chiefly by day, but one night the prospectors could not be still, the
moon on the sand was so bright!
The time which they had fixed for a silent, secret departure was drawing
near. Their bags were almost filled, but they lingered for a little
more, and covetously a little more still. And this night, this memorable
night, the moon on the sand was as bright as day!
The light slanted across the Tennessee River and shimmered in the
ripples. One could see, if one would, the stately lines of dark summits
along a far horizon. A mockingbird was singing from out the boscage of
the laurel near at hand, and the night wind was astir. And suddenly the
two gold-washers in the depths of the grotto became conscious that they
were not alone.
There, sitting like stone figures one on each side of the narrow portal,
were the two cheera-taghe of the town, silent, motionless, watching with
eyes how long alert, listening with ears how discerningly attentive, it
is impossible to divine.
The gold-washers sprang to their feet, each instinctively grasping for
his weapon, but alack, neither was armed! The pan had come to seem the
most potent of accoutrements, with which, in good sooth, one might take
the world by storm, and the rifle and knife were forgotten, in their
absorption. Doubtless the Cherokees interpreted aright the gesture, so
significant, so obvious to their methods of life. Both the cheera-taghe
were armed with pistol as well as tomahawk and scalping-knife.
Perhaps because of this they felt secure, at leisure, acquiescently
allowing the event to develop as it needs must,--or perhaps realizing
the significance of the discovery to the young strangers, their
palpitant eagerness to gauge its result, their dread of reprisal, of
forced renunciation of their booty, the Indians permitted themselves a
relish of the torture of an enemy on a more aesthetic scheme than their
wont.
The two cheera-taghe, the shadow of their feather-crested heads in the
moonlight on the sand of the grotto almost as distinct as the reality,
spoke suddenly to each other, and the discomfited gold-seekers, who had
learned to comprehend to a certain extent the language, perceived with
dismay the sarcasm that lengthened their suspense. For it was thus that
the rulers among the Cherokees rebuked their own young people, not
upbraiding them with their misdeeds, but with gentle satire
complimenting them for that in which they had notably failed.
"A reward for hospitality we find in these young men," said one, whose
voice was hoarse and croaking and guttural and who was called Kanoona
(the Bull-frog).
"Strangers to us, yet they requite us, for we treated them as our own,"
said Oo-koo-koo.
"They treat us as _their own!_" the croaking, satiric, half-smothered
laughter of this response intimated an aside. Then Kanoona in full voice
went on, "Open and frank as the day, they keep no secrets from us!"
"They are honest! They rob us not of the yellow stone which the Carolina
people think so precious!" rejoined Oo-koo-koo, while O'Kimmon and
L'Épine looked from one to the other as the cheera-taghe sustained this
fugue of satiric accusation.
"Not they," croaked the responsive voice, "for behold, we have long time
fed and lodged them and given them of our best. We have believed them
and trusted them. We have befriended them and loved them."
"And they have befriended and loved us!" said Oo-koo-koo.
Then silence. The river sang, but only a murmurous rune; the mute
moonlight lay still on the mountains; the wind had sunk, and the
motionless leaves glistened as the dew fell; a nighthawk swept past the
portal of the grotto with the noiseless wing of its kind.
"Had they desired to explore our land they would have asked our
consent," the croaking voice of Kanoona resumed the antiphonal reproach.
"They would not have brought upon us the hordes of British colonists,
who would fain drive us from our habitations for their greed of the
yellow stone."
"Oh, no! never would they make so base a recompense!--to bring upon us
the destruction of our men and women and children, the wresting from us
of our land, the casting of us forth from our homes,--because the poor,
unsuspecting Indians gave them food and shelter and a haven of rest
while waiting for the pettiaugres that are coming up from New Orleans."
"_The pettiaugres from New Orleans_!" Kanoona repeated with a burst of
raucous laughter. "Hala! Hala!"
But Oo-koo-koo preserved his gravity. "They would not lie! Surely the
white men would not lie!"
Then turning to O'Kimmon he asked point-blank, "Chee-a-koh-ga?" (Do you
lie?)
