II
TOWARD dawn the frogs, antiphonally chanting down by the water-side, ceased their chorusing clamors. Now and again a croaking voice sounded raucously alone,—then came silence. The moon was all solitary in the “beloved square,”—not even an errant gust of wind to bear her company. In broad, still, white effulgence the radiance rested unbroken on the sandy stretch and the dark, narrow row of cabins, devoted to public and official business, on each side of the quadrangular space. The more remote dwellings cast shadows wherever the boughs of the overhanging trees left the ground clear. Here too was silence, save in one hut whence issued the voice of a wakeful infant, as boldly bawling as if it were some cherished scion of civilization. Gradually, insensibly, the world took on an aspect of gray dimness. The mountains looming around began to definitely darken. The stars had all grown faint; for the sun would not await the moon’s descent, and presently, driving hard, his chariot was on the steep eastern summits; the song of birds, the trumpet-blast of the wind, the whispering voice of rustling pines, the dash of glancing waters, and human cries of joy and cheer were elicited as if these matutinal sounds partook of the quality of light.
The French officer, dead beat, still slumbered, but Push-koosh rose, stretched himself, and still arrayed in his splendid ambassadorial attire went out into the freshness of the dawning day and the renewing possibilities of the world. A man who hoped to make naught of dancing devils should have been earlier astir.
There was a scene of activity down at the river bank. The pettiaugre of their expedition, which had been brought to the Muscle Shoals of the Cherokee River laden with powder to aid in the removal of the barriers to free navigation, had been steered with great difficulty and at considerable risk through the rapids, repeatedly grazing the bottom, although it was a much smaller craft of the kind than was usual for the conveyance of freight. Proceeding thence up the stream, it had succeeded in passing safely the “whirl,” the “boiling pot,”—known now to modern engineers as the “mountain obstructions,”—and albeit somewhat the worse for the hard wear of its experiment, it had finally reached the smoother waters of the Little Tennessee, and continuing a placid progress along its curves, was coming in to land at the town of Great Tellico.
It was the intention to present the cargo as a token of amity from the French governor to the town of Tellico, such being Laroche’s instructions from Kerlerec in case the powder could not be used in the removal of the reefs.
Only a few of the Cherokees were on the bank, and in obedience to their signaled advice, the Choctaws on the pettiaugre had sheered off from the shallows, where a landing had been at first contemplated, and where the craft would have gotten aground at an inconvenient distance from the shore, to seek a deeper haven indicated by the Cherokees, who, as they ran up and down, gesticulated violently in the sign language, and, in lieu of comprehensible, articulate phrases, uttered wild cries, curiously unmusical, like the voice of the dumb.
There on the bank was Eve (her Indian name was Akaluka, which signifies “a whirlwind”). Overpowered with curiosity as to the arrival of the boat, she had repaired to the scene. Being as elaborately appareled as on the preceding evening, it is fair to conclude that the two handsome strangers had not been altogether forgotten. They were now, however, far from her thoughts. Like a frugal female, she was wholly absorbed in anxiety,—not lest an awkward landing should endanger or submerge many pounds of precious gunpowder, a princely gift from the French government to its secret friend, the important municipality of Great Tellico, especially at that time and in this region, but there were in the cargo sundry trifles originally intended as presents to individuals for the personal propitiation of certain warriors, and she was solicitous as to the fate of one of these gauds. It was a scarf of thin silk, a deep red, with a golden glimmer of broidery, and it had fallen over the gunwale as the Choctaws, no great boatmen at best, awkwardly shifted the cargo in the imminence of the peril of the precious freight. All unheeded, the scarf, escaping from its flimsy wrapping, was now floating away to deck the insensate wave.
Standing on the peak of a high rock, and distinct against the blue sky, like some delineation in white crayon, arrayed in her white, dressed doeskin garb, her white buskins, the white quills in her black hair, she shrieked again and again to the laboring Choctaws, as they wearily trimmed the boat, seeking to acquaint them with their loss, and adjuring the rescue of the property. They heard her, doubtless; but if they understood they did not heed. Their freight of gunpowder, meaning much to the Cherokees of valiant alliance, and even the hope of emancipation from the rule of the hated British, and always to all Indians the equivalent of money, of food, of life itself, rendered infinitely unimportant the gewgaws of the cargo, such as the red scarf so rapidly floating away on the steel-gray water. Flesh and blood could no longer endure the harrowing sight,—at least the flesh and blood of Eve. She suddenly held up both arms above her head, the palms pressed together; she brought them downward in a great, sweeping curve, as she bowed forward, and with an alert spring plunged from the crag into the deep water far below.
Push-koosh noted the resounding plash and held his breath for a moment, so daring the feat seemed to the unaquatic Choctaw. He watched half skeptically the successive silver circles elastically expanding over the spot where the gray water had closed over her head, as if he scarcely expected to see it rise again. Presently he caught a glimpse of it, very black and glossy still, but far out toward the middle of the river. She was swimming strongly in the silver gray floods and approaching the red scarf, that had now a wanton wind astir in its folds and threw up a curving edge like a sail. She carefully intercepted its course on the current, and holding it aloft out of the water, began to swim with one hand, still strongly and deftly but more slowly, toward the pettiaugre.
