XIII
AT camp an unusual activity had characterized the closing hours of the afternoon. It was the eve of the day fixed for the departure of the commissioners and their escort. The official business had been concluded. The survey of the land to be ceded was completed. The last feigning objections on the part of the Cherokee headmen and the final devious doubtings of the commissioners had been merged in mutual concession and compliant acquiescence. The gifts brought to propitiate the Indians had been presented and graciously accepted, and the official farewell taken with much smoking of the friend-pipe and saltatory agilities of the eagle-tail dance.
That no unforeseen mischance might hamper the early start, Everard, with military prevision, had caused every preparation to be so completed as to leave as little as possible to be done on the morrow. The pack-horses had been ranged in due order and tethered, and had but to be loaded, the fardels of the pack saddles being already made up and strapped on; the travel rations for several days had been issued to the men; the personal luggage of the commissioners was also ready, owing to the repeated insistence of Everard; the final orders had been given the first sergeant, left in command in his stead till he should join the line of march at Talassee. He himself in his tent, with hardly a hand’s turn left to be done, was on the point of setting out to ride to Talassee Town with his Cherokee guide to capture Callum MacIlvesty.
The Indians had made a mystery of their information. They had first sworn Everard to secrecy and then held back as if to disappoint him finally. They affected fear of the Highland contingent. Oh, the plaid-men were very terrible warriors! Were the horrors of Montgomerie’s campaign and the slaughter and the fire-raising of Grant ever to be forgotten? And since the Cherokees did all in love for the great red Capteny, it would not be wise or kind of him to allow the wrath of the plaid-men, for the surrender of their brother, to fall on Talassee Town, which the Highlanders might sack or burn—well remembered were their sackings and burnings!—as they marched through on the morrow upon the peaceful trading-path, which was now so white and bright from end to end. If the great red Capteny did not wish this path to be stained with the blood of the Indians, and perhaps of the plaid-men also, it would be well if he came to Talassee Town himself. There he might meet his tartan renegade as if by chance, and take him with his own hand.
Everard was troubled beyond expression by MacIlvesty’s continued absence; first, because of a genuine and humane fear that he would suffer a horrible death at the hands of the treacherous Indians, especially as the imminent departure of the troops could not be postponed on the desperate hope of a still further search for the willful runagate, and Callum would necessarily be left alone and at their mercy in the savage wilds. Nevertheless, the anger of the officer burned with great rancor. He believed that he would not have suffered the least pity had a court-martial gone the extreme length of sentencing MacIlvesty to be shot. That he should be brought to the degradation of the lash seemed to the lieutenant most meet and fitting whenever he felt the smart of that scarlet diagonal line, beginning to turn slightly blue, across his cheek. Punishment MacIlvesty had richly deserved, but the accident of torture by savages could not be accounted retribution for the crime of striking his officer. Nor could Everard, as his officer, feel justified in abandoning the Highlander to such a fate except at the last extremity, although he would not have regretted the righteous exaction of every pang of the penalty to which a court-martial might sentence the culprit. Therefore, impatient of the mysterious locutions and doubts, and alternate promises and withdrawals, by which the Cherokees sought to magnify the importance of their disclosure, Everard took no heed of personal prudence and was ready to put foot in the stirrup when suddenly there appeared at the flap of his tent one of the commissioners, fresh from an outing, clad in a long and dapper riding “Joseph,” his head cowled with a comfortable “trot cosy,” a suave smile upon his lips, and a bland “May I?” upon his tongue.
Everard in another moment had cause to curse his folly that he did not refuse the commissioner entrance; but he imputed much importance to a request which he anticipated, and therefore seated himself upon a stump of a tree, which had been sawed off smoothly to serve as a table, and resigned the single camp stool to the guest.
“The Magnolia auriculata,” Mr. Taviston said with a sigh of pleasure, “the most pompous beauty of the forest.”
He held forth a leaf of a tree, which a greater botanist has since rapturously described as “superbly crowned or crested with the fragrant flower representing a white plume, succeeded by a very large crimson cone or strobile.”
The officer gazed at it with uninterested and unrecognizing eyes. The only magnolia which he could identify was the growth which we call grandiflora, and which he had seen farther south.
“I have spent the day among the magnolias,” said the botanist, smiling consciously and with a sort of gloating reminiscence, as if Daphne herself had entertained him in the boskiest bowers. “And here,” presenting a gigantic leaf, “is the Magnolia tripetala—and this, the Magnolia pyramidata—foliis ovatis, oblongis, acuminatis, basi auriculatis, strobilo oblongo ovato.”
