In the next instant from beyond a curve in the river a boat shot into
the current,--a large row-boat, manned by twelve red-coated soldiers,
bending to the oars, whose steady strokes sent the craft down the stream
with the speed, it seemed, of a meteor.
They were alongside and a non-commissioned officer was in diplomatic
converse with Willinawaugh before Hamish had regained possession of his
faculties. Very diplomatic was the conference, for the corporal had his
pacific orders and Willinawaugh was burdened with the grave anxiety to
make the facts conform at once to the probabilities, yet sustain the
impeccability of his own conduct. A little network of wrinkles, almost
like a visible mesh, gathered at the corners of his eyes and gave token
of his grave cogitation.
The corporal, a dark-haired, blue-eyed, florid young Irishman, looking
very stanch and direct and steady, but not without a twinkle of humor
which betokened some histrionic capacity to support the situation,
speaking partly in English and partly, glibly enough, in very tolerable
Cherokee, although incongruously embellished with an Irish brogue,
detailed that Captain Stuart had been apprised that there was a band of
Indians on the river who had some white people with them, and he wished
to know if these white people were French, in which case, according to
the treaty made with the Cherokees, they must be arrested and delivered
up to the commandant of the fort, or if English, he wished to be assured
that they were at liberty to go where they pleased, and were under no
restraint.
As the officer concluded, having bowed to Odalie with much politeness,
considering he was not yet informed as to whether she were of a party of
French emissaries, forever sowing dissension amongst the Cherokee allies
of the English, he drew himself up very erect, with a complacent mien.
He was conscious of being a fine-looking fellow, and he had not seen so
handsome a young woman of her evident position in life for a month of
Sundays. Nevertheless he kept one eye on Willinawaugh, who was also
eminently worthy of his respectful attention.
"Ingliss--all Ingliss," said the chief, unexpectedly.
The Indians in the pettiaugre, listening attentively, gave no sign of
surprise upon this statement, so at variance with the warrior's previous
representations. His ruse to shield the travelers now by declaring them
English shielded himself as well, for being a chief and head-man he
could hardly find a plausible subterfuge to cloak his playing the _role_
of guide, philosopher, and friend to people of a nation so obnoxious to
his English allies, and establishing them in the very heart of the
Cherokee nation, contrary to its many solemn obligations and treaties.
After a moment's further reflection, Willinawaugh said again with
emphasis, "Ingliss, Ingliss." Perhaps he did not desire to avail himself
of the added fluency of explanation which the Cherokee language would
have afforded him, and which Corporal O'Flynn evidently understood. "Go
Chote--Old Town. Buy fur--man--packhorse," he added, pointing across the
woods in the direction in which Alexander MacLeod was presumably still
wearily tramping.
The corporal for the moment forgot how good-looking he was. He
concentrated his whole attention on Willinawaugh's disingenuous
countenance, and then turned and cast a long, searching look upon
Odalie. The eyes that met his own were swimming in tears, and with an
expression of pleading insistence that fairly wrung his heart, although
he hardly understood it. If she were English, why then she was free as
the air. If French--well, bedad, thin, Corporal O'Flynn wished himself
at the bottom of the Tennessee River, for a French lady in grief and
under arrest had no right to be so good-looking at all, at all. Here was
something wrong, he could but perceive, and yet because of
Willinawaugh's diplomacy he could not fix upon it.
"What's your name, my lad?" he said abruptly to Hamish.
Hamish had his eyes on the water. His fortitude, too, had given way in
the sudden relaxation of the strain of suspense. He could not, would
not, lift his face and let that boat's crew of stalwart soldiers resting
on their oars, the two ranks gazing at him, see the tears in his eyes.
"Hamish MacLeod," he made shift to say, and could say no more.
"A good English name, bedad, for a Scotch one, and an English accent,"
Corporal O'Flynn mentally commented, as he looked curiously at the boy,
standing with downcast face, mechanically handling the paddle.
"Now by the powers," said the young soldier to himself with sudden
resolution, "Captain Stuart may undertake the unraveling o' this tangle
himself."
