With the earliest flush of dawn Hamish MacLeod was seeking one of the
officers in order to solicit a guide to enable him to go in search of
his brother with some chance of success.
Captain Stuart, whom he finally found at the block-house in the
northwestern bastion, was standing on the broad hearth of the great
hall, where the fire was so brightly aflare that although it was day the
place had all the illuminated effect of its aspect of last night. The
officer's fresh face was florid and tingling from a recent plunge in the
cold waters of the Tennessee River. He looked at Hamish with an
unchanged expression of his steady blue eye, and drawing the watch from
his fob consulted it minutely.
"The hunters of the post," he said, still regarding it, "have been gone
for more than half an hour. There is no use in trying to overtake them.
They have their orders as to what kind of game they are to bring in."
He smiled slightly, with the air of a man who in indulgent condescension
would humor natural anxiety and overlook the effort of intermeddling,
and as he returned the watch to his pocket, Hamish felt dismissed from
the presence. The sun was well over the great range of purple bronze
mountains in the east, their snowy domes a-glister in the brilliance
between the dark slopes below and the blue sky above, and the fort, as
he came forth, was a scene of brisk activity. The parade ground had
already been swept like a floor, and groups of soldiers were gathered
about the barracks busily burnishing and cleaning their arms,
pipe-claying belts and rotten-stoning buckles and buttons, and at the
further end near the stables horses were in process of being groomed and
fed; one of them, young and wild, broke away, and in a mad scamper, with
tossing mane and tail, and head erect and hoofs scattering the gravel,
plunged around and around the enclosure, baffling his groom. A
drill-sergeant was busy with an awkward squad; another squad without
arms, in charge of a corporal, was marching and marching, making no
progress, but vigorously marking time, whether for exercise or
discipline Hamish could hardly determine, for he began to have a very
awesome perception of the rigor of authority maintained in this frontier
post. He had noticed--and the gorge of a freeman had risen at the
sight--a soldier mounted high upon a trestle, facetiously called a
horse, and he was well aware that this was by no means a new and a merry
game. Hamish wavered a little in his mental revolt against the powers
that be, as he noticed the reckless devil-may-care look of the man. He
was a ruddy young fellow; he had a broad visage, with a wide, facetious
red-lipped mouth, a quick, blithe, brown eye, and a broad, blunt nose.
Hamish knew intuitively that this was the typical inhabitant, the
native, so to speak, of the guard-house; his sort had ridden the
wooden-horse, for many a weary hour in every country under the sun, and
when an Indian's tomahawk or a Frenchman's bullet should clear the ranks
of him, the gap would be filled by a successor so like him in spirit
that he might seem a lineal descendant instead of a mere successor in
the line. He had long ago been dubbed the "Devil's Dragoon," and he
looked down with a good-humored glance at a bevy of his comrades, who
from the door of the nearest log-cabin covertly cast gibes at him,
calling out _sotto voce_, "Right about wheel--Trot!--March!"
In another quarter of the parade the regular exercise was in progress,
and Hamish listened with interest to the voice of the officer as it rang
out crisp and clear on the frosty air.
"Poise--Firelock!"
A short interval while the sun glanced down the gleaming barrels of the
muskets.
"Cock--Firelock!"
A sharp metallic click as of many sounds blent into one.
"Take--Aim!"
A moment of suspense.
"Fire!"
A resonant detonation of blank cartridges--and all the live echoes
leaped in the woods, while the smoke drifted about the parade and
glimmered prismatic in the sun, and then cleared away, escaping over the
ramparts and blending with the timorous dissolving mists of the morning.
Several Indians had come in through the open gate, some arrayed in
feather or fur match-coats and others in buckskin shirt and leggings,
with their blankets purchased from the traders drawn up about their
ears; they were standing near the walls of one of the block-houses to
see the drill. A certain expectancy hung upon this group as they watched
the movements of the men now loading anew.
"Half-cock--Firelock!" came the order in the peremptory voice of the
officer.
Once more that sharp, metallic, unnerving click.
"Handle--Cartridge!"
A sudden swift facial expression went along the line with a formidable
effect. With the simultaneous show of strong teeth it was as if each
soldier had fiercely snarled like a wild beast. But each had only bitten
the end of the cartridge.
"Prime!"
The eyes of the Indians followed with an unwinking, fascinated stare the
swift, simultaneous movement of the rank as of one man, every muscle
animated by the same impulse.
"Shut--Pan!"
Once more the single sound as of many sounds.
"Charge with--Cartridge!"
The watchful eyes of the Indians narrowed.
"Draw--Rammer!"
Once more the loud, sharp, clash of metal rising to a menace of emphasis
with the succeeding,--
"Ram down--Cartridge!"
"Return--Rammer!"
And as hard upon the clatter of the ramrods, slipping back into their
grooves, came the orders--
"Shoulder--Firelock!"
