This was the recital of the Cherokee traditions of the more ancient

Scriptural events,--the creation, the flood, the exodus,--knowledge of

which the earliest travelers in this region found already implanted

among that singular people, and, with certain analogous customs,

serving to add so much plausibility to the theory of its Hebraic

origin--even yet to be accounted for by vague hypotheses such as the

teachings of Cabeza de Vaca among the more southern tribes, thence

transmitted northward. If this be the source of these traditions, it

is singular, to say the least, that there should be among them none

of the essential truths of the new dispensation nor Roman Catholic

legends of the saints. Laroche could but lend heedful attention to

the variant details of the Cherokee version of the Patriarchal and

Mosaic dispensations, and now and again pointed out to Moy Toy their

divergencies from the true and only word, and much he meditated upon

this strange disclosure as he rode along the woodland ways, listening

in his turn.

Sometimes he sought to modify or adjust the sacred writings of the

old dispensation to the interpretative temper of the new, always

held in check by the Cherokee version which Moy Toy would repeat

with controversial relish, keeping pace _haud possibles æquis_.

For the savage, obdurate to the wile of civilization, was yet more

steeled against the advance of the Christian religion; and indeed

modern instances are not wanting, sufficiently dispiriting to the

student of human progress, in which after a lifetime of the profession

of Christianity the Cherokee in his dying hours openly discards the

religion of his adoption and departs to the happy hunting-grounds in

the faith of his fathers, going out of the world the pagan that he

entered it.

Serious as was the subject that absorbed Laroche’s thoughts, the

deep significance of his speculations, comprising the origin of

this race, its perverted destiny, the intentions of the Deity, this

strange glimpse into the mystic past, the darker mystery of the veiled

future,--these mighty interests could not suffice to sustain that human

heart of his when they passed once more the trading-house, silent and

deserted at Ioco Town, and the cottage hard by, where he had lived out

the sweets of the little romance snatched from untoward conditions. He

smiled sadly and tenderly at the thoughts conjured up by the evening

glow so red on the gable against the blue sky. Never again would the

fire flash forth from that deserted hearthstone to lure the wanderer

home. Never again would the gleam of the candle rejoice the hospitable

board that welcomed the stranger. The ingleside was cold and bleak,

and would soon be a wreck, for the Indians were now giving the roof

to the torch, and he watched the blaze with many a sentimental pang,

but did not offer remonstrance. Better thus! Far better thus! It was

well that Jock Lesly should not be tempted back by the knowledge that

his old nest still awaited him here, for the stout heart of the Scotch

trader would credit no less definite a portent of continued danger than

charred timbers and sacked dwelling. And Laroche honestly believed that

the day of the great British trade on the Tennessee and its neighboring

streams was over-past now and forever.

He did not hesitate when once more at Tellico Great to inaugurate

the scheme, the progress of which had been delayed months ago by the

defection of Mingo Push-koosh. For it was here on the banks of the

Tennessee that he at last recovered his old identity, lost in that

sweet and soft thrall of a hopeless love. He felt again a free man,

albeit the glamours of the evening star in the saffron west moved him

strangely. He threw himself ardently into all those plans so long in

abeyance of equipping an army of the confederated tribes,--the Choctaw,

the Muscogee, the Cherokee, and many minor bands,--and the problems

of securing munitions of war, of the transmission of supplies, and of

the apportionment of forces absorbed his every faculty. Continually

his messengers were going to and fro in the Indian country, and his

pettiaugres dared the currents of those swift difficult rivers, now and

again running the gauntlet of the musketry of the inimical Chickasaws

from some high bluff. Secretly, silently, the preparations went on like

the gathering mute menace of a sullen storm whose ferocity must burst

with an added fury from its long repression. All unsuspected it might

have been, although the expectation was so widely extended, save for

the arrogant boastfulness of some far-away Indian, drunk perhaps, in a

British trading-house or the bloody culmination of an individual feud

between a warrior and a white settler, the savage unable to restrain

his vengeful anticipation and abide the accepted time.

Fantastic and impotent as this tenuous scheme may seem now, long ago

shredded by the mere wind of the flight of time, a forgotten fantasy,

not to be more considered than the snares of any humble spider of

to-day throwing its fragile enmeshments from crag to crag on the banks

of the Tennessee, it struck cold terror to the hearts of the royal

governors of the adjacent British provinces. The Spaniard, insolent and

powerful, openly menaced them on the south, and with the combination of

the French and Indians they were surrounded and without recourse. They

had little to hope from one another, save perhaps an unacknowledged

aspiration on the part of each that the other might first tempt the

attack of the designing projector of the new Indian alliance and serve

as a sop to Cerberus. Each was in terror of a plea of assistance from

the other, for the colonies themselves lacked that strength which comes

from union and which Laroche sought to instill into the policy of the

tribes. Each province being incapable of self-defense with its weak,

untrained militia, its inadequate supplies of munitions of war, its

vast wildernesses and stretches of unfortified frontier, was averse

to dividing its slight resources. Roused, however, to the terror lest

immediate massacre of outlying stationers ensue, a consultation was

held and a remonstrance, adroit, sugared, promising yet threatening

withal, addressed by the Governor of South Carolina to Cunigacatgoah[8]

of Choté, now the nominal head of the Cherokee government, was framed

and sent by the hand of one of the Kooasahte Indians, who chanced to be

in Charlestown, with whose tribe the Cherokees were now at peace.

He returned after a swift journey with a most pacific answer,

protesting and reproachful, Cunigacatgoah demanding to be informed

of a single infraction of the terms of the treaty, bating, of course,

wild, irresponsible rumors. If the governor could cite one such for

which the nation could be fairly considered responsible, he would

himself come down to Charlestown to answer for it in person.

Governor Boone, surprised yet reassured by the unexpected character of

this reply, sought to further assuage his anxiety by catechising his

messenger as to the state of matters in the Cherokee country. He found

the mind of the Kooasahte, never forceful at best, in that flighty,

agitated state to be described as all agog. Obviously the man had been

immensely impressed by what he had seen and been able to learn. By

no means willing to disclose all, still his eyes were opened to new

possibilities of savage ascendancy. Under adroit cross-examination

he divulged extraordinary suggestions of the suddenly developed

magnificence of Moy Toy of Tellico and of the wonderful powers of a

strange magician who was Moy Toy’s friend, yet whom he affirmed was a

white man, and whose nationality he accidentally disclosed as French.

Whereupon Governor Boone grew more mystified than before. Finally

he bethought himself to send for Jock Lesly as one who, having been

intimately acquainted with the personnel and conditions of the Cherokee

country for years past, might perchance explain the inconsistency of

all these antagonistic details.

The doughty Scotch trader had accounted the burning of his buildings

and the plunder of his goods, of which he had been informed indirectly

by rumor, as but an accident or a bit of unwarranted and wanton

mischief, and by no means as the definite threat that Laroche had

supposed he would perceive therein. His daughter, however, had insisted

that the demonstration was inimical and in no wise to be braved. Jock

Lesly enjoyed much domestic oratory in these days which his “Whist,

whist, my bairn!” was powerless to silence, and feminine logic won

the battle when she persisted that if he returned, to Ioco Town she

would accompany him, for if it were safe for him it was safe for her!

Thereupon he hauled down his flag; and now as he needs must rebuild

wherever he should go, he was idly awaiting in Charlestown a propitious

opportunity of reëstablishment elsewhere under more permanent

conditions.

Jock Lesly, cocking his sharp blue eyes at the cringing Kooasahte, a

degenerate specimen of a warlike tribe, obviously regarded the whole

history of his visit as a fable.

“Gin your excellency wad forgie the freedom, the man is a beautiful

liar!”

“Was there no white man there when you left?”

“Nane, sir--that is--forbye a bit chiel o’ a Firginian on his way

hame--he had cam doun wi’ a wheen o’ neighbors to herd up some stray

horses that had been sold to the Williamsburg region and had gane back

to their auld grass in the Cherokee country. He fell ailin’, an’ his

friends went on wi’ the horses an’ lef him amang the Injuns,--an’ he

foregathered wi’ us. He cam part o’ the way hame wi’ us, but struck aff

a considerable way aboon Fort Prince George to go aff to Firginia.”

“He could not be this man, you think? Does he speak French?”

“He? Tam Wilson speak French?” exclaimed Jock Lesly, with a hearty

rollicking laugh in his enjoyment of his superior discernment. “Your

excellency disna ken thae carles out on the frontier! Tam Wilson ha’

enow to do to speer his wull in English,--puir fallow!”

This seemed definitive; Jock Lesly therefore was presently dismissed,

and the gratuity which the Kooasahte received was of limited value

and quality, which he had not expected nor had the governor intended,

because he had told the truth, which chanced to be unwelcome and

discredited. He went away, his heart hot within him, sending forth

fumes of rum, which the present sufficed to procure, and sedition,

which the present was not adequate to annul.

Meanwhile life on the banks of the Tennessee at Tellico Great flowed on

as gently as the river. Laroche had received orders to seek adoption

into the Cherokee tribe, according to the wont of the intriguing

French, that he might thereby recruit his influence and improve his

control. Thus he could better restrain their bellicose demonstrations

till the time was ripe for revolt, lest precipitancy annul its values.

Hence he became officially a Cherokee.

That singular atmosphere of fraternity peculiar to the Indian method

of adoption encompassed Laroche like a native element. It seemed no

longer inspired by self-interest. He was as one of the nation,--theirs

in success or defeat, theirs in weal or woe! He had polled his head

and painted his face and donned their garb. He had been initiated into

their mysteries and had accepted their religion; for the Cherokees

were no idolaters, and without mockery he could bow in worship to a

Great Spirit, albeit with many a mental reservation and evasion in

the ceremonies in which he participated. His suspicions were never

allayed,--but they were in his mind, not in theirs,--and he was not

the more content. Now and again as he danced with the braves in

three circles on the sandy spaces of the “beloved square” to the

shrilling of a flute, fashioned of the tibia of a deer, and to the

thunderous drone of the earthen drums, while strange figures such as

might grace pandemonium whirled about him,--hardly human figures;

some with grotesquely frightful masks of gourds hiding faces scarcely

less hideous; some almost nude; some smeared over with unguents as a

groundcoat to make adhere a medley of feathers and foster the semblance

of gigantic birds,--a great repulsion would seize him; every civilized

pulse would clamor against these uncouth follies, against the sacrifice

of time and identity and wonted usage in this cause; and he would

feel that the destruction of all the British colonies, could it be

compassed, was not worth the price which he paid. The recollection

of the sane, orderly customs of the life to which he was native rose

up before him with a sentiment of reproach, as one might feel in

ascertaining the realities in the lucid interval of some tormenting

mania. He was abashed by the mere contemplation of the mountains rising

on every side, silent, austere, as majestically aloof from the farce

which he enacted as the sky above or the world--the civilized world

that he had known and loved--far, far away.

To add to his discomforts the interval which he was to spend thus was

destined to be longer than had been anticipated. Aggressive measures

were again postponed, and his activities suspended by orders which he

received from New Orleans. For it had latterly been developed that the

British government contemplated securing a considerable cession of land

from the Cherokees, thinking that in thus increasing its holding in the

Indian country to keep the tribe more definitely under its domination

and influence, and to quiet the title to certain territory, on which

they claimed the government had encroached. The French, with their

resources much exhausted by the Seven Years’ War, now slowly dragging

its length along, were almost crippled in America for the lack of

ready cash, and their plans for the Cherokees would be considerably

recruited by the purchase money of the land thus poured into the tribal

coffers. The wily Indians were enchanted with so hopeful a prospect of

securing the means to purchase sufficient arms and ammunition to repel

the British and attain their old independence anew. Though they had

never doubted the will of the French government in Louisiana to forward

these measures, its capacity to furnish adequate ammunition had failed

signally more than once.

