The next day when Odalie turned her face once more toward her Mecca of
home and peace she felt that she trod on air, although her shoes, ill
calculated for hard usage, had given way at last, and suffered the
thorns to pierce through the long rifts between sole and upper leather
and the stones to still further rend the gaping tatters. MacLeod would
not allow himself to comment on it even by a look, lest some
uncontrollable sympathy should force him to call a halt, now when he
felt that their lives depended on pressing forward and taking advantage
of the pacific mood of the Indian and the assumed character of French
traders to reach the English fort. Hamish, however, with a dark-eyed,
reproachful glance upbraided this apparently callous disregard, and then
addressed himself to the task of making light of the matter to Odalie in
lieu of other solace.
"_Tu ne_ ought _pas l'avoir fait_," he gravely admonished her in his
queer French. "_Tu_ ought known better, Odalie!"
"Known what better?" demanded Odalie, resenting reprimand in a very
un-squawlike fashion.
"_Marcher_ in shoes! _Mong Dew!_ _Ces souliers_ couldn't have been made
_pour marcher_ in!" he retorted, with a funny grimace.
The facial contortion seemed suddenly to anger Willinawaugh, who had
chanced to observe them; to suggest recollections that he resented, and
the reminder shared in his disfavor. He abruptly wreathed his fierce
countenance into a simulacrum of Hamish's facetious mug; he shrugged his
shoulders with a genuine French twist; and anything more incongruously
and grotesquely frightful and less amusing could hardly be imagined.
"Fonny! vely fonny! Flanzy!" he exclaimed harshly. "Balon Des
Johnnes!"[5]
His unwilling companions gazed at him with as genuine a terror as if the
devil himself had entered into him and thus expressed his presence among
them. Willinawaugh abruptly discontinued his "fonny" grimace, that had a
very ferocity of rebuke, and leaning from his horse with an expression
of repudiation, spat upon the ground. Then he began to talk about Baron
Des Johnnes and his sudden disappearance from the Cherokee Nation.
At Chote, it seemed, was this gay and facetious Frenchman, this
all-accomplished Baron Des Johnnes, who could speak seven different
Indian languages with equal facility, to say nothing of a trifle or two
such as English, Spanish, German, and French, of course!--at Chote,
City of Refuge, where, if he had shed the blood of the native Cherokee
on his own threshold, his life would have been sacred even from the
vengeance of the Indian's brother! And suddenly came the Carolina
Colonel Sumter, returning with an Indian delegation that had been to
Charlestown, and found the Frenchman here. And with Colonel Sumter was
Oconostota, king of the Cherokees, and other head-men, who had just
signed a treaty at Charlestown, promising to kill or arrest any
Frenchman discovered within the Cherokee Nation. And who so appalled as
Oconostota, to see his friend, the gay Baron Des Johnnes, lying on a
buffalo skin before the fire, smoking his pipe in the chief's own
wigwam. And when Colonel Sumter demanded his arrest Oconostota refused
and pleaded the sanctity of the place--the City of Refuge. And Baron Des
Johnnes arose very smiling and bland, and bowed very low, and reminded
Colonel Sumter that he was in Chote--Old Town!
And what said Colonel Sumter? He spoke in the English, like a wolf might
talk--"Old Town--or New Town--I'll take _you_ to Charles Town!"
And what did the Baron Des Johnnes? Not a Cherokee; not bound by the
ever-sacred laws of the City of Refuge! Although surrounded by his
friends he struck not one blow for his freedom, as man to man. He
suffered himself to be arrested, single-handed, by this wolf of a
Colonel--Colonel Sumter--saying in gentle protest, "_Mais, M'sieur!_"
"_Mais, M'sieur!_" grimaced Willinawaugh, in mimicry. Then "_Mais
M'sieur!_" he threw up both hands. "_Mais, M'sieur!_" he shrieked in
harsh derision to the unresponsive skies.
Alexander knew that the Baron Des Johnnes had been taken to Charlestown
and examined, and although nothing could be proved against him, it had
been deemed expedient to ship him off to England. Perhaps the
authorities were of opinion that a man with such conversational
facilities as eight or ten languages had best be kept where "least said,
soonest mended."
