Peace was welcome--so welcome. Hence the turning of the soil by the
pioneers commenced betimes in the chill spring with heartfelt
thankfulness to be anew between the stilts of a plow. The sap was
rising; the winter had gone like a quiet sleep ensuing on the heavy
tumults of troubled dreams.
One day a wren came and perched in a loop-hole of the block-house of the
northwestern bastion and sang very loud and sweet and clear, till all
the men sitting about the fire turned to look at it, amazed at its
temerity, and enjoying in a lazy, sensuous way the jubilance and
thrilling crystalline purity of its tone. Two of the youngsters,
Lieutenant Gilmore and Ensign Whitson, ready to wager anything on
anything, disputed as to the size of the creature,--if it had on no
feathers,--one maintaining that it was two inches long, the other, an
inch and a half. The bird brought a straw and arranged it carefully in
place in the loop-hole, and then singing, flew away, and came back with
a feather. His intention was evident.
"My young friend," said Stuart, carelessly eyeing him, "you are a fine
figure of a settler, but that loop-hole is ours!"
"Let him have it," said Demere. "We shall never need it."
The door opened suddenly, and the orderly, saluting, announced the
express from over the mountains. At once there ensued a great stir of
the tobacco smoke, and a laying aside of pipes in any coign of vantage
to better handle the mail from home, as soon as the official dispatches
should be read. And then, "Here's something from Fort Prince George,"
said Demere, from where he sat at the rude table with the papers
scattered before him. "A goodly packet," he continued, as he broke the
seal, in the expectant, pleased silence of the others. "Ensign Milne is
writing--both the official communication and a long personal letter,"
noting the signature.
At the first glance along the lines his face fell.
"Captain Coytmore is dead," he said in a low voice.
Murdered by the Indians he had been, in front of the fort, in the
presence of the officers of his own command! As the news was unfolded,
startled, amazed glances were exchanged; no word was spoken; the silence
was only broken by the low, tense voice as Demere read, and now and
again the wren's clear, sweet, reedy note, full of joyance, of life, as
the bird fluttered in and out and builded his nest in the loop-hole.
Without warning the blow had fallen. One morning it happened, the 16th
of February, when naught of moment seemed to impend. On the bank of the
Keowee River opposite to Fort Prince George, two Indian women appeared,
and as they loitered, seeming to have something in hand, the sentinel
called the attention of an officer of the fort,--Doharty it was,--who at
once went out to speak to them, thinking they might have some news. He
called out to them, having a trifle of Cherokee at command, but before
they could answer they were joined by Oconostota, the king of the Indian
tribe, arrayed in his buckskin shirt and leggings, and mounted upon a
very excellent chestnut horse. He told Doharty that he desired to speak
to the commandant of the fort. Doharty, thinking it a matter of
importance, and possibly having reference to the surrender of some of
the murderers of the settlers in exchange for the hostages, went in
great haste and summoned Captain Coytmore, who instantly came,
accompanied by Lieutenant Bell with Foster, the interpreter, following.
The writer detailed that he himself was within, engaged in inspection
duty as officer of the day, or his interest and curiosity would have
carried him in their company. In expectation of developments they all
went down to the water's edge, and Coytmore asked the chief if he would
not ford the stream and come over. But Oconostota stated that he was in
haste touching matters of great moment which he wished to impart to the
royal governor of South Carolina. It was imperative that he should treat
of the subject in person, and thus he would go to Charlestown to see
Governor Lyttleton if Captain Coytmore would send a white man to
accompany him as a safeguard in the white settlements. Captain Coytmore
seemed to consider for a moment whom he could send; and then, evidently
desirous of furthering any pacific negotiation, said that he could
detail a man for that duty. Oconostota replied that that courtesy was
all he would ask of the commandant--a white man as a safeguard. He
himself would furnish a horse for the man to ride. He had come prepared
for the purpose, and he lifted a bridle, which he had brought over one
arm, to show it. He then remarked that he would get the horse, which he
had left a little distance back, while Captain Coytmore gave the man his
instructions. So saying, he lifted up the bridle in his hand, whirling
it three times around his head, and wheeling his horse, galloped off,
while from an ambush amongst the trees and underbrush a fire of twenty
or thirty muskets was poured upon the little group at the river bank.
