XI
POOR Callum Bane! Sober in good truth and sad as well! As soon as his guard had quitted his side, he flung himself down on the earth floor of the Indian winter-house, to which he had been conducted, with his cheek pressed to the clay. He wished that the day had come when it might cover him. Then he recoiled with the thought that this might not be far distant. Striking an officer was a most serious military offense. Even apart from its military aspect it was an insult for which only blood could atone. He knew that Lieutenant Everard could never face his world, the officers of his regiment, his mess, if they were aware that as man to man he had tamely submitted to receive a blow in the face. And since he could not challenge one of so low a station as a common soldier, he had let the matter revert to its normal aspect of insubordination, and the military law would take its course.
Yet Callum could have shed the tears that stood hot and smarting in his eyes for this sad finale to their gay young friendship. He had felt that it augured a certain magnanimity in Everard to ignore what he was in station in the knowledge of what he was by descent. Callum would never have admitted, not even in his most secret thoughts, that he found aught lacking in Jock Lesly, whose instincts rendered him a man of intrinsic worth; but this association on equal terms with Everard, a man of refined manners and gentlemanly phrasings and careful nurture, was to Callum like a return to the companionship of his earlier life, and a relief after the ruder comradeship of the boisterous common soldier and the dull routine of mechanical duty. He had taken a certain pleasure, too, in the realization that his society was the young officer’s only solace in the long and dreary march with its peculiar personal isolation. But it was a pleasure fraught with much pain,—the contemplation of this man in a position which but for an untoward fling of fate might have been his own also. The thought often lent a sharp edge to the close and intimate observation of Everard’s opportunities and their development, but Callum was not of a jealous temperament, and did not visit upon the individual, even in secret meditation, the disasters which national circumstances and conditions had wrought. Despite the difference in station and habits, wealth and education, the two had grown fraternally fond of each other, and now there was that between them which could be washed out only with blood, and the officer in the direct discharge of his duty had chosen that it should be with the blood of the soldier.
The sentinel still stood at the doorway, for there was no door, but gradually his glances within, prompted by curiosity, had grown infrequent. There was no guard tent. The men were of the best class, picked for the expedition, and so far not even a trifling misdemeanor had sullied the record of their good conduct. Punctual, alert, efficient, cheerful, invaluable each had seemed in every emergency, and thus the only unoccupied shelter that might conveniently hold a culprit was the clay-constructed winter-house, which stood aloof and vacant on the edge of Ioco Town. The preparations which Everard had ordered, with the intention of occupying it himself, had gone no farther than the kindling of a fire on the clay hearth in the centre of the floor, before it was diverted to the uses of a prison. The smoke, in thin, shifting, scroll-like forms, circled gray and blue about the red clay walls without an exit save such crevices as the wind and rain and neglect had wrought. As Callum had dropped down on the inner side, the vapors served to screen him somewhat from the observation of the sentinel, who, he now began to notice, had become absolutely oblivious of him. This matter riveted his attention presently. There was evidently some strange stir in the encampment, an odd circumstance, and Callum reflected in sudden affright that he had been bound, needlessly and cruelly he considered. The handcuffs, always carried pro forma, were among the baggage, and, it being deemed unmeet to rouse its custodians to overhaul it at that hour, a stout rope had been substituted. A vague clamor of voices came to his ears. He observed that the sentinel at the doorway had become rigid with suppressed excitement. Could it be that an attack by the Indians was threatened? Remembering his bonds, Callum’s blood ran cold. The force, while strong enough for protection against unauthorized vagabonds or possible bands of robbers, could not resist successfully an organized assault by the braves of this great tribe. He might well be forgotten in such a crisis—left here bound and helpless, to be captured and tortured and burned. The next moment, listening with every pulse tense, he realized that the voices were those of the soldiers in altercation or extenuation. One shrilly clamoring in Gaelic, as if the strength of his lungs and the pitch of the tone could render his gibberish intelligible to Lieutenant Everard, revealed to Callum’s practised ear the cause of the disturbance.
