The learned man was afoot now and in the path, and it may be doubted if

a person of his quality, so dapper, so sprucely clad in his fine brown

cloth and silver buckles, ever sustained a glance so surcharged with

contempt as the look which the officer bent upon him, albeit Everard

had just had a sharp lesson touching undue intolerance, and Mr. Herbert

Taviston was of far more worshipful presence in his worldly minded wig

and cocked hat than in his intimate, reclusive, betasseled nightcap.

His trim legs were carrying him briskly into the field, and a beatific

smile of scientific satisfaction was upon his serene, smoothly shaven

cheeks and his slightly doubled chin. He paused where a row of plants

of the “old religious tobacco” had once flourished and one or two had

chanced to escape the garnering knife. Before plucking a leaf he said

with punctilious courtesy to the nearest astounded Cherokee, “May I?”

The stolid Indians were obviously thrown into confusion by this

unexpected demonstration. It seemed to them that the white people,

even those of the same nationality, were infinitely various, and that

there was no reasoning on the basis of the common customs and traits

of a gens. Here were two Englishmen as unlike, as far apart in every

pulse and every phase of character, as if no national tie bound them

together. The inherent courtesy of the savage aided the botanist,

however, and the nearest Indian vouchsafed a bewildered mutter of

assent. With “A thousand thanks, my dear sir--monstrous obleeged, I’m

sure,” Mr. Taviston plucked some leaves of the old religious tobacco

and still happily ambling, retraced his way to the side of the horse of

the officer, who had hardly yet recovered from the impression that the

sudden cry of discovery heralded the finding of the fugitive and the

appropriate finale of his dilemma.

“Now, my dear sir,” said the botanist, holding up to the lieutenant a

few of the leaves, “let me beg that you will do me the favor to taste

these. My own tongue is still tingling with the pungency of mint, and

the discernment of my palate thereby blunted.”

And once more he offered the leaves.

It is possible that the officer had no fear of a probable tobacco worm

in the unwashed foliage, still lush and green, and he was also strongly

conscious of the inscrutable, attentive faces of the Indians. He had

always given orders that his men should observe caution in the presence

of the savages to show no divisions, no discourtesies, no quarrels

among themselves, thereby bringing each other into contempt or ridicule

which might be shared among the Indians, and the opportunity improved

by their machinations. Therefore, mindful of the observation of sundry

of the soldiers, he practiced his own admonition. Albeit infinitely

against his will, he thrust the leaves, possible tobacco bug and all,

between his strong white teeth, which he brought crunching down upon

them.

“And how does it compare? how does it taste?” demanded the botanist,

smiling his soft, white shaven benevolence.

“Nasty, sir, very extremely nasty,” said the disgusted lieutenant.

“And as I am not a browsing animal generally, sir, I have no other

experience of green forage with which to compare it.”

As, despite his intention, some of the juice went down his throat, he

was suddenly reminded of the botanist’s laudation of the skill and

extraordinary knowledge of the Cherokees in the matter of vegetable

poisons, and felt that he was relying too implicitly upon the

scientific learning and plant identification of this gentleman, of the

justice of whose pretensions he had no means of judging. For aught he

knew the stuff might be poison. It was certainly unlike any tobacco

that he had ever seen. He at once thrust the leaves from his mouth, and

then several times spat copiously upon the ground, the action of the

saliva being stimulated by the tobacco.

At that moment the corporal came up with the report that the search had

resulted fruitlessly. Everard took leave of the Indians merely with

a ceremonious bow, and the party rode hastily off, straight down the

river and once more toward Choté.

For one instant the Cherokees stood silent and motionless, watching the

flying horsemen, the sun glittering on their red coats and burnished

arms. Then to Callum’s amazement an elderly Indian, with a sudden sharp

cry such as an animal might utter in seizing upon its prey, sprang

forward, dropped upon his knees in the path, and caught up the dampened

tobacco leaves and the clod of clay upon which the saliva had fallen.

Half articulate exclamations of guttural triumph rang upon the air from

the group, and Callum, glancing from one fiercely joyous illuminated

face to another, felt as if his senses were in the thrall of some

fantastically horrible nightmare. For the possession of the man’s

saliva gave them, according to their savage creed, power over the man’s

life. It would end when the spell should be worked.

Perhaps because of the superstitions of his native land, in which his

childhood had been deeply imbued and which his nerves still accredited,

while his mind resolutely repudiated them, Callum watched with a sort

of sickened fright the preparations for the necromancy. Far away the

laborers in the fields were working now, even the girl who had lingered

so long, and the sere stalks of the tall corn concealed the secret

ceremony of the schemers from the other denizens of the town. Only

the Ancient Warrior, who had seen so much of yore, was to behold the

calling down of the curse.

Suddenly--Callum could not believe his eyes--there issued from among

the tall cornstalks the figure of a man, a familiar figure, a face

that he knew well, or was he bereft of his senses? For here was Tam

Wilson, arrayed in buckskin, fantastically beaded and fringed after

the Indian fashion, his head bare and polled like a Cherokee’s and

decorated with feathers. Yachtino, stepping hastily toward him, greeted

him in the Cherokee language, and pointed out the preparations for the

necromancy. Tam Wilson, also speaking in Cherokee, questioned minutely,

and stood for a moment gazing after the cheerataghe. Then as he turned

away--miracle of miracles!--he spoke to himself in French.

“_Tant pis pour lui!_” he commented upon the working of the spell.

“_À bon chat, bon rat!_”

He was gone in another moment among the corn, and Callum understood at

last the mystery of his continued presence here,--that this was the

arch-plotter whose machinations threatened the peace of the Cherokee

country.

Callum was dizzy with the significance of the discovery, the thoughts

of import, that crowded upon him. Only as in a dream he beheld the

group of the scheming headmen of Chilhowee, eager, breathless,

expectant, standing close at hand while one of the cheerataghe, a man

with the frenzy of a fanatic in his eyes and the fury of a savage, came

slowly down the space between two rows of the corn. He was clad in

the usual buckskin garb, but draped above it was a large dressed hide

decorated with painted symbols and strange hieroglyphics. Upon his head

he wore the horns and head of a buffalo, and as Callum listened to the

incantation, delivered in a weird, chanting undertone, with frequent

interpolations of a sonorous, exclamatory “Ha!” and anon pauses of

impressive silence, he felt his blood go cold.

“_Usuhiyi nunahi wite tsatanu usi gunesa gunage asahalagi. Tsutu

neliga._” (Toward the black grave of the upland in the Darkening

Land your paths shall tend. So shall it be for you.)

The increasing excitement of the moment showed in the attitude of the

other Indians, motionless, yet with an electrical energy of pose,

as if on the point of springing forward. They looked on, fiery eyed

but silent, from among the cornstalks, save that now and again an

inadvertent “Ku!” breathed out from surcharged lungs, and once Yachtino

muttered “_Nigagi!_” (This ends it!)

As the magician paced along he carried in his hand, like a sceptre,

a hollow reed of the poisonous wild parsnip, filled with a paste

compounded of earthworms and the spittle-moistened clay, to be buried

at the foot of a lightning-scathed tree in the forest.

“_Tsudantagi uskalutsiga. Sakani aduniga. Usuhita atanisseti,

ayalatsisesti tsudantagi, tsunanugaisti nigesuna. Sge!_”[9] (Now

your soul has faded away. It has become blue. When darkness comes your

spirit shall grow less and dwindle away, never to reappear. Listen!)

The wizard had reached the gloomy shades of the dense woods, and the

terrible words of the spell came floating back on the air, dwindling

with the distance like the diminishing thread of the life which it

affected to attenuate and reduce and finally cut short.

Listen! not even an echo now of that weird voice! Only the river’s

song; the sound of the wind blaring about Chilhowee Mountain; the

vague, far-off tones of the “second man” still at his quips and quirks

in the field; and suddenly the shrill, callow laughter of happy

children.

But for the icy drops starting on his brow Callum might have thought

he had been dreaming. Yet he stood in the burning sun, and so shivered

that had now the Cherokee Rose gazed upon the hero of her fancies, she

must have deemed the Ancient Warrior stricken with the palsy. He was

alone, however, none near to mark his lapse from the verisimilitude of

deportment. A bee came buzzing by, and crawled up and down the quaint

lines of the gourd vizard for a time, making the Highlander tremble

for a possible entrance through ear or eye spaces, but at last it took

droningly to wing. A lizard basked in the sun, as doubtless it had

done for many a day, on a stone at the feet of the scarecrow. A blue

jay, the sauciest of feathered rufflers, even alighted on the crown of

the dingy old bedraggled war-bonnet, and there preened his brilliant

blue and white plumage, and clanged his wild woodsy cry, and so off

again to the splendors of Chilhowee Mountain, gold and red above the

silver river and against the azure sky. And these wights were all the

passers-by, while Callum shivered and trembled from head to foot and

scarce could stand. He had no need of knowledge of the Indian character

to be aware that the savages would not fail to assist the workings of

the charm by non-magical powers. Everard, undoubtedly, by some crafty

device would be lured to his destruction.

The tempter, ever present, did not fail to suggest thereby the solution

of Callum’s own problem: with Everard gone, his accuser had vanished.

Even the corporal supposed his incarceration was but the result of some

slight insubordination, or perhaps Everard’s own hasty and arbitrary

whim while in liquor. As to the bewildered Mr. Taviston, his incoherent

impressions were hardly to be considered, so confused was he by the

sudden altercation. Thus Callum might escape the shame of the lash

that he dreaded more than death itself, and also save his own life. He

put the thought from him. He would return now willingly, willingly; he

would in this cause face aught that might menace him--and not for sheer

conscience’ sake, for at heart he loved the fop like a brother.

Yet should he issue forth and return to camp, he well knew that Everard

would laugh the threat to scorn, and fancy the whole adventure feigned

to win his gratitude and save the culprit from the lash. Callum’s

invention would respond to no goading. How could he forecast and thwart

the strange, savage lure which the Indians would devise? That it would

be apt, efficient, and bold withal, on the strength of their faith in

their own necromancy, thus crediting the spell with the result of their

own efforts, he was sure. And yet strive as he might, he could not

rouse his jaded faculties to divine, to baffle, to counterplot.

Some time had passed thus, when a sudden movement close at hand caused

him unthinkingly to turn his head. Fortunately the gourd vizard was

so ample as to permit the motion without stirring the mask. There

again was the Indian girl who had gazed so lovingly upon the effigy as

almost to disconcert the fair-haired Callum that it masked,--not gazing

upon him now, however. The same girl it was, he was sure, although

she passed by her ancient hero with so fickle an unconcern. But for

bewitchments! the Cherokee Rose was metamorphosed by a simple splendor

into the rarest bloom. White beads were twined in her long black hair,

where they glistered like pearls. A strand of the large, beautiful,

genuine pearls, still found in the rivers of the region, only slightly

discolored by the heated copper spindle which the Indians used to

pierce them, encircled her round, roseate-tinted throat. Her dress of

fawnskin dappled with white had a belt of many rows of white beads and

a low collar or cape of swans’ feathers. Above her high white buskins

two small skins of otter fur, worn like garters, were each trimmed

with straight stiff swan’s quills that stood out horizontally, and

gave the suggestion of wings to her feet, if one were open to poetical

imagery, or a bantam-like decoration, if prosaically inclined. Her

face was turned toward the road with a wistful, fascinated expression

in her soft, liquid eyes that would have been charming to view if any

but the supplanted Ancient Warrior had beheld her. Now and again, with

an incomparably graceful, lissome gesture, she lifted one bare arm and

silently beckoned the unseen.