"English!" he exclaimed aloud. Then with much courtesy of manner,
"Captain Stuart desires his compliments, and begs the English party to
do him the honor to lie at Fort Loudon to-night and pursue their
journey at their convanience." He glanced up at the sky. "It grows late
and there are catamounts out, an' other bletherin' bastes, an' their
howlin' might frighten the leddy."
Odalie, remembering the real dangers that had beset her and catching his
serious, unconscious glance as he animadverted on the possibly
terrifying vocalizations, burst into momentary laughter, and then into a
torrent of tears.
At which the corporal, the boat's crew, and the Indian braves gazed at
her in blank astonishment. Hysterics were a new importation on the
frontier. She controlled with an effort her tendency to laugh, but still
wept with the profusion of exhaustion and nervous tension.
Willinawaugh's eyes were fixed on her with deep displeasure. "Ugh!" he
grunted from time to time. "Ugh!"
"Oh, there's bloody murder here, if one could but chance upon the
carpse," said the corporal to himself, looking bewildered from her to
the boy.
And now was demonstrated the fact that although the corporal had but the
slightest bit of a brogue in the world, there was a twist in his tongue
which showed that he had at some time in his career made a practice of
kissing the "Blarney Stone" and was as Irish as County Clare.
"Of course Captain Stuart couldn't have known that his valued friend,
the great chief, Willinawaugh, was to be passing with the English party,
but, sure, he would take it mighty ill if the chief did not stop over,
too, and lie at the fort to-night,--an' he so seldom up from Toquoe!
Captain Demere, too, will expect the great chief. My word on't, he
will."
Now Willinawaugh, an epitome of craft, had no idea of adventuring with
his supposed French friends, whom he had endeavored to pass off as
English, into the British stronghold, for he doubted their capacity to
sustain their character of compatriots; he had no means of judging of
their knowledge of the English language and how soon their ignorance
might betray them. Since the ruse he had adopted had evidently not
sufficed to evade the enforced stoppage at Fort Loudon, he had
relinquished the intention to take them on past Chote to some other of
the Overhill towns, and let them establish themselves as French traders.
He feared that were they once inside the walls of Fort Loudon this
design against the agreement with his allies would become transparent.
To be sure, it must be soon elucidated, but Willinawaugh was determined
to be far away by that time, and, moreover, he could send a "talk"
(letter) to Captain Stuart, whose good opinion he greatly coveted, to
say that the French trader had deceived him and made him believe that
the party was English. At the same time he was too wary to venture into
his valued friend's power with this fresh grievance and with stormy
times for the two peoples evidently in prospect.
But he was flattered, infinitely flattered, as indeed who would not have
been, by Corporal O'Flynn's tone and expression of ingenuous eyes and
respectful word of mouth. Willinawaugh was glad to have these Chote
Cherokees see how highly he was esteemed--he was indeed a great warrior
and a "Big Injun" of exclusive privilege. The invitation in no wise was
to be extended to the others to pass the night at Fort Loudon--not even
to Savanukah, a chief himself, who spoke French!
Corporal O'Flynn was now going over in his mind how Willinawaugh might
best be insulated, so to speak, that he might not have means to fire the
barracks, should that enterprise suggest itself to his fertile brain, or
find a way to open the gates, or otherwise afford ingress to
confederates without; how to lock him in, and yet not seem to treat him
as a prisoner; to leave him at liberty, and yet free to do nothing but
that which his hosts should please. All such complicated and
contradictory details did Corporal O'Flynn deem himself capable of
reconciling--but one such subject was enough. Unfortunately for the
triumphant elucidation of these puzzling problems, Willinawaugh, with
dignity and a certain gruffness; yet now and again a flicker of covert
smile as if to himself, declined to partake of Captain Stuart's
hospitality. He had a mission to the head-men of Chote which would not
brook delay. Yet he had a message to leave for the English officer. He
desired to tell Captain Stuart that he often thought of him! Whenever he
heard tales of famous warriors, of British generals, he thought of
_him_! He considered these fighting men brave and noble, when he learned
of their splendid deeds in battle; and then again, they were as naught
in his mind,--for he had once more thought of the great Captain Stuart!
The corporal, listening attentively to pick out the meaning of Cherokee
and English, made a low bow in behalf of Captain Stuart, with a
flourishing wave of his hat.
