"The men had been hastily formed into a square.""The men had been hastily formed into a square."
Demeré fell at the first fire with three other officers and twenty-seven soldiers. Again and again, from the unseen enemy masked by the forest, the women and children, the humble beasts of burden,—fleeing wildly from side to side of the space,—the soldiers and the backwoodsmen, all received this fusillade. The men had been hastily formed into a square and from each front fired volleys as best they might, unable to judge of the effect and conscious of the futility of their effort, surrounded as they were on every side. Now and again a few, impelled by despair, made a wild break for liberty, unrestrained by the officers who gave them what chance they might secure, and with five or six exceptionsthese were shot down by the Indians after reaching the woods. The devoted remnant, fighting until the last round of ammunition was exhausted, were taken prisoners by the triumphant savages. Stuart, his face covered with blood and his sword dripping, was pinioned before he could be disarmed, and then helpless, hopeless, with what feelings one may hardly imagine, he was constrained to set forth with his captor on the return march to Fort Loudon.
The Cherokees could hardly restrain their joy in thus taking him alive. So far-famed had he become among them, so high did they esteem his military rank, so autocratic seemed his power in the great stronghold of Fort Loudon, with his red-coated soldiers about him, obeying his words, even saluting his casual presence, that it afforded the most æsthetic zest of revenge, the most acute realization of triumph, to contemplate him as he stood bound, bloody, bareheaded in the sun, while the very meanest of the lowest grade of the tribesmen were free to gather round him with gibes and menacing taunts and buffets of derision. His hat had been snatched off in order to smite him with it in the face; his hair, always of special interest to the Indians because of its light brown color and dense growth, was again and again caught by its thick, fair plait with howls of delight, and if the grasp of the hand unaided could have rent the scalp fromthe head, those fierce derisive jerks would have compassed the feat; more than one whose rage against him was not to be gratified by these malevolently jocose manifestations of contempt, gave him such heavy and repeated blows over the head with the butt of their firelocks that they were near clubbing the prisoner to death, when this circumstance attracted the attention of his captor, Willinawaugh, who was fain to interfere. Stuart, regretting the intervention, realized that he was reserved to make sport for their betters in the fiercer and more dramatic agonies of the torture and the stake.
His fortitude might well have tempted them. In a sort of stoical pride he would not wince. Never did he cry out. He hardly staggered beneath the crushing blows of the muskets, delivered short hand and at close quarters, that one might have thought would have fractured his skull. That the interposition of Willinawaugh was not of the dictates of clemency might be inferred from the manner in which the return journey was accomplished. Forced to keep pace with his captor on horseback Stuart traveled the distance from Taliquo Town to Old Fort Loudon in double-quick time, bareheaded, pinioned, in the blazing meridian heat of a sultry August day. He hoped he would die of exhaustion. In the long-continued siege of Fort Loudon, necessitating much indoor life, to which he was littleused, the texture of his skin had become delicate and tender, and now blistered and burned as if under the touch of actual cautery. With the previous inaction and the unaccustomed exposure the heat suggested the possibility of sunstroke to offer a prospect of release.
But he came at last to the great gates of Fort Loudon with no more immediate hurt than a biting grief deep in his heart, the stinging pain of cuts and bruises about his head and face, and a splitting, throbbing, blinding headache. Not so blinding that he did not see every detail of the profane occupancy of the place on which so long he had expended all his thought and every care, in the defense of which he had cheerfully starved, and would with hearty good-will have died. All the precise military decorum that characterized it had vanished in one short day. Garbage, filth, bones, broken bits of food lay about the parade, that was wont to be so carefully swept, with various litter from the plunder of the officers' quarters, for owing to the limited opportunity of transportation much baggage had been left. This was still in progress, as might be judged from the figures of women and men seen through the open doors and now again on the galleries, chaffering and bargaining over some trifle in process of sale or exchange. Indian children raced in and out of the white-washed interiors of thebarracks which had been glaringly clean; already the spring branch was choked by various débris and, thus dammed, was overflowing its rocky precincts to convert the undulating ground about it into a slimy marsh. Myriads of flies had descended upon the place. Here and there horses were tethered and cows roamed aimlessly. Idle savages lay sprawling about over the ground, sleeping in the shade. In the block-houses and towers and along the parade, where other braves shouldered the firelocks, the surrendered spare arms, mimicking the drill of the soldiers with derisive cries of "PlesentAhms!" "ShouldieFa'lock!" "GroundFa'lock!" only such injury as bootless folly might compass was to be deplored, but upon the terrepleine in the northeast bastion several Cherokees were working at one of the great cannons, among whom was no less a personage than Oconostota himself, striving to master the secrets of its service. The box of gunner's implements was open, and Stuart with a touch of returning professional consciousness wondered with that contempt for ignorance characteristic of the expert what wise project they had in progress now. For the gun had just been charged, but with that economy of powder, the most precious commodity in these far-away wilds, for which the Indians were always noted. The ball, skipping languidly out, had dropped down the embankment outside and rolled along the groundwith hardly more force than if impelled down an alley by a passable player at bowls, barely reaching the glacis before coming to a full halt. Realizing the difficulty, the gun under the king's directions was shotted anew; erring now in the opposite extreme, it was charged so heavily that, perhaps from some weakness in the casting, or the failure to duly sponge and clean the bore, or simply from the expansive force of the inordinate quantity of powder, the piece exploded, killing two of the savages, serving as gunners, and wounding a third. The ball, for the cannon had been improperly pointed by some mischance, struck the side of the nearest block-house, and as its projectile force was partly spent by the explosion, the tough wood turned it; it ricochetted across the whole expanse of the enclosure, striking and killing an Indian lying asleep on the opposite rampart. A vast uproar ensued, and Stuart could have laughed aloud in bitter mirth to see Oconostota almost stunned alike by the surprise and the force of the concussion, timorously and dubiously eying the wreck. Then, with a subdued air of renunciation and finality, "Old Hop," as the soldiers called him, came limping carefully down the steep ramp from the terrepleine, evidently just enlightened as to the dangers lurking about the breech of the cannon, well as he had long been acquainted with the menace ofits muzzle. The fury of the savages bore some similarity to the ricochet forces of the misdirected cannon-ball. Stuart plainly perceived himself destined to bear the brunt of the infuriating mishap in which, although he had no agency, he might be suspected of taking secret and extreme delight. It was for a moment a reversal of the red man's supremacy in the arts of war, that had been demonstrated by the results of the siege, the acquisition of the ordnance, the surprise and the massacre of the capitulated garrison. In the stress of the noisy moment, when the corpses had been carried off and the howling women and their friends had followed them to their assigned homes in the barracks, several braves, including Oconostota himself, had become aware of Stuart's return and gathered around him.
Nothing could have been more acutely malevolent than Oconostota's twinkling eyes; no words could have shown a keener edge of sarcasm than his greeting of the officer once more by the title of his dear brother. Stuart, impolitic for once, disdained to respond, and, grimly silent, eyed him with a sort of stoical defiance that struck the Indian's mummery dumb. There was a moment of inaction as they all contemplated him. His vigor, his fortitude, his rank, the consciousness how his proud spirit raged in his defeat and despair, all combined to render him a notable victim andpromised a long and a keen extension of the pleasures of witnessing his torture.
