“but this hyar still-house air yourn, an’ I s’pose ez ye hev got a
right ter say who air ter stay an’ who air ter go.”
He went out into the chill night; the moon had sunk; the fleet of
clouds rode at anchor above the eastern horizon, and save the throbbing
of the constellations the sky was still. But the strong, cold wind
continued to circle close about the surface of the earth; the pines
were swaying to and fro, and moaning as they swayed; the bare branches
of the other trees crashed fitfully together. As Yates mounted his
horse he heard Aaron say, in a fretful tone: “In the name of God,
John, what ails ye to-night? Ye tuk Mark an’ Mose up ez sharp! Ye air
ez powerful bouncin’ ez ef ye hed been drunk fur a week.”
The keen voice of the Panther rang out shrilly, and Mark gave his
horse whip and heel to be beyond the sound of it. He wanted to hear no
more--not even the tones--least of all the words, and words spoken in
confidence in their own circle when they believed themselves unheard.
He feared there was some wicked conspiracy among them; he could not
imagine what it might be, but since he could do naught to hinder he
earnestly desired that he might not become accidentally cognizant of
it, and in so far accessory to it. He therefore sought to give them
some intimation of his lingering presence, for Cockleburr had been
frisky and restive, and difficult to mount; he accordingly began to
sing aloud:--
“You hear that hawn? Yo he! Yo ho!”
But what was this? Instead of his customary hearty whoop, the tones
rang out all forlornly, a wheeze and a quaver, and finally broke and
sunk into silence. But the voices in conversation within had suddenly
ceased. The musically disposed of the Brice brothers himself was
singing, as if quite casually:--
“He wept full sore fur his ‘dear friend Jack,’
An’ how could I know he meant ‘Apple-Jack’!”
Mark was aware that they had taken his warning, although with no
appreciation of his motive in giving it. He could imagine the
contemptuous anger against him with which they looked significantly at
one another as they sat in the dusky shadows around the still, and he
knew that his sudden outburst into song must seem to them bravado--an
intimation that he did not care for having been summarily ejected
from the still-house, when in reality, only the recollection of it
sent the color flaming to his cheeks and the tears to his eyes. This
was not for the mere matter of pride, either; but for disappointment,
for fled illusions, for the realization that he had placed a false
valuation on these men. He had been flattered that they had cared for
his friendship, and reciprocally had valued him more than others;
they had relished and invited his companionship; they had treated him
almost as one of themselves. And although he saw much gambling and
drinking, sometimes resulting in brawls and furious fights, against
which his moral sense revolted, he felt sure that their dissipation was
transitory; they would all straighten out and settle down--when they
themselves were older. In truth, he could hardly have conceived that
this manifestation of to-night was the true identity of the friends to
whom he had attached himself--that their souls, their hearts, their
minds, were of a piece with the texture of their daily lives, as sooner
or later the event would show. In the disuse of good impulses and
honest qualities they grow lax and weak. They are the moral muscles of
the spiritual being, and, like the muscles of the physical body, they
must needs be exercised and trained to serve the best interests of the
soul.
“Yo-he! Yo-ho!” sang poor Mark, as he plunged into the forest, keeping
in the wood trail, called courteously a road, partly by the memory of
his horse, and partly by the keen sight of his gray eyes. He lapsed
presently into silence, for he had no heart for singing, and he
jogged on dispirited, gloomy, reflective, through the rugged ways of
the wilderness. It was fully two hours before he emerged into the more
open country about his mother’s house; as he reached the bank of the
stream he glanced up, toward the bridge--the faintest suggestion of two
parallel lines across the instarred sky. A great light flashed through
the heavens, followed by a comet-like sweep of fiery sparks.
“That thar air the ’leven o’clock train, I reckon,” said Mark, making
his cautious way among the bowlders and fragments of fallen rock to
the door of the house. The horse plucked up spirit to neigh gleefully
at the sight of his shanty and the thought of his supper. The sound
brought Mrs. Yates to the window of the cabin.
“Air that ye a-comin’, Mark?” she asked.
“It air me an’ Cockleburr,” replied her son, with an effort to be
cheerful too, and to cast away gloomy thoughts in the relief of being
once more at home.
“Air ye ez drunk ez or’nary?” demanded his mother.
This was a damper. “I ain’t drunk nohow in the worl’,” said Mark,
sullenly.
“Whyn’t ye stay ter the still, then, till ye war soaked?” she gibed at
him.
Mark dismounted in silence; there was no saddle to be unbuckled, and
Cockleburr walked at once into the little shed to munch upon a handful
of hay and to dream of corn.
His master, entering the house, was saluted by the inquiry, “War
Painter Brice ez drunk ez common?”
“No, he warn’t drunk nuther.”
“Hev the still gone dry?” asked Mrs. Yates, affecting an air of deep
interest.
“Not ez I knows on, it hain’t,” said Mark.
“Thar must be suthin’ mighty comical a-goin on ef ye nor Painter nare
one air drunk. Is Aaron drunk, then? Nor Pete? nor Joe? Waal, this air
powerful disapp’intin’.” And she took off her spectacles, wiped them on
her apron, and shook her head slowly to and fro in solemn mockery.
“Waal,” she continued, with a more natural appearance of interest,
“what war they all a-talkin’ ’bout ter-night?”
Mark sat down, and looked gloomily at the dying embers in the deep
chimney-place for a moment, then he replied, evasively, “Nuthin’ much.”
“That’s what ye always say! Ef I go from hyar ter the spring yander,
I kin come back with more to tell than yer kin gether up in a day an’
a night at the still. It ’pears like ter me men war mos’ly made jes’
ter eat an’ drink, an’ thar tongues war gin ’em for no use but jes’ ter
keep ’em from feelin’ lonesome like.”
Mark did not respond to this sarcasm. His mother presently knelt
down on the rough stones of the hearth, and began to rake the coals
together, covering them with ashes, preliminary to retiring for the
night. She glanced up into his face as she completed the work; then,
with a gleam of fun in her eyes, she said:
“Ye look like ye’re studyin’ powerful hard, Mark. Mebbe ye air
a-cornsiderin’ ’bout gittin’ married. It’s ’bout time ez ye war
a-gittin’ another woman hyar ter work fur ye, ’kase I’m toler’ble old,
an’ can’t live forever mo’, an’ some day ye’ll find yerself desolated.”
“I ain’t a-studyin’ no more ’bout a-gettin’ married nor ye air
yerself,” Mark retorted, petulantly.
“Ye ain’t a-studyin’ much ’bout it, then,” said his mother. “The Bible
looks like it air a-pityin’ of widders mightily, but it ’pears ter me
that the worst of thar troubles is over.”
Then ensued a long silence. “Thar’s one thing to be sartain,” said
Mark, suddenly. “I ain’t never a-goin ter that thar still no more.”
“I hev hearn ye say that afore,” remarked Mrs. Yates, dryly. “An’ thar
never come a day when yer father war alive ez he didn’t say that very
word--nor a day as that word warn’t bruken.”
These amenities were at length sunk in sleep, and the little log hut
hung upon its precarious perch on the slope beneath the huge cliff all
quiet and lonely. The great gorge seemed a channel hewn for the winds;
they filled it with surging waves of sound, and the vast stretches
of woods were in wild commotion. The Argus-eyed sky still held its
steadfast watch, but an impenetrable black mask clung to the earth.
At long intervals there arose from out the forest the cry of a wild
beast--the anguish of the prey or the savage joy of the captor--and
then for a time no sound save the monotonous ebb and flow of the sea
of winds. Suddenly, a shrill whistle awoke the echoes, the meteor-like
train sweeping across the sky wavered, faltered, and paused on the
verge of the crag. Then the darkness was instarred with faint, swinging
points of light, and there floated down upon the wind the sound of
eager, excited voices.
“Ef them thar cars war ter drap off’n that thar bluff,” said the
anxious Mrs. Yates, as she and her son, aroused by the unwonted noise,
came out of the hut, and gazed upward at the great white glare of the
headlight, “they’d ruin the turnip patch, worl’ without e-end.”
“Nothing whatever is the matter,” said the Pullman conductor, cheerily,
to his passengers, as he re-entered his coach. “Only a little church on
fire just beyond the curve of the road; the engineer couldn’t determine
at first whether it was a fire built on the track or on the hillside.”
The curtains of the berths were dropped, sundry inquiring windows
were closed, the travelers lay back on their hard pillows, the faint
swinging points of light moved upward as the men with the lanterns
sprang upon the platforms, the train moved slowly and majestically
across the bridge, and presently it was whizzing past the little
church, where the flames had licked up benches and pulpit and floor,
and were beginning to stream through door and window, and far above the
roof.
The miniature world went clanging along its way, careless of what it
left behind, and the turnip patch was saved.
The wonderful phenomenon of the stoppage of the train had aroused the
whole countryside, and when it had passed, the strange lurid glare high
on the slope of the mountain attracted attention. There was an instant
rush of the scattered settlers toward the doomed building. A narrow,
circuitous path led them up the steep ascent among gigantic rocks and
dense pine thickets; the roaring of the tumultuous wind drowned all
other sounds, and they soon ceased the endeavor to speak to one another
as they went, and canvass their suspicions and indignation. Turning
a sharp curve, the foremost of the party came abruptly upon a man
descending.
He had felt secure in the dead hour of night and the thick darkness,
and the distance had precluded him from being warned by the stoppage
of the train. He stood in motionless indecision for an instant, until
Moses Carter, who was a little in advance of the others, made an effort
to seize him, exclaiming, “This fire ez ye hev kindled, Painter Brice,
will burn ye in hell forever!” He spoke at a venture, not recognizing
the dark shadow, but there was no mistaking the supple spring with
which the man threw himself upon his enemy, nor the keen ferocity that
wielded the sharp knife. Hearing, however, in the ebb of the wind,
voices approaching from the hill below, and realizing the number of his
antagonists, the Panther tore himself loose, and running in the dark
with the unerring instinct and precision of the wild beast that he was,
he sped up the precipitous slope, and was lost in the gloomy night.
“Gin us the slip!” exclaimed Joel Ruggles, in grievous disappointment,
as he came up breathless. “A cussed painter if ever thar war one.”
