V
MOY TOY came indeed the next day and laden thus. In fact it was he who had first thought of the design of falling on the trader’s pack-train on their return trip to Charlestown and cutting them all off. Thus, he argued, the country would be rid at one blow of the trade,—for the others, here, there, everywhere, would never return,—and it was the trade, the paltry bauble, that had bought the Cherokees, scot and lot, alienated them from their own best interest, threatened them with vassalage to the British, and with national annihilation. The vengeance of the Carolina authorities would scarcely discriminate, scarcely even seek out so elusive a prey as the immediate offenders; frantic and furious it would alight like a bolt from heaven on whatever lay within its orbit. Thus it would serve to unite the upper Cherokees, the Ottare district, and the Ayrate towns in their own defense—the doubting must needs be steadfast, the weak-hearted confident and strong, the politic might scheme only from ambush, and Atta-Kulla-Kulla postpone his strategic talks of statecraft till the council once more should have time to heed his plotting and counterplotting. Then the way of the French would be open. Then might its skilled officer bring the great guns and build the forts and drive forever from the Cherokee borders this perfidious foe who sought to enslave a free people by goods and rum, at ruinous great prices and tolls of trade.
Despite Laroche’s experience of the inconsistencies and contradictory traits of the Indian character, this precipitancy surprised him. He began to see that the patience with which the savages were credited, their long waiting and scheming for revenge, the illimitable distances they traversed in war, the innumerable shifts and devices they practiced, of almost inconceivable ingenuity, to attain their object—all were exerted only when it lay beyond their immediate reach. Once within the possibilities, and the leap to seize upon it was like a panther’s, as swift, as bloodthirsty, and as unreckoning. For the Indians’ policy of doubting and debating was only when impotence held their revenge in bounds. Thus it was that their hasty, unguarded, impulsive seizing upon an opportunity of massacre and robbery so often recoiled upon the body politic, which suffered as a whole in the vengeance of the colony, the withdrawal of the trade, and the cutting off of supplies and ammunition, for the murderous enterprise of some small band. More than once Moy Toy himself, both earlier and later, headed a party of these independent warriors, for whose deeds the Cherokee nation at large paid the reckoning.
It was well that Laroche had the futility of such raids in mind to point the moral of the value of delay, of preparation, of acting with due caution for the attaining of permanent effect. Press the British back for a moment—that full-armed, embittered, more powerful still, they might again overrun the Cherokee country! And thus bring to naught the plans of the great French father to aid and abet the throwing off of this heavy yoke—all these plans as yet in abeyance,—not a cargo of ammunition en route.
“I care naught for the desertion of the base Mingo Push-koosh; it is to me but the freak of a peevish child, as his very name implies,” Laroche declared. “The Choctaws are ever loyal to the French; the Muscogees, and their subordinate tribes, all are in amity, all preparing for the great decisive blow, the simultaneous attack that shall some day drive the English colonists east and south into the Atlantic ocean and the Mexico gulf. But the moment must be propitious—the occasion ripe. Time, Moy Toy, time is the great warrior. Time always wins the long fight.”
He had walked out with the Indian, who had declined Jock Lesly’s invitation to light his pipe at the hearth in the spence, this being unsanctified fire, kindled by no cheerataghe, and had repaired to the fire always alight in the centre of the “beloved square,” annually kindled by the men of the divine fire, distributed amongst the dwellings, and never suffered to die out till the last day of the old year. The necessity had occurred to neither of the two men as a subterfuge, but both eagerly embraced the opportunity that they might speak apart—Moy Toy to communicate his scheme, and Laroche to contend with it.