Captain Coytmore was shot through the left breast and died that day.
Bell and Foster were each wounded in the leg. Doharty and the sentinel
had much ado to get them into the fort with Coytmore's help, for the
commandant was able to run to shelter with the rest through the
sally-port, and until Parker, who the writer said had had considerable
experience as a chirurgeon, examined Coytmore's wound, neither he nor
the others knew that it was mortal. Milne, being now the officer in
command, thought it fit to order the hostages into irons, fearing some
outbreak within the fort as well as an attack from without. One and
twenty stalwart savages were dangerous inmates at large, with the
freedom of the parade as they had had much of the time. They resisted;
one of the soldiers was killed in the effort to shackle them, for arms
appeared among them, evidently brought and secreted by their friends who
had been permitted to visit them, much leniency having been accorded
them, being hostages and not themselves criminals. Another soldier was
wounded in the head with a tomahawk. Upon the death of their comrade,
and the announcement that the commandant was dying, the garrison was
seized with an uncontrollable frenzy, fell upon the hostages, and within
five minutes had slaughtered the last man of them.
"I know you will feel for me," Milne wrote. "I dared scarce reprimand
the men, for they were full of fury. I see here and there signs of
sullenness. They watch me--their way of showing regret. I can scarcely
blame--yet the Cherokees were hostages and I am sorry; I was much alone,
with the temper of the soldiers to consider. Coytmore dead, and Bell
gone into a delirium with the fever--his wound bled very little--the
ball is near the bone. Doharty had been ill of a pleurisy and seems to
relapse. On the night after, I sat for a time in the block-house where
we had laid the commandant, feeling very low in my mind. There is one of
the men a bit of a joiner, and a great billet of the red cedar, used in
building the fort, being left over, he made a decent coffin, the wood
working easily and with a fine grain and gloss. I could hear as I sat
there the tapping of his mallet and chisel as he worked on the coffin,
while Coytmore lay with the flag over him, his sword and hat by his
side--there was no fire, because of him, and only a candle at his head,
or I think the savages would have seen the light. But the work being
finished and everything still, they supposed all asleep. I cannot think
why they did not smell the blood--for the ground of the room where the
hostages lay reeked of it. Twenty-one!--I could not think how I could
bury them inside the fort and I dared not send out a detail, nor do I
think the men would obey--the barracks seemed steeped in the smell,
though none there. Of a sudden, the night being fine and chill as I sat
there with Coytmore, a sentry outside the door, I heard a great voice
like a wind rushing. I thought I had been sleeping. And again I heard
it--words in Cherokee. _O-se-skinnea co-tan-co-nee!_ I slipped outside
the block-house where was the sentinel, much startled, and bade him
fetch the interpreter, alive or dead. He came limping--not greatly hurt.
The words he said meant, "Good tidings for the unhappy." Then as we
stood there other words sounded signifying 'Fight manfully and you will
be assisted!' They were spoken to the hostages and close to the rampart
hard by their hut, unknowing their--I cannot think how they should not
smell the blood! Then from a greater distance came the "Whoo-whoop!" and
a thick hail of musketry. The men got under arms very quick and
tractable, and I think wished to atone. The fire of the savages had no
effect, the balls being buried in the earth of the escarp, or falling
spent within the fort. But we were kept at it all night, the men
tireless and dutiful. The savages now and then paused at first,
expecting some token from the hostages. Then they fought with great
persistence--realizing. With what loss we do not know, since they
carried off their dead. Sure, how strange 'tis to be fighting all night,
firing through the loop-holes of the block-house around Coytmore, with
never a word from him, an order, or a sign. I miss him more since he is
out of sight. I am afraid to speak of burying the savages inside the
fort, along with the commandant and Private Mahone--and yet I _must_ get
rid of them. Twenty-one!--in so narrow an enclosure----
"Much gratified by a deputation of Indians, realizing at last, and
asking for bodies. Would not open gates for fear of surprise. Had each
hoisted up and slipped out of embrasure; could hardly force men to touch
them. I said, 'You were too quick once!'--drew my pistol. The Indians
seemed mighty glad to get them, yet women went off howling. Soldiers
seemed relieved to find in the hut tomahawks buried in ground, and a
phial of liquid, which they think was poison for well. I poured this out
on the earth, and broke bottle. Men's spirits improve--quite cheerful.
