“He wept full sore fur his ‘dear friend Jack,’An’ how could I know he meant ‘Apple-Jack’!”
“He wept full sore fur his ‘dear friend Jack,’An’ how could I know he meant ‘Apple-Jack’!”
“He wept full sore fur his ‘dear friend Jack,’An’ how could I know he meant ‘Apple-Jack’!”
“He wept full sore fur his ‘dear friend Jack,’
An’ how could I know he meant ‘Apple-Jack’!”
Mark was aware that they had taken his warning, although with no appreciation of his motive in giving it. He could imagine the contemptuous anger against him with which they looked significantly at one another as they sat in the dusky shadows around the still, and he knew that his suddenoutburst into song must seem to them bravado—an intimation that he did not care for having been summarily ejected from the still-house, when in reality, only the recollection of it sent the color flaming to his cheeks and the tears to his eyes. This was not for the mere matter of pride, either; but for disappointment, for fled illusions, for the realization that he had placed a false valuation on these men. He had been flattered that they had cared for his friendship, and reciprocally had valued him more than others; they had relished and invited his companionship; they had treated him almost as one of themselves. And although he saw much gambling and drinking, sometimes resulting in brawls and furious fights, against which his moral sense revolted, he felt sure that their dissipation was transitory; they would all straighten out and settle down—whenthey themselves were older. In truth, he could hardly have conceived that this manifestation of to-night was the true identity of the friends to whom he had attached himself—that their souls, their hearts, their minds, were of a piece with the texture of their daily lives, as sooner or later the event would show. In the disuse of good impulses and honest qualities they grow lax and weak. They are the moral muscles of the spiritual being, and, like the muscles of the physical body, they must needs be exercised and trained to serve the best interests of the soul.
“Yo-he! Yo-ho!” sang poor Mark, as he plunged into the forest, keeping in the wood trail, called courteously a road, partly by the memory of his horse, and partly by the keen sight of his gray eyes. He lapsed presently into silence, for he had no heart forsinging, and he jogged on dispirited, gloomy, reflective, through the rugged ways of the wilderness. It was fully two hours before he emerged into the more open country about his mother’s house; as he reached the bank of the stream he glanced up, toward the bridge—the faintest suggestion of two parallel lines across the instarred sky. A great light flashed through the heavens, followed by a comet-like sweep of fiery sparks.
“That thar air the ’leven o’clock train, I reckon,” said Mark, making his cautious way among the bowlders and fragments of fallen rock to the door of the house. The horse plucked up spirit to neigh gleefully at the sight of his shanty and the thought of his supper. The sound brought Mrs. Yates to the window of the cabin.
“Air that ye a-comin’, Mark?” she asked.
“It air me an’ Cockleburr,” replied her son, with an effort to be cheerful too, and to cast away gloomy thoughts in the relief of being once more at home.
“Air ye ez drunk ez or’nary?” demanded his mother.
This was a damper. “I ain’t drunk nohow in the worl’,” said Mark, sullenly.
“Whyn’t ye stay ter the still, then, till ye war soaked?” she gibed at him.
Mark dismounted in silence; there was no saddle to be unbuckled, and Cockleburr walked at once into the little shed to munch upon a handful of hay and to dream of corn.
His master, entering the house, was saluted by the inquiry, “War Painter Brice ez drunk ez common?”
“No, he warn’t drunk nuther.”
“Hev the still gone dry?” askedMrs. Yates, affecting an air of deep interest.
“Not ez I knows on, it hain’t,” said Mark.
“Thar must be suthin’ mighty comical a-goin on ef ye nor Painter nare one air drunk. Is Aaron drunk, then? Nor Pete? nor Joe? Waal, this air powerful disapp’intin’.” And she took off her spectacles, wiped them on her apron, and shook her head slowly to and fro in solemn mockery.
“Waal,” she continued, with a more natural appearance of interest, “what war they all a-talkin’ ’bout ter-night?”
Mark sat down, and looked gloomily at the dying embers in the deep chimney-place for a moment, then he replied, evasively, “Nuthin’ much.”
“That’s what ye always say! Ef I go from hyar ter the spring yander, I kin come back with more to tell than yer kin gether up in a day an’ a nightat the still. It ’pears like ter me men war mos’ly made jes’ ter eat an’ drink, an’ thar tongues war gin ’em for no use but jes’ ter keep ’em from feelin’ lonesome like.”
Mark did not respond to this sarcasm. His mother presently knelt down on the rough stones of the hearth, and began to rake the coals together, covering them with ashes, preliminary to retiring for the night. She glanced up into his face as she completed the work; then, with a gleam of fun in her eyes, she said:
“Ye look like ye’re studyin’ powerful hard, Mark. Mebbe ye air a-cornsiderin’ ’bout gittin’ married. It’s ’bout time ez ye war a-gittin’ another woman hyar ter work fur ye, ’kase I’m toler’ble old, an’ can’t live forever mo’, an’ some day ye’ll find yerself desolated.”
“I ain’t a-studyin’ no more ’bouta-gettin’ married nor ye air yerself,” Mark retorted, petulantly.
“Ye ain’t a-studyin’ much ’bout it, then,” said his mother. “The Bible looks like it air a-pityin’ of widders mightily, but it ’pears ter me that the worst of thar troubles is over.”
Then ensued a long silence. “Thar’s one thing to be sartain,” said Mark, suddenly. “I ain’t never a-goin ter that thar still no more.”
“I hev hearn ye say that afore,” remarked Mrs. Yates, dryly. “An’ thar never come a day when yer father war alive ez he didn’t say that very word—nor a day as that word warn’t bruken.”
These amenities were at length sunk in sleep, and the little log hut hung upon its precarious perch on the slope beneath the huge cliff all quiet and lonely. The great gorge seemed a channel hewn for the winds;they filled it with surging waves of sound, and the vast stretches of woods were in wild commotion. The Argus-eyed sky still held its steadfast watch, but an impenetrable black mask clung to the earth. At long intervals there arose from out the forest the cry of a wild beast—the anguish of the prey or the savage joy of the captor—and then for a time no sound save the monotonous ebb and flow of the sea of winds. Suddenly, a shrill whistle awoke the echoes, the meteor-like train sweeping across the sky wavered, faltered, and paused on the verge of the crag. Then the darkness was instarred with faint, swinging points of light, and there floated down upon the wind the sound of eager, excited voices.
“Ef them thar cars war ter drap off’n that thar bluff,” said the anxious Mrs. Yates, as she and her son,aroused by the unwonted noise, came out of the hut, and gazed upward at the great white glare of the headlight, “they’d ruin the turnip patch, worl’ without e-end.”
“Nothing whatever is the matter,” said the Pullman conductor, cheerily, to his passengers, as he re-entered his coach. “Only a little church on fire just beyond the curve of the road; the engineer couldn’t determine at first whether it was a fire built on the track or on the hillside.”