The spot was solitary at the moment. Rain was threatening; a great slate-tinted cloud hung above the darkly green mountains in tantalizing suspension, seeming weighted and surcharged with water above the drought-smitten cornfields. Day after day they waved with the delicate, newly sprouting blades, rustling and lisping in the capricious breaths of the wind, but showing a far-spread yellow tint beneath murky, purple glooms. Day after day the impending storm passed; the lightning that had rent the heavens with a stroke like a flashing blade, and a thunderous crash as of the rivings of a world asunder, subsided to an aimless flicker with a vague and distant rumble. The purple-black clouds of weighted portent would grow of lilac hue, and presently one might see the tint of the blue sky through the fleecy dispersal of their folds. The wind rushed down from the mountains; the sun shone out; the cornfields lay parched and sere; and the heart of a farmer of that day and generation differed in nowise from one of the present, albeit more than a century apart in time and of an alien race. Fortunately the laws now are kinder, and the weather prophets are fended from the wrath of him who plants and does not gather, who sows and does not reap, because of the rain that is vainly promised and the thunderhead that deludes and deceives. The cheerataghe of Ioco Town were playing in very hard luck. The luring of that particular storm down upon these fertile fields along the Tennessee River devolved immediately upon them, and although the tribesmen were assured that the failure was to be attributed to the wickedness of their own hearts and their frequent misdoings, a farmer at odds with the weather is the least amiable of the brute creation, and there was an unmistakable tendency to retort the fault upon the lack of skill of the cheerataghe.
Moy Toy cast a glance of indifferent interest at the group at the further side of the square (recent rains had fallen at Tellico, long, soft, satisfying—what is now known as a “season”), where the cheerataghe of Ioco were plying their invocations and spells, surrounded by a number of the agricultural sufferers and several of the second men; their plumed heads and scantily covered, copper-tinted bodies were all distinct in the weird, dun light under the purple cloud, and against the white and gray fleckings of the tortuous river, and the pallid expanse of the wilting corn. No one was alert to listen to what might pass between Moy Toy and the foreign white man. What would a drought-harassed farmer of that region to-day care for issues of diplomacy if he fancied he had a chance of working a charm on the weather!
“Will there be enough of the powder?” Moy Toy asked tentatively. His experience was limited, but he knew enough of the world to be aware of the folly of exchanging a small certainty for a large possibility—a small massacre for a large war of doubtful outcome.
“Powder!” exclaimed the soldier with a scornful laugh. “I can teach you to make powder! The country is full of the materials for its manufacture.”
With the keen observation of the scientist and the alertness of a schemer to turn every incident to account, he had taken note in his short stay of the nitrous caves of the country, of its resources for sulphur, of the infinite growths of dogwood and of willows along the streams to furnish the requisite grade of charcoal. In later wars these yielded their benefits to discerning labor, but even so early Laroche fully appreciated these opportunities and projected thus using them.
Moy Toy, standing on the opposite side of the sacred fire, gazed at him for one moment in blank wonderment, the curiously wrought stone pipe in his hand, slipping through his nerveless fingers, shattered unheeded on one of the steatite rocks that supported the fire. And he—Moy Toy, the fool, the madman, but for an accident, a mere trifle—would have laid in ashes this fine brain with its curious workings, its many shifts, its convolutions of knowledge that exceeded the wisdom of all the men he had ever known from far or near,—all would now be a mere cinder, the sport of the wind, all lost to the Cherokee nation and the aggrandizement of the great chief, Moy Toy! With the recollection he became anxiously apprehensive. That night—that night of woe, while the slaughtered braves were laid in their hasty graves, and the prisoner awaited their fair passage to a world beyond in a bitter suspense that was to inaugurate and augment his destined tortures—would the memory of those anguished hours, guarded on the summit of the high mound, move this Frenchman to withhold aught of this vital, this all-important, this intensely coveted knowledge from the Indian warriors? Moy Toy’s mental attitude, wistful, repentant, propitiatory, was distinctly meek, as intently listening he stared at Laroche, who was a trifle surprised at his agitation.
“Being a warrior, a soldier, I have learned many things, Moy Toy, that you would like to know, during my service as an officer of engineers and artillery,—and that would be of help to you against the English.”