"Advance--Arms!" the Cherokees drew a long breath as of the relief from
the tension of suspense. They were evidently seeking to discern the
utility of these strange military gyrations. This the Indians, although
always alert to perceive and adopt any advantage in arms or military
method, despite their characteristic tenacity to their ancient customs
in other matters, could not descry. They had, even at this early day,
almost discarded the bow and arrow for the firelock, wherever or however
it could be procured, but the elaborate details of the drill baffled
them, and they regarded it as in some sort a mystery. Their own
discipline had always sufficed, and their military manoeuvres, their
march in single file or widely extended lines, their skulking approach,
stalking under cover from tree to tree, were better suited, as even some
of their enemies thought, for military movements, than tactical
precision, to the broken character of the country and the dense forest
of the trackless wilderness.
They noticed with kindling eyes a brisk reprimand administered to
Corporal O'Flynn, when Lieutenant Gilmore called attention to the fact
that one of the men had used three motions instead of the prescribed two
motions in charging with cartridge, and two motions, instead of one, in
ramming down cartridge. Corporal O'Flynn's mortification was painted in
a lively red on his fresh Irish cheek, for this soldier was of a squad
whose tuition in the manual exercise had been superintended by no less a
tactician than himself.
"Faith, sir," he said to his superior officer, "I don't know what ails
that man. He has motion without intelligence. Like thim windmills, ye'll
remember, sir, we seen so much on the Continent. He minds me o' thim in
the way he whur-r-ls his ar-rms."
The lieutenant--they had served together in foreign countries--laughed a
trifle, his wrath diverted by the farcical suggestion, and the instant
the command to break ranks had been given, Corporal O'Flynn, with the
delinquent under close guard, convoyed him to the scene of the exploits
of the awkward squad, where he might best learn to discard the free
gestures of the windmills of the Continent of Europe.
"To disgrace me afore the officers," said Corporal O'Flynn, "and I
fairly responsible for ye! I larned ye all ye know--and for ye to show
the leftenant how little 'tis! Ye've got to quit that way of loading
with ca'tridge with as many motions as an old jontleman feeling for his
snuff-box! I'm fairly responsible for yez. I'm yer sponsor in this
business. I feel like yer godfathers, an' yer godmothers, an' yer maiden
aunt. I never seen a man so supple! Ye have as much use of yer hands as
if ye was a centipede!"
The matter and manner of this discourse tried the gravity of the awkward
squad, but no one dared to laugh, and Corporal O'Flynn himself was as
grave as if it were a question of the weightiest importance involved, as
he stood by and watched for a time the drill of the men.
The Indians turned their attentive eyes to Captain Stuart and Captain
Demere, who were both upon the terre-pleine at the shoulder-point of a
bastion where one of the twelve cannon, mounted _en barbette_, looked
grimly forth over the parapet. The gunners were receiving some
instructions which Stuart was giving in reference to serving the piece;
now and again it was pointed anew; he handled the heavy sponge-staff as
if in illustration; then stepped swiftly back, and lifted the match, as
if about to fire the gun. The Indians loitering in the shade watched the
martial figure, the sun striking full on the red coat and cocked hat,
and long, heavy queue of fair hair hanging on his shoulders, and as he
stood erect, with the sponge-staff held horizontally in both hands, they
turned and looked with a common impulse at one another and suddenly spat
upon the ground. The sentry in a sort of cabin above the gate--a
gate-house, so to speak--maintained a guard within as well as without,
for an outer sentinel was posted on the crest of the counterscarp beyond
the bridge; he kept his eye on the Cherokees, but he did not note their
look. He was not skilled in deciphering facial expression, nor did he
conceive himself deputed to construe the grimaces of savages. Gazing
without for a moment, he turned back and cast a glance of kindly concern
on Hamish MacLeod, who was disconsolately strolling about, not daring
to go back and encounter the reproaches of Odalie, who doubtless thought
him even now in the wilderness with a searching party, too urgent to
admit of the time to acquaint her with so hasty a departure--and yet
striving against his eagerness to go on this very errand, relying on the
superior wisdom of the officers even while rebelling against it. All
that he observed tended to confirm this reliance. How safe it was here!
How trebly guarded! Even to his callow experience it was most obvious
that whatever fate held in store for this garrison, whose lives were
intrusted to the wisdom and precaution of the commandant, surprise was
not among the possibilities. He remembered anew poor Sandy, far from
these stanch walls, the very citadel of security, within which he felt
so recreant; and as he thought again of the perils to which his brother
was exposed, and a possibly impending hideous fate, he felt a
constriction about his throat like the clutch of a hand. The tears rose
to his eyes--and through them as he looked toward the gate he saw Sandy
coming into the fort! In the extremity of the revulsion of feeling
Hamish gave a sudden shrill yell that rang through the woods like a
war-whoop. Even the Indians, still loitering in the diminishing shadow
of the block-house, started at the sound and gazed at him amazed, as he
dashed across the parade and flung his arms around his brother. Sandy,
who had had his own terrors to endure concerning the fate of his family,
was not altogether appreciative of their terrors for his sake. He felt
amply capable of taking care of himself, and if he were not--why, his
scalp was not worth saving! He extricated himself with unflattered
surprise from Hamish's frantic embrace that was like the frenzied hug of
a young bear and made his ribs crack.
"That's enough, Hamish; that's enough!" he said. "Of course I'm safe,
all right. That's enough."
He advanced with what grace he could command after such an exhibition to
shake hands with the two officers near the sally-port and thank them for
the shelter the fort had afforded his family.