Hope you have better luck at Ft. Loudon. Pray some one of you write to
me! Bell and the others too ill to send remembrances--doubtless would."
The circle listened in appalled silence, and when the reading was
concluded, except here and there a murmur of commiseration, or a deep
imprecation, hardly a stir was in the room until the joyous notes of the
building wren arose, so clear that they had a suggestion of glitter, if
the quality of light can ever be an attribute of sound. Then Captain
Stuart asked for the letter and silently read it from end to end, while
a fragmentary conversation concerning the personality of the slain
hostages, all men of great note in their respective towns, began to be
prosecuted by the others.
That evil days were upon the land hardly admitted of a doubt, and they
fell to discussing the improbability of measures of relief and reprisal
being undertaken so early after the bootless return of Governor
Lyttleton's troops without striking a blow. The Cherokees, too, were
surely cognizant of the fact that it was scarcely possible in view of
the great expense of mustering and sending forth this force that such an
expedition would again be soon set on foot. Acting upon this theory, and
always instigated by the subtle French, their demonstration probably
heralded a systematic and vigorous outbreak all along the frontier, to
exterminate the settlers and free their land forever from the
encroachments of the hated English. This view was confirmed by an attack
which presently ensued on Fort Ninety-six, and being without effect, the
repulsed Indian forces drew off and fell upon the more defenseless
settlements, ravaging the frontier throughout the borders of the two
Carolinas and Virginia and practicing all the horrible atrocities of
savage warfare. The settlers about Fort Loudon quaked in their little
log-cabins and looked upon their limited clearings in the wilderness and
their meager beginnings of a home, and wondered if it were worth coming
so far and risking so much to attain so little. As yet, save for glances
of a flashing ire and sullen silence, the Indians had made no
demonstration, but it was a period of poignant doubt, like waiting for
the falling of a sword suspended by a hair.
One day Odalie was startled by seeing Fifine, seated on the threshold,
persistently wreathing her countenance into a grimace, which, despite
the infantile softness of her face and the harsh savagery of the one she
imitated, was so singularly recognizable that the mother took her hands
from the bread-trough where she was mixing the pounded corn meal and
went near to hear what the child was saying:--
"Fonny! Fonny!" with the terrible look of malevolent ridicule with which
Willinawaugh had rebuked Hamish's poor pleasantries on that
heart-breaking journey hither.
Odalie's pulses seemed to cease to beat. The child could hardly have
remembered an incident of so long ago without some recent reminder.
"Where, Josephine? Where did you see Willinawaugh?"
But Fifine had no mind to answer, apprehending the agitation in the
sharp tones, and translating it as displeasure. She drew her
countenance straight in short order, and put a meditative forefinger in
her mouth as she looked up doubtfully at her mother.
Odalie changed her tone; she laughed out gayly.
"Fonny! Fonny!" and she too imitated the Indian. Then exclaimed--"_Oh_,
isn't it droll, Fifine?"
And Fifine, deceived, banged her heels hilariously against the
door-step, laughing widely and damply, and crying, "Fonny! Fonny!" in
infantile derision.
"You didn't see 'Fonny' yesterday. No, Fifine! No!" Odalie had the air
of detracting from some merit on Fifine's part, and as she played her
little _role_ she trembled so with a realization of terror that she
could scarcely stand.
Yes, Fifine protested with pouts and anger. She _had_ seen him; she had
seen him, only yesterday.
"Where, Fifine, where?" cried Odalie bewildered, for the child sat upon
the threshold all the day long, while the mother spun and wove and
cooked within the sound of the babble of her voice, the gates of the
stockade being closed in these troublous times, and always one or more
of the men at work hard by in the fields without.
The mystery was too fraught with menace to be disregarded, but Odalie
hesitated, doubting the policy of this direct question. Fifine's
interest, however, was suddenly renewed and her importance expanded.