The expectation of an approach along the path reminded Callum of the

sinister consultation of the headmen here to-day, and suddenly the

Ancient Warrior spoke.

“_Higeya tsusdiga! Higeya tsusdiga!_” (Oh little woman! Oh little

woman!)

Instantly she was palsied, stricken dumb. Faithfully as she had

believed in the Ancient Warrior, she had never thought to hear him

speak. Human credence has ever its reservations. She gazed wide-eyed at

the image, her lips parted, her hand on her plunging heart.

Sunset was on the face of the effigy; the soft red light freshened

the effect of his tattered old war-bonnet and gilded the stalks of

the high Indian corn amidst which he stood. Whether or not Callum was

conscious of his enhanced comeliness, the awe and respect in her face

and the obvious simplicity of her mental endowment nerved the young

daredevil to venture further speech. And indeed something must needs be

risked in view of the unwelcome knowledge that had come to him and the

restrictions that hampered its use. He mustered his best Cherokee.

“Who are you waiting for, little woman?”

“No Chickasaw, oh good grandfather,” she cried hastily; for one of

the best stories of the “second man” chronicled the hatred which the

Ancient Warrior had cherished against that tribe, and his valor,

which had nearly exterminated them from the face of the earth. His

sentiments were pointed by the fate of a Cherokee maiden who married a

Chickasaw and went to his tribe to dwell, and daily the Ancient Warrior

dispatched the magic messenger bird that lived among the Tuckaleechee

towns in the Cherokee country, on the banks of the Canot River, to

remind her of her home; and as the memories she could not shake off

clung about her, she finally became imprisoned in their convolutions;

and to this day she can be seen in the Chickasaw country, where they

think she is nothing but what she seems,--a tangle of grapevines!

The Ancient Warrior said nothing in reply. He was making a strenuous

mental endeavor to adjust another Cherokee sentence. His silence

terrified her. His anger was full of spells, as the “second man”

well knew; an _ageya_ lost her garters, for instance, and none

would ever again stay on, and thereafter she presented an appearance

painfully undecorated. The Cherokee Rose abruptly cut short the silent

linguistic toil of the Ancient Warrior by hurriedly explaining of her

own accord.

“A strange British warrior, oh good grandfather,--a splendid red

captain, most beautiful and brave, who will come up the path and pass

the mountain to-night on the way to Talassee Town. The same, oh good

grandfather, that made the road bright and shining to-day. And even if

he should come after the sun has gone down, one could never miss the

light of the day, but could see him yet ride his horse along the river

bank. For he is like the sun in splendid red, and his hair shines with

a white glister, and the look in his eyes warms the heart.”

The Ancient Warrior marked how the mental image she had summoned

up diverted her attention from him, for the fascination of the

supernatural had waned as she spoke, and she turned half away from the

effigy, which she had once so reverenced, to gaze along the curving

westward path for the vision of her anticipation. The Ancient Warrior,

all sullen and serious, gazed calculatingly and doubtfully at her.

The ranges were purpling along the perspectives of the background;

the forests of Chilhowee Mountain flamed gorgeously gold and red in

the middle distance; the sky above was all radiant with a uniform

amber tint. As she stood amidst the sun-suffused Indian corn, the

sere hues of which so harmonized with the deeper shade of her garb of

white-dappled fawnskin, and the dense white of the swan’s feathers

about her shoulders, she looked as might some primeval ideal of the

mystic harvest moon. Half mechanically she still beckoned, as if thus

she might bring the sun of her fancy to meet her upon the horizon line.

“_Ha, Capteny Gigagei!_” she cried. “_Usinuliyu! Usinuliyu!_”

(Oh great red captain! Haste! Haste!)

The Ancient Warrior suddenly spoke sternly. “_Higeya, hatu

ganiga!_” (You, woman, come and listen to me!)

Once more with that unquestioning subjection to the superstitions of

the cult in which she had been reared,--oh wily second man!--she turned

submissively toward the Ancient Warrior, albeit her docile obedience

might cost her eyes the first resplendent glimpse of the Capteny

Gigagei, riding his gallant war-horse straight out of the red west

and the illumined amethystine mountains, whither that humbler scarlet

splendor, the god of day, was now slowly disappearing. She lifted her

appealing child-like eyes to the gourd vizard of the young Highlander,

and well it was that he wore this impassive mask, for his own face

was pallid with exhaustion from a sleepless night and the exertion of

standing all day without food, drawn with the stress of much anxiety,

and lined with the many perplexities of his thoughts. The gourd face,

however, acquiring naught by propinquity, looked as it always did,

as its Indian draughtsman intended that it should,--arrogant, surly,

threatening, and very majestic.

“Oh good grandfather!” she faltered.

“_Higeya tsusdiga_ (Oh little woman), how do you know he comes?”

“Oh, he comes, he comes without doubt!--the headmen said late, but I

hoped early, so that I might see him as he rides his splendid horse

along the river bank. The headmen know he comes; they are ready for

him; he will be received at the house of the chief of Talassee. He

comes because a wicked man--one of his own soldiers--has fled, has

deserted the great red Capteny, and is in hiding at Talassee Town,

and the headmen have sent him the message that he may come and take

him with his own hand, lest the plaid soldiers, the comrades of the

runagate, wreak vengeance on Talassee, should the town deliver him

up to penance. The headmen have only _secretly_ sent messages

where the fugitive can be found. Oh good grandfather, the Capteny

comes, he comes! To-night he will abide at the house of the chief of

Talassee, where a great feast is made in his honor, and the braves

will dance the eagle-tail dance, and then the young girls will dance

in three circles with the braves, and I, too, I am to dance. And

there will be good store of wine at the feast (lowering her voice

mysteriously)--_French_ wine, oh good grandfather, but surely the

Capteny Gigagei cannot taste its _French-ness_! And to-morrow the

army of the commissioners will start back to the Carolina country and

overtake the great red Capteny at Talassee, and he will march at the

head like the king of his tribe.”

The heart of the Ancient Warrior turned cold and seemed to cease to

beat. The ingenious scheme was thus unwittingly outlined before

him. He knew that the thought of personal danger would never occur

to Everard as the result of the French coins in his keeping and his

knowledge of their significance, since any personal violence offered

to a man of his note would result in instant discovery and speedy

vengeance. From the beginning of the negotiations there had been more

or less interchange of friendly courtesies and mutual hospitalities

between the Cherokee headmen, the commissioners, and the commander of

the military force. Although Everard kept the rank and file close in

camp, in view of the disastrous possibility of clashing between the

boisterous young soldiers and the “mad young men” of the tribe, he

himself went about the country freely enough. He would not hesitate,

Callum was sure, to leave his orders with the first sergeant for the

march of the troops on the following day, and accompanied by a single

orderly, or perhaps by only the Cherokee guide, proceed to the tryst of

the headmen, where he would expect to capture the runaway Highlander,

and rejoin the escort when its vanguard should come in sight from

beyond Chilhowee Mountain.

No prophet need one be to foretell how the lines would straggle past;

how the sergeant in command would hourly expect his superior for a

while; then being without orders to halt would proceed for a day or so,

Everard’s lingering stay being of course within his own discretion. And

at last anxiety would develop, increase to troublous forecast, to panic

fear; a halt would be called, a detachment sent back, to find--nothing!

A mysterious disappearance,--some crafty, subtle, convincing story to

account for it innocuously. Callum did not dream what this could be;

only afterward its details were made clear to him by another, more

discerning.

What fate? he speculated--the river? No. The first sergeant, quailing

under his awful responsibility, would drag it for miles and miles in

search of the body. The stake?--a handful of ashes could tell no

tale. Surely the magic compound of earthworms and spittle-moistened

clay, mysteriously potent, buried at the foot of the lightning-scathed

tree, might spare room for the sepulture of so trifling a residuum of

all that gay spirit exhaled in smoke. Perhaps a more stealthy method

still--Everard might be drugged into quick insensibility by some

mysterious poison mixed with the French wine, and buried forever out of

sight somewhere in the infinities of the illimitable wilderness.

The Ancient Warrior trembled till the pole which aided to support him

shook in the ground.

One by one the schemes of possible rescue of his erstwhile friend and

his present enemy, and above all and before all his commanding officer,

fell to shreds as he sought to hold up the fabric in contemplation of

its feasibility. He said again that he would surrender himself now most

willingly; he would resign himself to any punishment rather than this

disaster, this treachery, this cowardly massacre, should ensue. But how

would surrender now avail? He could not regain the camp without the

danger of passing Everard, coming hither on another path. He resolved

that as soon as the first beat of the horse’s hoofs should herald an

approach he would rush out from his hiding-place, seize the officer’s

bridle, and compel him to listen.

Alack, the sun was already down; the dun shadows were on the land; far

away the dim stretch of the sere cornfields held all the fading light

between the slate-hued clouds, coming up from the south over the Great

Smoky Mountains, and the deep purple ranges that loomed close about

and limited the horizon. A dark night was at hand, without a star. How

should he distinguish the hoof-beat of one horse from another? Everard

might well pass without a word.

As thus the difficulties of the situation baffled his flagging

invention, the Ancient Warrior unwittingly lifted his hands and wrung

them together in the hard stress of his contending emotions. His

grotesque vizard was upturned appealingly to the darkening sky, and he

uttered a deep sigh.

The Cherokee girl, with a sudden look of appalled discernment on her

face, stepped back abruptly in affright, then stood in the shadows of

the denser stalks of corn, all writhen and twisted about her, and gazed

through the deepening dusk at the effigy.

In this crisis, this emotional revulsion of loyalty to his officer and

affection to his friend, Callum would not have grudged the sacrifice

had he rushed out blindly in the night and by mischance revealed

himself to Indian horsemen and certain capture, if it would not also

entail the success of their treachery in decoying Everard to his death.

“Eh, gude God--he maunna come--he maunna ride at a’ the nicht,” he said

aloud in a strained, poignant voice, all oblivious of the Indian girl,

who still stood hidden in the dusk and the tall stalks of the maize,

and silently, breathlessly, stared.

Much accomplished as she had known the Ancient Warrior to be, not even

his vaunting biographer, the “second man,” had ever claimed that he

spoke English.

The poor Ancient Warrior! His head drooped quite low, despite the

arrogance of the expression of his vizard. There was something in

his eyes that scalded them, for the Highlander was still very young,

and had been gently reared in a household of sisters; and his great

proficiency in the use of the broadsword, which made him so valued

a soldier, was superimposed upon simple, tender-hearted, ingleside

habitudes. In fact he must needs slip a hand up under his roomy vizard

to wipe off the very genuine tears which were burning his cheek--not

that he acknowledged these tears, no, not even to himself.

“Hegh, sirs,” he exclaimed, “this singeing reek is fair blindin’ me!”

As he spoke a new thought struck him. He lifted his head once more and

snuffed the odor of the distant burning woods.

It was dark now, quite dark. The color of the cloud and the mountain

had blended indissolubly in densest invisibility. Not a star was alight

in the sky. Only to one standing in the cornfield, hardly a yard away,

and with a discernment keenly whetted by previous sight and accurate

knowledge of the surrounding objects, could aught have been perceptible

as Callum straightened himself, and turning, looked carefully around

him.

“The bit lassock ha’ flitted awa’,” he said, quite satisfied.

But close at hand, still screened by the darkness and the tangled

growth, she watched the Ancient Warrior fling his vizard into the peas,

strip off his buckskin shirt and leggings, and emerge in the kilt

and plaid of one of the Highlanders of the escort. With the quick,

keen wits of her race she made no doubt that here was the wicked

renegade who had incurred the displeasure of the splendid red sun-god

of a captain, and who was falsely reputed to be lurking in hiding at

Talassee.