Push-koosh’s dark, sombrely lustrous eyes followed her with admiration. This method of progression seemed no longer the exercise of frogs. She lifted her head and her body half out of the water as she swam almost under the bow of the pettiaugre, and held the scarf aloft that one of the Choctaw boatmen might take it. The one nearest at hand desisted from his work and looked over the gunwale at her in surprise. Then suddenly he lifted his head, for a sharp halloo came from the bank. He understood the words shouted to him, recognized the authority of Push-koosh, and giving the woman only a shake of his head, by way of refusing to receive the bauble, fell once more to working the boat, and Akaluka, with the rescued scarf still in one hand, was obliged to paddle smartly to keep from being drawn under the pettiaugre by the suction, as the craft once more drove swiftly forward, cleaving the sunlit waves.
There was nothing further for the Cherokee girl but to swim for the bank. She was bewildered, a little startled, full of wonder, for she had just perceived the presence of Push-koosh upon the scene. She laid her course for a point distant from the rock upon which he had been standing while shouting his command to the boatman to refuse to receive the scarf, but when, still swimming with one arm and holding the delicate fabric out of the water with the other, she came alongside a ledge above a deep, still pool, he was here, waiting for her, and gazing down at her.
She threw her head far back as, all clad in white, she lifted her body half out of the water, and looking up at him held up her arm and offered the scarf.
He made no motion to take it. “Ook-kak!” (Swan!) he said. “Che awalas!” (I shall marry you!)
He said no more, and walked away instantly. She scrambled out of the deep water and stood on the rock, looking after him for a moment with the scarf still in her hand. Then with it still in her hand she ran home,—ran so fast, that with the wind and the sun and the speed, her hair and garments were almost dry when she reached her house, and but for the trophy there would have been little to confirm the details of this strange event when she recounted it to the man who said afterward, “You must blame the woman!”
Now this personage was one of the “mad young men” of the Cherokee Nation who always craved war,—which, however, seems to be the normal attitude of mind of the young officer even of civilized armies and accounted sane. He perceived propitious signs in the evidently impending proposition of a Choctaw-Cherokee alliance. This combination aided by the French government would indeed be able to strike a crushing blow to the British power in the Indian country. The experiment was obviously to be made. Intermarriages would strengthen the Choctaw-Cherokee bonds of amity. “You love the present,” he said in definite affirmation.
But Eve, ever the woman, tossed her head. Was there no man in all the Cherokee Nation to marry her, she asked in laughing mockery and coquettish humility, drawing the scarf back and forth through her hands, and looking far more beautiful than her wont with that curious embellishment of beauty which a realization of admiration confers,—no man at all, that she must needs marry a foreign Choctaw who spoke no language that a sensible person could understand, and who lived far away, who could say—indeed, where?—in the moon, perhaps!
Whereupon this mad young warrior, who was of her own kindred, the house of Ahowwe, the Deer family, told her that she spoke as a fool, since she was already committed, for she had taken the Choctaw’s present, a sign that she loved it, which was according to inflexible etiquette an acceptance of his suit.
Then she grew grave and a little frightened, and very voluble. She explained that she had had no intention of taking his present, and had kept it only because he would not receive it again, and she had no words that he could understand. But she would not marry a man to whom she could not speak her mind (one of the noblest prerogatives of a wife) and live with him in the moon!
As she said this, she looked upward with her great, dark, liquid eyes to the moon, still white in the western sky, but lace-like, tenuous, a most unsubstantial presentment of a dwelling-place.
The young man of the house of Ahowwe would not follow her wandering gaze as they stood together under a tree in front of her house,—no longer her dead husband’s war-pole marked its entrance, the peeled sapling, on the boughs of which the weapons of the warrior were hung until the stake rotted in the ground and fell. The young kinsman was experiencing a sudden and extreme agitation because of her perversity, for if it became necessary to explain the misunderstanding to the Choctaw at this crisis, before the proposals of the French authorities were made to the headmen of Tellico, it would doubtless greatly anger Mingo Push-koosh, and might frustrate the full disclosure of the measures of his embassy. Essential details might be perverted or entirely withheld in malice or revenge. And thus the French alliance, long sought by both nations, might fall to the ground. It was a complicated train of reflection that he followed, but he said quite simply, and with a cheerful air, that after all it was no great matter. To be sure she should have laid the scarf at the feet of the Choctaw chief, as he did not receive it when offered, to show him that she did not love his present and that his suit was rejected. But it was likely that Mingo Push-koosh had half forgotten it by now; he was of so great esteem in his own country, a prince and a most valiant red warrior! He was even sent to the Cherokee nation by the great French father with a splendid French officer as his interpreter! Such a man as that would not care—he had too much to think of. He himself, her young kinsman, would make it all right. He would see Mingo Push-koosh and return the scarf, and explain that she was only one of those stupid people who did not understand aught, and he would also lie and say that she was shortly to be married to a man who had no war-title and had never taken but a single scalp. Mingo Push-koosh would not care for her after such a description as that!