“Good God, sir!” the petulant officer interposed, hastily rising in desperation. “I cry you mercy! My duties”—he hesitated, then stopped short.
For the trip must needs seem of his own choosing,—to attend a feast made in his honor by the Cherokees because of his seeming interest in Indian life and ceremonial. The thought of the postponement of his ride and its important object greatly perturbed him. He had hoped to avoid delay by admitting his tormentor. Twice, nay thrice, after the botanist’s baggage had been consigned to the locality where the pack-train was to be loaded had the quartermaster sergeant, who officiated as chief of transportation, reported to the commanding officer various vexatious requests of the worshipful Herbert Taviston to be allowed another deposit therein of trophies of bark and leaves, and, for aught I know, caterpillars and beetles,—natural specimens, which he did not hesitate in the interests of science to insert amongst his immaculate and high-minded toggery. The lieutenant, anticipating the renewal of such requests, had intended to peremptorily refuse another overhauling of the baggage, because of the confusion entailed upon the somnolent and orderly camp, and possible delay on the morrow. Hence he was thrown out of his calculations, and flushed and bit his lip with vexation. Nevertheless he could not rid himself perfunctorily of the presence of his unwelcome visitor by the plea of the pressure of official duties. The preparations for the morrow’s march were obviously complete, the camp asleep; moreover, his spurs jingled at his heels and his horse pawed at the door of the tent. The pretext of his own diversion was necessary to protect or satisfy his Cherokee informants and to furnish a reason for his quitting the camp. He looked with sudden hopefulness at Mr. Taviston, who also rose, but the motion was merely mechanical, without a parting instinct. The smile yet resting upon the botanist’s face was inattentive, undiscerning. The officer was a natural specimen the study of which did not allure him in the least. He scarcely listened to the lieutenant’s words, so absorbed was he in the subject.
“The soil of this region is rich, sir, incredibly rich for mountain slopes. This redundant example of the Magnolia acuminata, sir, hangs positively over a precipice, craggy steeps, imposing and horrid. If you would but give yourself the trouble to step with me to the door, I could point out to you, even in the darkness, the height of the location where I found it,—an altitude of fully two thousand feet. The precipice is distinctly imposed upon the sky against the constellation Perseus, which must be well risen now if the clouds—ah—ah—ah!”
The officer, moving alertly toward the door, following his guest in the hope of ultimate release outside, had held up the flap that the botanist might emerge, and frowned heavily as he heard Mr. Taviston’s voice rising into a quavering exclamation of surprise.
“What cracker next!” Everard cried impatiently.
In a moment the words died upon his lips, and he stood staring out into the night, half dazed with his sudden revulsion of feeling and the extraordinary sight that met his eyes.
For the woods of Chilhowee Mountain were not invisible in the purple night and under the black cloud, but splendidly agleam in the shadows. All red and gold they showed, and wreathed about with scroll-like involutions of blue smoke. Volleying here and there at wide intervals were jets of flame, vivid white, tinged with red at the verges. Now and then strange meteors flew through the dense forests in airy arabesques, lace-like in their tenuity, where the blazes caught at sparse series of dead leaves still hanging sere and dry in wind-denuded areas. The ranges in the distance were suddenly evoked from the darkness and stood as in a trance, motionless. Further still, in the ultimate scope of vision, vague, illusory suggestions of mountain forms continually trembled and flickered as the flames rose and fell. The fire was fierce and furious along the lower reaches of Chilhowee where the trading-path crossed, for much light wood of undergrowth was among the great trees, and the elastic blazes that could only leap hound-like about the huge boles, as if seeking to seize their prey in the branches, easily enveloped the slender saplings, which now and again sent forth cracklings as of a sudden volley of musketry. All the black cloud above looked down in sullen dismay at the aghast earth, thus roused out of the abyss of darkness and night, with a strange, unnatural aspect upon the familiar contours of the landscape.
The Cherokee towns along the river were all astir. Here and there upon the banks flitted scantily clad Indian figures, gazing at the mountain and speculating upon the mystery of the ignition of the woods; for the Chilhowee Mountain is many miles in length, and it would seem that some region nearer to the distant burning forests, unseen and far to the north, must have been first fired. Although because of the recent drought the woods were dry, they would never have burned without extraneous kindling.
Everard had turned instinctively to his horse, with the intention of riding forth to investigate. His Cherokee guide checked him.
“No can ride to Talassee—no can cross mountain fire—fire—all fire!”