The direct address was a relief to O'Kimmon. He had often wondered to
see the young braves reduced almost to tears by this seemingly gentle
discipline; he felt its poignancy when the keen blade of satire was
turned against himself.
"I did lie!" he admitted, as unreservedly as it he were at confession.
"But Oo-koo-koo, we will pay for what we've got. This is all of ut! An'
faix, yez have thrated us well,--an' begorra, we would have axed yer
consint, if we had dramed we could have got ut!" he concluded
ingenuously.
The two Indians gazed at him with a surprise so evident that a chill ran
through his every nerve.
"We will never reveal the secret,--the place of the gold," declared
L'Épine. Then perceiving in his turn something uncomprehended in their
expression he reinforced his promise with argument. "We will want to
come back--alone--to get more of it--all for ourselves. We will not be
willing to share our discovery with others."
The cheera-taghe still silently gazed at the two young men; then turned
toward each other with that patent astonishment yet on their faces. At
last they burst forth into sarcastic laughter.
L'Épine and O'Kimmon, albeit half bewildered, exchanged appalled
glances. There was no need of speech. Each understood at last.
Return! There was no chance of departure. They were to pay the penalty
of the dangerous knowledge they had acquired. Already some vague report,
some suspicion of the hidden gold of the locality had been bruited
abroad,--thus the Indians must reason,--or these white men would not
have come so far to seek it. Should they be permitted to depart, their
sudden wealth would proclaim its source, even though as they had
promised they should keep silence.
This was equally true should they eventually escape. Therefore--hideous
realization!--the actual possession by the Indians of their own country
depended upon the keeping of the secret inviolate. Dead men tell no
tales!
O'Kimmon, with a swelling heart, bethought himself of his status as a
British subject and the possible vengeance of the province. It would
come, if at all, too late. For the Cherokees believed the two to be
without the pale of the English protection. One had repudiated the
government, declaring himself an Irishman, a nationality then unknown to
the Cherokees. The other was French,--no reprisal for his sake was
possible to a tribe under British allegiance. Death it must
be!--doubtless with all the pomp and circumstance of the torture, for
from the standpoint of the Indians they had requited hospitality with
robbery. Death was inevitable,--unless they could now escape. Had they
but one weapon between them they might yet make good their flight.
An Irishman rarely stops to count the odds. With the thought O'Kimmon,
heavy, muscular, yet alert, threw himself upon Oo-koo-koo, and in an
instant he had almost wrenched the knife from the Indian's belt.
The other Cherokee cried warningly, "_Akee-rooka! Akee-rooka_!" (I will
shoot!) Then drew his pistol and fired.
The next moment, perhaps for many moments thereafter, none of them knew
very definitely what had happened. There was a cloud of dust, a terrific
detonation, a sudden absolute darkness, as in some revulsion of nature,
a stifling sensation. They were penned within the grotto by a great
fragment of the beetling cliff. Doubtless it had been previously
fractured by the action of continuous freezes, and the concussion of the
pistol shot in the restricted space of the cave below had brought it
down.
The days went on. The men were missed after a time, but a considerable
interval had elapsed. The two strangers had of late kept themselves much
apart, owing to their absorption and their covert methods of seeking for
gold. It was an ill-ordered, roaming, sylvan life they led at best. The
cheera-taghe, although "beloved men" and priests of their strange and
savage religion, were but wild Indians, and their temporary absence
created no surprise. In fact, until sought with anxiety when the drought
had become excessive and threatened the later crops, and the services of
the cheera-taghe were necessary to invoke and with wild barbaric
ceremonials bring down the lightning and thunder to clear the atmosphere
and the rain to refresh the soil, it was not ascertained that the
prophets had definitely disappeared.
Then it was that excitement supervened, search, anxiety, grief, fear.
There began to be vague rumors of untoward sounds, remembered rather
than noticed at the time. Faint explosions had been heard in the night
as if under the ground, and again in broad daylight as if in the air.
None could imagine that the doomed men had sought to attract the
attention of the town by firing off their pistols, thus utilizing their
scanty ammunition. The strain grew intense; superstitious fancies
supplemented the real mystery; the place was finally abandoned, and thus
Nilaque Great became a "waste town."