The curtains of the berths were dropped, sundry inquiring windows were closed, the travelers lay back on their hard pillows, the faint swinging points of light moved upward as the men with the lanterns sprang upon the platforms, the train moved slowly and majestically across the bridge, and presently it was whizzing past the little church, where the flames had lickedup benches and pulpit and floor, and were beginning to stream through door and window, and far above the roof.
The miniature world went clanging along its way, careless of what it left behind, and the turnip patch was saved.
The wonderful phenomenon of the stoppage of the train had aroused the whole countryside, and when it had passed, the strange lurid glare high on the slope of the mountain attracted attention. There was an instant rush of the scattered settlers toward the doomed building. A narrow, circuitous path led them up the steep ascent among gigantic rocks and dense pine thickets; the roaring of the tumultuous wind drowned all other sounds, and they soon ceased the endeavor to speak to one another as they went, and canvass their suspicions and indignation. Turning a sharp curve, theforemost of the party came abruptly upon a man descending.
He had felt secure in the dead hour of night and the thick darkness, and the distance had precluded him from being warned by the stoppage of the train. He stood in motionless indecision for an instant, until Moses Carter, who was a little in advance of the others, made an effort to seize him, exclaiming, “This fire ez ye hev kindled, Painter Brice, will burn ye in hell forever!” He spoke at a venture, not recognizing the dark shadow, but there was no mistaking the supple spring with which the man threw himself upon his enemy, nor the keen ferocity that wielded the sharp knife. Hearing, however, in the ebb of the wind, voices approaching from the hill below, and realizing the number of his antagonists, the Panther tore himself loose, and running in thedark with the unerring instinct and precision of the wild beast that he was, he sped up the precipitous slope, and was lost in the gloomy night.
“Gin us the slip!” exclaimed Joel Ruggles, in grievous disappointment, as he came up breathless. “A cussed painter if ever thar war one.”
“Mebbe he won’t go fur,” said Moses Carter. “He done cut my arm a-nigh in two, but thar air suthin’ adrippin’ off ’n my knife what I feels in my bones is that thar Painter’s blood. An’ I ain’t a-goin ter stop till he air cotched, dead or alive. He mought hev gone down yander ter the Widder Yates’s house, ez him an’ Mark air thicker’n thieves. Come ter think on’t,” he continued, “Mark war a-settin’ with this hyar very Painter Brice an’ the t’others yander ter the still-house nigh ’pon eight o’clock ter-night, an’ like ez not he holpedPainter an’ the t’others ter fire the church.” For there was a strong impression prevalent that wherever Panther Brice was, his satellite brothers were not far off. Nothing, however, was seen of them on the way, and the pursuers burst in upon the frightened widow and her son with little ceremony. Her assertion that Mark had not left home since the eleven o’clock train passed was disregarded, and they dragged the young fellow out to the door, demanding to know where were the Brices.
“I hain’t seen none of ’em since I lef’ the still ’bout’n eight or nine o’clock ter-night,” Mark protested.
“Ef the truth war knowed,” said Moses Carter, jeeringly, “ye never lef’ the still till they did. War it ye ez holped ’em ter fire the church?”
“I never knowed the church war burnin’ till ye kem hyar,” repliedyoung Yates. He was almost overpowered by a sickening realization of the meaning of those covert insinuations which he had heard at the still; and he remembered that the Panther’s assertion that the church was safer with the Brices in it than out of it, was made while he sat among the brothers in Moses Carter’s presence. He saw the justice of the strong suspicion.
“You know, though, whar Painter Brice is now—don’t ye?” asked Carter.
A faint streak of dawn was athwart the eastern clouds, and as the young fellow turned his bewildered eyes upward to it the blood stood still in his veins. Upon one of the parallel lines of the bridge was the figure of man, belittled by the distance, and indistinctly defined against the mottling sky; but the far-seeing gray eyes detected in a certain untrammeled ease, as itmoved lightly from one of the ties to another, the Panther’s free motion.
Mark Yates hesitated. He cherished an almost superstitious reverence for the church which Panther Brice had desecrated and destroyed, and he feared the consequences of refusing to give the information demanded of him. A denial of the knowledge he did not for a moment contemplate. And struggling in his mind against these considerations was a recollection of the hospitality of the Brices, and of the ill-starred friendship that had taken root and grown and flourished at the still.
This hesitation was observed; there were significant looks interchanged among the men, and the question was repeated, “Whar’s Painter Brice?”
The decision of the problems that agitated the mind of Mark Yates was not left to him. He saw the figureon the bridge suddenly turn, then start eagerly forward. A heavy freight train, almost noiseless in the wild whirl of the wind, had approached very near without being perceived by Panther Brice. He could not retrace his way before it would be upon him—to cross the bridge in advance of it was his only hope. He was dizzy from the loss of blood and the great height, and the wind was blowing between the cliffs in a strong, unobstructed current. As he ran rapidly onward, the first faint gleam of the approaching headlight touched the bridge—a furious warning shriek of the whistle mingled with a wild human cry, and the Panther, missing his footing, fell like a thunderbolt into the depths of the black waters below.
There was a revulsion of feeling, very characteristic of inconstant humanity, in the little group on the slopebelow the crag. Before Mark Yates’s frantic exclamation, “Thar goes Painter Brice, an’ he’ll be drownded sure!” had fairly died upon the air, half a dozen men were struggling in the dark, cold water of the swift stream in the vain attempt to rescue their hunted foe. Long after they had given up the forlorn hope of saving his life, the morning sun for hours watched them patrolling the banks for the recovery of the body.
“Ef we could haul that pore critter out somehow ’nother,” said Moses Carter, his arm still dripping from the sharp strokes of the Panther’s knife, “an’ git the preacher ter bury him somewhar under the pines like he war a Christian, I could rest more sati’fied in my mind.”
The mountain stream never gave him up.
This event had a radical influenceupon the future of Mark Yates. Never again did he belittle the possible impetus given the moral nature by those more trifling wrongs that always result in an increased momentum toward crime. He was the first to discover more of what Painter Brice had really intended,—had attempted,—than was immediately apparent to the countryside in general. A fragment of the door lay unburned among the charred remains of the little church in the wilderness—a fragment that carried the lock, the key. Mark’s sharp eyes fixed upon a salient point as he stood among the group that had congregated there in the sad light of the awakening day. The key was on the outside of the door, and it had been turned! The Panther had doubtless been actuated by revenge, and perhaps, had been influenced by the fear that information of the illicit distilling wouldbe given by the parson to the revenue authorities, as a means of breaking up an element so inimical to the true progress of religion on the ridge—its denizens hitherto availing themselves of the convenience of the still to assuage any pricks of conscience they may have had in the matter, and also fearing the swift and terrible fate that inevitably overtook the informer. At all events, it was evident, that having reason to believe the minister was still within, Painter Brice had noiselessly locked the door that his unsuspecting enemy might also perish in the flames. For in the primitive fashioning of the building there was no aperture for light and air except the door—no window, save a small, glassless square above the pulpit which, in the good time coming, the congregation had hoped to glaze, to receive therefrom more lighton salvation. It was so small, so high, that perhaps no other man could have slipped through it, save indeed the slim little “skimpy saint,” and it was thus that he had escaped.