One could hardly say how many months of work had gone into the fashioning and polishing of that pipe, a fine bit of carved stone, a unique specimen of aboriginal art, shattered on the ground, but Moy Toy’s fingers were unconscious that it had escaped them.
He essayed some anxious phrases of apology.
They hardly knew what they did that night—surely they were sorely tried—an embassy received in peace and honor, and ending in a murder of unsuspecting and generous hosts—he feared Laroche had been inconsiderately treated, but prayed he would forgive the ignorance of the poor Cherokees, and help them against their foe.
The subtle Frenchman now stared hard at the subtle Indian.
“Oh,” Laroche said at last, airily, yet still at a loss, “you did the best you could, no doubt, in turning me over to the care of these white people who treated my ills in a way to which I and they are accustomed. No, no; although they are British the quarrel would have been had you persisted in keeping me at Tellico.”
Moy Toy shut his mouth so suddenly that his tongue was in some sharp danger from his teeth. Evidently by reason of his delirium Laroche had forgotten the aggressions upon his liberty, the length and torment of his captivity, the preparations for his torture and death in satisfaction of the crimes of his Choctaw colleague. The happy fantasy! The blessed fever!
“There is one boon I shall exact for the service I have already rendered you,” Laroche continued, seriously, weightily. “It is my pleasure to ask it, yet it is also your interest to grant it, and as a pledge of the future. I jeopardized my interest and promotion, I braved the wrath of Mingo Push-koosh, that a woman’s life—your sister’s life—should not be placed in peril. Much evil came of this,—but I risked most.”
Moy Toy, gazing fixedly at him, thought he little knew how much he had risked.
“And now,” continued Laroche, “I ask in return a safe conduct for another woman—the daughter of the Scotch trader.”
He paused with some sudden impediment of speech, his eyes seeming lighter, clearer than their wont, cast upward at the lowering storm cloud.
“This British family have saved my life by their care, and I owe them their lives in recompense. They must go in safety, but—I promise you”—once more that sudden hiatus in his fluency—“they shall not return.”
He was not as observant as usual, or he must have discerned some extreme and secret joy beneath Moy Toy’s calm exterior. That unique and quaint phenomenon of knowledge so delighted the crafty Indian!—that he should hold the key of incidents of great import in the experience of this man who was himself unconscious of them! And in the excess of his relief that Laroche remembered naught of his cruel perils, averted by a mere accident, the chief could have cried out in sheer, inarticulate joy. But he said, quite simply, that Laroche was his best beloved friend, whose injunctions should be obeyed, that he loved every hair on his head, that he should never forget the rescue of his sister, which, indeed, he felt he should have remembered earlier, for it was his nephew who should be his heir and hold the sway of Great Tellico.
“The life of the trader’s daughter, her safety, and the safety of all the trader’s household I demand for that service,” Laroche repeated solemnly. “And as it is assured to them so will I requite you. I will promise you then all the aid that mind and heart and hand can give you hereafter. I swear it.”
Moy Toy renewed his protestations of friendship and reiterated his apologies. The tone and tenor of his remarks implied acquiescence, and Laroche felt no lack. But Moy Toy looked after him cynically as he took his way back toward the dwelling of the trader, for the first large drops of the impending storm were falling slowly through the air. A breathless cry, like a gasp, went up from the rain enchanters at the other side of the square; then ensued silence, tense, expectant, painful. The farmer, poor sport of the skies, was aware that this limited manifestation of the obedience of the powers of the air rescued the reputation of the cheerataghe, since rain had fallen at their bidding, yet did not save the crop, and, reduced to the position of the only sufferer in the event, hung in desperate suspense upon the developments of the next few moments.
