The Story of Old Fort Loudon Part 2

"_Marcher_ in shoes! _Mong Dew!_ _Ces souliers_ couldn't have been made _pour marcher_ in!" he retorted, with a funny grimace.

The facial contortion seemed suddenly to anger Willinawaugh, who had chanced to observe them; to suggest recollections that he resented, and the reminder shared in his disfavor. He abruptly wreathed his fierce countenance into a simulacrum of Hamish's facetious mug; he shrugged his shoulders with a genuine French twist; and anything more incongruously and grotesquely frightful and less amusing could hardly be imagined.

"Fonny! vely fonny! Flanzy!" he exclaimed harshly. "Balon Des Johnnes!"[5]

His unwilling companions gazed at him with as genuine a terror as if the devil himself had entered into him and thus expressed his presence among them. Willinawaugh abruptly discontinued his "fonny" grimace, that had a very ferocity of rebuke, and leaning from his horse with an expression of repudiation, spat upon the ground. Then he began to talk about Baron Des Johnnes and his sudden disappearance from the Cherokee Nation.

At Chote, it seemed, was this gay and facetious Frenchman, this all-accomplished Baron Des Johnnes, who could speak seven different Indian languages with equal facility, to say nothing of a trifle or two such as English, Spanish, German, and French, of course!--at Chote, City of Refuge, where, if he had shed the blood of the native Cherokee on his own threshold, his life would have been sacred even from the vengeance of the Indian's brother! And suddenly came the Carolina Colonel Sumter, returning with an Indian delegation that had been to Charlestown, and found the Frenchman here. And with Colonel Sumter was Oconostota, king of the Cherokees, and other head-men, who had just signed a treaty at Charlestown, promising to kill or arrest any Frenchman discovered within the Cherokee Nation. And who so appalled as Oconostota, to see his friend, the gay Baron Des Johnnes, lying on a buffalo skin before the fire, smoking his pipe in the chief's own wigwam. And when Colonel Sumter demanded his arrest Oconostota refused and pleaded the sanct.i.ty of the place--the City of Refuge. And Baron Des Johnnes arose very smiling and bland, and bowed very low, and reminded Colonel Sumter that he was in Chote--Old Town!

And what said Colonel Sumter? He spoke in the English, like a wolf might talk--"Old Town--or New Town--I'll take _you_ to Charles Town!"

And what did the Baron Des Johnnes? Not a Cherokee; not bound by the ever-sacred laws of the City of Refuge! Although surrounded by his friends he struck not one blow for his freedom, as man to man. He suffered himself to be arrested, single-handed, by this wolf of a Colonel--Colonel Sumter--saying in gentle protest, "_Mais, M'sieur!_"

"_Mais, M'sieur!_" grimaced Willinawaugh, in mimicry. Then "_Mais M'sieur!_" he threw up both hands. "_Mais, M'sieur!_" he shrieked in harsh derision to the unresponsive skies.

Alexander knew that the Baron Des Johnnes had been taken to Charlestown and examined, and although nothing could be proved against him, it had been deemed expedient to s.h.i.+p him off to England. Perhaps the authorities were of opinion that a man with such conversational facilities as eight or ten languages had best be kept where "least said, soonest mended."

But for the repeated harsh treatment that the Cherokees sustained from the English settlers, the ingratiating arts of the French might have failed to find so ready a response. Sedate of manner and of a grave cast of mind themselves, the Indians could ill tolerate the levity, the _gaiete de coeur_, of the French, whom they p.r.o.nounced "light as a feather, fickle as the wind, and deceitful as serpents."

With this intimation of Willinawaugh's reserves of irritability the pioneers journeyed on, a trifle more ill at ease in mind, which was an added hards.h.i.+p, since their physical sufferings were intensifying with every long mile of continued effort. They began to wonder how they, supposed to be French, would fare when they should meet other Cherokees, perhaps more disposed than Willinawaugh to adhere to the terms of their treaty to kill or make prisoner every Frenchman who should venture into the Cherokee Nation, yet on the other hand perhaps more competent by virtue of a familiarity with the language to detect and resent the fact that they were not of the French nationality.