But for the repeated harsh treatment that the Cherokees sustained from
the English settlers, the ingratiating arts of the French might have
failed to find so ready a response. Sedate of manner and of a grave cast
of mind themselves, the Indians could ill tolerate the levity, the
_gaiete de coeur_, of the French, whom they pronounced "light as a
feather, fickle as the wind, and deceitful as serpents."
With this intimation of Willinawaugh's reserves of irritability the
pioneers journeyed on, a trifle more ill at ease in mind, which was an
added hardship, since their physical sufferings were intensifying with
every long mile of continued effort. They began to wonder how they,
supposed to be French, would fare when they should meet other
Cherokees, perhaps more disposed than Willinawaugh to adhere to the
terms of their treaty to kill or make prisoner every Frenchman who
should venture into the Cherokee Nation, yet on the other hand perhaps
more competent by virtue of a familiarity with the language to detect
and resent the fact that they were not of the French nationality.
Already Willinawaugh had counseled that they should go further than
Chote, to ply their trade in furs, for Chote was dangerously near the
English fort for a Frenchman; one of the Tuckaleechee towns on the Canot
River was a preferable location, and he promised to contrive to slip
them past Fort Loudon without the commandant's knowledge.
They restrained all expression of objection or discomfort and bore their
growing distresses with a fortitude that might rival the stoicism of a
savage. Only when an aside was possible, MacLeod besought his wife to
loose the burden of one of the packhorses and mount the animal herself.
She shook her head resolutely. She had already suffered grief enough for
the household stores she had left behind. To these precious remaining
possessions she clung desperately. "When I can no longer walk," she
said, with a flash in her eye which admonished him to desist.
They offered no comment on their route, although it seemed that they
had climbed the mountain two days ago for the express purpose of
descending it again, but on the eastern side. MacLeod, however, at
length realized that the Indian was following some faint trace, well
distinguishable to his skilled eye, and the difficulties of the steep
descent were rendered more tolerable by his faith in the competence of
his guide. The packhorses found it hard work filing down the sharp
declivities and sustaining the equilibrium of their burden. The chief,
with his lordly impatience and superiority to domestic concerns,
evidently fumed because of the delay they occasioned, and had he not
supposed that the contents of the bales of goods were merchandise and
trinkets to be bartered with the Indians for peltry, instead of Odalie's
slim resources of housekeeping wares,--sheets, and table-linen and
garments, and frugal supplies of flax and seeds,--he would not have
suffered the slow progress.
Through the new country below, that they had watched from the heights,
they went now, the mountains standing sentinel all around the
horizon--east and west, and north and south, sometimes nearer, sometimes
more distant; always mountains in sight, like some everlastingly
uplifting thought, luring a life to a higher plane of being. Now and
again the way wended along the bank of a river, with the steeps showing
in the waters below as well as against the sky above, and one day when
they had but recently broken their camp on its shores there shot out
from beneath an overhanging boscage of papaw trees a swift, arrowy thing
akin to a fish, akin to a bird--an Indian canoe, in which were three
braves.
The poor pioneers were exhausted with their long and swift journey;
their hearts, which had been stanch within them, could but fail with the
failure of physical strength. Their courage only sufficed to hold them
to a mute endurance of a dreadful expectation, and a suspense that set
every nerve a-quiver. The boatmen had cried out with a wild, fierce note
of surprise on perceiving the party, and the canoe was coming straight
across to the bank as fast as the winglike paddles could propel it.
Willinawaugh rode slowly down to meet them, and in contrast to the usual
impassive manners of the Indians he replied to the agitated hail in a
tone of tense and eager excitement. There ensued evidently an exchange
of news, of a nature which boded little good to the settlers. Dark anger
gathered on the brow of the chieftain as he listened when the braves had
bounded upon the bank, and more than once he cried out inarticulately
like a wild beast in pain and rage. Perhaps it is rare that a man has
such a moment in his life as Alexander experienced when one of the
savages, a ferocious brute, turned with a wild, untamed, indigenous
fury kindling in his eyes, and drawing his tomahawk from his belt smiled
fiercely upon the silent, motionless little band, his deadly racial
hatred reinforced by a thousand bitter grudges and wrongs.
Hamish's fingers trembled on his gun, but ostensibly no one moved.
Willinawaugh hastily interposed, speaking but the magic
words--"Flanzy--Flinch!" Then still in English, as if to reassure the
pioneers--"Go Chote--Old Town--buy fur!"