"I'll bear yer message, sir, and a proud man Captain Stuart ought to be
the day! An those jontlemen,"--he glanced at the pettiaugre full of
Indians,--"be so good as to ask them to lead the way."
Then he added in an undertone to his own men, "I am glad on't. I don't
want the responsibility of takin' care of the baste. I might be accused
of kidnapin' the craythure if anythin' was to happen to 'm,--though as
to kids, he's more like the old original Billy-goat o' the whole
worruld!"
Corporal O'Flynn cast the eye of a disciplinarian about him. It was one
of the rules of the tyranny he practiced, thus remote from civilization,
that however jocose he might be not a trace of responsive merriment must
decorate the faces of the men. They were all now, as was meet, grave and
wooden. At the orders in his clear, ringing voice--"Let fall!" and the
oars struck the water with emphasis, "Give way!"--Odalie's tears must
needs flow anew. She gazed at the dozen fresh, florid young faces, as
the boat swung round and they came once more near the canoe, as if they
were a vision of saints vouchsafed to some poor groping, distraught
spirit,--when they were far indeed from being saints, though good enough
in their way, too! They all looked with unconscious sympathy at her as
she sat and wept and looked at them, and Corporal O'Flynn, moved by the
tears, exclaimed below his breath, "But, be jabbers, afther all, what's
the good of 'em now--better have been cryin' yesterday, or mebbe the day
before. Back oars! Now--now! Give way!"
He was the last in the little fleet, and Hamish paddled briskly now to
keep ahead, as he was evidently expected to do, for Corporal O'Flynn
intended that his own boat should bring up the rear. As they fared thus
along, Odalie noted the inflowing of that tributary, the Tellico
River--how solitary, how remote, how possible its loneliness had
rendered the scheme of Willinawaugh. Some distance beyond appeared a
settler's cabin in an oasis of cultivated land in the midst of the dense
cane-brake; then others, now dull and dusky in the blue twilight, with
the afterglow of the sunset redly aflare above in the amber sky and
below in the gray and glimmering water; now with a lucent yellow flicker
from the wide-open door gemming the night with the scintillations of the
hearthstone, set like a jewel in the center of the wilderness; now
sending forth a babbling of childish voices where the roof-tree had been
planted close by the river-side and the passing of the boats had drawn
all the household to the brink. How many they seemed--these cabins of
the adventurous pioneers! How many happy homes--alas, that there should
ever be cause to cry it were better for them had they never been!
Odalie began to realize that she owed her liberty and perhaps her life
to the first of these settlers who had espied the craft upon the river;
as she marked the many windings and tortuous curves of the stream she
understood that he must have galloped along some straight, direct route
to the fort to acquaint the officers with the suspicious aspect of the
Indian party and their white captives. As to the tremendous speed the
commandant's boat had made to their rescue,--she blessed anew those
reckless young saints who had plied the oars with such fervent effort,
which, however, could hardly have effected such speed had it not been
too for the swift current running in their favor.
Suddenly the fort came into view--stanch, grim, massive, with the great
red-clay exterior slopes and the sharp points of the high palisades on
the rampart distinct in the blue twilight. It was very different from
the stockaded stations of the early settlers with which she had been
familiar. This fort had been erected by the British government, and was
a work of very considerable strength and admirably calculated for
defensive purposes, not only against the subtle designs of the Indians
but against possible artillery attacks of the French. There were heavy
bastions at the angles and within each a substantial block-house, the
upper story built with projections beyond the lower, that would not only
aid the advantage which the bastions gave of a flanking fire upon an
assailant, but enable a watch to be maintained at all times and from all
quarters upon the base of the wooden stockade on the rampart lest an
enemy passing the glacis should seek to fire the palisades. But this was
in itself well-nigh impracticable. Strong fraises, defending both scarp
and counterscarp, prevented approach. The whole was guarded by twelve
cannon, grimly pointed from embrasures, and very reassuring their black
muzzles looked to one who hoped to ply the arts of peace beneath the
protection of their threat of war. Even the great gates were defended,
being so thickly studded with iron spikes that not an inch of the wood
was left uncovered. They were broadly aflare now, and a trifle in
advance of the sentry at the entrance two officers were standing,
brilliant with their red coats and cocked hats. They were gazing with a
certain curiosity at the boats on the river, for Corporal O'Flynn,
having pressed forward and landed first, had left his men resting on
their oars and taken his way into the presence of his superior officers
to make his report. He had paused for half a dozen words with Hamish
MacLeod as the boat passed the canoe, and when Odalie and the boy, with
a couple of soldiers at either side maintaining the aspect of a guard,
came up the gentle ascent at a slower pace, Captain Stuart was already
fully apprised of their long and perilous flight from Virginia. He stood
awaiting their approach,--a tall man of about twenty-eight years of age,
bluff and smiling, with dense light-brown hair braided in a broad, heavy
queue and tied with a black ribbon. He had a fair complexion,
considerably sun-burned, strong white teeth with a wide arch of the jaw,
and he regarded her with keen steel-blue eyes, steady and unfathomable,
yet withal pleasant. He took off his hat and cordially held out his
hand. Odalie could do naught but clasp it in both her cold hands and
shed tears over it, mute and trembling.