No vengeance followed the Panther’s brothers. “They hed ter do jes’ what Painter tole ’em, ye see,” was the explanation of this leniency. And Mark Yates was always afterward described as “a peart smart boy, ef he hedn’t holped the Brices ter fire the church-house.” The still continued to be run according to the old regulations, except there was no whisky sold to the church brethren. “That bein’ the word ez John left behind him,” said Aaron. The laws of few departed rulers are observed with the rigor which the Brices accorded to the Panther’s word. The locality came to be generally avoided, and no one cared to linger there after dark, save the threeBrices, who sat as of old, in the black shadows about the still.
Whenever in the night-wrapped gorge a shrill cry is heard from the woods, or the wind strikes a piercing key, or the train thunders over the bridge with a wild shriek of whistles, and the rocks repeat it with a human tone in the echo, the simple foresters are wont to turn a trifle pale and to bar up the doors, declaring that the sound “air Painter Brice a-callin’ fur his brothers.”
THE EXPLOITOFCHOOLAH, THE CHICKASAW
The victorious campaign which Lieutenant-Colonel James Grant conducted in the Cherokee country in the summer of 1761, and which redounded so greatly to the credit of the courage and endurance of the expeditionary force, British regulars and South Carolina provincials, is like many other human events in presenting to the casual observation only an harmonious whole, while it is made up of a thousand little jagged bits of varied incident inconsistent and irregular, and with no single element in common but the attraction of cohesion to amalgamate the mosaic.
Perhaps no two men in the command saw alike the peaks of the Great Smoky Mountains hovering elusively on the horizon, now purple and ominous among the storm clouds, for the rain fell persistently; now distant, blue, transiently sun-flooded, and with the prismatic splendors of the rainbow spanning in successive arches the abysses from dome to dome, and growing ever fainter and fainter in duplication far away. Perhaps no two men revived similar impressions as they recognized various localities from the South Carolina coast to the Indian town of Etchoee, near the Little Tennessee River, for many of them had traversed hundreds of miles of these wild fastnesses the previous year, when Colonel Montgomery, now returned to England, had led an aggressive expedition against the Cherokees. Certain it is, the accounts of theirexperiences are many and varied—only in all the character of their terrible enemy, the powerful and warlike Cherokee, stands out as incontrovertible as eternity, as immutable as Fate. Hence there were no stragglers, no deserters. In a compact body, while the rain fell, and the torrents swelled the streams till the fords became almost impracticable, the little army, as with a single impulse, pressed stanchly on through the mist-filled, sodden avenues of the primeval woods. To be out of sight for an instant of that long, thin column of soldiers risked far more than death—capture, torture, the flame, the knife, all the extremity of anguish that the ingenuity of savage malice could devise and human flesh endure. But although day by day the thunder cracked among the branches of the dripping trees and reverberated from the rocks of thecraggy defiles, and keen swift blades of lightning at short intervals thrust through the lowering clouds, almost always near sunset long level lines of burnished golden beams began to glance through the wild woodland ways; a mocking-bird would burst into song from out the dense coverts of the laurel on the slope of a mountain hard by; the sky would show blue overhead, and glimmer red through the low-hanging boughs toward the west; and the troops would pitch their tents under the restored peace of the elements and the placid white stars.
A jolly camp it must have been. Stories of it have come down to this day—of its songs, loud, hilarious, patriotic, doubtless rudely musical; of its wild pranks, of that boyish and jocose kind denominated by sober and unsympathetic elders, “horse-play”; of the intense delight experienced bythe savage allies, the Chickasaws, who participated in the campaign, in witnessing the dances of the young Highlanders—how “their sprightly manner in this exercise,” and athletic grace appealed to the Indians; how the sound of the bag-pipes thrilled them; how they admired that ancient martial garb, the kilt and plaid.
No admiration, however extravagant of Scotch customs, character, or appearance, seemed excessive in the eyes of Lieutenant-Colonel James Grant, so readily did his haughty, patriotic pride acquiesce in it, and the Indian’s evident appreciation of the national superiority of the Scotch to all other races of men duly served to enhance his opinion of the mental acumen of the Chickasaws. This homage, however, failed to mollify or modify the estimate of the noble redman already formed by a certainsubaltern, Lieutenant Ronald MacDonnell.
“The Lord made him an Indian—and an Indian he will remain,” he would remark sagely.
The policy of the British government to utilize in its armies the martial strength of semi-savage dependencies, elsewhere so conspicuously exploited, was never successful with these Indians save as the tribes might fight in predatory bands in their own wild way, although much effort was made looking toward regular enlistments. And, in fact, the futility of all endeavors to reduce the savage to a reasonable conformity to the militarism of the camp, to inculcate the details of the drill, a sense of the authority of officers, the obligations of out-posts, the heinousness of “running the guard,” the necessity of submitting to the prescribedpunishments and penalties for disobedience of orders,—all rendered this ethnographic saw so marvelously apt, that it seemed endowed with more wisdom than Ronald MacDonnell was popularly supposed to possess. But such logic as he could muster operated within contracted limits. If the Lord had not fitted a man to be a soldier, why—there Ronald MacDonnell’s extremest flights of speculation paused.
In the scheme of his narrow-minded Cosmos the human creature was represented by two simple species: unimportant, unindividualized man in general, and that race of exalted beings known as soldiers. He was a good drill, and with the instinct of a born disciplinarian in his survey, he would often watch the Chickasaws with this question in his mind,—sometimes when they were on the march, and their endurance, their activity, theadmirable proportions of their bodies, their free and vigorous gait were in evidence; sometimes in the swift efficiency of their scouting parties when their strategy and courage and wily caution were most marked; sometimes in the relaxations of the camp when their keen responsive interest in the quirks and quips of the soldier at play attested their mental receptivity and plastic impressibility. Their gayety seemed a docile, mundane, civilized sort of mirth when they would stand around in the ring with the other soldiers to watch the agile Highlanders in the inspiring martial posturing of the sword dance, with their fluttering kilts and glittering blades, their free gestures,their long, sinewy, bounding steps, as of creatures of no weight, while the bag-pipes skirled, and the great campfire flared, and the light and shadows fluctuated in the denseprimeval woods, half revealing, half concealing the lines of tents, of picketed horses, of stacks of arms, of other flaring camp-fires—even the pastoral suggestion in the distance of the horned heads of the beef-herd. But whatever the place or scene, Ronald MacDonnell’s conclusion was essentially the same. “The Lord made him an Indian,” he would say, with an air of absolute finality.