Already Willinawaugh had counseled that they should go further than Chote, to ply their trade in furs, for Chote was dangerously near the English fort for a Frenchman; one of the Tuckaleechee towns on the Canot River was a preferable location, and he promised to contrive to slip them past Fort Loudon without the commandant's knowledge.

They restrained all expression of objection or discomfort and bore their growing distresses with a fort.i.tude that might rival the stoicism of a savage. Only when an aside was possible, MacLeod besought his wife to loose the burden of one of the packhorses and mount the animal herself.

She shook her head resolutely. She had already suffered grief enough for the household stores she had left behind. To these precious remaining possessions she clung desperately. "When I can no longer walk," she said, with a flash in her eye which admonished him to desist.

They offered no comment on their route, although it seemed that they had climbed the mountain two days ago for the express purpose of descending it again, but on the eastern side. MacLeod, however, at length realized that the Indian was following some faint trace, well distinguishable to his skilled eye, and the difficulties of the steep descent were rendered more tolerable by his faith in the competence of his guide. The packhorses found it hard work filing down the sharp declivities and sustaining the equilibrium of their burden. The chief, with his lordly impatience and superiority to domestic concerns, evidently fumed because of the delay they occasioned, and had he not supposed that the contents of the bales of goods were merchandise and trinkets to be bartered with the Indians for peltry, instead of Odalie's slim resources of housekeeping wares,--sheets, and table-linen and garments, and frugal supplies of flax and seeds,--he would not have suffered the slow progress.

Through the new country below, that they had watched from the heights, they went now, the mountains standing sentinel all around the horizon--east and west, and north and south, sometimes nearer, sometimes more distant; always mountains in sight, like some everlastingly uplifting thought, luring a life to a higher plane of being. Now and again the way wended along the bank of a river, with the steeps showing in the waters below as well as against the sky above, and one day when they had but recently broken their camp on its sh.o.r.es there shot out from beneath an overhanging boscage of papaw trees a swift, arrowy thing akin to a fish, akin to a bird--an Indian canoe, in which were three braves.

The poor pioneers were exhausted with their long and swift journey; their hearts, which had been stanch within them, could but fail with the failure of physical strength. Their courage only sufficed to hold them to a mute endurance of a dreadful expectation, and a suspense that set every nerve a-quiver. The boatmen had cried out with a wild, fierce note of surprise on perceiving the party, and the canoe was coming straight across to the bank as fast as the winglike paddles could propel it.

Willinawaugh rode slowly down to meet them, and in contrast to the usual impa.s.sive manners of the Indians he replied to the agitated hail in a tone of tense and eager excitement. There ensued evidently an exchange of news, of a nature which boded little good to the settlers. Dark anger gathered on the brow of the chieftain as he listened when the braves had bounded upon the bank, and more than once he cried out inarticulately like a wild beast in pain and rage. Perhaps it is rare that a man has such a moment in his life as Alexander experienced when one of the savages, a ferocious brute, turned with a wild, untamed, indigenous fury kindling in his eyes, and drawing his tomahawk from his belt smiled fiercely upon the silent, motionless little band, his deadly racial hatred reinforced by a thousand bitter grudges and wrongs.

Hamish's fingers trembled on his gun, but ostensibly no one moved.

Willinawaugh hastily interposed, speaking but the magic words--"Flanzy--Flinch!" Then still in English, as if to rea.s.sure the pioneers--"Go Chote--Old Town--buy fur!"

The hatred died out of the fierce Indian faces. The French in the South, as has been said, had always used every art to detach the Cherokees from the British interest, and even now the men who had abandoned Fort Duquesne, escaping down the Ohio River, were sending emissaries up the Tsullakee, to the Lower Towns, there finding fruitful soil in which to sow the seeds of dissension against the English. The a.s.sertion that these travelers were French, and the fact that by receiving persons of this nation the Cherokees could requite with even a trivial and diplomatic injury some faint degree of the wrong which they considered they had sustained from the Virginians, was more than adequate to nullify for the time the rage they felt against these pioneers as of the white race.

