Breakfast, the rigorous cleaning of the quarters, guard mounting, and
inspection, followed in their usual sequence, but the morning drills
were omitted to give the opportunity to recruit from the vigils of the
previous night, protracted, as the soldiers began to suspect, that they
might be in readiness to respond to an onslaught of the savages. For
Captain Stuart made no effort to restrain the story of the scene at the
gate, since the sentries were already cognizant of it; he always saw fit
to maintain before the troops an attitude of extreme frankness, as if
the officers suppressed no intelligence, whatever its character, even
with the intention of conducing to the public good.
In the great hall in the block-house of the northwestern bastion, when
the officers were congregated about the fire, in the rude arm-chairs,
and their pipes lighted, he divulged without reserve the news which the
express had brought. In an instant all the garnered sweetness of the
retrospect of the little holiday they had made for themselves and their
co-exiles was turned to gall. It even held bitter dregs of remorse.
"And we were dancing all the night through while you knew this horrible
thing!" exclaimed Captain Demere, his voice tense with reproach.
"Lord!--it happened three weeks ago, Paul," returned Stuart, "if it
happened at all! Some of the settlers had already come. I did not feel
qualified to balk the children and the young people of their
enjoyment--or the elders, either. The world will go on after such
tragedies. It must, you know." He pulled at his pipe, meditatively. "To
have called a halt could have done those poor fellows no good," he
nodded toward the south, "and might have done us incalculable harm.
There had already been a demonstration of the Indians, before the
express came in, because they had noticed the gathering of the guests,
and I thought the settlers safer congregated in the fort until daybreak
than going home scattered through the night. This is no time or place to
give ceremonious deference to questions of feeling."
"Was there a demonstration of the Indians last night, Captain?" asked
Lieutenant Gilmore.
Stuart detailed both occurrences at the gate. "Without the chief's
guaranty I don't see how we could have let the settlers go this
morning," he concluded.
Demere frowned deeply as he sat upright in his chair and gazed at the
fire.
"You have great presence of mind in these queer emergencies, John," he
said. "For my life I could not have thought how to get rid of them
peaceably--to offer to open the gates!"
"I can't soothe the Indians," said Ensign Whitson, with a quick flush.
"My gorge rises at the very sight of them."
"If a dog licks my hand, I must needs pat him on the head," said Stuart,
lounging easily among the soft rugs that covered the chair.
"But if a wolf licks your hand, sir, would you pat him on the head?"
asked the ensign.
"A wolf will not lick my hand," retorted the superior officer. "Besides,
my young friend, bear this in mind,--if this dog is not patted on the
head, he will fly not only at my throat, but at the throat of the
garrison and of the settlement as well."
There was silence for a time, while the flames of the great fire sprang
elastically upward in the strong draught with an impetuous roar. The
holly boughs and the banners stirred fitfully on the wall. The men's
heads were surrounded by tobacco smoke. Demere sat upright, meditative,
with one elbow on the table. Stuart was lolling far back in the soft fur
rugs that covered the great chair, his hat on the floor behind him,
where it had fallen off his dense, blond hair, which so much attracted
the curiosity and admiration of the swarthy Indians.
"And then," he said suddenly, drawing some official letter-books and
files from the table, and fluttering the pages with one hand while he
held the pipe-stem with the other, "were we not admonished to be
diplomatic in such matters? We had our orders to cultivate the graces of
our manners! The Earl of Loudon desired that we should," and he began to
read aloud, "'You can best retain our confidence by promoting, in every
way in your power, the preservation of peace with the Cherokees.'"
He shoved the papers away on the table, and laughing, put the stem of
his pipe between his teeth.
"Now," he said, "I am as much disposed toward peace as a man of war may
decently be. I only wish my lord could have won Oconostota to his
lordship's pacific way of thinking. A garrison of two hundred soldiers
is not likely to prove very overbearing to a neighbor who can muster
three thousand fighting men armed with British muskets. My lord's advice
was timely."
He glanced with raillery at Demere, and laughed again.