And here was Odalie,--for a good-natured soldier, one of the boat's crew
of the previous evening, had instantly run to her cabin with the news of
the arrival--restored to her normal poise in an instant, in the
twinkling of an eye, by the shattering of her dismal forebodings in the
glad reality of MacLeod's safety. So composed was her manner, so calmly
happy, that Captain Stuart could not forbear to unmask the sham, and let
the poor man know how he had been bewept yesterday at even.
"We were very glad to take in the wanderers, although I cannot say it
was a cheerful scene. I never realized until Mrs. MacLeod reached the
gate here the meaning of the phrase 'dissolved in tears.'"
Alexander looked anxiously at his wife--had she found the journey, then,
so vexatious?
"I was tired and dusty," she said demurely, as if in explanation. "My
shoes--one of them was in tatters; and, Sandy, I was _so_ ashamed."
Captain Stuart stared at her for a moment and broke into a laugh.
"That's putting the shoe on the other foot, at all events," he said.
He and Captain Demere, accompanied by the newcomer, turned into the
block-house, in order to question Sandy as to any information he might
have been able to acquire concerning French emissaries, the disposition
of the Cherokees, the devastation of the Virginia settlements, and any
further news of General Forbes and the fall of Fort Duquesne now called
Fort Pitt. However, Sandy had naught to report, save the angry threat
with the tomahawk which gave way upon the assurance that the party was
French. In the solitary journey with those who had resigned their boat
to Willinawaugh, he had experienced no worse treatment than the
destruction of his pocket compass. With this at first they had been
highly delighted, but some ten miles from the fort they had been joined
by an Indian who declared he had seen such things in Carolina, doubtless
among land-surveyors, and who stigmatized it as a "land-stealer,"
forthwith crushing it with his tomahawk. MacLeod had expected this
revelation to bring about ill-feeling, but the party shortly met the
hunters of the post, who had insisted on conducting him to the fort on
suspicion of being a Frenchman.
These pioneers never forgot that day, a rich, languid day of the
lingering St. Martin's summer-tide. What though in the early morn the
frost had lain in rime as white as snow on the bare branches of the
great trees where now the yellow sunshine dripped in liquid light! A
tender haze like that of spring suffused the depths of the forest, the
gleaming, glancing reaches of the river, the level summit-lines of the
great massive purple mountains of the west, and half concealed, and
shifting half revealed, always elusively, the fine azure snow-capped
domes against the pearl-tinted eastern sky. What though the flowers were
dead, the leaves had fled, the woods were bare and rifled,--when the
necromancy of the powers of the air filled all the winter day with
sweet, subtle odors that excelled the fragrance of summer, as a memory
might outvie the value of the reality, seeming to exhale now from the
forest, and again from the river, and anon from some quality of the
beneficent sunshine, or to exist in ethereal suspension in the charmed
atmosphere. Nature was in such blessed harmony, full of graceful
analogy; a bird would wing his way aloft, his shadow careering through
the sun-painted woods below; a canoe with its swift duplication in the
water would fly with its paddles like unfeathered wings down the
currents of the river; those exquisite traceries of the wintry woods,
the shadows of the leafless trees, would lie on a sandy stretch like
some keen etching, as if to illustrate the perfection of the lovely
dendroidal design and proportion of the growth it imaged; now and again
the voice of herds of buffalo rose thunderously, muffled by distance; a
deer splashed into the river a little above the fort, and gallantly
breasting the current, swam to the other side, while a group of soldiers
standing on the bank watched his progress and commented on his prowess.
No shot followed him; the larders were filled, and orders had been given
to waste no powder and ball.
The newcomers were made most heartily welcome in the settlement near the
fort, as newcomers were apt to be in every pioneer hamlet, whatever
their quality; for the frontiersmen, in their exposed situation,
earnestly appreciated the strength in numbers. But this gratulation was
of course infinitely increased when the arrivals were, like these,
people of character, evidently so valuable an addition to the
community. Finally several of the settlers persisted in carrying off
Sandy to look at a fertile nook where the river swung round in a bend,
earnestly recommending the rich bottom lands for the growth of corn, and
the crest of the hill with a clear free-stone spring for that home he
sought to plant in the far west. Hamish went too,--he could not bear
Sandy to be out of his sight and was "tagging" after him as resolutely
and as unshake-off-ably as when he was four and Sandy was twelve years
of age.
In their absence Odalie and Josephine and the _douce mignonne_ sat on
the doorstep of their latest entertainer, and watched the shadows and
sunshine shift in the woods, and listened to the talk of their hostess.
And here was where the trail of the serpent began to be manifest; for
this old woman was a professed gossip, and Odalie speedily learned the
points of view from which the settlement about Fort Loudon ceased to
present the aspect of the earlier Paradisaic era.
Mrs. Halsing had a hard, set visage, and was very shrewd,--none the
worse gossip for that,--and went straight to the weak point, and
unraveled the tangle of mystery in any subject that presented itself for
discussion. She was thin and angular and uncultivated, and had evidently
come of people who had been used to small advantages in education and
breeding. Equally humble of origin was another of Odalie's future
neighbors, with a sort of homespun dress made after the fashion called a
"short gown," a red petticoat, and a pair of moccasons in lieu of shoes.
