CHAPTER XVIII
Ensign Raymondwas no polemic nor versed in the Hebraic analogies rife at that day among those who ascribed a Semitic origin to the American Indian and sought to recognize in them the “lost tribes of Israel.” When at last he set foot on the “ever-sacred” soil of the city of refuge and opened his sealed orders, it was less a resemblance to ancient Jewish customs that appealed to him than an appreciation of the prudence of his commander in choosing this site for the delivery of his mission. For he had that to say to the head-men of the Cherokee nation which elsewhere might cost him his life. Here, however, at the horns of the altar, had he, himself, been the shedder of blood, he was safe. Here his blood could not be shed. He was under the shadow of the “wings of peace.” The “infinitely holy” environment protected him and his.
When he drew up his command and addressed the soldiers, ordering them on no account to venture beyond the limits of the “beloved town,” the amazement and flouting ridicule on their florid Irish and Cockney faces marked the difficulty which the ordinary mind experiences in seeking to assimilate the theories of eld. With the heady severity characteristic of a very young officer, he replied to the nettling surprise and negation in their facial expression.
“It may sound like a fool notion to you, but you must remember that you are only a pack of zanies, and don’t know a condemned thing but the goose-step. They had this same sort of immunity ’way back in the Bible times,”—he was himself a trifle vague,—“cities of refuge, where, in the case of involuntary manslaughter, the slayer might find protection, and in this ‘old peaceable town’ of Choté no hurt may be done even to a wilful man-slayer, no blood may be shed here,—now, do you understand?”
The heads were all erect; the position was the regulation “attention” with “eyes front,” but so round were these eyes with amazement that “the greasy red-sticks” had aught similar to customs “’way back in the Bible times,” that the caustic young commander was moved to add: “You are a set of heathen, too, or you would have learned all that long ago,—about holding to the horns of the altar, as an effective defensive measure. Anyhow,” he summed up, “if you choose to go off the ‘sacred soil’ and get yourselves slaughtered, you cannot say that you have not been fairly warned. You will disobey orders, you will be put under full stoppage of pay, and—yourbones will not be buried.”
The parade was dismissed and they marched away, much marvelling at his strange discourse.
The allusion to their bones remained rankling in his mind. For there was a fence of human bones at Choté, very grievous for a British soldier to look upon,—a trophy, a triumphal relic, of the massacre of the British garrison of Fort Loudon after its capitulation.It had been difficult for Raymond to control the righteous wrath of his soldiers in the presence of this ghastly mockery,—notwithstanding their scanty number and the realization that any demonstration would be but the sacrifice of their own lives the moment they should quit the soil of immunity. The assurance of their commander that he would report the indignity to the government, when doubtless some action would be taken, was necessary to avert disastrous consequences.
Raymond, himself, had great ado to contend with the storm of anger a-surge within his own breast when the Cherokees ceremoniously received him, beating the drums of the late Captain Demeré, who had marched out of Fort Loudon with the full honors of war, with flags and music and their assurance of safeguard.
“This is not well,” Raymond could not refrain from saying, as he stood in the centre of the “beloved square” in the midst of the town, with the head-men, splendidly arrayed in their barbaric fashion, gathered to greet him. “The articles of capitulation reserved to Captain Demeré the colors, drums, and arms of the garrison—he had the solemn assurance of the Cherokee nation,—and—” Raymond was very young; his face turned scarlet, the tears stood in his eyes, he caught his breath with something very like a sob, “the remains of that honorable soldier are entitled to Christian burial.”
He was sorry a moment later that he had said aught. The Indians’ obvious relish of his distresswas so keen. They replied diplomatically, however, that all this had happened long ago, nearly three years, in fact, and that if they had done aught amiss, the British government had amply avenged the misdeed in the distressful wars it had waged against the Cherokee nation, that had indeed been reduced to the extremity of humiliation.