While the individual soldier is but a factor in a great machine, and
moves only as one motor element acts and reacts on another, making
naught of his own volition or intelligence, it being his "to do and
die," the courage and strength of character which make this abnegation
of will and mind possible are the greater from the fact that the
reasoning faculties cannot by the same process be annulled. He sees the
convergence of the circumstances drawing to the event; whether
consciously or not he deliberates upon the validity of the policy
unfolded; he often goes to meet disaster, perceiving its undisguised
approach from afar off. And yet he goes unfalteringly.
"When our government armed these savage fiends against the
French,--civilized men and 'palefaces' like ourselves," said Captain
Demere, "and the American colonists fought with them as allies, side by
side, despite their hideous barbarities, we fell upon our own sword."
"Honors are easy," returned Captain Stuart, lightly. "Have the French
armed no Indian allies? Did they not do it first?"
"We are not wont to look so far afield for our warrant," Demere retorted
testily. Then resuming: "These barbarous beasts are no fit allies for
English arms. They degrade our spirit, and destroy our discipline, and
disgrace our victories. I would rather suffer any honorable defeat than
win through their savageries."
He was unconsciously the advance guard of that sentiment which caused
the Earl of Chatham, nearly twenty years afterward, to declare in the
House of Lords that it was a reflection on the honor of the nation that
the scalping-knife and the tomahawk should be the aids of the British
firelock and sword, and wreak their savage deeds under the sanction of
the same brave banner; but even then Lord Gower was able to retort that,
when still Mr. Pitt the "great Commoner," and the ruling spirit of the
ministry, he, himself, had without scruple employed American savages in
warfare. As yet, however, this objection was but a sensitive protest in
the heart and mind of an obscure officer, the commandant of a merely
temporary post on the furthest western frontier.[9]
The papers had been pushed near Demere's elbow, and he began to look
over them disaffectedly.
"Hear Governor Lyttleton," he said, and read in a tone that was itself a
commentary: "'Use all means you think proper to induce our Indians to
take up the hatchet. Promise a reward to every man who shall bring in
the scalp of a Frenchman or a French Indian.'"
"As if one could be sure of a dead man's nationality or allegiance by
seeing the hair on his scalp," said Whitson, as ever readily disgusted.
Stuart sought to take an unprejudiced view. "I never looked upon war as
a pastime or an elegant accomplishment," he declared, watching the
wreaths rise from the deep bowl of his long pipe. "War is war, and when
we call it civilized we only mean that invention has multiplied and
elaborated our methods of taking life. A commander can but use the
surest means to his end against his enemy that the circumstances afford.
A soldier is at best but the instrument of the times."
"And what of the torture, the knife, the fagot?" demanded Demere,
excitedly. "What do you think of them?"
"I never, dear Captain Demere, think of them, in a garrison of two
hundred men in a little mud fort on the frontier, with the Cherokees
three thousand strong just outside, toward whom I have been admonished
to mind my pretty manners. But since you are so keen to reason it out, I
will remind you that until comparatively recently the torture was one of
our own methods of punishment, or coercion, tending to the disclosure of
secret conspiracies or any other little matter that the government might
want to know and could not otherwise find out, and was practiced,
thumb-screws, iron-boot, and all, in the worshipful presence of men of
high estate--councils, commissions, and what not! Men and women--women,
too!--have been burned alive in England under due authority because
their style of piety was not acceptable. They were Christians, to be
sure, but not exactly the highest fashion of Christian. You will say all
this was long ago. Granted! but if such practices still obtain in such
an oligarchy as Oconostota's realm,--the frontier being, paradoxically,
a little in the rear of the times,--should we be surprised? No! I don't
think of such things. I keep my mind on the discipline of the garrison,
and control my temper very nicely when in the presence of the Cherokee
kings, and bless God and the Earl of Loudon for the cannon at the
embrasures and the powder and ball in the magazine."