An Indian horse-race had been held in a neighboring town, and albeit this amusement was one which appealed especially to the tastes of the pleasure-loving lieutenant, so grievously debarred and deplorably dull on this uncongenial expedition, he would not attend it himself and issued positive orders that no man of the force should be present. Nay, he went so far as to see to it that none had leave of absence from the camp on any pretext on the day when this diversion took place. He very definitely appreciated the perils which menaced his little command in case of any antagonism or open quarrel with the tribesmen of the towns. Had his mission been strictly military, to make a stanch defense or a brisk onslaught, it would have been far simpler, in his estimation, whatever dangers or disasters hostility might involve. But the success of his mission depended upon the preservation of a strict peace. Apart from the safe-conduct and guardianship of the commissioners and their attendants, fully one third of the party being non-combatants,—and no man believes so implicitly as does the British regular in the absolute incapacity of the non-professional to do battle in any behalf, or to be of any belligerent value even in his own defense,—the interests of the government were at stake. Nothing could so quickly sow the seeds of dissension, the acute officer argued within himself, as the winning of the Indians’ money and valuable furs and other choice gear at the projected horse-race. He did not doubt that charges of fraud would arise, a fracas ensue, the security of the commissioners’ camp be placed in jeopardy, and the cession itself imperiled. Hence his self-denial, for he was a good judge of horseflesh himself, and dearly loved a show of speed, and the Cherokees of that day owned some extraordinary animals.
Everard had felt himself extremely ill used by fate, as he was turning away from the camp-fire, after his dismissal of the astonished corporal with the prisoner, and his low bow to salute the disappearance of Mr. Herbert Taviston. His face was smarting with pain from the blow, his heart burned hot within him, his pride upbraided his condescension to this man of low estate, who had so ungratefully requited recognition of his real quality as a born gentleman. While Everard was beginning to revolve troublous doubts as to how the course of action upon which he had resolved in these unprecedented circumstances would be regarded by his mess and superior officers, a new and unprovoked disaster was presented. One of the corporals in the functions of officer of the day appeared, and with a mechanical salute and a look of abject despair reported that several of the men, three English soldiers and one Highlander, had run the guard that afternoon and had attended the horse-race, in which they had found their account. They had smuggled into camp after dark a quantity of valuable furs, some strings of the fresh-water pearls of the region, and the Highlander had jingling in his sporran some French money, several louis d’ors. So successfully indeed had they managed their enterprise that its discovery was made only through the anxiety of the Cherokees to repossess themselves of these pieces of French gold. By no means adepts in banking principles, they had, nevertheless, with an unassisted natural intelligence evolved the idea of a premium. As soon as the headmen learned the fact of the loss of this money, they secretly offered to redeem the louis d’ors with English currency and pay a guinea extra for the exchange. The “mad young man,” Wahuhu by name, who had been grievously deprived by fate of his money, browbeaten by his elders upon discovery of the circumstances, and sent upon this secret errand to retrieve the disaster, was greatly perturbed by the unaccustomed restrictions of the camp. He had himself sought to run the sentry, and being taken in charge by the officer of the guard, naïvely demanded to see and confer with a certain Highland soldier. By adroit cross-questioning the facts had been elicited by the corporal—little by little because of the Indian’s reluctance to disclose aught and the linguistic deficiencies of the Highlander.
“Lord, sir, he is a poor creature!” said the corporal, laying the matter before his superior officer. “He cannot talk at all.”
“An enlisted man cannot be dumb,” said the officer with asperity.
“No, sir, but he can’t be understood, sir. He can talk no English, nor even the gibberish they call ‘braid Scotch,’ nor yet Cherokee. He has nothin’ but the Gaelic, sir.”
“And yet he can run the guard and bet at a horse-race?”
“Yes, sir; an’ win his sporran full o’ louis d’ors!”
And with true Scotch thrift the accomplished personage in question would not be parted from them. Thus it was that his voice was presently lifted in the midnight. He spoke on his own behalf. He mistrusted the interpretation of his Scotch comrades, for his ear discerned the difference in their accent from the speech of the English soldiers and the lieutenant, and he cherished the conviction that were the Gaelic but addressed directly and distinctly to the commanding officer, he being a sensible man could not steel his comprehension against it. Wherefore the Highlander yelped and shrilly piped into the night air until the very hem of his kilt quivered with his vocalizations, and the lieutenant stood as if bewitched before him, gazing at the spectacle he presented.