"Him wasn't all in," she explained. "Him top-feathers--him head--an' him
ugly mouf!" She looked expectantly and half doubtfully at her mother,
remembering her seeming anger.
"Oh, how droll! One might perish with laughter!" screamed Odalie, with a
piercing affectation of merriment, and once more Fifine banged her heels
hilariously against the door-step, as she sat on the threshold, and
cried in derision, "Fonny! Fonny!"
"Where, Fifine? At the stockade? Some hole?"
Fifine became angry at this suggestion, for had not "Dill" built the
stockade, and would he build a stockade so Indians might get through and
cut off her curls--she bounced them about her head--that Dill said were
"'andsomer than any queen's."
But Odalie _knew_ she had seen "Fonny" at the stockade, and Fifine
contradicted, and after a spirited passage of "Did!" "Didn't!" "Did!"
"Didn't!" Fifine arose to go and prove her proposition.
There at the little spring, so sylvan sweet, so full, yet with the
merest trickle of a branch that hardly wet the mint, so shyly hidden
amongst its rocks, was a fissure. Odalie had often noted it; dark it
was, for the shadows fell on it, and it might be deep; limited--it would
but hold her piggin, should she thrust it there, or admit a man's head,
yet not his shoulders--and this was what it had done yesterday, for
protruding thence Fifine maintained she had seen Willinawaugh's face
with "him top-feathers, him head, an' him ugly mouf!"
Odalie laid her ear to the ground to listen; smooth, quiet, full, she
heard the flow of water, doubtless the branch from the little spring
always brimming, yet seeming to send so tiny a rill over the slopes of
the mint. There was evidently a cave beneath, and they had never dreamed
of it! She began to search about for fissures, finding here and there in
the deep herbage and the cleft rocks one that might admit the passage of
a man's body. She remembered the first sudden strange appearance of the
Cherokee women at her fireside, and afterward, and that Sandy and Hamish
and Dill often declared that watch the gate as they might they never saw
the squaws enter the stockade nor issue therefrom. Doubtless they had
come through the cave, that had a hidden exit.
Her heart throbbed, her eyes filled; "I ought to be so thankful to
discover it in time--to think how safe we felt here when the gates were
locked! But, oh, my home! my sweet, sweet home!"
The way the men's faces fell when they were summoned, and stood and
looked at the slope, might make one pity them. It represented the hard
labor of nearly two years--and it was all to begin anew.
When Sandy, with the vigorous Scotch thrift, began to show how easily
the stockade might be moved to exclude the spring, Gilfillan shook his
head warningly. A station should never be without water. Sooner or later
its days were numbered. As to the stockade, it was futile. Twenty--nay,
fifty men might be surprised and massacred here. For the ordinary
purposes of life the place was useless.
Hamish, after the first sharp pang, was resolved into curiosity; he must
needs slip through the fissure and into the cave below. When Odalie
ceased her tears to remonstrate, he declared that he could get out of
any cave that Willinawaugh or Choo-qualee-qualoo could, and then
demanded to be tied to her apron-string to be drawn up again in case he
should prove unable to take care of himself. He went down with a whoop,
somewhat like Willinawaugh's own war-cry, then called out that the coast
was clear, and asked for his rifle to be handed to him.
Following the wall with his hand and the sound of the water he took his
way through a narrow subterranean passage, so densely black that it
seemed he had never before known what darkness was. He could hear naught
but the wide, hollow echo of the flow of the stream, but never did it
touch his feet; and after he had progressed, as he judged, including
the windings of his way, some five or six miles, he began to recollect a
little, meager stream, yet flowing with a good force for its compass,
that made a play in the current not a quarter of a mile, not more than
one thousand feet, from the fort. So well founded was his judgment of
locality that when the light first appeared, a pale glimmer at the end
of a long tunnel, growing broader and clearer on approach, and he
reached an archway with a sudden turn, seeming from without a mere
"rock-house"--as a grotto formed by the beetling ledges of a cliff is
called in that region--and with no further cavernous suggestion, the
first thing that caught his eye was the English flag flying above the
primitive block-houses and bastions and out-works of Fort Loudon, while
the little stream gathered all its strength and hied down through the
thick underbrush to join the Tennessee River.