Callum, without a moment’s hesitation, struck off in a long, rapid

stride through the corn. Silently, stealthily, she followed him--not

like a shadow, for not even a shadow could follow thus through the

densities of that dark night.

XIII

AT camp an unusual activity had characterized the closing hours of

the afternoon. It was the eve of the day fixed for the departure of

the commissioners and their escort. The official business had been

concluded. The survey of the land to be ceded was completed. The

last feigning objections on the part of the Cherokee headmen and

the final devious doubtings of the commissioners had been merged in

mutual concession and compliant acquiescence. The gifts brought to

propitiate the Indians had been presented and graciously accepted, and

the official farewell taken with much smoking of the friend-pipe and

saltatory agilities of the eagle-tail dance.

That no unforeseen mischance might hamper the early start, Everard,

with military prevision, had caused every preparation to be so

completed as to leave as little as possible to be done on the morrow.

The pack-horses had been ranged in due order and tethered, and had but

to be loaded, the fardels of the pack saddles being already made up and

strapped on; the travel rations for several days had been issued to the

men; the personal luggage of the commissioners was also ready, owing

to the repeated insistence of Everard; the final orders had been given

the first sergeant, left in command in his stead till he should join

the line of march at Talassee. He himself in his tent, with hardly a

hand’s turn left to be done, was on the point of setting out to ride to

Talassee Town with his Cherokee guide to capture Callum MacIlvesty.

The Indians had made a mystery of their information. They had first

sworn Everard to secrecy and then held back as if to disappoint

him finally. They affected fear of the Highland contingent. Oh,

the plaid-men were very terrible warriors! Were the horrors of

Montgomerie’s campaign and the slaughter and the fire-raising of Grant

ever to be forgotten? And since the Cherokees did all in love for

the great red Capteny, it would not be wise or kind of him to allow

the wrath of the plaid-men, for the surrender of their brother, to

fall on Talassee Town, which the Highlanders might sack or burn--well

remembered were their sackings and burnings!--as they marched through

on the morrow upon the peaceful trading-path, which was now so white

and bright from end to end. If the great red Capteny did not wish this

path to be stained with the blood of the Indians, and perhaps of the

plaid-men also, it would be well if he came to Talassee Town himself.

There he might meet his tartan renegade as if by chance, and take him

with his own hand.

Everard was troubled beyond expression by MacIlvesty’s continued

absence; first, because of a genuine and humane fear that he would

suffer a horrible death at the hands of the treacherous Indians,

especially as the imminent departure of the troops could not be

postponed on the desperate hope of a still further search for the

willful runagate, and Callum would necessarily be left alone and

at their mercy in the savage wilds. Nevertheless, the anger of the

officer burned with great rancor. He believed that he would not have

suffered the least pity had a court-martial gone the extreme length

of sentencing MacIlvesty to be shot. That he should be brought to the

degradation of the lash seemed to the lieutenant most meet and fitting

whenever he felt the smart of that scarlet diagonal line, beginning

to turn slightly blue, across his cheek. Punishment MacIlvesty had

richly deserved, but the accident of torture by savages could not be

accounted retribution for the crime of striking his officer. Nor could

Everard, as his officer, feel justified in abandoning the Highlander

to such a fate except at the last extremity, although he would not

have regretted the righteous exaction of every pang of the penalty to

which a court-martial might sentence the culprit. Therefore, impatient

of the mysterious locutions and doubts, and alternate promises and

withdrawals, by which the Cherokees sought to magnify the importance

of their disclosure, Everard took no heed of personal prudence and

was ready to put foot in the stirrup when suddenly there appeared at

the flap of his tent one of the commissioners, fresh from an outing,

clad in a long and dapper riding “Joseph,” his head cowled with a

comfortable “trot cosy,” a suave smile upon his lips, and a bland “May

I?” upon his tongue.

Everard in another moment had cause to curse his folly that he did not

refuse the commissioner entrance; but he imputed much importance to a

request which he anticipated, and therefore seated himself upon a stump

of a tree, which had been sawed off smoothly to serve as a table, and

resigned the single camp stool to the guest.

“The _Magnolia auriculata_,” Mr. Taviston said with a sigh of

pleasure, “the most pompous beauty of the forest.”

He held forth a leaf of a tree, which a greater botanist has since

rapturously described as “superbly crowned or crested with the fragrant

flower representing a white plume, succeeded by a very large crimson

cone or strobile.”

The officer gazed at it with uninterested and unrecognizing eyes. The

only magnolia which he could identify was the growth which we call

_grandiflora_, and which he had seen farther south.

“I have spent the day among the magnolias,” said the botanist, smiling

consciously and with a sort of gloating reminiscence, as if Daphne

herself had entertained him in the boskiest bowers. “And here,”

presenting a gigantic leaf, “is the _Magnolia tripetala_--and

this, the _Magnolia pyramidata--foliis ovatis, oblongis, acuminatis,

basi auriculatis, strobilo oblongo ovato._”

“Good God, sir!” the petulant officer interposed, hastily rising in

desperation. “I cry you mercy! My duties”--he hesitated, then stopped

short.

For the trip must needs seem of his own choosing,--to attend a feast

made in his honor by the Cherokees because of his seeming interest in

Indian life and ceremonial. The thought of the postponement of his

ride and its important object greatly perturbed him. He had hoped

to avoid delay by admitting his tormentor. Twice, nay thrice, after

the botanist’s baggage had been consigned to the locality where the

pack-train was to be loaded had the quartermaster sergeant, who

officiated as chief of transportation, reported to the commanding

officer various vexatious requests of the worshipful Herbert Taviston

to be allowed another deposit therein of trophies of bark and leaves,

and, for aught I know, caterpillars and beetles,--natural specimens,

which he did not hesitate in the interests of science to insert amongst

his immaculate and high-minded toggery. The lieutenant, anticipating

the renewal of such requests, had intended to peremptorily refuse

another overhauling of the baggage, because of the confusion entailed

upon the somnolent and orderly camp, and possible delay on the morrow.

Hence he was thrown out of his calculations, and flushed and bit his

lip with vexation. Nevertheless he could not rid himself perfunctorily

of the presence of his unwelcome visitor by the plea of the pressure of

official duties. The preparations for the morrow’s march were obviously

complete, the camp asleep; moreover, his spurs jingled at his heels

and his horse pawed at the door of the tent. The pretext of his own

diversion was necessary to protect or satisfy his Cherokee informants

and to furnish a reason for his quitting the camp. He looked with

sudden hopefulness at Mr. Taviston, who also rose, but the motion was

merely mechanical, without a parting instinct. The smile yet resting

upon the botanist’s face was inattentive, undiscerning. The officer was

a natural specimen the study of which did not allure him in the least.

He scarcely listened to the lieutenant’s words, so absorbed was he in

the subject.

“The soil of this region is rich, sir, incredibly rich for mountain

slopes. This redundant example of the _Magnolia acuminata_, sir,

hangs positively over a precipice, craggy steeps, imposing and horrid.

If you would but give yourself the trouble to step with me to the door,

I could point out to you, even in the darkness, the height of the

location where I found it,--an altitude of fully two thousand feet. The

precipice is distinctly imposed upon the sky against the constellation

Perseus, which must be well risen now if the clouds--ah--ah--ah!”

The officer, moving alertly toward the door, following his guest in

the hope of ultimate release outside, had held up the flap that the

botanist might emerge, and frowned heavily as he heard Mr. Taviston’s

voice rising into a quavering exclamation of surprise.

“What cracker next!” Everard cried impatiently.

In a moment the words died upon his lips, and he stood staring out into

the night, half dazed with his sudden revulsion of feeling and the

extraordinary sight that met his eyes.

For the woods of Chilhowee Mountain were not invisible in the purple

night and under the black cloud, but splendidly agleam in the shadows.

All red and gold they showed, and wreathed about with scroll-like

involutions of blue smoke. Volleying here and there at wide intervals

were jets of flame, vivid white, tinged with red at the verges. Now and

then strange meteors flew through the dense forests in airy arabesques,

lace-like in their tenuity, where the blazes caught at sparse series

of dead leaves still hanging sere and dry in wind-denuded areas. The

ranges in the distance were suddenly evoked from the darkness and

stood as in a trance, motionless. Further still, in the ultimate scope

of vision, vague, illusory suggestions of mountain forms continually

trembled and flickered as the flames rose and fell. The fire was fierce

and furious along the lower reaches of Chilhowee where the trading-path

crossed, for much light wood of undergrowth was among the great

trees, and the elastic blazes that could only leap hound-like about

the huge boles, as if seeking to seize their prey in the branches,

easily enveloped the slender saplings, which now and again sent forth

cracklings as of a sudden volley of musketry. All the black cloud above

looked down in sullen dismay at the aghast earth, thus roused out of

the abyss of darkness and night, with a strange, unnatural aspect upon

the familiar contours of the landscape.

The Cherokee towns along the river were all astir. Here and there upon

the banks flitted scantily clad Indian figures, gazing at the mountain

and speculating upon the mystery of the ignition of the woods; for the

Chilhowee Mountain is many miles in length, and it would seem that

some region nearer to the distant burning forests, unseen and far to

the north, must have been first fired. Although because of the recent

drought the woods were dry, they would never have burned without

extraneous kindling.

Everard had turned instinctively to his horse, with the intention of

riding forth to investigate. His Cherokee guide checked him.

“No can ride to Talassee--no can cross mountain fire--fire--all fire!”

The amazement, the dismay, and something more--the deep, cogitating

speculation on the man’s face--fixed Everard’s attention. The light of

the burning scene was full upon it, glimmering upon the feathers on the

top of the Indian’s head as he bent forward to gaze, but the shadow

annulled the rest of his body, and his aspect in the weird effects of

the flicker was as if he had been decapitated. When Everard next turned

to speak to him the man had disappeared. Inquiry revealed the fact

that he had quitted the camp. For the first time Everard experienced a

sudden doubt of him. What significance did he perceive in the fire? And

why should he look so downcast, so defeated, so despairing--as at the

end?

The camp had been roused by the crackle and roar of the flames and the

wide, blaring illumination, as if the world were afire. The officer

doubled the camp guard by way of precaution against any disturbance,

lest the kindling of this conflagration be attributed to the agency of

the soldiers as a bit of bravado on their part, and rouse the wrath of

the Indians to reprisal. Then he went back into his tent and sat down

on the camp stool beside the table, rudely fashioned of the stump of a

great tree, and tried to think out some new solution of the problem of

the capture of MacIlvesty. The candle was still burning with a timid,

white, pearly lustre, all pallid and dim against the great yellow

flare outside, which showed through the translucent canvas walls. The

gigantic leaves of the _Magnolia tripetala_ still lay on the

improvised table, and he had his elbows among them and his head in his

hands, when suddenly he was aware of the corporal of the guard standing

and saluting in the doorway.

“Ready with some new foolery?” Everard demanded tartly.

“Yes, sir,” the corporal replied with anxious deprecation. “Here’s a

messenger, sir. I can’t make out who she comes from. But she seemed

possessed to get a word with you, sir. She was so excited and hasty

that, though I had no orders, I was afraid of letting important news

slip if I sent her away.”

“What’s her name?” demanded Everard, in frowning haste. The moments at

this crisis were important.

“I don’t know the Injun lingo, sir, but they call her the ‘Cherokee

Rose.’”