He leaned forward suddenly to examine with momentary interest the sole
of his boot as he sat with his leg crossed, then with a bantering "Eh,
Captain Quawl?" he glanced up with a smile of _camaraderie_ at Captain
Demere as if to test the effect of his argument, and finally laughed
outright at his friend's silent gravity.
Such arguments were the ordinary incidents in the great hall of the
block-house of the northwest bastion. The time hung heavily on the hands
of the officers of the garrison. For beyond the military routine, a
little hunting and fishing, a little card and domino playing, a little
bout now and again of fencing, there was naught to relieve the
monotony, for books were few and the express with mail from over the
mountains infrequent, and therefore discussions in familiar conclave on
abstract subjects, protracted sometimes for hours, filled the breach.
Often these questions developed on paper, for a continual
correspondence, as regular as might be compassed, was maintained with
the officers of Fort Prince George, another frontier post, estimated as
three hundred miles distant from Charlestown, yet still two hundred
miles from Fort Loudon. As a matter of public policy it was deemed
expedient that the commandants of the two posts should keep each other
informed as to the state of the country about their respective
strongholds, of the condition of the settlers, the temper of the
Indians, the masked movements of French emissaries. In dearth of
official intelligence, as the express necessarily went back and forth
with mail and dispatches from Charlestown, the correspondence
sympathetically expanded into personal interests, for the conditions
surrounding both posts were in many respects similar. Fort Prince George
also was a work designed with special reference to the military needs of
that region and the character of its possible assailants. The defenses
consisted of a rampart of clay, eight feet high, surmounted by a strong
stockade, forming a square with a bastion at each angle; four small
cannon were mounted on each bastion, and a deep ditch surrounded the
whole; there was a natural glacis where the ground fell away on two
sides of the quadrangle and on the others a strong abatis had been
constructed at a short distance from the crest of the counterscarp.
Within the fort were two block-houses and barracks for a garrison of one
hundred men.
The sequestered, remote situation of each post developed a certain
mutual interest and the exchange of much soldierly chaff; the names and
disposition of even the subalterns were elicited in this transmitted
gossip of the forts; in default of news, details of trivial happenings
were given, unconsciously fertile in character-drawing; jokes,
caricatures, good stories,--and thus at arm's length sprung up a
friendship between men who had never seen one another and who were
possibly destined never to meet. Of course all this gayety of heart
vanished from the paper when serious tidings or despondent prospects
were at hand, but even in the succinct official statements an undertone
of sympathy was perceptible, and the slightest nerve of thought, of
danger, of joy, of dissatisfaction touched at Fort Loudon thrilled in
kind at Fort Prince George.
The attention of the group about the fire of the officers' mess-hall had
seldom been brought to themes so grave as the news of the recent
massacre, holding so definite and possible a personal concern, and after
the evening of the Christmas ball life at Fort Loudon began to seem more
serious and the current event to be scanned and questioned as to a
probable bearing on the future.
Even Odalie's optimistic mind, forever alert to hope and fair presage,
felt the influence of the atmospheric change of the moral conditions.
But the fact was revealed to her in an incident sufficiently startling.
That morning after the festivity, when gayly rowing down the bleak river
to MacLeod's Station, as the bend had begun to be called, she looked
blithely enough over the stream's gray stretches of ruffled steel to the
snowy slopes of the banks, and to the brown woods, and beyond to the
dark bronze and dusky blue mountains as they stretched away in varying
distance. The dull suffusive flare of carmine beginning to show above
them seemed a spell to drive the day-star out of the sky, to bid the
weird mists hie home with the fancies of the night, to set a wind keenly
astir in a new dawn. All this she watched with eyes as clear, as soft,
as confiding as if it were a May morning coming over the mountains,
scattering the largesse of the spring--new life, new hopes, new
strength, and all the glad inspiration of success that has a rarer,
finer flavor than the actual consummation of the triumph.