Raymond, breathing a sigh of solace, was accepting this logic with the docile rudimentary reasoning of youth, when one of the chiefs, with a countenance at once singularly fierce and acute, the great Oconostota, added blandly that he, himself, had known Captain Demeré with something of intimacy and desired to withhold naught of advantage from him. If Ensign Raymond was sufficiently acquainted with his bones to select them from out the fence, he would be privileged to remove them. But this applied to none of the other bones, for the consent of other warriors controlled the remainder of the structure.
When he paused a ripple of mirth, like a sudden flash of lightning on a dull cloud, appeared on the feather-crested faces and disappeared in an instant. They all stolidly eyed Raymond, standing with his hand on his sword, his heart swelling as he realized the fleer with the ludicrous ghastliness of the dilemma it presented. Then it was that Raymond showed the soldier. The cub, despite its immaturity, has all the inherent mettle of the lion. His eyes still flashed, his cheek glowed, his voice shook, but he replied with a suavity, which was itself a menace, that being only a subaltern he did not feel authorized to take theinitiative in so serious a matter, but that he would report the offer to Captain Howard, commanding at Fort Prince George, with whom Oconostota was also acquainted, and with, he believed, some degree of intimacy.
That the Indians were adepts in every art of propitiation was amply manifest in the urbanities that Raymond enjoyed after this apt suggestion, and if aught could have obliterated its provocation from his mind, this would have been compassed by the courtesies and attentions showered upon him and his men during the days that intervened between his arrival and the time when etiquette permitted the business of his mission to be opened.
Raymond seemed to have brought the spring to Choté, that lovely vernal expectation which holds a charm hardly to be surpassed by the richness of fulfilment. Soft languors were in the air, infinitely luxurious. A large leisure seemed to pervade the world. The trees budded slowly, slowly. At a distance the forests had similitudes of leaflets, but as yet the buds did not expand. It was evident that the grass was freshly springing, for deer were visible all a-graze on the opposite banks of the Tennessee River. Far away the booming note of buffalo came to the ear, and again was only a soft silence. A silver haze hung in the ravines and chasms of the mountains, austere, dark, leafless, close at hand but in the distance wearing a delicate azure that might have befitted a summer-tide scene.
After the long, toilsome, wintry march Raymondfound a sort of luxury in this interval of rest, despite the unaccustomed barbaric manners of his hosts. He sought to make due allowance for the differing standards of civilization, but there was much that was irksome notwithstanding the utmost endeavors of his entertainers to win his favor. From morning to night he was attended by an obsequious young warrior called “Wolf-with-two-feet” with half a dozen braves who tried to anticipate his every wish, and when he was relegated to his repose at night in the “stranger house,” a guard was placed before the door to protect the guest from intrusion or harm. Raymond thought this cordon of braves was also effective in preventing on his part any reconnoitring expedition thence, when Choté, old town, lay asleep and at the mercy of the curiosity of the inquisitive British officer. This suspicion, however, seemed contradicted by the disposition of his cicerone during the day. He was dragged hither and thither over every inch of the “sacred soil” as it appeared, and every object of interest that the town possessed was paraded before him to titillate his interest. The Indians of Choté, an ancient and conservative municipality, yet retained a certain pride in their national methods despite the repeated demonstration of the superiority of the Europeans both in war and manufactures. Had Raymond possessed a theoretical interest in such matters, or were he skilled in anthropological deductions, he might have derived from them some information concerning the forgotten history of the people. But it was only with the superficial attention of thedesperately idle that he watched the great weaving-frame on which they made their cloth, of porous quality—few yards indeed now being produced since the Indian trade had brought English textile fabrics to the Tennessee River. He had never seen a better saddle than the one a leisurely wight was finishing—lying down in the sun at intervals and sleeping an hour or so to reward some unusual speed of exertion. Raymond committed the solecism of laughing aloud when told that a year’s time was necessary to complete a saddle to the satisfaction of the expert. He took more interest in their pottery—a wonderfully symmetrical pattern, in deep indentations in checks or plaids, baffled his conjecture as to how it was applied in the decoration of jars and bowls of the quaintest shape imaginable. His guide, philosopher, and friend challenged him to a dozen guesses, breaking out in guttural glee and ridicule at every untoward suggestion, till at last Raymond was shown the baskets, deftly woven of splints or straw or withes, which were lined with clay, and set to bake in the oven, the plastic material taking not only the shape of the mould but the pattern of the braiding.