The amazement, the dismay, and something more—the deep, cogitating speculation on the man’s face—fixed Everard’s attention. The light of the burning scene was full upon it, glimmering upon the feathers on the top of the Indian’s head as he bent forward to gaze, but the shadow annulled the rest of his body, and his aspect in the weird effects of the flicker was as if he had been decapitated. When Everard next turned to speak to him the man had disappeared. Inquiry revealed the fact that he had quitted the camp. For the first time Everard experienced a sudden doubt of him. What significance did he perceive in the fire? And why should he look so downcast, so defeated, so despairing—as at the end?
The camp had been roused by the crackle and roar of the flames and the wide, blaring illumination, as if the world were afire. The officer doubled the camp guard by way of precaution against any disturbance, lest the kindling of this conflagration be attributed to the agency of the soldiers as a bit of bravado on their part, and rouse the wrath of the Indians to reprisal. Then he went back into his tent and sat down on the camp stool beside the table, rudely fashioned of the stump of a great tree, and tried to think out some new solution of the problem of the capture of MacIlvesty. The candle was still burning with a timid, white, pearly lustre, all pallid and dim against the great yellow flare outside, which showed through the translucent canvas walls. The gigantic leaves of the Magnolia tripetala still lay on the improvised table, and he had his elbows among them and his head in his hands, when suddenly he was aware of the corporal of the guard standing and saluting in the doorway.
“Ready with some new foolery?” Everard demanded tartly.
“Yes, sir,” the corporal replied with anxious deprecation. “Here’s a messenger, sir. I can’t make out who she comes from. But she seemed possessed to get a word with you, sir. She was so excited and hasty that, though I had no orders, I was afraid of letting important news slip if I sent her away.”
“What’s her name?” demanded Everard, in frowning haste. The moments at this crisis were important.
“I don’t know the Injun lingo, sir, but they call her the ‘Cherokee Rose.’”
“Then hale her off!” cried Everard, bringing his hand down on the table with a force that made the candle jump in its socket. “I want no rosaceous specimens here, native or foreign. No—the Cherokee Rose—I have done with botany forever, I swear!” He spoke as if he had given many years of unrequited and fruitless study to that ungrateful science. “Send the baggage about her business! The Cherokee Rose, forsooth!” he repeated fleeringly.
He turned suddenly, hearing a slight scuffle without, and the next moment the flap of his tent was drawn back and the girl stood in the doorway, the flaming night behind her, and all her amber and white attire showing in soft splendor and full detail in the refined, subdued, pearly light of the single candle. The discomfited corporal, who had sought to detain her by as much force as he dared to exert, was vaguely glimpsed in the background, sullenly resigning himself to wait to conduct her out of camp, as he saw that Everard had a mind now to give her an audience. Her first words had arrested the lieutenant’s attention. He could not have constructed the sentences that issued from her trembling scarlet lips, but the sound of the Cherokee language had grown familiar in many weeks’ sojourn here, and he understood its drift and made shift to reply.
“I have found your plaid-man,” she cried. “Oh, the wicked one!” casting up her liquid eyes in aspiration. “Cut off his head! Cut it off clean!”
“But where? when was he found?” Everard exclaimed eagerly.
“Oh, now you have lent your ear to listen!” she cried triumphantly. She glanced warily over her shoulder to make sure that the corporal had not also lent his ear for the same purpose. Then leaning forward, the flap of the tent still in one hand, her finger now and again cautiously laid on her lips, she detailed the strange metamorphosis of the Ancient Warrior into a Highland soldier which she had witnessed, and every word that he had said she repeated in English as she had heard it, with a faithful duplication of accent and gesture.
“You were to come to Talassee, and he would not let you,—you the great red Capteny, and he the dust of the earth!—where a feast was made for you, and the headmen waited, and many young and beautiful were to dance, and I was to dance. See!—was I not to dance?”
Her anklets of white beads jingled in unison as she moved her slender restless feet in their buskins of fine white dressed doeskin.
“And he wept—the plaid-man! and cried for the French gold! and said, ‘He maunna ride at a’ the nicht! He maunna ride—he maunna gang to Talassee wi’ the French gowd o’ saxty-twa! Ohonari! Ohonari! He maunna ride at a’ the nicht.’ And then this plaid-man he sobbed much, and straightway said to himself that the smoke of far-away burning woods hurt his eyes—when it is because he is a squaw-man that he sheds tears, and is no great red Capteny and soldier. And does he not wear a petticoat every day of his life, like the woman that he is? He sheds tears! And then he crept out, saying all the time, ‘Oh, gude God, he maunna ride to Talassee—he maunna ride at a’ the nicht!’ And I, all unseen, followed him like his shadow, like his soul, through the night to the foot of the mountain where the trading-path skirts Chilhowee, and there he struck a flint and set the dry leaves afire, and then with a lighted torch he ran—ran like a deer—firing the woods here, there, everywhere! Two Indians, coming from a hunt, saw him, but he gave them the slip. And the headmen are having the woods scoured for him. And I—I lost him in the night—for he ran very fast!”