At this period, while Laroche was awaiting decisive advices from New

Orleans, the progress of events seemed suspended. Hope, anxiety, fear

were in abeyance. He spent much time in the perfecting of the details

of his plan and in the correspondence incident to the enterprise. As he

grew more wearied with the monotonous association with the Indians, he

took advantage of his leisure to send long discursive letters to his

comrades in the southern forts whenever he chanced to have a messenger

going that way,--to Captain Pierre Chabert at Fort Tombecbé or the

Chevalier Lavnoué at Fort Toulouse.

Cold, wet weather set in late in the summer, a long, dreary,

unseasonable interval. When the rains came down in thin, persistent,

fibrous lines, and the surface of the river palpitated and throbbed

beneath its multitudinous touches, and the gathering gray mists half

shrouded then half revealed those endless lengths of dark-hued solemn

mountains, and the trees dripped drearily, and the wind surged and

sobbed amidst their boughs, the susceptible Frenchman reached the

lowest ebb of his isolation, his dissatisfaction, and his yearning wish

to feel again the throbbing pulse of civilization.

Thus it was that for many hours of those chill nights in the quaint

winter-house, without window or chimney, while the rain would pour down

the conical earthen roof, resounding like a drum, he would seek for

solace in writing those long letters to his military friends describing

his plight, and commenting on the news of the day received chiefly

through their responses.

All unmindful of him and his occupations, the other inmates of the

house lay sleeping, stretched in a line, on the couch of cane that

ran along the red clay walls of the circular room, behind the row of

pillars which upheld the conical roof. Even the heads were covered with

the wolfskins and bearskins that formed the drapery of their elastic

cane mattresses. All unmindful of him they were--all except Moy Toy.

The fire would flare up now and again, showing the colonnade of

pillars, the cane couch, and above, the circular wall of the rich red

hue of the clay of that country, with here and there upon it quaint

hieroglyphics in parti-colored paints, or a decorated buffalo hide

suspended, or a curiously carven pipe of stone with some famous scalp

attached, while the scroll-like thin blue smoke eddied overhead,

pressing closer and closer to its exit at the smoke hole. All gradually

flickered and dulled and blurred into a dusky red glow in which

naught was distinguishable but vague reminiscent shadows, the mass of

smouldering coals in the centre of the floor, and the spirited blond

Gallic face of Laroche with his incongruous Indian garb, bending

intent, eager, absorbed, above the page as he wrote. Not till the

page also grew dim would he rouse himself and throw off the gathering

ashes. Then as the responsive flame leaped up white and vivid, he

would look back along the paper to review the last paragraphs, and

with a freshened brightness of aspect apply himself anew to his task.

Moy Toy’s keen eye had grown to distinguish a certain difference of

expression when the military expert wrought upon the problems of his

enterprise,--the alert, elevated look, puzzled now and then, but

intellectual, powerful, confident, and in contrast the twinkling eye,

the sarcastic curving lip, the sly, devil-may-care, gibing nod, and

yet sometimes the plaintive dejection with which he made those “black

marks” which he sent away to his correspondents in the southern forts.

“You are my friend, the friend of my heart, and you know everything,”

Moy Toy once said suddenly out of the dreary midnight, when the

dizzy rain was whirling abroad in a witch’s dance with the wind, the

mountains were lost in the density of night, and the river had become

but a voice in the vast voids of the outer atmosphere.

Laroche looked up suddenly from where he sat on a buffalo rug before

the red glow of the coals. He wrote upon one knee, but the inkhorn

was close by on the floor, and he placed one hand over it, in careful

forethought, that a friendly dog, nosing about with the conviction that

it held refection of worth, might not overturn it. However Laroche’s

hair was clipped it sprang anew and there was a curling fringe under

the edge of his cap, which was fashioned of otter fur and bordered

with white swan’s feathers. His hunting-shirt was of otter fur and

his leggings of buckskin heavily fringed and terminating in a pair of

buskins; these were dyed scarlet and gayly decorated with quills. His

face, with its expression of intellectual absorption, was inconceivably

at variance with his attire and the place. He said nothing, but his

hazel eyes looked an expectant inquiry, and seeing him silent Moy Toy

spoke again.

“Wonderful friend! though your knowledge is no more to be moved or

shaken than the mountains, yet you have the changeable countenance.”

“It is you who know everything!” said Laroche, laughing, but very

distinctly embarrassed.

Moy Toy, encouraged by this appreciation, began to put his impressions

into words. “When you make black marks on those papers which you

treasure, and which I am sure must belong to your beautiful artillery,

or else to make powder, or perhaps to the fine plans for the great fort

which we are to have here one day, your face is the same it has always

been, and as those who love you must love to see it. But when you write

the black marks which you send to the commandants of the forts in the

south, your eyes grow little, and they twinkle, and your mouth is

pursed for lies, and you nod your head with a risky air, and you look

more wicked than clever!”

Laroche listened in silence. Then suddenly he burst out laughing. He

hastily suppressed the tone of loud hilarity, for one of the sleepers

stirred and turned, but fell a-snoring again.

“It is the commandants who are wicked,” he said, smiling

retrospectively. “I answer them only in their own vein--sardonic,

witty, half-malicious fellows.”

“And what makes them so wicked?”

“They are so close to the English, perhaps,--they learn all they know

from the English.”

Moy Toy gazed at the smiling face with a doubtful anxiety, some

withheld thought, a half formed purpose in abeyance.

Laroche had had occasion to note that jealousy of the “black marks”

of civilization which seemed to animate all the Indians of that day,

powerless to restrain this mysterious opportunity of communicating the

most secret thought a thousand miles by the stroke of a pen. He had

been somewhat irked to discover in addition a sort of pettish tribal

jealousy on the part of Moy Toy toward this interest in the southern

forts. The chief desired that the officer’s entire attention should be

concentrated on the welfare of the Cherokee nation, and deprecated that

any advancement or opportunity should be afforded through his means to

the various Alabama tribes congregated about those forts. Laroche was

an adopted Cherokee, and why should he so delight in writing to the

forts _aux Alibamons_!

It had always seemed to Laroche that the intercepting of a letter was

essentially a civilized emprise, but the process was invented, as it

were, in the brain of this specious Indian. As the commandants of Fort

Tombecbé and Fort Toulouse knew so much about the wicked English,

perhaps it was not well to keep longer between the folds of the soft

panther and wolf skins that formed the furnishings of the couch of the

chief a missive addressed to Lieutenant Jean Marie Edouard Bodin de

Laroche, and sealed with a big official splash of wax.

“Here,” said Moy Toy, without the least confusion as he produced it, “I

thought too many times you nodded your head toward Fort Toulouse and

you might soon speak with the forked tongue of Lavnoué. But perhaps he

may tell the truth when his heart weighs heavy with the thought of the

English.”

Laroche stared with amazed displeasure. The color rose indignantly to

his cheeks. He was about to utter a vehement remonstrance, but paused

to break the seal which should have parted under his fingers three

weeks earlier. Then he forgot this encroachment upon his vested rights.

For the letter was a warning, heralding the approach of British

soldiers.

X

THERE stood a quaint, grotesque figure in the midst of the level spaces

about Chilhowee, Old Town. It maintained its stiff, stanch pose alike

through shadow and sheen; oblivious of night or day; unmindful of

the rain that the sudden mountain storms now and again sent surging

down from over the summit of the Chilhowee Range, looming high above;

disdainful of the wind that fluttered the fringes of its buckskin shirt

and leggings and slanted the feathers of its war-bonnet askew, and

flouted and buffeted its aged, painted, fantastic face.

So like a grim old warrior in good truth was the adroitly constructed

effigy that Callum MacIlvesty long remembered the day when first he

beheld it upon entering the Cherokee town of Chilhowee, and was moved

to wrath because of its surly, important, inimical attitude and fixed

aggressive stare. Only the closest scrutiny enabled him to realize

that it was but a scarecrow, albeit the cleverest of its type, with

a painted gourd for a head and a gaudily arrayed body of fagots and

straw. But he did not then even vaguely divine that he was ever to hold

a closer association with the image, or that years afterward and far

away the mere recollection of its aspect in his sleeping fancies would

wake him to a breathless fright and dreary reminiscences of a most

troublous episode in a chequered history.

The scene was bright with the varying luminosity of the azure tints of

the mountains of the distance; nearer the hue of the wooded heights

deepened to the richest autumnal crimson and bronze as they drew

close about the gap where the Tennessee River flows through the

Great Smoky Mountains and pierces the Chilhowee Range to the very

heart. The metallic lustre of the water was now like silver, now like

steel, and again showed a burnished copper glister where its surges

had washed a bank of red clay; occasionally a white drift of swans

was on its current, or a deer swam gallantly across; and once a group

of buffaloes, pausing to drink at the margin, lifted their heads,

apparently as unafraid as tame neat cattle, to gaze with a dull bovine

curiosity at the party of equestrians and the detachment of British

foot-soldiers on the opposite shore.

All the ancient Cherokee customs were still in vogue, although

destined soon to fall away with a suddenness that confounds history

and almost baffles tradition, suggesting, indeed, the instantaneous

transition to dust of some prehistoric skeleton at the first touch of

the disintegrating air. Even at that date, however, with the obvious

doom of evanescence upon them, a certain curiosity concerning them was

very general among those equipped for the archaic speculations in which

Laroche had found an interest; there was a general quickening of the

pace of the horses as several riders closed about a sedate, middle-aged

personage, spare and tall, of great length of limb and evident strength

and toughness, who wore a suit of buckskin and was a surveyor of long

experience on the frontier, and who proceeded to explain the reason for

the extraordinary _vraisemblance_ of the effigy.

“The Indians have aye a crafty turn,” he said. In illustrating this

fact he narrated how the “second man” of the town, “a bailiff belike,”

induced the young people to believe that the scarecrow was the

reincarnated spirit of an ancient warrior, an ancestor, who had come

back to overlook their work. Keeping them at a sufficient distance,

the “second man” was wont to tell wonderful stories of the exploits of

the mythical warrior of Chilhowee, the evil influences of his anger

against the idle, and the benefits of pleasing him by industry. The

women and girls would believe this, and thus to song and story the work

would go merrily on.

The gentleman directly addressed by the surveyor was apparently of a

higher and more fastidious grade. He was sprucely arrayed in brown

cloth of a trim cut and a fine texture, with a cocked hat, dapper yet

sober. His fresh pink cheek and chin were smoothly shaven, the first

slightly wrinkled, the latter cleft with a line that duplicated its

contours. His black “solitaire” was accurately adjusted about his neck.

His bag-wig was the most decorous appendage of that fantastic sort that

ever swung behind a well-furnished and elaborately trained brain. That

he was the exponent of some kind of careful scientific learning was

apparent to the most undiscerning wight at the first glance. Indeed,

the English surveyor in offering this bit of information as to Indian

customs was making but a scant return for the largess of botanical

lore that had strewn the way from Charlestown full five hundred miles

thicker than ever were leaves in Vallombrosa.

As the botanist contemplated the broad fields in cultivation he

began to speak. “This pompion, now,--the variety of _Cucurbita

Pepo_,--that the Indians grow,”--and at the phrase a British officer

resplendent in scarlet coat, white breeches, cocked hat, and powdered

hair, with a look of shocked revolt checked his horse so suddenly

as to throw the animal back upon the haunches and to discommode the

advance of the infantry escort that followed, consisting of thirty

English soldiers of his own company and a detachment of twenty Scotch

Highlanders.

If Lieutenant John Francis Everard could, he would have banished from

the memory of man all Latin plant names, for before he was fifty miles

out from Charlestown he was glutted with information concerning the

vegetable products of the earth on which he lived. He felt that had he

a retroactive power in cosmogony this world should have been created

a leafless ball. From the beginning of the march his spirit quailed in

the presentiment of the tortures of learned converse that were destined

to wreck the pleasure and almost the possibility of the expedition.