As he offered to lay hold on the scarf she drew back, shook her head, breathed very fast, and finally burst into tears. Whereupon this wise young man, who was only called “mad,” demanded of her in affected surprise why she wasted her tears. Surely she did not want to live in the moon and marry a Choctaw chief, even though he had achieved the distinction of a dozen “warrior’s marks” for his prowess in battle! Why did she not give up the scarf?—he, her kinsman, would return it for her, and the great chief would not care; for he would tell Mingo Push-koosh of a handsomer squaw than she, and younger by four years, more appropriate to make a splendid marriage such as this. Then Eve gave herself to argument, as she always does, and smartly demanded to be told the name of this squaw more beautiful than she, and most pertinently required of him to disclose the reason, since her attractions were so easily eclipsed, that the two strangers, the French officer as well as the Choctaw chief, must always gaze at her in the merrymaking last night,—why did not their eyes seek those younger and more beautiful squaws, as all were present? She declared, moreover, that she would not give her scarf to him. He doubtless desired to make himself fine in it for the horse-races (in fact, it had never been designed as a gift to a mere woman, but as propitiation for some goodly warrior, to rivet his affections to the French interest, and to be worn as a sash, or scarf, or turban, or in any way that his savage fancy for decoration might dictate). As to the scarf, she averred that it was hers, and she would keep it, and she would hear no more of his sharp speeches, which made her heart very heavy. The day was wearing on and her work was awaiting her. So she seated herself on the protruding roots of the great tree in front of her dwelling, giving the final deft touches to a large mat which she had been weaving.
The “mad young man” flung away, secretly satisfied, but with a discontented and affectedly scornful mien, after the manner of his kind, and meeting presently a congenial spirit he paused to detail the demonstration of the Choctaw chief and its reception by the woman. The listener, too, was of the Deer family, and not insensible of the value and distinction of the proposed matrimonial alliance. But he forthwith freely stigmatized the ambassador as a “mad young man” to be thinking of women and marriage in a crucial national crisis such as this. As he contemplated the political juncture, he could not sufficiently applaud the wisdom of the other’s course in preventing the return of the scarf and the consequent affronting of the Choctaw chief, for since the present had been received his suit was accepted according to etiquette. They agreed that she must marry him,—as at heart she was no doubt willing to do, but must needs affect reluctance after the tiresome fashion of women, and talk about living in the moon! And with a scoff at such feminine follies, which they declared made their hearts weigh[5] very heavy to contemplate, these “mad young men” separated, each going his own way cheerfully,—neither of them being threatened with a doom of living far away, among strangers in a foreign tribe, in a speechless marriage.
As Akaluka sat under the tree and worked at her mat her own heart grew heavier still, and in fact she hardly knew what to make of it. Now and then the realization of the admiration of her suitor brought a curve of pride to her lips, and then her eyes would fill with tears in doubt, and dismay, and anxiety,—all those troublous vacillations of sentiment which a woman naturally experiences in such circumstances; for she was, perhaps, not the first woman, and certainly not the last, who has accepted a suitor without intending to marry him, and cannot perceive definitely how to recede from an engagement that has become unexpectedly binding.
The man in her thoughts suddenly passed,—the Choctaw chief with the French officer. Both paused as their eyes fell upon her. She was tremulous, perturbed, appealing as she looked up from her lowly posture. A mottling of darkness and sunlight was about the verges of the shadow of the great, wide-spreading tree, but only a dim, green, subdued atmosphere where she sat and in her white attire and with her fishbone needle in her hand wrought an added embellishment of embroidery in the borders of her painted mat.
Both men perceived her agitation. The officer, unaware of the incident of the morning, did not comprehend it. With that suave Gallic civility, always solicitous of the entente cordiale, he exclaimed aloud in Cherokee his admiration of the fabric. It was one of those carpets, described as “two fathoms long,” woven of the wild hemp, and painted with indelible dyes and designs of the figures of beasts and birds, always the same on both sides. Laroche expressed an interest in the plan of its barbaric decoration and effort at delineation, while Push-koosh stood and silently looked on. Here Laroche traced out a lion (the panther or American cougar), which evidently signified strength, and here were feathers, many and various, so dexterously imitated that he declared they seemed real, which suggested softness, and love, and nesting,—the symbolism was of the guardianship of home,—truly an appropriate mat to lay before a hearthstone! Secure in his interpretation, he looked straight at her with a smile in his handsome brown eyes. She must needs speak in response; yet with Push-koosh loftily looking on she sought by her phrase to include them both as, gazing up, she faltered that she had kept it quite smooth despite its complicated design,—it was quite smooth to walk upon.