The stationers landed at the bend, and she was glad of her home as she
took her way within the enclosure of the high stockade. She looked
around at it, still leading the sleepy Fifine by one hand and only half
hearing Hamish's enthusiastic sketches of the boys and girls in the
settlement, with whom he had made fast friends. The snow was heavy on
the roofs of the two log cabins and the shanty of poles that served as a
barn, and lay in fluffy masses between the sharp points of the palisades
and on the bare boughs of sundry great trees that Odalie had insisted
should not be cut away with the rest in the enclosure or "girdled" like
those outside in the field. The smoke still curled up lazily from the
chimneys, and after she had uncovered the embers and donned her rough
homespun dress and housewifely apron and cap, and had the preparations
for breakfast well under way, she went to the door and called aloud in
the crisp, chill air to "Dill," as Gilfillan was christened by
Fifine,--the name being adopted by all the family,--insisting that he
should not cook his own breakfast but join them.
"There are going to be 'flim-flams,'" she shouted triumphantly. Then
with a toss of the head--"Short eating!"
It had chanced that one day when the lonely pioneer had dined with his
fellow-stationers he had remarked approvingly of certain dishes of
French cookery acquired from her Grand'maman's receipts--"I dunno what
ye might call them flim-flams, Mrs. MacLeod, but they make powerful
short eatin'."
He and she and Fifine had become fast friends, and it was indeed a happy
chance that had thrown the lonely man into this cordial and welcoming
atmosphere of home. Even his terribly ghastly head Odalie had begun to
forget, so deeply did she pity him for other things,--for the loss of
wife and children and friends in the terrible Yadkin massacre; for the
near approach of age,--and stalwart as he was, it was surely coming on;
for the distortions of his queer religion, which was so uncouth as to be
rendered hardly the comfort it might have been otherwise.
"I can't see how you can mention it," she said one day, with wincing
eyes, when he was telling Hamish, who manifested that blood-thirsty
imagination peculiar to boys, how he was conscious throughout the whole
ordeal of scalping; how the tomahawk hit him a clip; how the Indian, one
whom he had trusted, put his foot on his breast for a better purchase on
the knife.
"Why, Mrs. MacLeod," Dill replied, "it makes me thankful to think he
took nothing but the scalp. If he had mended his holt a little he could
have took my whole head, and where would I have been now!"
"By the grace of God you would be a saint in Paradise," said Odalie,
presenting the orthodox view.
"Yes," he admitted, "I've always feared there might be more in that
notion of the Injuns about the scalpless being shut out of heaven than
we know about--revelation, mebbe."
"No, no!" and horrified at this interpretation she made her meaning
clear.
After that she undertook the _role_ of missionary in some sort, and in
quiet unobtrusive ways suggested bits of orthodox doctrine of much
solace to his ruminating spirit, and sometimes on dreary, icebound days
he and she and Fifine sat on the crudely fashioned benches before the
fire and sang psalms and hymns together till the station rang with the
solemn choiring.
"Dill" came in now, bringing his own knife for breakfast, and a very
cheery face under his coonskin cap and red handkerchief, and when the
"short eating" was disposed of all three men took their axes to chop up
a tree for fuel, close outside the stockade, for the great
chimney-places had capacious maws, and the weather was fast hardening to
a freeze.
Presently Odalie heard the quick strokes of their axes, alternating
with sharp clangs, the blows ringing out briskly on the icy air. The
house was very still. Fifine had fallen asleep on the rug before the
fire, having peevishly declined the folly of being disrobed and put to
bed in the daytime, to recuperate from the exhaustion attendant upon her
first ball. As she could not stay awake without whimpering, Odalie saw
with satisfaction her little distorted countenance, round head, and
chubby body collapse on the opposite side of the fireplace. Odalie
herself sat down to rest for one moment on the befrilled block of wood
which she complimented by calling a _tabouret_. Once she roused herself,
smoothed out the expanse of her white apron over her blue homespun
dress, then careful to permit the attitude to foster no crumple in her
stiff, sheer, white mob-cap on the lustrous folds of dark hair, she
leaned her head against the rude chimney.