Indeed, it was only the second day out that he summoned Callum

MacIlvesty from the ranks of the marching Highlanders and bending

down nearly to the saddle bow said in a bated voice of consternation,

“Callum Bane, do you see that old man? Why,” in an appalled staccato,

“he is almost as bad as ex-Governor Ellis of Georgia!” By which he

meant to imply almost as learned, member of almost as many scientific

associations, perhaps even a fellow of the Royal Society, almost as

acute in making observations, atmospheric, botanic, geologic, almost as

industrious in jotting them down, almost as oblivious of the gayer and

more frivolous interests of life.

To Lieutenant Everard was intrusted the command of this small

military force to escort certain commissioners appointed by the

government to the Cherokee country for the purpose of treating with

the Indians concerning the projected cession of land, which was not

made, however, for several years thereafter, because of an incident

of much significance here chronicled--in fact not until 1768. In view

of the doubtful temper of the Cherokees and the unsettled state of

the country, it was exclusively and comprehensively his duty to see

to it that the heads of these gentlemen were unmolested, with their

brains securely inside and their scalps securely outside, nor were they

expected in return to minister in any degree to his entertainment.

But it is not too much to say that Lieutenant Everard would have

regarded a brisk brush with Indian enemies with less awe, despite his

slight numerical strength, than the ponderous themes, the weighty

presence, the worshipful gravity of the commissioners of the crown.

There was not a conversable person among them, in the estimation

of the gay and dapper lieutenant, and the march thither and back,

with the negotiations at Choté, was calculated to occupy a matter of

many weeks. The surveyor was of the same ultra-sober type, and the

subordinate attendants he considered as unbefitting his society. Of

course familiar association with the men of his company, having only

their noncommissioned officers, was inappropriate, even if their ruder

breeding had not rendered them unacceptable.

Thus it was that after a day or two of floundering out of his element,

he was thrown upon Callum MacIlvesty for solace. For he knew that

MacIlvesty, although serving in the ranks, was a man better born and

better bred than himself. Of course he was aware that the train of

woes, the attainder for treason and forfeiture of estates, following

the rebellions of 1715 and 1745, wrecking a number of noble families,

brought to the ground the branches as well as the parent stem; and in

this instance Callum’s commanding officer had acquainted Lieutenant

Everard with the “gentleman ranker’s” name and condition just before

their departure from Charlestown, when this small detachment of

Highlanders was ordered to reinforce the escort, as they were familiar

with the wild country, a number of them having served with the British

troops in this region the two preceding years during the Cherokee War.

The forlorn young officer, so grievously solitary in this expedition,

soon ceased to ride with the commissioners, and fell into the habit

first of riding near the Highlander as Callum MacIlvesty, alert,

active, with a vivid interest in life, strode along in the marching

column whose fluttering tartans played tag with the wind and whose

burnished accoutrements set up a bright kaleidoscopic glitter at the

vanishing point of many a winding woodland perspective. When the talk

grew more animated and the interest keener, Lieutenant Everard would

throw the reins to an orderly and march on foot beside his new-found

friend in his lowly place; whereat the first sergeant of the English

detachment would glance at the nearest corporal with meaning eyes, and

all adown the column the scarlet elbows of the fours called “battle

comrades” would give each other the touch with more emphasis than the

effort to march in due alignment necessitated. Often, however, in

fact most usually, the whole force marched with the route step, when

conversation was admissible and comment freer than before. For it was

obviously a derogation from the dignity of a commissioned officer to

continue this familiar association with a common soldier and in so far

subversive of discipline, and when the crisis came there were those

amply prepared to say “I told you so!”

“The lieutenant wouldn’t demean himself by walkin’ an’ talkin’ familiar

with a non-com like me,” the first sergeant of the English contingent

averred. “An’ I can’t see as I am a worse man or a less loyal subjec’

’cause I ain’t got fine, titled kin taken in open rebellion an’

attainted o’ treason--one of ’em, Callum’s great uncle, was executed

for treason and his head perched up over a city gate--there yet, for

aught I know!”

For this was the fate of many of the good and noble who had adhered to

the political faith of their fathers.

The Highlanders of the escort, however, some of whom were rescued from

imbroglio on this theme by a simple incapacity to speak or understand

a word of English, and who clattered away cheerily enough together

in Gaelic, deemed this association no sort of condescension on the

part of Lieutenant Everard. So well aware were they of the claims

to distinction of sundry ancestors of Callum MacIlvesty that this

penniless scion of a line of half mythical Highland princes, extending

back in dim procession into the mists of ages, seemed far superior in

social status to Lieutenant Everard, whose best prospect was some day

to represent a comparatively modern but well-endowed English baronetcy.

Perhaps Everard might have justified his course by the plea that

the expedition was not strictly military, and thus permitted some

abrogation of strictly military rule. Every detail to insure safety,

however, was rigorously observed. When the tents were pitched sentinels

were posted, the various guards mounted, all the discipline of a

military camp preserved. When on the march scouts were thrown out, and

a baggage and rear guard maintained. But, he argued, surely he could

not be expected to live so long a time without a being with whom to

exchange a congenial word. And if he saw fit to single out a man near

his own age, of his own station in life, only constrained to serve in

the ranks by reason of poverty because of political misfortunes, he did

not conceive that Callum MacIlvesty was lifted out of his place as a

soldier and absolved from the duty of obedience because thus admitted,

unofficially, to the society of his superior in military rank.

Although both men felt the irking of the anomalous situation, their

mutual relish of congenial companionship rendered them adroit in

nullifying the difficulty. When Everard gave an order he addressed

the Highlander as “MacIlvesty,” who simply and implicitly obeyed it

as a soldier should. But if Everard spoke to him as “Callum Bane,” he

received the request as from a friend and complied or not as he chose,

for the sobriquet had come to be a mark of friendly familiarity, as

it was not necessary on this expedition as a means of identification.

While the regiment had not the disaster in nomenclature that beset

the corps of the Sutherland Fencibles, in which one hundred and

four men answered to the name of “William Mackay,” seventeen being

in one company, still in the Forty-Second there was much patronymic

repetition, and in one company there were three Callum MacIlvestys

severally distinguished as “Callum Roy” (the red-haired) and “Callum

Dhu” (the dark) and “Callum Bane” (the fair).

This fair-haired Callum seemed an attractive personality to Lieutenant

Everard, who felt a compassionate regret that a youngster of such

good parts should have no better prospects, for these were the days

of the purchase of commissions, and this serious thought was often in

Everard’s mind as they sat alone beside the camp-fire, making so far

as opportunity favored them a convivial night of it. Callum had been

grateful for the recognition of his true quality in the humble guise

of the private soldier and in the coarse tartan. It was as a salve

to his wounded spirit and sense of exile. It had been with a great

effort at self-assertion, as a rallying of forces after a defeat,

that he had been able to regain in a measure his normal poise, a

semblance of his wonted brave cheerfulness, subsequent to his obvious

supplantation in the favor of Lilias. Her indifference had pierced him

with a pain all the keener because of his ardent sincerity. Perhaps

because he had already suffered so much from untoward fate he was

endued with the strength to suffer more without succumbing utterly.

He was fortunate in the stubborn resources of his indomitable pride.

He would not pine like a love-sick girl, he said to himself. He would

nerve himself to bear this latest and bitterest fling of fortune like

a man. He was the better enabled to meet it with a bold front since

the continual exactions of Everard occupied his attention, and left

him little time for that silent brooding so pernicious yet so precious

to the youth crossed in love. There was an element of humiliation

in the situation which seared his sensitive pride like actual fire.

Jock Lesly had found his account in the Indian trade, and thus Lilias

would have no inconsiderable inheritance, while Callum had naught

to offer but his heart, which seemed no great matter after all, and

the hand of an ordinary foot-soldier. He had roused himself with a

loyal feeling that he owed it to his ancestry, his name, his sense of

honor, and of honorable achievements in those who had gone before,

his own unimpeachable record, not to think so meanly of himself; and

thus the warm appreciation of his personal qualities and high descent,

irrespective of his incongruously humble station which Everard had

manifested, the admitted equality of their association, had aided to

restore his mental calm and self-respect, and seemed at this crisis

more valuable than it could be at any other time.

The responsibility and anxiety consequent upon escorting the party

of the commissioners through the country of savages, so inimical and

treacherous as Everard had discovered that the Cherokees still were,

weighed very sensibly upon the officer’s consciousness. Therefore the

relaxation at intervals afforded by congenial companionship was all the

more acceptable. The tension of the situation augmented the nervous

stress of his intolerance of the learned and inopportune disquisitions

which the botanist forced continually upon him. He sought to dissemble

his displeasure and irritation, however, for he was essentially a

gentleman, according to his lights, notwithstanding his repudiation

of bigwigs and botany. For all their dullness and slow decorum he had

shown every respectful observance to the elderly civilians whom it was

his duty to escort, and they, being civilians, thought his choice of

a companion very appropriate. They all looked upon Lieutenant Everard

with much favor. They could not know, of course, how often he would

pause in his talk with Callum, when the two were alone beside the

camp-fire, and shake his head with an unutterable thought even to hear

the voice of the botanist, the well-known Herbert Taviston, as it was

raised in his guarded tent to call out a string of Latin plant names of

the growths of the Great Smoky region to another of the commissioners

already abed under his own canopy, while the Highlander, whose ills

in life were so much grimmer than boredom, laughed in glee at the

officer’s dismay and disaffection. So often Everard shook his head for

this cause that its decorous powder suffered, and that is saying much.

For so perfect of accoutrement was he, so point-device, so solicitous

in every detail of dress, that one can hardly think of the fop’s dying

save in full uniform, as befitting the importance of the occasion. The

fact that extremes meet is suggested in the thought that the savages,

when going out to battle with another tribe, often importuned the

white traders for such attire as would enable them to “make a genteel

appearance in English cloth when they died.” That the highly civilized

Everard would die in his boots was a foregone conclusion, but one is

sure that they were elaborately polished whatever the emergency, his

burnished sword in his hand, his neckcloth richly laced about his

throat, his hair curled according to its graceful wont. It was a very

fine head of hair, and for that reason he did not wear the fashionable

wig. Of a rich brownish auburn hue, his hair rose up from his forehead

in a natural undulation that gave all the fashionable effect; it curled

crisply at the sides; it was thick, long, and lent itself with every

address to be plaited in a queue at the back. He had brown eyes, darkly

lashed, a large aquiline nose, a curling, disdainful, discontented

mouth, and a complexion sunburned a permanent scarlet, for despite

his fripperies he had seen much service and was by no means a tin

soldier. The dashing young officer was a somewhat dazzling exponent of

a position and a status which Callum felt to be his own by right, and

the simply educated and much denied Highland youth listened greedily to

the stories with which Everard sought to beguile the tedium: stories of

cosmopolitan life, society, the gay world, the gossip of the times in

high circles, London, Paris, Vienna,--for Everard had seen life,--he

had seen the world! Sometimes these choice narratives were military,

and Callum’s pulse would quicken, for he was ambitious of deeds of

valor and the opportunity of command. Sometimes the chronicle of

Everard’s experiences became boastful and coxcombical, and adroitly

suggested other conquests than those of the battlefield.

Nevertheless to Everard the tedium was intolerable. They could not

gamble at cards, the reigning vice and pleasure of the day, for the

extremity of the poverty of Callum Bane precluded this, and Everard

would have been both ashamed and sorry to win his meagre pay. Now and

again they played a dreary game without hazard, merely “for the fun of

the thing,” but Everard found more genuine amusement in object lessons

with the cards, in which he elucidated the methods and mysteries of

sundry new games, the latest rage, which he had picked up when he was

last in London or Paris. This interest palled too after a time, and

in reverting to the chronicle of his experiences he was even fain to

elaborate questions of the cuisine; he described queer dishes of which

he had partaken in out of the way quarters of the world whither his

military duties had chanced to carry him; he learnedly compared the

abilities of the cooks of different inns and coffee-houses in divers

cities; and he vaunted the discrimination and keen discernment of

his palate as a judge of wines till the “bouquet,” of which he spoke

so knowingly, seemed to dispense an actual fragrance to the alert

senses of the imaginative listener. None of these subtle refinements

appertained to the beverage of which Everard invited Callum’s opinion

one night as the two boon spirits lingered long about the camp-fire,

now and again mending it as it sank, for the hour wore on to the chill

of midnight.