“Mebbe he won’t go fur,” said Moses Carter. “He done cut my arm a-nigh
in two, but thar air suthin’ adrippin’ off ’n my knife what I feels
in my bones is that thar Painter’s blood. An’ I ain’t a-goin ter stop
till he air cotched, dead or alive. He mought hev gone down yander
ter the Widder Yates’s house, ez him an’ Mark air thicker’n thieves.
Come ter think on’t,” he continued, “Mark war a-settin’ with this hyar
very Painter Brice an’ the t’others yander ter the still-house nigh
’pon eight o’clock ter-night, an’ like ez not he holped Painter an’
the t’others ter fire the church.” For there was a strong impression
prevalent that wherever Panther Brice was, his satellite brothers were
not far off. Nothing, however, was seen of them on the way, and the
pursuers burst in upon the frightened widow and her son with little
ceremony. Her assertion that Mark had not left home since the eleven
o’clock train passed was disregarded, and they dragged the young fellow
out to the door, demanding to know where were the Brices.
“I hain’t seen none of ’em since I lef’ the still ’bout’n eight or nine
o’clock ter-night,” Mark protested.
“Ef the truth war knowed,” said Moses Carter, jeeringly, “ye never lef’
the still till they did. War it ye ez holped ’em ter fire the church?”
“I never knowed the church war burnin’ till ye kem hyar,” replied
young Yates. He was almost overpowered by a sickening realization of
the meaning of those covert insinuations which he had heard at the
still; and he remembered that the Panther’s assertion that the church
was safer with the Brices in it than out of it, was made while he sat
among the brothers in Moses Carter’s presence. He saw the justice of
the strong suspicion.
“You know, though, whar Painter Brice is now--don’t ye?” asked Carter.
A faint streak of dawn was athwart the eastern clouds, and as the young
fellow turned his bewildered eyes upward to it the blood stood still in
his veins. Upon one of the parallel lines of the bridge was the figure
of man, belittled by the distance, and indistinctly defined against
the mottling sky; but the far-seeing gray eyes detected in a certain
untrammeled ease, as it moved lightly from one of the ties to another,
the Panther’s free motion.
Mark Yates hesitated. He cherished an almost superstitious reverence
for the church which Panther Brice had desecrated and destroyed, and he
feared the consequences of refusing to give the information demanded of
him. A denial of the knowledge he did not for a moment contemplate. And
struggling in his mind against these considerations was a recollection
of the hospitality of the Brices, and of the ill-starred friendship
that had taken root and grown and flourished at the still.
This hesitation was observed; there were significant looks interchanged
among the men, and the question was repeated, “Whar’s Painter Brice?”
The decision of the problems that agitated the mind of Mark Yates
was not left to him. He saw the figure on the bridge suddenly turn,
then start eagerly forward. A heavy freight train, almost noiseless
in the wild whirl of the wind, had approached very near without being
perceived by Panther Brice. He could not retrace his way before it
would be upon him--to cross the bridge in advance of it was his only
hope. He was dizzy from the loss of blood and the great height, and the
wind was blowing between the cliffs in a strong, unobstructed current.
As he ran rapidly onward, the first faint gleam of the approaching
headlight touched the bridge--a furious warning shriek of the whistle
mingled with a wild human cry, and the Panther, missing his footing,
fell like a thunderbolt into the depths of the black waters below.
There was a revulsion of feeling, very characteristic of inconstant
humanity, in the little group on the slope below the crag. Before
Mark Yates’s frantic exclamation, “Thar goes Painter Brice, an’ he’ll
be drownded sure!” had fairly died upon the air, half a dozen men were
struggling in the dark, cold water of the swift stream in the vain
attempt to rescue their hunted foe. Long after they had given up the
forlorn hope of saving his life, the morning sun for hours watched them
patrolling the banks for the recovery of the body.
“Ef we could haul that pore critter out somehow ’nother,” said Moses
Carter, his arm still dripping from the sharp strokes of the Panther’s
knife, “an’ git the preacher ter bury him somewhar under the pines like
he war a Christian, I could rest more sati’fied in my mind.”
The mountain stream never gave him up.
This event had a radical influence upon the future of Mark Yates.
Never again did he belittle the possible impetus given the moral
nature by those more trifling wrongs that always result in an
increased momentum toward crime. He was the first to discover more
of what Painter Brice had really intended,--had attempted,--than was
immediately apparent to the countryside in general. A fragment of the
door lay unburned among the charred remains of the little church in the
wilderness--a fragment that carried the lock, the key. Mark’s sharp
eyes fixed upon a salient point as he stood among the group that had
congregated there in the sad light of the awakening day. The key was
on the outside of the door, and it had been turned! The Panther had
doubtless been actuated by revenge, and perhaps, had been influenced
by the fear that information of the illicit distilling would be given
by the parson to the revenue authorities, as a means of breaking up an
element so inimical to the true progress of religion on the ridge--its
denizens hitherto availing themselves of the convenience of the still
to assuage any pricks of conscience they may have had in the matter,
and also fearing the swift and terrible fate that inevitably overtook
the informer. At all events, it was evident, that having reason to
believe the minister was still within, Painter Brice had noiselessly
locked the door that his unsuspecting enemy might also perish in the
flames. For in the primitive fashioning of the building there was no
aperture for light and air except the door--no window, save a small,
glassless square above the pulpit which, in the good time coming, the
congregation had hoped to glaze, to receive therefrom more light on
salvation. It was so small, so high, that perhaps no other man could
have slipped through it, save indeed the slim little “skimpy saint,”
and it was thus that he had escaped.
No vengeance followed the Panther’s brothers. “They hed ter do jes’
what Painter tole ’em, ye see,” was the explanation of this leniency.
And Mark Yates was always afterward described as “a peart smart boy,
ef he hedn’t holped the Brices ter fire the church-house.” The still
continued to be run according to the old regulations, except there
was no whisky sold to the church brethren. “That bein’ the word ez
John left behind him,” said Aaron. The laws of few departed rulers are
observed with the rigor which the Brices accorded to the Panther’s
word. The locality came to be generally avoided, and no one cared to
linger there after dark, save the three Brices, who sat as of old, in
the black shadows about the still.
Whenever in the night-wrapped gorge a shrill cry is heard from the
woods, or the wind strikes a piercing key, or the train thunders over
the bridge with a wild shriek of whistles, and the rocks repeat it
with a human tone in the echo, the simple foresters are wont to turn
a trifle pale and to bar up the doors, declaring that the sound “air
Painter Brice a-callin’ fur his brothers.”
THE EXPLOIT
OF
CHOOLAH, THE CHICKASAW
The victorious campaign which Lieutenant-Colonel James Grant conducted
in the Cherokee country in the summer of 1761, and which redounded so
greatly to the credit of the courage and endurance of the expeditionary
force, British regulars and South Carolina provincials, is like many
other human events in presenting to the casual observation only an
harmonious whole, while it is made up of a thousand little jagged bits
of varied incident inconsistent and irregular, and with no single
element in common but the attraction of cohesion to amalgamate the
mosaic.
Perhaps no two men in the command saw alike the peaks of the Great
Smoky Mountains hovering elusively on the horizon, now purple and
ominous among the storm clouds, for the rain fell persistently;
now distant, blue, transiently sun-flooded, and with the prismatic
splendors of the rainbow spanning in successive arches the abysses
from dome to dome, and growing ever fainter and fainter in duplication
far away. Perhaps no two men revived similar impressions as they
recognized various localities from the South Carolina coast to the
Indian town of Etchoee, near the Little Tennessee River, for many of
them had traversed hundreds of miles of these wild fastnesses the
previous year, when Colonel Montgomery, now returned to England, had
led an aggressive expedition against the Cherokees. Certain it is, the
accounts of their experiences are many and varied--only in all the
character of their terrible enemy, the powerful and warlike Cherokee,
stands out as incontrovertible as eternity, as immutable as Fate. Hence
there were no stragglers, no deserters. In a compact body, while the
rain fell, and the torrents swelled the streams till the fords became
almost impracticable, the little army, as with a single impulse,
pressed stanchly on through the mist-filled, sodden avenues of the
primeval woods. To be out of sight for an instant of that long, thin
column of soldiers risked far more than death--capture, torture, the
flame, the knife, all the extremity of anguish that the ingenuity of
savage malice could devise and human flesh endure. But although day
by day the thunder cracked among the branches of the dripping trees
and reverberated from the rocks of the craggy defiles, and keen swift
blades of lightning at short intervals thrust through the lowering
clouds, almost always near sunset long level lines of burnished golden
beams began to glance through the wild woodland ways; a mocking-bird
would burst into song from out the dense coverts of the laurel on the
slope of a mountain hard by; the sky would show blue overhead, and
glimmer red through the low-hanging boughs toward the west; and the
troops would pitch their tents under the restored peace of the elements
and the placid white stars.
A jolly camp it must have been. Stories of it have come down to this
day--of its songs, loud, hilarious, patriotic, doubtless rudely
musical; of its wild pranks, of that boyish and jocose kind denominated
by sober and unsympathetic elders, “horse-play”; of the intense delight
experienced by the savage allies, the Chickasaws, who participated in
the campaign, in witnessing the dances of the young Highlanders--how
“their sprightly manner in this exercise,” and athletic grace appealed
to the Indians; how the sound of the bag-pipes thrilled them; how they
admired that ancient martial garb, the kilt and plaid.
No admiration, however extravagant of Scotch customs, character, or
appearance, seemed excessive in the eyes of Lieutenant-Colonel James
Grant, so readily did his haughty, patriotic pride acquiesce in it, and
the Indian’s evident appreciation of the national superiority of the
Scotch to all other races of men duly served to enhance his opinion of
the mental acumen of the Chickasaws. This homage, however, failed to
mollify or modify the estimate of the noble redman already formed by a
certain subaltern, Lieutenant Ronald MacDonnell.
“The Lord made him an Indian--and an Indian he will remain,” he would
remark sagely.
The policy of the British government to utilize in its armies
the martial strength of semi-savage dependencies, elsewhere so
conspicuously exploited, was never successful with these Indians save
as the tribes might fight in predatory bands in their own wild way,
although much effort was made looking toward regular enlistments.
And, in fact, the futility of all endeavors to reduce the savage to
a reasonable conformity to the militarism of the camp, to inculcate
the details of the drill, a sense of the authority of officers, the
obligations of out-posts, the heinousness of “running the guard,” the
necessity of submitting to the prescribed punishments and penalties
for disobedience of orders,--all rendered this ethnographic saw so
marvelously apt, that it seemed endowed with more wisdom than Ronald
MacDonnell was popularly supposed to possess. But such logic as he
could muster operated within contracted limits. If the Lord had not
fitted a man to be a soldier, why--there Ronald MacDonnell’s extremest
flights of speculation paused.