As he stood listening Everard more than once changed color, and finally sat down, looking very grave.
The girl with only a momentary pause recommenced: “And then I knew that you could not go to Talassee through the fiery woods, although the feast was made, and the headmen waited, and many were to dance, and I, too, was to dance, because that creature, in his plaid petticoat, said you had his French gold. Was it his, forsooth? I do not understand! And I lost him, but I went back from the mountain to Chilhowee Town, and there—oh, joy!—there he stood once more in the likeness of the Ancient Warrior,—who must be very wroth, if there ever was any Ancient Warrior,—in his hunting-shirt and war-crown. And softly, very softly, like the mist slipping down the mountain-side I crept away here, and left him there, that the great red Capteny may descend upon him, and capture him, and wreak vengeance upon him, and break his great ugly bones, and give his woman’s petticoat to the dogs to tear!”
“And is he there yet?” demanded Everard eagerly. “Is he unaware that he is discovered?”
Her animated diction had left her breathless and speechless. She could only bow her head in assent, her lustrous eyes still fiery, her lips trembling with her panting breath.
Everard sprang up, tense and alert, keen and quick to see his error.
“You shall have the French gold as a reward for your story if I find my tartan man as you say at Chilhowee. Say nothing to any one till I send you the French gold by the hand of Yachtino, the chief of Chilhowee,” he said, hoping that thus the headmen might think that he had failed to notice the significant date of the coinage of the louis d’ors, since he parted so lightly from them. Thus he would avoid further dangerous machinations, for of course the pieces were not themselves essential to the validity of his report.
He was calling out hasty orders to the corporal in the pauses of his sentences to her, and in the next few moments he rode out of the camp at the head of a dozen mounted infantry-men, their red coats and burnished accoutrements showing in the flames still rioting along the mountain-side.
A sense of dawn was presently in the air,—the vague, undiscriminated, indescribable perception of the awakening of nature. It was not night, let the darkness gloom as it might. It was not night, let the light delay as it would. It was a new day, and every nerve acclaimed the fact with a revival of power. Everard met this new day in emerging from the forests near Chilhowee Town. The flames were dying out upon the mountain. A thin rain was falling, and misty moisture enveloped the higher slopes, where nevertheless here and there a pennant of fire waved through dull gray involutions of vapor. The smell of charred timber was rife on the air. The slate-tinted sky, the darkly looming purple mountains of the distance, the black, fire-swept steeps closer at hand, the Indian town as yet silent and still, the long, level stretches of the pallid, sere cornfields dimly striped with fine lines of the misting rain,—all were visible in the dull gray light as the party halted on the verge of the woods. Everard dismounted and went forth alone into the cornfields.
Callum MacIlvesty, facing in the opposite direction, heard naught, and saw naught but the dreary fire-smirched scene before him and the rain slowly descending with a steadiness which promised to make a day of it. He was too exhausted to think, to scheme further. He only knew that his ruse had succeeded; that Everard had not been decoyed to a terrible death; that the commissioners and their military escort would march to-day. But when he sought to forecast how he would fare, left alone and helpless in the country of the savage Cherokees, the puzzling problem so baffled his tired brain—without food, as he was, aching in every muscle, and drenched to the very bones by the persistent rain—that he would fall asleep, still standing half supported by the pole, his war-bonnet and gourd head nodding after a fashion which must have revealed the sham that he was, had any discerning Indian chanced to pass that way. He dreamed strange things in these meagre snatches of sleep,—so strange that he thought he was still dreaming when, recovering his balance with a start and lifting his heavy eyelids, he saw Lieutenant Everard striding across the wet cornfield and heard his friendly voice calling, “Callum Bane! Callum Bane!” as of yore.
Callum’s heart plunged and then stood still, as he perceived the reality of his impressions. Before he could decide upon his course the voice sounded anew, with a queer tremor in it:—
“For God’s sake, Callum Bane, don’t hide from me! I wouldn’t hurt a hair of your head for all the Cherokee country!”
