language, “It is the
most imperfect of any that has ever been discovered;” whereas Mr.
Duponceau finds it “rich in grammatical forms,” and permits himself the
expression “pompous ignorance” in alluding to the conclusions of his
learned confrère.
The fact that Dr. Adam Smith as well as Lord Monboddo perceived in the
tendency to incorporate in one word the meaning of a whole sentence an
evidence of barbarism induces Mr. Duponceau to support the contrary
opinion with “a lively example from Suetonius, _Ave Imperator,
morituri_ (those-who-are-going-to-die) _te salutant_. Since it
has been discovered that the barbarous dialects of savage nations are
formed on the same principles with classical idioms, it has been found
easier to ascribe the beautiful organization of these languages to
stupidity and barbarism than to acknowledge our ignorance of the manner
in which it has been produced.”
Humboldt says: “It is acknowledged that almost everywhere the Indian
idioms display greater richness and more delicate gradations than might
be supposed from the uncultivated state of the people by whom they are
spoken.” Adair, who had forty years’ personal experience among them,
writing in 1775, claims that their languages give evidence of culture
and scope of expression impossible to have originated with uncivilized
tribes such as they were found. A singular circumstance concerning the
“syllabic alphabet,” presumed to have been invented by the Cherokee
Sequoyah (John Guest) about 1820, would imply an origin at a far more
ancient date. A stone engraved with this character was found by an
agent of the Bureau of Ethnology in 1889 lying under the skull of a
skeleton buried in an Indian mound, with every evidence of antiquity,
on the north side of the Tennessee River, in the immediate vicinity
of one of the old Cherokee towns. This is of more special interest as
Adair and also Buttrick, in his “Antiquities,” record that the Indians
always claim to have once had scriptures, or a book, which for their
sins they had lost to the white race. May not these quaint characters
bear some relation to this tradition?
The “particular plural” for “we,” which it seems occurs in all these
languages, even found in the extinct Taensa dialect,--concerning the
genuineness of the grammar of which so much interest was elicited
some years ago on its publication, edited by Messieurs Adam and
Parisot,--seems hardly worth the discussion bestowed upon it, as
parallels exist in so many modern European languages,--_noi altri_,
_nous autres_, _nosotros_,--and even the vernacular may offer a
counterpart in “we-all” and “we-uns.”
Lord Monboddo’s idea, first presented to his attention by the blind
poet, the Reverend Thomas Blacklock, “that the first language among men
was music,” has an interesting suggestion of confirmation in the speech
of the Cherokees as described by Timberlake. “Their language is vastly
aspirated, and the accents so many and various you would often imagine
them to be singing in their common discourse.” Bartram says of the
sound of the Muscogulge (Muscogee) language, “The women in particular
speak so fine and musical as to represent the singing of birds.”
Gayarre states that the word “Choctaw” means “charming voice,” and was
hence applied to the tribe.]
[Footnote 3: Page 8. A letter from General Sir Jeffrey Amherst dated
Albany, August 13, 1761, gives a particularized account of these
destructive measures. “The country would have been impenetrable had it
been well defended. Fifteen towns and all the plantations have been
burned; above 1400 acres of corn, beans, and pease, etc., destroyed;
about 5000 people, men, women, and children, driven into the woods and
mountains, where having nothing to subsist upon they must either starve
or sue for peace.”
The fury of these measures after resistance had ceased is partly to be
explained as retaliation for the Cherokees’ breach of faith during the
preceding year, in the massacre of the garrison of Fort Loudon after
its capitulation, while on the march to Fort Prince George under the
safe conduct and escort of the principal chiefs. All the officers,
including the commandant, the unfortunate Captain Paul Demeré, fell
in this indiscriminate slaughter except one, Captain John Stuart,
who escaped and was afterward rewarded by a crown office for his
courage and constancy in the siege. He was of the family of Stuart of
Kincardine, Strathspey, Scotland, married into a South Carolina family,
and previous to the American Revolution lived in Charlestown, where
was born his son, who became an officer in the British army, General
Sir John Stuart, Count of Maida, winning the signal victory of Maida
over the French general Reynier, in Calabria in 1806. The garrison
of Fort Loudon has a special interest as the first military force of
civilization giving battle on the soil which is now Tennessee, its
earliest sacrifice in the cause of human progress.]
[Footnote 4: Page 13. Several of the elder writers describe such
clever pastimes among the Indians. Timberlake records that while in
the Cherokee country he witnessed this favorite pantomime, as well as
another equally diverting, called “Taking the pigeons at roost.”]
[Footnote 5: Page 31. It is said that the Indians when discovered had
among them no methods of ascertaining weight, and bought and sold
exclusively by measure. Hence the incongruity of this locution in their
speech has furnished an additional argument to the supporters of the
theory of their Hebraic origin, suggesting an idiomatic survival of
forgotten customs.]
[Footnote 6: Page 56. So extreme and well founded was the prevalent
terror of the torture by the Indians that once captured no immediate
sacrifice was too great to evade the grimmer possibility. General David
Stewart of Garth gives an instance in this region among the British
troops at this time. “Montgomerie’s Highlanders were often employed
in small detached expeditions. In these marches they had numberless
skirmishes with the Indians and with the irregular troops of the enemy.