In the scheme of his narrow-minded Cosmos the human creature was
represented by two simple species: unimportant, unindividualized man
in general, and that race of exalted beings known as soldiers. He was
a good drill, and with the instinct of a born disciplinarian in his
survey, he would often watch the Chickasaws with this question in his
mind,--sometimes when they were on the march, and their endurance,
their activity, the admirable proportions of their bodies, their free
and vigorous gait were in evidence; sometimes in the swift efficiency
of their scouting parties when their strategy and courage and wily
caution were most marked; sometimes in the relaxations of the camp when
their keen responsive interest in the quirks and quips of the soldier
at play attested their mental receptivity and plastic impressibility.
Their gayety seemed a docile, mundane, civilized sort of mirth when
they would stand around in the ring with the other soldiers to watch
the agile Highlanders in the inspiring martial posturing of the sword
dance, with their fluttering kilts and glittering blades, their free
gestures,their long, sinewy, bounding steps, as of creatures of no
weight, while the bag-pipes skirled, and the great campfire flared, and
the light and shadows fluctuated in the dense primeval woods, half
revealing, half concealing the lines of tents, of picketed horses,
of stacks of arms, of other flaring camp-fires--even the pastoral
suggestion in the distance of the horned heads of the beef-herd.
But whatever the place or scene, Ronald MacDonnell’s conclusion was
essentially the same. “The Lord made him an Indian,” he would say, with
an air of absolute finality.
He was a man of few words,--of few ideas; these were strictly military
and of an appreciated value. He was considered a promising young
officer, and was often detailed to important and hazardous duty. And
if he had naught to say at mess, and seldom could perceive a joke
unless of a phenomenal pertinence and brilliancy, broadly aflare so to
speak under his nose, he was yet a boon companion, and could hold his
own like a Scotchman when many a brighter man was under the table.
He had a certain stanch, unquestioning sense of duty and loyalty, and
manifested an unchangeable partisanship in his friendship, of a silent
and undemonstrative order, that caused his somewhat exaggerated view
of his own dignity to be respected, for it was intuitively felt that
his personal antagonism would be of the same tenacious, unreasoning,
requiting quality, and should not be needlessly roused. He was still
very young, although he had seen much service. He was tall and
stalwart; he had the large, raw-boned look which is usually considered
characteristic of the Scotch build, and was of great muscular strength,
but carrying not one ounce of superfluous flesh. Light-colored hair,
almost flaxen, indeed, with a strong tendency to curl in the shorter
locks that lay in tendrils on his forehead, clear, contemplative blue
eyes, a fixed look of strength, of reserves of unfailing firmness about
the well-cut lips, a good brick-red flush acquired from many and many
a day of marching in the wind, and the rain, and the sun--this is the
impression one may take from his portrait. He could be as noisy and
boisterously gay as the other young officers, but somehow his hilarity
was of a physical sort, as of the sheer joy of living, and moving, and
being so strong. One might wonder what impressions he received in the
long term of his service in Canada and the Colonies--these strange
new lands so alien to all his earlier experience. One might doubt if
he saw how fair of face was this most lovely of regions, the Cherokee
country; if the primeval forests, the splendid tangles of blooming
rhododendron, the crystal-clear, rock-bound rivers were asserted in
his consciousness otherwise than as the technical “obstacle” for troops
on the march. As to the imposing muster of limitless ranks of mountains
surrounding the little army on every side, they did not remind him of
the hills of Scotland, as the sheer sense of great heights and wild
ravines and flashing cataracts suggested reminiscences to the others.
“There is no gorse,” he remarked of these august ranges, with their
rich growths of gigantic forest trees, as if from the beginning of the
earliest eras of dry land,--and the mess called him “Gorse” until the
incident was forgotten.
For the last three days the command, consisting of some twenty-six
hundred men, had been advancing by forced marches, despite the
deterrent weather. Setting out on the 7th of June from Fort Prince
George, where the army had rested for ten days after the march of
three hundred miles from Charlestown, Colonel Grant encountered a
season of phenomenal rain-fall. Moreover, the lay of the land,--long
stretches of broken, rocky country, gashed by steep ravines and
intersected by foaming, swollen torrents, deep and dangerous to ford,
encompassed on every hand by rugged heights and narrow, intricate,
winding valleys, affording always but a restricted passage,--offered
peculiar advantages for attack. Colonel Grant, aware that these craggy
defiles could be held against him even by an inferior force, that a
smart demonstration on the flank would so separate the thin line of
his troops that one division would hardly be available to come to the
support of the other, that an engagement here and now would result
in great loss of life, if not an actual and decisive repulse, was
urging the march forward at the utmost speed possible to reach more
practicable ground for an encounter, regardless how the pace might
harass the men. But they were responding gallantly to the demands on
their strength, and this was what he had hardly dared to hope. For
during the previous winter, when General Amherst ordered the British
regulars south by sea, many of them immediately upon their arrival
in Charlestown, succumbed to an illness occasioned by drinking the
brackish water of certain wells of the city. Coming in response to the
urgent appeals of the province to the commander-in-chief of the army
to defend the frontier against the turbulent Cherokees who ravaged
the borders, the British force were looked upon as public deliverers,
and the people of the city took the ill soldiers from the camps into
their own private dwellings, nursing them until they were quite
restored. No troops could have better endured the extreme hardships
which they successfully encountered in their march northward. So
swift an advance seemed almost impossible. The speed of the movement
apparently had not been anticipated, even by that wily and watchful
enemy, the Cherokees. It has been said that at this critical juncture
the Indians had failed to receive the supply of ammunition from the
French which they had anticipated, although a quantity, inadequate for
the emergency, however, reached them a few days later. At all events
Colonel Grant was nearly free of the district where disaster so menaced
him before he received a single shot. He had profited much by his
several campaigns in this country since he led that rash, impetuous,
and bloody demonstration against Fort Duquesne, in which he himself
was captured with nineteen of his officers, and his command was almost
cut to pieces. Now his scouts patrolled the woods in every direction.
His vanguard of Indian allies under command of a British officer was
supported by a body of fifty rangers and one hundred and fifty light
infantry. Every precaution against surprise was taken.
Late one afternoon, however, the main body wavered with a sudden shock.
The news came along the line. The Cherokees were upon them--upon the
flank? No; in force fiercely assaulting the rear-guard. It was as Grant
had feared impossible in these narrow defiles to avail himself of his
strength, to face about, to form, to give battle. The advance was
ordered to continue steadily onward,--difficult indeed, with the sound
of the musketry and shouting from the rear, now louder, now fainter,
as the surges of attack ebbed and flowed.
A strong party was detached to reinforce the rear-guard. But again
and again the Cherokees made a spirited dash, seeking to cut off the
beef herd, fighting almost in the open, with as definite and logical a
military plan of destroying the army by capturing its supplies in that
wild country, hundreds of miles from adequate succor, as if devised by
men trained in all the theories of war.
“The Lord made him--” muttered Ronald MacDonnell, in uncertainty,
recognizing the coherence of this military maneuver, and said no more.
Whether or not his theory was reduced to that simple incontrovertible
proposition, thus modified by the soldier-like demonstration on the
supply train, his cogitations were cut short by more familiar ideas,
when in command of thirty-two picked men, he was ordered to make a
detour through the defiles of a narrow adjacent ravine, and, issuing
suddenly thence, seek to fall upon the flank of the enemy and surprise,
rout, and pursue him. This was the kind of thing, that with all his
limitations, Ronald MacDonnell most definitely understood. This set
a-quiver, with keenest sensitiveness, every fiber of his phlegmatic
nature, called out every working capacity of his slow, substantial
brains, made his quiet pulses bound. He looked the men over strictly as
they dressed their ranks, and then he stepped swiftly forward toward
them, for it was the habit to speak a few words of encouragement to the
troops about to enter on any extra-hazardous duty, so daunting seemed
the very sight of the Cherokees and the sound of their blood-curdling
whoops.
“Hech, callants!” he cried, in his simple joy; and so full of valiant
elation was the exclamation that its spirit flared up amongst the wild
“petticoat-men,” who cheered as lustily as if they had profited by the
best of logic and the most finely flavored eloquence. Ronald MacDonnell
felt that he had acquitted himself well in the usual way, and was under
the impression that he had made a speech to the troops.
Now climbing the crags of the verges of the ravine, now deep in its
trough, following the banks of its flashing torrent, they made their
way--at a brisk double-quick when the ground would admit of such
progress--and when they must, painfully dragging one another through
the dense jungles of the dripping laurel, always holding well together,
remembering the ever-frightful menace of the Cherokee to the laggard.
The rain fell no longer; the sunlight slanted on the summit of the
rocks above their heads; the wind was blowing fresh and free, and the
mists scurried before it; now and again on the steep slopes as the
vapors shifted, the horned heads of cattle showed with a familiar
reminiscent effect as of mountain kyloes at home. But these were great
stall-fed steers, running furiously at large, bellowing, frightened
by the tumults of the conflict, plunging along the narrow defiles,
almost dashing headlong into the little party of Highlanders who were
now quickening their pace, for the crack of dropping shots and once
and again a volley, the whoopings of the savages and shouts of the
soldiers, betokened that the scene of carnage was near.
Only a few of the cattle were astray for, as MacDonnell and his men
emerged into a little level glade, they could see in the distance
that the herd was held well together by the cattle-guard, while the
reinforcements sought to check the Cherokees, who, although continually
sending forth their terribly accurate masked fire from behind trees
and rocks, now and again with a mounted body struck out boldly for the
supply train, assaulting with tremendous impetuosity the rear-guard.
So still and clear was the evening air that, despite the clamors of
battle, MacDonnell could hear the commands, could see in the distance
the lines rallying on the reserve forming into solid masses, as the
mounted savages hurled down upon them; could even discern where rallies
by platoon had been earlier made judging from the position of the
bodies of the dead soldiers, lying in a half-suggested circle.
The next moment, with a ringing shout and a smartly delivered volley
of musketry the Highlanders flung themselves from out the mouth of the
ravine. The Cherokee horsemen were going down like so many ten-pins.