“Then hale her off!” cried Everard, bringing his hand down on the

table with a force that made the candle jump in its socket. “I want

no rosaceous specimens here, native or foreign. No--_the Cherokee

Rose_--I have done with botany forever, I swear!” He spoke as if

he had given many years of unrequited and fruitless study to that

ungrateful science. “Send the baggage about her business! _The

Cherokee Rose_, forsooth!” he repeated fleeringly.

He turned suddenly, hearing a slight scuffle without, and the next

moment the flap of his tent was drawn back and the girl stood in the

doorway, the flaming night behind her, and all her amber and white

attire showing in soft splendor and full detail in the refined,

subdued, pearly light of the single candle. The discomfited corporal,

who had sought to detain her by as much force as he dared to exert,

was vaguely glimpsed in the background, sullenly resigning himself to

wait to conduct her out of camp, as he saw that Everard had a mind now

to give her an audience. Her first words had arrested the lieutenant’s

attention. He could not have constructed the sentences that issued from

her trembling scarlet lips, but the sound of the Cherokee language had

grown familiar in many weeks’ sojourn here, and he understood its drift

and made shift to reply.

“I have found your plaid-man,” she cried. “Oh, the wicked one!” casting

up her liquid eyes in aspiration. “Cut off his head! Cut it off clean!”

“But where? when was he found?” Everard exclaimed eagerly.

“Oh, now you have lent your ear to listen!” she cried triumphantly. She

glanced warily over her shoulder to make sure that the corporal had not

also lent his ear for the same purpose. Then leaning forward, the flap

of the tent still in one hand, her finger now and again cautiously

laid on her lips, she detailed the strange metamorphosis of the Ancient

Warrior into a Highland soldier which she had witnessed, and every word

that he had said she repeated in English as she had heard it, with a

faithful duplication of accent and gesture.

“You were to come to Talassee, and he would not let you,--you the great

red Capteny, and he the dust of the earth!--where a feast was made

for you, and the headmen waited, and many young and beautiful were to

dance, and I was to dance. See!--was I not to dance?”

Her anklets of white beads jingled in unison as she moved her slender

restless feet in their buskins of fine white dressed doeskin.

“And he wept--the plaid-man! and cried for the French gold! and said,

‘He maunna ride at a’ the nicht! He maunna ride--he maunna gang to

Talassee wi’ the French gowd o’ saxty-twa! Ohonari! Ohonari! He maunna

ride at a’ the nicht.’ And then this plaid-man he sobbed much, and

straightway said to himself that the smoke of far-away burning woods

hurt his eyes--when it is because he is a squaw-man that he sheds

tears, and is no great red Capteny and soldier. And does he not wear a

petticoat every day of his life, like the woman that he is? _He sheds

tears!_ And then he crept out, saying all the time, ‘Oh, gude God,

he maunna ride to Talassee--he maunna ride at a’ the nicht!’ And I, all

unseen, followed him like his shadow, like his soul, through the night

to the foot of the mountain where the trading-path skirts Chilhowee,

and there he struck a flint and set the dry leaves afire, and then with

a lighted torch he ran--ran like a deer--firing the woods here, there,

everywhere! Two Indians, coming from a hunt, saw him, but he gave them

the slip. And the headmen are having the woods scoured for him. And

I--I lost him in the night--for he ran very fast!”

As he stood listening Everard more than once changed color, and finally

sat down, looking very grave.

The girl with only a momentary pause recommenced: “And then I knew that

you could not go to Talassee through the fiery woods, although the

feast was made, and the headmen waited, and many were to dance, and I,

too, was to dance, because that creature, in his plaid petticoat, said

you had his French gold. Was it his, forsooth? I do not understand!

And I lost him, but I went back from the mountain to Chilhowee Town,

and there--oh, joy!--there he stood once more in the likeness of the

Ancient Warrior,--who must be very wroth, if there ever was any Ancient

Warrior,--in his hunting-shirt and war-crown. And softly, very softly,

like the mist slipping down the mountain-side I crept away here, and

left him there, that the great red Capteny may descend upon him, and

capture him, and wreak vengeance upon him, and break his great ugly

bones, and give his woman’s petticoat to the dogs to tear!”

“And is he there yet?” demanded Everard eagerly. “Is he unaware that he

is discovered?”

Her animated diction had left her breathless and speechless. She could

only bow her head in assent, her lustrous eyes still fiery, her lips

trembling with her panting breath.

Everard sprang up, tense and alert, keen and quick to see his error.

“You shall have the French gold as a reward for your story if I find my

tartan man as you say at Chilhowee. Say nothing to any one till I send

you the French gold by the hand of Yachtino, the chief of Chilhowee,”

he said, hoping that thus the headmen might think that he had failed to

notice the significant date of the coinage of the louis d’ors, since

he parted so lightly from them. Thus he would avoid further dangerous

machinations, for of course the pieces were not themselves essential to

the validity of his report.

He was calling out hasty orders to the corporal in the pauses of his

sentences to her, and in the next few moments he rode out of the camp

at the head of a dozen mounted infantry-men, their red coats and

burnished accoutrements showing in the flames still rioting along the

mountain-side.

A sense of dawn was presently in the air,--the vague, undiscriminated,

indescribable perception of the awakening of nature. It was not night,

let the darkness gloom as it might. It was not night, let the light

delay as it would. It was a new day, and every nerve acclaimed the

fact with a revival of power. Everard met this new day in emerging

from the forests near Chilhowee Town. The flames were dying out upon

the mountain. A thin rain was falling, and misty moisture enveloped

the higher slopes, where nevertheless here and there a pennant of fire

waved through dull gray involutions of vapor. The smell of charred

timber was rife on the air. The slate-tinted sky, the darkly looming

purple mountains of the distance, the black, fire-swept steeps closer

at hand, the Indian town as yet silent and still, the long, level

stretches of the pallid, sere cornfields dimly striped with fine lines

of the misting rain,--all were visible in the dull gray light as the

party halted on the verge of the woods. Everard dismounted and went

forth alone into the cornfields.

Callum MacIlvesty, facing in the opposite direction, heard naught,

and saw naught but the dreary fire-smirched scene before him and the

rain slowly descending with a steadiness which promised to make a day

of it. He was too exhausted to think, to scheme further. He only knew

that his ruse had succeeded; that Everard had not been decoyed to a

terrible death; that the commissioners and their military escort would

march to-day. But when he sought to forecast how he would fare, left

alone and helpless in the country of the savage Cherokees, the puzzling

problem so baffled his tired brain--without food, as he was, aching

in every muscle, and drenched to the very bones by the persistent

rain--that he would fall asleep, still standing half supported by the

pole, his war-bonnet and gourd head nodding after a fashion which must

have revealed the sham that he was, had any discerning Indian chanced

to pass that way. He dreamed strange things in these meagre snatches

of sleep,--so strange that he thought he was still dreaming when,

recovering his balance with a start and lifting his heavy eyelids, he

saw Lieutenant Everard striding across the wet cornfield and heard his

friendly voice calling, “Callum Bane! Callum Bane!” as of yore.

Callum’s heart plunged and then stood still, as he perceived the

reality of his impressions. Before he could decide upon his course the

voice sounded anew, with a queer tremor in it:--

“For God’s sake, Callum Bane, don’t hide from me! I wouldn’t hurt a

hair of your head for all the Cherokee country!”

In his rough, young-man fashion Everard had begun to tear off the

Ancient Warrior’s war-bonnet and gourd vizard and hunting-shirt that,

long subject to the weather’s hard usage, had grown ragged and rent

with the climbing in and out of it by the stalwart Highlander, and

before the transformation was complete the story of each was elicited.

As they faced each other, Callum, conscience-stricken at the enormity

of his offense and overwhelmed by the magnanimity of his friend, albeit

debtor for his life, in forgiving him, suddenly burst into tears,

exclaiming, “Ohon! Ohon! I wish you would kill me!” and cast himself,

in all his smoke-grimed, rain-soaked tartans, into the arms of the

smart officer.

Everard chose to consider the blow as delivered under the extremity

of provocation and in the quality of friend over a convivial bowl,

and therefore his own personal affair. He was willing to risk the

carping comment of his mess, should it ever come to their knowledge

that he had received this insult without requital from a man who had

saved his life with so much forethought and ingenuity, and danger to

his own,--a man who deemed he would have profited immeasurably by the

officer’s destruction, thus escaping the death which menaced him, or an

ignominious punishment more terrible to him than death itself.

Everard, however, with his larger experience of life and wider outlook,

saw the plot differently, perfectly rounded and in its entirety. He

knew that the Cherokees would not dare to lure him to Talassee had they

not some innocuous device by which to account for his disappearance

thence. Their subtle intelligence had doubtless seized upon the

fortuitous escape of the Highlander from custody as a thread to work

into their web. For it was most natural that to this man, who had

offended the officer and had cause to fear him, should be attributed

his murder and consequent disappearance. The Highlander himself, easily

found, seized, and destroyed after the departure of the troops from the

country, could gainsay naught.

The lieutenant’s military conscience, however, would not permit

him to forgive so easily the escape from the guard-house and the

lurking in hiding, these being notorious offenses of evil example

and to the prejudice of good order and discipline. For not even the

corporal who had had the custody of the prisoner knew that Callum had

struck the officer, and the only witness, Mr. Taviston, had utterly

forgotten the blow as a matter of no consequence,--being frantic with

excitement concerning a new species of _Stuartia_, here found and

at that time unknown to any catalogue, but since called _Stuartia

montana_. The corporal and the other soldiers supposed only that

Callum had become intoxicated in the society of his superiors and had

drunkenly and foolishly contrived a troublesome escape from custody.

For this breach of discipline, Callum was destined to undergo in due

time extra guard duty.

Everard was explaining this to him as being a part of his military

obligations and not to gratify a personal grudge. “You are still under

arrest, you know, Callum Bane!” Everard reminded him.

“I care na, I care na--onything ye will! Only I maun hae a word wi’ ye

the noo, lad.”

This word, albeit he was faint from fatigue, both ahungered and

athirst, cold and shivering, having been drenched for hours with the

keen chill rain, Callum so clamored to be allowed to speak that Everard

could not constrain him to wait till after he should have been fed and

warmed and clad anew.

“Na, na!” Callum persisted, waving away the flask which the officer

pressed upon him, but still clutching his friendly hand, “if I tak

but ae sup ye wad say I am drunk when ye hear what I hae to tell ye!”

He paused for a moment to add weight to his words. “I hae seen that

Frenchman wha hae made sic clavers an’ turmoil amang the Cherokees.”

“Where? when?” Everard asked breathlessly, his face suddenly grave.

Callum pointed down at the Ancient Warrior lying at his feet in all

the dreary dislocations of disillusionment,--the tattered, befringed

garments, the quaintly painted gourd head, with its ghastly effect of

decapitation, its glorious war-bonnet bedraggled and forlorn. “When I

was that daft gomeril,--that big Injun,” he replied.

“A white man?”

Callum nodded and leaned against the officer. He could hardly stand. He

felt too weak almost to speak, unless indeed he must.

“A Frenchman, Callum Bane?” Everard asked again, vaguely incredulous.

“How did you know he was French?”

“By the lingo, man!” said Callum impatiently.

“Did he speak to you?” demanded Everard, looking keenly into the

Highlander’s pale face, all wet and shining with the rain.

In the mists on one side were vaguely glimpsed the tall cornstalks

of the far-stretching fields, all writhen and bent by the wind, and

with the gleams of sleet on their sere, pallid blades, but despite

their motion he was aware that among them there were other tall,

befringed, betasseled figures not dissimilar, something too distant for

recognition, where doubtless the ever wily Indians were watching the

conference. At the edge of the woods on the other side of the clearing

stood the mounted detail of English soldiers, the glimmer of the sad

gray day flashing back with a live, alert glitter from the burnished

steel of their arms and their scarlet coats, all quick to note the

fraternal, familiar attitude of the officer and soldier, and internally

to comment on this condescension, which had already resulted in a

breach of discipline and threatened continued insubordination.