It was ten years, perhaps, after this blight had fallen upon it, that
one day as the pack-train came down the valley of the Little Tennessee,
on its autumnal return trip to Charlestown, the snow began to sift down.
An unseasonable storm it was, for the winter had hardly set in. A north
wind sprang up; the snow was soon heavily driving; within an hour the
woods, still in the red leafage of autumn, were covered with snow and
encased in ice. Only by a strenuous effort would the train be able to
pass the old "waste town" before the early dusk,--a mile or two at most;
but it was hoped that this might suffice to keep the ghosts out of the
bounds of visibility. The roaring bacchanalian glees with which the
pack-men set the melancholy sheeted woods aquiver might well send the
ghosts out of earshot, presuming them endowed with volition.
Suddenly Cuddy Barnett discovered that one of the pack-horses of his own
especial charge was missing,--a good bay with a load of fine dressed
deerskins to take to Charlestown, then the great mart of all this far
region. A recollection of a sharp curve in the trading-path, running
dangerously near a bluff bank, came abruptly into his mind. Drifts had
lodged in its jagged crevices, and it might well have chanced that here
the animal had lost his footing and slipped out of the steadily trotting
file along the river bank unnoticed in the blinding snow.
This theory seemed eminently plausible to his comrades, but when they
learned that he was of the opinion that the disaster had happened at the
old "waste town," as he had there first missed the animal in the file,
not one would go back with him to search the locality,--not for the
horse, not for the peltry, not even to avert the displeasure of their
employer in Charlestown. Barnett besought their aid for a time, urging
the project of rescue as they all sat around the roaring camp-fire under
the sheltering branches of a cluster of fir trees that, acting as
wind-break, served to fend off in some degree the fury of the storm. The
ruddy flare illumined far shadowy aisles of the snowy wilderness, all
agloom with the early dusk. Despite the falling flakes, they could still
see the picketed pack-horses, now freed from their burdens, huddling
together and holding down their heads to the icy blast as they munched
their forage. The supper of the young pack-men was broiling on the
coals; their faces were florid with the keen wind, their coonskin caps
all crested with snow; and the fringes of their buckskin raiment had
tinkling pendants of icicles; but although they had found good cheer in
a chortling jug, uncorked as the first preliminary of encamping, they
had not yet imbibed sufficient fictitious courage to set at naught their
fears of the old "waste town."
Barnett at last acquiesced in the relinquishment of his desire of
rescue. Some losses must needs occur in a great trade, and considering
the stress of the weather, the long distances traversed, the dangers of
the lonely wildernesses in the territory of savages, the incident would
doubtless be leniently overlooked. And then he bethought himself of the
horse,--a good horse, stout, swift, kindly disposed; a hard fate the
animal had encountered,--abandoned here to starve in these bleak winter
woods. Perhaps he might be lying there at the foot of the cliffs with a
broken leg, suffering the immeasurable agonies of a dumb beast, for the
lack of a merciful pistol-ball to put him at peace. Barnett could not
resist the mute appeal of his fancy.
Presently he was trudging alone along the icy path. The flare of the red
fire grew dim behind him; the last flicker faded. The woods were all
unillumined, ghastly white, with a hovering gray shadow. The song of the
bivouac fainted in the distance and failed; the echo grew doubtful and
dull; and now in absolute silence that somehow set his nerves aquiver he
was coming in with the dreary dusk and the driving snow to the old
"waste town," Nilaque Great.
More silent even than the wilderness it seemed with the muffling drifts
heavy on the roofs, blocking the dark open doors of the tenantless
dwellings, lying in fluffy masses on the boughs of the trees that had
once made the desert spaces so pleasantly umbrageous in those sweet
summers so long ago. The great circular council-house, shaped like a
dome, was whitely aglimmer against the gray twilight and the wintry
background of the woods and mountains,--only the vaguest suggestions of
heights seen through the ceaseless whirl of the crystalline flakes. No
wolf now, although remembering the casual glimpse he had had he was
prepared with rifle and pistol, and held his knife in his hand; no bear;
no sign of living creature until, as he skirted the jagged bluff of the
river where he fancied the horse might have lost his footing, he heard a
sudden whinny of welcome, the sound keen and eerie and intrusive in the
strange breathless solemnity of the silent place.