He was a man of few words,—of few ideas; these were strictly military and of an appreciated value. He was considered a promising young officer, and was often detailed to important and hazardous duty. And if he had naught to say at mess, and seldom could perceive a joke unless of a phenomenal pertinence and brilliancy, broadly aflare so to speak under his nose, he was yet a boon companion, and could hold his own like aScotchman when many a brighter man was under the table. He had a certain stanch, unquestioning sense of duty and loyalty, and manifested an unchangeable partisanship in his friendship, of a silent and undemonstrative order, that caused his somewhat exaggerated view of his own dignity to be respected, for it was intuitively felt that his personal antagonism would be of the same tenacious, unreasoning, requiting quality, and should not be needlessly roused. He was still very young, although he had seen much service. He was tall and stalwart; he had the large, raw-boned look which is usually considered characteristic of the Scotch build, and was of great muscular strength, but carrying not one ounce of superfluous flesh. Light-colored hair, almost flaxen, indeed, with a strong tendency to curl in the shorter locks that lay in tendrils on hisforehead, clear, contemplative blue eyes, a fixed look of strength, of reserves of unfailing firmness about the well-cut lips, a good brick-red flush acquired from many and many a day of marching in the wind, and the rain, and the sun—this is the impression one may take from his portrait. He could be as noisy and boisterously gay as the other young officers, but somehow his hilarity was of a physical sort, as of the sheer joy of living, and moving, and being so strong. One might wonder what impressions he received in the long term of his service in Canada and the Colonies—these strange new lands so alien to all his earlier experience. One might doubt if he saw how fair of face was this most lovely of regions, the Cherokee country; if the primeval forests, the splendid tangles of blooming rhododendron, the crystal-clear, rock-bound rivers wereasserted in his consciousness otherwise than as the technical “obstacle” for troops on the march. As to the imposing muster of limitless ranks of mountains surrounding the little army on every side, they did not remind him of the hills of Scotland, as the sheer sense of great heights and wild ravines and flashing cataracts suggested reminiscences to the others. “There is no gorse,” he remarked of these august ranges, with their rich growths of gigantic forest trees, as if from the beginning of the earliest eras of dry land,—and the mess called him “Gorse” until the incident was forgotten.
For the last three days the command, consisting of some twenty-six hundred men, had been advancing by forced marches, despite the deterrent weather. Setting out on the 7th of June from Fort Prince George, wherethe army had rested for ten days after the march of three hundred miles from Charlestown, Colonel Grant encountered a season of phenomenal rain-fall. Moreover, the lay of the land,—long stretches of broken, rocky country, gashed by steep ravines and intersected by foaming, swollen torrents, deep and dangerous to ford, encompassed on every hand by rugged heights and narrow, intricate, winding valleys, affording always but a restricted passage,—offered peculiar advantages for attack. Colonel Grant, aware that these craggy defiles could be held against him even by an inferior force, that a smart demonstration on the flank would so separate the thin line of his troops that one division would hardly be available to come to the support of the other, that an engagement here and now would result in great loss of life, if not an actual and decisive repulse, was urgingthe march forward at the utmost speed possible to reach more practicable ground for an encounter, regardless how the pace might harass the men. But they were responding gallantly to the demands on their strength, and this was what he had hardly dared to hope. For during the previous winter, when General Amherst ordered the British regulars south by sea, many of them immediately upon their arrival in Charlestown, succumbed to an illness occasioned by drinking the brackish water of certain wells of the city. Coming in response to the urgent appeals of the province to the commander-in-chief of the army to defend the frontier against the turbulent Cherokees who ravaged the borders, the British force were looked upon as public deliverers, and the people of the city took the ill soldiers from the camps into their own privatedwellings, nursing them until they were quite restored. No troops could have better endured the extreme hardships which they successfully encountered in their march northward. So swift an advance seemed almost impossible. The speed of the movement apparently had not been anticipated, even by that wily and watchful enemy, the Cherokees. It has been said that at this critical juncture the Indians had failed to receive the supply of ammunition from the French which they had anticipated, although a quantity, inadequate for the emergency, however, reached them a few days later. At all events Colonel Grant was nearly free of the district where disaster so menaced him before he received a single shot. He had profited much by his several campaigns in this country since he led that rash, impetuous, and bloody demonstration against Fort Duquesne,in which he himself was captured with nineteen of his officers, and his command was almost cut to pieces. Now his scouts patrolled the woods in every direction. His vanguard of Indian allies under command of a British officer was supported by a body of fifty rangers and one hundred and fifty light infantry. Every precaution against surprise was taken.
Late one afternoon, however, the main body wavered with a sudden shock. The news came along the line. The Cherokees were upon them—upon the flank? No; in force fiercely assaulting the rear-guard. It was as Grant had feared impossible in these narrow defiles to avail himself of his strength, to face about, to form, to give battle. The advance was ordered to continue steadily onward,—difficult indeed, with the sound of the musketry and shouting from the rear, now louder,now fainter, as the surges of attack ebbed and flowed.
A strong party was detached to reinforce the rear-guard. But again and again the Cherokees made a spirited dash, seeking to cut off the beef herd, fighting almost in the open, with as definite and logical a military plan of destroying the army by capturing its supplies in that wild country, hundreds of miles from adequate succor, as if devised by men trained in all the theories of war.
“The Lord made him—” muttered Ronald MacDonnell, in uncertainty, recognizing the coherence of this military maneuver, and said no more. Whether or not his theory was reduced to that simple incontrovertible proposition, thus modified by the soldier-like demonstration on the supply train, his cogitations were cut short by more familiar ideas, when in command ofthirty-two picked men, he was ordered to make a detour through the defiles of a narrow adjacent ravine, and, issuing suddenly thence, seek to fall upon the flank of the enemy and surprise, rout, and pursue him. This was the kind of thing, that with all his limitations, Ronald MacDonnell most definitely understood. This set a-quiver, with keenest sensitiveness, every fiber of his phlegmatic nature, called out every working capacity of his slow, substantial brains, made his quiet pulses bound. He looked the men over strictly as they dressed their ranks, and then he stepped swiftly forward toward them, for it was the habit to speak a few words of encouragement to the troops about to enter on any extra-hazardous duty, so daunting seemed the very sight of the Cherokees and the sound of their blood-curdling whoops.
“Hech, callants!” he cried, in his simple joy; and so full of valiant elation was the exclamation that its spirit flared up amongst the wild “petticoat-men,” who cheered as lustily as if they had profited by the best of logic and the most finely flavored eloquence. Ronald MacDonnell felt that he had acquitted himself well in the usual way, and was under the impression that he had made a speech to the troops.