Her face was as broad as the moon, and as bland. Much smiling had worn
dimples around her mouth instead of wrinkles in her forehead. She, too,
had a keen gleam of discernment in her eyes, but tempered with a
perception of the sweetly ludicrous in life, which converted folly into
the semblance of fun. She seemed to love her comfort, to judge by her
leisurely motions and the way her arms fell into easy foldings, but the
wife of a pioneer could never have lived at ease in those days. She sat
opposite Mrs. Halsing, by the cabin door, on a bench which the hostess
had vacated in her favor, adopting instead an inverted tub, and although
admitting as true much that was said, Mrs. Beedie advanced palliating
theories which, paradoxically enough, while they did not contradict the
main statement, had all the effect of denial.
For her part, said Mrs. Halsing, she did not see what anybody who was
safe in Virginia or Carolina, or anywhere else, would come to this
country for. She wouldn't, except that her husband was possessed! The
sight of a road put him into a "trembly fit." He was moving west to get
rid of civilization, and he was as uncivilized as a "bar himself, or an
Injun."
Odalie learned that a number of the men were wild, roving, roaring
fellows, who came here because they hated law and order; then, without
contradiction, Mrs. Beedie's exposition tended to show that it was a new
country with splendid prospects and they desired to take advantage of
its opening opportunities; some of them being already poor, sought here
cheaper homes, with more chance for development.
And, pursuing the interpretation of her side of the shield, Mrs. Halsing
detailed the fact that some people love change and adventure, because no
matter what the Lord gave 'em they wouldn't fold their hands and be
thankful. Were the Rush people poor and oppressed in Carolina? Mighty
well off, they seemed to her--had cows, if the wolves hadn't got 'em,
and had owned property and held their heads mighty high where they came
from, and claimed kin with well-to-do people in England. People said
Captain Stuart said he knew who they were--but the Lord only knew what
Captain Stuart knew! Then Mrs. Halsing further unfolded the fact that
Mrs Rush's husband had been the son of a bishop, but had got among the
dissenters, and had been cast out like a prodigal, because he took to
preaching.
"Preachin' being in the blood, I reckon," Mrs. Beedie palliated.
Thereupon he emigrated to America and was seized with a mission to the
Indians, that fastened upon him like a plague; and he lost his scalp and
his life--not even a red Indian would tolerate the doctrine he set up as
the Word! And Mrs. Halsing pursed her lips with a truly orthodox fixity.
And now we have no religion at the fort and the settlement.
But here Mrs. Beedie took up her testimony with unction and emphasis. We
had Captain Stuart!
Mrs. Halsing gave a sudden cry of derision like the abrupt squawk of a
jay-bird. Captain Stuart was not a humble man. That back of his was
never bent! She wondered if his heart had ever felt the need of aught.
"Yes," Mrs. Beedie affirmed. "When one of the soldiers died of the
pleurisy last winter in the fort and Captain Demere was ill himself,
Captain Stuart read the service all solemn and proper, and had men to
march with arms reversed and fire a volley over the grave."
Mrs. Halsing rose to the occasion by demanding what good such evidences
of religion might do in such a lot as there was at the fort. Forgetting
her scorn of the bishop's son, who had taken to Methodism and Indians,
she set forth the fact that the whole settlement was given to
dances--that the settlers with their wives and daughters, not content
with dances at home, must needs go to the fort on state and special
occasions, such as Christmas, and there participate in the ball, as they
called it, given in the officers mess-hall. They went in daylight, and
did not return till daylight, and the fiddle it sang the whole night
through! And cards--the soldiers played cards, and the settlers too; and
the officers, they played "loo," as they called it, as if that made it
any better. Even Captain Demere! This latter phrase occurred so
frequently in Mrs. Halsing's prelection that it created a sort of
mitigating effect, and made the enormity it qualified gain a trifle of
respectability from the fact that Captain Demere countenanced it. Odalie
knew already that he was the commandant, and it was plain to be seen
that Captain Demere stood first in Mrs. Halsing's estimation. And the
officers all, she declared, the captains, the frisky lieutenants, and
the ensigns, all drank tafia.
"When they can git it," interpolated Mrs. Beedie, with twinkling eyes.
"They are deprived, I will say, by the slowness and seldomness of the
express from over the mountains. But if they are a sober set, it is
against their will, and that I do maintain," Mrs. Halsing added, turning
an unflinching front toward Mrs. Beedie. Then resuming her dissertation
to Odalie:--
"But there's one thing that rests on my mind. I can't decide which one
it belongs to, Captain Stuart or Captain Demere. Did ye see--I know ye
did--a lady's little riding-mask on the shelf of the great hall. Ye must
have seen it,"--lowering her voice,--"a love token?"
"Oh," said Odalie, in a casual tone and with a slight shrug of the
shoulders, not relishing the intrusive turn of the disquisition, "a
souvenir, perhaps, from the colonies or over seas."
"La, now!" cried Mrs. Halsing, baffled and disconcerted, "you're as
French as a frog!"
Recovering herself, she resumed quickly. "It's the deceitfulness of
Captain Stuart that sets me agin him. Ye must be obleeged to know he
can't abide the Injuns. He keeps watch day and night agin 'em. Yet they
think everything o' Captain Stuart! They _all_ prize him. Now don't ye
know such wiles as he hev got for them must be deceit?"