The hatred died out of the fierce Indian faces. The French in the South,
as has been said, had always used every art to detach the Cherokees from
the British interest, and even now the men who had abandoned Fort
Duquesne, escaping down the Ohio River, were sending emissaries up the
Tsullakee, to the Lower Towns, there finding fruitful soil in which to
sow the seeds of dissension against the English. The assertion that
these travelers were French, and the fact that by receiving persons of
this nation the Cherokees could requite with even a trivial and
diplomatic injury some faint degree of the wrong which they considered
they had sustained from the Virginians, was more than adequate to
nullify for the time the rage they felt against these pioneers as of the
white race.
With the instinct of hospitality, which is a very marked element of the
Cherokee nature, one of them signed with a free and open gesture to the
boat.
"_Beaucoup marchez!_" he said, smiling with an innocent suavity like a
child, "Svim!"
He did not mean literally "swim," and to offer them the facilities of
the Tennessee River for that purpose, although this might have been
inferred. But the pioneers understood the proffer of the canoe for the
remainder of their journey, and a deadly terror seized the heart of
Odalie as she marked the demonstrations of the others in pulling
Willinawaugh forcibly from his horse in spite of his feigned objections,
for the canoe could hold but three persons. Little choice had she,
however. Willinawaugh, maintaining the affable demeanor of a guest of
conscious distinction, was already seated in the boat, and pointed out
Alexander as his preferred companion. For once the Scotchman disregarded
the wishes of his guide, philosopher, and friend, and taking his wife by
the hand motioned to her to step over the side of the little craft.
Odalie could only look reproachfully at him; she could not contend with
her lord and master in the presence of savages--such are the privileges
of civilization! The Indians, somewhat accustomed by the talk, and on
occasion the example, of the French traders, and perhaps by traditions
from the white settlements, to the idea of the extreme value that the
paleface was wont to place on wife or daughter, scornfully marked the
instance, but beyond an expressive "Ugh!" naught was said. The child was
lifted to Odalie's arms--the cat strapped pappoose-wise to Josephine's
back and accommodating itself quiescently to the situation.
Alexander had never intended to embark Odalie and Josephine alone with
the Indians, although his will was but a slight thing, so entirely were
they now in the power of the savages; he motioned to Hamish to take the
paddle, and with the slight mixture of French and Cherokee at his
command, intimated to the apparent owner of the boat that he would
rather walk by his side and profit by his converse than to be able to
sail at will on the water like the swan there--a large and handsome
bird, who was giving the finest exhibition of that method of progression
to be easily found anywhere, with her white neck arched, her gliding
motion, and snowy breast reflected in the clear water.
And so Odalie had parted from her husband, without so much as a glance
of farewell! Perhaps he dared not look at her. So far they had come
together, and now in these wild fastnesses, among these blood-loving
fiends in the likeness of humanity, they were separated to meet
when?--where? Perchance no more. She could not--would not--leave him
thus. She would turn back at the last moment! She would go back!
She rose to her feet so precipitately that with the shifting of her
weight the canoe careened suddenly and was momentarily in danger of
capsizing with all on board. Willinawaugh glanced up with a kindling eye
and a ferocious growl. Hamish, throwing himself skillfully on the
opposite side, adroitly trimmed the boat. His look of warning,
upbraiding and yet sympathizing, steadied Odalie's nerves as she sank
back into her place. She tactfully made it appear that she had
accidentally come near to dropping the little girl from her grasp and
rising to recover her had shaken the poise of the frail craft.
Willinawaugh's mutter of dissatisfaction showed that he esteemed the
possibility no very great mischance, and set no high store on Josephine.
Now and again he eyed the cat, too, malevolently, as if he could ill
brook her mannerisms and pampered mien. Hamish had an uncomfortable idea
that the Cherokee was not familiar with animals of this kind, and that
he harbored a wonder if Kitty would not serve her best and noblest
possibilities in a savory stew. But for himself Hamish avoided the
Indian's eyes with their curious painted circles of black and white, as
much as he might, for whenever their glances met, Willinawaugh's facial
contortion to deride the "fonny" disposition he deemed a part of
Hamish's supposed French nature so daunted the boy that he bent his
head as well as his muscles to the work.
That day was like a dream to Odalie, and, indeed, from the incongruity
of her mental images she hardly knew whether she was sleeping or waking.