And at that instant of crisis, as if to seal his doom, a great guttural clamor arose about the southeast bastion, and here was Willinawaugh, with wild turbulent gesticulations, and starting gleaming eyes, and a glancing upheaving tomahawk, for in the perspective a dozen hale fellows were dragging out of the pit beneath the old smoke-house the ten bags of powder that Stuart had concealed there—only two nights ago, was it?—it seemed a century! How had they the craft to find them, so securely, so impenetrably were they hidden! Stuart's store of Cherokee enabled him to gather the drift of the excited talk. One of the Indians, with the keen natural senses of the savage, had smelled the freshly turned clay—smelled itin that assortment of evil odors congregated in the parade!—and had sought to discover what this might be so recently buried. Fraud! Fraud! the cry went up on every side. Unmasked fraud, and Stuart should die the death! He had violated the solemn agreement by which the garrison was liberated; he had surrendered the spare arms and the cannon indeed, but only a fraction of the powder of the warlike stores—and he should die the death and at once. Stuart wondered that he was not torn to pieces by the infuriated savages, protesting their indignation because ofhis violation of the treaty,—while his garrison, under the Cherokees' solemn agreement of safe-conduct, lay in all their massacred horrors unburied on the plains of Taliquo. The cant of the Cherokees, their hypocrisy, and their vaunting clamor of conscience made them seem, if one were disposed to be cynical, almost civilized! Doubtless, but for Oconostota's statesmanlike determination to sift the matter first, Stuart could not have been torn from among the tribesmen and dragged to the seclusion of his own great mess-hall, where the door was closed and barred in their distorted faces as they followed with their howls. He was required to stand at one end of the grievously dismantled room and detail his reason for this reserve of the powder. Had he grounds to suspect any renewal of the English occupancy? Had he knowledge of forces now on the march in the expectation of raising the siege of Fort Loudon? Oconostota pointed out the desirability of telling the truth, with a feeling allusion to the Great Spirit, the folly of seeking to deceive the omniscient Indian, as the discovery of the powder sufficiently illustrated, and the discomforts that would ensue to Captain Stuart, should it be found necessary to punish him for lying, by burning him alive in his own chimney-place, admirably adapted for the purpose. Oconostota sat now with his back to it, with all his council of chiefs in a semicircle abouthim, on the buffalo rug on the broad hearth. The Indian interpreter Quoo-ran-be-qua, the great Oak, stood behind him and looked across the length of the room at Captain Stuart, the only other person standing, and clattered out his wooden sentences.
Stuart could make no further effort. His capacity to scheme seemed exhausted. He replied in his bluff, off-hand manner, his bloody head held erect, that they now had more powder than was good for them,—witness the bursting of that costly great gun! He had buried the powder in the hope of further English occupancy of the fort, which he had, however, no reason to expect; it was only his hope,—his earnest hope! He had left them spare arms, great guns, ball, powder,—much powder,—and if he had seen fit to reserve some store he could say, with a clear conscience, that it was done only in the interests of peace and humanity, and because of doubts of their good faith,—how well grounded the blood shed this day upon the plains of Taliquo might testify! His friends, his comrades, were treacherously murdered under the safe-conduct of the Cherokee nation. And if he were to die too, he was fully prepared to show with what courage he could do it.
His eyes flashed as he spoke; they seemed to transmit a spark across the room to the dull orbs of the interpreter. And what was this? Stuart's knowledge of the Cherokee language enabled himto discern the fact that after a moment's hesitation Quoo-ran-be-qua was clacking out a coherent statement to the effect that the concealment of the powder was Captain Demeré's work, and wrought unknown to Stuart during his absence on his mission to Choté, where, as the great chiefs well knew, he was detained several hours. Stuart stared in astonishment at the interpreter, who, blandly secure in the conviction that the prisoner did not comprehend the Cherokee language, maintained his usual stolid aspect. Whether Stuart's courage so enforced admiration, or whatever quality had secured for him the regard of the higher grade of Indians, the interpreter had sought, by an unrecognized, unrewarded effort, to save the officer's life by a sudden stroke of presence of mind,—a subterfuge which he supposed, in his simplicity, undiscoverable.
There were milder countenances now in the circle, and Stuart's attention was presently concentrated upon an eager controversy between Atta-Kulla-Kulla and Willinawaugh that was curiously enough, at this moment of gravest council, sitting in judgment on the disposal of a human life, a matter of chaffer, of bargain and sale. Willinawaugh had already refused a new rifle and a horse—and then two horses besides, and, still untempted, shook his head. And suddenly the interest in the concealment of the powder collapsed, and they were all looking atWillinawaugh, who gazed much perplexed down at the ground, all his wrinkles congregated around his eyes, eager to acquire yet loath to trade, while Atta-Kulla-Kulla, keen, astute, subtle, plied him with offers, and tempting modifications of offers, for the Cherokees of that date were discriminating jockeys and had some fine horses.
The wind came in at the loop-holes and stirred the blood-clotted hair on the prisoner's brow, and the suspension of the mental effort that the examination cost him was for a moment a relief; the shadowy dusk of the ill-lighted room was grateful to his eyes, the heavy, regular throbbing of his head grew less violent. He could even note the incongruity of the situation when he saw that Willinawaugh resisted upon the point that the matter was with him a question of character! The chief said he had lost his standing in public estimation because he had allowed the Englishman, MacLeod, and his brother, to deceive him on the pretense of being French,—for although he (Willinawaugh) spoke French himself, and that better than some people who had lost their front tooth, he could not understand such French as the two Scotchmen spoke, nor, indeed, as some Cherokees spoke, with their front tooth out.
Savanukah, seated on the rug an expression of poignant mortification on his face, his lips fast closed over the missing tooth, only muttered disconsolately,in his mingled French and Cherokee jargon, "C'est dommage! Sac-llé bleu! Noot-te![J]Ugh! en vérité—O-se-u!"[K]
Willinawaugh, pausing merely for effect, continued. He himself was not an interpreter, to be sure; he was a Cherokee war-captain, with a great reputation to sustain. He had captured the prisoner, and it ill accorded with his honor to yield him to another.
"Cho-eh!"[L]said Atta-Kulla-Kulla, softly.
And Stuart became aware, with a start that almost dislocated his pinioned arms, that it was the transfer of his custody, the purchase of himself, over which they were bargaining.
"Nankke—soutare,"[M]urged Atta-Kulla-Kulla.
Again Willinawaugh shook his head. Was he some slight thing,—seequa, cheefto, an opossum, a rabbit? "Sinnawah na wora!"[N]he cried sonorously. For months, he said, he had besieged that man in his great stronghold of Fort Loudon. Like a panther he had watched it; like a spider he had woven his webs about it; like a wolf by night he had assaulted it; like a hawk he had swooped down upon it and had taken it for the Cherokee nation; and it was a small matter if he, who spoke French so well, had not comprehendedan Englishman who spoke French like an unknown tongue, and had let him pass, being deceived!