Odalie made an effort to say something about magnetism, but it seemed
inadequate to express the officer's bonhomie, when Mrs. Halsing
continued:
"Ye never know _how_ to take Captain Stuart," she objected. "Before
folks he'll behave to Captain Demere as ceremonious and polite as if
they had just met yesterday; but if you hear them talking off together,
in another minute he'll be rollicking around as wild as a buck, and
calling him 'Quawl--I say Quawl!'"
She evidently resented this familiarity to the dignified officer, and
Odalie pondered fruitlessly on the possible ridicule involved in being
called "Quawl."
In this remote frontier fort a strong personal friendship had sprung up
between the two senior officers which not only promoted harmony in their
own relations, but a unanimity of sentiment in the exertion of authority
that redoubled its force, for the garrison was thus debarred from the
support on a vexed question of the suspicion of a dissentient mind in
high quarters. Stuart had chanced to address his friend as "Paul," in a
fraternal aside on an unofficial occasion, and one or two of the Indians
overhearing it, and unaccustomed to the ceremony of a surname, had thus
accosted him,--to Stuart's delight in the incongruity that this
familiarity should be offered to the unapproachable Demere, rather than
to himself, whose jovial methods might better warrant the slack use of a
Christian name. Moreover, "Paul" was transmogrified as "Quawl," the
Cherokees never definitely pronouncing the letter P; and thereafter in
moments of expansive jollity Stuart permitted himself the liberty of
imitation in saying "Quawl," and sometimes "Captain Quawl."
As Odalie puzzled over this enigma, Mrs. Halsing became more personal
still, having noticed during the pause the crystal clearness of her
visitor's eyes, the fairness of her complexion, the delicacy of her
beauty, her refinement, and the subtle suggestion of elegance that
appertained to her manner, and--
"How old be you?" asked Mrs. Halsing, bluntly.
"Twenty-one," replied Odalie, feeling very responsible and matronly.
"Child," said Mrs. Halsing, solemnly, "why did you ever come to the
frontier?"
"We were lacking somewhat in this world's goods. And we wish to make a
provision for our little girl. We are young and don't care for
privation."
"You ain't fitten for the frontier."
"I walked all the way here from New River," cried Odalie, "and not by
the direct route, either--not by the old 'Warrior's Path.' We came by
way of the setting sun, as Willinawaugh has it."
"You can't work," Mrs. Halsing's eyes narrowed as she measured the
figure, slight and delicate despite its erect alertness.
"I can spin two hanks of yarn a day, six cuts to the hank," boasted
Odalie. "I can weave seven yards of woolen cloth a day--my linen is all
ten hundred. And I can hoe corn like a squaw."
"That's what you'll be in this country--a squaw! All women are. You'll
have to hoe all the corn you can plant." Mrs. Halsing shook her head
mournfully from side to side. "I'd like to see the coast towns agin. If
I was as young as you I'd not tarry, I'd not tarry in the wilderness."
Odalie was all unaffected by her arguments, but this talk, so deadly to
the progressive spirit of the pioneer settlements, and so rife then and
later, was, she knew, inimical to content. The disaffection of those who
remained to complain wrought more evil against the permanence of the
settlements than the desertion of the few who quitted the frontier to
return to the towns of the provinces. She welcomed, therefore, with
ardor the reappearance of Sandy and Hamish from their tour of
investigation of the site of their new home, and her eyes sparkled
responsively as she noted their enthusiasm. She was glad to be again
hanging on Sandy's right arm, while Hamish hung on his left, and Fifine,
with her _fillette toute cherie_, toddled on in front.
Very cheerful the fort looked to Odalie as they approached. The
afternoon dress-parade was on. The men were once more in full uniform,
instead of the pioneer garb of buckskin shirt and leggings and moccasons
which had won such universal approval, and was so appropriate to general
use that it was almost recognized as a fatigue uniform. The sun was
reddening upon the still redder ranks of scarlet coats that took even a
higher grade of color from the effect of the white belts and the
burnished metallic glitter of the gun-barrels. A different effect was
afforded by the dress of a small body of militia from the provinces that
had recently reinforced the garrison, whose dark blue had a rich but
subsidiary tone and abated the glare of the ranks of scarlet, even while
heightening the contrast. The Indians, always gathering from their towns
up the river to revel in this feast of color and spectacle of military
pomp, so calculated to impress them with the superior capacity and
knowledge of the arts of warfare possessed by the white race, had
mustered in stronger numbers than usual and stood in rows about the
walls of the block-houses or along the interior slopes of the rampart.
In groups near the gate were some of the Cherokee women, huddled in
blankets, although one wore a civilized "short gown" that had a
curiously unrelated look to her physiognomy and form. Their countenances
were dull and lack-luster, and the elder hag-like and hideous, but as
the new settlers passed the group of squaws a broadside of bright black
eyes, a fresh, richly tinted, expressionless, young face, and a string
of red beads above a buckskin garb that was a sort of tunic, half shirt,
half skirt, only partly revealed by the strait folds of a red blanket
girt about a slender, erect figure, reminded the observant Odalie of the
claim to a certain sort of beauty arrogated for the youthful among
these denizens of the woods--a short-lived beauty, certainly.