It was too pretty to walk upon, the Frenchman declared in facile compliment, and as she drew out the roll flat, to exhibit its smoothness of texture, he dropped on one knee and tried its sleek, evenly wrought fibres with his hand. But Push-koosh, turning away, walked across it with a lordly air like a husband, and as the Frenchman rose from his kneeling posture and joined him, Akaluka looked after them both, with the fishbone needle motionless in her hand, extended to the limit of its hempen thread, and destined to be very idle that day. She was best accustomed to the attitude of mind of the Indian,—and yet the Frenchman, how quick of interpretation he was!—how well he understood all things! Strange, strange, that there should be such difference in men! She would not have been afraid to go with him—to the moon.
They conducted themselves at the horse-races that day like other “mad young men;” they shouted, and bet more than they could afford to lose, and argued much, and talked very loud, and were tumultuously and heavily self-important. But that afternoon, seated in secret conclave on buffalo rugs on the floor of the council-house, with half a dozen chiefs of the towns of the vicinage summoned to join Moy Toy and the headmen of Tellico at the conference, they seemed to have experienced a sudden recurrence to sanity, a lucid interval, and each deported himself much like a man of this world.
These deliberations, although expected to result in a treaty, were not conducted as a formal council, since the will of the Cherokee nation could only be expressed in a general congress, and much consideration must needs precede so important a step as a renunciation of the British alliance and firmly grasping the hand of the great French father. The pipe was solemnly smoked, and although none arose as usual in addressing the assembly, their habitual courtesy to one another in council was observed, each speaking in turn, and punctiliously refraining from interruption. When a subject was mentioned on which the speaker desired a categorical reply from any one present, he handed that person a small stick, at the end of the paragraph as it were, to keep the remark in mind, and then went on to the other heads of his discourse. When he had finished all he had to say, specific responses to the details of his speech were made in turn by those to whom he had handed sticks.
As Moy Toy thoughtfully canvassed the advantages proposed by the French alliance, he remarked that Atta-Kulla-Kulla—a noted chief not present at this time—had always advocated adherence to the British treaty, since the trade which it provided and protected, albeit a monopoly, afforded the Cherokees a means to keep under arms and adequately supplied with ammunition, which was essential for hunting, and also in view of war; even to enforce against the British with the arms they themselves had supplied the observance of every jot and tittle of the compact with the Cherokees. This advantage the French did not furnish to the Indian tribes under their control.
He paused and solemnly handed a stick to Push-koosh, and then another to Laroche.
It was the fashion, he continued, among the “mad young men” of the nation, to comment upon Atta-Kulla-Kulla’s desire to avoid causes of war with the British, calling him “an old woman;” but the great chief was a wise man, for the object of prime importance was to keep the warriors of the tribe under arms in the European fashion, since bows and arrows were of no avail against powder and lead, and on the supply of guns and ammunition actually depended the continuance of the national existence of the Cherokees.
Push-koosh held his stick, attentively listening as Laroche interpreted these words, and in answering said that it was even for such reason the French father furnished the Choctaw tribe fully with arms and ammunition only in times of war against a common enemy—so that, on other occasions, their own “mad young men,” caviling thus at the superior wisdom of their elders, might not have the means of embroiling themselves and thrusting nations into hostilities when the great warriors and “beloved men” were all for peace. But for chiefs and headmen the armories of the great French father were always open.
He deftly touched the handsome pistols at his belt with a casual gesture, and hardly seemed to listen to the voice of the French officer repeating his words in Cherokee.
The Indian councilors experienced a tumult of excitement, which their faces, however, stolidly repressed when Laroche, replying without regard apparently to the presence of the Choctaw, said, as he held his stick in his hand, that it was by no means the intention of the French authorities to ignore the different status of the Cherokees from the tribes under their control. The Cherokees, as the French government well understood, were in effect an absolute integer in the sum of nations, a free, independent, unified people, and they would be armed and equipped in accordance with that fact. Whereas the Choctaws, and Choccomaws, and others were nearly akin to the Chickasaws, all sub-tribes of the Chickemicas of old; and although the Chickasaws, always adhering firmly to the British and inimical to the French, had often warred bitterly against their kindred Choctaws, still in view of ties of consanguinity, similar customs, and above all a common language, a friendly compact between them at some period, while not probable, was eminently possible, especially when promoted by the machinations of the British. Under these circumstances the French father felt indisposed to keep the Choctaws fully under arms while their brothers, the Chickasaws, held the knife at his throat. Surely the great and wise chiefs could perceive a reason for a difference in his attitude toward the Cherokees.
The great and wise chiefs could and did! They were also moved by a recollection that the most notable of the Choctaws, the great chief Shulashummashtabe (Red Shoes), long entertained designs to detach his whole tribe from the interest of the French, being instrumental in their defeat at the battle of Ackia, where he stood aloof with his own command of Choctaw braves while the French troops charged to the cry of “Vive le roi!” and afterward he fled in a simulated panic. He later openly deserted to the English, and a reward being offered for his head by the dear French father, he was treacherously slain by one of his own tribe, during the governorship of the Marquis de Vaudreuil.
The Cherokee chiefs in council felt much as if they were treading on mined ground, as they listened to the French officer’s voice while he rendered into Choctaw his long speech for the benefit of Push-koosh; for as the ambassador was blandly smiling, they must needs be sure that the interpretation tendered him was to an entirely different effect.