The officers heard with evident concern of the disaster that had
befallen MacLeod Station, and immediately sent a runner to bid the
stationers come to the fort, pending their selection of a new site and
the raising of new houses. So Odalie, with such few belongings as could
be hastily collected once more loaded on a packhorse, again entered the
gates of Fort Loudon with a heavy heart.
But it was a cheery group she encountered. The soldiers were swaggering
about the parade in fine form, the picture of military jollity, and the
great hall was full of the officers and settlers. An express had come in
with news of a different complexion. Long delayed the bearer had been;
tempted to turn back here, waiting an opportunity there, now assisted on
his backward journey by a friendly Indian, and again seeing a dodging
chance of making through to Loudon, he had traveled his two hundred
miles so slowly that the expedition he heralded came hard on the
announcement of its approach. While the tidings raised the spirits of
the officers and the garrison, it was evident that the movement added
elements of danger and developed the crisis. Still they consisted with
hope, and with that sentiment of good cheer and jovial courage which
succeeded the reading of the brief dispatch from Fort Prince George.
Advices just received from Charles Town. General Amherst detaches
Colonel Montgomery with adequate force to chastise Indians.
Discussions of the situation were rife everywhere. There was much talk
of the officer in command of the expedition, a man of distinguished
ability and tried courage, and the contradictory Gilmore and Whitson
found themselves in case to argue with great vivacity, offering large
wagers of untransferable commodities,--such as one's head, one's eyes,
one's life,--on the minor point, impossible to be settled at the moment,
as to whether or not he spelled his name with a final "y," one
maintaining this to be a fact, the other denying it, since he was a
younger brother (afterward succeeding to the title) of the Earl of
Eglinton, who always spelled his name Montgomerie. It might have
afforded them further subject for discussion, and enlarged their
appreciation of the caricature of incongruity, could they have known
that some two years later three of these savage Cherokee chiefs would be
presented to His Majesty King George in London by the Earl of Eglinton,
where they were said to have conducted themselves with great dignity and
propriety. Horace Walpole in one of his letters chronicles them as the
lions of the hour, dining with peers, and having a vocal celebrity, Mrs.
Clive, to sing on one of these occasions in her best style for their
pleasure. In fact, such was the grace of their deportment, that several
of the newspapers seemed to deduce therefrom the failure of
civilization, since the aboriginal state of man could show forth these
flowers of decorum, a point of view that offends to the quick a learned
historian, who argues astutely throughout a precious half-page of a
compendious work that the refinements of spiritual culture are still
worth consideration, seeming to imply that although we cannot all be
Cherokee chieftains, and take London by storm,--in a manner different,
let us say in passing, from their previous reduction of smaller
cities,--it is quite advisable for us to mind our curriculum and our
catechism, and be as wise and good as we may, if not distinguished.
Perhaps the Cherokees acted upon the intuitive perception of the value
of doing in Rome as the Romans do. And that rule of conduct seems
earlier to have been applied by Colonel Montgomery. However he spelled
his name, he was sufficiently identifiable. He came northward like an
avenging fury. Advancing swiftly with a battalion of Highlanders and
four companies of the Royal Scots,[11] some militia and volunteers,
through that wild and tangled country, he fell on Little Keowee Town,
where with a small detachment he put every man to the sword, and, by
making a night march with the main body of his force, almost
simultaneously destroyed Estatoe, taking the inhabitants so by surprise
that the beds were warm, the food was cooking, loaded guns exploded in
the flames, for the town was promptly fired, and many perished thus, the
soldiers having become almost uncontrollable on discovering the body of
an Englishman who had only that morning suffered death by torture at the
hands of the savages. Sugaw Town next met this fate--in fact, almost
every one of the Ayrate towns of the Cherokee nation, before Colonel
Montgomery wiped his bloody sword, and sheathed it at the gates of Fort
Prince George, having personally made several narrow escapes.