The trading-house, with its door broadly aflare, giving a glimpse of an orderly assortment of merchandise within, had on the roofless porch or platform a group of the young packmen who had accompanied Callum MacIlvesty from Charlestown. They were wearying for their return thither, since so many restrictions had been laid on their conduct and language, lest they give offense to the Indians and bring down reprisal while they had in their keeping the precious charge of the young lady, “little lassie Lilias,” as auld Jock loved to call her. This restraint greatly irked them, for they were accustomed to giving and receiving hard knocks, speaking their minds without fear or favor and with a very rough edge to their tongues. One, fallen a trifle ill, declared that he would be well in a trice if he were not “just dying of all these manners!” Sodden themselves in a thousand superstitions, they had taken a keen interest in the weather bewitchments, in which, from these motives, they had been forbidden to mingle. They had neither the time nor the inclination to notice the invalid hastening away out of the rain to shelter, but his disordered step, his pallid countenance, his agitated mien did not fail altogether of observation. The door of the dwelling opened as he approached it, and there stood Lilias holding it against the wind. So incongruous seemed her fair face and golden hair and whitely glimmering attire with the sullen aspect of the approaching storm, the gloom-darkened woods on every hand, that she suggested an affinity with a sunlit scene that glimmered along the far perspective of the ranges where a rift in the cloud admitted a suffusion of ethereal golden light, in which the mountains were azure, the woods of a fine, intense jade hue, the flash of a cataract like molten silver,—the very apotheosis of scenery, some transient glimpse of the fair land of Canaan.
Laroche’s lip trembled as he looked at her—so beautiful, so good, so cruelly endangered.
She noticed his pained expression, but misunderstood its meaning. With the constant household anxiety as to his health—“Ye hae been lang awa wi’ that dour carle, Moy Toy, an’ ye look pale. Set ye down by the fire, an’ I’ll gie ye a posset, before the others get here to beg for tae half o’ it.”
He loved to do her bidding, even if it were not blended with many odd “sups an’ bites,” of a quality peculiarly acceptable to an invalid’s capricious appetite. He would have drunk poison as readily for her sake, he said to himself, and added with a grim smile that he might do that yet. For he had come to a full realization of late. He consciously recoiled from all his loyal plans, his secret orders, his duties, his pride of intellect, of achievement, his past, his profession, his future. He said to himself that he would have liked the life of a poppet—he could have felt if he had been made of wood or wax—to be placed thus in a corner; to gaze at her with unwinking eyes; to be given a bowl of drink, withdrawn in a minute, as she must needs test with her own lips whether it were not too hot. He sought with sedulous care the section of the rim her lips had touched. Poison! but the cup of the present held nectar! He would have been satisfied—would have kissed the hand of fate had he been only her pet dog.
A great collie, old, cosmopolitan,—he had come across on the ship with her father in the days “lang syne,” and exceedingly surprising did he find the experience of a collie of degree on the ocean,—had deserted the trading-house, since her arrival, repudiated his master, forgotten his friends, the packmen, cut his Indian acquaintance dead, to lie by her hearth, to follow her footsteps, to feed from her hand, to sit with his head against her knee and his listless body, dislocated, weighing against her, to whine in jealous disfavor and an effort to attract her attention had she more than a sentence or two to exchange with any interlocutor save him.
“Whist, whist, hinny,”—she would gently smite his lolling head—“ye’ll talk soon, and then I’ll ken ye’re no canny!”