Would the great chief, whose words in whatever language were of paramount importance, accept a money price?
As several gold pieces rolled out on the buffalo rug, the wrinkles so gathered around Willinawaugh's eyes that those crafty orbs seemed totally eclipsed. He wagged his head to and fro till "him top-feathers" temporarily obliterated the squad of henchmen behind him, in woe that he could not take the money, yet not in indecision.
For lo, he said, who had done so much as he, whose prestige had been touched for a trifle, whose best-beloved brother, Savanukah, had maligned him—for the sake of an Englishman who could not speak French so that it could be understood. He had let that Englishman pass—it was a small matter, and if any had sustained harm it was he himself—for the English brother in the French squaw's dress had escaped through his lines, and came near raising the siege, perhaps—because of the French squaw's dress. But he was not there, and he gave the English boy no front tooth!
At this reiterated allusion, Savanukah's guttural grunt,O-se-u!was almost a groan.
"Rifle, six horses, seven pieces of gold in ransom," said Atta-Kulla-Kulla, slowly massing his wealth.
Once more Willinawaugh shook his head. His prestige had suffered because of aspersions. Yet he had besieged the fort and reduced the two captains and their splendid cannon—this for the Cherokee nation! He had followed hard on the march of the garrison, and with Oconostota and his force had surrounded them and killed many, and captured the great Captain Stuart alive!—this for the revenge of the Cherokee nation! But the scalp of the great Captain Stuart, with its long fair hair, like none others, was a trophy for himself—this he should wear at his belt as long as he should live, that when he told how he had wrought for the Cherokee nation none should say him nay!
Oconostota suddenly showed a freshened interest. He turned to Atta-Kulla-Kulla, who sat on his right hand, and in an eager, low voice spoke for a moment; the half-king seeming anxious, doubtful, then nodded in slow and deliberative acquiescence. Meantime Willinawaugh's words flowed on.
And—he lifted his fierce eyes in triumph to the captive's face—for all those weary days of beleaguerment, for every puff of smoke from the shotted guns, for every blaze they belched, for every ball, death freighted, they vomited, for every firelock that spoke from the loop-holes in the midnight attack, would be meted out Captain Stuart's penalty—in pangs, with knives, with cords, with hot coals,with flames of fire! The time had come to reward his patience!
"You have done well," said Atta-Kulla-Kulla, "you should think well on your reward!"
And he laid before Willinawaugh a fine gold watch—an English hunting watch, with a double case, and the works were running; doubtless, it was another trophy from the slaughtered officers of Colonel Montgomery's harassed march. Willinawaugh was stricken dumb.
Stuart, in whose heart poor Hope, all bruised and bleeding, with wings broken but about to spread anew, astonished, overcome, with some poignant pang of gratitude that the semblance of kindness should be again extended to him by aught on earth, felt a stifling suffocation when Oconostota's voice broke in on his behalf, for naught from the crafty Cherokee king boded good. The "Great Warrior" declared that Willinawaugh's deeds spoke for themselves—not in French, not in English, but in the Cherokee tongue—in flame and in blood, in courage and in victory. The prisoner's scalp was no great matter in the face of the fact of Fort Loudon. The long fair hair of the English Captain to hang at his belt if he liked, but here was Fort Loudon to swing forever at the silver belt of the Tennessee River! He thought the great Willinawaugh had a right to choose his reward—the goods or the scalp.The scalp Atta-Kulla-Kulla could not wear, not having taken it. And the great Willinawaugh could be present and rejoice when Atta-Kulla-Kulla should choose to burn the captive; for whom he, himself, and Atta-Kulla-Kulla had devised a certain opportunity of usefulness to the Cherokee nation before Stuart should be called upon to expiate his crimes at the stake to satisfy the vengeance of his conqueror.
And who so glad as Willinawaugh to lose naught of his satisfaction—neither his material nor immaterial reward? who now so glad to protest that he would waive any personal gratification that stood in the way of utility to the Cherokee nation? He had the watch in his hand, dangling by the gold chain and seals; the ticking caught his ear. He held it up close, with an expression of childish delight that metamorphosed his fierce face and seemed actually to freshen the expression of "him top-feathers."
In obedience to a motion of Atta-Kulla-Kulla's hand, Stuart followed him out to the parade in the red rays of the sinking sun,—how often thence had he watched it go down behind the level ramparts of the Cumberland Mountains! They passed through the staring motley throng to Captain Demeré's house which the half-king had chosen for his own quarters. It was a log-cabin, floored, and of two rooms with a roofed but open passage between, not unlike thecabins of the region of the present day. Here the Cherokee paused, and with a pass or two of the scalping-knife cut the ropes that pinioned Stuart, opened the door of Demeré's bedroom and with an impassive face sternly motioned him to enter.
The door was closed and Stuart was alone in the quarters reserved for the chief. It had not yet been invaded by the filthy plundering gangs without, and its order and military neatness and decorum affected his quivering nerves as a sort of solace—as of a recurrence of the sane atmosphere of right reason after a period of turbulent mania. And suddenly his heart was all pierced by grief and a sense of bereavement. He had realized his friend was dead, and he felt that this might fairly be considered the better fate. But somehow the trivial personal belongings so bespoke the vanished presence that he yearned for Demeré in his happy release; the shaken nerves could respond to the echo of a voice forever silenced; he could look into vacancy upon a face he was destined to see never again. His jaded faculties, instead of reaching forward to the terrible future, began to turn back vaguely to the details of their long service together; as a reflex of the agitation he had endured he could not, in the surcease of turmoil, compass a quiet mind; he began to experience that poignant anguish of bereavement, self-reproach. He remembered trifling differences they had had in the life they lived here like brothers, and his own part in them gnawed in his consciousness like a grief; he repented him of words long ago forgiven; he thought of personal vexations that he might have sought to smooth away but carelessly left in disregard; and when he lay down in the darkness on the narrow camp-bed with his friend's pillow under his head, Demeré's look this morning, of affectionate banter, with which he had turned on the ground as they lay in the bivouac was so present to his mind that the tears which all his pains and griefs were powerless to summon, sprang to his eyes.
But the weary physical being sunk to rest, and then in the midst of his somnolent mental impressions was wrought a change. Demeré was with him still,—not in the guise of that white, stark face, upturned now to the stars on the plains of Taliquo,—but in his serene, staid presence as he lived; together they were at Fort Loudon, consulting, planning, as in its happier days; now it was the capacity of the spring which they wished to enlarge, and this they had done with blasting-powder; now it was the device to add to the comfort of the garrison by framing the little porches that stood before the doors of the barracks; now it was the erection of an out-work on the side exposed to assault by the river, and they were marking off the ravelin,—CorporalO'Flynn and a squad, with the tapes,—and directing the fashioning of the gabions, the Indians peacefully sitting by the while like some big, unintelligent, woodland animals, while the great, basket-like frames were woven of white oak splints and then filled with the solid earth. He was trying to tell Demeré that he was afraid something would happen to that second gun in the barbette battery on the northeast bastion, for the metal always rang with a queer vibration, and he had had a dream that Oconostota had overcharged and fired it, and it had exploded; and as Demeré was laughing at this folly Stuart realized suddenly the fact that the day was coming in to him again there in his friend's place, as it would come no more to Demeré, though dawning even now at Taliquo Plains where he lay. Instead of that essential presence, on which Stuart had leaned and relied, and which in turn had leaned and relied on him, there was in his mind but a memory, every day to grow dimmer.