Now climbing the crags of the verges of the ravine, now deep in its trough, following the banks of its flashing torrent, they made their way—at a brisk double-quick when the ground would admit of such progress—and when they must, painfully dragging one another through the dense jungles of the dripping laurel, always holding well together, remembering the ever-frightful menace of the Cherokee to the laggard. The rainfell no longer; the sunlight slanted on the summit of the rocks above their heads; the wind was blowing fresh and free, and the mists scurried before it; now and again on the steep slopes as the vapors shifted, the horned heads of cattle showed with a familiar reminiscent effect as of mountain kyloes at home. But these were great stall-fed steers, running furiously at large, bellowing, frightened by the tumults of the conflict, plunging along the narrow defiles, almost dashing headlong into the little party of Highlanders who were now quickening their pace, for the crack of dropping shots and once and again a volley, the whoopings of the savages and shouts of the soldiers, betokened that the scene of carnage was near.
Only a few of the cattle were astray for, as MacDonnell and his men emerged into a little level glade, theycould see in the distance that the herd was held well together by the cattle-guard, while the reinforcements sought to check the Cherokees, who, although continually sending forth their terribly accurate masked fire from behind trees and rocks, now and again with a mounted body struck out boldly for the supply train, assaulting with tremendous impetuosity the rear-guard. So still and clear was the evening air that, despite the clamors of battle, MacDonnell could hear the commands, could see in the distance the lines rallying on the reserve forming into solid masses, as the mounted savages hurled down upon them; could even discern where rallies by platoon had been earlier made judging from the position of the bodies of the dead soldiers, lying in a half-suggested circle.
The next moment, with a ringing shout and a smartly delivered volleyof musketry the Highlanders flung themselves from out the mouth of the ravine. The Cherokee horsemen were going down like so many ten-pins. The first detachment of reinforcements set up a wild shout of joy to perceive the support, then flung themselves on their knees to load while a second volley from the Highlanders passed over their heads. The rear-guard had formed anew, faced about, and were advancing in the opposite direction. The Cherokee horsemen, almost surrounded, gave way; the fire of the others in ambush wavered, slackened, became only a dropping shot here and there, then sunk to silence. And the woods were filled with a wild rout, with the irregular musketry of the troops frenzied with sudden success, out of line, out of hearing, out of reason as they pursued the unmounted savages, dislodged atlast from their masked position; with the bugles blowing, the bag-pipes playing; with the unheard, disregarded orders shouted by the officers; with that thrilling cry of the Highlanders “Claymore! Claymore!” the sun flashing on their drawn broadswords as they gained on the flying Indians, themselves as fleet;—a confused, disordered panorama of shadows and sunlight, of men in red coats and men in blue, and men in tartan, and savage Chickasaws and Cherokees in their wild barbaric array.
It had been desired that the repulse should be fierce and decisive, the pursuit bloody and relentless. The supply train represented the life of the army, and it was essential to deter the Cherokees from readily renewing the attack on so vital a point. But these ends compassed, every effort of the officers was concentrated on the necessity ofrecalling the scattered parties. Night was coming on; it was a strange and an alien country; the skulking Cherokees were doubtless in force somewhere in the dense coverts of the woods, and the vicarious terrors of the capture that menaced the valorous and venturesome soldiers began to press heavily upon the officers. Again and again the bugles summoned the stragglers, the rich golden notes drifting through the wilderness, rousing a thousand insistent echoes from many a dumb rock thus endowed with a voice. Certain of the more solicitous officers sent out, with much caution, small details, gathering together the stragglers as they went.
How Ronald MacDonnell became separated from one of these parties was never very clear afterward to his own mind. His attention was attracted first by the sight of a canny Scotch face or two, which he knew, lyingvery low and very still; he suffered a pang which he could never evade. These were the men who had followed him to the finish, and he took out his note-book and holding it against a tree, made a memorandum of the locality for the burial parties, and then, with great particularity, of the names, “For the auld folks at hame,” and he quoted, mournfully a line of the old Gaelic lament much sung by the Scotch emigrants “Ha til mi tulidh” (we return no more), which was sadly true of the Highland soldiery in the British ranks,—an instance is given of a regiment of twelve hundred men who served in America of whom only seventy-six ever saw their native hills again. Then, briskly putting up the book he went on a bit, glancing sharply about for the living of his command, even now thrusting their reckless heads into the den of the Cherokee lion. “Ill-fau’rd chields,and serve them right,” he said, struggling with the dismay in his heart for their sake.
Perhaps he did not realize how far those active strides were carrying him from the command. In fact the march continued that night until the sinking of the moon, the army pressing resolutely on through the broken region of the mountain defiles. MacDonnell noted no Cherokee in sight, that is to say, not a living one. Several of the dead lay on the ground, their still faces already bearing that wan, listening, attentive look of death; they were heedless indeed of the hands that had rifled them of their possessions, for there were a few of the Chickasaw allies intent on plunder.
Presently as he went down a sunset glade, MacDonnell saw advancing a notable figure, a Chickasaw chief, tall, lithe, active, muscular, with agait of athletic grace. He was wearing the warrior’s “crown,” a towering head-dress in the form of a circlet of white swan’s feathers of graduated height, standing fifteen inches high in front, and at the bottom woven into a band of swan’s down—all so deftly constructed that the method of the manufacture of the whole could not be discerned, it is said, without taking it into the hand. To the fringed borders of a sort of sleeveless hunting shirt of otter-skin and his buckskin leggings bits of shells were attached and glittered, and this betokened his wealth, for these beads represented the money of the Indians, with the unique advantage that when not in active circulation, one’s currency could be worn as an ornament. It has been generally known under the generic name “wampum,” although several of theSouthern tribes called it “roanoke” or “pe-ack.” It was made in tiny, tubular beads, of about an inch in length, of the conch and mussel-shells, requiring the illimitable leisure of the Indian to polish the cylinder to the desired glister, and drill through it the hollow no larger than a knitting-needle might fill. His chest and arms were painted symbolically in red and blue arabesques, and his face, of a proud, alert cast was smeared with vermilion and white. All his flesh glistened and shone with the polishing of some unguent. MacDonnell had heard a deal of preaching in his time of the Scotch Presbyterian persuasion, and in the dearth of expression Biblical phrases sometimes came to him. “Oil to give him a cheerful countenance,” he quoted, still gazing at the grim face and figure. So intently he gazed, indeed, that the Indian hesitated,doubting if the Highland officer recognized him as a friend. Breaking off a branch of a green locust hard by and holding it aloft at one side, after the manner of a peaceful embassy, he continued his stately advance until within a yard of the silent Scotchman, also advancing. Then they both paused.
“Ish la chu; Angona?” said the Indian, in a sonorous voice. (Are you come, a friend?)
With the true Briton’s aversion to palaver, intensified by his own incapacity for its practice, Ronald MacDonnell discovered little affinity for barbaric ceremonial. Nevertheless he was constrained by the punctilious sense that a gentleman must reply to a courteous greeting in the manner expected of him. His experience with the Chickasaws had acquainted him with the appropriate response.
“Arabre—O, Angona,” (I am come, a friend) he returned, a trifle sheepishly, and without theore rotundaeffect of the elocution of the Indian.
The young chief looked hard at him, evidently desirous of engaging him in conversation, unaware that it was a game at which the Scotchman was incapacitated for playing.