The whole camp was astir. Lights gleamed in sundry tents, all white and translucent in the darkness. Military figures had ventured out and stood in the shadows, some bearing weapons on the pretext of having fancied the tumult a summons to arms. The officer of the guard had attended with the Indian negotiator, who was instantly set at liberty by the order of the lieutenant, but who still lingered with wild eyes and a constant keen turning of the head to and fro to see and to hear; that he was not altogether unsupported might be inferred from vague vistas that the camp lights flung down the aisles of the forest, where shadowy faces and feathered crests showed, flitting like a fancy. And of all, the central figure was Eachin MacEachin, his red hair rough from his pillow and his well-earned dreams of wealth; his dress in disarray, one stocking well-braced and gartered, the other hanging over his shoe and showing his shapely sturdy leg and his great bare rough red knee; his kilt fluttering in the wind; his freckled face eager and distorted with his vociferations to his discerning commander. And in truth, aided by adroit gesticulations, his words were not so far from intelligible. He spurned the proposition of an exchange. As he opened his sporran of badger skin and took therefrom a glittering gold piece and exhibited it to the lieutenant, then with an ecstatic leer put it between his strong white teeth and bit hard on it to prove it genuine, there was no need for a mortified compatriot, who had volunteered to interpret to the officer, to say,—
“She aye threepit she ha’ gotten ta gowd, sir. She mistrust ta English guinea.” Then with a look of blank distress, “She’ll aye mainteen she saw muckle French gowd in ta Forty-foive. She’ll no be so well acquent wi’ ta guinea.”
The object of his aid, desirous of speaking for himself, now and again turned upon his interpreter with a furious Gaelic phrase of repudiation, to which the better soldier, who had run no guard and consequently had won no money, vouchsafed no retort, only commenting indirectly by shaking his head and exclaiming, “Hegh, sir, she’s but a puir creature!”
“I am not so sure of that,” said the lieutenant dryly, “unless I can count what he has got in that sporran!”
Suddenly something in the aspect of the glittering coin which the Highlander still held in his fingers struck Lieutenant Everard’s attention. His face changed sharply. He asked for the coin, and calling for a candle keenly scrutinized the piece by the flickering taper, as the corporal held it, screening with his hand the feeble flame from the wind. In another moment the lieutenant demanded the transference of the remaining five louis d’ors to his custody, sternly insisting, despite the wild plaintive protests of Eachin MacEachin.
All this, the Gaelic being as intelligible to Callum as the English, came to him on the chill night air, and he marveled at Everard’s persistence in taking custody of the coins, for although it was the habit of the Highland soldiery to make their officers their bankers, this trust was altogether voluntary, and not by duress, as in the case of poor Eachin MacEachin and his ill-gotten “gowd.” As it was the favor of chance, like fairy gold, its possession may have seemed equally precarious; or as it was won in direct disobedience of orders, he may have even entertained doubts of the lieutenant’s intentions in the matter of its ultimate return to him, for the Highlanders were as a rule peculiarly averse to the control of any officers save those of their own regiments and more than once mutinied rather than serve under strangers. For whatever reason, so valiantly indeed did Eachin MacEachin resist Lieutenant Everard’s orders that force at last became necessary, and his voluble insubordination in the pain of parting with his gold made Callum acquainted with the fact that he might presently expect company in his imprisonment. This recalled his mind summarily to his own plight. He realized the importance of the officer’s efforts to avoid a clash with the Indians, and wondered what effect this circumstance would have in the discipline of the military offenders. Suddenly he turned sick and his blood ran cold. The corporal punishment, then in vogue in the British army, was regarded by the better class of soldiers as so great a degradation that a man once brought to the lash was practically ruined, socially and morally. The indignity came all at once into Callum’s mind as a possible solution of Everard’s difficulty in his case. He knew that he could not be shot without a regularly organized court-martial, which, necessarily delayed, in view of the personnel and conditions of the force, until their return to Charlestown, would also publish far and wide the officer’s derogation of his dignity in associating on equal terms with a private, who had struck him over their drink as an equal might have done. Everard would flinch from this disclosure, for it would impugn his fitness for his position. And yet he could not challenge a private nor submit as man to man to the ignominy of a blow in the face. The summary punishment of a flogging at the head of the line would dispose of the matter with the utmost contempt and amply avenge the indignity. Callum was terrified lest Everard’s authority in this independent command of a detachment, so remote from superior military jurisdiction, gave him such latitude, or could be so stretched in view of his dilemma. With the mere thought Callum sprang from the floor with a suddenness that loosened every taut strand of the ropes that bound him. His breath was short; he gasped; the blood almost burst from his veins as his heart plunged and the arteries throbbed. He must be quick; the little makeshift prison would soon be recruited; and of captives, one was a spy on another. He could scarcely see, through the blue swirls of smoke, the sentry at the door, whose attention was still riveted on the excited scene without. Callum had caught at the first wild scheme of release, hardly canvassing its practicability. He did not reckon with the pain or the danger when he thrust his bound hands into the flames to burn off the cords. The thought in his brain, the ignominy that threatened him, seared far tenderer perceptions than appertain to the flesh. The fire caught at the hemp, and he set his teeth hard. The ligaments had at last fallen away when discovery suddenly menaced him.