“Did the Frenchy speak to me? Na! I was that big Injun, I tell ye!”

pointing at the prideful gourd face now staring up at them from among

the straw. “Na! nane minted a word at me, except yon _ageya_,--the

Injun lass ye know,--an’ she ca’ me ‘Gude-sire!’ _Gude-sire!_”

Callum laughed dreamily, then suddenly put his hand up to his head, in

the effort to recall the importance of the disclosure.

“A nip of brandy now, Callum,”--the officer pressed the flask, eager

for the detail,--“and then you’ll remember.”

“I winna taste it,” Callum rejoined sternly, “for then ye’ll say I was

drunk an’ telled ye but idle clavers. What’s your wull?” he added, as

if bewildered.

“How do you know the man is French?” demanded Everard.

“He spoke in French,” replied Callum.

“To the Indians?”

“He spoke in Cherokee to the Injuns, and then to himsel’ in French,”

responded Callum definitely.

Everard was silent for a moment. Important interests of the government,

the peace of the colonies, the policy of the cession of land, the

possible permanent repulse of the French, and on the other hand the

triumphant enormous extension of the French empire in America hung

upon this slight incident. Therefore to make sure, to prevent the

possibility of deception or mistake, he asked, thinking the words that

Callum had heard might have other signification, “What did he say,

Callum? What did he say to himself?”

“_Tong pee per lee. A bong char bong rar_,” Callum solemnly

repeated.

Everard burst out laughing hysterically. He was convinced. He was all

tremulous at the momentous discovery that it had chanced to one of his

command to make, eager, nay frenzied, to take instant advantage of it;

yet the accent of the solemn Highlander, to which the French of the

Stratford-atte-Bowe variety would have had an eminently Gallic tang,

outmastered his risibles, and he laughed with that curious duality of

entity when he was never so serious before in his life.

The first duty, however, in putting into execution the plan which had

instantly shaped itself in his mind, with a dozen variant details,

was to take such order with the Highland soldier as should restore

him to his normal mental and physical fitness. He shouted for aid to

the soldiers, and presently Callum, mounted on a horse behind one of

them,--for he was in no condition to guide the animal or even to retain

his posture, save for a horse girth passed around his waist and the

body of the man in the saddle,--was escorted back to camp, and still

under arrest, bestowed in the snug winter-house devoted to the uses of

a military prison. There was no lack of hot lotions applied externally

and internally, and good food and warm clothing; but the surgeon in

attendance upon the party reported a fever, with a touch of delirium

and a “sair hoast,” as the patient himself described the measure of

cold that he had caught.

To the surprise of all the force and the suspicious dismay of the

Indians, the return to Charlestown was unaccountably delayed. The

soldiers, wearying of their long inaction, the monotony of life

in the Indian country, hampered as they were by the many unusual

restrictions imposed upon conduct and camp to avoid all possible

cause for clashes with the young Indian braves, had been in high

spirits at the prospect of a speedy change, and their hopes were

suddenly dashed by the countermanding of the orders to march. The

commissariat fell into gloom, and as far as they dared remonstrated

with the commander, predicting a famine ere Charlestown could be

reached; and the quartermaster sergeant and his subordinates of the

baggage contingent, foreseeing all the undoing of the more permanent

arrangements of the baggage train, felt that never again could such

triumphs of transportation be achieved--the stowage of large and

unwieldy commodities in small compass, _multum in parvo_--as a

lucky inspiration in packing had permitted in this instance.

Moreover, the fine days seemed gone. The weather offered an

incalculable menace. Already the air was full of the misting autumnal

rains, and the many turbulent rivers of the country would soon be out

of their channels beyond even the deep crag-girt banks, rendering

fording impossible and ferriage dangerous. Even snows might fall,

early though it was in the season. In fact, one or two domes of the

Great Smoky Range already showed glittering white against an ominous

slate-tinted sky, as the soft, gauzy tissues of the mists parted before

them, and again impenetrably veiled those frigid altitudes.

The commissioners themselves had grown obviously disaffected and

doubtful; they were disposed to remonstrate, and one of them

reproachfully coughed from time to time, occasionally from genuine

affection and again from patent affectation. Only the meteorologic

and botanic Mr. Taviston welcomed the lengthened opportunity, and

since the flowers had all fallen under the repeated frosts and an

unseasonable nipping freeze, he found a solace in investigating the

climate itself, going about, a comfort to himself, and eke to say a

wellspring of joy to others, with an umbrella above his head, to the

ribs of which was suspended a thermometer at the height of his nose,

taking acute scientific notes of the extraordinary variability of the

temperature and the swift fickleness of the atmospheric changes. He was

even disposed to climb the mountains to the snow line, to press his

inquiries among the white domes of the great range, accompanied only by

an Indian guide; but the stern interdiction of this enterprise by the

commander precluded his wandering so far afield, and he was compelled

to content himself with such specimens of weather as he could collate

nearer at hand.

To the prevalent dissatisfaction Lieutenant Everard accorded only

the most casual attention, obviously preoccupied, intent on his own

thoughts, sternly determined, but sharing his conclusions with no

adviser.

The civilians of the party naturally distrusted these _indicia_

of changes of moment evidently impending, and felt some qualms as to

his comparative youth and heady traits, some curiosity as to possible

details of his instructions to which it might be they were not privy,

some helpless anxiety lest for reasons satisfactory to himself, which

they could not divine, he should venture to deviate from his orders.

The commissioners were in the nature of things more or less men of

consequence, accustomed to command, and to the habit of determining and

shaping their own course in life as the eventuation of circumstance

should seem to require. They had not had the military training to an

unquestioning obedience, the suppression of natural curiosity, the

relinquishment of all responsibility and individual identity, in the

existence of a corporate body, subject to the volition of a superior.

They chafed in the sense of helplessness, and from time to time eyed

him greedily in hopes of catching from his manner some intimation as to

his ultimate plans. In response to more open expressions of curiosity,

he had flatly refused to gratify it, and the courtesy and apparent

consideration in his phrase made him seem only the more inscrutable.

“You will pardon me, I am sure, but Gad, sir, my duty does not permit

me to be explicit. The march is postponed, but you will not be required

to move without information,” he replied suavely, but with a flash of

the eye which intimated that he would tell them when he could no longer

avoid it, and when all the rest of the world must know.

While the camp thus settled down to its former routine, grumbling

and speculating variously as to the causes that had necessitated the

countermanding of the orders to march, the Cherokees were alarmed for

the interests of the projected cession of land. Their earlier fears had

been quieted in great measure by the recovery of the French gold, the

louis d’ors of the coinage of the current year, thus falling readily

into the trap which Everard had warily set for them. They concluded

that since he had given the gold pieces so casually to the Indian

girl as a reward for her detection of his runagate soldier he had not

noticed the date with its cogent significance, having them so short a

time in his possession. Certainly it was great munificence, but this

was the more easily accounted for as the louis d’ors really belonged

to another man, and the officer seemed generous without loss, for the

Cherokees did not understand that their value must needs be returned to

Eachin MacEachin. As the Indians were not admitted familiarly within

the camp, and the soldiers were not free to wander without, there could

be only futile surmises as to the reasons for the postponement of the

march. Secret observations of the camp taken from the river and the

opposite bank intimated much activity among the farriers. Perhaps the

horses were all to be reshod. But surely such a necessity could not be

in the nature of a surprise to the Capteny Gigagei. Another day ensued

a great overhauling of the baggage for clothing of heavier weight, in

anticipation of severe weather. The commissioners bargained with the

Indians for some furs fashioned into match-coats, and the lieutenant

himself, being obliged to wear the hated British uniform, ordered

blankets of the fine dressed otter and panther skins, for which he

paid in English guineas: he had no more louis d’ors. The postponement

gradually came to be accepted as the result of the sudden unseasonable

spell of cold weather.

Therefore it fell like a thunderclap upon the headmen, when suddenly

one day Lieutenant Everard took advantage of a personal visit which the

great chief Tanaesto was making to him in his tent, to declare that

he had certain knowledge that the Cherokees harbored amongst them a

Frenchman who sought to spirit them up against the British government,

despite the fact that they had so lately firmly shaken hands anew with

it. He protested that unless they instantly surrendered to him this

miscreant, chargeable with he knew not how many of the crimes laid at

their door, he would report to the royal governor the fact that he had

ascertained his presence here in the heart of the Cherokee country, and

this would annul the privileges they expected to enjoy under the treaty

thus rendered void, and destroy the possibility of the cession itself.

But for that single phrase, but for the interests dependent upon the

cession, but for the fact that this purchase money for the lands would

enable the Cherokees to secure the munitions of war to wrench not only

this limited territory but their whole country from the encroaching

British grasp, as well as sustain them in a certain independence in

their relations with their expected French allies,--but for these

obvious dictates of policy, the commissioners’ train and military

escort would have been set upon by unnumbered hundreds and destroyed in

the instant.

Even as it was, however, their safety was in a great part assured by

the fact that this episode took place only within the knowledge of

the wily chiefs. The populace--those “mad young men,” so difficult

to restrain, whose impetuosity so often cost the nation dear--could

not have been held back had this demand been suddenly publicly urged.

And indeed the chiefs themselves were between two fires; for if aught

should befall the French officer through their pusillanimity or

treachery, it was obvious they could hope for no further aid from the

great French king, without which they could not save their national

existence.

Admire the collected Tanaesto’s aplomb! Without one moment’s hesitation

he denied the accusation,--utterly oblivious of the future,--so

definitely, so instantly, that Everard himself, closeted in his tent

with three or four Indians who had accompanied Tanaesto, felt a

momentary doubt. Could Callum have been dreaming?--the vision of the

Frenchman only a figment of the fever then laying hold upon him, the

words an echo?--some reminiscence sounding anew in his delirium?

“But you have a white man, a Frenchman, here in the nation,” Everard

sternly persisted.

“A white man in the nation? Several here and there in the lower towns.

Oh, yes, the Capteny says the gracious truth. But these are English or

Scotch, never French. Some there are who like the Cherokee methods and

settle in the tribe. But here in the Overhill towns only one white man,

an Englishman--that is to say, a Virginian.”

Everard, staring fixedly at Tanaesto, shook his head, and the Indian

interpreter mechanically repeated the gesture, as if the parties for

whom he served as a means of communication were blind as well as deaf

to all but him.

Most unlikely did Everard consider it that an Englishman would dare to

linger here alone in the present disorganized state of the Cherokee

country and the inflamed public sentiment against the British.

“This man--who I fear is no Englishman--sojourned in Moy Toy’s town of

Great Tellico,” Everard persisted. “This I know. The great chief will

perceive there are no limits to my knowledge.”

With this corollary, confirmatory of his proposition, the Indians

hardly dared to further deny. A sudden stillness ensued; and this

desperate silence, long unbroken, was an invisible appeal one to the

others, each waiting for some intrepid invention of some one else that

might serve to rescue the situation.

Everard smiled grimly as his sarcastic eyes traveled the rounds from

one confused, downcast face to the other. “Since he is a Virginian, as

you say, an Englishman so far, I should be glad to see him,” persisted

Everard, relishing their discomfort. “I should not like it to be said

that I left an only countryman in this remote wilderness without an

effort to exchange a word with him, a homelike greeting.”