In his rough, young-man fashion Everard had begun to tear off the Ancient Warrior’s war-bonnet and gourd vizard and hunting-shirt that, long subject to the weather’s hard usage, had grown ragged and rent with the climbing in and out of it by the stalwart Highlander, and before the transformation was complete the story of each was elicited. As they faced each other, Callum, conscience-stricken at the enormity of his offense and overwhelmed by the magnanimity of his friend, albeit debtor for his life, in forgiving him, suddenly burst into tears, exclaiming, “Ohon! Ohon! I wish you would kill me!” and cast himself, in all his smoke-grimed, rain-soaked tartans, into the arms of the smart officer.
Everard chose to consider the blow as delivered under the extremity of provocation and in the quality of friend over a convivial bowl, and therefore his own personal affair. He was willing to risk the carping comment of his mess, should it ever come to their knowledge that he had received this insult without requital from a man who had saved his life with so much forethought and ingenuity, and danger to his own,—a man who deemed he would have profited immeasurably by the officer’s destruction, thus escaping the death which menaced him, or an ignominious punishment more terrible to him than death itself.
Everard, however, with his larger experience of life and wider outlook, saw the plot differently, perfectly rounded and in its entirety. He knew that the Cherokees would not dare to lure him to Talassee had they not some innocuous device by which to account for his disappearance thence. Their subtle intelligence had doubtless seized upon the fortuitous escape of the Highlander from custody as a thread to work into their web. For it was most natural that to this man, who had offended the officer and had cause to fear him, should be attributed his murder and consequent disappearance. The Highlander himself, easily found, seized, and destroyed after the departure of the troops from the country, could gainsay naught.
The lieutenant’s military conscience, however, would not permit him to forgive so easily the escape from the guard-house and the lurking in hiding, these being notorious offenses of evil example and to the prejudice of good order and discipline. For not even the corporal who had had the custody of the prisoner knew that Callum had struck the officer, and the only witness, Mr. Taviston, had utterly forgotten the blow as a matter of no consequence,—being frantic with excitement concerning a new species of Stuartia, here found and at that time unknown to any catalogue, but since called Stuartia montana. The corporal and the other soldiers supposed only that Callum had become intoxicated in the society of his superiors and had drunkenly and foolishly contrived a troublesome escape from custody. For this breach of discipline, Callum was destined to undergo in due time extra guard duty.
Everard was explaining this to him as being a part of his military obligations and not to gratify a personal grudge. “You are still under arrest, you know, Callum Bane!” Everard reminded him.
“I care na, I care na—onything ye will! Only I maun hae a word wi’ ye the noo, lad.”
This word, albeit he was faint from fatigue, both ahungered and athirst, cold and shivering, having been drenched for hours with the keen chill rain, Callum so clamored to be allowed to speak that Everard could not constrain him to wait till after he should have been fed and warmed and clad anew.
“Na, na!” Callum persisted, waving away the flask which the officer pressed upon him, but still clutching his friendly hand, “if I tak but ae sup ye wad say I am drunk when ye hear what I hae to tell ye!” He paused for a moment to add weight to his words. “I hae seen that Frenchman wha hae made sic clavers an’ turmoil amang the Cherokees.”
“Where? when?” Everard asked breathlessly, his face suddenly grave.
Callum pointed down at the Ancient Warrior lying at his feet in all the dreary dislocations of disillusionment,—the tattered, befringed garments, the quaintly painted gourd head, with its ghastly effect of decapitation, its glorious war-bonnet bedraggled and forlorn. “When I was that daft gomeril,—that big Injun,” he replied.
“A white man?”
Callum nodded and leaned against the officer. He could hardly stand. He felt too weak almost to speak, unless indeed he must.
“A Frenchman, Callum Bane?” Everard asked again, vaguely incredulous. “How did you know he was French?”
“By the lingo, man!” said Callum impatiently.
“Did he speak to you?” demanded Everard, looking keenly into the Highlander’s pale face, all wet and shining with the rain.
In the mists on one side were vaguely glimpsed the tall cornstalks of the far-stretching fields, all writhen and bent by the wind, and with the gleams of sleet on their sere, pallid blades, but despite their motion he was aware that among them there were other tall, befringed, betasseled figures not dissimilar, something too distant for recognition, where doubtless the ever wily Indians were watching the conference. At the edge of the woods on the other side of the clearing stood the mounted detail of English soldiers, the glimmer of the sad gray day flashing back with a live, alert glitter from the burnished steel of their arms and their scarlet coats, all quick to note the fraternal, familiar attitude of the officer and soldier, and internally to comment on this condescension, which had already resulted in a breach of discipline and threatened continued insubordination.