Nevertheless, he rose, refreshed and strengthened with the stimulus of that unreal association, which was yet so like reality, with the comrade of his dreams. The orderly instincts of a soldier, as mechanical as the functions of respiration, enabled him, with the use of fresh linen from his friend's relinquished effects, to obliterate the traces of theexperiences of the previous day, and fresh and trim, with that precise military neatness that was so imposing to the poor Indian, who could not compass its effect, he went out to meet the half-king with a gait assured and steady, a manner capable and confident, and an air of executive ability, that bade fair for the success of any scheme to which he might lend his aid.
Now and again he marked a glance of deep appreciation from the subtle Atta-Kulla-Kulla,[13]the result of much cogitation and effort at mental appraisement. He feared that important developments were to ensue, and after breakfast, at which meal he was treated like a guest and an equal, and not in the capacity of slave, as were most captives, his host notified him that his presence would be necessary at a council to be held at Choté.
Too acute, far too acute was Atta-Kulla-Kulla not to recognize and comment upon the different aspect of life at Fort Loudon. "The red man cannot, without use, become capable of handling the advantages of the white man," he said in excuse of the anarchy everywhere, with all the riot and grotesqueness and discomfort incident to being out of one's sphere. At Choté the Cherokees would have seemed as easy, as appropriate, as graceful, as native as the deer.
And at Choté Oconostota seemed as native asthe fox. There he sat on the great buffalo rugs, even his faculties much more at command in his wonted place, under the dusky red walls of the clay-daubed dome of the council-chamber. And there Captain Stuart learned the reason of the Cherokee king's interference yesterday to postpone his fate.
For Oconostota had evolved the bold project of the reduction of Fort Prince George. This would consummate the triumph of the fall of Fort Loudon, rid the greater portion of the Cherokee country of the presence of the English, and, with their strongholds in the hands of the Indians, reinforced by a few French gunners, prevent them from ever renewing foothold. The powder left by Stuart he had found, in experimenting with the guns, was not enough for a siege, but with the discovery of the ten extra bags, the supply would prove most ample. The ammunition, together with the guns, was to be at once removed and transported thither, laborious though it might prove.
Stuart attempted to set forth the great difficulties of the undertaking, but was met at every point by the foresight and ingenuity of Oconostota, who had considered evidently each detail. It was plain that the project was feasible, for the Indian, too lazy in peace to hoe a row of beans, is capable in war of prodigies of valorous industry. Stuart beganto feel singularly placed, since he did not perceive in this his personal concern, to be thus admitted to a council of war with the enemy. The affability of Oconostota he knew was insincere, but being in the Cherokee king's power the fraud of his amiability was more acceptable than the ferocity of his candor.
"You will accompany the expedition," said the king of the Cherokees, suavely.
"In what capacity?" Stuart asked, also politic, seeking to disguise his anxiety, for any hesitation or refusal would renew his straits of yesterday, Atta-Kulla-Kulla being as eager, as capable, and even more subtle in planning the campaign than Oconostota.
"You will write the letters to the commandant of Fort Prince George, summoning him in our names to surrender, and"—with a twinkle of the eye—"advising him in your own name to comply."
Stuart bowed in bland acquiescence. "And the commandant will find it very easy reading between the lines of any letters I shall write him," he said to himself.
Nevertheless, he still sought to dissuade them. In ignorance of the state of the defenses at Fort Prince George, the strength of the works, the supply of ammunition and provisions, the difficulties that might have arisen in communicating with Charlestown, he sought to avert the dangers of asiege and a possible ultimate disaster such as had befallen Fort Loudon. But although he spoke with force and readiness it was very guardedly.
"If the great Cherokee kings would please to consider the experience which I have had in the management of cannon, I should like to represent that such an attack on Fort Prince George can but be a duel with artillery. I am not well acquainted with the armament of Fort Prince George," he declared, "but it may well chance that the cannon, captured by the Cherokees at so great a cost, may be disabled under a heavy fire and lost to Fort Loudon, which would then become mere intrenchments, to be leveled by a single brisk cannonade."
Atta-Kulla-Kulla, his quick, keen, fiery face aglow, informed him that they would leave a reserve of cannon at Fort Loudon, his advice having been to take with them only six of the great guns and two coehorns.
Stuart was baffled for a moment by the definiteness and the military coherence of these plans. He rallied, however, to say that the gunners of Fort Prince George were trained men, doubtless, and drilled with frequent target practice. And a commander of skill, such as theirs, was essential to the effectiveness of an aggressive demonstration.
A flicker of triumph illuminated Atta-Kulla-Kulla's spirited face. They were provided in thisemergency also. He, the great Captain Stuart, would command the artillery of the expedition, the guns to be served by Indians as cannoneers under his direction; nicety of aim was not essential; a few days' practice would suffice, and at short range Fort Prince George was a large target.
For his life Stuart could not control his countenance; the color flared to the roots of his hair; his eyes flashed; his hand trembled; he could not find his voice; and yet angry as he was, he was both amazed and daunted.
Oconostota broke in upon his speechless agitation in a smooth, soothing voice to remind him of the clemency he enjoyed in that his life had been spared, and only yesterday, even at the supreme moment of the discovery of the treachery of his garrison in the concealment of the powder. They had not acquainted Willinawaugh with their designs, for Oconostota himself would lead the expedition. (Stuart as a military man realized a necessity, that sometimes supervenes in more sophisticated organizations, which they felt of curbing the power of a possibly too successful and a too aspiring subordinate.) How generous, declared Oconostota, had been the intercession of the noble Atta-Kulla-Kulla,—half-king of the Cherokees,—who had given in effect all his wealth to ransom him, a mereeeankke, a prisoner, from his warlikecaptor, the great Willinawaugh, that this military service might be rendered in exchange for his life.
Stuart's eyes turned away; he sought to veil their expression; he looked through the tall narrow door of the red clay walls at the waters of the Tennessee River, silver-shotted and blue as ever, still flowing down and down beyond the site of Fort Loudon—unmindful of its tragic fate, unmindful! The august domes of the Great Smoky Mountains showed now a dull velvet blue against the hard blue of the turquoise sky, and anon drew a silver shimmer of mists about them. Chilhowee Mountain, richly bronze and green, rose in the middle distance, and he was vaguely reminiscent of the day when he watched the young soldier rocking in his boat on the shallows close to the shore, the red coat giving a bright spot of color to the harmonious duller tones of the landscape, and wondered were it possible among these friendly people that the lad could be in danger of a stealthy rifle shot. Now there were no red coats,—nevermore were they to be seen here! Between himself and the water he watched only the white swaying of a tall cluster of the great ethereally delicate snowy blossoms, since known as the Chilhowee lily.