Raymond thought it was his interest in this primitive art that had defied his conjectures which influenced his attention toward another plastic impression different from aught he had seen in the Cherokee country. Still accompanied by Wolf-with-two-feet he had left the main portion of the town, and the two were idly strolling along the river-bank. Raymond was thinking that Wolf-with-two-feet wasnot a poor specimen of a host considering his limitations, his strange, antiquated, savage standards, and his incapacity for civilization in a modern sort. He had kept the shuttle-cock of conversation tossing back and forth for two days. He had gotten up a horse-race and a feather-dance to entertain the guest. He had fed him on his choice of an imitation of British fare and appetizing Indian dainties, and of the latter Raymond partook with distinct relish. He had shown the town and descanted on the value of its methods of government and its manufactures, and save that now and again he turned his sharp, high-featured face, with its polled head and feather crest, toward him with a fiery eye, his upper lip suddenly baring all his narrow white teeth set in a curiously narrow arch, the officer could see naught of the wolf in him.
The sky was beginning to redden; the air was bland and filled with the scent of the spring-tide herbs; some early growth of mint was crushed under their feet and sent up a pungent aroma; the ground was moist and warm, as it had been for several days; Raymond noticed on the shelving shore the mark, still distinct, of the prow of the canoe in which he had landed at Choté,—for during the last stages of the march the Indians of the various riverside towns of the vicinity had come forth and proffered their boats for the remainder of the journey. He now spoke of the circumstance and identified the spot and the canoe, for there was the print of his London-made boot distinct amongst the tracks of a dozen Indianmoccasins. His men had followed in a pettiaugre, formerly belonging to Fort Loudon, and had landed a little below the town.
Perhaps it was this idle interest that kept him still looking at the ground,—for, as they skirted a point and came again on a marshy level beneath a row of cliffs, he suddenly paused and pointed out a different impression on the earth.
“But what is that?” he said, thinking first of some queer fish or amphibious animal, for the natural history of America was of vast interest to Europeans, and there were many fables current of strange creatures peculiar to the new world.
The Wolf-with-two-feet turned and looked down at the spot at which Raymond was staring.
“Where?” he asked in Cherokee, for the British officer spoke the language with enough facility to enable them in casual conversation to dispense with an interpreter.
The impression was of a deep indentation in the centre, surrounded at the distance of some inches by a ring, plainly marked but less deep, and this had an outer circular imprint very symmetrical but still more shallow. Raymond saw that for one moment the eyes of the Indian rested upon it, but still saying, “Where?” he stepped about, looking now in every direction but the one indicated; all at once, as if inadvertently, he pressed his foot deeply into the marshy soil, and the water rushing up obliterated forever the impression of the deep indentation and the two concentric circles.
Raymond called out to him pettishly that he had spoiled the opportunity of discovering the cause of so strange a mark.
“’Twas the track of a snake, perhaps, or a tortoise,” the Wolf suggested.
When he was assured that this was something circular and symmetrical, he said he did not know what it could have been, but some things had big hoofs. Perhaps it might have been Mr. Morton’s Big Devil, whom he was so fond of preaching about!
“In Choté?” asked Raymond.
“Oh no—not in Choté,” the Wolf made haste to say—“Mr. Morton could not preach in Choté. Cunigacatgoah has a sacred stone, an amulet, that belongs to the Cherokee people, and it would not suffer a word about Mr. Morton’s very wicked Big Devil in the city of refuge.”
“An amulet against evil,” said Raymond sarcastically—“and yet the Devil walks along the river-bank of the ‘ever-sacred’ soil and leaves his big footprint in defiance!”
“True,—true,”—said the Wolf, doubling like his own prey, “then it couldn’t have been the Devil. It must have been a buffalo,—just a big bull buffalo.”