The Indians were so crafty that they seemed to love a device for its own shifty sake. They secretly admired this keen double-dealing of the French authorities, without reflecting that a two-edged blade is made to cut both ways. With a heightened sense of the sagacity of the French officer, they all bent an attentive ear to his account of the obstruction to navigation in the Rivière des Chéraquis and his disappointment to find that it was not to be overcome in the manner expected by the French governor Kerlerec,—in fact it was there for all time.
Mingo Push-koosh had been himself disappointed, both as a soldier and a statesman, but his mien had an element of pride as he said that the variegated merchandise—al-poo-e-ack—could not be forwarded. Perhaps he resented the fact that he had been forced to discuss the clipped-claw condition of the unarmed Choctaw tribe, whom Kerlerec had nevertheless the art so to propitiate that he was called preëminently the “Father of the Choctaws.” Mingo Push-koosh was evidently secretly triumphant in the realization that the French alliance which he possessed so easily, and the Cherokees coveted so strenuously, was not to be had by them; for without the privileges of trade and a base of supply, the Cherokees must adhere to the repugnant treaty with the British to be able to keep under arms at all, even in war with other tribes.
Moy Toy’s countenance fell.
“To e u?” (Is this true?) he asked sternly, as if he suspected dissimulation, for from time to time there had been traffic more or less by way of the Cherokee River.
“To e u hah!” (It is true indeed!) replied the French officer definitely.
The chiefs looked from one to another silently, their countenances expressing much that their pride would fain have hidden. If this were true, a species of vassalage was the best hope of the free and independent Cherokee people. Laroche begged to be permitted to explain his views in reference to the obstructions to navigation.
Canoes, he went on to say, could pass of course, a few light craft occasionally, perhaps even large pettiaugres at long intervals in some especially favorable stage of the water, but for the free, systematic transportation of the fleets of a great and continuous trade, the passage was forever impracticable. In the distant future the difficulties of navigation might be nullified by the construction of a parallel artificial channel (he could find no Cherokee equivalent for the word “canal”), the method of which he alertly explained with that relish of technical details characteristic of the very young in science,—all as carefully heeded by the Indian statesmen as if entirely comprehensible. But at present he desired to lay before the wise chiefs a plan of his own, which, should it meet their approval, he would elaborate and submit to the governor at New Orleans.
There was an interval of silence as he arranged his thoughts. The anxious, deliberative faces of the chiefs all turned toward him, their eyes keenly studying his expression of countenance, seemed oddly incongruous with the puerile decoration of beads and great earrings, and feathers poised upright on each polled head. The vague light of the smouldering council-fire flickered upon them; the sombre interior of the windowless building was but dimly glimpsed in the deep red glow; the glare from the brilliant day outside filled the narrow portal as with some transparency, some illuminated segment of a painted landscape unnaturally bright,—an emerald mountain aglow, a silver shimmering river, a bit of sapphire sky, intense. Voices, faint in the distance, of jovial intimations, came from where the young people were dancing in three circles after the races and the feastings. The sound was far alien to this atmosphere of thought and anxious care, this dim council-house, where were concocted the measures of statecraft that kept the people free and happy. Even Push-koosh, whom the envious shadows could not bereave of the brilliant effect of his white raiment, asserted albeit in the dimness, his glossy pearls, the glitter of his silver ornaments, did not heed the joyous clamor. As to Laroche, he did not hear it at all.
It was not to be contemplated, he said, that this perverse obstruction to navigation should withhold the Cherokee nation from firmly grasping the hand of the French father who loved them; but since it was absolutely impracticable to send valuable cargoes of arms and ammunition, as well as cloths, cutlery, tools, and paints, all those necessities of the Indian trade, so expensive and difficult to be obtained, through those twenty miles of roaring rapids, to say nothing of the whirlpools further up the current, the merchandise might be thence transferred, under strong guard, by land with pack-horses to the comparatively near point of the reopening of easy navigation, were there a barrier town settled at each extremity of the overland route to receive and distribute the goods by the various waterways throughout the Cherokee nation.
“Seohsta-quo!” (Good!) cried Moy Toy of Tellico.
The others in great excitement but in definite order, observing their usual courtesy in deliberation, with much rapid bestowal of sticks, bespeaking categorical answers on the various details, began the discussion of this bold project,—the extension of their settlements for more than a hundred miles rather than fail to secure the advantage of the French alliance. The details of the diplomatic scheme illustrated the Frenchman’s fertility in device, and Push-koosh was not slow to perceive that Laroche presently had both hands full of sticks, while he himself held but two, evidently tendered only as an afterthought and pro forma. The Indian statesmen wished to hear the French officer speak. The coherence and cogency of his plan commended it. Indeed, afterward they contemplated the removal of the town of Tellico Great itself, one of the “seven Mother Towns” of the Cherokee nation, far enough down the Cherokee River to be within easy access of the large French pettiaugres. Even as it was, the nation subsequently extended its frontier on this basis, and a series of new towns was settled below the “mountain obstructions,” the “whirl,” the “boiling pot,” and still beyond, near the upper end of the Muscle Shoals, serving as the “barrier towns” of the tribe. The Cherokees craftily explained to the English the necessity for this move by the statement that the site of some of their upper towns had become infested with witches!—it may safely be presumed that they were British witches!