The first detachment of reinforcements set up a wild shout of joy to
perceive the support, then flung themselves on their knees to load
while a second volley from the Highlanders passed over their heads.
The rear-guard had formed anew, faced about, and were advancing in the
opposite direction. The Cherokee horsemen, almost surrounded, gave
way; the fire of the others in ambush wavered, slackened, became only
a dropping shot here and there, then sunk to silence. And the woods
were filled with a wild rout, with the irregular musketry of the troops
frenzied with sudden success, out of line, out of hearing, out of
reason as they pursued the unmounted savages, dislodged at last from
their masked position; with the bugles blowing, the bag-pipes playing;
with the unheard, disregarded orders shouted by the officers; with that
thrilling cry of the Highlanders “Claymore! Claymore!” the sun flashing
on their drawn broadswords as they gained on the flying Indians,
themselves as fleet;--a confused, disordered panorama of shadows and
sunlight, of men in red coats and men in blue, and men in tartan, and
savage Chickasaws and Cherokees in their wild barbaric array.
It had been desired that the repulse should be fierce and decisive, the
pursuit bloody and relentless. The supply train represented the life
of the army, and it was essential to deter the Cherokees from readily
renewing the attack on so vital a point. But these ends compassed,
every effort of the officers was concentrated on the necessity of
recalling the scattered parties. Night was coming on; it was a strange
and an alien country; the skulking Cherokees were doubtless in force
somewhere in the dense coverts of the woods, and the vicarious terrors
of the capture that menaced the valorous and venturesome soldiers began
to press heavily upon the officers. Again and again the bugles summoned
the stragglers, the rich golden notes drifting through the wilderness,
rousing a thousand insistent echoes from many a dumb rock thus endowed
with a voice. Certain of the more solicitous officers sent out, with
much caution, small details, gathering together the stragglers as they
went.
How Ronald MacDonnell became separated from one of these parties was
never very clear afterward to his own mind. His attention was attracted
first by the sight of a canny Scotch face or two, which he knew, lying
very low and very still; he suffered a pang which he could never evade.
These were the men who had followed him to the finish, and he took out
his note-book and holding it against a tree, made a memorandum of the
locality for the burial parties, and then, with great particularity,
of the names, “For the auld folks at hame,” and he quoted, mournfully
a line of the old Gaelic lament much sung by the Scotch emigrants
“_Ha til mi tulidh_” (we return no more), which was sadly true of
the Highland soldiery in the British ranks,--an instance is given of
a regiment of twelve hundred men who served in America of whom only
seventy-six ever saw their native hills again. Then, briskly putting up
the book he went on a bit, glancing sharply about for the living of his
command, even now thrusting their reckless heads into the den of the
Cherokee lion. “Ill-fau’rd chields, and serve them right,” he said,
struggling with the dismay in his heart for their sake.
Perhaps he did not realize how far those active strides were carrying
him from the command. In fact the march continued that night until
the sinking of the moon, the army pressing resolutely on through the
broken region of the mountain defiles. MacDonnell noted no Cherokee
in sight, that is to say, not a living one. Several of the dead lay
on the ground, their still faces already bearing that wan, listening,
attentive look of death; they were heedless indeed of the hands that
had rifled them of their possessions, for there were a few of the
Chickasaw allies intent on plunder.
Presently as he went down a sunset glade, MacDonnell saw advancing
a notable figure, a Chickasaw chief, tall, lithe, active, muscular,
with a gait of athletic grace. He was wearing the warrior’s “crown,”
a towering head-dress in the form of a circlet of white swan’s
feathers of graduated height, standing fifteen inches high in front,
and at the bottom woven into a band of swan’s down--all so deftly
constructed that the method of the manufacture of the whole could not
be discerned, it is said, without taking it into the hand. To the
fringed borders of a sort of sleeveless hunting shirt of otter-skin
and his buckskin leggings bits of shells were attached and glittered,
and this betokened his wealth, for these beads represented the money
of the Indians, with the unique advantage that when not in active
circulation, one’s currency could be worn as an ornament. It has been
generally known under the generic name “wampum,” although several of
the Southern tribes called it “roanoke” or “pe-ack.” It was made in
tiny, tubular beads, of about an inch in length, of the conch and
mussel-shells, requiring the illimitable leisure of the Indian to
polish the cylinder to the desired glister, and drill through it the
hollow no larger than a knitting-needle might fill. His chest and arms
were painted symbolically in red and blue arabesques, and his face, of
a proud, alert cast was smeared with vermilion and white. All his flesh
glistened and shone with the polishing of some unguent. MacDonnell
had heard a deal of preaching in his time of the Scotch Presbyterian
persuasion, and in the dearth of expression Biblical phrases sometimes
came to him. “Oil to give him a cheerful countenance,” he quoted, still
gazing at the grim face and figure. So intently he gazed, indeed, that
the Indian hesitated, doubting if the Highland officer recognized
him as a friend. Breaking off a branch of a green locust hard by and
holding it aloft at one side, after the manner of a peaceful embassy,
he continued his stately advance until within a yard of the silent
Scotchman, also advancing. Then they both paused.
“_Ish la chu; Angona?_” said the Indian, in a sonorous voice. (Are you
come, a friend?)
With the true Briton’s aversion to palaver, intensified by his own
incapacity for its practice, Ronald MacDonnell discovered little
affinity for barbaric ceremonial. Nevertheless he was constrained
by the punctilious sense that a gentleman must reply to a courteous
greeting in the manner expected of him. His experience with the
Chickasaws had acquainted him with the appropriate response.
“_Arabre--O, Angona_,” (I am come, a friend) he returned, a trifle
sheepishly, and without the _ore rotunda_ effect of the elocution of
the Indian.
The young chief looked hard at him, evidently desirous of engaging him
in conversation, unaware that it was a game at which the Scotchman was
incapacitated for playing.
“Big battle,” he observed, after a doubtful interval.
“A bonny ploy,” assented the officer, who had seen much bigger ones.
Then they both paused and gazed at each other.
“Cherokee--heap fight! Big damn--O!” remarked Choolah, the Fox,
applausively.
The use of this most vocative vowel as an intensitive suffix is
one of the peculiar methods of emphasis in the animated Chickasaw
language--for instance the word _Yanas-O_ means the biggest kind of
buffalo (_yanasa_ signifying buffalo in all the dialects). Choolah
conversing in the cold and phlegmatic English evidently felt the need
of these intensitives, and although a certain strong condemnatory
monosyllable has been usually found sufficiently satisfying to the
feelings of English speaking men seeking an expletive, the poor
Aboriginal, wishing to be more wicked than he was, discovered its
capacity for expansion with the prefix “Big” and devised an added
emphasis with the explosive final “O.”
“The Cherokee warriors? Pretty men!” said MacDonnell laconically,
according the enemy’s valor the meed of a soldier’s praise. “Very
pretty men.”
Choolah had never piqued himself on his command of the English
language, but he thought now his fluency was at least equal to that
of this Scotchman, who really seemed to speak no tongue at all. As to
the French--of that speech, _ookproo-se_ (forever despised) Choolah
would not learn a syllable, so deadly a hatred did the Chickasaw tribe
bear the whole Gallic nation, dating back indeed through many wars and
feuds, to the massacre by Choctaws of certain of the tribe in 1704,
while under the protection of Boisbriant with a French safeguard, the
deed suspected to have been committed if not at the instigation, at
least by the permission of the French commander who, however, himself
wounded in the affray, was beyond doubt, helpless in the matter.
“Heap tired?” ventured Choolah, at last, pining for conversation, his
searching eyes on the young Highlander’s face.
Ronald MacDonnell laughed a proud negation. He held out one of his
long, heavily muscled arms, with the fist clenched, that the Indian
might feel, through his sleeve, the swelling cords that betokened his
strength.
But it was Choolah’s trait to cherish vanity in physical endowment, not
to foster it in others. He only said, “Good! Swim river.”
“Why swim the river?” demanded the Lieutenant.
Then Choolah detailed that through a scout he had thrown out he had
learned that Colonel Grant’s force, still pushing on, had succeeded
in crossing the Tennessee river, the herd of cattle and the pack
animals giving incredible trouble in the fords, deeply swollen by the
unprecedented rains. It suddenly occurred to MacDonnell that, in view
of the passage of the troops beyond this barrier, much caution would be
requisite in endeavoring to rejoin the main body, lest they fall into
the clutch of the Cherokees on the hither side, who doubtless would
seek the capture of parties of stragglers by carefully patrolling the
banks. He suggested this to Choolah. The Indian listened for only a
moment with a look of deep conviction; then suddenly calling to five
Chickasaws who were still engaged in parceling out the booty they had
brought away from the dead bodies, he beckoned to MacDonnell, and they
set out on a line parallel with the river, in Indian file, in a long,
steady trot, the Scotchman among them, half willing, half dismayed,
repudiating with the distaste of a prosaic, unimaginative mind every
evidence of barbarism; every unaccustomed thing seemed grotesque and
uncouth, and lacking all in lacking the cachet of civilization. Each
man, as he ran lightly along that marshy turf, almost without noting,
as if by instinct placed his feet upon the steps of the man in advance;
thus, although seven persons passed over the ground, the largest man
coming last, the footprints would show as if but one had gone that way.
Ronald MacDonnell, quick at all military or athletic exercises, readily
achieved conformity, although the barbarous procedure compromised his
sensitive dignity, and he growled between his teeth something about a
commissioned officer and a “demented goose-step,” as if he found the
practice of the one by the other a painful derogation. The moon came
into the sky while still they sped along in this silent, crafty way,
the wind in their faces, the pervasive scents of the damp, flowery June
night filling every breath they drew with the impalpable essences of
sylvan fragrance.
Even with the dangers that lurked at their heels, the Indians would
never leap over a log, for this was unlucky, but made long detours
around fallen trees, till Ronald MacDonnell could have belabored them
with hearty good-will, and but for the fear of capture by the savage
Cherokees, could not have restrained himself from crying aloud for rage
for the waste of precious time. He had even less patience with their
slow and respectful avoidance of stepping on a snake sinuously skirting
their way, since, according to their belief, this would provoke the
destruction of their own kindred by the serpent’s brothers; Choolah’s
warning to the other Chickasaws in the half-suppressed hiss--“_Seente!
Seente!_” (snake!) sounded far and sibilant in the quiet twilight. The
Cherokee tribe also were wont to avoid with great heed any injury to
snakes, and spoke of them always in terms of crafty compliment as “the
bright old inhabitants.”