“You have to go on guard duty anyhow presently, Callum Bane,” the

officer said, “so you might as well stay here till the corporal goes

out with the relief.”

They had been in high glee, and the lieutenant was loath to lose his

merry company.

The camp was now pitched at Ioco Town,--by Callum, alack, so well

remembered,--west of the Chilhowee Range, and the English surveyor

had offered the lieutenant some particularly fierce tafia, doubtless

originally distilled for the Indian trade (against the law), the

“fire water” that wrought such woe among the tribes. The sober-minded

civilians had not cared to deviate from their usual refreshment of

brandy and water or wine which they had brought for their consumption

during the journey, but the officer was disposed to experiment. Neither

Everard nor Callum was accustomed to this particular drink nor pleased

with it, and now and again reverted to the officer’s Scotch whiskey,

wherein they demonstrated the fact that they were both Britons and

compatriots. Then once more they essayed the contemned rum, and again

to take the taste out drank the home-brew.

“My certie! it’s got the smell o’ the peat ontil it!” cried the

Scotchman in his simple joy and bibulous patriotism.

Despite his exaltation of the Scotch product, however, the rum had no

cause to complain of him when some criticism of the beverage by Everard

required that it should be sampled anew, and then they once more sagely

conferred together.

That Everard was more irritable than usual was amply manifest in the

expression of his uplifted eyes and the cant of his eyebrows when

suddenly the learned Herbert Taviston issued forth all nightcapped from

his tent, and, snugly wrapped in a gaudy floriated dressing-gown, once

more sought the solace of the fire.

“You seem very comfortable here, my dear sir,” he said with complacent

sweetness and self-satisfaction, all unaware of the piteous spectacle

his nightcapped well-informed head presented in the estimation of the

military man, who was already alienated by a surfeit of botany, and

whose hair, blowsing in the chill wind about his high forehead, was not

even sheltered by his hat. “I find my tent quite cold. We should have

done better to take up our quarters in this vacant house hard by, as it

seems to be abandoned.”

He nodded the tassel of his nightcap toward the slumbering town of

Ioco, the nearest conical-roofed houses showing dimly against the

densely black night. Some residue of light seemed held in the Tennessee

River, for now and again came a sidereal glimmer from the reflection

of the stars on the invisible surface, and a mysterious vista opened

between the towering forests on either bank, where the unseen stream

led like some great shadowy roadway into regions of deeper darkness

beyond. Ioco Town, long and narrow, stretched along the bank, still and

silent. Only the wind was abroad. Of the nearest dwellings all seemed

alike, but one quite apart from the others, close at hand in fact, was

vacant, according to the adroitly waving tassel,--doubtless impelled by

previous knowledge rather than present assurance of the circumstance.

The officer spoke up with only half masked acerbity. He felt

responsible, as he was indeed, for the conduct of the expedition to the

best advantage, and all details as to transportation, lodgment, the

commissariat, passed under his direct supervision. No slight matter

was such a march in that region in those days. Now a river had risen

out of fording depth, and ferriage was to be improvised, from whatever

materials could be had in the dense wilderness, and safely achieved;

now an accident occurred to the baggage train, a horse going hopelessly

lame, or getting astray; now a shortage supervened in certain

provisions for the commissioners that had proved more acceptable than

others which thus outlasted them. All the time the discipline of a

military camp was to be maintained, the soldiers provided for after

their kind, the thousand maladroit incidents of a march of five hundred

miles to be severally met and adjusted, without assistance or advice,

and reconciled to the comfort and safety of an official party of

elderly civilians.

“You will do me the favor to remember, sir, that since the change in

the weather I have urged you and the other civilian gentlemen to accept

the invitation of the chiefs of Ioco Town and quarter yourselves in

their ‘stranger-house,’ a very commodious lodging and vastly superior

to yonder tumble-down hovel.”

Everard pointed with the stem of his pipe toward the stove-like

“winter-house,” a mere shadow crouching low in the night and only

revealed because of the far-reaching flare of the freshening camp-fire.

The yellow flames sprang cheerily up with a roar and a jet of leaping

red sparks. The boughs of the tall hickory trees high over their heads

showed fluctuating glimpses of the amber and scarlet hues of the still

redundant leafage; a star scintillated through the fringes of a pine;

the tents of the little encampment glimmered white at regular intervals

in the dusky aisles of the woods; now and again the dull red glow of

a fire at some distance, about which was grouped the guard, asserted

its fervors, “lights out” being an order held not applicable to it nor

to the fire in front of the commissioners’ tents; and continually,

regularly, the tramp of an unseen sentry, walking his beat, smote on

the air with a dull mechanical iteration like the ticking of a clock.

“I should have placed a strong guard about the building,” Everard went

on, “and as the rest of the escort lies so near Ioco you would have

been as secure certainly if not safer than here as you are.”

For Everard, not unnaturally, considered the complaint of the

discomforts to which the commissioners were subjected as a reflection

upon his conduct of the march.

The tassel on the learned nightcap wagged in deprecation. “My dear sir,

most true, most true, but”--

“I remember you insisted that you preferred the camp because of

possible infection from smallpox in the Indian dwellings,” the

officer mercilessly went on, with a curl of the upper lip, already

so disdainfully disposed. He had that flouting scorn of the fear of

contagion which a man naturally acquires whose life is in continual

jeopardy from epidemics, constrained to dwell in hordes, and subject

every hour to the chances of the times. “For myself,” he protested,

“except that I am obliged to keep the escort in camp to avoid brawls

between the soldiers and the young Cherokee braves, I should prefer

to billet the whole force upon the town, in the good, cosy, dry

winter-houses, since this unseasonable chilly change in the weather.

There is no more danger from smallpox for you in sleeping in their

‘stranger-house’ than in the handshaking that went on in the powwowing

over the terms of the cession at Choté with the headmen. Shoot me, sir,

but you ought to see an epidemic in an army--something to be afraid

of! Gad, sir, the men died with cholera in India like sheep--and with

scurvy, too, on board ship, both going and coming.”

The tassel on the nightcap had lost its pliant urbanity. Be a man ever

so scientific, so civilian, so intrusted with peaceful commissional

powers, he cannot admit an inference of fear, even of disease, in

taking ordinary precaution.

“All, my good sir, within the scope of civilization and the best

deterrent effects of a scientifically applied materia medica. The army

chirurgeons do good service--excellent, excellent. But here, among the

savages, no disinfectant processes obtain, and no intelligent effort

to prevent the spread of the dread scourge. Why, sir, in 1738 the

Cherokees lost almost half their number by the ravages of the smallpox

and their ignorance in dealing with the disease.”

“And if they had lost _all_ their number I should not hesitate

to sleep in one of their winter-houses twenty-four years later. Ha,

ha, ha!” The rum was evidently getting in its work. “Hey, Benson,” the

lieutenant called to his servant in the one illumined tent hard by,

“make up my bed in that vacant winter-house, and hark ye, build a fire

in the middle of the floor, Injun-wise! Gad! I’ll not be diddled out of

the comforts of life for fear of a Cherokee distemper twenty-four years

gone!”

The nightcap wished itself where it belonged, on its pillow. To

retire with dignity became the most definite motive in the brain that

it surmounted, and in this emprise it conceived that some aid might

be secured by a few words of casual conversation with the officer’s

companion, who was therefore civilly addressed.

Now the worshipful Herbert Taviston would have been excited to a frenzy

by a false classification of the meanest herb of the earth, and would

have repudiated it as an unrighteous pretension and a mischievous

effort to subvert the accepted grades and relations of a careful and

accurate system. But if aware that such elements and considerations

existed in matters military, they were in his estimation of no

practical moment, and he turned toward the Highland soldier with as

pliant a grace of his tasseled crest as erstwhile it had borne in

bending before the commander of the force. And in fact he might well be

oblivious of distinctions of rank. The young Highlander had a handsome,

kindly, intelligent face and a manner of refinement and dignity, and

bating his coarse garb and rustic dialect he might have easily seemed

a man of degree. Moreover, he was here hobnobbing familiarly with his

officer.

“Do you find your pipe a solace, my dear sir?” Mr. Taviston blandly

demanded, for smoking was not then the universal habit that it was

sometime earlier and has been since.

“Aye, sir,” the Highlander replied politely, a trifle embarrassed by

the obvious mistake as to his rank rather than his quality. “But it

isna sae cantie a crony as a queigh o’ gude browst, neither,” he added

blithely, with an effort to reëstablish the _entente cordiale_.

The young officer, with sullen, attentive eyes, that held a spark of

red fire in their brown depths, glowered at them.

“Ah, so indeed!” suavely commented the elderly nightcap. “But have

you observed, sir, that the Indians have another kind of tobacco than

that which is commonly smoked,--which is of course the _Nicotiana

Tabacum_? Now this other tobacco plant is a small-leaved, green,

bitter species which they use exclusively in their religious

ceremonies, their incantations, their necromancy, known as”--

“As _Nicotiana diabolica_,” suggested the officer.

Now had the nightcap housed but a modicum of tact and permitted a

laugh at this fling, all might yet have gone well. But trust a man of

scientific hobbies for serious denseness.

“Not at all, sir,” he said with asperity. “That name is unknown to

the herbalist. The plant is _Nicotiana rustica_ with us. With

the Cherokees it is _Tsalagayuli_, and the Muskogees call it

_It-chau-chee-le-pue-puggee_, ‘the tobacco of the ancients,’

and the Delawares, _Lenkschatey_, ‘original tobacco,’--showing

an interest parity of signification; with the coast Indians it is

_Uppowoc_; the Tuscaroras call it _Charho_; the Pamlico

Indians, _Hoohpau_; and the Woccon Indians, _Vucoone_. Now,”

turning back to the Highlander with an air of excluding the ill-starred

jester on subjects of such grave moment, “there is a so-called tobacco,

not even related to the genus _Nicotiana_--it is the _Lobelia

inflata_--which furnishes the Indians with a powerful medicinal

infusion. Have you noticed in your march hither, and perhaps in your

previous campaigns in the Cherokee country, the amazing expertness of

the Cherokees in the matter of simples?”

“He is too simple himself,” put in the officer, with an airy laugh.

The Highlander’s face was flushing painfully. He was carrying a goodly

quantity of mixed liquor of the fiercest description, and it had not as

yet shaken a nerve; but the consciousness of his false position between

his two companions was aiding its potency, and his equilibrium was

beginning to tremble.

The botanist, touched in his sensitive pride, calmly ignored Lieutenant

Everard at his own camp-fire; and the officer, who had borne much from

his idiosyncrasies and had assiduously sought to promote his comfort

and security on the weary march hither, gazed at him with a deepening

glow of that fiery spark in his eyes.

“The Cherokees’ expert knowledge of toxicology in plant forms is

amazing,” continued the botanist. “They excel all savage nations in

their discoveries of vegetable poisons and their application. And then

their botanical nomenclature--how happy--how apt! Are you conversant,

sir, with their generic plant names?”

“The title of the parent stem, do you mean?” said the unlearned

Highlander hesitating, fumbling in his mind as to what Cherokee plant

names were considered applicable as to a parent stem.

“He doesn’t lay much nowadays on the title of parent stems,”

interpolated Everard flippantly. “His own branch has lost its head,

through that head having been so heady as to lose his head.”