Fifine had caught sight of other children, the families of the settlers
having gathered here to witness the parade. Here, too, were many of the
men; now a hunter, leaning on his rifle, with a string of quail, which
he called "pat-ridges," tied to one another with thongs detached from
the fringes of his buckskin shirt and looking themselves like some sort
of feathered ornament, as they hung over his shoulder and almost to his
knee, and a brace of wild turkeys, young and tender, at his belt;
another, attracted from the field by the military music and the prospect
of the rendezvous of the whole settlement, still carried a long sharp
knife over his shoulder, with which he had been cutting cane, clearing
new ground. A powerful fellow leaning on an ax was exhibiting to another
and an older settler a fragment of wood he had brought, and both
examined with interest the fiber; this was evidently a discovery, the
tree being unknown in the eastern section, for these people were as if
transplanted to a new world.
Odalie's attention was suddenly arrested by a man of gigantic build,
wearing the usual buckskin garb, and with a hard, stern, fierce face,
that seemed somehow peculiarly bare; he wore no queue, it is true, for
at this period many of the hunters cut their hair for convenience, and
only the conservative retained that expression of civilization. Under
his coonskin cap his head was tied up in a red cotton handkerchief, and
as he stood leaning against the red-clay wall of the rampart, talking
gravely to another settler, the children swarmed up the steep interior
slope of the fortifications behind him and from this coign of vantage
busied themselves, without let or hindrance, in pulling off his cap,
untying the handkerchief, and with shrill cries of excitement and
interest exposing to view the bare poll. For the man had been scalped
and yet had escaped with his life.
"_Quelle barbarie! Oh, quelle barbarie!_" murmured Odalie, wincing at
the sight.
Years ago it must have chanced, for the wounds had healed; but it had
left terrible scars which the juvenile element of the settlement prized
and loved to trace as one might the map of the promised land, were such
charts known to mere earthly map-makers. A frequent ceremony, this,
evidently, for the shrill cries were of recognition rather than
discovery, and when the unknown became a feature it was as a matter of
speculation.
"Here! here!" exclaimed one wiry being of ten,--his limited corporeal
structure, too, was incased in buckskin, the pioneer mother, like other
mothers, feeling no vocation toward works of supererogation in the way
of patching, and having discovered that skins of beasts resist the
clutch of briers and the destructive propensities characteristic of
callow humanity better than cloth, even of the stoutest homespun
weave,--"here's where the tomahawk knocked him senseless!"
"Here's where the scalping-knife began!" cried a snaggle-toothed worthy,
from the half-bent posture in which he had been surveying the forlorn
cicatrices of the bare poll, and digging his heels into the red-clay
slope to sustain his weight.
"No, no--here!" advanced another theorist.
Odalie turned her head away; it was too horrible!--or she would have
seen the tugging climb of Josephine and her triumphant emergence on the
slope amongst the boys. They looked at her in surprise for a moment, but
without resentment, for it was too good an opportunity to rehearse the
history that so enchanted them.
"Here, here," the shrill voices began anew. "Here's where the tomahawk
hit him a clip!" "An' here," shrieked out another, seizing upon Fifine's
chubby little hand that her own soft finger might have the privilege of
exploring the wound, "here's where the scalping-knife circled him
round!"
"The Injun begun here first, but his knife was dull, an' he had to mend
his holt!" screeched a third.
"An',--an', 'n," vociferated another, almost speechless in the
contemplation of so bloody a deed, "ter git a full purchase onto it the
Injun held him down by putting a foot on his breast!" He lifted his own
bare foot, itself a cruel and savage sight, scarred with the scratching
of briers and stone-bruises and the results of what is known as
dew-poison--he called it "jew-pizen," and so do those of his ilk to this
good day,--and aped the gesture so present to his imagination.
Fifine knew only too well what it all meant, as her soft infantile face,
incongruously maternal with compassion, bent above the hideous record of
a hideous deed.
"All this here," cried the first expositor, sparing a sustaining hand to
hold her by the elbow,--for her weight not being sufficient to drive her
heels into the clay slope, she had given imminent signs of slipping down
the incline,--"all this here top of his 'ead ain't the sure enough top;
the Injuns scalped that off. This is just sich top as growed since; he
ain't got no real top to his 'ead."
Fifine's baby hands traveled around this substitute top; her mouth
quivered pitifully; then she bent down and kissed the grim wounds in
several places with a sputter of babbling commiseration. At this moment
Hamish caught sight of her and advanced in great contrition. He flushed
to the roots of his hair as he spoke to the man, for as a rule those few
fortunate yet unfortunate persons who had chanced to survive the cruel
disaster of being scalped were exceedingly sensitive on the subject of
their disfigurement--it was usually a subject not to be mentioned. But
this settler looked at Hamish in surprise as the boy said, "Pray excuse
the little girl, sir. I had lost sight of her and didn't know she was so
vexatious with her curiosity."
"No, no," returned the stalwart giant, in a singularly languid voice,
mild and deep and pacific to the last degree. "It pleases the chil'n,
an' don't hurt me."