The shadows grew darker, more definite; the moon, of a whiter glister
now, thoughtful, passive, very melancholy, illumined the long vistas
of the woods, and although verging toward the west, limited the area
of darkness that had become their protection. More than once Choolah
had glanced up doubtfully at its clear effulgence, for the sky was
unclouded and the constellations were only a vague bespanglement of
the blue deeps; coming at length to a dense covert among the blooming
laurel, he crept in among the boughs, that overhung a shallow grotto
by the river bank. MacDonnell followed his example, and the group soon
were in the cleft of the rocks under the dense shade, the Scotchman
alone among the Indians, with such dubious sentiments as a good hound
might entertain were he thrust, muzzled, among his natural enemies, the
bears.
But the Chickasaws, as ever, were earnestly, ardently friendly to the
British. There was no surly reservation in Choolah’s mind as he reached
forth his hand and laid it upon the muscular arm of the Scotchman.
“Good arm,” he said, reverting to the young Highlander’s boast.
“But--big damn--O!--good leg! Heap run!” he declared, with a
smothered laugh, like any other young man’s, much resembling indeed
the affectionate ridicule that was wont to go around the mess-table
at Ronald’s unimaginative solemnities. But even MacDonnell could
appreciate the jest at a brave man’s activities, and he laughed in
pleasant accord with the others.
A scout that they had thrown out came presently creeping back under
the boughs with the unwelcome intelligence that there was a party of
Cherokees a little higher up on the river, a small band of about a
dozen men, seeming intent on holding the ford. These were stationary,
apparently, but lower down, patrolling the banks, were groups here and
there beating the woods for stragglers, he fancied. As yet, however,
he thought they had no prisoners. Still, their suspicions of hidden
soldiers were unallayed, and they were keeping very quiet.
The scout was named Oop-pa, the Owl. Although himself a warrior
of note he was of a far lower grade of Chickasaw than Choolah, in
personal quality as well as in actual rank. Instead of manifesting the
stanch courage with which the Indian Fox hearkened to this untoward
intelligence, the alert gathering of all his forces of mind and body
for defense and for victory, or to make his defeat and capture an
exceedingly costly and bloody triumph, Oop-pa set himself, still in the
guise of imparting news, to sullenly plaining. The Highland officer
listened heedfully for in these repeated campaigns in the valley of
the Tennessee River he had become somewhat familiar with the dialect
of the Chickasaw allies and in a degree they comprehended the sound of
the English, and thus the conversation of the little party was chiefly
held each speaking in his own tongue. The English were all across the
river, Oop-pa declared. The red-coats, and the green-coats, and the
tartan-men, and the provincial regiment--he did not believe a man of
the command was left--but them.
“Well, thank God for that much grace!” exclaimed Ronald MacDonnell,
strictly limiting his gratitude; he would render to Providence due
recognition for his own rescue when it should be accomplished. His
thankfulness, however, for the extent of the blessing vouchsafed was
very genuine. His military conscience had been sharply pricked lest he
might have lost some of his own men in the confusion of the pursuit and
the subsequent separation from the little band.
Oop-pa looked at him surlily. For his own part, the Indian said, he was
tired. Let the English and French fight one another. They had left him
to be captured by the Cherokees. He needed no words. White man hated
red man. Big Colonel Grant would be glad. Proud Colonel Grant--much
prouder than an Indian,--would not care if the terrible Cherokees
tortured and burned his faithful Chickasaws. Let it be one of his own
honey plaidsmen, though, and you would see a difference! For haughty
Colonel Grant couldn’t abide for such little accidents to befall any of
his pampered tartan-men, whom he loved as if they were his children.
With the word the world changed suddenly to Ronald MacDonnell. For
this--this fearful fate menaced him. His was not a pictorial mind, but
he had a sudden vision of a quiet house on a wild Scottish coast at
nightfall within view of the surging Atlantic, with all the decorous
habitudes about it of a kindly old home, with a window aglow, through
which he could see, as if he stood just outside, a familiar room where
there were old books and candlelight, and the flare of fire, and the
collie on the rug, and the soft young pink cheeks of sisters, and a
gray head with a pipe, intent upon the columns of a newspaper and the
last intelligence from far America,--and oh! in the ingle-nook, a
face sweeter for many a wrinkle, and eyes dearer for the loss of blue
beauty, and soft hands grown nerveless, whose touch nevertheless he
could feel across the ocean on his hard, weather-beaten young cheek.
It had been a long time since this manly spirit had cried back to his
mother, but it was only for a moment. If his fate came as he feared,
he hoped they might never know how it had befallen. And the picture
dissolved.
He did not fail to listen to the scornful reproaches with which Choolah
upbraided Oop-pa. He had been left because he had lingered to rob the
slain Cherokees. Look at the load there of hunting-shirts and blankets,
and yes, even a plaid or two from a dead Highlander, that he had borne
with him on his back from the field of battle; it was his avarice that
had belated him.
And what then, Oop-pa retorted, had belated Choolah and the Highland
officer? They had brought away nothing but their own hides, which they
were at liberty to offer to the Cherokees, as early as they might.
The freedom of Oop-pa’s tongue was resented as evidently by Choolah
as by Ronald, but the _Etissu_ occupied a semi-sacerdotal position
toward the chief, a war-captain, the decrees of whose religion would
not suffer him to touch a morsel of food or a drop of drink while
on the war-path unless administered by the _Etissu_. The utmost
abstemiousness was preserved among the Chickasaws throughout, and it
continued a marvel to the British troops how men could march or fight
so ill-nourished, practicing all the fasting austerities of religious
observances. There were many similar customs implying consecration to
war as holy duty, but they were gradually becoming modified by the
introduction of foreign influences, for formerly the Indians would
not have suffered among them on the march the unsanctified presence
of a stranger like Ronald MacDonnell. He said naught in reply to the
_Etissu_. His mind was grimly preoccupied. He was busied with the
realization of how strong he was, how very strong. These lithe Indians,
with all their supple elasticity, their activity, had no such staying
power as he, no such muscular vitality. He was thinking what resources
of anguish his stalwart physique offered for the hideous sport of the
torture; how his stanch flesh would resist. How long, how long dying he
would be!
The terrors of capture by the Cherokees had been by Grant’s orders
described again and again to the troops to keep the rank and file
constant to duty, close in camp, vigilant on outpost, and alert to
respond to the call to arms. Never, as Ronald righteously repeated
this grim detail, had he imagined he would ever be in case to remember
it with a personal application. He now protested inwardly that he
could die like a soldier. Even from the extremity of physical anguish
he had never shrunk. But the hideous prospect of the malice of human
fiends wreaked for hours and hours upon every quivering nerve, upon
every sensitive fiber, with the wonderful ingenuity for which the
Cherokees were famous, made him secretly wince as he crouched there
among the friendly Chickasaws, beneath the boughs of the rhododendron
splendidly a-bloom in the moonlight, while the rich, pearly glamours
of the broken disk sunk down and down the sky, and the dew glimmered
on the full-fleshed leaves, and through them a silver glitter from
the Tennessee River hard by struck his eye, and a break in the woods,
where the channel curved, showed the contour of a dome of the Great
Smoky Mountains limiting the instarred heavens. As he looked out from
the covert of the laurel--his flaxen hair visible here and there in
rings on his sunburned forehead, from which his blue bonnet was pushed
back; his strongly marked high features, hardly so immobile as was
their wont; his belt, his plaid, his claymore, all the details of that
ancient martial garb, readjusted with military precision since the
fight; his long, rawboned figure, lean and muscular, but nevertheless
with a suggestion of the roundness of youth, half reclining, supported
on one arm--the Indian gazed at him with questioning intentness.
Suddenly Choolah spoke.
“_Angona_,” (friend) he said, with a poignant note of distrust, “you
have a thought in your mind.”
It was seldom indeed, that Ronald MacDonnell could have been thus
accused. He changed color a trifle, although he said, hastily, “Oh, no,
my good man, not at all--not at all!”
“_Angona! Angona!_” cried Choolah, in reproach.
Perhaps a definite recognition of this thought in his mind came to
MacDonnell with the fear that the Chickasaw, who so easily discerned
it, would presently read it. “The fearsome Fox that he is,” thought
Ronald with an almost superstitious thrill at his heart.
Naturally he could not know how open was that frank face of his,
and that the keen discernment of the savage, though perceiving the
presence of the withheld thought, was yet inadequate to translate
its meaning. This thought was one which he would in no wise share
with Choolah. MacDonnell’s most coherent mental process was always
of a military trend; without a definite effort of discrimination, or
even voluntarily reverting to the events of the day, it had suddenly
occurred to him that the Cherokee with the essential improvidence of
the Indian nature, could not have developed that plan of attack on the
provision train, so determined and definitely designed, so difficult
to repulse, so repeated, renewed again and again with a desperation of
the extremest sacrifice to the end. And small wonder! Its success would
have involved the practical destruction of Grant’s whole army. Hundreds
of miles distant from any sufficient base of supplies, the provision
train was the life of the expedition. The beef-herds to be subsequently
driven out from the province to Fort Prince George for the use of
the army were to be timed with a view to the gradual consumption of
the provisions already furnished, and to communicate by messenger to
Charlestown, now distant nearly four hundred miles, the disaster of the
capture of stores would obviously involve a delay fatal to the troops.
The Indians, however, were a hand-to-mouth nation. Subsisting on the
chances of game in their long hunts and marches, enduring in its
default incredible rigors of hunger as a matter of course, sustaining
life and even strength when in hard luck by roots and fruits and
nuts, they could not have realized the value of the provision train
to civilized troops who must needs have beef and bacon, flour and
tobacco, soap and medicine--or they cannot fight. There was but one
explanation--French officers were among the Cherokees and directed
these demonstrations. Their presence had been earlier suspected, and
this, Ronald thought, was indisputable proof. The strange selection
of the ground where in the previous year the Cherokees had massed in
force and given battle to Colonel Montgomery’s troops had occasioned
much surprise, and later the same phenomenon occurred in their
engagements with Colonel Grant. It seemed to amount to an exhibition
of an intuitive military genius. No great captain of Europe, it was
said, could have acted with finer discernment of the opportunities and
the dangers, could with greater acumen have avoided and nullified the
risks. But Colonel Grant, who was always loath to accord credit to
aught but military science, believed the ground was chosen by men who
had studied the tactics of the great captains of Europe, and although
he had learned to beware of the wily devices of the savage, and to meet
his masked fire with skulking scouts and native allies, fighting in
their own way, he preserved all the precise tactical methods in which
he had been educated, and kept a sharp edge on his expectation for the
warlike feints and strategy of the equally trained French officer.