“Did the Frenchy speak to me? Na! I was that big Injun, I tell ye!” pointing at the prideful gourd face now staring up at them from among the straw. “Na! nane minted a word at me, except yon ageya,—the Injun lass ye know,—an’ she ca’ me ‘Gude-sire!’ Gude-sire!” Callum laughed dreamily, then suddenly put his hand up to his head, in the effort to recall the importance of the disclosure.
“A nip of brandy now, Callum,”—the officer pressed the flask, eager for the detail,—“and then you’ll remember.”
“I winna taste it,” Callum rejoined sternly, “for then ye’ll say I was drunk an’ telled ye but idle clavers. What’s your wull?” he added, as if bewildered.
“How do you know the man is French?” demanded Everard.
“He spoke in French,” replied Callum.
“To the Indians?”
“He spoke in Cherokee to the Injuns, and then to himsel’ in French,” responded Callum definitely.
Everard was silent for a moment. Important interests of the government, the peace of the colonies, the policy of the cession of land, the possible permanent repulse of the French, and on the other hand the triumphant enormous extension of the French empire in America hung upon this slight incident. Therefore to make sure, to prevent the possibility of deception or mistake, he asked, thinking the words that Callum had heard might have other signification, “What did he say, Callum? What did he say to himself?”
“Tong pee per lee. A bong char bong rar,” Callum solemnly repeated.
Everard burst out laughing hysterically. He was convinced. He was all tremulous at the momentous discovery that it had chanced to one of his command to make, eager, nay frenzied, to take instant advantage of it; yet the accent of the solemn Highlander, to which the French of the Stratford-atte-Bowe variety would have had an eminently Gallic tang, outmastered his risibles, and he laughed with that curious duality of entity when he was never so serious before in his life.
The first duty, however, in putting into execution the plan which had instantly shaped itself in his mind, with a dozen variant details, was to take such order with the Highland soldier as should restore him to his normal mental and physical fitness. He shouted for aid to the soldiers, and presently Callum, mounted on a horse behind one of them,—for he was in no condition to guide the animal or even to retain his posture, save for a horse girth passed around his waist and the body of the man in the saddle,—was escorted back to camp, and still under arrest, bestowed in the snug winter-house devoted to the uses of a military prison. There was no lack of hot lotions applied externally and internally, and good food and warm clothing; but the surgeon in attendance upon the party reported a fever, with a touch of delirium and a “sair hoast,” as the patient himself described the measure of cold that he had caught.
To the surprise of all the force and the suspicious dismay of the Indians, the return to Charlestown was unaccountably delayed. The soldiers, wearying of their long inaction, the monotony of life in the Indian country, hampered as they were by the many unusual restrictions imposed upon conduct and camp to avoid all possible cause for clashes with the young Indian braves, had been in high spirits at the prospect of a speedy change, and their hopes were suddenly dashed by the countermanding of the orders to march. The commissariat fell into gloom, and as far as they dared remonstrated with the commander, predicting a famine ere Charlestown could be reached; and the quartermaster sergeant and his subordinates of the baggage contingent, foreseeing all the undoing of the more permanent arrangements of the baggage train, felt that never again could such triumphs of transportation be achieved—the stowage of large and unwieldy commodities in small compass, multum in parvo—as a lucky inspiration in packing had permitted in this instance.
Moreover, the fine days seemed gone. The weather offered an incalculable menace. Already the air was full of the misting autumnal rains, and the many turbulent rivers of the country would soon be out of their channels beyond even the deep crag-girt banks, rendering fording impossible and ferriage dangerous. Even snows might fall, early though it was in the season. In fact, one or two domes of the Great Smoky Range already showed glittering white against an ominous slate-tinted sky, as the soft, gauzy tissues of the mists parted before them, and again impenetrably veiled those frigid altitudes.
The commissioners themselves had grown obviously disaffected and doubtful; they were disposed to remonstrate, and one of them reproachfully coughed from time to time, occasionally from genuine affection and again from patent affectation. Only the meteorologic and botanic Mr. Taviston welcomed the lengthened opportunity, and since the flowers had all fallen under the repeated frosts and an unseasonable nipping freeze, he found a solace in investigating the climate itself, going about, a comfort to himself, and eke to say a wellspring of joy to others, with an umbrella above his head, to the ribs of which was suspended a thermometer at the height of his nose, taking acute scientific notes of the extraordinary variability of the temperature and the swift fickleness of the atmospheric changes. He was even disposed to climb the mountains to the snow line, to press his inquiries among the white domes of the great range, accompanied only by an Indian guide; but the stern interdiction of this enterprise by the commander precluded his wandering so far afield, and he was compelled to content himself with such specimens of weather as he could collate nearer at hand.