For this, even so little as this, Laroche felt at times that he would barter his learning, his prospects, his identity, his duty. Sometimes he sought to justify his long, unnecessary lingering here, despite his consciousness of the fact that his very individuality was a dangerous secret. Were it known or suspected that he was employed in the French interest, he could not hope to escape arrest, and thereby injury to the cause he represented. Whatever might be the will of personal friends, should he retain them in the stress of these disclosures, hard usage would he encounter at the hands of the British colonial authorities—perhaps even death; nay, had there not been a reward offered for the scalp of every Frenchman busy among the Indians? And certainly in such an adverse development he could not count on the adhesion of the fickle Cherokees, especially to their detriment! But for this one rift in his loyalty, he was wholly devoted to the Louisiana interests which he had so zealously sought to advance. This—this was his own personal beguilement. He would have known how to resist his wonted allurements,—the pride of intellect, the pampered independence and security of life, the world, the flesh, and the devil. He was full armed against them; the attack would have been met by hardy resistance along those lines. But to divert him from his duty, his loyalty to his political trust, his obedience to his officers by means of a virtuous attachment to a being so gentle, so fair, so good that “no man could think on evil seeing her”—this seemed a device worthy of the devil, and very like him; for this attachment would have done him honor in any station of life save this, harbored deep, deep in the subtle, deceitful heart of an enemy in the guise of a friend, a spy upon his benefactor, the destroyer of their simple and limited and humble prosperity.
Not so subtle as he thought—for now the schemer was but the man. Worse still, for his secret, he was a Frenchman. Sometimes as he looked at her those keen, eagle-like eyes of his softened suddenly, with his emotional French susceptibility, and filled with tears. These tears she saw, and in responsive emotion her own would start, trembling, to the eyelids. She was not used to the sight of tears in a man’s eyes. Callum MacIlvesty had not trafficked with such gear since he had first gotten afoot on his sturdy infant legs and began his long travels through this weary world. Sometimes, taking a pinch out of the proffered snuffbox of a merchant of degree in Charlestown, Jock Lesly, who could carry his liquor well enough, would find this unaccustomed gentility of the mull culminating in a sneeze and water in the eyes. But such tears as these of Laroche’s—tears of sheer pleasure, of subtle sorrow, of hopeless love, of the sweet emotion of looking upon her—she had not witnessed, and yet, enlightened by a kindred sentiment, she could appreciate; and the difference of the manifestation for her sake from aught else she had ever known made it seem the deeper, the truer, the dearer.
Certainly it was more picturesque than the obvious signs of Callum’s dissatisfaction in an unhappy love, though, to be sure, she took scant heed of them. When “ses jupons” swished out of the room in his swinging stride, she was cognizant neither of the cause nor the circumstance of his sudden taking of offense. And this brought slowly to his intelligence the fact that she was equally unmindful of his embarrassed return, as he sat glowering at Laroche across the fire, well aware that his watchful rival fully appreciated and rejoiced in the futility of his show of anger. Once, in awkward inadvertence, Callum stepped on the collie’s tail, and the shrieks that the doggie sent up to high heaven would seem to imply that there was no other canine so ruthlessly afflicted in the universe. Lilias rebuked MacIlvesty’s carelessness in a tone which conveyed genuine indignation, and he could only protest in a gruff monosyllable; while the beast, leaning against her knee, causelessly sobbing for half an hour, would burst forth in a plaintive yelp whenever his eyes met Callum’s, and her “Whist, hinny, whist” had all the adverse sentiment that might have been expressed in an admonition, “I wad not tak ony notice o’ him.”
Callum could not even mend the fire with wonted deftness, nor keep his temper when the logs of wood would roll down, but would administer a kick of such free force as to send the red-hot coals flying about the puncheon floor and all the family scuttling to catch them up before the whole “bigging suld be in a low.” Even in the assiduous comity of his conversations with Jock Lesly he often seemed to forget names of people and places in Scotland with which he was obviously familiar, and he was curiously uninformed of all calculated to interest the elder in the doings of the regiment. Sometimes, indeed, his sentence broke off in the middle, and he would fall into a revery, from which he was only roused by the sudden jocularly upbraiding voice of Jock Lesly, and once more with galvanic earnestness he would essay his method of propitiation. Matters went better with him when the simple and unobservant Jock Lesly himself did the talking, which was usually the case, in great fullness of detail and long, circuitous routes of narrative, leaving his auditor scant duty save to murmur “Ou!” “Ay!” “I’se warrant ye!” at intervals, these dicta being uncompromising and calculated to be generally applicable to any situation. His supplantation was definite and complete.