The questions relative to the proposed new location,—the number of warriors requisite for the barrier towns; the possibility that, if supported by a sufficient force of braves in the neighborhood, the French government would settle a garrison at the Muscle Shoals; the number of horses and men necessary for the pack-trains and the guard for the overland transportation; the most desirable point for the resumption of the water carriage of the merchandise up the Cherokee River, and thence by way of the Eupharsee (Hiwassee), the Tennessee, the Agiqué (French Broad), throughout the Cherokee country; the measures to be taken for the protection of French traders and their mercantile assistants against the British,—all these points Laroche intelligently discussed, continually receiving and returning sticks, while the transparent landscape in the doorway shimmered to a change: the blue sky grew red, the green mountain turned purple, the silver river dulled to steel, and a star began to flicker in the west.
Moy Toy would have talked on through the descending darkness, regardless of the night and the dying of the last ember of the council-fire, save for the admonition of one of the minor chiefs, on whom the duty of caring for the creature comforts of the guests had devolved, and who contrived to intimate presently that it was long since the strangers had eaten and drunk. On this account the council was adjourned, Moy Toy still wearing a thoughtful aspect and meditatively saying, “We will talk of this again to-morrow.” And as they left him in the gloom of the state-house, and began the descent of the steps of earth that led down from the high mound, they heard him still mechanically repeating in the solitary darkness, “We will talk of this again to-morrow.”
Now Push-koosh, like some other infants, even when not Choctaw chiefs nor warriors, was of a proud, implacable, and pompous self-opinion. It required little to wound his vanity and nettle his temper, but indeed he had ample cause for affront in that this officer had talked unceasingly in his presence to the Cherokee chiefs without pausing to translate what was said, although in their excitement no one had noticed the fact. At first Push-koosh had essayed to speak in Cherokee, but his knowledge of the tongue would not sustain the subtleties of his meaning. He had even humbled himself once to seek recourse in the sign language, comprehensive enough for all needs, but every eye was fixed upon Laroche, every ear intent. He felt his pride touched that this absorbing interest, which the chiefs had manifested in diplomatic matters, sprang from naught that he had disclosed in his ambassadorial capacity,—in fact he did not even know the subject of their excitement or its importance. He thought it derogatory to his position to inquire of Laroche, or to seem to realize that he had been overlooked—he, the head of the embassy! But the incident roused him to the assertion of his own importance.
He saw, with pleasure in the contrast, that Laroche was exhausted by the mental stress of the discussion, while he had been refreshed by the long hours of rest in the quiet seclusion of the state-house. When they were seated in one of the piazza-like cabins at one side of the “beloved square,” where the banquet had been spread after the races, Laroche was still absorbed and silent, ate little, and drank only of the decoction from the “flint corn” made by boiling the grain and straining the result, the beverage when cooled said to have been refreshing and nutritive and “much liked even by genteel strangers.” A fire was alight in the centre of the “beloved square,” but the other public buildings were all vacant, and their open piazza-like fronts showed dark and deserted in the deepening dusk. The festivities were over for the nonce; the Indian guests from the neighboring villages had departed; the strangers’ share of the evening banquet, with which the merrymaking in their honor had ended, having been reserved for them till the close of the protracted session of the council. The town seemed drowsy, already half asleep; only a few occasional passers set the echo of a footfall astir; an owl was hooting in the woods; a vague sense of dreariness had descended with the twilight, and suddenly Laroche became cognizant, with a start as if he had seen a ghost, that there was a presence at the meal of which he had been hitherto unaware,—Akaluka herself, meekly seated by the Choctaw chief while he silently ate and drank.
There was a bold, open triumph in the face of Push-koosh, as he noted the manifestation of surprise. He looked at the French officer as arrogantly as if he had already that luxuriant Gallic scalp hanging to his favorite pipe. Perhaps he himself had never seemed so assertive, so lordly, as in the blended light of the bland moonrise and a flickering pine torch with which the table was lighted by the old woman who served it,—his strings of pearls, his glittering pistols, his white and scarlet garb, the red flamingo feathers in his hair, the broad silver band across his forehead, his perfect physical condition; while Laroche, pale from mental exertion, the mathematical calculation, the evolution of plans of public polity, the arrangement of intricate and antagonistic details in the problems of the Indian trade, wiped his forehead, felt his eyes ache, and was too tired to eat.
These plans were the more precious since they were suddenly beset with a new danger; he realized the menace, although he did not appreciate that he himself was an element in it; he did not know how admiringly the girl had gazed at him the previous evening at the pantomime, while Push-koosh, who could have killed him for it, gazed at her. Even Push-koosh had noted his unconsciousness of this fact,—but Laroche had not been equally oblivious of her attractions. “Eho chookoma!” quotha. She might now gaze at her peril,—and so might he! Laroche had not noticed this evening the Choctaw as he beckoned the girl to sit beside him as he ate, but he knew enough of Indian etiquette to be aware that this is the method by which the suitor formally recognizes and emphasizes the fact that his addresses are accepted.