“If he is now at Great Tellico, I know not; it has been long since I

saw him,” Tanaesto qualified. Then realizing that this belated negation

could not nullify all that had gone before, “Doubtless he will be glad

to take you by the hand,” he concluded falteringly.

“Doubtless. I shall do myself the honor to wait upon him there, and

shall also take this occasion to pay my respects to the great Moy Toy.”

Everard smiled sardonically, grimly triumphant, for the leave-taking

of the graceful, ceremonious Indians was like the hasty scuttling away

of a group of culprits evading the clutch of custody.

The camp had been hastily broken; all was now gleeful stir and

activity. Everard had waited long, but he had reached the limit of his

patience and the necessity to exercise it simultaneously. MacIlvesty

was sufficiently recovered to have regained the full use of his

faculties, and he depended upon the Highlander’s identification of the

man, whom he had seen in familiar conversation with the Indians at one

of their most secret ceremonies, speaking Cherokee to them and French

in soliloquy. Everard would take no substitute for this man! Lest some

dull under-trader, some runaway apprentice, finding it easier to turn

Cherokee than work at a trade in the colonies, be palmed off on him in

lieu of this forked-tongued schemer, he had awaited the Highlander’s

recovery, despite his impatience. He realized that should he miss his

grip at the opportune moment the chance would be gone and forever. He

would confront Callum MacIlvesty with this sojourner at Tellico whom

he doubted not to be the French emissary who had occasioned a world of

trouble in readjusting the Cherokees on their former basis with the

British government. Unless opportunity should prove amazingly elusive,

he would arrest this man and carry him to Charlestown, where the

consideration of the problems which he embodied could be shifted upon

those more qualified to undertake it, the colonial diplomats.

Everard’s determination to proceed further into the Cherokee

country necessitated the detail of some portion of his plan to the

commissioners whom he must needs drag with him, since his force was

too slight to divide, and he could not leave them without a guard at

Ioco. Though firm as adamant and steeled against any remonstrance,

he had dreaded their efforts to deter him, their insistence that he

was transcending his instructions, that he was merely the commander

of their bodyguard, and required to act only in the interests of

the cession. The fluttered squawking of the botanist, the deep

basso-profundo rumble of the commissioner whose fad was geology, the

appeal to his official conscience and his oath by the diplomat proper,

the politician, the piercing fife-like note of the surveyor’s voice

in protest,--all sounded coherently in his imagination long before

he made the disclosure, and sooth to say, sounded nowhere else. For

the “gentlemanly old ladies” showed unexpected mettle; they applauded

his determination, belittled the possible danger they might incur,

commended his discretion, and urged the instant setting forward of

the force before the man could be spirited away and the Indians make

head in their schemes to conceal all evidences of his identity and

machinations.

XIV

LAROCHE, however, as far as his safety was concerned, was more secure

at Tellico Great than he could have been elsewhere, and he appreciated

this, for both Moy Toy and he had been speedily advised of the untoward

discovery of the secret of his presence here and the lame and futile

effort of Tanaesto to account for it innocuously. Where the Cherokees

were in force, as in one of the greater “mother towns,” he could more

effectually claim the national protection than if, seeking refuge in

flight, he should be apprehended in some secluded outlying region

where only a few scattered tribesmen would be receptive to his appeal.

Therefore at Tellico he determined to stand his ground, albeit he

doubted both the will and the capacity of the Indians to hold out

against the demand of the English officer. He argued that with so small

a force as the escort of the commissioners, coercion was manifestly

not contemplated, and the British commander was risking the dangers of

the Indian country, disaffected though it was, with no protection save

the ostensible comity of the already jeopardized treaty. Unassisted

reason and logic were hardly to be relied upon in Indian negotiation.

Reproaches for a broken faith needs an unimpeachable counter-record to

render them practicable. Laroche feared, as the last resource, bribes,

large, tempting, irresistible.

At that moment his stanch scheme of empire, rebuilt on the ruins

of a score of fantastic projections of old, braced and held to

interdependent cohesion in a thousand details, seemed to him also a

mere phantasm, the immaterial outline of the functions of a state, a

spectre of power, to dissolve into nullity at the first cockcrow of

the lordly realities of established rule. He had but expended himself,

his time, his efforts, his liberty, it might even be his life itself,

that the crafty Moy Toy should have the opportunity of driving a more

thrifty bargain with the British interest because of the formidable

character of the threatened defection; or mayhap, indeed, only for the

sake of a personal gift,--a finer rifle, or a trifle of embroidered and

gold-laced suits of apparel,--he would consent to bring anew the nation

under British domination until such time as the yoke grew cumbersome to

his fitful ambition and he was minded to throw it off again.

Naturally Moy Toy could not read these thoughts in the face of his

friend, but he marked his changing color and partly interpreted his

agitation. Because of the stress of his religion,--a very queer and

inconvenient restriction the savage deemed it,--never would Laroche

lift a weapon against his fellow man, except in legitimate warfare.

And yet he was eminently a proper man, to use the language of the

day, light, active, with muscles like steel wire and strong with a

latent staying power. When personally threatened he would offer no

aggression, save in self-defense, and even now, in this stress of

realized jeopardy, he insisted with all his arts of persuasion that Moy

Toy should give over the idea of a massacre of the advancing party,

with several delectable items of the horrors of a surprise and friendly

lure to merge at last into fierce and wholesale murder, which the chief

planned with many a sly and furtive smile, and which met with open and

applausive assent from his councilors assembled.

“They come in peace, relying on your honor; let them go in peace,”

urged Laroche, as in duty bound, from the standpoint of soldier,

Christian, and patriot.

“They have not my honor in their keeping,” Moy Toy lowered. “I do not

love your ugly religion!”

Nevertheless, he suffered himself to be gainsaid in the paramount

interests of the land cession, and Laroche felt at the end of all

things.

If Moy Toy were to have no fun out of the rash adventure of the

embassy, the embassy would certainly profit at the expense of the

interloper. He it was who must suffer between the two. He knew

that this sudden unforeseen demonstration against him personally

was obviously fraught with too great danger to the government’s

commissioners for the military commander of the escort to lightly

undertake it or to relinquish it without advantage. Nothing less could

it portend than the arrest of the French emissary and his removal in

the British interest from the Cherokee country. Laroche’s experimental

resourceful mind became suddenly blank in the contemplation of the

vista of long days, nay years, in prison, at the will of a British

colonial magnate or on a quibble of British law. And then this

suggestion opened a new speculation. What if, being without his

uniform, without command, in the discharge of no specific military

duty, he should be held as a spy or as a civil prisoner, and

responsible for certain murders which the Cherokees had committed on

British subjects either with the sanction of Moy Toy or on that system

of personal individual warfare which in modern civilized times is

called feud, and which the Cherokee autonomy countenanced. Brave though

his spirit was, Laroche quailed at the imputed instigation of these

horrors which he had sought to avert and had openly condemned at much

personal risk.

He was keenly reminiscent of the day when a previous expedition had

arrived at the town of Tellico Great and he had then been of the

embassy. With that strange dual capacity of the mind, albeit his

every faculty might seem otherwise absorbed, he was conscious of all

the details of the event which he now watched as it were from the

inside,--the placing of the appurtenances of the town to the best

advantage, the gathering of the warriors and braves, as well as women

and children, arrayed each in the finest toggery. The “beloved square”

had been swept and resanded, the public buildings were painted anew.

There in each of the four open, piazza-like cabins the incumbents of

the high municipal offices were ranged on the tiers of seats in the

wonted order of their relative rank,--the medicine and religious men,

the war-captains, the aged councilors, and Moy Toy in the place of

chief. Always an impressive figure, he had assumed an added dignity

in the doubly conferred imperial title, from both British and French

powers,[10] superimposed upon his hereditary municipal chieftaincy,

though the latter distinction was the only point of supremacy in which

the Cherokee nation itself now acquiesced. He sat in his place upon

the white divan, his iridescent feather-woven mantle glittering in the

sun, his polled head plumed with eagle quills, about his neck a single

strand of those glossy fresh-water Tennessee pearls, almost as large

as filberts, a size then rare, but even yet taken occasionally from

the _Unio margaritiferus_ of our sandy river banks. A great bead,

which he valued far more, wrought painfully with years of labor from

the conch shell, ivory-like in its polish and tint, was suspended in

the middle of his forehead. His guard of immediately attendant warriors

was about him, and Laroche sat at his side.

Arrayed too in aboriginal splendor was the French officer. This was

hardly bravado on his part, for he had long ago lost sight of that

uniform which he had worn to Great Tellico, for Moy Toy had sequestered

it, lest it remind him in some inscrutable way of those events when

he had so nearly lost his life at the stake, and thus by exciting

resentment diminish his utility to the nation. This garb would scarcely

have much commended him to the Englishman whose advent he momently

expected, but with that acute Gallic self-consciousness he winced from

the anticipated wonder at his attire, averse yet scornful. But Moy

Toy was not to be withstood, and the adopted tribesman was nearly as

fine as the prince. He too wore a necklace of pearls, that set off the

fairer tints of his throat with less barbaric effect than the Indian’s

own bauble. His face was fantastically streaked with paint, yet its

keen lines and the fine expressiveness of his eyes were definitely

asserted. His trim figure was encased in a shirt and leggings of white

dressed doeskin with long fringes wrought with scarlet feathers; his

buskins were dyed scarlet, and he wore scarlet feathers mounted high

on his blond hair. It seemed to him now, as he sat silent thus and

waited, that the agonies of suspense were decreed to him as a portion.

He could hear the beating of his heart in the absolute stillness of

the assemblage as, with the stoicism of Indian patience and endurance,

the Cherokees, motionless and silent, awaited the appearance of the

commissioners’ party.

The bland blue sky seemed waiting too, so still it was. Here and there

were cloud masses of a dazzling whiteness and variant density and

depth of tone, as if to illustrate the infinite scope of the possible

interpretations of this tint, technically an absence of color. Bright

as they were, as they swung motionless in the sunlit air, wherever

their shadows fell on the velvet azure of the distant mountains the

hue deepened and dulled to a violet, subdued as with the expunging

of light. The snow on the mountain domes near at hand showed a sharp

contrast to the red and yellow and brown of the brilliant leafage still

on the steep slope below. The haze in the intermediate valleys was

like a silver gauze--of a consistency that suggested a fabric. Even as

close as the willows along the river bank it preserved this illusion,

and now veiled them from sight and now withdrew, revealing their slim

idyllic wands, all leafless and whitely frosted and trembling in some

imperceptible pulsation of the currents of the air. Many a bare bough

with the distinctness of some fine etching was reflected in the

shimmering water, here a smooth and silver expanse, and here a rippling

steely sheen. Upon its surface a flock of swans, glittering white

in the sunshine, floated into view, and then like a fantasy drifted

suddenly into the invisibilities of the mist and the shadow. Far away

the booming note of a herd of buffaloes came to the ear and was silent,

and again one could not so much as hear the throng of waiting Cherokees

draw a breath. It might seem that a spell had fallen upon the town, the

silent assemblage, the loitering clouds, the still mountains, and that

they had thus stood waiting for unnumbered ages till some magic sound

should break their bonds.

It came suddenly. The dreaming swans lifted their heads to listen, then

with an abrupt unmusical cry began to swim swiftly down toward the

confluence with the Tellico River. A dog barked and was silent once

more. Then distant though it was, indeterminate, merely a pulsing throb

in the air, Laroche recognized the far-away beating of a drum, and

could hardly distinguish it, save by its steadier, more rhythmic throb,

from the agitated beating of his own heart.