And still Laroche, despite his qualms of conscience, putting aside his repentance as for indulgence at a more convenient season, interpreted all the indicia of the young Highlander’s state of mind, felt the complacence of a favored rival, and experienced all the joys of triumph over the poor young Callum, as if he had a full intention to enter a contest against him for this prize. True he was touched with the generosity of the young mountaineer, who had shown at the first some definite proclivity to inquire into the stranger’s means as well as local habitation and association, but becoming impressed from some casual phrase with the idea that the guest was of meagre resources and had experienced much financial hardship, he withdrew all his forces along that line. The reverse, in fact, was the case, for Laroche’s fortune was not inconsiderable and he enjoyed fair prospects. The error of his magnanimous rival elicited that æsthetic sentiment, that prepossession in favor of whatever is noble, which a certain type delights to admire rather than to emulate. It stimulated a degree of reciprocal interest in the young Highlander,—a sort of curiosity as to his status which comprised several incongruities. MacIlvesty’s poverty was obvious, not merely from his humble estate as a foot-soldier, but often from allusions to it that escaped him. He had the manner of a gentleman of a high type,—he was lofty, yet not assuming; kind without condescension. He was often merry but never clownish, and by turns grave and dignified without affectation. Yet his education was most limited; he notably lacked the training appertaining to a certain social rank, while possessing all its other worthy attributes and inherent values; his experience of travel was the service of the Forty-Second, the troop ship, and the forced march of the wilderness.
Laroche, in his idle interest, had had an intermittent intention of inquiring directly of Jock Lesly concerning the inconsistency of the young Highlander’s endowments and position, but the awkwardness of this display of sheer curiosity was obviated when one day the trader complained of a freak of taciturnity which he declared Callum had shown.
“I canna get muckle mair talk out o’ Callum now than when he kenned naught but the Gaelic.”
Then in reply to a question which seemed to express but a civil interest, “Ou, ay,—Callum was near grown when he had the meenister for a tutor, an’ the callant got to his English. Ou, ay,—the family hae had hard straits,—but, wow, man! the clan were a’ out in the Fifteen, an’ then what was left o’ them went out in the Forty-five!” Though not without sympathy, he spoke with obvious reprehension of this clan’s misfortunes, for Jock Lesly was of the Lowland Scotch and had always been well affected to government. “An’ they lost much blood, an’ a head or twa amang them afterward,—an’ a’ the land was forfeited to the crown—there were twa or three titles amang them, a yerl an’ a baronet or twa—I wot na what, but a’ very fine—if it were not for the attainder. Callum is kin to gre’t folk! But what’s a title—neither fitten to eat nor to drink, I trow. I wad wuss, though, the callant did own the land that the government took away from his father,—wha died in hiding after the Forty-five,—an’ the rents, that he might hae made a gentleman o’ himsel’ instead o’ just a buirdly foot-sodger.”
He was a gentleman even without the land or the rents, and the Frenchman piqued himself upon his subtlety of discernment in having perceived this fact in so untoward a guise as a “foot-sodger” who shoulders a musket for pay.
For these reasons now and again Laroche experienced a compunction that he should be destroying the prospect of the domestic happiness of this man, when circumstances—nay, his life was at stake!—forbade any serious intentions on his own part. And yet, and the thought was subtly sweet, she loved him—he was sure of it—as he loved her. But in the dark hours of the night, when the house was silent, all wrapped in slumber, a certain wakefulness had begun to harass him, like a Nemesis; a voice of reproof sounded in all his reflections, of warning, of presentiment, the prophecy of the future. When thus repentance and doubt fell upon him he would urge in extenuation that if he had idly won her heart it was but in the interests of that disguise still so imperative upon him. Yet the thought of their kindness was like coals of fire. They had brought him back from the verge of the grave. They had lavished their best upon him, the stranger, for aught they knew humble of station and penniless. Still, and it was the trifle that wrung his heart with the most poignant pang, the best room in the house was his; the graces of the bed curtains; the luxury of the sheets; the cleanly though rude furnishings; all the little comforts packed with the view of her father’s illness, and brought so far through the toilsome wilderness, were for the guest.