Several soldiers of this and other regiments fell into the hands of
the Indians, being taken in an ambush. Allan Macpherson, one of these
soldiers, witnessing the miserable fate of several of his fellow
prisoners, who had been tortured to death by the Indians, and seeing
them preparing to commence the same operations upon himself, made signs
that he had something to communicate. An interpreter was brought.
Macpherson told them that provided his life was spared for a few
minutes he would communicate the secret of an extraordinary medicine
which, if applied to the skin, would cause it to resist the strongest
blow of a tomahawk or sword, and if they would allow him to go to the
woods with a guard to collect the plants proper for this medicine,
he would prepare it and allow the experiment to be tried on his own
neck by the strongest and most expert warrior among them. This story
easily gained upon the superstitious credulity of the Indians, and
the request of the Highlander was instantly complied with. Being sent
into the woods he soon returned with such plants as he chose to pick
up. Having boiled these herbs, he rubbed his neck with their juice,
and laying his head upon a log of wood desired the strongest man among
them to strike at his neck with his tomahawk, when he would find that
he could not make the slightest impression. An Indian, leveling a blow
with all his might, cut with such force that the head flew off to the
distance of several yards. The Indians were fixed in amazement at their
own credulity and the address with which the prisoner had escaped the
lingering death prepared for him; but instead of being enraged at the
escape of their victim, they were so pleased with his ingenuity that
they refrained from inflicting further cruelties on their remaining
prisoners.”]
[Footnote 7: Page 84. The disposition to compete for the Cherokee trade
had earlier been the occasion of much remonstrance from Governor Glen
of South Carolina to Lieutenant-Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia during
their respective incumbency. The vexed question then seeming set at
rest was revived later by Lieutenant-Governor Fauquier of Virginia. In
his allusion to the subject, Jock Lesly possibly included Lieutenant
Henry Timberlake of Byrd’s Virginia Regiment, who had recently been on
a visit to the Cherokee country, quitting it in the early spring, on
March 10, 1762. But it is only fair to Lieutenant Timberlake to say
that the Indians were pressing him to induce Virginia to open a trade
with the Cherokees.]
[Footnote 8: Page 182. Timberlake uses the spelling “Kanagatucko;” the
name appears otherwise signed to the Articles of Capitulation of Fort
Loudon, but of course in each instance the spelling is phonetic.]
[Footnote 9: Page 244. This incantation is an extract from one of the
most singular of the ancient Sacred Formulæ of the Cherokees collected
by Mr. James Mooney for the Smithsonian Institution.]
[Footnote 10: Page 282. The title of Emperor of the Cherokee Nation
was conferred by British authority on Moy Toy through Sir Alexander
Cuming in 1730, but this proved no hindrance to the chief’s acceptance
of the same high title under the authority of the French government
in 1736 through its emissary among the tribe, Christian Priber, a
German Jesuit. Adair recounts some details of the latter’s efforts to
materialize Iberville’s old scheme of unifying the Indian tribes, which
were similar to the experiences in the same emprise of the earlier
emissaries, and the futile ventures of Baron Dejean, Louis Latinac, and
Laroche a score of years later.]
[Footnote 11: Page 336. The history of the Indians is not a little
complicated by the repetition of their names from one generation to
another and of their war-titles, sometimes to be differentiated only
by the names of their respective towns as a suffix, as Outacite (the
Man-killer), of Citico, or Quorinnah (the Raven), of Huwhassee. Even
their sobriquets are not to be relied upon for further identification.
Another Mingo Push-koosh flourished among the Choctaws a generation
earlier, and was the half brother of the celebrated Shulashummashtabe
(Red Shoes), who is himself often confounded with the chief of the
Coosawdas, also known as “Red Shoes,” long afterward, being active in
Indian politics as late as 1789. The Choctaw “Red Shoes” enjoyed great
esteem among the British, as did also the Cherokee “Little Carpenter”
(more accurately translated as “Superlative Wood-carver”), in whose
honor, indeed, an English ship was named and a British stronghold,
before the Cherokee War, Fort Atta-Kulla-Kulla.]
[Footnote 12: Page 368. The climate of this southern region at this
period seems to have won some renown for its extremes. An officer’s
letter from Fort Prince George, dated January 9, 1761, says: “I have
been several winters in the north of Scotland and do not think I
have ever felt it colder there than here at this time; the snow is
in general three quarters of a yard deep, attended with very sharp
frosts.” As to the summer temperature, Governor Ellis has left it of
record in a letter to John Ellis, Esq., F.R.S., dated Georgia, July
17, 1758, that he thought the inhabitants of this section “breathed
hotter air than any other people upon earth.” He takes pains to state
that he made his observations with the same thermometer that he had had
with him in the equatorial parts of Africa and in the Leeward Islands.
Hewatt, the historian, ventures to protest, albeit deferring to the
accuracy and learning of the erudite and traveled governor, and says
that the mercury never so far exceeded the bounds of reason in South
Carolina, and implies that he believed that these eccentricities were
very rare in Georgia.]
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