He kept his eyes still averted, his voice deepening with the seriousness of his sentiment as he replied that this was impossible—he could notundertake the command of the Cherokee artillery against Fort Prince George; he was bound by his oath of fidelity which he had sworn to the English government; he could not bear arms against it.
A choking chuckle recalled his gaze to the dusky red interior of the council-chamber. Oconostota's countenance was distorted with derision, and his twinkling eyes were swimming in the tears of the infrequent laughter of the grave Indian—even Atta-Kulla-Kulla's face wore a protesting smile of scorn as of a folly.
Twice Oconostota sought to speak, and he sputtered, and choked, and could not, for his relish of the thought in his mind. Then with a deep mock-seriousness he demanded slowly if it were fireproof. And relapsed into his shaking chuckle.
"What?" demanded Stuart, uncomprehending.
"This oath of yours—to the English government. Does this fidelity so clothe your body that it will not burn and crisp and crinkle in the anguish as of your hell? Does your oath harden your flesh as a rock, that arrows and knives shall not pierce it and sting and ache as they stick there waiting for the slow fires to do their work? Will your oath restore sight to your eyes when a red-hot iron has seared them?" He could say no more for the chuckling delight that shook and shook his lean old body.
Atta-Kulla-Kulla spoke in reproach. The Cherokee kings had offered Captain Stuart life and practically liberty in exchange for this service. If he denied it and talked of his oath, it was but just that vengeance should take its way. Many a Cherokee had fallen dead from the fire of his garrison of Loudon, both of great guns and small, and their blood called still from the ground. A wise man was Captain Stuart, and he would choose wisely.
He was a hearty man, still young, and in full vigor, and, although his life had been but little worth of late, he was loath to throw it away.
He began to temporize, to try to gain time. He sought to talk discontentedly of the project, as if he found it infeasible. The commandant, he said, as if he contemplated him only as the leader of an opposing force, would fight at an infinite advantage within the strong defenses of Fort Prince George, while he outside, without intrenchments except such hasty works as could be thrown up in a night, and beaten down by the enemy's cannonade in the morning, could but expect to have his guns soon silenced. A regular approach would be impracticable. The Indians were not used to fight unscreened. They would never open a parallel under fire, and a vigilant defense would make havoc among the working parties.
He noted the effect of the unfamiliar militarytheories upon the Indians, as they both seemed to anxiously canvass them.
"You cannot skulk behind a tree with cannon," he continued. "The artillery, to be able to command the fort with its fire, would be within range of the enemy's batteries, and without efficient cover it would be necessary, in serving each piece, for the gunners to be exposed to fire all the time."
An interval of deep, pondering silence ensued. At length Atta-Kulla-Kulla said he believed there would be little or no fight on account of the prisoners.
"What prisoners?" demanded Stuart, shortly.
Then Oconostota explained, with his blandest circumlocutions, that, partly as a check upon his dear brother's good faith, bound as he was by his oath of fidelity to the English government,—and he almost choked with the relish of his derision every time he mentioned it,—and to make sure that he should handle the guns properly, and fire them with due effect,—not aiming them wildly, so that the balls might fly over the fort, or fall short, not spiking the guns, or otherwise demolishing them, all of which his great knowledge of the arm rendered possible, and the ignorance of the poor red man unpreventable, they had determined to take with them the remnant of the garrison, their lives to be pledges of his good conduct and effectivemarksmanship; and if at last his earnest and sincere efforts should prove unavailing, and the commandant should continue to hold out and refuse to surrender when finally summoned, these, the countrymen and fellow-soldiers of that officer, should be singly tortured and burned before his eyes, within full sight and hearing of Fort Prince George.
As the fiendish ingenuity of this scheme was gradually unfolded, Stuart sat stunned. All the anguish he had suffered seemed naught to this prospect. He staggered under the weight of responsibility. The lives of the poor remnant of his garrison,—more, their death by fire and torture,—hung upon such discretion as he could summon to aid his exhausted powers in these repeated and tormented ordeals. He said nothing; he could not see and he did not care for the succession of chuckles in which Oconostota was resolved at the delightful spectacle of his dismay. The Cherokee had beaten this man of resource at his little game of war, and now had outmaneuvered him at his mastercraft of scheming!
FOOTNOTES:[J]Tooth![K]Very excellent.[L]Three.[M]Four—six.[N]The great hawk is at home!
[J]Tooth!
[J]Tooth!
[K]Very excellent.
[K]Very excellent.
[L]Three.
[L]Three.
[M]Four—six.
[M]Four—six.
[N]The great hawk is at home!
[N]The great hawk is at home!
Stuart seemed utterly vanquished—his spirit gone. In silence he was conducted back to his quarters in Demeré's house at Fort Loudon. And as there he sat in the spare, clean room, in the single chair it contained, with one elbow on the queer, rough little table, constructed according to a primitive scheme by the post carpenter, he stared forward blankly at the inevitable prospect so close before him. He had not now the solace of solitude in which he might have rallied his faculties. On the buffalo rug on the floor Atta-Kulla-Kulla reclined and smoked his long-stemmed pipe and watched him with impenetrable eyes. Once he spoke to him of the preparations making without, selecting the men for the gunners of the expedition. Stuart lifted his head abruptly.
"I will not go!" he cried in sudden passion. "So help me, God! I will die first!—a thousand deaths. So help me, God!" He lifted his clinched right hand in attestation and shook it wildly in the air.
"He stared forward blankly at the inevitable prospect.""He stared forward blankly at the inevitable prospect."
He had a momentary shame in thus giving wayto his surcharged feelings, but as he rose mechanically from his chair his restless eyes, glancing excitedly about the room, surprised an expression of sympathy in the face of the Cherokee as he lay coiled up on the rug.
"Atta-Kulla-Kulla!" Stuart exclaimed impulsively, holding out both arms, "feel for me! Think of me! The poor remnant of the garrison! My 'young men'! My own command! I will die first, myself, a thousand deaths!"
Atta-Kulla-Kulla began to argue, speaking partly in Cherokee and now and again in fragmentary English. Neither the one nor the other might be the victim. The commandant at Fort Prince George would yield under this strong coercion.
"Never! Never!" cried Stuart. "His duty is to hold the fort. He will defend it to the last man and the last round of ammunition and the last issuance of rations. For his countrymen to be tortured and burned in his sight and hearing would doubtless give him great pain. But his duty is to his own command, and he will do it."
Atta-Kulla-Kulla seemed doubtful. "And then," argued Stuart, "would such torturing and burning of the surrendered garrison of Fort Loudon before the eyes of the garrison of Fort Prince George be an inducement to them to surrender too, and perhaps meet the same fate? Be sure they willsell their lives more dearly! Be sure they will have heard of the massacre of the soldiers under the Cherokees' pledge of safe-conduct on the plains of Taliquo."
"To-e-u-hah!" Atta-Kulla-Kulla broke out furiously. "To-e-u-hah!It is most true!"