Perhaps it may have been due to the influences of mental solitude,

as it were, and much introspective brooding, always averse to the

prosaic mundane atmosphere; perhaps to that undefined fascination

which the life of the Cherokees of the earlier epochs of our knowledge

of them exerted upon certain temperaments among the strangers who

sojourned with them; perhaps merely to personal antagonism and national

prejudice, but the sound of the British fife and drum, now distinct,

playing a foolish air, the sight of the British flag, the appearance of

the embassy, half military, half civilian, some mounted, some afoot,

partly English, partly Scotch Highlanders, the progress accommodated

ill enough to the beat of the quickstep, affected Laroche as singularly

crass and uncouth.

The undisguisable contempt of the commander for the Indians and all

that appertained to them, the absolute lack of comprehension of the

subtler elements of their character, the determination to secure the

object he sought without any recognition of the complicated details

of the environment, gave a certain effect of ignorance to the address

and standpoint of the highly civilized man that by contrast made

the aboriginal, with his mystery of antiquity, his symbolism, his

ceremonial, his inscrutability, the gravity of his courtesy, seem to

have profited by the lack of modern education and to be endowed with

learning by inheritance and intuition.

Without any embellishment of ceremony in his presence, Everard

sauntered casually across the “beloved square” toward the Indian chief,

wreathing his unwilling features into such a smile as he deemed might

answer for the occasion, but he stretched out his hand benignly. In the

service of the king it could not hurt his dignity to shake hands with

an Injun.

Moy Toy, his beaded and braceleted arms folded across his bosom, took

no notice of the proffered hand, but bowed halfway to the ground.

Everard, in no wise disconcerted, cared no more for the declination

of this courtesy--nay, not half so much--than if his favorite hound,

Brutus, whom he was training to the observance of this gentility of

greeting, had withheld his paw; for sometimes Brutus would shake, and

sometimes in the exercise of canine freedom the paw of Brutus was his

own, since Everard’s cuff of disappointment was but a half hearted

demonstration, and no dog or horse stood in much fear of cruelty from

him.

That Everard was a fine, handsome man, and by his profession

accustomed to etiquette and parade, gave additional point to his lack

of ostentation and formality in the present instance. He evidently

did not think it worth his while. But he wagged his well-shaped

head eagerly in serious argument when he forthwith entered upon the

subject of his mission without preamble, dispensing with the usual

ceremonials of eating, drinking, and smoking among the Indians.

Perhaps he truly thought that in view of the slightness of his force

the hospitality of the savages was not to be trusted at so inimical

a juncture. The commissioners, all mounted, looked on at a little

distance, and the soldiers were hard by, drawn up in close order just

without the “beloved square.” Some were in the scarlet gear of the

British foot-soldier and others in the dark blue and green tartan of

the Forty-Second Regiment, and this variation of costume, albeit they

were ranged separately in their respective ranks, gave a sort of motley

guise to the command and impaired the effect of their number. But in

truth, all told, the military escort mustered scarcely threescore,

for the demonstration was essentially a pacific one, and Everard but

expected to wield the weapons of right reason rather than brute force.

He might, however, have done better execution with the latter, for he

was no diplomatist.

It was Everard’s faithful conviction that the government’s emissaries

habitually treated the Indians too seriously in seeking to adopt their

social methods in conference, and that thus the civilized ambassador

was a fool from his own point of view and a butt of ridicule to the

Indians, who could but mark his failure in aboriginal etiquette in a

thousand undreamed-of details. Simplicity, candor, directness, he held,

became a bold Briton, and he would make no concessions to please the

Indians and foster their sense of their own consequence by letting

them see him play the condemned monkey, aping their fantastic savage

ceremony.

Wherefore he stood, for he was not invited to sit, but he cared no

more for the implied derogation than for the courtesies of such as

they. He leaned negligently one hand on his sheathed sword, its

point on the ground, and did not even maintain an erect attitude, as

one obviously should in addressing a prince, nay, an emperor twice

crowned by British and French authority. But this dereliction was not

intentional. In truth there was a good deal of Lieutenant Everard in

one piece, and in common with many other tall people he was disposed

at times to loll and make his superfluous length comfortable. Not

thus, however, did he conduct himself on parade or in the presence of

a military superior or his excellency the royal governor, and well

aware was Moy Toy of this. Moreover, his beautiful hair was not so well

powdered as it was wont to be, and even his hat, which he still wore,

was cocked casually askew.

Perhaps the consciousness of these facts, trivial yet significant,

rendered Moy Toy the less capable of being pricked in conscience by the

long list of fractures which the old treaty had suffered at his hands.

“And now,” said Everard, stooping to metaphor, “the path, so red with

the blood of the English colonists and British soldiers and the slain

Cherokee braves and made so crooked by the wiles of the pestiferous

Louisiana French, has been whitened and straightened out by the

magnanimity of the great British sovereign, his majesty King George.

He has forgiven the treachery of the Cherokees because like children

they could not reason aright, and like the blind they could not walk

straight. He has intended to purchase large quantities of land from

the tribe, that they might have the means to build up all the former

prosperity of the nation which their wickedness caused to be pulled

down. He expects to send traders once more to the Cherokee country,

that the Indians may be furnished with goods for their necessities

at a low and uniform price. He will maintain a system of weights

and measures amongst them to which the traders will be required to

conform. Armorers will he send to mend their guns free of charge, one

gunsmith to every town, and artisans to instruct them in the methods

and manufactures of civilization. And in return for so much clemency

what did the Cherokees promise in the articles of the new treaty? A

fair and firm friendship, a forbearance of murder and fire-raising on

the frontier, the surrender of any white men of whatever nationality

who aided them in the war against Great Britain, and the solemn promise

that they would not suffer any Frenchman to come into their country to

trade, to plant, or to build, lest they be again spirited up against

the English to subvert this new treaty so faithfully signed and sealed

and witnessed.”

He paused and silence fell suddenly, save for the far-away booming of

the buffaloes, the murmurous monotone of the river, the vague stir of a

breeze from the mountains beginning to clash the bare boughs together

and lift the folds of the British flag.

“Moy Toy,” Everard resumed with a weighty manner, “the ink of that

signature is hardly dry, and yet so early I find a Frenchman installed

amongst you. And there,” he threw out his hand at arm’s length, “there

is the man!”

His eyes roaming around had singled out Laroche and now dwelt upon him

with an expression at once scornful and upbraiding. Then his attention

traveled fleeringly up and down the barbaric details of the garb of the

splendidly decorated white man, who winced under the voiceless jeer

of the “perfide Albion,” and whose gorge rose within him while yet he

quaked to encounter this enmity.

Moy Toy, visibly hesitant, replied at length.

It was his desire, he stated, to be at peace with the British king,

although he would not or could not protect from the encroachments of

the colonists the Cherokees whom he had once called his children.

Moy Toy held himself, in fact, as the friend and brother of that

king,--which statement reached such a point of sensitiveness in

Everard’s organization as to cause him to snort suddenly in surprise

and indignation.

But Moy Toy, although maintaining his dignity of port, was hardly

equal to himself. He could play a double part easily enough, but to

adjust the multiplicity of deceits requisite for this emergency in

good relation to the interest of the tribe, to forfeit nothing of

the expected French support and yet avoid the jeopardy of the price

of the lands to be ceded to the British, passed even his measures

of duplicity. He sought to adopt the wile that Tanaesto had earlier

essayed.

The stranger was English--so he said; for himself he did not know;

he could not pretend to decide; he was no linguister; he was all for

peace; but the Great Spirit in his unfathomable wisdom had given men

many tongues, with which indeed they talked too much.

“Ha!” Everard exclaimed sardonically, “they have been at that since the

days of Babel!”

He paused that the interpreter might repeat his words, the while

Everard transferred his flouting gaze from Laroche to the noble figure

of Moy Toy, with no sort of appreciation of the dignity of its aspect,

the subtle force of its facial expression, the picturesque barbarity

of its ornament and garb. To him, in common with many of the British

soldiers and colonists of the day, Moy Toy represented merely “old

Injun” or “greasy red stick.” Everard had, however, an especial relish

for the perplexity that looked out from among the wrinkles of his eyes,

wrought by many a problem of statecraft, and his pondering, anxious,

outwitted despair. The officer waited for a moment, expectant that Moy

Toy would advance a new argument; then, as the chief remained silent,

Everard proceeded with his own solution of the problem.

“Perhaps in Charlestown they may know how to tell a Frenchman from an

Englishman. If this man is a loyal subject of King George he will not

grudge the detention in so good a cause, and I pledge my honor that

he shall be put to no charges for the expense of the journey; if a

Frenchman, the colonial authorities may take him in hand then and I

shall be free of him.”

Whatever his deficiencies as a diplomat, Lieutenant Everard certainly

did not lack courage. He lifted his head suddenly; his sword swung back

with his left hand on its hilt; tense, erect, he strode forward a dozen

resolute paces, and, that the intention of the act might be obvious to

all who witnessed it, struck the cowering Laroche on the shoulder with

the stern cry, “In the king’s name!”

The sound seemed a spell to raise the devil withal. Elicited like

an echo, dependent on the tone, yet magnified a thousandfold, an

inarticulate cry broke forth from the tribesmen, protesting, frantic,

but menacing. The crowd surged this way and that, and Lieutenant

Everard, suddenly mindful of the safety of his soldiers, turned,

his chin high in the air, and his head still haughtily posed, to

glance where they stood, a thought more compact than before, a scant

threescore, with the savages circling in hundreds tumultuously about

them.

“You would not dispute his majesty’s authority!” Everard stiffly held

his ground; for Moy Toy, irate, commanding, although visibly agitated,

ordered him in no set phrase to desist. “He is a Frenchman and an

enemy!” urged Everard. “He is no Cherokee!”

“He has been made a great ‘beloved man’!” protested Moy Toy. “He is a

Cherokee by adoption!”

The words roused the populace to renewed clamors. No heed took the “mad

young men” of the frowning faces of their elders, the silent gestures

of Moy Toy beseeching a hearing.

There is in that inarticulate murmur of the wrath of a mob something

so menacing, so daunting, so indefinably terrible, that even Everard

was receptive to an admonition so growlingly enforced. He took his hand

from the Frenchman’s shoulder lest in having it removed for him he

might be torn in pieces. The implacable murmur still rose, the crowds

still surged, and Laroche, half ashamed yet wholly reassured, feared

that he looked as smug as he felt, while a glitter of satisfaction and

triumph shone in Moy Toy’s eyes. They narrowed as he gazed steadily,

threateningly, with a latent devilish thought, at Everard, so entirely

at his mercy. A corner was a very tight fit for Lieutenant John Francis

Everard, but he was fairly in it. He was accustomed to disport himself

freely in the open, and the wriggles incident to a confined space did

not suit his muscles, his size, or his temper. He made an effort to

wrench himself from it.

“Mighty fine! mighty fine!” he said sneeringly to the Frenchman. “You

are sane enough, sir, and sober enough, to know what poor stuff this

is,--what pitiful dupes you are befooling and befuddling! Faugh! your

deceits sicken me!”

He looked with a snarl, which he designed to be a withering smile, over

the fantastic apparel of the Frenchman, but Lieutenant Everard was as

much out of countenance as a man of his stamp could well be.

“Zounds!” he resumed, still seeking to recover the control of the

situation, and shaking off Moy Toy’s restraining hand laid upon his

arm, “we’ll hear the fellow himself. Since you are English, give us

your name, sirrah!”

He was consciously and blatantly rude, rejoicing in his capacity to be

independent of the varnish with which such occasions are sleeked over.