With that ready tact which always distinguished him, Captain Stuart
broke the tension of the situation.
"Do you wish to enlist, Mrs. MacLeod?" he said, his smile showing a
glimpse of his white teeth. "His majesty, the king, has need of
stout-hearted soldiers. And I will take my oath I never saw a braver
one!"
And Odalie broke into laughter to blend with her tears, because she
divined that it was with the intention of passing on a difficulty that
he not ungracefully transferred her hands to the officer standing near
with the words, "I have the pleasure of presenting Captain Demere."
However capable Captain Stuart might be of dealing with savages, he
evidently shrank from the ordeal of being wept over and thanked by a
woman.
He has been described by a contemporary historian as "an officer of
great address and sagacity," and although he may have demonstrated these
qualities on more conspicuous occasions, they were never more definite
than in thus securing his escape from feminine tearfulness.
Captain Demere was of a graver aspect. He heard without impatience her
wild insistence that the whole available force of the fort should turn
out and scour the wilderness for her husband--he even argued the matter.
It would be impossible to find Mr. MacLeod at night and the effort might
cost him his life. "So marked a demonstration of a military nature would
alarm the Indians and precipitate an outbreak which we have some reason
to expect. If he does not appear by daylight, the hunters of the fort
who always go out shall take that direction and scout the woods. Rest
assured everything shall be done which is possible."
She felt that she must needs be content with this, and as it had been
through the intervention of the officers that she and Hamish and Fifine
were set free, it did not lie in her mouth to doubt their wisdom in such
matters, or their capacity to save her husband. Looking back to the
river, as upon a phase of her life already terminated, she saw the canoe
in which she had spent this troublous day already beginning to push out
upon the broad current. Willinawaugh, with an Indian from the other crew
to paddle the craft, had eluded Captain Stuart, who had reached the
water's edge too late for a word with him, and who stood upon the bank,
an effective martial figure, and blandly waved his hand in farewell,
with a jovial outcry, "_Canawlla! Canawlla!_"[C]
The features of the chief were slightly corrugated with those fine lines
of diplomatic thought, and even at this distance he muttered the last
word he had spoken to the corporal as he swiftly got away from
him--"Ingliss!" he said again. "All Ingliss!"
As Odalie turned, the interior of the fort was before her; the broad
parade, the lines of barracks, the heavy, looming block-houses, the
great red-clay wall encircling all, and the high, strong palisades that
even surmounted the rampart. It gave her momentarily the sensation, as
she stood in its shadow, of being down in a populous and very secure
well. There was a pervasive sentiment of good cheer; here and there the
flicker of firelight fluctuated from an open door. Supper was either in
progress or just over, and savory odors gushed out into the air. The
champing of horses and now and then a glad whinny betokened that the
corn-bin was open in the stables somewhere in the dusk. She felt as if
the wilderness was a dream, for surely all this cordial scene of warmth,
and light, and cheer, and activity, could not have existed while she
wandered yonder, so forlorn, and desolate, and endangered; in pity of
it,--surely it was a dream! Now and again groups of fresh-faced soldiers
passed, most of them in full uniform, for there had been a great dress
parade during the afternoon, perhaps to impress the Indians with the
resources and military strength of the fort; perhaps to attach them by
affording that spectacular display, so new to all their experience, so
imposing and splendid. Some of the savage visitors lingered, wistful,
loath to depart, and were being hustled carefully out of the place by a
very vigilant guard, who had kept them under surveillance as a special
charge all the afternoon. A few soldiers of the post coming in laden
with game wore the buckskin leggings, shirt, and coonskin cap usual
among the settlers, for it had been bitterly demonstrated that the
thorns of the trackless wilderness had no sort of reverence for the
texture of the king's red coat.