How long she sat there she did not know. While sleeping she saw the
faces of Indians, and when she gradually woke she thought she still
slept. For there beside the fire were the Indian faces of her dream! She
was stifled and dumbly sought to cry out, for this was surely some
terror of the nightmare. But no! without was the light of the wan wintry
day, showing in a vague blear at the half-open door, and within, the
dull glow of the fire, sunken now to a vermilion mass of embers. On the
opposite side of the hearth lay Fifine on the rug, sleeping still, with
the sleeping cat in her arms--and between were Indian faces, the Indian
faces of her dream!
Odalie breathed more freely, for they were women's faces--two women,
muffled to the ears in red blankets, were calmly seated on the rug
before the fire as if they had long been there gazing at her with blank,
expressionless faces. She still heard the regular strokes of the axes of
the men of the station, as just outside the stockade they resolutely
pursued the chopping of the tree. She could not understand how the two
women, unobserved by them, had slipped in at the open gate; Odalie was
able to smile faintly at a prevision of Sandy's amazement at his own
negligence.
One of the Indian women smiled in return, a bright-eyed demonstration,
and suddenly Odalie remembered the young Cherokee beauty she had noted
at the sally-port, watching the parade, the day after her arrival at
Fort Loudon. The other, encouraged, began to speak, and to speak in
French--a curious, dislocated patter. Asking how she had acquired the
language, Odalie was informed that this was the squaw of Savanukah, and
that he had journeyed as guide and hunted much with a French trader who
had formerly dwelt at Chote, and hearing them talk the squaw, too, had
learned.
"And how did you know that I speak French?" asked Odalie.
The elder woman pointed at the girl, who laughed and tucked down her
head like a child. She was obviously solicitous that Odalie should
observe the many strings of red beads about her neck; these she now and
again caught in her fingers and drew forward, and then looked down at
them with her head askew like a bird's. Odalie, with ready tact, let her
eyes rest attentively on them, and smiled again. Her instinct of
hospitality was so strong that it was no effort to simulate the gracious
hostess. It was one of Hamish's stock complaints, often preferred in
their former home when visitors were an intrusion and their long
lingering a bore, that if the Enemy of Mankind himself should call,
Odalie would be able to muster a smile, and request him to be seated,
and offer him a fan of her best turkey feathers, and civilly hope that
the climate of his residence was not oppressive to _him_!
"And how do _you_ know that I am French?" she asked, with a delightful
expression of her fascinating eyes.
The soldier had told her,--the handsome young brave who talked to her
one day at Chote,--the girl said in fairly good English. Odalie asked
her name, and, as it was given, exclaimed that it was a whole sentence.
Both the Cherokee women laughed at this in the pleasure of
_camaraderie_, and the elder translated the name as the "Wing of the
flying Whip-poor-will." The young Indian girl came to be known afterward
at MacLeod's Station as Choo-qualee-qualoo, the Cherokee word which
imitates the note of the bird. Recurring to the subject, she attempted
to describe the soldier, by way of identification, as having hair the
color of the lace on the Captain's red coat. Odalie was able to
recollect a certain smart young soldier, who as orderly had one day
accompanied Captain Stuart on a visit of ceremony to Oconostota, at his
seat of government at Chote--old town. While the young orderly had led
the horse of the English Captain up and down before the door of the
chief's great council-house, Choo-qualee-qualoo had been set to ask him
some questions, and as she told this the little minx laughed with her
sharp white teeth shining, and looked like some sly little animal,
malevolent, yet merry, and of much grace. Willinawaugh, she continued,
believed that he had been duped by MacLeod into affording him and his
family safe conduct on his journey hither, under the pretext that he was
French, and therefore an enemy to the English, whom Willinawaugh hated;
for the newcomer, MacLeod, and his brother, had been suffered to build a
house and settle here among the English, while if Frenchmen they would
have been hung as spies at the great gate of the fort or sent direct to
Charlestown as prisoners. So Willinawaugh had set her to weave her toils
about the young soldier and discover the truth from him, as he walked
the officer's fine horse up and down, and the tall English Captain and
the great warrior, Oconostota, smoked their pipes in the council
chamber. Thus it had chanced that the unsuspicious orderly, free with
his tongue, as a young man is apt to be in the presence of a pretty
girl, told all that Choo-qualee-qualoo asked to know, as far as he knew
it himself, and sooth to say, a trifle further. He gave forth the fact
that MacLeod was English--that is Scotch, which he made as one of the
same tribe, and so was the brother. But the wife was French--he himself
had overheard her talking the frog-eaters' lingo--and, by George, she
was a stunner! The baby was hers, and thus a mixture of English and
French; as for the cat, he could not undertake to pronounce upon the
animal's nationality, for he had not the pleasure of the acquaintance of
its parents.