These details, however, were to Fort Loudon like the flashes of
lightning of a storm still below the horizon, and of which one is only
made aware by the portentous conditions of the atmosphere. The senior
officers of the post began to look grave. The idea occurred to them with
such force that they scarcely dared to mention it one to the other, lest
it be developed by some obscure electrical transmission in the brain of
Oconostota, that Fort Loudon would offer great strategic value in the
possession of the Indians. The artillery, managed by French officers,
who, doubtless, would appear at their appeal, might well suffice to
check the English advance. The fort itself would afford impregnable
shelter to the braves, their French allies and non-combatants. Always
they had coveted it, always they claimed that it had been built for
them, here in the heart of their nation. Stuart was not surprised by the
event. He only wondered that it had not chanced earlier.
That night the enmity of the Indians was prefigured by a great glare
suddenly springing into the sky. It rose above the forests, and from the
open spaces about Fort Loudon, whence the woods had been cleared away,
one could see it fluctuate and flush more deeply, and expand along the
horizon like some flickering mystery of the aurora borealis. But this
baleful glare admitted of no doubt. One needed not to speculate on
unexplained possibilities of electrical currents, and resultant thrills
of light. It only epitomized and materialized the kindling of the fires
of hate.
It was Odalie's little home; much that she valued still remained
there--left to be quietly fetched to the fort next day. Their flitting
had taken place at dusk, with but a load of wearing apparel, and it was
supposed that the rest was quite safe, as the Cherokees were not
presumed to be apprised of their absence. The spinning-wheel and the
loom; her laborious treasures of home-woven linen for bed and table; the
fine curtains on which the birds flickered for the last time; the beds
and pillows, adding pounds on pounds of dry balsam needles to the fire;
the flaunting, disguised tabourets, showing themselves now at their true
value, and burning stolidly like the chunks of wood they were; the
unsteady tables and puncheon benches; all the uncouth, forlorn little
makeshifts of her humble housekeeping, that her embellishing touch had
rendered so pretty, added their fuel to the flames which cast
long-glancing lines of light up and down the silvery reaches of the
river she had loved.
Captain Stuart and Captain Demere, who had gone instantly to the tower
in the block-house by the gate, on the report of a strange, distant
light, saw her as they came down, and both paused, Demere wincing a
trifle, preferring not to meet her. She was standing beside one of the
great guns and had been looking out through the embrasure. The moon was
directly overhead above the parade, and the shadows of the palisades
fell outward. The officers could not avoid her; their way led them down
near at hand and they needs must pass her. She turned, and as she stood
with one hand on the big cannon, her white dress richly a-gleam in the
moonlight, she looked at them with a smile, something of the saddest, in
her eyes.
"If I wanted to scream, Mrs. MacLeod, I should scream," exclaimed
Demere, impulsively.
She laughed a little, realizing how he would have upbraided the futility
of tears had she shed them--he was always so ready with his staid, kind,
undeniably reasonable rebukes.
"No," she said, "I am trying to remember that home is not in a house,
but in the heart."
"I think you are trying to show us the mettle of a soldier," said
Demere, admiringly.
"Mrs. MacLeod would like the king's commission!" cried Stuart, breaking
the tension with his bluff raillery, striking the cannon a smart tap
with the butt of the pistol he carried in his hand, while the metal
gave out a deep, hollow resonance. "Her unbridled ambition was always to
be the commanding officer!"
Both Stuart and Demere thought more seriously of the demonstration as
affecting the public weal than did the pioneers of the settlement. Still
hoping for the best, it seemed to them not unnatural that an abandoned
station should be fired as merely wanton mischief, and not necessarily
with the knowledge or connivance of the head-men of the Cherokees.
The next day, the hunters of the fort went out betimes as usual, and
Hamish found it agreeable to make one of the party. Corporal O'Flynn was
among the number, and several horses were taken to bring in the game; a
bright, clear day it was, of that sweet season when the spring blooms
gradually into the richness of summer. The wind was fresh; the river
sang; the clouds of a glittering whiteness, a flocculent lightness,
floated high in the blue sky. Suddenly the sentry at the gate called out
sharply for the corporal of the guard. The men, lounging about the
parade, turned to look and listen.
[Illustration: "Plunging through the gate and half across the parade
ground."]