“Big battle,” he observed, after a doubtful interval.
“A bonny ploy,” assented the officer, who had seen much bigger ones.
Then they both paused and gazed at each other.
“Cherokee—heap fight! Big damn—O!” remarked Choolah, the Fox, applausively.
The use of this most vocative vowel as an intensitive suffix is one of the peculiar methods of emphasis in the animated Chickasaw language—forinstance the wordYanas-Omeans the biggest kind of buffalo (yanasasignifying buffalo in all the dialects). Choolah conversing in the cold and phlegmatic English evidently felt the need of these intensitives, and although a certain strong condemnatory monosyllable has been usually found sufficiently satisfying to the feelings of English speaking men seeking an expletive, the poor Aboriginal, wishing to be more wicked than he was, discovered its capacity for expansion with the prefix “Big” and devised an added emphasis with the explosive final “O.”
“The Cherokee warriors? Pretty men!” said MacDonnell laconically, according the enemy’s valor the meed of a soldier’s praise. “Very pretty men.”
Choolah had never piqued himself on his command of the English language, but he thought now hisfluency was at least equal to that of this Scotchman, who really seemed to speak no tongue at all. As to the French—of that speech,ookproo-se(forever despised) Choolah would not learn a syllable, so deadly a hatred did the Chickasaw tribe bear the whole Gallic nation, dating back indeed through many wars and feuds, to the massacre by Choctaws of certain of the tribe in 1704, while under the protection of Boisbriant with a French safeguard, the deed suspected to have been committed if not at the instigation, at least by the permission of the French commander who, however, himself wounded in the affray, was beyond doubt, helpless in the matter.
“Heap tired?” ventured Choolah, at last, pining for conversation, his searching eyes on the young Highlander’s face.
Ronald MacDonnell laughed a proudnegation. He held out one of his long, heavily muscled arms, with the fist clenched, that the Indian might feel, through his sleeve, the swelling cords that betokened his strength.
But it was Choolah’s trait to cherish vanity in physical endowment, not to foster it in others. He only said, “Good! Swim river.”
“Why swim the river?” demanded the Lieutenant.
Then Choolah detailed that through a scout he had thrown out he had learned that Colonel Grant’s force, still pushing on, had succeeded in crossing the Tennessee river, the herd of cattle and the pack animals giving incredible trouble in the fords, deeply swollen by the unprecedented rains. It suddenly occurred to MacDonnell that, in view of the passage of the troops beyond this barrier, much caution would be requisite in endeavoring to rejoin the mainbody, lest they fall into the clutch of the Cherokees on the hither side, who doubtless would seek the capture of parties of stragglers by carefully patrolling the banks. He suggested this to Choolah. The Indian listened for only a moment with a look of deep conviction; then suddenly calling to five Chickasaws who were still engaged in parceling out the booty they had brought away from the dead bodies, he beckoned to MacDonnell, and they set out on a line parallel with the river, in Indian file, in a long, steady trot, the Scotchman among them, half willing, half dismayed, repudiating with the distaste of a prosaic, unimaginative mind every evidence of barbarism; every unaccustomed thing seemed grotesque and uncouth, and lacking all in lacking the cachet of civilization. Each man, as he ran lightly along that marshyturf, almost without noting, as if by instinct placed his feet upon the steps of the man in advance; thus, although seven persons passed over the ground, the largest man coming last, the footprints would show as if but one had gone that way. Ronald MacDonnell, quick at all military or athletic exercises, readily achieved conformity, although the barbarous procedure compromised his sensitive dignity, and he growled between his teeth something about a commissioned officer and a “demented goose-step,” as if he found the practice of the one by the other a painful derogation. The moon came into the sky while still they sped along in this silent, crafty way, the wind in their faces, the pervasive scents of the damp, flowery June night filling every breath they drew with the impalpable essences of sylvan fragrance.
Even with the dangers that lurked at their heels, the Indians would never leap over a log, for this was unlucky, but made long detours around fallen trees, till Ronald MacDonnell could have belabored them with hearty good-will, and but for the fear of capture by the savage Cherokees, could not have restrained himself from crying aloud for rage for the waste of precious time. He had even less patience with their slow and respectful avoidance of stepping on a snake sinuously skirting their way, since, according to their belief, this would provoke the destruction of their own kindred by the serpent’s brothers; Choolah’s warning to the other Chickasaws in the half-suppressed hiss—“Seente! Seente!” (snake!) sounded far and sibilant in the quiet twilight. The Cherokee tribe also were wont to avoid with great heed any injury to snakes, andspoke of them always in terms of crafty compliment as “the bright old inhabitants.”
The shadows grew darker, more definite; the moon, of a whiter glister now, thoughtful, passive, very melancholy, illumined the long vistas of the woods, and although verging toward the west, limited the area of darkness that had become their protection. More than once Choolah had glanced up doubtfully at its clear effulgence, for the sky was unclouded and the constellations were only a vague bespanglement of the blue deeps; coming at length to a dense covert among the blooming laurel, he crept in among the boughs, that overhung a shallow grotto by the river bank. MacDonnell followed his example, and the group soon were in the cleft of the rocks under the dense shade, the Scotchman alone among the Indians, with such dubioussentiments as a good hound might entertain were he thrust, muzzled, among his natural enemies, the bears.
But the Chickasaws, as ever, were earnestly, ardently friendly to the British. There was no surly reservation in Choolah’s mind as he reached forth his hand and laid it upon the muscular arm of the Scotchman.
“Good arm,” he said, reverting to the young Highlander’s boast. “But—big damn—O!—good leg! Heap run!” he declared, with a smothered laugh, like any other young man’s, much resembling indeed the affectionate ridicule that was wont to go around the mess-table at Ronald’s unimaginative solemnities. But even MacDonnell could appreciate the jest at a brave man’s activities, and he laughed in pleasant accord with the others.
A scout that they had thrown out came presently creeping back under theboughs with the unwelcome intelligence that there was a party of Cherokees a little higher up on the river, a small band of about a dozen men, seeming intent on holding the ford. These were stationary, apparently, but lower down, patrolling the banks, were groups here and there beating the woods for stragglers, he fancied. As yet, however, he thought they had no prisoners. Still, their suspicions of hidden soldiers were unallayed, and they were keeping very quiet.
The scout was named Oop-pa, the Owl. Although himself a warrior of note he was of a far lower grade of Chickasaw than Choolah, in personal quality as well as in actual rank. Instead of manifesting the stanch courage with which the Indian Fox hearkened to this untoward intelligence, the alert gathering of all his forces of mind and body fordefense and for victory, or to make his defeat and capture an exceedingly costly and bloody triumph, Oop-pa set himself, still in the guise of imparting news, to sullenly plaining. The Highland officer listened heedfully for in these repeated campaigns in the valley of the Tennessee River he had become somewhat familiar with the dialect of the Chickasaw allies and in a degree they comprehended the sound of the English, and thus the conversation of the little party was chiefly held each speaking in his own tongue. The English were all across the river, Oop-pa declared. The red-coats, and the green-coats, and the tartan-men, and the provincial regiment—he did not believe a man of the command was left—but them.