With the instinct of hospitality, which is a very marked element of the Cherokee nature, one of them signed with a free and open gesture to the boat.

"_Beaucoup marchez!_" he said, smiling with an innocent suavity like a child, "Svim!"

He did not mean literally "swim," and to offer them the facilities of the Tennessee River for that purpose, although this might have been inferred. But the pioneers understood the proffer of the canoe for the remainder of their journey, and a deadly terror seized the heart of Odalie as she marked the demonstrations of the others in pulling Willinawaugh forcibly from his horse in spite of his feigned objections, for the canoe could hold but three persons. Little choice had she, however. Willinawaugh, maintaining the affable demeanor of a guest of conscious distinction, was already seated in the boat, and pointed out Alexander as his preferred companion. For once the Scotchman disregarded the wishes of his guide, philosopher, and friend, and taking his wife by the hand motioned to her to step over the side of the little craft.

Odalie could only look reproachfully at him; she could not contend with her lord and master in the presence of savages--such are the privileges of civilization! The Indians, somewhat accustomed by the talk, and on occasion the example, of the French traders, and perhaps by traditions from the white settlements, to the idea of the extreme value that the paleface was wont to place on wife or daughter, scornfully marked the instance, but beyond an expressive "Ugh!" naught was said. The child was lifted to Odalie's arms--the cat strapped pappoose-wise to Josephine's back and accommodating itself quiescently to the situation.

Alexander had never intended to embark Odalie and Josephine alone with the Indians, although his will was but a slight thing, so entirely were they now in the power of the savages; he motioned to Hamish to take the paddle, and with the slight mixture of French and Cherokee at his command, intimated to the apparent owner of the boat that he would rather walk by his side and profit by his converse than to be able to sail at will on the water like the swan there--a large and handsome bird, who was giving the finest exhibition of that method of progression to be easily found anywhere, with her white neck arched, her gliding motion, and snowy breast reflected in the clear water.

And so Odalie had parted from her husband, without so much as a glance of farewell! Perhaps he dared not look at her. So far they had come together, and now in these wild fastnesses, among these blood-loving fiends in the likeness of humanity, they were separated to meet when?--where? Perchance no more. She could not--would not--leave him thus. She would turn back at the last moment! She would go back!

She rose to her feet so precipitately that with the s.h.i.+fting of her weight the canoe careened suddenly and was momentarily in danger of capsizing with all on board. Willinawaugh glanced up with a kindling eye and a ferocious growl. Hamish, throwing himself skillfully on the opposite side, adroitly trimmed the boat. His look of warning, upbraiding and yet sympathizing, steadied Odalie's nerves as she sank back into her place. She tactfully made it appear that she had accidentally come near to dropping the little girl from her grasp and rising to recover her had shaken the poise of the frail craft.

Willinawaugh's mutter of dissatisfaction showed that he esteemed the possibility no very great mischance, and set no high store on Josephine.

Now and again he eyed the cat, too, malevolently, as if he could ill brook her mannerisms and pampered mien. Hamish had an uncomfortable idea that the Cherokee was not familiar with animals of this kind, and that he harbored a wonder if Kitty would not serve her best and n.o.blest possibilities in a savory stew. But for himself Hamish avoided the Indian's eyes with their curious painted circles of black and white, as much as he might, for whenever their glances met, Willinawaugh's facial contortion to deride the "fonny" disposition he deemed a part of Hamish's supposed French nature so daunted the boy that he bent his head as well as his muscles to the work.

That day was like a dream to Odalie, and, indeed, from the incongruity of her mental images she hardly knew whether she was sleeping or waking.

One moment it seemed to her that she was in Carolina, in the new frame mansion that she had always thought so fine, sitting on the arm of her grandmother's chair, with her dark hair against the white locks and the snowy cap, while she babbled, in the sweet household patois of French children that has no lexicon, and no rules, and is handed down from one generation to another, her girlish hopes, and plans, and anxieties, to find the grandmother's fine, old, deft hand smooth all the difficulties away and make life easy, and hope possible, and trouble a mere shadow.