To the prevalent dissatisfaction Lieutenant Everard accorded only the most casual attention, obviously preoccupied, intent on his own thoughts, sternly determined, but sharing his conclusions with no adviser.
The civilians of the party naturally distrusted these indicia of changes of moment evidently impending, and felt some qualms as to his comparative youth and heady traits, some curiosity as to possible details of his instructions to which it might be they were not privy, some helpless anxiety lest for reasons satisfactory to himself, which they could not divine, he should venture to deviate from his orders. The commissioners were in the nature of things more or less men of consequence, accustomed to command, and to the habit of determining and shaping their own course in life as the eventuation of circumstance should seem to require. They had not had the military training to an unquestioning obedience, the suppression of natural curiosity, the relinquishment of all responsibility and individual identity, in the existence of a corporate body, subject to the volition of a superior. They chafed in the sense of helplessness, and from time to time eyed him greedily in hopes of catching from his manner some intimation as to his ultimate plans. In response to more open expressions of curiosity, he had flatly refused to gratify it, and the courtesy and apparent consideration in his phrase made him seem only the more inscrutable.
“You will pardon me, I am sure, but Gad, sir, my duty does not permit me to be explicit. The march is postponed, but you will not be required to move without information,” he replied suavely, but with a flash of the eye which intimated that he would tell them when he could no longer avoid it, and when all the rest of the world must know.
While the camp thus settled down to its former routine, grumbling and speculating variously as to the causes that had necessitated the countermanding of the orders to march, the Cherokees were alarmed for the interests of the projected cession of land. Their earlier fears had been quieted in great measure by the recovery of the French gold, the louis d’ors of the coinage of the current year, thus falling readily into the trap which Everard had warily set for them. They concluded that since he had given the gold pieces so casually to the Indian girl as a reward for her detection of his runagate soldier he had not noticed the date with its cogent significance, having them so short a time in his possession. Certainly it was great munificence, but this was the more easily accounted for as the louis d’ors really belonged to another man, and the officer seemed generous without loss, for the Cherokees did not understand that their value must needs be returned to Eachin MacEachin. As the Indians were not admitted familiarly within the camp, and the soldiers were not free to wander without, there could be only futile surmises as to the reasons for the postponement of the march. Secret observations of the camp taken from the river and the opposite bank intimated much activity among the farriers. Perhaps the horses were all to be reshod. But surely such a necessity could not be in the nature of a surprise to the Capteny Gigagei. Another day ensued a great overhauling of the baggage for clothing of heavier weight, in anticipation of severe weather. The commissioners bargained with the Indians for some furs fashioned into match-coats, and the lieutenant himself, being obliged to wear the hated British uniform, ordered blankets of the fine dressed otter and panther skins, for which he paid in English guineas: he had no more louis d’ors. The postponement gradually came to be accepted as the result of the sudden unseasonable spell of cold weather.
Therefore it fell like a thunderclap upon the headmen, when suddenly one day Lieutenant Everard took advantage of a personal visit which the great chief Tanaesto was making to him in his tent, to declare that he had certain knowledge that the Cherokees harbored amongst them a Frenchman who sought to spirit them up against the British government, despite the fact that they had so lately firmly shaken hands anew with it. He protested that unless they instantly surrendered to him this miscreant, chargeable with he knew not how many of the crimes laid at their door, he would report to the royal governor the fact that he had ascertained his presence here in the heart of the Cherokee country, and this would annul the privileges they expected to enjoy under the treaty thus rendered void, and destroy the possibility of the cession itself.
But for that single phrase, but for the interests dependent upon the cession, but for the fact that this purchase money for the lands would enable the Cherokees to secure the munitions of war to wrench not only this limited territory but their whole country from the encroaching British grasp, as well as sustain them in a certain independence in their relations with their expected French allies,—but for these obvious dictates of policy, the commissioners’ train and military escort would have been set upon by unnumbered hundreds and destroyed in the instant.
Even as it was, however, their safety was in a great part assured by the fact that this episode took place only within the knowledge of the wily chiefs. The populace—those “mad young men,” so difficult to restrain, whose impetuosity so often cost the nation dear—could not have been held back had this demand been suddenly publicly urged. And indeed the chiefs themselves were between two fires; for if aught should befall the French officer through their pusillanimity or treachery, it was obvious they could hope for no further aid from the great French king, without which they could not save their national existence.