Even the cat realized the transition to the demesne of civilization and
in some sort the wonted domestic atmosphere. She suddenly gave an
able-bodied wriggle in the basket on Josephine's back where she had
journeyed, pappoose-wise, sprang alertly out, and scampered, tail up and
waving aloft, across the parade. Josephine's shriek of despair rang
shrilly on the air, and Captain Demere himself made a lunge at the
animal, as she sped swiftly past, with a seductive cry of "Puss! puss!"
A young soldier hard by faced about alertly and gave nimble chase; the
cry of "Puss! puss!" going up on all sides brought out half a dozen
supple young runners from every direction, but Kitty, having lost none
of the elasticity of her muscles during her late inaction, darted
hither and thither amongst her military pursuers, eluded them all, and
scampering up the rampart, thence scaled the stockade and there began to
walk coolly along the pointed eminence of this lofty structure as if it
were a backyard fence, while the soldier boys cheered her from below. In
this jovial demonstration poor Josephine's wailing whimper of despair
and desertion was overborne, and with that juvenile disposition to force
the recognition and a share of her woe on her elders she forthwith lost
the use of her feet, and was half dragged, rather than led, by poor
Odalie, who surely was not calculated to support any added burden. She
herself, with halting step, followed Captain Demere across the parade to
a salient angle of the enclosure, wherein stood one of the block-houses,
very secure of aspect, the formidable, beetling upper story jutting out
above the open door, from which flowed into the dusky parade a great
gush of golden light. Josephine's whimper was suddenly strangled in her
throat and the tears stood still on her cheeks, for as Captain Demere
stepped aside at the door with a recollection of polite society,
yielding precedence to the ladies, which formality Odalie marveled to
find surviving in these rude times so far on the frontier, Josephine
seemed resolved into a stare of dumb amazement, for she had never seen a
room half so fine. Be it remembered she was born in the backwoods and
had no faint recollection of such refinement and elegances as the
colonial civilization had attained on the Carolina coast, and which her
father and mother had relinquished to follow their fortunes to the West.
And in truth the officers' mess-hall presented a brave barbaric effect
that had a sort of splendor all its own. It was a large room, entered
through the gorge of the bastion, and its deep chimney-place, in the
recesses of which a great fire burned with a searchingly illuminating
flare, was ample enough to afford a substantial settee on either hand
without impinging on the roomy hearth of flagstones that joined the
puncheons of the floor. Around the log walls the suffusion of light
revealed a projecting line of deer antlers and the horns of buffalo and
elk, partly intended as decoration and trophies of the chase, and partly
for utilitarian purposes. Here and there a firelock lay from one to
another, or a powder-horn or brace of pistols swung. A glittering knife
and now and again a tomahawk caught the reflection of the fire and
bespoke trophies of less peaceful pursuit. Over the mantel-shelf a
spreading pair of gigantic antlers held suspended a memento evidently
more highly cherished,--a sword in its sheath, but showing a richly
chased hilt, which Odalie divined was a presentation in recognition of
special service. Other and humbler gifts were suggested in the long
Indian pipes, with bowls of deftly wrought stone; and tobacco-bags and
shot-pouches beaded with intricate patterns; and belts of wampum and
gorgeous moccasons; and bows and arrows with finely chiseled flint-heads
winged with gayly colored feathers--all hanging from antlers on either
side, which, though smaller than the central pair, were still large
enough to have stretched with surprise more sophisticated eyes than
Fifine's. The variegated tints of the stained quills and shells with
which a splendid curious scarlet quiver was embroidered, caught Odalie's
attention, and reminded her of what she had heard in Carolina of the
great influence which this Captain Stuart had acquired among the
Indians, and the extraordinary admiration that they entertained for him.