“Well, thank God for that much grace!” exclaimed Ronald MacDonnell, strictly limiting his gratitude; hewould render to Providence due recognition for his own rescue when it should be accomplished. His thankfulness, however, for the extent of the blessing vouchsafed was very genuine. His military conscience had been sharply pricked lest he might have lost some of his own men in the confusion of the pursuit and the subsequent separation from the little band.
Oop-pa looked at him surlily. For his own part, the Indian said, he was tired. Let the English and French fight one another. They had left him to be captured by the Cherokees. He needed no words. White man hated red man. Big Colonel Grant would be glad. Proud Colonel Grant—much prouder than an Indian,—would not care if the terrible Cherokees tortured and burned his faithful Chickasaws. Let it be one of his own honey plaidsmen, though, and you would see a difference! Forhaughty Colonel Grant couldn’t abide for such little accidents to befall any of his pampered tartan-men, whom he loved as if they were his children.
With the word the world changed suddenly to Ronald MacDonnell. For this—this fearful fate menaced him. His was not a pictorial mind, but he had a sudden vision of a quiet house on a wild Scottish coast at nightfall within view of the surging Atlantic, with all the decorous habitudes about it of a kindly old home, with a window aglow, through which he could see, as if he stood just outside, a familiar room where there were old books and candlelight, and the flare of fire, and the collie on the rug, and the soft young pink cheeks of sisters, and a gray head with a pipe, intent upon the columns of a newspaper and the last intelligence from far America,—and oh! in the ingle-nook,a face sweeter for many a wrinkle, and eyes dearer for the loss of blue beauty, and soft hands grown nerveless, whose touch nevertheless he could feel across the ocean on his hard, weather-beaten young cheek. It had been a long time since this manly spirit had cried back to his mother, but it was only for a moment. If his fate came as he feared, he hoped they might never know how it had befallen. And the picture dissolved.
He did not fail to listen to the scornful reproaches with which Choolah upbraided Oop-pa. He had been left because he had lingered to rob the slain Cherokees. Look at the load there of hunting-shirts and blankets, and yes, even a plaid or two from a dead Highlander, that he had borne with him on his back from the field of battle; it was his avarice that had belated him.
And what then, Oop-pa retorted, had belated Choolah and the Highland officer? They had brought away nothing but their own hides, which they were at liberty to offer to the Cherokees, as early as they might.
The freedom of Oop-pa’s tongue was resented as evidently by Choolah as by Ronald, but theEtissuoccupied a semi-sacerdotal position toward the chief, a war-captain, the decrees of whose religion would not suffer him to touch a morsel of food or a drop of drink while on the war-path unless administered by theEtissu. The utmost abstemiousness was preserved among the Chickasaws throughout, and it continued a marvel to the British troops how men could march or fight so ill-nourished, practicing all the fasting austerities of religious observances. There were many similar customs implying consecration to war as holyduty, but they were gradually becoming modified by the introduction of foreign influences, for formerly the Indians would not have suffered among them on the march the unsanctified presence of a stranger like Ronald MacDonnell. He said naught in reply to theEtissu. His mind was grimly preoccupied. He was busied with the realization of how strong he was, how very strong. These lithe Indians, with all their supple elasticity, their activity, had no such staying power as he, no such muscular vitality. He was thinking what resources of anguish his stalwart physique offered for the hideous sport of the torture; how his stanch flesh would resist. How long, how long dying he would be!
The terrors of capture by the Cherokees had been by Grant’s orders described again and again to the troops to keep the rank and file constant toduty, close in camp, vigilant on outpost, and alert to respond to the call to arms. Never, as Ronald righteously repeated this grim detail, had he imagined he would ever be in case to remember it with a personal application. He now protested inwardly that he could die like a soldier. Even from the extremity of physical anguish he had never shrunk. But the hideous prospect of the malice of human fiends wreaked for hours and hours upon every quivering nerve, upon every sensitive fiber, with the wonderful ingenuity for which the Cherokees were famous, made him secretly wince as he crouched there among the friendly Chickasaws, beneath the boughs of the rhododendron splendidly a-bloom in the moonlight, while the rich, pearly glamours of the broken disk sunk down and down the sky, and the dew glimmered on the full-fleshed leaves, andthrough them a silver glitter from the Tennessee River hard by struck his eye, and a break in the woods, where the channel curved, showed the contour of a dome of the Great Smoky Mountains limiting the instarred heavens. As he looked out from the covert of the laurel—his flaxen hair visible here and there in rings on his sunburned forehead, from which his blue bonnet was pushed back; his strongly marked high features, hardly so immobile as was their wont; his belt, his plaid, his claymore, all the details of that ancient martial garb, readjusted with military precision since the fight; his long, rawboned figure, lean and muscular, but nevertheless with a suggestion of the roundness of youth, half reclining, supported on one arm—the Indian gazed at him with questioning intentness.
Suddenly Choolah spoke.
“Angona,” (friend) he said, with a poignant note of distrust, “you have a thought in your mind.”
It was seldom indeed, that Ronald MacDonnell could have been thus accused. He changed color a trifle, although he said, hastily, “Oh, no, my good man, not at all—not at all!”
“Angona! Angona!” cried Choolah, in reproach.
Perhaps a definite recognition of this thought in his mind came to MacDonnell with the fear that the Chickasaw, who so easily discerned it, would presently read it. “The fearsome Fox that he is,” thought Ronald with an almost superstitious thrill at his heart.
Naturally he could not know how open was that frank face of his, and that the keen discernment of the savage, though perceiving the presence of the withheld thought, was yet inadequate to translate its meaning.This thought was one which he would in no wise share with Choolah. MacDonnell’s most coherent mental process was always of a military trend; without a definite effort of discrimination, or even voluntarily reverting to the events of the day, it had suddenly occurred to him that the Cherokee with the essential improvidence of the Indian nature, could not have developed that plan of attack on the provision train, so determined and definitely designed, so difficult to repulse, so repeated, renewed again and again with a desperation of the extremest sacrifice to the end. And small wonder! Its success would have involved the practical destruction of Grant’s whole army. Hundreds of miles distant from any sufficient base of supplies, the provision train was the life of the expedition. The beef-herds to be subsequently driven out from the province to Fort Prince Georgefor the use of the army were to be timed with a view to the gradual consumption of the provisions already furnished, and to communicate by messenger to Charlestown, now distant nearly four hundred miles, the disaster of the capture of stores would obviously involve a delay fatal to the troops.