One moment it seemed to her that she was in Carolina, in the new frame
mansion that she had always thought so fine, sitting on the arm of her
grandmother's chair, with her dark hair against the white locks and the
snowy cap, while she babbled, in the sweet household patois of French
children that has no lexicon, and no rules, and is handed down from one
generation to another, her girlish hopes, and plans, and anxieties, to
find the grandmother's fine, old, deft hand smooth all the difficulties
away and make life easy, and hope possible, and trouble a mere shadow.
Alas! that brightening perspective of the colonial garden, where the
jasmine, gold and white, clung to the tall trellises, and the clove
gillyflower, and the lilies and roses grew in the borders in the broad
suffusions of the sunshine, was metamorphosed to the wide spread of the
Tennessee River, with the noon-day blaze on its burnished expanse of
ripples; and grand'maman had long since ceased her ministry of soothing
and consolation, and found her own comfort in the peace and quiet of the
grave. And ere Odalie could suffer more than a pang to realize that she
was so far from that grave, her head drooped once more--she was asleep.
No; she was awake, awake and splendid in a white dress, her beautiful
bridal dress in which she had looked a very queen, with her
grand'maman's pearl necklace, itself an heirloom, about her white
throat. And so, standing at the altar of the little church with
Alexander, and much light about her, and a white dress, oh, very
white--and suddenly! all the church is stricken to darkness. No; there
is light again!
It was a flash from a thunder cloud, reflected in sinister, forked lines
in the Tennessee River, so that they seemed in the very midst of the
lightning, until it vanished into the darkness of a lowering black sky,
that overhung the water and made all the woods appear bleak and
leafless, though here and there still a red tree blazed. The world was
drearier for these grim portents of storm, for all the way hitherto fair
weather had smiled upon their progress. Still she could not heed--she
did not care even when the rain came down and pitilessly beat upon her
white face; she did not know when Fifine crept under the shawl which
Hamish threw around her, and that the frightened little girl held to her
tight with both arms around her waist, while the pioneer cat very
discreetly nestled down in the basket on Josephine's back. She was not
roused even by loud voices when later a pettiaugre, a much larger boat
than theirs, pulled alongside with eight or ten warriors and remained in
close and unremitting conversation with Willinawaugh for several miles.
Poor Hamish could hardly sustain himself. He felt practically alone.
Odalie was, he thought, on the verge of death from exhaustion and
realized naught of her surroundings. His brother had been left in these
wild woods with a party of savages, who were as likely to murder him for
a whim or for the treasures of the bales which the packhorses carried,
as to respect the safe conduct of Willinawaugh and the supposed
character of French traders. This, Hamish was aware, hardly sufficed
now, so unrestrained was the ferocity of the glances cast upon them by
the Indians in the pettiaugre alongside--so like the glare of a savage
catamount, ready to leap upon its prey and yet with a joyance in its
ferocity, as if this rage were not the pain of anger but the pleasure of
it.
What subtle influence roused Odalie at last she could hardly have said;
perhaps the irresistible torpor of exhaustion had in some sort recruited
her faculties. The storm was gone, unseasonable and transient, and only
a broken remnant of its clouds hung about the western mountains. Toward
the east the sky was clear and a dull fluctuation of sunset, alternating
with shadow, was on the landscape. As a sudden suffusion of this broad,
low, dusky glare lay upon the scene for a moment, she saw against the
dark blue Chilhowee Mountain in the middle distance something glimmering
and waving, and as she strained her eyes it suddenly floated broadly
forth to the breeze,--the blended cross of St. George and St. Andrew
blazoned on the British flag.
In one moment she was strong again; alert, watchful, brave, despite that
boat close alongside and the alternate questions and remonstrances of
the fierce and cruel Indians. One of them, the light of a close and fine
discernment in his savage features, was contending that Willinawaugh was
deceived; that these were no French people; that the cast of the face of
the "young dog" was English; he looked like the Virginia settlers and
hunters; even like the men at the fort.
Willinawaugh had the air of deigning much to consider the plea that the
other Indians preferred. He only argued astutely that they all spoke
French among themselves,--man, boy, squaw, and pappoose. They showed
gratitude when he had promised them that they should not be obliged to
pass the English fort and risk the chance of detection. He intended to
slip them up the Tellico River where it flows into the Tennessee a mile
on the hither side of the fort and thence make their way to a remoter
Indian town than Chote.