These tokens of Aboriginal art were all, she doubted not, little
offerings of the chieftains to attest good-will, for if they had been
merely bought with money they would not have been so proudly displayed.
There was a continual fluttering movement in the draught from the
loop-holes and open door, and lifting her eyes she noted the swaying
folds of several banners against the wall, carrying the flare of color
to the ceiling, which was formed only by the rude floor of the room
above.
But in all the medley her feminine eye did not fail to perceive high up
and withdrawn from ordinary notice, a lady's silk riding-mask such as
was used in sophisticated regions at the period to protect the
complexion on a journey,--dainty, fresh, of a garnet hue with a black
lace frill, evidently treasured, yet expressively null. And this was
doubtless all that was left of some spent romance, a mere memory in the
rude military life on the far frontier, barely suggesting a fair and
distant face and eyes that looked forth on scenes more suave.
With a sentiment of deep respect Odalie observed the six or eight
arm-chairs of a rude and untoward manufacture, which were ranged about
the hearth, draped, however, to real luxury by wolfskins, for the early
settlers chiefly affected rough stools or billets of wood as seats, or
benches made of puncheons with a couple of auger-holes at each end,
through which four stout sticks were adjusted for legs, which were
indeed often of unequal length and gave the unquiet juvenile pioneer of
that day a peculiarly acceptable opportunity for cheerily jouncing to
and fro. There were several of these benches, too, but placed back
against the walls, for the purpose she supposed of affording seats when
the festive board was spread at length. An absolute board, this
figurative expression implied, for the stern fact set forth a half dozen
puncheons secured together with cleats and laid across trestles when in
use, but at other times placed against the wall beside the ladder which
gave access to the room above. The table was now in the center of the
floor, spread with some hasty refreshments, of which Captain Demere
invited the forlorn travelers to partake. At the other end lay a
draughtsman's board, a Gunter's scale, a pair of dividers and other
materials, where he had been trying to reduce to paper and topographical
decorum for transference to an official report a map of the region which
Rayetaeh, a chief from Toquoe, who had visited the fort that afternoon,
had drawn on the sand of the parade ground with a flint-headed arrow.
The officer had found this no slight task, for Rayetaeh was prone to
measure distance by the time required to traverse it--"two warriors, a
canoe, and one moon" very definitely meaning a month's journey by
watercourse, but requiring some actively minute calculation to bring the
space in question to the proportional scale. Rayetaeh might be
considered the earliest cartographer of this region, and some of his
maps, copied from the sand, are extant to this day. Captain Demere laid
the papers of this unfinished task carefully aside, and by way of giving
his hospitality more grace took the head of the table himself.
But Odalie could not eat, and wept steadily on as if for the purpose of
salting her food with tears, and Fifine's hunger seemed appeased by the
feast of her eyes. Now and again her head in its little white mob-cap
turned actively about, and she seemed as if she might have entered upon
a series of questions save for the multiplicity of objects that
enthralled her attention at once. Captain Demere desisted from
insistence after one or two well-meant efforts, and the man who had
served the table waited in doubt and indecision.
"It's a hard life for women on the frontier," the officer observed as if
in polite excuse for Odalie's ill-mannered tears that she could not
control.
"And for men," she sobbed, thinking of Alexander and marveling if the
Indians would carry him on without resistance to Chote,--for he could
not know she had found lodgement in the fort,--or further still and
enslave him--many captives had lived for years in Indian tribes--she had
heard of this even in Carolina; or would they murder him in some
trifling quarrel or on the discovery of his nationality or to make
easier the robbery of the packhorses. Ah, why had she brought so much;
why had she hampered their flight and risked their lives for these
paltry belongings, treasures to the Indians, worth the shedding of much
blood? How could she have sacrificed to these bits of household gear
even her own comfort! She remembered, with an infinite yet futile wish
to recall the moment, how eagerly Sandy had urged the abandonment of
these poor possessions, that she might herself mount the horse and ease
her bleeding and torn feet. Is every woman an idolater at heart, Odalie
wondered. Do they all bow down, in the verity of their inner worship, to
a few fibers of woven stuff and some poor fashioning of potter's clay,
and make these feeble, trivial things their gods? It seemed so to her.