Alas! that brightening perspective of the colonial garden, where the jasmine, gold and white, clung to the tall trellises, and the clove gillyflower, and the lilies and roses grew in the borders in the broad suffusions of the suns.h.i.+ne, was metamorphosed to the wide spread of the Tennessee River, with the noon-day blaze on its burnished expanse of ripples; and grand'maman had long since ceased her ministry of soothing and consolation, and found her own comfort in the peace and quiet of the grave. And ere Odalie could suffer more than a pang to realize that she was so far from that grave, her head drooped once more--she was asleep.

No; she was awake, awake and splendid in a white dress, her beautiful bridal dress in which she had looked a very queen, with her grand'maman's pearl necklace, itself an heirloom, about her white throat. And so, standing at the altar of the little church with Alexander, and much light about her, and a white dress, oh, very white--and suddenly! all the church is stricken to darkness. No; there is light again!

It was a flash from a thunder cloud, reflected in sinister, forked lines in the Tennessee River, so that they seemed in the very midst of the lightning, until it vanished into the darkness of a lowering black sky, that overhung the water and made all the woods appear bleak and leafless, though here and there still a red tree blazed. The world was drearier for these grim portents of storm, for all the way hitherto fair weather had smiled upon their progress. Still she could not heed--she did not care even when the rain came down and pitilessly beat upon her white face; she did not know when Fifine crept under the shawl which Hamish threw around her, and that the frightened little girl held to her tight with both arms around her waist, while the pioneer cat very discreetly nestled down in the basket on Josephine's back. She was not roused even by loud voices when later a pettiaugre, a much larger boat than theirs, pulled alongside with eight or ten warriors and remained in close and unremitting conversation with Willinawaugh for several miles.

Poor Hamish could hardly sustain himself. He felt practically alone.

Odalie was, he thought, on the verge of death from exhaustion and realized naught of her surroundings. His brother had been left in these wild woods with a party of savages, who were as likely to murder him for a whim or for the treasures of the bales which the packhorses carried, as to respect the safe conduct of Willinawaugh and the supposed character of French traders. This, Hamish was aware, hardly sufficed now, so unrestrained was the ferocity of the glances cast upon them by the Indians in the pettiaugre alongside--so like the glare of a savage catamount, ready to leap upon its prey and yet with a joyance in its ferocity, as if this rage were not the pain of anger but the pleasure of it.

What subtle influence roused Odalie at last she could hardly have said; perhaps the irresistible torpor of exhaustion had in some sort recruited her faculties. The storm was gone, unseasonable and transient, and only a broken remnant of its clouds hung about the western mountains. Toward the east the sky was clear and a dull fluctuation of sunset, alternating with shadow, was on the landscape. As a sudden suffusion of this broad, low, dusky glare lay upon the scene for a moment, she saw against the dark blue Chilhowee Mountain in the middle distance something glimmering and waving, and as she strained her eyes it suddenly floated broadly forth to the breeze,--the blended cross of St. George and St. Andrew blazoned on the British flag.

In one moment she was strong again; alert, watchful, brave, despite that boat close alongside and the alternate questions and remonstrances of the fierce and cruel Indians. One of them, the light of a close and fine discernment in his savage features, was contending that Willinawaugh was deceived; that these were no French people; that the cast of the face of the "young dog" was English; he looked like the Virginia settlers and hunters; even like the men at the fort.

Willinawaugh had the air of deigning much to consider the plea that the other Indians preferred. He only argued astutely that they all spoke French among themselves,--man, boy, squaw, and pappoose. They showed grat.i.tude when he had promised them that they should not be obliged to pa.s.s the English fort and risk the chance of detection. He intended to slip them up the Tellico River where it flows into the Tennessee a mile on the hither side of the fort and thence make their way to a remoter Indian town than Chote.

The skeptical Cherokee, Savanukah, immediately a.s.serted boastfully that he spoke "Flinch" himself and would test the nationality of the boy.

Hamish had never had great scholastic advantages and had st.u.r.dily resisted those that Odalie would have given him. He remembered with despair the long lines of French verbs in the little dog's-eared green book that all her prettiest sisterly arts could never induce him to learn to conjugate. Why should he ever need more talking appliance than he already possessed, he used to argue. He could tell all he knew, and more besides, in the somewhat limited English vocabulary at his command.