He was busying himself in tying up the horrible exhibition in his red
handkerchief preparatory to putting on his coonskin cap, for the brisk
interest the children took in disrobing, so to speak, his scalpless
head, did not extend to the task of properly accoutering it again, and
repairing the disarray they themselves had made, for they had scampered
off through the great gate of the fort. His voice gave Hamish a sort of
intimation how they had had the hardihood to venture on these
familiarities with one so formidable of aspect. Hamish learned afterward
that he had lost his scalp rather through this quality of quiet
indulgence, so open to treachery, than to inability to keep it. A
terrible fighter he was when he was roused, though even then his utmost
prowess was exerted without anger. In the Indian fights his friends had
often exhorted him to scalp the wretches he slew, as he had been
scalped, and thus complete his revenge, for the Indians believed that a
scalpless person would be excluded from the happy hunting-grounds of
heaven, their fury thus following their foes from this world into the
next.
"Let 'em have all the heaven they can git," he would remark, wiping his
bloody knife upon the mane of his horse. "I expec' to smoke the pipe o'
peace with all I meet on Canaan's shore,--Cherokees, Creeks, or
Chickasaws,--Reg'lars, Millish, or Settlers."
For he was intensely religious and had a queer conglomeration of
doctrines that he had picked up here and there in his rambles through
this western world. He embraced alike the theory of purgatory and the
Presbyterian tenets of predestination and justification. He had acquired
the words of "Hail Mary!" from a French Catholic with whom he had hunted
on the banks of the Sewanee, as the Indians called it, and Chauvanon, as
the Gallic tongue metamorphosed the name,--perhaps these two were the
first white men that ever trod those bosky ways,--and he believed
faithfully in total immersion as promulgated by the Baptists. He was all
for peace, like the Quakers,--peace at any price; and yet when for the
entertainment of the boys at a friendly fireside he was urged to recount
how many men he had fought and killed, the long list failed only from
failure of memory.
Hamish expected to hear no more of him after they parted, and he
experienced a sort of repulsion which found an echo in Odalie's
exclamation, when Captain Demere proposed that Gilfillan should live
with them. "I should recommend a strong stockade if you go as far from
the fort as the bend of the river," the officer commented, when the spot
they had selected was made known to him. "And with only two gun men," he
cogitated, as he paused. "It would not be safe." Then brightening,--for
the officers of the post sought to facilitate in every way the prospects
of the settlers and the extension of the settlement,--"Take Gilfillan
with you; he's an odd fish, but he is equal to any four men, and he has
never quite settled down since the massacre on the Yadkin where he lost
his wife and children. Take Gilfillan."
A group from the fort strolled along the river-bank, and the ripples
were red under the red sunset sky, and the eastern mountains were blue
and misty, and the western were purple and massive and distinct, and
though sedges were sere and the birds gone, summer was in the air, and
they talked of hope and home.
Captain Demere's suggestion broke discordantly on the serenity of the
hour and the theme.
"Oh! oh!" cried Odalie, "and have Fifine forever tracing the map of
anguish all around that terrible head, never tiring of 'Here's where the
tomahawk hit him a clip!' and 'Here's where the scalping-knife began!'"
"What a consideration!" exclaimed the officer, with some asperity. "And
if you will excuse me, how very French! The man's rifle--the finest
marksman I ever saw--is the point for your consideration. And you find
his looks not convenable."
"Fifine, herself, will be less likely to have a head like his, perhaps,
if he will come and strengthen our station," suggested Alexander
MacLeod, astutely.
"Oh,--yes, yes!" assented Odalie, with a sudden expression of fright.
"Besides," said Captain Stuart, with his bluff nonchalance, "the
river-bend will be so easily famous for the good looks of the stationers
that a trifle of discount upon Gilfillan will not mar the sum total."
"And then," said Captain Demere, "he is a very exceptional kind of
man--you are fortunate to find such a man--for a single man, in the
settlements. You would not like it if he were one of the rattling,
roaring blades that such irresponsible single fellows are here,
usually."
"Mighty sprightly company, some of these rufflers," remarked Captain
Stuart, with a twinkling eye. "Rarely good company," he averred.
"And besides," added Captain Demere, whose extreme sensitiveness enabled
him better to appreciate her sentiment than the others, despite his
rebuke, "you need not have him in the same house with you; you can have
two cabins within the stockade and connected by the palisades from one
house to the other. Otherwise, in the present state of feeling among the
Cherokees it would hardly be safe so far from the fort."
It had been explained that Alexander was especially solicitous
concerning the choice of his location, since the quality of the land had
not been well selected in his former home on New River. Here he had
found in a comparatively small compass the ideal conjuncture for those
growths so essential to the pioneer who must needs subsist on the
produce of his own land. In that day and with the extremely limited and
difficult means of transportation, no deficit could be filled from the
base of a larger supply. The projected station, he thought, would be as
safe as any other place outside the range of the guns of the fort, but
he welcomed the idea of numbering among its denizens the hardy hunter,
Gilfillan, and cared no more for his bald head than he did for the
broad, smooth, handsome plait of Captain Stuart's fair hair. MacLeod had
all the desperate energy of one who seeks to retrieve good fortune,
although no great deal of money was involved in his earlier disasters.