“A big bull buffalo with one foot,” sneered Raymond, logically, “there is no other track near it,—except,” he continued looking narrowly at the earth, “the imprint of a number of moccasins of several sizes.” He was merely irritated at the balking of his natural curiosity, but he noticed with surprisethat Wolf-with-two-feet was very eager to quit the subject, and digressed with some skill and by an imperceptible gradation from the character of this spongy soil, so plastic to impressions, to the alluvial richness of the whole belt along the watercourses and thence to the large yield of the public fields that lay to the southwest of Choté, and which were even now, early as it was, in process of being planted. And then, as if suddenly bethinking himself, he changed the direction of their stroll to give Raymond an exhibition of the primitive methods of agriculture practised with such signal success at Choté Great. At this hour the laborers had quitted the fields, leaving, however, ample token of their industry. For in the whole stretch of the cultivated land the fresh, rich, black loam had been turned, but with never a plough, and daily large numbers of women and girls repaired thither under the guidance of the “second men” of the town to drop the corn. Though the world was so full of provender elsewhere, the birds took great account of this proceeding, and thronged the air twittering and chattering together as if discussing the crop prospects. Now and again a bluejay flew across the wide expanse of the fields, clanging a wild woodsy cry with a peculiarly saucy intonation, as though to say, “I’ll have my share! I’ll have my share!”
But birds were builders in these days, and he could hardly see a beak that was not laden with a straw. Oh, joyous architects, how benign that no foreknowledge of the storm that was to wreck these frail tenements, so craftily constructed, or of the marauderthat was to rifle them, hushed the song or weighted the wing! Human beings have a hard bargain in their vaunted reason.
There was none of the delight in the spring; none of the bliss of sheer existence in days so redundant of soft sheen, of sweet sound, of fragrant winds, of the stirring pulse of universal revivification; none of that trust in the future which is itself the logic of gratitude for the boons of the past, expressed in the hard-bitten faces of the head-men and in the serious eyes of the young officer when they sat in a circle around the fire in the centre of the council-house at Choté. They were all anxious, troubled, each determined to mould the days to come after the fashion of his individual will, only mindful enough of the will of others to have a sense of doubt, of poignant hope, and a strenuous realization of conflict. Thus the young officer was wary, and the Indian chiefs were even wilier than their wont as he opened the subject of his mission.
The interpreter of each faction stood behind his principal, for a long time silent as the official pipe was smoked. The council-house of the usual type, a great rotunda built on a high mound near the “beloved square,” and plastered within and without with red clay, was dark, save for the glimmer of the dull fire and the high, narrow door, through which could be seen the town of similar architecture but of smaller edifices, with here and there a log cabin of the fashion which the pioneers imitated in their earlier dwellings, familiar to this day, and the open shed-like buildingsat each side of the “beloved square.” The river was in full view, a burnished steely gray, and the further mountains delicately blue, but more than once, as Raymond glanced toward them, his eyes were filled with a blinding red glare, sudden, translucent, transitory.
Only the nerve of a strong man, young, hearty, well-fed, enabled him to be still and make no sign. The first thought in his mind was that this was a premonition of illness, and hence it behooved him to address himself swiftly to the business in hand that no interest of the government might suffer. As he pressed his palm to his brow for a moment, it occurred to him that the strange feather-crested faces were watching him curiously, inimically,—but perhaps that was merely because they doubted the intent of his mission.
And so in Choté, in the unbroken peace of its traditional sanctity, he began with open hostility.
“You signed a treaty, Cunigacatgoah,” he addressed the ancient chief, “and you Oconostota, and other head-men for the whole Cherokee nation,—in many things you have broken it.”
Several chiefs held out their hands to receive “sticks,” that they might reply categorically to this point when he had finished. But he shook his head. He did not intend to conform to Indian etiquette further than in sitting on a buffalo rug on the floor, with his legs in their white breeches and leggings folded up before him like the blades of a clasp knife. He gesticulated much with his hands, around which hisbest lace frills dangled, and he wore a dress sword as a mark of ceremony; his hair was powdered, too, and he carried his cocked hat in his left hand. He did not intend to be rude, but he was determined to lose no time in useless observances, because of that strange affection, that curious red glare which had seemed to suffuse his eyes, portending some disturbance of the brain perchance.