“Look out for your plaid in there, Callum,” said the sentry abruptly. “I smell something burning.”
“’T isna wool,” rejoined Callum promptly. “My plaid isna even scorching.”
And the sentinel, thus satisfied, once more turned his attention without.
Callum looked about him wildly. His first impulse was to throw himself upon the sentinel’s back, overturn him, and fly down the dark aisles of the woods—to what? Certain recapture, and an ignominy that overawed his proud spirit more than death.
“Gae cannily—gae cannily,” he said to himself, as he crouched uncertainly behind the flare of the fire and the veiling tissues of the smoke.
The house, like all of its kind, had neither window nor chimney. It seemed to him of far ampler proportions than such as were used for a single family, and yet it did not approach in dimensions the great assembly rotunda, which could contain an audience of several hundred persons. It occurred to him that it might have been used as a fort at some date long previous, when perhaps Ioco had served as a barrier town, and this was its outlying defense. He remembered having noted the vestiges of an ancient stockade outside, and with the idea that it might have once held an Indian garrison, his keen eyes searched the interior. The old cane-wrought divan, that once perchance encircled the clay-plastered walls, had long ago vanished, leaving only a mark to suggest it. But above this, on a level with the ground outside, for the floor was fully two feet lower than the surface of the earth, he detected a series of vague circles of white chalk. These white circles indicated where loopholes were concealed beneath the clay of the wall, to be utilized by the forted party in firing on an approaching enemy. He rushed to the nearest in a sudden frenzy. The clay gave way in his blistered baked hands; and suddenly, with an inrush of the sweet woodland air without and a glimpse of the black night beyond, was revealed the loophole, adroitly fashioned by savage skill how many years agone! A limited opening it proved, however, barely sufficient to admit of the flight of an arrow thence, and just above the surface of the ground, but it gave a purchase to the frantic clutching of his strong hands and for the use of a clasp knife of an ordinary sort that had been stowed in his sporran; for although he had been searched for concealed weapons, it had been but a cursory investigation, as his wrists were bound. The blade broke when the work was nearly completed, but his fingers, although almost nailless and lacerated to bleeding, finished the enlargement of the aperture, and he dragged himself through the narrow horizontal space and stood, breathless, exhausted, in the dark woods without.
Only for one moment did he pause. The clamors at the scene of action warned him that a crisis had supervened. Wild cries of “Ohon! Ohon!” betokened the despair of the erstwhile lucky gambler, the fact that the five louis d’ors were temporarily transferred to the custody of the officer, and that the Highlander and his fellow culprits who had so gallantly run the guard and played the races were being hustled along to the half demolished prison, which they would find empty. The thought lent wings to Callum’s feet, for in another moment discovery would ensue and the pursuit come hot upon his track.