The hoof-beats of a horse coming at frantic speed smote first upon the
ear; then across the open space to which the glacis sloped, with
snorting head and flying mane and tail, the frightened creature
galloped, plunging through the gate and half across the parade
ground; a soldier was on his back, leaning forward upon the animal's
neck, his arms clasped about it, the stirrups and his position alone
retaining him in the saddle; for he was dead--quite dead. Too dead to
answer any of the dozen questions hurled at him as the soldiers caught
the bridle; when the horse whirled he reeled out of the saddle, so
hopelessly dead that they asked him no more. The good sorrel would have
told much, if he might, as he stood, snorting and tossing his head, and
trembling in every fiber, his eyes starting out of their sockets, yet,
conscious he was among his friends, looking from one to another of the
soldiers as they handled him, with an earnest appeal for sympathy and
consolation which implied some terrible ordeal. Before an order could be
given the crack of rifles came from the woods, and a few of the hunters
were seen bursting from the forest, one by one, and coming at a
double-quick up the slope of the glacis.
Hamish and O'Flynn were the last. They had been together a little
distant from the others. Now and again they had heard the report of
firearms, multiplied into something like a volley.
"Listen at them spalpeens wastin' powdher," the corporal exclaimed once,
wroth at this unsoldierly practice. "Must they have twenty thrys to hit
a big black buffalo? Just lemme git 'em into the gyard house wunst
agin--time they git out they'll be fit to worship the outside o' the
dure; it'll look so strange an' good to 'm."
It was a wolf-trap which he was exploiting at the moment, made of logs
cumbrously adjusted and baited with buffalo meat, and within it now were
two large, handsome specimens whose skins were of value, and who had
evidently resolved to part with those ornamental integuments as
reluctantly as might be; they were growling and plunging at the timbers
with a most ferocious show of fangs and the foam flying from their
snarling jaws.
The sun sifted down through the great trees and the soft green shadows
on the man and boy, both clad in the hunter's buckskin shirt and
leggings. Corporal O'Flynn had knelt down outside the pen the better to
see in the shadow the two plunging wild beasts.
"I'm afeared to shoot so close lest I might singe yer hair, but I can't
stand on ceremony, me dears," he said, addressing the wolves, as he drew
his pistol. "Bedad, I _must_ go and stop that wastin' o' powdher!"
The next moment something suddenly sang aloud in the wilderness--a wild,
strange, sibilant strain. It seemed materialized as it whizzed past
Hamish's ear, and so long had it been since he had heard the flight of
the almost discarded arrow that he did not recognize the sound till he
heard a sharp exclamation of pain and saw the shaft sticking in
O'Flynn's right arm, pinning it to the logs of the wolf-trap. The claws
of the wild beasts, reaching through, tore now the buckskin and now the
flesh from his chest, as he pluckily struggled to free himself; the
pistol went off in his grasp and one of the wolves fell in convulsive
agonies; the other, dismayed, shrank back. Hamish caught up O'Flynn's
loaded gun, looking about warily for Indians, and prudently reserving
his fire. He saw naught, and the next moment he realized that O'Flynn
was fainting from the pain. He knew that the straggler who had shot the
arrow had sped swiftly away to summon other Cherokees, or to secure a
gun or more arrows. He risked his life in waiting only a moment, but
with the fellow-feeling which was so strong among the pioneers of the
Tennessee Valley that it would induce two men at parting, having but one
knife between them, to break and share the blade, to divide the powder
that meant life in that wild country equally to the last grain. Hamish
did not for one instant contemplate any other course. He rushed to
O'Flynn and sought to release him, but the flint of the arrow that had
gone through the heavy muscular tissues of the arm still stuck fast in
the strong fiber of the logs of the trap, and the blood was streaming,
and once more the wolf was angrily plunging against the side of the
pen. Suddenly the boy remembered the juvenile account of the scalping of
"Dill." Calling piteously to O'Flynn not to mind, if he could help it,
Hamish placed one firm foot against the straight back of the soldier,
and bracing himself with his left arm around a stanch young tree, he
pulled at the arrow with all his might. There was a ripping sound of
flesh, a human scream, a creak of riving wood, and Corporal O'Flynn lay
face downward on the ground, freed, but with the shaft still in his arm,
the blood spurting from it, and the wolf plunging and snarling unheeded
at the very hair of his head.