Gazing cautiously over the verge of the precipice, he saw the animal
despite the gathering shadows. The horse was quite safe, having
doubtless slipped down in the soft densities of a great drift dislodged
from the crevice by his own weight. His pack was still on his back, now
piled twice as high with snow. He lifted his arched neck as he sprang
about with undiminished activity, vainly seeking to ascend the almost
sheer precipice.
Daylight, however, was essential for his rescue. The effort now on these
icy steeps might cost either man or beast a broken limb, if no more.
With an instinct of self-protection the animal had chosen the lee of a
great buttress of the cliff, and could stand there safely all night
though the temperature should fall still lower. The young pack-man
called out a word or two of encouragement, listening fearfully as the
sound struck back in the silence from the icy bank of the river, the
craggy hillsides, and the resonant walls of the deserted houses in the
old "waste town." Himself suddenly stricken to silence, he realized as
he turned that the night had at last closed in. It lay dark and desolate
in the limitless woods, where a vague sense of motion gave token that
the snow was still viewlessly falling in the dense obscurities.
But in the "waste town" itself a pallid visibility lingered in the open
spaces where the trees were few, and gloomily showed the empty cabins,
the deserted council-house, the vacant "beloved square." Somehow, turn
as he would, this dim scene in the midst of the dense darkness of the
stormy night was before his eyes. Again and again he plunged into the
woods seeking to follow the well-known trail of the trading-path to the
camp and rejoin his companions, but invariably he would emerge from the
wilderness after a toilsome tramp, entering the old "waste town" at a
different angle.
He perceived at length that he could not keep the direction, that he was
wandering in a circle after the manner of those lost in forests. His
clothing, freezing upon his body, was calculated for warmer weather; the
buckskin shirt and leggings, the garb of the frontiersmen, copied from
the attire of the Indians, were of a thin and pliable texture, owing to
the peculiar skill of the savages in dressing peltry. An early historian
describes such costume in a curiously sophisticated phrase as the
"summer visiting dress of the Indians." The southern tribes were
intensely averse to cold, for in winter they wore furs and garments made
of buffalo hides, the shaggy side inward; this raiment was sewed with
the sinews of deer and a kind of wild hemp for thread, and with needles
dexterously fashioned of fishbone.
Barnett had now no thought of the ghosts of the old "waste town." His
first care was to save his life this cruel night; without fire, without
food, without shelter, it might be that he had indeed come to the end.
He was induced by this reflection to climb the mound to the old
council-house. For here the walls, plastered both within and without
with the strong adhesive red clay of the region, admitted no wind, while
in the cabins which had been dwellings the drifts lay deep beneath the
rifts in the dilapidated roofs and the crevices in the wall, and the
flying flakes sifted in as the keen gusts surged through. He had had the
forethought to gather as he went bits of wood, now a loose clapboard or
piece of bark from low-hanging eaves, now a fragment of half-rotten
puncheon from a doorstep, and as he groped into the dense darkness of
the council-house with his steel and flint he set them alight on the
hearth in the centre of the floor.
When he was once more warm and free of the fear of death, other fears
took hold upon him. In the first glimmers of the fire he could see
through the tall narrow doorless portal only the dark night outside and
a flickering glimpse against its blackness of the quivering crystals of
the snow,--these but vaguely, for the blue smoke eddying through the
great room veiled the opposite side, there being no chimney or window,
and he sat in the interior behind the fire.
He gazed furtively over his shoulder ever and anon, as the flames flared
up, revealing the deeply red walls of the dome-like place with here and
there a buffalo skin suspended against them, the inside of the hide
showing, painted in curious hieroglyphics, brilliant with color, and
instinct with an untranslated meaning; a number of conch shells lay
about, with jars and vases of clay, and those quaintly fashioned earthen
drums, the heads of tightly stretched deerskin,--all paraphernalia of
the savage worship which the cheera-taghe had conducted, now abandoned
as bewitched.