A keen steely glance, as significant as the drawing of a burnished

blade, flashed from the Highlander’s eyes and was received full in the

gaze of the facetiously fleering officer. The subject of the forfeiture

of estates, the loss of titles, the attainder of treason, was not fit

for jesting with one who had suffered so fiercely by them, and except

in his cups no man would have been more definitely and respectfully

aware of this than Everard. And yet the fiery liquor was not altogether

to blame. He was as cruelly hampered by the false position as his

lowly friend, who nevertheless in every essential that he reverenced

was his equal if not his superior. To be ignored, to be talked down,

and meekly submit to keep his mouth closed was more than his patience

could admit. But he was practically helpless. He could not seize that

egregious nightcap by the tassel and punch that learned head. He could

only assert himself by interjecting scoffs and fleering laughter, and

because of the fiery cup these were ill advised.

“It is singular how very fitting and descriptive is the Cherokee

plant nomenclature!” chirped the botanist. As he sat on a block of

wood beside the fire, his face seemed ludicrously small in its strait

toggery, in comparison with its enlarged and bewigged aspect by day,

and he looked like an elderly infant, if such an anachronism can be

pictured. His gaudy gown was drawn close about his spare figure, but

he had forgotten to be cold, and his smiling eyes were fixed absently

on the face of the young Highlander, as fitting the fingers of his

delicate hands daintily together he continued to speak of the accurate

niceties of Cherokee plant names.

“_Atali kuli_, ‘the mountain climber,’” he translated, his

lingering tones almost chanting, so great was his pleasure in the

definition; “the mountain ginseng, my good sir.” Then, fairly intoning

the Latin like a priest, he added, “_Panax quinquefolium_, of the

order _Araliaceæ_, also a native of China, sir.”

“_He_ is not a native of China, sir. He was made out of a peat

bog,” put in Everard flippantly.

Naturally the nightcap addressed the civil Highlander.

“Then there is _Ahowwe akata_, ‘deer-eye,’--yes, the word

_ahowwe_ signifying deer,--with us the _Rudbeckia fulgida_.

And again,” dropping his voice now in deprecation of the suggestion

of indelicacy, as if a lowered tone made the allusion more seemly,

“there is _Unistiluisti_, meaning ‘they stick on,’”--in a whisper,

“beggar’s lice,”--then at full voice, as if the Latin would mend the

matter, “_Myosotis Virginiana_.”

The lieutenant looked ostentatiously disgusted. He had indeed never

heard of the plant, and the Latin did not impose upon him, but the

mention of the insect from which it took its name was an insult to ears

polite. “Oh fie, sir!” he said rebukingly, for he was indeed aweary of

it all.

The nightcap turned hastily toward the Highlander, who was heavily

harassed between the two, the double discord of their moods jarring

upon his nerves and bringing them more under subjection to his

previous potations. “Then, my dear sir, there is the Indian shot, the

_Canna_,--as you are aware the Celtic word for ‘a cane,’--with us

the ‘headache plant,’ and”--

“Come, come, sir, enough of this,” cried Everard, scarcely listening,

and forced to rise. “We have nothing to do with headaches. It grows

late, and your hearer cannot meet your phrase nor match your learning,

although as to the question of heads he knows more about them than you

can ever teach him. Nothing fixes them in the memory like having them

grinning from a city gate.”

The Highlander had risen too. He had a pictorial imagination, and

there still lingered upon its sensitive retina, so to speak, images

of the night’s talk, before the botanist had come to the fireside:

the aspect of London, the castellated Rhine, the glitter of Paris,

and many a suave and southern scene beneath a blue and tropic sky.

Suddenly these were all obliterated. That woeful land upon which the

cruel hand of Doom had rested so heavily, the sequestered estates, the

beggared gentry, the starving peasants, the scattered clans, the hunted

fugitives, the proscribed national garb, the hopeless exiles, the

prison, the scaffold, the gibbet--all rose up before him as elements in

a stricken gray landscape, in ghastly wintry guise. For one moment he

hesitated. Then stepping aside from the fire, he reached out and struck

the flippant mocker full in the face.

The officer, taken all unaware, reeled as if he would lose his

balance. Then, for he was of a fine, alert physique, he recovered the

perpendicular, and it seemed as if he would spring like a panther upon

the Highlander, who had thrown himself into a posture of defense. The

next moment Everard’s military identity was fully reasserted, and the

proud Highlander writhed under the realization that the officer would

not return the blow. He would not demean himself by striking so low a

thing,--a man of the ranks. His voice rang out crisp and steady as he

called the corporal of the guard, placed Callum under arrest, and named

the manner and locality of his detention and the details when he should

be brought up “at orders” the following morning. Then wholly sobered,

Everard turned with dignified courtesy upon the botanist, who was now

protesting and squawking like some fluttered fowl instead of a refined

and elegant gentleman in the discharge of a public trust.

“I must beg your favor, sir,” the lieutenant said, by way of denial of

a wild plea for clemency for the culprit. “I understand my duty and I

shall do it. And may I beg that you will now retire to your tent, as

all this stir may rouse the camp to the prejudice of discipline and

good order? I wish you a very good-night, sir!”

And the nightcap with a depressed and lankly pendent tassel and the

floriated gown disappeared under the flap of the tent and enlivened the

spaces around the fire no more.

XI

POOR Callum Bane! Sober in good truth and sad as well! As soon as his

guard had quitted his side, he flung himself down on the earth floor

of the Indian winter-house, to which he had been conducted, with his

cheek pressed to the clay. He wished that the day had come when it

might cover him. Then he recoiled with the thought that this might

not be far distant. Striking an officer was a most serious military

offense. Even apart from its military aspect it was an insult for which

only blood could atone. He knew that Lieutenant Everard could never

face his world, the officers of his regiment, his mess, if they were

aware that as man to man he had tamely submitted to receive a blow in

the face. And since he could not challenge one of so low a station as

a common soldier, he had let the matter revert to its normal aspect of

insubordination, and the military law would take its course.

Yet Callum could have shed the tears that stood hot and smarting in his

eyes for this sad finale to their gay young friendship. He had felt

that it augured a certain magnanimity in Everard to ignore what he was

in station in the knowledge of what he was by descent. Callum would

never have admitted, not even in his most secret thoughts, that he

found aught lacking in Jock Lesly, whose instincts rendered him a man

of intrinsic worth; but this association on equal terms with Everard, a

man of refined manners and gentlemanly phrasings and careful nurture,

was to Callum like a return to the companionship of his earlier life,

and a relief after the ruder comradeship of the boisterous common

soldier and the dull routine of mechanical duty. He had taken a certain

pleasure, too, in the realization that his society was the young

officer’s only solace in the long and dreary march with its peculiar

personal isolation. But it was a pleasure fraught with much pain,--the

contemplation of this man in a position which but for an untoward fling

of fate might have been his own also. The thought often lent a sharp

edge to the close and intimate observation of Everard’s opportunities

and their development, but Callum was not of a jealous temperament,

and did not visit upon the individual, even in secret meditation, the

disasters which national circumstances and conditions had wrought.

Despite the difference in station and habits, wealth and education, the

two had grown fraternally fond of each other, and now there was that

between them which could be washed out only with blood, and the officer

in the direct discharge of his duty had chosen that it should be with

the blood of the soldier.

The sentinel still stood at the doorway, for there was no door,

but gradually his glances within, prompted by curiosity, had grown

infrequent. There was no guard tent. The men were of the best class,

picked for the expedition, and so far not even a trifling misdemeanor

had sullied the record of their good conduct. Punctual, alert,

efficient, cheerful, invaluable each had seemed in every emergency,

and thus the only unoccupied shelter that might conveniently hold

a culprit was the clay-constructed winter-house, which stood aloof

and vacant on the edge of Ioco Town. The preparations which Everard

had ordered, with the intention of occupying it himself, had gone no

farther than the kindling of a fire on the clay hearth in the centre

of the floor, before it was diverted to the uses of a prison. The

smoke, in thin, shifting, scroll-like forms, circled gray and blue

about the red clay walls without an exit save such crevices as the

wind and rain and neglect had wrought. As Callum had dropped down

on the inner side, the vapors served to screen him somewhat from

the observation of the sentinel, who, he now began to notice, had

become absolutely oblivious of him. This matter riveted his attention

presently. There was evidently some strange stir in the encampment, an

odd circumstance, and Callum reflected in sudden affright that he had

been bound, needlessly and cruelly he considered. The handcuffs, always

carried _pro forma_, were among the baggage, and, it being deemed

unmeet to rouse its custodians to overhaul it at that hour, a stout

rope had been substituted. A vague clamor of voices came to his ears.

He observed that the sentinel at the doorway had become rigid with

suppressed excitement. Could it be that an attack by the Indians was

threatened? Remembering his bonds, Callum’s blood ran cold. The force,

while strong enough for protection against unauthorized vagabonds or

possible bands of robbers, could not resist successfully an organized

assault by the braves of this great tribe. He might well be forgotten

in such a crisis--left here bound and helpless, to be captured and

tortured and burned. The next moment, listening with every pulse tense,

he realized that the voices were those of the soldiers in altercation

or extenuation. One shrilly clamoring in Gaelic, as if the strength

of his lungs and the pitch of the tone could render his gibberish

intelligible to Lieutenant Everard, revealed to Callum’s practised ear

the cause of the disturbance.

An Indian horse-race had been held in a neighboring town, and albeit

this amusement was one which appealed especially to the tastes of the

pleasure-loving lieutenant, so grievously debarred and deplorably dull

on this uncongenial expedition, he would not attend it himself and

issued positive orders that no man of the force should be present. Nay,

he went so far as to see to it that none had leave of absence from the

camp on any pretext on the day when this diversion took place. He very

definitely appreciated the perils which menaced his little command in

case of any antagonism or open quarrel with the tribesmen of the towns.

Had his mission been strictly military, to make a stanch defense or a

brisk onslaught, it would have been far simpler, in his estimation,

whatever dangers or disasters hostility might involve. But the success

of his mission depended upon the preservation of a strict peace. Apart

from the safe-conduct and guardianship of the commissioners and their

attendants, fully one third of the party being non-combatants,--and no

man believes so implicitly as does the British regular in the absolute

incapacity of the non-professional to do battle in any behalf, or to

be of any belligerent value even in his own defense,--the interests

of the government were at stake. Nothing could so quickly sow the

seeds of dissension, the acute officer argued within himself, as the

winning of the Indians’ money and valuable furs and other choice

gear at the projected horse-race. He did not doubt that charges of

fraud would arise, a fracas ensue, the security of the commissioners’

camp be placed in jeopardy, and the cession itself imperiled. Hence

his self-denial, for he was a good judge of horseflesh himself, and

dearly loved a show of speed, and the Cherokees of that day owned some

extraordinary animals.

Everard had felt himself extremely ill used by fate, as he was turning

away from the camp-fire, after his dismissal of the astonished corporal

with the prisoner, and his low bow to salute the disappearance of Mr.

Herbert Taviston. His face was smarting with pain from the blow, his

heart burned hot within him, his pride upbraided his condescension to

this man of low estate, who had so ungratefully requited recognition

of his real quality as a born gentleman. While Everard was beginning

to revolve troublous doubts as to how the course of action upon which

he had resolved in these unprecedented circumstances would be regarded

by his mess and superior officers, a new and unprovoked disaster

was presented. One of the corporals in the functions of officer of

the day appeared, and with a mechanical salute and a look of abject

despair reported that several of the men, three English soldiers and

one Highlander, had run the guard that afternoon and had attended the

horse-race, in which they had found their account. They had smuggled

into camp after dark a quantity of valuable furs, some strings of the

fresh-water pearls of the region, and the Highlander had jingling in

his sporran some French money, several louis d’ors. So successfully

indeed had they managed their enterprise that its discovery was made

only through the anxiety of the Cherokees to repossess themselves of

these pieces of French gold. By no means adepts in banking principles,

they had, nevertheless, with an unassisted natural intelligence evolved

the idea of a premium. As soon as the headmen learned the fact of the

loss of this money, they secretly offered to redeem the louis d’ors

with English currency and pay a guinea extra for the exchange. The

“mad young man,” Wahuhu by name, who had been grievously deprived

by fate of his money, browbeaten by his elders upon discovery of

the circumstances, and sent upon this secret errand to retrieve the

disaster, was greatly perturbed by the unaccustomed restrictions of

the camp. He had himself sought to run the sentry, and being taken in

charge by the officer of the guard, naïvely demanded to see and confer

with a certain Highland soldier. By adroit cross-questioning the facts

had been elicited by the corporal--little by little because of the

Indian’s reluctance to disclose aught and the linguistic deficiencies

of the Highlander.