His countenance had changed to extreme anger. He launched out into a bitter protest that he had always contemned, and deprecated, and sought to prevent this continual violation of their plighted word and the obligations of their treaties on the part of the Cherokee nation. It invariably hampered their efforts afterward, as it was hampering them now. It took from their hand the tool of negotiation, the weapon of the head-men, and left only the tomahawk, the brute force of the tribe.Wahkane, wahkane!Was it not so when the treaty of Lyttleton was broken and Montgomery, the Terrible, came in his stead? And when the Cherokees had driven him out, and had taken their revenge on him for the blood which had been shed in his first foray, of what avail to massacre the garrison evacuating Fort Loudon, the possession of which had been for so long a coveted boon, and thus preclude a peaceful rendering of Fort Prince George and the expulsion of all English soldiery from Cherokee soil!
Stuart, cautiously reticent, let him dilate uponall the wrongs wrought in council by the disregard of his advice, only now and again dropping a word as fuel to the flame. Cautiously, too, he led to the topic of the regard and the admiration which the acute mind and the more enlightened moral sentiment of this chief had excited in the English authorities, and the service this official esteem would have been to the headstrong nation if they had availed themselves of it. For was not Montgomery instructed to offer them terms onhisaccount only? Their cruelty Atta-Kulla-Kulla was brought to perceive had despoiled them of the fruits of their victory; they might have, for all their patience and all their valor, and all their statecraft, only a few more scalps here and there; for presently the great English nation would be pressing again from the south, with Fort Prince George as a base, and the war would be to begin anew.
Deep into the night Atta-Kulla-Kulla dwelt on the treachery toward him,—for he had known naught of the enterprise of the massacre—that had so metamorphosed victory into disaster. The moonlight was coming in at the window, reminding Stuart of that night when he lay at length on the rug and consulted with Demeré and anxiously foreboded events, the news of Montgomery's departure from the country having fallen upon them like a crushing blow. How prescient of disaster they had felt—buthow little they had appraised its force! Paler now was the moon, more melancholy, desolate to the last degree as it glimmered on the white-washed walls of the bare, sparely furnished room. His attention had relaxed with fatigue as he still sat with his elbow on the table, his head on his hand, vaguely hearing the Indian councillor droning out his griefs of disregarded statesmanship and of the preferable attitude of affairs, so rudely, so disastrously altered. Suddenly his tone changed to a personal note.
"But it was ill with you, starving with your young men, in this place—long days, heap hungry."
"They seem happy days, now," said Stuart drearily, rousing himself.
"And to-morrow—and yet next day?" asked Atta-Kulla-Kulla.
Stuart stirred uneasily. "I can only die with what grace and courage I can muster," he said reluctantly. He glanced about him with restless eyes, like a hunted creature. "I cannot escape."
He looked up in sudden surprise. The Indian was standing now, gazing down at him with a benignity of expression which warranted the character of bold and forceful mind, and broad and even humane disposition, which this Cherokee had won of his enemies in the midst of the bloodshed and the treachery and the hideous cruelty of the warfare in which he was so much concerned.
"John Stuart," he said, "have I not called you my friend? Have I not given all I possess of wealth to save your life? Do I not value it, and yet it is yours!"
Stuart had forgotten the chief's words that Christmas night at the great gates, but they came back to him as Atta-Kulla-Kulla repeated them, anew.
"I know your heart, and I do not always forget! I do notalwaysforget!"
In Stuart's amazement, in the abrupt reaction, he could hardly master the details of the unfolded plan. The Cherokee declared he had made up his mind to a stratagem, such as might baffle even the designs of Oconostota. He doubted his own power to protect his prisoner, should the king learn that Stuart still refused his services in the expedition to Fort Prince George. Oconostota's heart was set upon the reduction of this stronghold, and so was that of all the Cherokee nation. And yet Atta-Kulla-Kulla could but perceive the flagrant futility of the expectation of the surrender of the garrison on the coercion that Oconostota had devised, especially as Fort Prince George was so much nearer than Fort Loudon to communication with the white settlements. "I contemplate the fact before it happens, they only afterward," he said.
On the pretext of diverting Stuart's mind after his glut of horrors, and in affording him this recreation to secure an influence over him, eminently in character with the wiles of the Cherokee statesman, he gave out that he intended to take his prisoner with him for a few days on a hunting expedition. The deer were now in prime condition, and Captain Stuart was known by the Indians to be specially fond of venison. In the old days at Fort Loudon they had often taken note of this preference, and stopped there to leave as a gift a choice haunch, or saddle, or to crave the privilege of nailing a gigantic pair of antlers to vie with the others on the walls of the great hall. Stuart himself was a famous shot, and was often called by them in complimentA-wah-ta-how-we, the "great deer-killer." The project created no surprise, and Stuart saw with amazement the door of his prison ajar. One might have thought in such a crisis of deliverance no other consideration could appeal to him. But his attachment to the British interest seems to have been like the marrow in his bones. He demanded of Atta-Kulla-Kulla the privilege of being accompanied by two men of the garrison of his own choice.
The chief cast upon him a look of deep reproach. Did he fear treachery? Had his friend, his brother, deserved this?
"I ask much of a friend—nothing of an enemy," declared Stuart, bluffly. "You know my heart—trust me."
Atta-Kulla-Kulla yielded. If he experienced curiosity, the names of the two men which Stuart gave him afforded no clue as to the reason for their selection; one was a gun-smith, an armorer of uncommon skill, and Stuart knew that he was capable of dismounting and removing the cannon, without injury, through the tangled wilderness to Fort Prince George, should coercion overcome his resistance to the demands of the savages; the other, an artillery-man of long experience and much intelligence, himself adequately fitted to take command of the guns of the expedition, with a good chance of a successful issue. The massacre had swept away most of the cannoneers, and Stuart was aware that the infantrymen left of the garrison would be hardly more capable of dealing with the problems of gun service than was Oconostota, their careless and casual observation being worth little more than his earnest, but dense ignorance. Nevertheless, with his exacting insistence on the extreme limit of demand, he begged Atta-Kulla-Kulla, whose patience was wearing dangerously thin, to let him see them, speak to them for one moment.
"You can hear all I say—you who understand the English so well."
As he stepped into the old exhausted store-room, where the soldiers were herded together, squalid, heart-broken, ill, forlorn, Atta-Kulla-Kulla outsideclosing the door fast, a quavering cheer went up to greet Stuart. For one moment he stood silent while their eyes met—a moment fraught with feeling too deep for words. Then his voice rang out and he spoke to the point. He wanted to remind them, he said, how the action of the garrison had forced the surrender and left the officers no choice, no discretion; however the event would have fallen out, it would not have happened thus. "But I did not come here to mock your distress," he protested. "I wish to urge you to rely upon me now. I have hopes of securing the ransom of the garrison by the government,"—again a pitiful cheer,—"and as I may never be allowed to see you again this is my only chance.Be sure of this,—no man need hope for ransom who affords the Cherokees the slightest assistance in any enterprise against Fort Prince George, or takes up arms at their command."
He smiled, and waved his hat in courteous farewell, and stepped backward out of the door, apparently guarded by Atta-Kulla-Kulla, while that quavering huzza went up anew, the very sound almost breaking down his self-control.