“No,” he said firmly, declining to receive or to give the notched sticks, “I am not going to enter into the various details. There is only one thing out of kilter about that treaty which I am going to settle. It relates to the cannon which you brought here after the capitulation of Fort Loudon. They were to be delivered up to the British government according to the last treaty. Eight of these guns were taken down to Fort Prince George, one was burst by an overcharge at Fort Loudon, but others you have not relinquished. You have evaded compliance.”
A long silence ensued, while the chiefs gazed inscrutably into the fire. Their pride, their dignity suffered from this cavalier address. All their rancor was aroused against this man,—even his callowness was displeasing to them. They revolted at his incapacity for ceremonial observance, save, indeed, such as appertained to his military drill, which they esteemed hideous and of no value to the British in the supreme test of battle. They resented his persistence in having ensconced himself here under the protection of the sanctities of Choté until after his offensive mission should be disclosed and answered. Hehad evidently neither the will nor the art to disguise it with euphemistic phraseology that might render it more acceptable to a feint of consideration. It was not now, however, at the moment of the French withdrawal, that the Cherokees could resist by force an English demand. Diplomacy must needs therefore fill the breach. In some way Captain Howard had evidently learned that the three missing cannon were not sunk in the river by the garrison of Fort Loudon as the Cherokees had declared. With this thought in his mind, Cunigacatgoah said suddenly, “Only three cannon failed to be relinquished,—they had been in the river, and they were all sick,—they could not speak.”
“Sick,—are they? I have a sovereign remedy for a sick cannon,” declared Raymond. “They shall speak and—” Once more as he glanced mechanically through the open door toward the brilliant outer world, with the gleam of the river below the clifty mountains and a flight of swans above, that curious translucent red light flashed through his eye-balls.
This time he was quicker,—or perhaps accident favored him, for as, half-blinded, his glance returned, he saw the red light disappearing into the ample sleeve of one of the Indians who sat on the opposite side of the fire.
Raymond’s first feeling was an infinite relief. No illness menaced him, no obscure affection of the nerves or brain. Some art of conjuring,—some mechanical contrivance, was it?—they were employing to distracthis attention. In their folly and fatuity did they dream that they might thus undermine his purpose, or weaken his intellect, or destroy his sight, or work a spell upon him? He marked how they watched his every motion.
He looked vaguely, uncertainly, about the shadowy place, with its red wall. The decorated buffalo hides suspended on it showed dully against its rich uniform tint. The circle of the seated Indian chiefs in the shifting shadow and the flickering light, with their puerile ornaments of paint and feathers and strings of worthless beads about the barbaric garb of skin and fur, was itself vague, unreal, like a curious poly-tinted daub, some extravagant depiction of aboriginal art. Each face, however, was expressive in a different degree of power, of perspicacity, of subtlety, and many devious mental processes, and he marvelled, as many wiser men have marvelled since, that these endowments of value should fail to compass the essentials of civilization, theorizing dimly that the Indians were a remnant of a different order of being, the conclusion of a period of human development, the final expression of an alien mind, radically of an age and species not to be repeated.
There was absolutely no basis of mutual comprehension, and Raymond was definitely aware of this when he said, “I can cure a disabled cannon,—show me the guns,”—and a sudden silence ensued, the demand evidently being wholly unexpected.
“Tell me,” he urged, his patience growing scant, “where are the guns now?” Then catching theshifty expression of the chief, Cunigacatgoah, he was moved to add, disregarding the interpreter, “Gahusti tsuskadi nigesuna.” (You never tell a lie.)
Now and again his knowledge of the Cherokee language had enabled him to detect the linguister for the British force softening his downright candid soldierly phrases. The interpreter was seeking to mitigate the evident displeasure excited by the commander’s address, which he thought might rebound upon himself, as the medium of such unpleasant communication. There was something so sarcastic in this feigned compliment that it might well have seemed positively unsafe, even more perilous than overt insult, but as Raymond, with a wave of his cocked hat in his left hand and a smiling bow of his heavily powdered and becurled head, demanded, “Haga tsunu iyuta datsi waktuhi?” (Tell me where they are now?) a vague smile played over the features of Cunigacatgoah, and he who was wont to believe so little, found it easy to imagine himself implicitly believed, the model of candor.