Choo-qualee-qualoo laid down this last proposition with a doubting
gravity, for the young man had promulgated it as if with a sense of its
importance and a weighty soberness, although he laughed at most that he
said himself and at everything that any one else said.
He saw fit to remark that he did not understand how that sober-minded
Sawney--meaning the Scotchman--had ever contrived to capture such a fine
woman, but that was always the way with these dull prigs. Now as for
such rattling blades as himself and his Captain--who would have been
disposed to lay the flat of his sword smartly across the shoulders of
the orderly, could he have dreamed of mention in such irreverent
fellowship--they had no chance with the women, and for his own part this
made him very sad. And he contrived to look so for about a minute, as he
led the Captain's horse up and down before the door of the
council-house, while Choo-qualee-qualoo, at one end of his beat, stood
among a clump of laurel and talked to him as he came and went, and
Willinawaugh, in the shadowy recesses of a neighboring hut, watched
through the open door how his scheme took effect.
It made him very sad, the soldier said, mournfully, for the girls to
like other fellows better than him--as they generally did!
And Choo-qualee-qualoo broke off to say here that she did not discern
why such preference should be, for this soldier's hair was the color of
the Captain's gold lace on his red coat (the orderly was called
"Carrots" by his comrades), and he had a face with--and at a loss she
dabbled the tips of her fingers delicately about the bridge of her nose
and her eyes to intimate the freckles on his fair skin, which
beauty-spots she evidently admired.
The Scotchman's French wife was a stunner, the orderly was good enough
to declare again, and everybody else thought so too. But he had
overheard Captain Demere say to Captain Stuart that her husband had no
right to bring her to this western wilderness, and that that terrible
journey of so many hundred miles, keeping up on foot with men, was
enough to have killed her; and Captain Stuart had replied that she would
make a fine pace-setter for infantry in heavy marching order. The
orderly protested that for his part, if he were a condemned fine woman
like that, he wouldn't live in a wilderness--he would run away from the
Scotchman and go back to wherever she came from. Handsomest eyes he ever
saw--_except two eyes_!
Here Choo-qualee-qualoo gave Odalie a broadside glance which left no
doubt as to whose eyes this exception was supposed to refer, and put two
or three strands of the red beads into her mouth, showing her narrow
sharp teeth as she laughed with pleasure and pride.
Thus it was that Odalie was apprised of the fact that she was regarded
by the Indians as a French prisoner in the hands of the English, and
that the young soldier's use of the idea of capture by her husband,
figuratively, as in the toils of matrimony, was literally construed.
Her first impulse was to repudiate this suggestion of captivity, of
detention against her will. Then her strong instinct of wisdom,--for she
had no foresight in the matter,--that made Hamish sometimes charge her
with being as politic as Captain Stuart himself, moved her to reserve
this detail for the consideration of the commandant of the fort, as
every matter, however trivial, that bore upon the growing enmity of the
Cherokees toward the English amongst them, and their disposition to
fraternize with the French, was important.
The two captains listened with serious attention when she detailed this
conversation to them, having repaired to the fort for the purpose, and
being received as a guest of much distinction in the great hall,
summarily cleared of the junior officers, and, not so summarily, of the
clouds of tobacco smoke. They both instantly commended her course in
leaving the impression on the minds of the Indian women as it had
chanced to be made, and in dismissing them in unimpaired good humor with
some little presents--a tiny mirror set locket-wise and an ivory bobbin
wound around with red thread. The women had evidently derived special
pleasure from the slyness and presumable secrecy of their interview,
skulking out with a craft of concealment that completely eluded the
notice of Sandy and "Dill," and this had given Odalie a sense of
disapprobation and repulsion.