The next day Stuart, accompanied by Atta-Kulla-Kulla, the warrior's wife, his brother, the armorer, and the artillery-man,—the supposititious hunting party,—set gayly and leisurely forth. But once out of reach of espionage they traveled in a northeastern direction with the utmost expedition night and day through the trackless wilderness, guided only by the sun and moon. What terrors of capture, what hardships of fatigue, what anxious doubt and anguish of hope they endured, but added wings to the flight of the unhappy fugitives. Nine days and nights they journeyed thus, hardly relaxing a muscle.
On the tenth day, having gained the frontiers of Virginia, they fortunately fell in with a party of three hundred men, a part of Bird's Virginia regiment, thrown out for the relief of any soldiers who might be escaping in the direction of that province from Fort Loudon, for through Hamish's dispatches its state of blockade and straits of starvation had become widely bruited abroad. With the succor thus afforded and the terror of capture overpast, the four days' further travel were accomplished in comparative ease, and brought the fugitives to Colonel Bird's camp, within the boundaries of Virginia.
Here Stuart parted from Atta-Kulla-Kulla, with many a protestation and many a regret, and many an urgent prayer that the chief would protect such of the unhappy garrison as were still imprisoned at Fort Loudon until they could be ransomed, measures for which Stuart intended to set on foot immediately. So the half-king of the Cherokees went his way back to his native wilds, loaded by Stuart with presents and commendations, and inno wise regretting the radical course he had taken.[14]Stuart had instantly sent off messengers to apprise the commandant of Fort Prince George of the threatened attack, and to acquaint the governor of South Carolina with the imminence of its danger and the fall of Fort Loudon, for Governor Bull had expected Virginia to raise the siege of Loudon, unaware that that province had dropped all thought of the attempt, finding its means utterly inadequate to march an army thither through those vast and tangled wildernesses carrying the necessary supplies for its own subsistence. Provisions for ten weeks were at once thrown into Fort Prince George, and a report was industriously circulated among the Indians that the ground about it on every side had been craftily mined to prevent approach.[15]
Stuart found that Hamish MacLeod, after performing his mission and setting out for his return to the beleaguered fort with the responsive dispatches, had succumbed to the extreme hardship of those continuous journeys throughout the wild fastnesses, many hundred miles of which were traversed on foot and at full speed under a blazing summer sun, and lay ill of brain-fever at one of the frontier settlements. There Stuart saw him—still so delirious that, although recognizing the officer in some sort, he talked wildly of pressing dispatches, of the inattention and callous hearts of officials in highstation, of delays and long waitings for audience in official anterooms, of the prospect of any expedition of relief for the fort, of Odalie, and red calashes, and Savanukah, and rifle-shots, and Fifine, and "top-feathers," and Sandy—Sandy—Sandy; always Sandy!
Later, Stuart was apprised that the boy was on the way to recovery when he received a coherent letter from Hamish, who had learned that Stuart was using every endeavor—moving heaven and earth as the phrase went—to compass the ransom of the survivors of the garrison still at Fort Loudon or the Indian villages in its neighborhood. Hamish had heard of the fall of the fort and the massacre of the evacuating force, and still staggering under the weight of the blow, he reminded Stuart peremptorily enough of the services which Odalie had rendered in venturing forth from the walls under the officer's orders, when he dared not seek to induce a man to volunteer nor constrain one to the duty, and to urge upon his consideration the fact that she might be justly esteemed to have earned her ransom and that of her husband and child. Hamish had an immediate reply by a sure hand.
If it could avail aught to Mrs. MacLeod or any of her household, Stuart wrote with an uncharacteristic vehemence of protest, every influence hecould exert, every half-penny he possessed, every drop of his blood would be cheerfully devoted to the service, so highly did he rate the lofty courage which had given to Fort Loudon its only chance of relief, and which under happier auspices would undoubtedly have resulted in raising the siege. Whatever might be forgotten, assuredly it would not be the intrepid devotion of the "forlorn hope" of Fort Loudon.
Hamish, left to his own not overwise devices, decided to return to the country where he had quitted all that was dear to him, dangerous though that return might be. And, indeed, those wild western woods included the boundaries of all the world to him—elsewhere he felt alone and an alien. It seemed strange to realize that there were other people, other interests, other happenings of moment. He long remembered the sensation, and was wont to tell of it afterward, with which he discovered, camping one night at the foot of a tree—for he journeyed now by easy stages, keeping sedulously from the main trail through the forest—the traces of a previous presence, a bit of writing cut on the bark of the tree. "Daniel Boon," it ran, "cilled a bar on tree in the year 1760."
That momentous year—that crucial time of endeavor and fluctuating hope and despair and death—a hunter here, all unaware of the maelstromof mental and physical agony away there to the south in the shadow of the same mountain range, was pursuing his quiet sylvan craft, and slaughtering his "bar" and the alphabet with equal calm and aplomb.
Perhaps it was well for the future career of the adventurous young fellow that he fell in with some French traders, who were traveling with many packhorses well laden, and who designed to establish themselves with their goods at one of the Lower Towns of the Cherokees; they urged that he should attach himself to their march, whether from a humane sense of diminishing his danger, or because of the industry and usefulness and ever ready proffer of aid in the frank, bright, amiable boy, who showed a quality of good breeding quite beyond their custom, yet not unappreciated. They warned him that it would be certain death to him, and perhaps to his captive relatives, should he in a flimsy disguise, which he had fancied adequate, of dyeing his hair a singular yellow and walking with a limp, which he often alertly forgot, venture into the villages of those Cherokees by whom he had been so well known, and against whose interest he had been employed in such vigorous and bold aggression. The traders showed some genuine feeling of sympathy and a deep indignation, because of the treachery that had resulted in the massacre of the garrison of FortLoudon,—although the English were always the sworn foe of the French. The leader of the party, elderly, of commercial instincts rather than sylvan, albeit a dead shot, and decorated with ear-rings, had a great proclivity toward snuff and tears, and often indulged in both as a luxury when Hamish with his simple art sought to portray the characters of the tragedy of the siege; and as the Frenchman heard of Fifine and Odalie, and Stuart and Demeré, and all their sufferings and courage and devices of despair—"Quelle barbarie!" he would burst forth, and Hamish would greet the phrase with a boyish delight of remembrance. Two or three of the party made an incursion into Choté when they reached its neighborhood, and returned with the news that the ransom of such of the garrison as were there had taken place, and they had been delivered to the commandant of Fort Prince George, but certain others had been removed to Huwhasee Town and among them were the French squaw, the pappoose, and the Scotchman. In his simplicity Hamish believed them, although Monsieur Galette sat late, with his delicate sentiments, over the camp-fire that night, and stared at it with red eyes, often suffused with tears, and took snuff after his slovenly fashion until he acquired the aspect of a blackened pointed muzzle, and looked in his elevated susceptibility like some queer unclassified baboon.
But at Huwhasee Town Hamish heard naught of those his memory cherished. He was greatly amazed at the courage with which Monsieur Galette urged upon the head-men that some measures should be taken to induce Oconostota to remove that fence, of which they had heard at Choté, which had been built of the bones of the massacred garrison, and give them burial from out the affronted gaze of Christian people. This was not pleasing, he said, not even to the French. He was evidently growing old and his heart was softening!