“Lord, sir, he is a poor creature!” said the corporal, laying the

matter before his superior officer. “He cannot talk at all.”

“An enlisted man cannot be dumb,” said the officer with asperity.

“No, sir, but he can’t be understood, sir. He can talk no English, nor

even the gibberish they call ‘braid Scotch,’ nor yet Cherokee. He has

nothin’ but the Gaelic, sir.”

“And yet he can run the guard and bet at a horse-race?”

“Yes, sir; an’ win his sporran full o’ louis d’ors!”

And with true Scotch thrift the accomplished personage in question

would not be parted from them. Thus it was that his voice was presently

lifted in the midnight. He spoke on his own behalf. He mistrusted

the interpretation of his Scotch comrades, for his ear discerned the

difference in their accent from the speech of the English soldiers and

the lieutenant, and he cherished the conviction that were the Gaelic

but addressed directly and distinctly to the commanding officer, he

being a sensible man could not steel his comprehension against it.

Wherefore the Highlander yelped and shrilly piped into the night air

until the very hem of his kilt quivered with his vocalizations, and the

lieutenant stood as if bewitched before him, gazing at the spectacle he

presented.

The whole camp was astir. Lights gleamed in sundry tents, all white

and translucent in the darkness. Military figures had ventured out and

stood in the shadows, some bearing weapons on the pretext of having

fancied the tumult a summons to arms. The officer of the guard had

attended with the Indian negotiator, who was instantly set at liberty

by the order of the lieutenant, but who still lingered with wild eyes

and a constant keen turning of the head to and fro to see and to hear;

that he was not altogether unsupported might be inferred from vague

vistas that the camp lights flung down the aisles of the forest, where

shadowy faces and feathered crests showed, flitting like a fancy. And

of all, the central figure was Eachin MacEachin, his red hair rough

from his pillow and his well-earned dreams of wealth; his dress in

disarray, one stocking well-braced and gartered, the other hanging

over his shoe and showing his shapely sturdy leg and his great bare

rough red knee; his kilt fluttering in the wind; his freckled face

eager and distorted with his vociferations to his discerning commander.

And in truth, aided by adroit gesticulations, his words were not so

far from intelligible. He spurned the proposition of an exchange. As

he opened his sporran of badger skin and took therefrom a glittering

gold piece and exhibited it to the lieutenant, then with an ecstatic

leer put it between his strong white teeth and bit hard on it to prove

it genuine, there was no need for a mortified compatriot, who had

volunteered to interpret to the officer, to say,--

“She aye threepit she ha’ gotten ta gowd, sir. She mistrust ta English

guinea.” Then with a look of blank distress, “She’ll aye mainteen she

saw muckle French gowd in ta Forty-foive. She’ll no be so well acquent

wi’ ta guinea.”

The object of his aid, desirous of speaking for himself, now and

again turned upon his interpreter with a furious Gaelic phrase of

repudiation, to which the better soldier, who had run no guard and

consequently had won no money, vouchsafed no retort, only commenting

indirectly by shaking his head and exclaiming, “Hegh, sir, she’s but a

puir creature!”

“I am not so sure of that,” said the lieutenant dryly, “unless I can

count what he has got in that sporran!”

Suddenly something in the aspect of the glittering coin which the

Highlander still held in his fingers struck Lieutenant Everard’s

attention. His face changed sharply. He asked for the coin, and calling

for a candle keenly scrutinized the piece by the flickering taper, as

the corporal held it, screening with his hand the feeble flame from the

wind. In another moment the lieutenant demanded the transference of the

remaining five louis d’ors to his custody, sternly insisting, despite

the wild plaintive protests of Eachin MacEachin.

All this, the Gaelic being as intelligible to Callum as the English,

came to him on the chill night air, and he marveled at Everard’s

persistence in taking custody of the coins, for although it was the

habit of the Highland soldiery to make their officers their bankers,

this trust was altogether voluntary, and not by duress, as in the

case of poor Eachin MacEachin and his ill-gotten “gowd.” As it was

the favor of chance, like fairy gold, its possession may have seemed

equally precarious; or as it was won in direct disobedience of orders,

he may have even entertained doubts of the lieutenant’s intentions

in the matter of its ultimate return to him, for the Highlanders

were as a rule peculiarly averse to the control of any officers save

those of their own regiments and more than once mutinied rather than

serve under strangers. For whatever reason, so valiantly indeed did

Eachin MacEachin resist Lieutenant Everard’s orders that force at

last became necessary, and his voluble insubordination in the pain of

parting with his gold made Callum acquainted with the fact that he

might presently expect company in his imprisonment. This recalled his

mind summarily to his own plight. He realized the importance of the

officer’s efforts to avoid a clash with the Indians, and wondered what

effect this circumstance would have in the discipline of the military

offenders. Suddenly he turned sick and his blood ran cold. The corporal

punishment, then in vogue in the British army, was regarded by the

better class of soldiers as so great a degradation that a man once

brought to the lash was practically ruined, socially and morally. The

indignity came all at once into Callum’s mind as a possible solution

of Everard’s difficulty in his case. He knew that he could not be

shot without a regularly organized court-martial, which, necessarily

delayed, in view of the personnel and conditions of the force, until

their return to Charlestown, would also publish far and wide the

officer’s derogation of his dignity in associating on equal terms with

a private, who had struck him over their drink as an equal might have

done. Everard would flinch from this disclosure, for it would impugn

his fitness for his position. And yet he could not challenge a private

nor submit as man to man to the ignominy of a blow in the face. The

summary punishment of a flogging at the head of the line would dispose

of the matter with the utmost contempt and amply avenge the indignity.

Callum was terrified lest Everard’s authority in this independent

command of a detachment, so remote from superior military jurisdiction,

gave him such latitude, or could be so stretched in view of his

dilemma. With the mere thought Callum sprang from the floor with a

suddenness that loosened every taut strand of the ropes that bound him.

His breath was short; he gasped; the blood almost burst from his veins

as his heart plunged and the arteries throbbed. He must be quick; the

little makeshift prison would soon be recruited; and of captives, one

was a spy on another. He could scarcely see, through the blue swirls

of smoke, the sentry at the door, whose attention was still riveted on

the excited scene without. Callum had caught at the first wild scheme

of release, hardly canvassing its practicability. He did not reckon

with the pain or the danger when he thrust his bound hands into the

flames to burn off the cords. The thought in his brain, the ignominy

that threatened him, seared far tenderer perceptions than appertain to

the flesh. The fire caught at the hemp, and he set his teeth hard. The

ligaments had at last fallen away when discovery suddenly menaced him.

“Look out for your plaid in there, Callum,” said the sentry abruptly.

“I smell something burning.”

“’T isna wool,” rejoined Callum promptly. “My plaid isna even

scorching.”

And the sentinel, thus satisfied, once more turned his attention

without.

Callum looked about him wildly. His first impulse was to throw himself

upon the sentinel’s back, overturn him, and fly down the dark aisles of

the woods--to what? Certain recapture, and an ignominy that overawed

his proud spirit more than death.

“Gae cannily--gae cannily,” he said to himself, as he crouched

uncertainly behind the flare of the fire and the veiling tissues of the

smoke.

The house, like all of its kind, had neither window nor chimney. It

seemed to him of far ampler proportions than such as were used for a

single family, and yet it did not approach in dimensions the great

assembly rotunda, which could contain an audience of several hundred

persons. It occurred to him that it might have been used as a fort at

some date long previous, when perhaps Ioco had served as a barrier

town, and this was its outlying defense. He remembered having noted

the vestiges of an ancient stockade outside, and with the idea that it

might have once held an Indian garrison, his keen eyes searched the

interior. The old cane-wrought divan, that once perchance encircled

the clay-plastered walls, had long ago vanished, leaving only a mark

to suggest it. But above this, on a level with the ground outside, for

the floor was fully two feet lower than the surface of the earth, he

detected a series of vague circles of white chalk. These white circles

indicated where loopholes were concealed beneath the clay of the wall,

to be utilized by the forted party in firing on an approaching enemy.

He rushed to the nearest in a sudden frenzy. The clay gave way in

his blistered baked hands; and suddenly, with an inrush of the sweet

woodland air without and a glimpse of the black night beyond, was

revealed the loophole, adroitly fashioned by savage skill how many

years agone! A limited opening it proved, however, barely sufficient

to admit of the flight of an arrow thence, and just above the surface

of the ground, but it gave a purchase to the frantic clutching of his

strong hands and for the use of a clasp knife of an ordinary sort that

had been stowed in his sporran; for although he had been searched for

concealed weapons, it had been but a cursory investigation, as his

wrists were bound. The blade broke when the work was nearly completed,

but his fingers, although almost nailless and lacerated to bleeding,

finished the enlargement of the aperture, and he dragged himself

through the narrow horizontal space and stood, breathless, exhausted,

in the dark woods without.

Only for one moment did he pause. The clamors at the scene of action

warned him that a crisis had supervened. Wild cries of “Ohon! Ohon!”

betokened the despair of the erstwhile lucky gambler, the fact that the

five louis d’ors were temporarily transferred to the custody of the

officer, and that the Highlander and his fellow culprits who had so

gallantly run the guard and played the races were being hustled along

to the half demolished prison, which they would find empty. The thought

lent wings to Callum’s feet, for in another moment discovery would

ensue and the pursuit come hot upon his track.

Yet his spirits revived as he felt the fresh wind, cool and pure upon

his face; his muscles, supple and strong, responded to the demand upon

their activities. Like a deer he sped straight through the town and

along the sloping bank of the watercourse. At that hour he encountered

not a living creature. Only the currents of the Tennessee came to meet

him. All was silent save the flow of the water and the flutter of the

wind. So definite were these sounds in the night as he went that he

began to take heart of grace and hope rebounded anew. The pursuit,

he reflected, had probably gone in the opposite direction, since the

camp lay on the edge of the town. This gave him time to scheme, to

secure some place of concealment, for horsemen, once on his heels,

would soon run him down. For this reason he left the river bank and

took his way among the fields. His pace grew slower, for the rugged

cultivated ground and now and then great masses of weeds in ill-tended

and neglected spaces made the going difficult. Twice he caught his foot

in the vines of pompions and came heavily to the earth, where he lay

for a time stealthily listening before he dared to rise again. He had

great fear of the Indians--the fear of the straggler. They hated the

soldiers now more than ever heretofore, and above all the Highlanders,

so conspicuous in the recent Cherokee War. A wreaking of many grudges

they would find should he fall into their hands while fleeing from the

wrath of his officer. A terrible fate this! a sly, treacherous capture,

torture, the stake, a mysterious and unavenged disappearance from the

knowledge of all the world! Military discipline could threaten no

such horrors save to a man of his proud temperament. Once or twice he

slackened his speed to a walk, swinging onward with a good long stride,

but he could not now continuously run; his strength was spent. Suddenly

he came to a full pause, with the weight of doom on his heart. There

in the space between two rows of corn the figure of a man stood not

three paces distant! Callum in a panic marveled how he had not noticed

this approach. Above, the night was silent, and high over these alien

mountains glittered stars that he had known of yore, that still shone

over the mountains in far, far Scotland as placidly as before ever Woe

came in to sit by her hearth and her sons went forth to exile forever.