"Why should you care?" demanded Demere, always sympathetic with a
woman's whim-whams, even when he could not feel with them. "No amount of
explanation could enable the Indian women to comprehend the situation
from your standpoint."
And Captain Stuart could not restrain his laughter at her discomfiture.
"Do you consider yourself so free, then? Do you call it freedom--in the
holy _bonds_ of matrimony? I had no idea how much you object to hear the
clanking of your chains!"
As he noted her long-lashed glance of disdain,--"Doesn't the holy
Scripture call it a 'yoke,'" he persisted, bursting out laughing afresh.
She would not reply but sat listening to Captain Demere, who began to
reason,--"This impression on the part of the Cherokee women might afford
us--I don't know how--some means of learning and frustrating the
treacherous plans of the savages. It gives us a source of information
through you that we can trust."
"I don't relish the deceitful part assigned to me," she protested.
"What would we do with any information, Mrs. MacLeod, supposing we gain
aught of value," returned Demere with some haughtiness, "except to use
it for the defense of the fort, and your own outlying station? Are we
here to wage war or to maintain peace?"
She was silent, a trifle mortified because of her own mortification to
be supposed a mere captive.
"Everybody else knows that you are the commanding officer at MacLeod's
Station," said Stuart in pretended consolation, only half smothering a
laugh.
"Besides," Demere argued, gravely, "you will never be able to convince
them of the facts. Of course you know I intend no disparagement to you
when I say they will believe that young soldier's rodomontade in
preference to your word--being women of such extreme ignorance."
"Why, the man ought to be gagged!" exclaimed Stuart, in delight at her
seriousness.
The color mounted to Odalie's cheek. She had but entered her twenties,
and despite her matronly arrogations she felt very young, now and then.
Notwithstanding her humble pioneer status, she retained much of the
aristocratic traditions inherited from her "Grand'maman"; she was
beginning to feel it a great liberty that the young orderly should have
expressed his admiration of her, although of course he was not aware
that it would be repeated. She objected that he should know that she
knew of it.
"I hope you will not acquaint him with the circumstances," she said,
stiffly.
"By no means," said Demere, appreciating her scruples. "That sort of
thing is beyond discipline. The men in a garrison will tell everything
they know or think they know."
Odalie sat for a moment longer. "I think," she said, recovering her
equanimity after a fashion, "that since I immediately placed the
information of this ludicrous _contretemps_ at your disposal, for
whatever you may make it worth, I should be promised exemption from the
kind of raillery--and jokes--which Captain Stuart--frequent mention of
chains, and bond-slave, and matrimonial noose and--such things," she
paused, rising and looking at Stuart, wistfully remonstrant, for she
could but notice how her chagrin ministered to his mischievous delight.
"How _can you_, Mrs. MacLeod!" he cried. "Captain 'Quawl' will have me
clapped into irons at the first offence! And this is the vaunted
tender-heartedness of women!"
Even Captain Demere joined in the laugh at her, only becoming grave to
insist that she should not, without notice to him, divulge the fact that
she was not French, but of Carolinian birth and parentage, and the
further fact--and his serious face relaxed--that she, herself, was the
commandant at MacLeod's Station, and that Sandy and Hamish, Fifine and
"Dill," were the mere minions of her power.
She found discretion the better part of valor, and thought it wise to
laugh a little at herself and her own pride, although the dimples came
and went in very red cheeks, and her eyes were so bright as they rested
on the merry face of the big blond officer that they might be said to
flash. She diverted with difficulty Hamish's attention from Captain
Demere's half-finished map on the table at the other end of the room,
over which the boy had been poring during the entire interview, and then
they took their leave.
Little did any of the party realize how important the mistaken
impression of the Cherokee women was to prove!