She had bled for the things she had brought through the wilderness. She
had wept for others that she had left. And if for such gear Sandy had
come to grief--"I wonder--I wonder if I could find a pretext to care for
them still!"
But she only said aloud, with a strong effort to control her attention,
"And for men, too."
"Men must needs follow when duty leads the way," said Captain Demere, a
trifle priggishly.
Odalie, trying to seem interested, demanded, lifting her eyes, "And what
do women follow?"
If Captain Demere had said what he truly thought, he would have
answered:--
"Folly! their own and that of their husbands!"
He had had close observation of the fact that the pioneers gave heavy
hostages to fate in their wives and children, and a terrible advantage
to a savage foe, and the very bravery of so many of these noble
helpmeets only proved the value of all they risked. He could not
elaborate, however, any scheme by which a new country should be entered
first by the settlers aided by a strong occupancy of soldiery, and only
when the lands should be cleared and the savages expelled the women and
children venture forth. So he said:--
"They follow their destiny."
He had a smile in his eyes as if appealing to her clemency not to tax
him with ascribing a humbler motive to the women than to the men, as he
was only making talk and spoke from a natural deprecation of dangers to
non-combatants who of right should be exempt from peril. His eyes, which
were large, were of a color between gray and brown--darker than the one
and lighter than the other. His hair was brown and smooth; he was
slender and tall; his aquiline nose and finely cut lips gave a certain
cast of distinction to his face, although the temples were slightly
sunken and the thinness of his cheek revealed the outline of the jaw and
chin which showed determination and force, despite his mild expression
at present. Josephine fixed an amazed stare upon his polished shoes as
he crossed his legs, never having seen any men's foot-gear save a buskin
of deer hide.
"The men have a natural interest in warfare," suggested Odalie,
forlornly, seeking to be responsive to his conversational efforts.
"Warfare!" exclaimed Captain Demere, with sudden animation. "Contention
with savages is not warfare! It cannot be conducted on a single
recognized military principle." He went on to say that all military
tactics counted for naught; the merely mechanical methods of moving
bodies of troops were unavailable. Discipline, the dexterities of
strategy, an enlightened courage, and the tremendous force of _esprit de
corps_ were alike nullified.
The problem of Indian fighting in America was then far greater than it
has been since the scene has shifted to the plains, the densely wooded
character of the tangled wilderness affording peculiar advantage to the
skulking individual methods of the savage and embarrassing inconceivably
the more cumbrous evolutions of organized bodies. But long before
Captain Demere's time, and often since, the futility of opposing regular
scientific tactics to the alert wiles of the savage native in his own
difficult country has been commented upon by observers of military
methods, and doubtless recognized in the hard knocks of experience by
those whose fate it has been to try again the experiment.[6]
"As to military ethics," he added, "to induce the Indian to accept and
abide by the principles governing civilized warfare seems an
impossibility. He cannot be constrained for a pledge of honor to forego
an advantage. He will not respect his parole. He continually violates
and sets at naught the provisions of his solemn treaty."
Odalie would not ask if the white man never broke faith with the red--if
the Indian had not been taught by example near at hand of what brittle
stuff a treaty was made. It was not worth while to reason logically with
a mere man, she said to herself, with a little secret sentiment of
derision, which served to lighten a trifle the gloom of her mental
atmosphere, and since she could not eat and little backwoods Fifine's
eyes had absorbed her appetite, it was just as well that Hamish, who had
been greatly interested in being shown over the fort by the jolly
Corporal O'Flynn, appeared at the door with the intelligence that their
quarters were assigned them. The courteous Captain Demere handed her to
the door, and she stepped out from the bizarre decorated mess-hall into
the dark night, with the stars showing a chill scintillation as of the
approach of winter in their white glitter high in the sky, and the
looming bastion close at hand. The barracks were silent; "tattoo" had
just sounded; the great gates were closed, and the high walls shut off
the world from the deserted parade.
Naught was audible in all the night save the measured tread of a sentry
walking his beat, and further away, seeming an echo, the step of
another sentinel, while out in the wilderness the scream of a wildcat
came shrilly on the wind from the darkness where Alexander roamed with
savage beasts and still more savage men far from the sweet security so
trebly protected here.