Nothing stirred save their palpitant scintillations. He could hear

naught except the pulsations of his own heart beating like a drum. The

figure of the man stood motionless and gazed at him, as motionless,

fascinated, helpless, he stood and stared.

“_Canawlla!_” (Friendship) Callum at last said softly, although in

the dense darkness he could not have stated why he thought it was an

Indian.

A moment of suspense passed leaden-weighted.

There was no response. The world was so silent that he heard the almost

soundless flight of a bat winging past.

The next instant a strange doubt entered his mind. He put forth his

hand gingerly, and laid it on the figure’s arm. There was no quick

stroke of a tomahawk, as he had half feared. The man’s arm, as he stood

so stiff and silent, was all unresponsive. In fact, it was but a couple

of fagots, and Callum realized that he was in Chilhowee, Old Town, and

that this was the image of the Ancient Warrior he had noted in the

fields.

“Take that for the leein’, fause face o’ ye!” he said, striking the

gourd in sudden wrath, his cold fear growing hot anger, as he thought

of the waste of time that the fright had cost him, and the imminence of

the danger in which he stood.

The gourd wavered and dropped suddenly to the earth, and as he

mechanically stooped and picked it up, a strange idea struck him. It

was a great gourd; he lifted it with its bedraggled war-bonnet to his

head, and it slipped easily over and down to his neck. He began in a

fever of haste to disrobe the effigy. It had been of gigantic stature,

and the hunting-shirt even concealed the kilt of the big Highlander;

the leggings went on over his stockings and hid his bare knees; the

sleeves came down over his hands. Half supported by the stake which

had upheld the scarecrow, he took the stiff pose that he remembered.

And why, he asked himself, should he not stand here as safely, thus

masked, as lie all day in some Indian hut, if he could gain admission?

Doubtless every house on the river bank would be searched by Everard’s

orders, and most probably he would be delivered up by treachery to this

demand, if not murdered to settle old scores. At nightfall he would

array the figure anew and slip off, traveling by dark and hiding by

day, and returning thus to Charlestown, surrender to his own captain.

He fancied the officers of the Highland regiment could understand the

situation, and would relish the allusion to scaffolds and grinning

skulls scarcely more than he. If he had been left in his station as a

private soldier, he argued, all would have been well. But he had been

admitted to familiarity and friendship with the officer as a gentleman,

and when over their liquor he had repelled an insult with a blow, as an

equal might, he was suddenly relegated to the status and penalties of

a private soldier. If the members of the court-martial were minded to

account his escape under these circumstances desertion, they could make

the most of it: he would rather choose to be shot on this charge than

flogged for the blow.

Punctures in the egregious painted physiognomy of the gourd served for

sight and breath. The nostrils, the eyes, the mouth, the ears, had

all been curiously and faithfully delineated by the Indian artist,

according to his lights. Callum tasted the dawn even before he saw that

the night was turning vaguely blue. When in this dim medium figures of

Indians began to appear, he experienced a sudden elation to perceive

that none cast a second glance at the effigy of the Ancient Warrior in

the cornfield.

XII

A FINE outlook at life the Ancient Warrior enjoyed. The sun came

splendidly up from over the blue and misty domes of the Great Smoky

Mountains, and the beautiful Chilhowee Range suddenly sprang from the

nullity of darkness into all the chromatic richness of autumnal color.

A wind went chanting blithely through its dense woods, as if it were

fitting there to be happy where all was so gay. The river, a trifle of

fog blurring its silver sheen here and there, reflected the gorgeous

tints of the red and gold forests on its banks and caught the light

with an added glister. The world was so fresh, so misty sweet, so newly

created! The rocks echoed the barbaric notes of the blasts blown on the

conch shells, as with the joyful cries of the ritual of their ancient

religion the Cherokee braves went down into the water in their symbolic

ablutions.

Smoke had long been curling up from the hearths of the houses, and

presently the brisk “second man” of the town was marshaling out his

cohorts of women and girls to work in the fields. Callum was surprised

to see the placid and smiling faces that they wore, for field work in

these rich soils is held to be far less drudgery than housework, and

even now a feminine farm laborer is hardly to be found to exchange

willingly. The Indians always protested that their division of labor,

which allotted field work to the woman, favored the weaker vessel, and

by no means implied that indifference and scorn of her attributed to

them by the white people.

The “second man” in a civilized community would have been accounted a

wag or a buffoon. So very funny he made himself as he sat on the ground

near the effigy of the Ancient Warrior that Callum was more than once

diverted from his own troublous thoughts and moved to wish for a few

additional phrases of Cherokee, that he might more fully understand the

quip and song and tale with which this genius of the field beguiled

the labor. The elder women listened with slow and languid pleasure;

the children sometimes interrupted with a breathless inquiry. He did

not lack his critic to remark, in the course of a twice-told tale,

that last year the fox had not thus replied to the admonition of

the Ancient Warrior, whereupon, with the privilege of response, the

_raconteur_ doubled like the animal in question and averred

that it was not that same fox! One of the women, a girl of eighteen,

perhaps, showed a brilliant, imaginative face as, at the crisis of each

story, she turned toward the Ancient Warrior and gazed spellbound upon

him with dark, lustrous, liquid eyes, until the “second man” had seen

him safely through an adventure of a series for which, had he lived

from the days of Noah, the centuries scarcely held space. Then with a

long-drawn sigh she would fall to work again, reaching up with lissome

ease for the ears of corn which she gathered. Only the children picked

the peas and beans and other small crops that the corn had sheltered.

For the working force comprised all the laborers of Chilhowee, these

being the public fields destined for the common granaries filled for

emergencies, and not the individual gardens adjoining each domicile.

She was notably expert despite the patent fact that her thoughts

were oft so far away; although obviously strong, she was tall and

delicately slender, which made picturesque her garb of ordinary

doeskin, so fashioned as to leave her arms bare; her buskins were

dyed scarlet; and a cascade of red beads, the valueless trinkets of

civilized manufacture, bought at a round price from an English trader,

fell from her neck. But she was not in gala attire, by reason of her

occupation. Her fingers were long and deft and exquisitely shapely; her

feet slender and small. She was endowed with a sort of stately bloom

and a consummate grace, that justified the sobriquet by which she was

distinguished, the “Cherokee Rose.” She obviously cared less for what

was done and said here yesterday than for the discourse of the fox and

the Ancient Warrior some two or three hundred years before, according

to the elastic chronology of the “second man.” For when other Indians,

evidently of a high grade in the tribe, came up and began to discuss

together the commissioners’ expedition, she worked on with far greater

industry, and only occasionally paused to lift her head from where she

stood, half shrouded in the tall maize, to gaze meditatively upon the

Ancient Warrior,--the hero of so many fancies, for she was of the type

of woman who loves the renown of exploits,--with a patent admiration

embarrassing to the fair-haired Callum, even although masked by the

gourd. At times he experienced a more formidable embarrassment. He

was in terror of a strong inclination to cough. As the day had worn

on the smoke and smell of distant burning forests suffused all the

currents of the air, for the weather had lately been singularly dry.

Sometimes he was almost suffocated by the acrid vapor, collecting in

the restricted compass of the gourd mask, and again it was dissipated

by the freshening of the wind.

As the headmen lingered and talked, the laborers were rapidly moving

on under the directions of the “second man,” for the Cherokees never

permitted women or boys to hear aught of political machinations or

import. Callum began to understand that a runner had brought to

Chilhowes the details of the unlucky winning of the French gold by the

Highlander, and the ineffectual attempt by the Cherokee headmen to

buy it back out of notice with English guineas. So important did the

Chilhowee warriors consider this circumstance that they evidently had

half a mind to assemble in council in their town-house to debate the

matter, but they were deterred by the remonstrances of the runner, who

seemed to give also warning of an approach. Thus Callum was apprised

that Everard was in the saddle and on the road hither. It would never

do, the messenger argued, for the English officer to find the Chilhowee

headmen in solemn consultation,--in effect an official recognition of

the importance which they attached to the incident. While admitting

the justice of this reasoning, they were nevertheless fain to secure

at least a hasty word together as to how they should meet the officer.

Therefore it was that the “second man” urged forward the laborers,

and the councilors gathered about in the field as if they had been

participating, as they often did, in relating the traditions and

legends of the tribe, that were thus handed down from one generation to

another.

They grouped themselves near the Ancient Warrior, whose pedestal stood

in a heap of fodder that usually concealed certain ungainly posturings

to which his straw-filled moccasins were prone, but that now served

to hide the strong, stanchly planted feet of the hardy infantry-man.

Had Callum’s knowledge of the Cherokee tongue been more complete and

accurate,--in fact it consisted but of sundry fragments caught up at

haphazard in his campaigns in this region the two previous years, and

from the Indian guides of the present expedition, and his short stay

at Jock Lesly’s trading-house,--he might have comprehended all the

subtleties of which this secret discussion was rife. Even as it was,

however, he understood that the Indians feared much from the discovery

of the French money here.

“The French coins must be taken from the officer--if they were his

eyes, if they were his heart; they must be taken from him,” a fierce,

straight, stiff warrior, Yachtino, the chief of Chilhowee, was

continually saying as he stood pacifically in the midst of the corn,

his feathered crest, his quiver and bow, his garments decorated with

fringes seeming not unlike the growth itself, as if he had been thence

incarnated.

Another Indian, with a swift, furtive step aside, ever and anon bent to

gaze down the trading-path, interjecting from time to time the phrase,

_“Usinuli! Usinuli!”_ (Quick! Quick!), which agitated the course

of the deliberations, usually so slow and decorous, like the sudden

striking of a flaw of wind on the surface of placid water.

They all stood in silence and looked stolidly at the ground.

“But how?” said Tlamehu, the Bat, at last. And then another, “How

_can_ the coins be taken from him?”

Callum, noting the dismay in their countenances, fumbled mentally for

the significance of the French money. That this currency should be

common among them seemed natural enough, as their intercourse with

the French had been great, even before the Cherokee War against the

British government. During its progress, indeed, it was believed that

in several engagements the Cherokee forces were commanded by French

officers.

The next words let in the light.

“And so the coins that had the king’s head, pictured in the fine gold,

spoke with a deceitful forked tongue, and tells the English that it was

made in sixty-two?”

“The date is stamped on the metal--all, all!” impatiently responded the

informant.

The words were echoed with an intonation of perplexed despair. Then a

despondent silence ensued until Yachtino, the warrior who had first

spoken, reiterated: “The coins must be taken from the officer--if they

were the breath of his life!”

“But how?” the question came again.

Callum wondered no longer at their agitation. The louis d’ors were

of the coinage of 1762, and therefore revealed the fact of renewed

machinations with the French, in direct contravention of the terms

of the treaty of peace of 1761 between the Cherokees and the British

government, which expressly forbade all trade on the part of the

Indians with other nations, especially the French, who, being still

at war with Great Britain, were to be denied admission to any of the

Cherokee towns and intercourse with the tribe, the Cherokees pledging

themselves to surrender or kill such intruders. The Indians, indeed,

had much to fear from the discovery of this breach of the treaty. They

gloomily foreboded therefrom the collapse of the favorable phases of

the cession. This secret hope on their part was to effect from the

purchase money the speedy supply of the tribe with powder, and thus

perpetuate their national existence. The ammunition must needs be

secured before any intimation of renewed hostilities, and thus the

British government actually would furnish the money for another attack

upon its own frontiers. The French would doubtless afford the Cherokees

substantial aid, but despite the fairest promises, they were unable

to fully supply the savages with ammunition in the last campaign of

the furious Cherokee war against the British, failing the Indians at

their utmost need. Thus at the critical juncture all their previous

fierce and bloody successes were brought to naught. For as a nation

the Cherokees were now practically disarmed and at the mercy of any

demand made from a basis of powder and lead. It was a new point of view

from which to contemplate the proposed cession of land, and Callum

felt as if the gourd on his head had spun quite round, since from the

English standpoint the cession was designed to bring the Cherokee tribe

more definitely under the domination of the British government by

strengthening its occupation among them, and thereby monopolizing their

trade.