The skeptical Cherokee, Savanukah, immediately asserted boastfully that
he spoke "Flinch" himself and would test the nationality of the boy.
Hamish had never had great scholastic advantages and had sturdily
resisted those that Odalie would have given him. He remembered with
despair the long lines of French verbs in the little dog's-eared green
book that all her prettiest sisterly arts could never induce him to
learn to conjugate. Why should he ever need more talking appliance than
he already possessed, he used to argue. He could tell all he knew, and
more besides, in the somewhat limited English vocabulary at his command.
"Parlez vous? Parlez, fou!" he was wont to exclaim, feeling very clever.
How should he have dreamed that Odalie's little _Vocabulaire Francais_
would be more efficacious to save his life than his rifle and his deadly
aim?
[Illustration: "The canoe rocked in the swirls."]
He looked toward her once more in his despair. The boats were now among
a series of obstructions formed by floating debris of a recent
storm,--many branches of trees, here and there a bole itself, uprooted
and flung into the river by the violence of the tempest,--which
necessitated careful steering and paddling and watching the current to
take them through safely. It threw the two boats apart for a space,
prolonging Hamish's suspense, yet serving as a reprieve to the ordeal of
his examination as to his proficiency in the French language by the
erudite Cherokee. The canoe rocked in the swirls, and although
Willinawaugh sat still in stately impassiveness, Odalie and Fifine clung
to the gunwale. Hamish's eyes met Odalie's, which were clear, liquidly
bright, as if fired with some delightful anticipation, and yet weary and
feverishly eager. Oh, this was delirium! She did not realize her
surroundings; her intelligence was gone! His poor young heart swelled
nearly to bursting as he turned back with aching arms and dazzled eyes
and throbbing, feverish pulses to the careful balancing of the paddle,
for Willinawaugh was an exacting coxswain. Hamish could not know what
vision had been vouchsafed to Odalie in the midst of the gloomy woods
while the other Indians and Willinawaugh had wrangled and he had hung
absorbed upon their words as on the decrees of fate. Even she at first
had deemed it but hallucination, the figment of some fever of the
brain--this had been a day of dreams! Yet there it had stood on the
river bank with the primeval woods around it, with the red sunset
amongst the clouds above it, with the sunset below it, reflected in the
current of the river, full of sheen and full of shadow,--a figure, a
hunter, looking out at the boats; a white man,--a man she had never
before seen.
How he stared! She dared make no signal of distress. She only turned
her head that she might look back covertly with a face full of meaning.
The next moment she saw him mount his horse in the buffalo path in the
cane-brake and gallop off at a breakneck speed.
But was she sure--had she seen aught, she asked herself, tremulously.
For it had been a day of dreams--it had been a day of dreams! And the
confluence of the Tellico River with the Tennessee might be so
hopelessly near!
The progress of both boats was very slow now, upstream against the
current and the debris of the storm; even the crew of Indian braves
needed to pull with vigor to make the clear water again. When this was
reached they rested motionless, the duplication of the pettiaugre and
the feather headdress of the Cherokees as clearly pictured in the
bright, still reaches of the river as above in the medium of the air
between sunset and dusk.
They were all looking back, all commenting on Hamish's slow progress. He
had the current and his exhaustion both against him, and the most
earnest and well-equipped postulant of culture would hardly be eager to
go to an examination in the French language when his life was to be the
forfeit of failure. The sound of the river was loud on the evening air;
a wind was astir on either bank,--a pillaging force, rifling the forest
of the few leaves it might still treasure; now and then a scurrying
cloud of them fled before the blast against the sky; the evening had
grown chill; the boy felt its dank depression in every nerve despite the
drops of perspiration that stood upon his brow as he too paddled into
the clear water. He held the boat stationary by a great effort.
He had come to the end. He could strive no more. He saw Savanukah rise
up in the pettiaugre, looking toward him. The next moment the savage
turned his head. There was an alien sound upon the air, so close at hand
that despite the fret and turmoil of the water, the blare of the wild
wind, the tumultuous clashing together of the bare boughs in the black
forest, it arrested the attention. Once more it asserted itself against
the tumult, and then Hamish, his head spinning around until he thought
that the canoe had broken loose from his mechanical plying of the
paddle, recognized the regular rhythmical dash of oars.