If he could only meet one now, Ronald MacDonnell was thinking. In case
it should prove impossible to cross the river and rejoin his command,
if he could only surrender to Johnny Crapaud!
To be sure the creature spoke French and ate frogs! More heinous
still he was always a Romanist, and diatribes on the wicked sorceries
and idolatries of papistry had been hurled through MacDonnell’s
consciousness from the Presbyterian pulpit since his earliest
recollection. But a soldier, a French officer--surely he would be
acquainted with higher methods than the barbarities of the savage; he
would be instructed in the humanities, subject to those amenities which
in all civilized countries protect a prisoner of war. Surely he would
not stand by and see a fellow-soldier--a white man, a Christian, like
himself--put to the torture and the stake. And if his authority could
not avail for protection--“I’d beg a bullet of him; in charity he could
not deny me that!” If the opportunity were but vouchsafed, MacDonnell
resolved to appeal to the Frenchman by every sanction that can control
a gentleman, by their fellow feeling as soldiers, by the bond of their
common religion. He hesitated a moment, realizing a certain hiatus
here, a gulf--and then he reconciled all things with a triumphant
stroke of potent logic. “They may call it idolatry or Mariolatry, if
they want to,--but I never heard anybody deny that the Lord _did_ have
a mother. And it’s a mighty good thing to have!”
This was the thought in his mind--the chance, the hope of surrendering
to a French officer.
The stir of the Indians recalled him. The moon was lower in the sky,
sinking further and further toward that great purple dome of the
many summits of the Great Smoky Mountains. All the glistening lines
of light upon the landscape--the glossy foliage, the shining river,
the shimmering mists--seemed drawn along as if some fine-spun seine,
some glittering enmeshment were being hauled into the boat-shaped
moon, still rocking and riding the waves off the headlands that the
serrated mountains thrust forth like a coast-line on the seas of the
sky. Now and again the voices of creatures of prey--wolves, panthers,
wildcats--came shrilly snarling through the summer night from the deep
interior of the woods, where they wrangled over the gain that the
battle had wrought for them in the slain of horses and men,--of the
Cherokee force doubtless; MacDonnell had scarcely a fear that these
were of Grant’s command, for that officer’s care for such protection of
his dead as was possible was always immediate and peculiarly marked,
and it was his habit to have the bodies sunk with great weights into
the rivers to prevent the scalping of them by the Cherokees. Ronald
wearied of the melancholy hours, the long, long night, although light
would have but added dangers of discovery. It was the lagging time he
would hasten, would fain stride into the future and security, so did
the suspense wear on his nerves. It told heavily even on the Indian,
and Ronald felt a certain sympathy when Choolah’s half-suppressed voice
greeted the scout, creeping into the grotto once more, with the wistful
inquiry, “_Onna He-tak?_” (Is it day?)
But the news that the _Etissu_ brought was not indeed concerned with
the hour. In his opinion, they would all soon have little enough to do
with time. His intelligence was in truth alarming. While the Cherokees
patrolling the river had gradually withdrawn to the interior of the
forest and disappeared, those at the ford above were suspiciously
astir. They had received evidently some intimation of the presence here
of the lurking Chickasaws, and were on the watch. To seek to flee would
precipitate an instant attack; to escape hence would be merely to fall
into the hands of the marauders in the forest beyond; to plunge into
the Tennessee River would furnish a floating target for the unerring
marksmen. Yet the crisis was immediate.
Choolah suddenly raised the hand of authority.
Ronald MacDonnell had seen much service, and had traveled far out of
the beaten paths of life. He was born a gentleman of good means and
of long descent--for if the MacDonnells were to be believed, Adam
was hardly a patch upon the antiquity of the great Clan-Colla. He
had already made an excellent record in his profession. It seemed to
him the veriest reversal of all the probabilities that he should now
be called upon to take his orders from Choolah the Fox, the savage
Chickasaw. Yet he felt no immediate vocation for the command, had it
been within his reach. With all his military talent and training he
could devise no other resource than to withstand the attack of the
larger party with half their number; to swim the river, and drown there
with a musket-ball in his brain; to flee into the woods to certain
capture. He watched, therefore, with intensest curiosity the movements
of the men under Choolah’s direction. The moon was now very low, the
light golden, dully burnished, far-striking, with a long shadow. First
one, then another of the Chickasaws showed themselves openly upon
the bank of the river in a clear space high above the current of the
water. Choolah beckoned to the Scotchman, and MacDonnell alertly sprang
to his feet and joined the wily tactician without a question, aware
that he was assisting to baffle the terrible enemy. His bonnet, his
fluttering plaid, his swinging claymore, his great muscular height and
long stride, all defined in the moonlight against the soft sky and the
mountains beyond, were enough to acquaint the watching Cherokees with
the welcome fact that here was not only an enemy but a white man of the
Highland battalion, the friends of the Chickasaw. The artful Chickasaws
swiftly and confusedly came and went from the densities of the laurel.
Impossible it would have been for the Cherokees to judge definitely of
their numbers, so quickly did they appear and disappear and succeed one
another. Thus cleverly the attack was postponed.
Ronald MacDonnell gave full credit to the strategy of Choolah. For
it would now seem--it needs must--that their little party no longer
feared the enemies in the quiet woods! They must have presumed the
Cherokees all gone! The Chickasaws were building a fire since the moon
was sinking. Probably they felt they could not lie down to sleep
without its protection and wolves very near in the woods. Listen to
that shrill, blood-curdling cry! They were surely disposing themselves
to rest! Already as the blaze began to leap up and show in the water
of the river below like a great red jewel, with the deep crystalline
lusters of a many-faceted ruby, figures might be seen by the flare of
the mounting flames, recumbent on the ground, wrapped in blankets; here
and there was tartan, an end of the plaid thrown over the face as the
Highlanders always slept; here and there a hunting-shirt and leggings
were plainly visible--all lying like the spokes of a wheel around the
central point of the fire.
“It is only the Muscogees who sleep in line,” Choolah explained to
MacDonnell, who had criticised the disposition.
The crafty Cherokees, stealthily approaching ever nearer and nearer,
had not seen in the first feeble glimmers of the flames the figures of
the seven men crawling gingerly back to the grotto in the covert of
the laurel, leaving around the fire merely billets of wood arrayed in
the blankets and stolen gear which the Owl had brought off from the
battle-field.
“But I am always in the wrong,” plained Oop-pa, sarcastically. “What
would you and the big tartan-man have to dress those warriors in if I
had not stayed for my goods?”
MacDonnell had urged his scruples. This was hardly according to the
rules of war. “But if the Cherokees fire on sleeping men,” he argued--
“_Angona_,” the wily Chickasaw assured him, suavely, “they are
disarmed. We can rush out and overpower them before they can load.”
“They ought to be able to fire three times to the minute,” thought
MacDonnell, who was a good drill.
But the Cherokees were not held to the rigorous manual of arms, and did
not attain to that degree of dexterity considered excellent efficiency
in that day although a breech-loading musket invented by Colonel
Patrick Ferguson, who met his death at King’s Mountain, was capable of
being fired seven times a minute, and was used not many years after
these events, with destructive effect, by his own command at the battle
of the Brandywine, in 1777.
MacDonnell, lying prone on the ground in the laurel, his face barely
lifted, saw the last segment of the moon slip down behind the great
mountain, the following mists glister in the after-glow and fade, a
soft, dull shadow drop upon the landscape then sink to darkness, and
in the blaze of the fire a quivering feather-crested head protrude
above the river-bank. There were other crafty approaches--here, there,
the woods seemed alive! Suddenly an alien flare of light, a series of
funnel-shaped evanescent darts, the simultaneous crack of a volley, and
a dozen swift figures dashed to the scalping of their victims by the
fire--to lay hold on the logs in the likeness of sleeping men, to break
a knife in the hard fibers of one that seemed to stir, to cry aloud,
inarticulate, wild, frenzied in rage, in amaze, in grief, to find
themselves at the mercy of the Chickasaws darting out from the laurel!
There was a tumultuous rush, then a frantic, futile attempt to reload;
two or three of the prisoners wielding knives with undue effect were
shot down, and Choolah, triumphant, majestic in victory, stately,
erect, his crown of tall white swan’s feathers, his glittering fringes
of roanoke, the red and blue of his glossy war-paint, all revealed by
the flaring fire, waved his hand to his “_Angona_” to call upon him to
admire his prowess in battle.
The next moment his attention was caught by a sudden swift alarm in the
face of one of the Cherokees, a faraway glance that the wily Choolah
followed with his quick eye. Something had happened at the camp the
Cherokees had abandoned--was there still movement there?
It was some one who had been away, returning, startled to see the
bivouac fire sunken to an ember,--for the Cherokees had let it die out
to further the advantages of the attack,--then evidently reassured to
note the flare a little further down the stream, as if the camp had
been shifted for some reason.
Choolah drew his primed and loaded pistol. No Cherokee, however,
would have dared to venture a warning sign. And Ronald MacDonnell,
with what feelings he could hardly analyze, could never describe, saw
leaping along the jagged bank of the river toward them a white man,
young, active, wearing a gayly-fringed hunting-shirt and leggings of
buckskin, but a military hat and the gorget of a French officer. He was
among them before he saw his mistake--his fatal mistake! The delighted
shrieks of the Chickasaws overpowered every sense, filling the woods
with their fierce shrill joy and seeming to strike against the very
sky, “_French! hottuk ook-proo-se!_” (The accursed people!)
All thought of caution, all fears of wandering Cherokees were lost
in the supreme ecstasy of their triumph--the capture of one of the
detested French, that the tribe had hated with an inconceivable and
savage rancor for generations.
“_Shukapa! Shukapa!_” (Swine-eater!) they exclaimed in disgust and
derision, for the aversion of the Indians to pork was equaled only by
that of the Jews, and this was an extreme expression of contempt.