"Parlez vous? Parlez, fou!" he was wont to exclaim, feeling very clever.

How should he have dreamed that Odalie's little _Vocabulaire Francais_ would be more efficacious to save his life than his rifle and his deadly aim?

[Ill.u.s.tration: "The canoe rocked in the swirls."]

He looked toward her once more in his despair. The boats were now among a series of obstructions formed by floating debris of a recent storm,--many branches of trees, here and there a bole itself, uprooted and flung into the river by the violence of the tempest,--which necessitated careful steering and paddling and watching the current to take them through safely. It threw the two boats apart for a s.p.a.ce, prolonging Hamish's suspense, yet serving as a reprieve to the ordeal of his examination as to his proficiency in the French language by the erudite Cherokee. The canoe rocked in the swirls, and although Willinawaugh sat still in stately impa.s.siveness, Odalie and Fifine clung to the gunwale. Hamish's eyes met Odalie's, which were clear, liquidly bright, as if fired with some delightful antic.i.p.ation, and yet weary and feverishly eager. Oh, this was delirium! She did not realize her surroundings; her intelligence was gone! His poor young heart swelled nearly to bursting as he turned back with aching arms and dazzled eyes and throbbing, feverish pulses to the careful balancing of the paddle, for Willinawaugh was an exacting c.o.xswain. Hamish could not know what vision had been vouchsafed to Odalie in the midst of the gloomy woods while the other Indians and Willinawaugh had wrangled and he had hung absorbed upon their words as on the decrees of fate. Even she at first had deemed it but hallucination, the figment of some fever of the brain--this had been a day of dreams! Yet there it had stood on the river bank with the primeval woods around it, with the red sunset amongst the clouds above it, with the sunset below it, reflected in the current of the river, full of sheen and full of shadow,--a figure, a hunter, looking out at the boats; a white man,--a man she had never before seen.

How he stared! She dared make no signal of distress. She only turned her head that she might look back covertly with a face full of meaning.

The next moment she saw him mount his horse in the buffalo path in the cane-brake and gallop off at a breakneck speed.

But was she sure--had she seen aught, she asked herself, tremulously.

For it had been a day of dreams--it had been a day of dreams! And the confluence of the Tellico River with the Tennessee might be so hopelessly near!

The progress of both boats was very slow now, upstream against the current and the debris of the storm; even the crew of Indian braves needed to pull with vigor to make the clear water again. When this was reached they rested motionless, the duplication of the pettiaugre and the feather headdress of the Cherokees as clearly pictured in the bright, still reaches of the river as above in the medium of the air between sunset and dusk.

They were all looking back, all commenting on Hamish's slow progress. He had the current and his exhaustion both against him, and the most earnest and well-equipped postulant of culture would hardly be eager to go to an examination in the French language when his life was to be the forfeit of failure. The sound of the river was loud on the evening air; a wind was astir on either bank,--a pillaging force, rifling the forest of the few leaves it might still treasure; now and then a scurrying cloud of them fled before the blast against the sky; the evening had grown chill; the boy felt its dank depression in every nerve despite the drops of perspiration that stood upon his brow as he too paddled into the clear water. He held the boat stationary by a great effort.

He had come to the end. He could strive no more. He saw Savanukah rise up in the pettiaugre, looking toward him. The next moment the savage turned his head. There was an alien sound upon the air, so close at hand that despite the fret and turmoil of the water, the blare of the wild wind, the tumultuous clas.h.i.+ng together of the bare boughs in the black forest, it arrested the attention. Once more it a.s.serted itself against the tumult, and then Hamish, his head spinning around until he thought that the canoe had broken loose from his mechanical plying of the paddle, recognized the regular rhythmical dash of oars.

CHAPTER III

In the next instant from beyond a curve in the river a boat shot into the current,--a large row-boat, manned by twelve red-coated soldiers, bending to the oars, whose steady strokes sent the craft down the stream with the speed, it seemed, of a meteor.