Laroche’s blood began to rise, his eye to sparkle. Despite his awful,

imminent jeopardy,--for who could say how the scene might even yet

result,--the spirit of the fray quivered through his blood. “If it may

please your excellency,” he said in his usual clear tones and precise

enunciation, “yonder stands a man in your ranks to whom I am personally

known. Your excellency might prefer to believe his account of me rather

than my own.”

Everard stared blankly and secretly winced. The man’s politeness had a

whetted edge, that cut like ridicule. The title of “excellency,” so far

above the usage of the lieutenant’s rank and deserts, might have been

conferred in ignorance or propitiation, but taken in conjunction with

his own rude address seemed as apt as a fleer.

Everard was at once doubtful and bewildered. The stranger’s English,

so far as the construction of his sentences and choice of words went,

was perfect. There was, however, something in his intonation which

grated on the Briton’s ear. Nevertheless, there were many variations

of provincial accent, especially in the colonies. Everard, in fact,

believed that no one here could speak the language with purity, as if

it had suffered a sea change in coming over the water.

Turning toward the ranks, he perceived a touch of consciousness on

Callum MacIlvesty’s face, and was startled to remember that it was his

original intention to confront the two, that Callum might identify

this man as the French-speaking familiar of the Ancient Warrior of

Chilhowee. By a gesture he summoned the Highlander to his side, and

simultaneously the Frenchman stepped forth and stood beside Moy Toy.

The Indian’s eyes were all a-glitter, and a tremor agitated the

feathers stiffly upright on his polled head.

“MacIlvesty, did you ever before see this man?” demanded the officer,

while the two eyed each other.

“Aye, sir, mony a time,” replied Callum MacIlvesty.

Everard stared. “And where?”

“At one Jock Lesly’s trading-house at Ioco Town, sir.”

Whither was this tending? The expression of the officer’s face became

amazed, concerned, intent. The flutter among the head feathers of Moy

Toy was suddenly stilled.

“When was this?” the military catechist demanded.

“Nigh on a year ago come Easter, sir.”

The triumph in the man’s face, its suggestion of covert ridicule,

nettled Everard. Into what fool’s play had he been lured?

“_Why, Callum!_” he said in a reproachful murmur aside; then

aloud, “What’s his name?”

Callum shook his head. “I dinna ken, sir; I misdoubt.”

“What was he called?” the lieutenant mended the phrase.

“Tam--Tam Wilson.”

“Oh Callum--Callum Bane!” once more the officer’s admonitory whisper

reached him. “And where was he said to hail from?” Everard added aloud.

“Firginia, sir,” faltered the Highland soldier.

It was becoming definite in Everard’s mind that Callum, all agog about

the French, as the Highland soldiery, who had often triumphantly

encountered them, forever were, and hearing much of suspected

machinations among the Indians, had but dreamed of the French enemy

beside the effigy of the Indian Warrior and had heard only in fancy,

perhaps in the inception of the fever, the words that he repeated. For

evidently this man was not only well known to him, but was also long a

familiar of the English trading-station in the Cherokee nation. Perhaps

even yet the young fellow’s mind was not quite clear.

Nevertheless, since the ordeal had been in his defense and for his

sake, Everard was minded to be gentle with him, although the false

position into which Callum had involved him burned the officer’s pride

like fire.

“Why did you think he was French, MacIlvesty?” he asked openly.

“Because,” said Callum, with a keen resentment against himself, the

officer, the arch-deceiver, the untoward facts themselves, that he

could not make the truth as he knew it now, as he was sure of it,

appear as aught but a falsehood or a folly, “he spoke French--he spoke

it to himself!--when I saw him last, a fortnight ago, amang the Injuns.”

“And, Callum,” said Laroche familiarly, “did you never hear an

Englishman speak French? Why, lad, I myself have e’en heard a

Scotchman’s tongue waggling into it!”

His eyes twinkled as if in reminiscence, and Everard, remembering the

peculiarities of the Highlander’s accent, was minded to mark anew the

familiarity of this Tam Wilson with him. He himself had not spoken his

Christian name aloud, but the stranger knew it, and with no prompting

called him “Callum.”

Bewildered, raging internally, humiliated, Callum was ordered to his

former place in the ranks, having only succeeded, because of the

artifice of this arch-strategist and the intractability and paucity of

the perverse facts, in identifying this Frenchman as an Englishman, to

the satisfaction, or rather dissatisfaction, of his superior officer.

Of all people incompetent to use power without its abuse the Cherokees

were preëminent. The turbulent mob had been quick to discern in the

result of the conference that their adopted tribesman, the French

officer, was obviously triumphant; that Moy Toy, although standing

like a statue, was overjoyed, with gleaming wide eyes and an elated

port. They could ill afford magnanimity toward these people, so many

grudges as a nation and as individuals did they owe the English,

consequent on the slaughters and fire-raising and punitive famine they

had suffered at the hands of the British troops in the warfare of the

preceding years. Their note of comment had lost its tone of appeal, of

indignation, of protest. It was swelling now and again into a savage

roar of awful import, of reprisal, of scorn, of eager brutality.

Laroche heard in it the knell of all his hopes. This precipitate

action would forever frustrate the fruition of his work here,--the

gathering and organization of the tribal forces, the transportation

of supplies, the plan of his campaign,--and with this, his success,

his promotion, his hard-earned guerdon, for which he had labored so

diligently, so discreetly, so valiantly. He was not ready to strike

yet--not yet! A premature blow now would preclude all those sequences

of aggression so carefully planned, for the forces of the campaign were

as yet unprepared; the English would be first in the field, and the

tribal remnants of the Indian nations taken in detail and succession

would be overwhelmed, intimidated, scattered, before the carefully

aggregated resources of the French expedition could be made effective

and available.

It was necessary that he should think very fast. And yet when he

spoke his words seemed quite casual, almost irrelevant. “As to Callum

MacIlvesty,” he said to Everard, “why, I hardly know what to make of

Callum! He always seemed jealous of me on account of Jock Lesly’s

beautiful daughter, Miss Lilias,--who was much too good for either of

us!” he stipulated gallantly. “But I should never have suspected Callum

of an invention like this!”

Everard looked at him keenly. This added another point in favor of his

identity as a Virginian,--his familiarity with the names of the members

of the trader’s household; another reason why his image should intrude

into the troubled delirium of the Highland soldier,--an old romance,

with heart burnings and rivalries. Little wonder that in the distorted

mental images of fever the hated figure of perhaps the fortunate suitor

should appear invested with the added opprobrium of the national enemy.

The buoyant airy grace of this figure, even in the Indian garb, the

volatile but bated aggressiveness of manner, the joyous, yet capable,

intellectual expression of face, the handsome eyes and regular features

suggested that he might appear to no contemptible advantage in the

estimation of a girl as contrasted with the grave, reserved, proud, and

exacting Highlander, with many an inherited sorrow to make him serious

and many a personal privation to make him bitter. With his youth and

strength and the natural amiability of his nature Callum could on

occasion throw off the consciousness of these weights and be merry.

But this fellow’s element was the air itself, and the necessity to be

serious was like the clipping of wings.

“Come, sir, let us have an end of this,” said Everard. “Being English

you cannot object to go to Charlestown and make your standing clear to

the authorities. I pledge my honor that you shall be put to no expense

and shall be indemnified for any financial loss you may sustain by

reason of your absence.”

“If I should agree these people would regard it as if I were taken by

force,” Laroche protested. “Your life would be the forfeit. Indeed, I

am already concerned for your safety. I cannot control the Cherokees.

You know what they are! You must admit that your errand here is futile!”

It was so contrary to Everard’s temperament to accept defeat in any

form that he could only accede metaphorically. “I’m not half blind!” he

said.

Laroche pressed the point. “The effusion of blood is threatened. You

must perceive it.”

“The knife is at my throat,” assented Everard debonairly, as if

scornful of his peril.

Laroche tried him on a more vulnerable topic. “The commissioners’ party

would never get out of the country. But to save the lives of your brave

soldiers and the civilian commissioners, who have no quarrel with any

one, if you will at once draw off your force I will use what influence

I have with Moy Toy to let you go scot-free through the country.”

The eyes of Everard were large, but the astonished white showed all

around the iris. He gasped once or twice and caught his breath,--that

the man whom he had come to arrest under the authority of the British

government and bear away captive should engage to see him clear of the

Cherokee country!

Only after many stormy wrangles with Moy Toy, however, and the other

headmen, did Laroche, secretly urging upon them the jeopardized

interests of the cession and the disastrous effects of precipitancy in

the imminent emprise of the united tribal armies, secure acquiescence

in this plan of permitting the expedition to depart in peace. It was,

nevertheless, a perilous time. The air seemed freighted with treachery.

Along the route among the Overhill towns lying on the Tennessee River,

always reputed the most warlike and implacable and powerful of the

Cherokee nation, through which they must needs pass to retrace their

way, hardly an hour elapsed in which some inimical demonstration did

not seem impending. Now the march was checked by a deputation from some

more remote town desiring to send by their hand a memorial or a present

to Governor Boone. Now a formidable group of savages, splendidly armed

and mounted, rejoicing in the terrible suspicions of sinister designs

and lurking ambuscades in force, which their presence must foster,

begged to take personal and individual leave of the notables of the

expedition.

Everard, in all his military experience, had never known such anxiety.

He could not have watched a father’s danger with more tender and

self-reproachful solicitude than he felt for the elderly civilians,

with their wrinkled countenances and bewigged heads wagging affably

under the ceremonious ordeal of parting from these friends, who might

at a wanton blow bloody the one and break the other, and account the

deed righteousness and patriotism. Alas, for the point of view!

“I can never forgive myself for extending and increasing your

jeopardy,” Everard said to them in uncharacteristic dismay one night,

as he sat with the commissioners around the camp-fire, each man with

a sort of automatic motion of looking over the shoulder at intervals,

to descry, perchance, in the shadows something more dangerous than the

green shining of a panther’s eyes or a wolf crouched ready to spring.

The sound of the sentry’s tramp, as unmolested he walked his beat hard

by, was a reassurance that naught else could bestow. “I ought to be

court-martialed, I ought to be broke, I vow and protest!”

He cared little for the military views of the polite and “lady-like

old men,” but the chorus of indignant negation that rose upon the

suggestion was as salve to a wound. He had moved with the entire

sanction of the commissioners themselves, one of them argued.

“And if the man had been that fellow Laroche or Louis Latinac, think of

the repose his capture would have insured the frontier!” exclaimed the

member of the council, the diplomat.

“Either one is worth a regiment to the French cause,” growled the basso

profundo of the geologist. “The mere chance was not to be neglected.”

“We are not required to achieve the impossible. We are all held down to

metes and bounds, course and distance,” said the surveyor.

“And the _best_ of us are subject to mistakes. Think of me,”

exclaimed Mr. Taviston, fitting together his waxen-white, knuckly

fingers and casting an aquiline smile at Everard, on one side of the

fire. “I actually sent a misdescription of a specimen to the Botanical

Society, and the mistake, when discovered--so overwhelming, so

important, so humiliating--I took to my bed!”

Lieutenant Everard did not in his contrition seek this refuge in

recumbency, but as Mr. Taviston entered upon a long, minute, and

learned account of how the error had occurred, and the exact points

of difference, and all the bewigged heads leaned together to hear, to

compare, to comment, to condole, Everard, on the pretext of visiting

the guards, which he did himself at close intervals, quitted the

group. He looked back at them once as they sat around the flare in

the darkness, oblivous for the time of danger, regardless of night,

impervious to cold, eager, agitated, curious, utterly absorbed; and

yet the point of interest, as well as he could make out, was that Mr.

Taviston had actually said by strange inadvertence _filiform_

instead of _filamentose_.