The captive was handled rudely enough in the process of disarming him,
which the Owl and Choolah accomplished, while his Cherokees stood at
the muzzles of the firelocks of the others. There was blood on his
face and hands as he turned a glance on the Scotchman. He uttered a
few eager words in French, unintelligible to MacDonnell save the civil
preface, “_Pardon, Monsieur, mais puis-je vous demander--_”
The rest of the sentence was lost in the fierce derisive shrieks of
the Chickasaws recognizing the inflections of the detested language,
“_Seente soolish! Seente soolish!_” (snake’s tongue!) they vociferated.
But had the conclusion of the request been audible it would have been
incomprehensible to Ronald MacDonnell.
The impassive Highlander silently shook his head, and a certain fixity
of despair settled on the face of the French officer. It was a young
face--he seemed not more than twenty-five, MacDonnell thought. It was
narrow, delicately molded, with very bright eyes, that had a sort of
youthful daring in them--adventurous looking eyes. They were gray, with
long black lashes and strongly defined eyebrows. His complexion was of
a clear healthy pallor, his hair dark but a trifle rough, and braided
in the usual queue. So often did Ronald MacDonnell have to describe
this man, both on paper and off, that every detail of his appearance
grew very familiar to him. The stranger’s lips were red and full, and
the upper one was short and curving; he did not laugh or smile, of
course, but he showed narrow white teeth, for now and again he gasped
as if for breath, and more than once that sensitive upper lip quivered.
Not that Ronald MacDonnell ever gave the portraiture in this simple
wise, for his descriptions were long and involved, minute and yet
vague, and proved the despair of all interested in fixing the identity
of the man; but gleaning from his accounts this is the way the stranger
must have appeared to the young Scotchman. His figure was tall and
lightly built, promising more activity than muscular force, and while
one hand was held on the buckle of his belt, the left went continually
to the hilt of a sword, _which he did not wear_, but the habit was
betrayed by this gesture. There was nothing about him to intimate his
rank, beyond the gorget, and on this point Ronald MacDonnell could
never give any satisfaction.
The Indian is seldom immoderate in laughter, but Choolah could not
restrain his wicked mirth to discover that the two officers could
not speak to each other. And yet the pale-faces were so often amazed
that the Cherokees and the Chickasaws and the Creeks had not the same
language, as if a variety of tongues were thrown away on the poor
Indian, who might well be expected to put up with one speech! For only
the Chickasaw and Choctaw dialects were inter-comprehensible, both
tribes being descended, it is said, from the ancient Chickemicaws,
and in fact much of the variation in their speech was but a matter
of intonation. The tears of mirth stood in Choolah’s eyes. He held
his hand to his side--he could scarcely calm himself, even when he
discerned a special utility in this lack of a medium of communication,
for the enterprising scout came back once more to say that there were
some Chickasaws lower down on the river, where the ford was better.
Choolah received this assurance with most uncommon demonstrations
of pleasure, evidently desiring their assistance in guarding the
prisoners to Grant’s camp, being ambitious of securing the commander’s
commendation and intending to afford ocular proof of his exploit by
exhibiting the number of his captives. But MacDonnell detected a high
note of elation in Choolah’s voice which no mere pride could evoke,
and he recognized a danger signal. He instantly bethought himself
of the fate at the hands of the Chickasaws, more than a score of
years before, of the gallant D’Artaguette, the younger, and his brave
lieutenant Vincennes, burned at the stake by slow fires, after their
unhappy defeat at the fortified town, _Ash-wick-boo-ma_ (Red Grass),
the noble Jesuit, Sénat, sharing their death, although he might have
escaped, remaining to comfort their last moments with his ghostly
counsels.
MacDonnell listened as warily to the talk as he might, and although
Choolah said no more than was eminently natural in planning to turn
over his prisoners to these Chickasaws by reason of their superior
numbers, MacDonnell’s alert sense detected the same vibration when he
expressed his decision to leave the _Etissu_ and the Highland officer
to guard the Frenchman till his return.
“Then we will together cross the Tennessee river here,” he said.
MacDonnell yawned widely as he nodded his head, his hand over his
stretched mouth and shielding his face. He would not trust its
expression to the discerning Choolah, for he had again that infrequent
guest, “a thought in his mind.”
In truth, Choolah had no intention to take the Frenchman to Grant’s
camp. The praise he would receive as a reward was a petty consideration
indeed as compared with the delights of torturing and burning so rare,
so choice a victim as a French officer. To be sure his excuse must be
good and devised betimes, for Colonel Grant was squeamish and queer,
objecting to the scalping and burning of prisoners, and seemed indeed
at times of a weak stomach in regard to such details. And that came
about naturally enough. He did not fast, as behooves a war-captain.
He ate too much on the war-path. He had two cooks! He had also a man
to dress his hair, and another to groom his horse. Naturally his heart
had softened, and he was averse to the stern pleasures of recompensing
an enemy with the anguish of the stake. This Choolah intended to
enjoy, summoning the Chickasaws at the ford below to the scene of his
triumph. Besides it requires a number of able-bodied assistants to
properly roast in wet weather a vigorous and protesting captive. The
Scotchman should suspect naught until his return. True, he might not
object, for were not the French as ever the inveterate enemies of the
English? But if he should it could avail naught against the will of a
round dozen or more of Chickasaws. Besides, was not the prisoner of the
detested nation of the French--_Nana-Ubat_? (Nothings and brothers to
nothing.) Nevertheless, it was well they could not speak to each other
and possibly canvass fears and offer persuasions. He could spare only
one man, the scout, to aid in the watch, but he felt quite assured.
Ronald MacDonnell was always notoriously vigilant and exacting, and
was held in great fear by guards and outposts and sentinels, for often
his rounds were attended by casualties in the way of reprimand, and
arrests, and guard-tent sojourns and discipline. Choolah felt quite
safe as he set off at a brisk pace with his squad of four Chickasaws,
driving the disarmed Cherokees, silent and sullen, before him.
They were hardly out of sight when MacDonnell, kicking the enveloping
blanket out of the way, sat down on one of the logs by the fire and
spread his big bony hands out to the blaze. It was growing chill;
the June night was wearing on toward the dawn; it was that hour of
reduced vitality when hope seems of least value, and the blood runs
low, and conscience grows keen, and the future and the past bear
heavily alike on the present. The prisoner was shivering slightly.
He glanced expectantly at the Scotchman’s impassive countenance. No
man knew better than Ronald MacDonnell the churlishness of a lack of
consideration of the comfort of others in small matters. No man could
offer little attentions more genially. They comported essentially with
his evident breeding, and his rank in the army; once more the prisoner
looked expectantly at him, and then, wounded, like a Frenchman, as
for a host’s lack of consideration, he sat down on a log uninvited,
casting but one absent glance, from which curiosity seemed expunged,
at the effigies which explained how the Cherokees came to their fate.
It mattered little now, his emotional, sensitive face said. Naught
mattered! Naught! Naught!
In the sudden nervous shock his vitality was at its lowest ebb. He
could not spread his hands to the blaze, for his arms had been pinioned
cruelly tight. He shivered again, for the fire was low. MacDonnell
noticed it, but he did not stir; perhaps he thought Johnny Crapaud
would soon find the fire hot enough. The scout himself mended it, as
he sat tailorwise on the ground between the other two men. Now and
again the _Etissu_ gazed at MacDonnell’s impassive, rather lowering
countenance, with a certain awe; if he had expected the officer to show
the squeamishness which Colonel Grant developed in such matters, or any
pity, he was mistaken; then he looked with curiosity at the Frenchman.
The prisoner’s lips were vaguely moving, and Ronald MacDonnell
caught a suggestion of the sound--half-whispered words, not French,
or he would not have understood; Latin!--paters and aves! As he had
expected--frogs, papistry, French, and fool!
“What’s that?” the Highland officer said, so suddenly that the scout
started in affright.
“Nothing,” said the Indian; “the wind, perhaps.”
“Sticks cracking in the laurel--a bear, perhaps,” suggested MacDonnell,
taking up a loaded musket and laying it across his knee. Then “Only a
bear,” he repeated reassuringly.
“Choolah ought to leave more men here,” said the _Etissu_.
“It’s nothing!” declared MacDonnell, rising and looking warily about.
“Perhaps Choolah on his way back.”
The scout was true to his vagrant tendencies, or perhaps because of
those tendencies he felt himself safer in the dense, impenetrable
jungle, crawling along flat like a lizard or a snake, than seated
perched up here on a bluff by a flaring camp-fire with only two other
men, a mark for “Brown Bess”--the Cherokees were all armed with British
muskets, although they were in revolt, and perhaps it was one reason
why they were in revolt--for many a yard up and down the Tennessee
River. “I go see,” he suggested.
“No, no,” said MacDonnell, “only a bear.”
“I come back soon,” declared the _Etissu_, half crouching and gazing
about, “soon, soon. _Alooska, Ko-e-u-que-ho._” (I do not lie, I do not
indeed.)
MacDonnell lifted his head and gazed about with a frowning mien of
reluctance “_Maia cha!_” (Go along) he said at last. Then called out,
“Come back _soon_,” as his attention returned to the priming and
loading of a pistol which he had in progress. “Soon! remember!”
The scout was off like a rabbit. For a moment or two MacDonnell did not
lift his eyes, while they heard him crashing through the thicket. Then
as he looked up he met the dull despair in the face of the bound and
helpless Frenchman. It mattered little to him who came, who went. He
gasped suddenly in amazement. The Highland officer was gazing at him
with a genial, boyish smile, reassuring, almost tender.
“Run, now, run for your life!” he said, leaning forward, and with a
pass or two of a knife he severed the prisoner’s bonds.
In the revulsion of feeling the man seemed scarcely able to rise to
his feet. There were tears in his eyes; his face quivered as he looked
at his deliverer.
“Danger--big fire--burn,” said the astute MacDonnell, as if the English
words thus detached were more comprehensible to the French limitations.
Perhaps his gestures aided their effect, and as he held out his hand
in his whole-souled, genial way, the Frenchman grasped it in a hard
grip of fervent gratitude and started off swiftly. The next moment the
young officer turned back, caught the British soldier in his arms, and
to MacDonnell’s everlasting consternation kissed him in the foreign
fashion, first on one cheek and then on the other.
Ronald MacDonnell’s mess often preyed upon the disclosures which his
open, ingenuous nature afforded them. But his simplicity stopped far
short of revealing to them this Gallic demonstration of gratitude--so
exquisitely ludicrous it seemed to his unemotional methods and mind.