Not even the flare of another big homelike fire in the cabin assigned to
her could efface the impression of the bleak and dark loneliness outside
the walls of the fort, and when the three were together, untrammeled by
the presence of others, they were free to indulge their grief and their
awful terror for husband and brother and father. They could not speak of
it, but they sat down on a buffalo rug spread before the fire, and all
three wept for the unuttered thought. The suspense, the separation of
the little party, seemed unbearable. They felt that they might better
have endured anything had they been together. Perhaps it was well for
the elder two that their attention was diverted now and again by the
effort to console Fifine in a minor distress, for with the ill-adjusted
sense of proportion peculiar to childhood she had begun to clamor loudly
too for her cat--her _mignonne_, her _douce fillette_ that she had
brought so far in her arms or on her back.
Alas, poor Fifine! to learn thus early how sharper than a serpent's
tooth it is to have a thankless child! For indeed Kitty might have
seemed to lie under the imputation of having merely "played baby" in
order to secure free transportation. At all events, she was a cat now,
the only one in the fort, and for all she knew in the settlement. The
_douce mignonne_ was in high elation, now walking the palisades, now
peeping in at a loop-hole in the upper story of one of the block-houses
where a sentinel was regularly on guard, being able to scan from the
jutting outlook not only the exterior of the fort on two sides, but a
vast extent of darkling country. In his measured tramp to and fro in the
shadowy apartment lighted only by the glimmer of the night without, he
suddenly saw a flicker at the loop-hole he was approaching, caught a
transient glimpse of a face, the gleam of a fiery eye, and he nearly
dropped his loaded firelock in amazement.
"By George!" he exclaimed, "I thought that was a blarsted cat!"
He had not seen one since he left Charlestown a year before.
He walked to the loop-hole and looked far down from the projecting wall
and along the parapet of the curtain and the scarp to the opposite
bastion with its tower-like block-house.
Nothing--all quiet as the grave or the desert. He could hear the river
sing; he could see in the light of the stars, and a mere flinder of a
moon, the clods of earth on the ground below,--naught else. For the
_douce mignonne_, with her back all handsomely humped, had suddenly
sprung aside and fled down the interior slope of the rampart into the
parade and over to the cook's quarters neighboring the kitchen. She
nosed gleefully about among pots and kettles, feeling very much at home
and civilized to the verge of luxury; she pried stealthily, every inch a
cat, into the arrangements for to-morrow's breakfast, with a noiseless
step and a breathless purr, until suddenly a tin pan containing beans
was tumultuously overturned, being within the line of an active spring.
For the _douce fillette_ had caught a mouse, which few sweet little
girls are capable of doing;--a regular domestic fireside mouse, a thing
which the _douce fillette_ had not seen in many weeks.
The stir in the neighboring cabin did not affright Kitty, and when the
officers' cook, a veritable African negro, suddenly appeared with an
ebony face and the rolling whites of astonished eyes, she exhibited her
capture and was rewarded by a word of commendation which she quite
understood, although it was as outlandish as the gutturals of
Willinawaugh.
When the night was nearly spent, a great star, splendidly blazing in the
sorceries of a roseate haze, seemed to conjure into the blackness a cold
glimmer of gray light above the high, bleak, serrated summit line of
the mountains of the eastern horizon, showing here and there white blank
intervals, that presently were revealed as stark snowy domes rising into
the wintry silence of a new day. The resonant bugle suddenly sounded the
reveille along the far winding curves of the river, rousing greetings of
morning from many a mountain crag, and before the responsive echoes of
the forest were once more mute the parade was full of the commotion
elicited by the beating of the drums; shadowy military figures were
falling in line, and the brisk authoritative ringing voice of the first
sergeant was calling the roll in each company.
And on the doorstep of Odalie's cabin, when Josephine opened the door,
sat the _douce mignonne_ with her most babified expression on her face,
now and again mewing noiselessly, going through the motions of grief,
and cuddling down in infantile style when with wild babbling cries of
endearment the little girl swooped up maternally the renegade cat.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote C: Friendship! Friendship!]