His father had had shipping interests, and the loss of a barque and her
cargo at sea had sufficed to swamp the young man's financial craft on
shore. As to the possessions of his wife's family--they were a few
inconsiderable heirlooms, some fine traditions, growing now a trifle
stale and moldy with age, and a brave, proud spirit in facing the world,
the result of the consciousness of having a fine old record to sustain;
her forefathers had been of that class of refugees from religious
persecution whose property was of such a character and whose emergency
was so imminent that they had fled from France with little else than the
garments in which they stood. They had not prospered since, nor
multiplied, and Odalie was nearly the last of the family. A certain
innate refinement in both, MacLeod's gravity and dignity of carriage and
the distinction of Odalie's manner, notwithstanding its simplicity,
marked their exceptional quality to a discerning judgment, despite their
precarious plight. The two officers had grave doubts as to the wisdom of
their adventuring so boldly in the quest of fortune in these savage
wildernesses, but both felt that it was well for the community that
harbored them, and each knew of isolated instances elsewhere when such
folly had been transmuted into a potent sapience by the bounty of
uncovenanted good luck. They had experienced a sort of pleasure in the
advent of the newcomers, for Sandy's intelligence and information were
far above the average, and they were more or less isolated in this
remote frontier post from those dainty charms of toilette and manner
which Odalie would have found means to practice were she cast away on a
desert island, all the more marked, perhaps, from their demure
simplicity and a sort of unstudied elegance.
It was only a serge gown she wore, of the darkest red
hue,--murrey-colored, she called it,--but all faint vestige of the
journey had vanished, and over the long, straight bodice of those days
was a cape or fichu of fine white cambric, embellished with a delicate
tambour, one of those graceful accomplishments which her "grand'maman"
had brought from France, and transmitted to a docile pupil as among the
arts which should adorn a woman. The deep red and the vivid white of
this costume comported well with her fine dark-brown hair, rising
straight from her forehead in a heavy lustrous undulation, and drawn
back to be gathered into a dense knot, her fair smooth complexion, the
contemplative yet suave expression of her large dark eyes, and their
heavy, almost diplomatic eyelashes,--for they implied so much that they
did not say, and were altogether the most effective feature of that most
effective face. Often Sandy, who had taken more notice of those eyes and
eyelashes than any one else in the world,--although they had not been
unremarked in general,--could not decipher what she meant by them, and
at other times he marveled why she should say so much with them instead
of with the means which Nature had bestowed for the expression of her
views,--of which, too, she made ample use. Those eyelashes, for
instance, indicated disdain, reproof, reproach, and yet a repudiation of
comprehension when Captain Stuart said significantly that he hoped she
found her footing quite satisfactory to-day--she was wearing a spruce
pair of prunella brodequins which had come in the pack. With his bluff
raillery he inquired of her how she had the conscience to grudge her
husband the triumph of knowing that she had shed a tun of tears for his
absence yesterday and had demanded of the commandant of the post that
the whole strength of the garrison should instantly take the field to
search for him.
"For discipline," she answered, with placid solemnity. "If he knew that
I care enough to weep for him instead of for my shabby shoes, my
authority would be shattered. And a mutiny, under any circumstances, is
not pretty."
The river carried the officer's jovial laughter far along the lapsing
current that was growing steely now, reflecting a pale gray sky of very
luminous tone, beneath which the primeval woods were dark and gloomy,
and the mountains on the east loomed but dimly through the gray mists,
while on the west the summit-line was hard and darkly distinct. It was
winter, for all the still air; no sound of bird, no chirring of cicada,
no rustle of leaf. The voice of the river rose quite alone in the
silence, and a single star seemed to palpitate in a white agitation as
it listened.
And when the party sat down on the rocky ledges of the river-bank,
Captain Demere was beside Odalie, and they talked not of this new
country lying before them, with the unread, unrecorded mystery of its
past, and the unsolved, impenetrable question of its future, but of his
own people. With her delicate tact she had evaded the continual
occupation of the general attention with her experiences and
expectations, and the details of her new home, and led him to speak of
himself and his own interests, which he was insensibly brought to do
with little disguise, so potent were the reminiscent effects of the
murrey-colored gown, and the dainty freshness of the cambric fichu, and
the delicate feminine attraction that hung about her like an exquisite
fragrance, and seemed, because of her lack of arrogation, less peculiar
to herself than some sweet quality appertaining to the whole species of
womankind.
She noted how the future of men like these is not with the future of the
country. They were not to participate in the prosperity which their
presence here might foster. While all the others looked forward they
looked backward, or perhaps aside, as at a separate life. Such is the
part a garrison must always play. She doubted if many felt it. With Mrs.
Halsing, she, too, marveled if Captain Stuart felt the need of aught.
But Demere, looking into the past as the tide of reminiscence rose, said
to a sympathetic heart a thousand things of home. Trifles came back,
hitherto forgotten; sorrows seared over by time; old jests that had
outworn the too frequent laugh at last; resolutions failing midway,
half-hearted; friends heretofore dead even to memory; old adventures
conjured up anew; affections lingering about an old home, like the scent
of roses when the fallen petals have left but the bare stalk; vanished
joys, reviviscent with a new throb that was more like pain than
pleasure. And if he did not look to the future that sweet December night
of Saint Martin's summer by the placid Tennessee River, perhaps it was
as well,--oh, poor Captain Demere!