Laroche had learned that this woman was the sister of Moy Toy, and while a Choctaw match for her might be approved by him as a means of strengthening the alliance between the tribes, still there was of necessity great doubt as to the completion of this national compact, the Choctaws and Cherokees having many ancient enmities to reconcile, and the offer of intermarriage must needs be approached with precaution. And above all things at some future day! To hamper at this crisis so important and promising a negotiation between the French government and the Cherokee nation, so difficult of arrangement, with a nettling trifle like this,—a personal matter of so alien and doubtful a character,—Laroche trembled with impatience at the very thought.
He was once more all alert. When Push-koosh rose at last from the meal and flung casually away, taking his path along the river bank where a cool breeze was stirring, the lieutenant followed. For although the woman must sit beside her suitor when he eats if he beckons to her, still the match is not yet irretrievably made. He must needs give her the foot of a deer as an admonition how brisk she must be on his errands, whereupon she must bake and offer him a cake of rockahominy meal, as token of willing subservience. He must also break an ear of corn in half, and in the presence of witnesses give her one portion, retaining the other himself, which completes the symbolic Indian marriage ceremonies.
“Push-koosh,” said Laroche gravely, as he approached,—the Indian slackened his pace, welcoming from his position of vantage as an accepted suitor the prospect of a quarrel with a jealous lover,—“the commandant did not send us here to make love to women!”
Push-koosh turned to glance aside at him. “Take care that you don’t do it, then,” he admonished the officer.
“Our mission is a matter far too important to jeopardize with such considerations,” declared Laroche. He slipped his arm through the Choctaw’s in a friendly way and detailed at length his scheme, his clever scheme, apologizing that he had not interpreted it at the council. “But it was not a part of our instructions,—only a plan of my own.”
“You did not want my suggestions,—I do not want yours,” retorted Push-koosh, deeply angered to perceive the importance of the discussion, through which he had sat silent, carried on over his head.
“But you can see surely that there must be no talk of women and marriage till all this is settled,—wait till you come again,” urged Laroche, holding his temper well in hand.
“Eho chookoma!” quoted Push-koosh significantly. “Meantime there might be another man!”
That fatal “other man”—was ever a lover’s dream which he did not haunt?
“But, Bébé, Push-koosh,” argued the Frenchman suavely, “what would you do hampered with a Cherokee wife if, after all, this tribe continues to adhere to the British, and should take part in their war with the French and their Choctaw allies?”
Push-koosh, animated with the jealous conviction, yet full of triumph in the fact, that the French officer was himself in love with this charming swan and therefore sought to interpose obstacles, retorted as if to strike him to the heart, “Do?—comply with the tribal custom! Kill her! In the last war with the Muscogee, did not the Choctaw braves who had married Muscogee wives kill the women and their children, they being also Muscogee, for the children inherit the nationality of the mother? I should, of course, kill her!”
He had turned to face the officer, who stood for one moment speechless, realizing the strange world in which he was living, the curious medley of devil and man, of savagery and civilization.
The moon was well up over the river, and where the light struck with full effulgence the water was all a shining violet hue; the banks were of an invisible green, too dark for color, but somehow still sensibly verdant. All along the shore the frogs were piping, hardly noticed; for in the budding rhododendron close at hand a mocking-bird sang with wonderful élan and elasticity, the multitude of exquisitely sweet notes springing one from another with a definite effect of rebound.
“Push-koosh,” the lieutenant said at length, “mon Bébé bien-aimé, you always betray your tender infant heart!”
He seemed to laugh, but his hand trembled on the hilt of his sword, as he stood as if irresolute and gazed at Push-koosh with a threat in his intent eyes hardly less fierce than the look with which only last night Push-koosh had menacingly, nay murderously gazed at him while he slept. Suddenly the officer turned aside, and alone took his way back to the Indian town.
Yet Laroche did not love the woman. Perhaps he was merely civilized by virtue of his nationality and his religion; for although as a soldier he would have coolly taken the life of a man and an enemy, he felt all a coward in the secret danger that menaced the Cherokee girl, unaware, doubtless, of her peril. He himself was not unaware of it, and therein he perceived an irksome responsibility. The Cherokees were so far in advance of the other Indian tribes in point of character, sentiment, civilization, that Laroche doubted if this mode of ridding one’s self of a wife, who, through no fault of her own, but for political reasons, had incurred disfavor, would suggest itself to them more readily than it had to him. With their evident intention to accept the proffer of the French alliance, it was more than likely that the Cherokee authorities, with their characteristic lack of foresight, would treat the match with the Choctaw chief as if the compact with the French were already made fast. Yet should it fail,—and from Laroche’s post on the seamy side he saw many a rent in the web of the probabilities,—Push-koosh had said it,—he had decreed her fate.