Admire the collected Tanaesto’s aplomb! Without one moment’s hesitation he denied the accusation,—utterly oblivious of the future,—so definitely, so instantly, that Everard himself, closeted in his tent with three or four Indians who had accompanied Tanaesto, felt a momentary doubt. Could Callum have been dreaming?—the vision of the Frenchman only a figment of the fever then laying hold upon him, the words an echo?—some reminiscence sounding anew in his delirium?
“But you have a white man, a Frenchman, here in the nation,” Everard sternly persisted.
“A white man in the nation? Several here and there in the lower towns. Oh, yes, the Capteny says the gracious truth. But these are English or Scotch, never French. Some there are who like the Cherokee methods and settle in the tribe. But here in the Overhill towns only one white man, an Englishman—that is to say, a Virginian.”
Everard, staring fixedly at Tanaesto, shook his head, and the Indian interpreter mechanically repeated the gesture, as if the parties for whom he served as a means of communication were blind as well as deaf to all but him.
Most unlikely did Everard consider it that an Englishman would dare to linger here alone in the present disorganized state of the Cherokee country and the inflamed public sentiment against the British.
“This man—who I fear is no Englishman—sojourned in Moy Toy’s town of Great Tellico,” Everard persisted. “This I know. The great chief will perceive there are no limits to my knowledge.”
With this corollary, confirmatory of his proposition, the Indians hardly dared to further deny. A sudden stillness ensued; and this desperate silence, long unbroken, was an invisible appeal one to the others, each waiting for some intrepid invention of some one else that might serve to rescue the situation.
Everard smiled grimly as his sarcastic eyes traveled the rounds from one confused, downcast face to the other. “Since he is a Virginian, as you say, an Englishman so far, I should be glad to see him,” persisted Everard, relishing their discomfort. “I should not like it to be said that I left an only countryman in this remote wilderness without an effort to exchange a word with him, a homelike greeting.”
“If he is now at Great Tellico, I know not; it has been long since I saw him,” Tanaesto qualified. Then realizing that this belated negation could not nullify all that had gone before, “Doubtless he will be glad to take you by the hand,” he concluded falteringly.
“Doubtless. I shall do myself the honor to wait upon him there, and shall also take this occasion to pay my respects to the great Moy Toy.”
Everard smiled sardonically, grimly triumphant, for the leave-taking of the graceful, ceremonious Indians was like the hasty scuttling away of a group of culprits evading the clutch of custody.
The camp had been hastily broken; all was now gleeful stir and activity. Everard had waited long, but he had reached the limit of his patience and the necessity to exercise it simultaneously. MacIlvesty was sufficiently recovered to have regained the full use of his faculties, and he depended upon the Highlander’s identification of the man, whom he had seen in familiar conversation with the Indians at one of their most secret ceremonies, speaking Cherokee to them and French in soliloquy. Everard would take no substitute for this man! Lest some dull under-trader, some runaway apprentice, finding it easier to turn Cherokee than work at a trade in the colonies, be palmed off on him in lieu of this forked-tongued schemer, he had awaited the Highlander’s recovery, despite his impatience. He realized that should he miss his grip at the opportune moment the chance would be gone and forever. He would confront Callum MacIlvesty with this sojourner at Tellico whom he doubted not to be the French emissary who had occasioned a world of trouble in readjusting the Cherokees on their former basis with the British government. Unless opportunity should prove amazingly elusive, he would arrest this man and carry him to Charlestown, where the consideration of the problems which he embodied could be shifted upon those more qualified to undertake it, the colonial diplomats.
Everard’s determination to proceed further into the Cherokee country necessitated the detail of some portion of his plan to the commissioners whom he must needs drag with him, since his force was too slight to divide, and he could not leave them without a guard at Ioco. Though firm as adamant and steeled against any remonstrance, he had dreaded their efforts to deter him, their insistence that he was transcending his instructions, that he was merely the commander of their bodyguard, and required to act only in the interests of the cession. The fluttered squawking of the botanist, the deep basso-profundo rumble of the commissioner whose fad was geology, the appeal to his official conscience and his oath by the diplomat proper, the politician, the piercing fife-like note of the surveyor’s voice in protest,—all sounded coherently in his imagination long before he made the disclosure, and sooth to say, sounded nowhere else. For the “gentlemanly old ladies” showed unexpected mettle; they applauded his determination, belittled the possible danger they might incur, commended his discretion, and urged the instant setting forward of the force before the man could be spirited away and the Indians make head in their schemes to conceal all evidences of his identity and machinations.