Sitting here comfortably in the place of those men of the "divine fire,"
Cuthbert Barnett, his rifle by his side, his knife in his belt, his
coonskin cap pushed back from his face, once more florid, warm, tingling
from the keen wind of the day and the change to this heated air, and
with perchance a drowsy eyelid, began to marvel anew as to the fate of
the cheera-taghe. Hardly a drowsy eyelid, he consciously had, however,
for he had resolved that he would not sleep. His situation here alone
was too dangerous; he feared wolves,--the fire that would otherwise
affright them might untended sink too low. He feared also some wandering
Indian. Should he be discovered here by means of the unaccustomed light
he might be wantonly murdered as he slept, or in revenge for the
sacrilege of his intrusion among these things that the savages had
esteemed sacred.
Therefore, when he suddenly saw the cheera-taghe he saw them quite
plainly. Tall, stately, splendidly arrayed in their barbaric garb,
draped with their iridescent feather-wrought mantles, their heads
dressed with white plumes, a staff of cane adorned with white feathers
in the right hand, a green bough in the left, preceded by those
curiously sonorous earthen drums, of which the drone blended with the
notes of the religious song, _Yo-he-wah-yah! Yo-he-wah-yah!_ they thrice
led the glittering procession of the "holy dance" around and around the
"beloved square."
A blank interval ensued. And then again he saw them, nearer now, more
distinct; they were entering the temple; they were close at hand;
triumphant of mien, assured, so full of life!--he could laugh to think
that he had had a dream, or had heard somehow, that they were dead or
lost or vaguely gone. For here, without seeming in the least to notice
his presence, they kindled anew with friction of bits of poplar or white
oak the fire for the new year, the _cheera_, the "sacred flame," to bear
it outside to distribute it to the assembled people of Nilaque Great.
Without was summer; the trees were full of green leaves; canoes were
glancing along the shimmering river; the "beloved square" was crowded
with braves,--he saw their feathered crests wave and glisten; the wind
was blowing fresh and cool; the sun shone.
And suddenly it was shining in his face, as it came up over the Great
Smoky Mountains, sending its first long slanting wintry beams through
the narrow portal to the hearth where he had lain asleep before the
ashes of the once "sacred fire," covered with the fresh ashes of last
night's vigil, for they too were dead. He staggered to his feet and went
out into the glistening dawn of this snowy sunlit day, hardly able to
reconcile its aspect with the summer-tide scene he had just quitted. Now
and again he paused, half-bewildered, as if unfamiliar with the pathetic
miseries of the old "waste town"--the scene in his mind savored far more
of reality.
The necessity of caring for the pack-horse, perhaps better than aught
else, served to restore his faculties. He found it easy now to climb
down the jagged face of the bluffs of the river bank, whence the snow
had vanished, for in the changeable southern climate a sudden thaw had
begun in the earlier hours and now the warm sun was setting all the
trees and eaves adrip. As he stood below the cliff on the sandy slope
whence the snow had slipped down into the river, the volume of which the
storm of last night would much increase after the long drought of the
summer, he carefully examined the horse to ascertain what injuries he
might have sustained; a few abrasions on the right flank seemed to be
all, until the animal moved, a bit stiffly with the near fore leg. This
attracted Barnett's attention to a gash on the knee received doubtless
when the horse first fell on the ground,--a queer gash, long, jagged,
unaccountable, as if it had been made by a dull blade. Glancing down to
search the gravel, the pack-man discerned, half-imbedded in the sand,
the edge of a fragment of a knife, a scalping-knife, broken half in two;
and there, lying not three yards away, was a handle attached to a belt
heavily wrought with roanoke,--only a bit of the belt,--and the other
half of the knife.
The pack-man's hand trembled and his florid cheek went pale, for these
lay just under the sharp edge of a huge fragment of rock that had
evidently fallen from the cliff above, breaking the blade and holding
the belt fast.
How long he stood and stared he did not know. For a time he heard
without realizing the significance of the sounds the whoops and shouts
of his comrades, wildly racing back through the old "waste town" in
search of him; but although in the strenuous duty of his rescue they
would venture to pass it in broad daylight, no ardor of persuasion could
induce them to linger there to investigate the locality of his find, or
to aid in moving the rock and exploring the grotto that had evidently
proved a sepulchre.