He instantly assumed an engaging appearance of extreme frankness, and abruptly said, “Now, I, myself, will tell you the whole truth.”
Raymond looked at him eagerly, breathlessly, full of instant expectation.
“The cannon are not here,—they have all three sickened and died.”
The soldier sat dumbfounded for a moment, realizing that this was no figurative speech, that he was expected to entirely believe this,—so low they ratedthe intelligence of the English! He experienced the revolt of reason that seizes on the mind amidst the grotesqueries of a dream. He had no words to combat the follies of the proposition. Only with a sarcastic, fleering laugh he cried aloud, “Gahusti tsuskadi nigesuna!” (You never tell a lie.)
The next moment he felt choking. He was balked, helpless, hopeless, at the end. He knew that Captain Howard had anticipated no strategy. The savages could not by force hold the guns in the teeth of the British demand, and the commandant of Fort Prince George had fancied that they would be yielded, however reluctantly, on official summons. They were necessary to Captain Howard, to complete his account of the munitions of war intrusted to his charge, upon being transferred from Fort Prince George. And this was the result of Raymond’s mission,—to return empty-handed, outwitted, to fail egregiously in the conduct of an expedition in which he had been graced with an independent command,—Raymond was hot and cold by turns when he thought of it! Yet the guns had disappeared, the Indians craftily held their secret, the impossible checks even martial ardor. Raymond, however, was of the type of stubborn campaigner that dies in the last ditch. The imminence of defeat had quickened all his faculties.
“Ha-nagwa dugihyali” (I’ll make a search), he blustered.
But the threat was met with sarcastic smiles, and Cunigacatgoah said again with urgent candor,—“Agiyahusa cannon.” (My cannon are dead.)
As Raymond hesitated, half distraught with anxiety and eagerness, the red light suddenly flashed once more through his eye-balls from its invisible source. He was inherently and by profession a soldier, and it was not of his nature nor his trade to receive a thrust without an effort to return a counter-thrust.
“Hidden!” he cried suddenly, with eyes distended. “Hidden!” he paused, gasping for effect. “I know the spot,” he screamed wildly, springing to his feet; for he had just remembered the peculiar track he had noticed on soft ground near the river, and he now bethought himself that only the trunnion of a dismounted gun could have made an imprint such as this. It suggested a recent removal and a buoyant hope. “The cannon are in the ravine by the river. I know it! I know it!”
In the confusion attendant upon this sudden outburst they all rose turning hither and thither, awaiting they hardly knew what in this untoward mystery of divination or revelation. Making a bull-like rush amongst them, actually through the fire, Raymond fairly charged upon the conjurer, felling him to the ground, and ran at full speed out into the air and down the steep mound.
“Fall in! Fall in!” he cried out to his “zanies” as he went, hearing in a moment the welcome sound of his own drum beating “the assembly.”
He led the way to the locality where he had seen the track, followed by all his score of men at a brisk double-quick. In a ravine by the river a close search resulted in the discovery of the guns ambushedin a sort of grotto, all now mounted on their carriages. Not so sick were they but that they could speak aloud, and they shouted lustily when the charges of blank cartridges issued from their smoking throats. For the giddy young officer had them dragged up to the bluffs and trained them upon the “beloved town” of peace itself, and by reason of the Indians’ terror of artillery hardly five minutes elapsed before Choté was deserted by every inhabitant.
Raymond found his best capacity enlisted to maintain his authority and prevent his twenty men flushed with victory, triumphant and riotous with joy, from pillaging the city of refuge, thus left helpless at their mercy. But the behests of so high-handed and impetuous a commander were not to be trifled with, and the troops were soon embarked in the large pettiaugre belonging to the British government, which chanced to be lying abandoned at the shore. In this they transported the three guns, which they fired repeatedly as they rowed up the Tennessee River, with the echoes bellowing after all along the clifty banks and far through the dense woods,—effectually discouraging pursuit.