They were debarred the pleasure of racking him on this circumstance.
They never knew it. He disclosed it only years afterward, and then by
accident, to a member of his own family.
The whole affair seemed to the mess serious enough. For the Chickasaws,
baffled and furious, had threatened his life on their return,
reinforced by a dozen excited, elated, expectant tribesmen, laden with
light wood and a chain, to find their prisoner gone. But after the
first wild outburst of rage and despair Choolah, although evidently
strongly tempted to force the Highlander to the fate from which he had
rescued the French officer, resolved to preserve the integrity of his
nation’s pledge of amity with the British, and restrained his men from
offering injury. This was rendered the more acceptable to him, as with
his alert craft he perceived a keen retribution for Ronald MacDonnell
in the displeasure of his commanding officer, for the Chickasaws well
understood the discipline of the army, which they chose to disregard.
To better enlist the prejudice of Colonel Grant, Choolah was preparing
himself to distort the facts. He upbraided Ronald MacDonnell with
causelessly liberating a prisoner, a Frenchman and an officer, taken
by the wily exploit of another. As to the dry wood, he said, the
Chickasaws had merely brought some drift, long stranded in a cave by
the waterside, to replenish the fire, kindled with how great difficulty
in the soaking condition of the forests the Lieutenant well knew.
“Hout!--just now when we are about to cross the river?” cried Ronald,
unmasking the subterfuge. “And for what then that stout chain?”
The chain, Choolah protested, was but part of the equipment of one of
the pack animals that had broken away and had been plundered by the
Cherokees. Did the Lieutenant Plaidman think he wanted to chain the
prisoner to the stake to burn? He had had no dream of such a thing!
It was not the custom of the Chickasaws to waste so much time on a
prisoner. It was sufficient to cut him up in quarters; that usually
killed him dead,--quite dead enough! But if the Lieutenant had had a
chain, since he knew so well the use of one, doubtless he himself would
have joyed to burn the prisoner, provided it had been his own exploit
that had taken him,--for did not the Carolinians of the provincial
regiment say that when the Tartan men were at home they were as wild
and as uncivilized as the wildest Cherokee savage!
“_Holauba! Holauba! Feenah!_” (It is a lie. It is a lie, undoubtedly),
cried the phlegmatic MacDonnell, excited to a frenzy. He spoke in the
Chickasaw language, that the insult might be understood as offered with
full intention.
But Choolah did not thus receive it. In the simplicity of savage
life lies are admittedly the natural incidents of conversation. He
addressed himself anew to argument. At home the Tartan men lived
in mountains,--just like the Cherokees,--and no wonder they were
undismayed by the war whoops--they had heard the like before! Savages
themselves! They had a language, too, that the Carolinians could
not speak; he himself had heard it among the Highlanders of Grant’s
camp--doubtless it was the Cherokee tongue, for they were mere
Cherokees!
“_Holauba! Holauba! Feenah!_” No denial could be more definite than the
tone and the words embodied.
The wily Choolah, maliciously delighted with his power to pierce the
heart of the proud Scotchman thus, turned the knife anew. Did not the
provincials declare that the Highlanders at home were always beaten in
war, as they would be here but for the help of the Carolinians?
“_Holauba! Holauba! Feenah!_” protested Ronald resolutely, thinking of
Preston Pans and Falkirk.
For the usual emulous bickering between regulars and provincials,
which seems concomitant with every war, had appeared in full force in
this expedition, the provincials afterward claiming that but for them
and their Indian allies no remnant of the British force would have
returned alive; and the regulars declaring that the Carolinians knew
nothing, and could learn nothing of discipline and method in warfare,
laying great stress on the fact that this was the second campaign to
which the British soldiers had been summoned for the protection of
the province, which could not without them defend itself against the
Cherokees, and assuming the entire credit of the subjugation of that
warlike tribe that had for nearly a century past desolated at intervals
the Carolina borders.
Although it had been Choolah’s hope that, by means of provoking against
the Lieutenant the displeasure of his superior officer, he might
revenge himself upon MacDonnell, for snatching from the Chickasaws the
peculiar racial delight of torturing the French prisoner, the Indians
had no anticipation of the gravity of the crisis when they came to
the camp with the details of the occurrence, which, to Colonel Grant’s
annoyance, tallied with MacDonnell’s own report of himself.
For there was a question in Colonel Grant’s mind whether the prisoner
were not the redoubtable Louis Latinac, who had been so incredibly
efficient in the French interest in this region, and who had done more
to excite the enmity of the Cherokees against their quondam allies, the
British, and harass his Majesty’s troops than a regiment of other men
could accomplish. When Grant tended to this opinion, a court-martial
seemed impending over the head of the young officer.
“What was your reason for this extraordinary course?” Colonel Grant
asked.
And Ronald MacDonnell answered that he had granted to his prisoner
exactly what he had intended to demand of his captor had the situation
been reversed--to adjure him by their fellow feeling as soldiers, by
the customs of civilized warfare, by the bond of a common religion, to
save him from torture by savages.
“Can a gentleman give less than he would ask?” he demanded.
And when Colonel Grant would urge that he should have trusted to his
authority to protect the prisoner, Ronald would meet the argument with
the counter-argument that the Indians respected no authority, and in
cases of fire it would not do to take chances.
“Why did you not at least exact a parole?”
“Lord, sir, we couldn’t talk at all!” said Ronald, conclusively. “In
common humanity, I was obliged to release him or shoot him, and I
could not shoot an unarmed prisoner to save my life--not if I were to
be shot for it myself.”
Lieutenant-Colonel Grant’s heart was well known to be soft in spots. He
has put it upon record in the previous campaign against the Cherokees
that he could not help pitying them a little in the destruction of
their homes,--it is said, however, that after this later expedition
his name was incorporated in the Cherokee language as a synonym of
devastation and a cry of warning. He was overcome by the considerations
urged upon him by the Lieutenant until once more the possibility loomed
upon the horizon that it was Louis Latinac who had escaped him, when
he would feel that nothing but Ronald MacDonnell’s best heart’s blood
could atone for the release. To set this much vexed question at rest
the young officer was repeatedly required to describe the personal
appearance of the stranger, and thus it was that poor Ronald’s verbal
limitations were brought so conspicuously forward. “A fine man,”
he would say one day, and in giving the details of that sensitive
emotional countenance which had so engaged his interest that momentous
night--its force, its suggestiveness, its bright, alert young eyes,
would intimate that he had indeed held the motive power of the Cherokee
war in his hand, and had heedlessly loosed it as a child might release
a butterfly. The next day “a braw callant” was about the sum of his
conclusions, and Colonel Grant would be certain that the incident
represented no greater matter than the escape of a brisk subaltern,
like Ronald himself. In the course of Colonel Grant’s anxious
vacillations of opinion, the young Highlander was given to understand
that he would be instantly placed under arrest, but for the fact that
every officer of experience was urgently needed. And indeed Colonel
Grant presently had his hands quite full, fighting a furious battle
only the ensuing day with the entire Cherokee nation.
The Indians attacked his outposts at eight o’clock in the morning,
and with their full strength engaged the main body, fighting in their
individual, skulking, masked manner, but with fierce persistency
for three hours; then the heat of the conflict began to gradually
wane, although they did not finally draw off till two o’clock in the
afternoon. It was the last struggle of the Cherokee war. Helpless or
desperate, the Indians watched without so much as a shot from ambush
the desolation of their country. For thirty days Colonel Grant’s
forces remained among the fastnesses of the Great Smoky Mountains,
devastating those beautiful valleys, burning “the astonishing magazines
of corn,” and the towns, which Grant states, were so “agreeably
situated, the houses neatly built.” Often the troops were constrained
to march under the beetling heights of those stupendous ranges, whence
one might imagine a sharp musketry fire would have destroyed the dense
columns, almost to the last man. Perhaps the inability of the French to
furnish the Cherokees with the requisite ammunition for this campaign
may explain the abandonment of a region so calculated for effective
defense.
Aside from the losses in slain and wounded in the engagement, the
expeditionary force suffered much, for the hardships of the campaign
were extreme. Having extended the frontier westward by seventy
miles, and withdrawing slowly, in view of the gradual exhaustion of
his supplies, Colonel Grant found the feet of his infantry so mangled
by the long and continuous marches in the rugged country west of the
Great Smoky Mountains that he was forced to go into permanent camp on
returning to Fort Prince George, to permit the rest and recovery of the
soldiers, who in fact could march no further, as well as to await some
action on the part of the Cherokee rulers looking to the conclusion of
a peace.
A delegation of chiefs presently sought audience of him here and agreed
to all the stipulations of the treaty formulated in behalf of the
province except one, viz., that four Cherokees should be delivered up
to be put to death in the presence of Colonel Grant’s army, or that
four green scalps should be brought to him within the space of twelve
nights. With this article the chiefs declared they had neither the will
nor the power to comply,--and very queerly indeed, it reads at this
late day!
Colonel Grant, perhaps willing to elude the enforcement of so
unpleasant a requisition, conceived that it lay within his duty to
forward the delegation, under escort, to Charlestown to seek to induce
Governor Bull to mitigate its rigor.
It was in this connection that he alluded again to the release of the
prisoner, captured in the exploit of Choolah, the Chickasaw, although
in conversation with his officers he seemed to Ronald MacDonnell to be
speaking only of the impracticable stipulation of the treaty, and his
certainty that compliance would not be required of the Cherokees by the
Governor--and in fact the terms finally signed at Charlestown, on the
10th of December of that year, were thus moderated, leaving the compact
practically the same as in the previous treaty of 1759.
“I could agree to no such stipulation if the case were mine,” Colonel
Grant declared, “that four of my soldiers, as a mere matter of
intimidation, should be surrendered to be executed in the presence
of the enemy! Certainly, as a gentleman and a soldier, a man cannot
require of an enemy more than he himself would be justified in yielding
if the circumstances were reversed, or grant to an enemy less favor
than he himself could rightfully ask at his hands.”
Ronald MacDonnell had forgotten his own expression of this sentiment.
It appealed freshly to him, and he thought it decidedly fine. He did
not recognize a flag of truce except as a veritable visible white rag,
and from time to time he experienced much surprise that Colonel Grant
did not order him under arrest as a preliminary to a court martial.
PRINTED BY R. R. DONNELLEY AND SONS COMPANY AT THE LAKESIDE PRESS,
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