And here, in the British officer’s keeping, was the unfortunate French

money of the coinage of 1762, that told so straight a tale amidst

all these subtle and devious windings of savage statecraft. Callum

recognized an imprudence on Everard’s part, against which, however,

only superhuman wisdom could have guarded, in having overlooked, in

the agitation of the moment, the presence of Wahuhu, who had lost the

coins at the races,--the sad Screech-owl, who yet perceived with great

keenness, and argued with an impeccable ratiocination, and witnessed

the transference of the money to official keeping after the lieutenant

had scrutinized the date of the coinage. The mere transference of the

louis d’ors Callum regarded lightly. Their equivalent in “ta guinea”

would undoubtedly be returned, when the force should reach Charlestown,

to the man who had at so many risks won the money, and who would easily

be reconciled to the English currency in the bliss of the exercise of

its purchasing power. Everard intended to reserve the coins themselves

to be shown to the royal governor, with the significance of date and

freshness of mintage, and these facts would be made a part of the

lieutenant’s report to his superior officer, offering in support of his

account of the matter ocular demonstration of the louis d’ors. Anything

that touched upon French machinations among the Cherokees, from whose

atrocities the English had suffered so severely in the Cherokee War,

and who had been subdued at so great a cost of blood and time and

treasure, was of paramount importance in this year of grace 1762, and

not to be lightly argued aside.

As Callum watched the fiercely reflective faces of the group, he

realized that they contemplated more in the enterprise to serve their

object than the mere recovery of the coins. An accident might adroitly

account for the event. Some opportune misfortune often befell men

charged with disaster to others.

“But how?” the question came again, as if it voiced a common train of

thought. In fact they all seemed to think in unison, until one of the

group, suddenly looking up, said,--

“But the tongues of the ugly commissioners are strong. They eat much

food, they drink much wine, and the British government pays them money

for their wisdom. The many black marks that they put on paper will

report the French money, the coinage of this year, to the governor. And

yet the wings of the eagles overshadow the commissioners, and for the

sake of the cession they must not be touched.”

“_Usinuli! Usinuli!_” urged the voice of Time, as once more the

self-constituted lookout scanned the reaches of the path.

“The commissioners have never shaken hands firmly with the speech of

the lieutenant,” replied an authoritative voice, “and the lieutenant

tells _nothing_ to the commissioners.”

Canting his eye askew, to look through the orifices of the ear of

the image painted on the gourd, Callum saw--to his surprise and

indignation, for his heart was still in the undertaking--the Cherokee

guide of the commissioners’ expedition, whose utilities as a spy for

his own people must have been very marked and duplicated his services.

He went on with great animation to discuss the mutual relations of the

personnel of the expedition.

“The commissioners have never tied fast the old beloved friend-knot

with the lieutenant, and the lieutenant despises the commissioners.

They are not soldiers, and they look very small in his eyes. And they

talk till his ears are tired. When he is scornful he speaks of them as

‘lady-like old men,’ and when he is angry he calls them ‘gentlemanly

old ladies’! He trusts them not at all--with nothing!”

“_Usinuli! Usinuli!_” The sound of doom!

“But though the lieutenant has taken the coins into his own keeping the

soldiers have seen them,” said the Indian, who seemed to evolve all

the objections for the others to combat, that the scheme might thus be

battered, as it were, into solid shape.

“Only the bird that flies high sees far,” retorted Yachtino quickly.

“The flock of pigeon soldiers see nothing--they would never notice

the date of the coins--the man in command keeps his eyes open and his

thoughts awake. Besides, what are rumors among mere soldiers,--the

chatter of grasshoppers! The French gold that they have seen--what

does French gold signify? It may have been here for years for all they

know,--those years when the true emblem of the French was the white

dressed doeskin, and the British the long scalping knife. Now those

conflicts of the past are wiped out by the treaty, and its strong lying

mouth has said that our tears are dried and our wounds closed. But the

coinage of 1762--that is a far different matter! It proves a direct

breach of the treaty, and that once more we have taken the great French

Father fast by the arm and close to the shoulder. And the path is

straight no more! If the French coins of 1762 were hidden in the heart

of the officer they must be cut out!”

“_Usinuli! Usinuli!_” The sound was like the beating of a muffled

drum in the ears of Callum MacIlvesty, for he realized that the life

of the officer was forfeited to the knowledge, which he alone had

acquired, of the date of the coins. Should he be permitted to reach

Charlestown, whether with or without the fatal pieces, his disclosure

of the facts would mean added punishment and renewed restrictions for

the Cherokees, already so heavily chastised, the cautious hampering of

the Indian trade, and the rupture of the terms of the land cession,

through the purchase money of which they hoped for ultimate freedom.

It was too plain: the officer with this knowledge in his possession

would be prevented from ever again reaching Charlestown.

But how--that suspicion might impute naught to the agency of the

Indians? they asked again of one another. How could he be found

accessible and alone? How could he be secured without an attack upon

the whole party, which was not to be contemplated, since this would of

necessity involve the destruction of the proposed scheme of the cession

of land and its financial value to the Cherokee nation--possibly

resulting in the extermination of the whole people. Therefore still,

“But how?”

“Already they have lost a man,”--once more the current of the common

thought flowed in words,--“this is a wild country. Many paths lead

far--far--with no return. All our little brothers--the panther, the

wolf, the wildcat--are many, many--and they none of them are the little

brothers of the white man. Should he offend the little brothers he

would hardly know how to hide from them! Then there are many wandering

Indians from the French settlements, and knowing that the great French

Father is still at war with the English king, they would rejoice to

slay a man in the British uniform. The British have already lost a man

on this expedition--they may well lose another.”

Yet how to compass this that the force of the blow might have no

recoil! And once more an interval of deep and silent meditation fell

upon the group.

The Cherokee spy and guide, whose sensibilities had been evidently

ruffled by the manner of the man who employed and paid him, suddenly

threw himself into an attitude mimicking Everard’s stiff military

carriage.

“_Agiyahusa asgaya! Agiyahusa asgaya!_” (I have lost a man!) he

cried in Cherokee, but marred with a queer English accent. A slow

smile pervaded the grim circle. “_Agiyahusa asgaya!_ the Capteny

bleats this through every town. His redcoats search every house and

field.”

The Ancient Warrior trembled.

“‘Capteny, _asgaya gigagei_?’” (Captain, a red man?--meaning a

British redcoat.) The spy rehearsed this with an affectation of the

bated breath of extreme solicitude and a crouching mockery of his

own manner of respect. Then with a perfect reproduction of Everard’s

petulant arrogance, despite the broken English, “No, no, my good man!

I have lost no red soldier, but my plaid soldier, my tartan man, my

MacIlvesty! Five guineas reward to the man who brings him to the

guard-house before nightfall!”

The officer evidently would pay roundly for the privilege of the lash.

His vengeance was indeed afire, and Callum’s cheek burned with a flame

to match. They should never take him alive he swore beneath his breath.

“_Usinuli! Usinuli!_” The words swung back and forth like a

pendulum chronicling the passing of the moments; and suddenly Callum

recognized, blended with the iterative chant, the regular throb of the

hoof-beat of horses approaching along the trading-path at a fair pace.

In another moment there issued from the forest a dozen of the English

soldiers all mounted, and with Lieutenant Everard riding at their head.

Beside him was Mr. Herbert Taviston, bland, smiling, perceiving in the

stir and the difficulty that beset the officer only a fine opportunity

to browse about a bit in the woods safe from Indians and panthers--the

unique advantage of botanizing with a military escort. The lieutenant’s

keen eyes, falling upon the group around the Ancient Warrior, discerned

at once in them men of station and authority, judging merely from the

expression of their countenances, for the occasion being unofficial,

they wore no insignia of rank. He at once halted his party, and called

out in his crisp, peremptory tones a request to be allowed to search

the town. His guide interpreted, and as the chief, Yachtino, gravely

and ceremoniously assented, Everard thanked him curtly and turned to

admonish the corporal.

“See to it that the varlets give no offense, Baker,” he said. “If the

man is taken bring him before me at once.”

“Oh, the poor young man, to be sure!” exclaimed the botanist, his eyes

gloating the while upon Chilhowee Mountain; every leaf of the myriads

it flaunted, red and amber and purple and brown, he could call out of

its name with Latin equivalents as flamboyant as the foliage. “Not

found yet!”

He had utterly forgotten the provocation that occasioned the arrest

and the object of the search, that it held aught more serious than

the acquisition which he had made of a certain parasitic plant, the

Indian pipe--or let us imitate Mr. Taviston and say _Monotropa

uniflora_--delicate, wax-like stems of which he now held tenderly in

his spare white fingers, not altogether devoid of similarity to that

unique growth.

“I wish to God I could lay my hands on him! I can give my mind to

nothing else till I take him,” declared the officer fervently, all

unaware that as he looked casually at the effigy he was gazing straight

into the eyes of the man whom he sought, and who returned a look of

fire.

It was a somewhat fluctuating scrutiny that Everard gave the scarecrow,

as he sat upon his fine bay horse, for the animal, in spirited

impatience of the detention, shifted his position continually, pawing

the ground and tossing his head, despite the rein and spur and curb.

Thus splendidly mounted, Everard presented a gallant aspect, his showy

scarlet coat, white breeches, cocked hat, and polished boots as perfect

and precise in this wilderness as if worn on parade. His fine dark

eyes and expressive features only needed in general a cast of gravity

and dignity to render them imposing, and this his anger and sense of

responsibility had compassed.

The Indians of the group gazed fixedly at him. They had their own

reasons, intimately associated with the louis d’ors in his pocket, to

regard him with a deep morbid curiosity--very shocking to a civilized

mind--as a living man who must soon in their interest be dead. And once

more the question stirred every brain, “But how?” The Highlander saw

his enemy resplendent in all the regalia and rank equally appropriate

to his own condition by right of descent, and remembered and repeated

in his sore consciousness every word of the foolish, half drunken,

brutal fleer of the night before. And the Indian girl, the Cherokee

Rose, still at her work hard by, unobserved in the midst of the

standing maize, hearing yet unheeding all that had been said, gazed

upon the officer with a dazzled reverence, as one might behold the

glittering martial vision of the archangel Michael.

Nothing so glorious had ever blazed in her wildest dreams. All her

imaginings of the graces and glamours of the Ancient Warrior in the

charm of his youth and the heyday of his achievement paled and grew dim

and faded out of comparison with this magnificent palpitant reality.

Her hands rested petrified upon the ear of corn which she was about to

wrest from its stalk. Her eyes, dilated, fascinated, glowed upon him.

She scarcely dared to breathe, and for one moment silence encompassed

the group. The breeze only vaguely rustled through the crisp, sere

blades and stalks; the usual sounds of the town were annulled now, with

its “beloved square” vacant, its council-house still, and its women and

girls all away at their labors in the further fields. It sent up a mere

murmur that came drowsily to the ear on the perfumed suave air of this

sunlit autumnal day, for the search, orderly in its conduct, was not

resisted, and made scant stir. The officer’s horse broke an interval

of almost absolute stillness when it once more lowered its head and

fretfully beat the earth with its high-stepping, impatient forefoot.

Suddenly the elderly commissioner started from his saddle with an

exclamation of bland delight.

“Found, sir, found at last!”

The officer’s horse executed an abrupt demivolt as its bewildered rider

looked hastily around, expectant of seeing the fugitive. The Ancient

Warrior himself crouched appalled in his flimsy disguise.

The amiable Mr. Taviston went on in his address to the lieutenant. “Do

you remember last night?” he sweetly queried, while Everard mentally

asked himself would he ever forget it. “I had then the pleasure to

direct your attention to it--the _Nicotiana rustica_.”