Yet his spirits revived as he felt the fresh wind, cool and pure upon his face; his muscles, supple and strong, responded to the demand upon their activities. Like a deer he sped straight through the town and along the sloping bank of the watercourse. At that hour he encountered not a living creature. Only the currents of the Tennessee came to meet him. All was silent save the flow of the water and the flutter of the wind. So definite were these sounds in the night as he went that he began to take heart of grace and hope rebounded anew. The pursuit, he reflected, had probably gone in the opposite direction, since the camp lay on the edge of the town. This gave him time to scheme, to secure some place of concealment, for horsemen, once on his heels, would soon run him down. For this reason he left the river bank and took his way among the fields. His pace grew slower, for the rugged cultivated ground and now and then great masses of weeds in ill-tended and neglected spaces made the going difficult. Twice he caught his foot in the vines of pompions and came heavily to the earth, where he lay for a time stealthily listening before he dared to rise again. He had great fear of the Indians—the fear of the straggler. They hated the soldiers now more than ever heretofore, and above all the Highlanders, so conspicuous in the recent Cherokee War. A wreaking of many grudges they would find should he fall into their hands while fleeing from the wrath of his officer. A terrible fate this! a sly, treacherous capture, torture, the stake, a mysterious and unavenged disappearance from the knowledge of all the world! Military discipline could threaten no such horrors save to a man of his proud temperament. Once or twice he slackened his speed to a walk, swinging onward with a good long stride, but he could not now continuously run; his strength was spent. Suddenly he came to a full pause, with the weight of doom on his heart. There in the space between two rows of corn the figure of a man stood not three paces distant! Callum in a panic marveled how he had not noticed this approach. Above, the night was silent, and high over these alien mountains glittered stars that he had known of yore, that still shone over the mountains in far, far Scotland as placidly as before ever Woe came in to sit by her hearth and her sons went forth to exile forever. Nothing stirred save their palpitant scintillations. He could hear naught except the pulsations of his own heart beating like a drum. The figure of the man stood motionless and gazed at him, as motionless, fascinated, helpless, he stood and stared.
“Canawlla!” (Friendship) Callum at last said softly, although in the dense darkness he could not have stated why he thought it was an Indian.
A moment of suspense passed leaden-weighted.
There was no response. The world was so silent that he heard the almost soundless flight of a bat winging past.
The next instant a strange doubt entered his mind. He put forth his hand gingerly, and laid it on the figure’s arm. There was no quick stroke of a tomahawk, as he had half feared. The man’s arm, as he stood so stiff and silent, was all unresponsive. In fact, it was but a couple of fagots, and Callum realized that he was in Chilhowee, Old Town, and that this was the image of the Ancient Warrior he had noted in the fields.
“Take that for the leein’, fause face o’ ye!” he said, striking the gourd in sudden wrath, his cold fear growing hot anger, as he thought of the waste of time that the fright had cost him, and the imminence of the danger in which he stood.
The gourd wavered and dropped suddenly to the earth, and as he mechanically stooped and picked it up, a strange idea struck him. It was a great gourd; he lifted it with its bedraggled war-bonnet to his head, and it slipped easily over and down to his neck. He began in a fever of haste to disrobe the effigy. It had been of gigantic stature, and the hunting-shirt even concealed the kilt of the big Highlander; the leggings went on over his stockings and hid his bare knees; the sleeves came down over his hands. Half supported by the stake which had upheld the scarecrow, he took the stiff pose that he remembered. And why, he asked himself, should he not stand here as safely, thus masked, as lie all day in some Indian hut, if he could gain admission? Doubtless every house on the river bank would be searched by Everard’s orders, and most probably he would be delivered up by treachery to this demand, if not murdered to settle old scores. At nightfall he would array the figure anew and slip off, traveling by dark and hiding by day, and returning thus to Charlestown, surrender to his own captain. He fancied the officers of the Highland regiment could understand the situation, and would relish the allusion to scaffolds and grinning skulls scarcely more than he. If he had been left in his station as a private soldier, he argued, all would have been well. But he had been admitted to familiarity and friendship with the officer as a gentleman, and when over their liquor he had repelled an insult with a blow, as an equal might, he was suddenly relegated to the status and penalties of a private soldier. If the members of the court-martial were minded to account his escape under these circumstances desertion, they could make the most of it: he would rather choose to be shot on this charge than flogged for the blow.
Punctures in the egregious painted physiognomy of the gourd served for sight and breath. The nostrils, the eyes, the mouth, the ears, had all been curiously and faithfully delineated by the Indian artist, according to his lights. Callum tasted the dawn even before he saw that the night was turning vaguely blue. When in this dim medium figures of Indians began to appear, he experienced a sudden elation to perceive that none cast a second glance at the effigy of the Ancient Warrior in the cornfield.