Lured by a vague rumor expressed among the party that those he sought had been removed to a remote Indian town on the Tsullakee River, Hamish broke away from Monsieur Galette, despite all remonstrances, to seek those he loved in the further west—if slaves, as Monsieur Galette suggested, he would rather share their slavery than without them enjoy the freedom of the king. And, constrained to receive two snuffy kisses on either cheek, he left Monsieur Galette shedding his frequent tears to mix with the snuff on his pointed muzzle.
And so in company with a French hunter in a canoe, Hamish went down the long reaches of the Tsullakee River, coming after many days to their destination, to find only disappointment and agnawing doubt, and a strange, palsying numbness of despair. For the French traders here, reading Monsieur Galette's letter, looked at one another with grave faces and collogued together, and finally became of the opinion that the members of the family he sought were somewhere—oh, far away!—in the country where now dwelt the expatriated Shawnees, and that region, so great an Indian traveler as he was must know was inaccessible now in the winter season. It would be well for him to dismiss the matter from his mind, and stay with them for the present; he could engage in the fur trade; his society would be appreciated. With the well-meaning French flattery they protested that he spoke the French language so well—they made him upon his proficiency their felicitations. Poor Hamish ought to have known from this statement what value to attach to what they said otherwise, conscious as he was how his verbs and pronouns disagreed, and dislocated the sense of his remarks, and popped up and down out of place, like a lot of puppets on a disorganized system of wires. These traders were not snuffy nor lachrymose; they were of a gay disposition and also wore ear-rings—but they all looked sorrowfully at him when he left them, and he thought one was minded to disclose something withheld.
And so down and down the Tsullakee River hewent, and after the junction of the great tributary with the Ohio, he plied his paddle against the strong current and with the French hunter came into the placid waters of the beautiful Sewanee, or Cumberland, flouted by the north wind, his way winding for many miles in densest wintry solitudes. For this was the great hunting-ground of the Cherokee nation and absolutely without population. His adventures were few and slight until he fell in with Daniel Boon, camping that year near the head waters of the Sewanee, who listened to his story with grave concern and a sane and effective sympathy. He, too, advised the cessation of these ceaseless wanderings, but he thought Stuart's letter evasive, somehow, and counseled the boy to write to him once more, detailing these long searches and their futility. Hamish had always realized that Stuart's sentiments, although by no means shallow, for he was warmly attached to his friends, were simple, direct, devoid of the subtlety that sometimes characterized his mental processes. Life to him was precious, a privilege, and its environment the mere incident.
He now replied that he had not dared divulge all the truth while Hamish MacLeod was in the enfeebled condition that follows brain-fever, and had been loath, too, to rob him of hope, only that he might forlornly mourn his nearest and dearest. But since the fact must needs be revealed he couldyet say their sorrows were brief. In that drear dawn on the plains of Taliquo the mother and child were killed in the same volley of musketry, and afterward, as he ordered from time to time the ranks to close up, he saw Sandy, who had been fighting in line with the troops, lying on the ground, quite dead. "You may be sure of this," Stuart added; "I took especial note of their fate, having from the first cared much for them all."
The terrible certainty wrought a radical change in Hamish. From the moment he seemed, instead of the wild, impulsive, affectionate boy, a stern reserved man. In the following year he enlisted in a provincial regiment mustered to join the British regulars sent again by General Amherst to the relief of the Carolina frontier; for the difficulties in Canada being set at rest, troops could be put in the field in the south, and vengeance for the tragedy of Fort Loudon became a menace to the Cherokees, who had grown arrogant and aggressive, stimulated to further cruelties by their triumphs and immunity. Nevertheless, Atta-Kulla-Kulla went forth to meet the invaders, and earnestly attempted to negotiate a treaty. It was well understood now, however, that he was in no sense a representative man of his nation, and his mission failed. Lieutenant-Colonel James Grant, on whom Colonel Montgomery's command had now devolved, at thehead of this little army of British regulars and provincials, preceded by a vanguard of ninety Indian allies and thirty white settlers, painted and dressed like Indians, under command of Captain Quentin Kennedy,—in all about twenty-six hundred men,—continued to advance into the Cherokee country. At Etchoee, the scene of the final battle of Colonel Montgomery's campaign in the previous year, they encountered the Cherokees in their whole force—the united warriors of all the towns. A furious battle ensued, both sides fighting with prodigies of valor and persistence, that resulted in breaking forever the power of the Cherokee nation. Three hours the rage of the fight lasted, and then the troops, pushing forward into the country, burned and slew on every side, wasting the growing crops all over the face of the land, and driving the inhabitants from the embers of their towns to the refuge of caves and dens of wild beasts in the mountains. They stayed not their hand till Atta-Kulla-Kulla came again, now to humbly sue for peace and for the preservation of such poor remnant as was left of his people.
After this the colonists came more rapidly into the region. A settlement sprang up at Watauga, the site of one of Hamish's old camps as he had journeyed on his fruitless search for those who had made his home and the wilderness a sort of paradise. But the place, far away from Loudon though it was,seemed sad to him. The austere range of mountain domes on the eastern horizon looked down on him with suggestions which they imparted to none others who beheld them. He and they had confidences and a drear interchange of memories and a knowledge of a past that broke the heart already of the future. He was glad to look upon them no more! His mind had turned often to the trivial scenes, the happier times, when, unbereaved of hope, he had hunted with the Frenchman on the banks of the beautiful Sewanee River. And he welcomed the project of a number of the pioneers to carry their settlement on to the region of the French Salt Lick, which other hunters had already rendered famous, and with a few of these he made his way thither by land while the rest traveled by water, the way of his old journey in search of his lost happiness. And here he lived and passed his days.
He heard from Stuart from time to time afterward, but not always with pleasure. It is true that it afforded him a sentiment of deep gratification to learn that the Assembly of South Carolina had given Stuart a vote of thanks for his "courage, good conduct and long perseverance at Fort Loudon," with a testimonial of fifteen hundred pounds currency, and earnestly recommended him to the royal governor for a position of honor and profit in the service of the province; the office of Superintendentof Indian Affairs for the South having been created, Stuart's appointment thereto by the Crown was received with the liveliest public satisfaction, it being a position that he was pronounced in every way qualified to fill.[16]For some years this satisfaction continued, failing only when, in the growing differences between the colonists and Great Britain, Stuart, wholly devoted to the royal cause, conceived himself under obligations to carry out the instructions which the British War Department sent to him and the four royal governors of the southern provinces to use every endeavor to continue the Indians in their adherence to the British standard as allies against all its enemies; even concocting a plan with General Gage, Governor Tonyn, Lord William Campbell, and other royalists,—which plan happily failed,—to land a British army on the western coast of Florida, whence, joined by tories and Indians, the united force should fall upon the western frontiers of Carolina at the moment of attack on the eastern coast by a British fleet, in the hope that the province thus surrounded would be obliged to sue the royal government for peace.