Laroche had so longed for the success of his scheme! It was so great, so clever, so promissory of personal and professional advancement! He felt that he would hardly hazard an item of its development for his own life,—much less then for the life of a creature like this—hardly more human than a deer! Besides, why should he interfere?—all might yet go well with the alliance. When he began to argue thus, he suddenly stopped short. Would he weigh a human life in the balance of his personal interest—become, albeit indirectly, accessory to a murder of the innocent? He grew a trifle pale at the thought and devoutly crossed himself. He would assume no such responsibility. He would keep no such secret. And then he began to see the matter in the light of an official duty. He represented the French interest, and should the Cherokees ever learn that he had been cognizant of this threat and had withheld it from them, it would alienate them, as naught else could, from the power that so earnestly sought their conciliation. In every point of view he determined that he would not hesitate. He would lay the matter before Moy Toy, as in civilization he would instantly report a threatened murder to the police.
Now Moy Toy was a man of family affection. Years earlier, in 1730, he had given indications of this fact when a Cherokee delegation, favored by royal invitation, were on the point of setting forth to visit King George II. in London; Moy Toy, although he was to be the chief delegate, at the last moment relinquished the distinguished opportunity because his wife had fallen dangerously ill and he could not leave her. Therefore he remained at the little Indian village, while several other chiefs made the wonderful journey to England, and had audience of the sovereign at his palace, and were the recipients of innumerable presents and attentions, being the lions of the day.
He now took instant alarm at this menace to his sister, and to Laroche’s surprise presently summoned to his aid and counsel the other chiefs of Tellico Great. The Indian scheme of succession follows the collateral female line, and therefore Moy Toy’s possible future nephew would inherit his office as chief of Tellico Great, to the exclusion of his own son. Hence his sister was a personage of as much consequence in Tellico Great as a mere woman could be, and the council agreed that in view of this circumstance they would not trust the Franco-Choctaw-Cherokee alliance until it was an accomplished fact. Yet even now it was in jeopardy, for Mingo Push-koosh, the French ambassador, bearing also the assurances of the Choctaw nation, angered with so good a reason might work mischief. And then began the accusation of the woman!
Why had she kept his present, and involved them in all this difficulty? the sage councilors assembled in the state-house demanded of her when summoned before them. For this very reason, she declared, had she kept his present, although not loving it, for the young men had said that she must not on any account anger the Choctaw ambassador of the great French father. Then poor Moy Toy, roused from cogitation on such deep and intricate problems as had occupied the day, to fill the dark hours of the night with vacillations and agitations touching the political effects of so ill-starred a flirtation, asked her bitterly had she no more sense than to listen to the “mad young men!” Whereupon she protested with tears that the “mad young men” had but spoken the words that even now were on his own sage lips,—the ambassador must not be angered!
With daylight came new resolutions. Moy Toy, arguing that the ambassador was not empowered to treat for a Cherokee wife, and to exact compliance with his demand as a condition of his mission, concluded that he sustained no official affront in the ceremonious return of the scarf with an intimation that so great and flattering an intermarriage could only be made after the compact with the two tribes.
Now it is possible that Push-koosh might have acquiesced with appropriate docility in this obviously just reasoning of his elders, requiring, however, promises of Moy Toy on his sister’s behalf, conditioned on the completion of the tribal compact, had it not been for his jealousy of the French lieutenant. Akaluka, again summoned, was also at the state-house, wild-eyed, tremulous, visibly terrified, eager to return the present, which, having been made acquainted with her possible fate, she was far indeed from loving.
As the Choctaw ambassador received the scarf which she tendered him, the cogent reasons for delay that had been urged, the political interests involved, so prominent in the apologies of the Cherokee chiefs,—all were merged in a sense of sustaining the curious disgrace of a personal and public rejection in the presence of a rival,—for Mingo Push-koosh caught the eyes of the French lieutenant fixed hopefully upon him.
Why then, the Choctaw asked quite calmly, had she received the present if she did not love it? Why had she sat beside him as he ate? For himself,—neither did he love the present!
He held up the gauzy red scarf and with sundry swift passes of a scalp knife severed the fabric into dozens of shreds, sent lightly flying about the state-house like a flock of redbirds. Then whirling on his heel, he quitted the council-chamber and followed by all his tribesmen ran across the “beloved square” to the river bank, where the pettiaugre lay defenseless at his mercy. All the kegs of the precious powder were emptied into the stream before his design was dreamed of, and still he deemed he had sufficient margin for a running start from the pursuit he expected, for he paused in the woods to hang up the “war-brand.” This being, however, in a secluded place, it was not early discovered, and the first intimation that the Cherokees received of the depth of his resentment was the massacre almost to a man of a peaceful party of their tribesmen, offering no resistance, taken wholly by surprise, owing to the pacific character of the Franco-Choctaw mission to Great Tellico. This exploit achieved, Mingo Push-koosh and his escort, adorned with scalps and singing war-songs, made good their escape, with the wonderful Choctaw speed in marching, leaving the deserted Laroche alone and at the mercy of the frantic and infuriated Cherokees.