The heavy snoring of Jock Lesly would echo from one of the rooms on the other side of the spence, but through the flimsy partition of the adjoining chamber Laroche could often hear the creaking cords of the bedstead as Callum MacIlvesty, sleepless too, flounced back and forth in the instability of his feather bed, restless, anxious, reviewing many trifles fraught with great moment to him, heartsore, weary, and despairing. Laroche commiserated the young Highlander’s sentimental anguish, but he had a sentimental anguish of his own, and he dwelt upon it in alternate pain and pleasure, in an ecstatic torment.
One night as he lay thus, pondering the events of the day, his attention was arrested by a stealthy step. He put his hand under his bolster and grasped the handle of his pistol. He listened hopefully for the stir of the tortured Callum MacIlvesty, but sleep at last and some fond and peaceful dream held the young Scotchman, and naught but the sound of his deep and regular breathing attested his proximity in the next room. Laroche hardly dared cry out and alarm the house, lest the impending demonstration be delayed and renewed at some moment when no one was awake and on guard. Except for the possibility of firing the building, it was in danger of no calamity that could fall upon it without noise. The doors were locked, the batten shutters had heavy bars; therefore he judged it prudent to wait and listen.
There came again the tread of feet, stealthy, quiet as before; the impact of a bare sole upon the ground beneath the window was distinct for a moment. In the blank interval that ensued he heard the continual rise and fall of the breathing of the night; the chiming and chanting of woodland cicada, in regular alternations; the rush of the Tennessee River dashing over the rocks. Once more that sound, as of a bare foot, and again beneath the window.
He was exceedingly deft and light and certain in all his movements; when it had passed he slipped out of his bed and crossed the room to the window, not a sound attesting his progress, save that once a puncheon creaked. He stood for a moment motionless, then peered through the rift between the shutter and the window.
Outside there was a glare—a sudden glare. He saw a figure so grotesque as to recall for a moment the associations of his delirium; then half a dozen figures came into view, all in Indian file, and strangely bedight. They were making the rounds of the house again and again, evidently working a charm. Perfect silence waited on their movements, save always beneath his window the stroke of a bare foot fell on a sleek and clayey space with that slight sibilance that gave him warning. Heads surmounted by torches enclosed in great gourds, hideously painted in the semblance of human faces, showed faces below still more hideously painted; buffalo horns and tails adorned figures grotesquely and silently dancing; others wore bears’ claws and hides; a human panther ran on all fours, now and again leaping so high into the air that he seemed some inconceivable triumph of mechanism instead of a living creature. The soldier felt his heart sink. Seldom did the Indians permit the presence of white strangers in their more national customs, and thus often the depths of their savagery, their fantastic barbarism, lay unrevealed. Some strange significance surely marked this grim pantomime, enacted in the darkest hour of the night about the silent dwelling, while its unconscious inmates slept. Their lives might seem to hang by a hair. He bethought himself, with a pang of terror, of the young packmen quartered in the attic of the trading-house—surely the glance of a wakeful eye must prelude the crack of a rifle, for could a sane man imagine this to be aught but the revelings of the creatures in the midst of an assault. But while he gazed in a terror he could hardly suppress yet dared not voice, in one instant, while the panther was in the mid-air trajectory of one of its wild leaps, every light was extinguished, every figure vanished; and lurk and listen as he might for the impact of the bare foot upon the clayey soil which would intimate that in darkness the strange procession continued its rounds, he heard only the vague sighings of the melancholy woods, a creak once of the timbers of the house, and again the voice of the Tennessee River dashing against its rocks.