The Indians, however, were a hand-to-mouth nation. Subsisting on the chances of game in their long hunts and marches, enduring in its default incredible rigors of hunger as a matter of course, sustaining life and even strength when in hard luck by roots and fruits and nuts, they could not have realized the value of the provision train to civilized troops who must needs have beef and bacon, flour and tobacco, soap and medicine—or they cannot fight. There was but one explanation—French officers were amongthe Cherokees and directed these demonstrations. Their presence had been earlier suspected, and this, Ronald thought, was indisputable proof. The strange selection of the ground where in the previous year the Cherokees had massed in force and given battle to Colonel Montgomery’s troops had occasioned much surprise, and later the same phenomenon occurred in their engagements with Colonel Grant. It seemed to amount to an exhibition of an intuitive military genius. No great captain of Europe, it was said, could have acted with finer discernment of the opportunities and the dangers, could with greater acumen have avoided and nullified the risks. But Colonel Grant, who was always loath to accord credit to aught but military science, believed the ground was chosen by men who had studied the tactics of the greatcaptains of Europe, and although he had learned to beware of the wily devices of the savage, and to meet his masked fire with skulking scouts and native allies, fighting in their own way, he preserved all the precise tactical methods in which he had been educated, and kept a sharp edge on his expectation for the warlike feints and strategy of the equally trained French officer.
If he could only meet one now, Ronald MacDonnell was thinking. In case it should prove impossible to cross the river and rejoin his command, if he could only surrender to Johnny Crapaud!
To be sure the creature spoke French and ate frogs! More heinous still he was always a Romanist, and diatribes on the wicked sorceries and idolatries of papistry had been hurled through MacDonnell’s consciousness from thePresbyterian pulpit since his earliest recollection. But a soldier, a French officer—surely he would be acquainted with higher methods than the barbarities of the savage; he would be instructed in the humanities, subject to those amenities which in all civilized countries protect a prisoner of war. Surely he would not stand by and see a fellow-soldier—a white man, a Christian, like himself—put to the torture and the stake. And if his authority could not avail for protection—“I’d beg a bullet of him; in charity he could not deny me that!” If the opportunity were but vouchsafed, MacDonnell resolved to appeal to the Frenchman by every sanction that can control a gentleman, by their fellow feeling as soldiers, by the bond of their common religion. He hesitated a moment, realizing a certain hiatus here, a gulf—and then he reconciled all thingswith a triumphant stroke of potent logic. “They may call it idolatry or Mariolatry, if they want to,—but I never heard anybody deny that the Lorddidhave a mother. And it’s a mighty good thing to have!”
This was the thought in his mind—the chance, the hope of surrendering to a French officer.
The stir of the Indians recalled him. The moon was lower in the sky, sinking further and further toward that great purple dome of the many summits of the Great Smoky Mountains. All the glistening lines of light upon the landscape—the glossy foliage, the shining river, the shimmering mists—seemed drawn along as if some fine-spun seine, some glittering enmeshment were being hauled into the boat-shaped moon, still rocking and riding the waves off the headlands that the serrated mountains thrust forth like a coast-line on theseas of the sky. Now and again the voices of creatures of prey—wolves, panthers, wildcats—came shrilly snarling through the summer night from the deep interior of the woods, where they wrangled over the gain that the battle had wrought for them in the slain of horses and men,—of the Cherokee force doubtless; MacDonnell had scarcely a fear that these were of Grant’s command, for that officer’s care for such protection of his dead as was possible was always immediate and peculiarly marked, and it was his habit to have the bodies sunk with great weights into the rivers to prevent the scalping of them by the Cherokees. Ronald wearied of the melancholy hours, the long, long night, although light would have but added dangers of discovery. It was the lagging time he would hasten, would fain stride into the future and security, so did the suspensewear on his nerves. It told heavily even on the Indian, and Ronald felt a certain sympathy when Choolah’s half-suppressed voice greeted the scout, creeping into the grotto once more, with the wistful inquiry, “Onna He-tak?” (Is it day?)
But the news that theEtissubrought was not indeed concerned with the hour. In his opinion, they would all soon have little enough to do with time. His intelligence was in truth alarming. While the Cherokees patrolling the river had gradually withdrawn to the interior of the forest and disappeared, those at the ford above were suspiciously astir. They had received evidently some intimation of the presence here of the lurking Chickasaws, and were on the watch. To seek to flee would precipitate an instant attack; to escape hence would be merely to fall into the hands of the marauders inthe forest beyond; to plunge into the Tennessee River would furnish a floating target for the unerring marksmen. Yet the crisis was immediate.
Choolah suddenly raised the hand of authority.
Ronald MacDonnell had seen much service, and had traveled far out of the beaten paths of life. He was born a gentleman of good means and of long descent—for if the MacDonnells were to be believed, Adam was hardly a patch upon the antiquity of the great Clan-Colla. He had already made an excellent record in his profession. It seemed to him the veriest reversal of all the probabilities that he should now be called upon to take his orders from Choolah the Fox, the savage Chickasaw. Yet he felt no immediate vocation for the command, had it been within his reach. With all his military talent and training he coulddevise no other resource than to withstand the attack of the larger party with half their number; to swim the river, and drown there with a musket-ball in his brain; to flee into the woods to certain capture. He watched, therefore, with intensest curiosity the movements of the men under Choolah’s direction. The moon was now very low, the light golden, dully burnished, far-striking, with a long shadow. First one, then another of the Chickasaws showed themselves openly upon the bank of the river in a clear space high above the current of the water. Choolah beckoned to the Scotchman, and MacDonnell alertly sprang to his feet and joined the wily tactician without a question, aware that he was assisting to baffle the terrible enemy. His bonnet, his fluttering plaid, his swinging claymore, his great muscular height and long stride, all definedin the moonlight against the soft sky and the mountains beyond, were enough to acquaint the watching Cherokees with the welcome fact that here was not only an enemy but a white man of the Highland battalion, the friends of the Chickasaw. The artful Chickasaws swiftly and confusedly came and went from the densities of the laurel. Impossible it would have been for the Cherokees to judge definitely of their numbers, so quickly did they appear and disappear and succeed one another. Thus cleverly the attack was postponed.
Ronald MacDonnell gave full credit to the strategy of Choolah. For it would now seem—it needs must—that their little party no longer feared the enemies in the quiet woods! They must have presumed the Cherokees all gone! The Chickasaws were building a fire since the moon was sinking.Probably they felt they could not lie down to sleep without its protection and wolves very near in the woods. Listen to that shrill, blood-curdling cry! They were surely disposing themselves to rest! Already as the blaze began to leap up and show in the water of the river below like a great red jewel, with the deep crystalline lusters of a many-faceted ruby, figures might be seen by the flare of the mounting flames, recumbent on the ground, wrapped in blankets; here and there was tartan, an end of the plaid thrown over the face as the Highlanders always slept; here and there a hunting-shirt and leggings were plainly visible—all lying like the spokes of a wheel around the central point of the fire.
“It is only the Muscogees who sleep in line,” Choolah explained to MacDonnell, who had criticised the disposition.