The Story of Old Fort Loudon

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  Transcriber's note

  Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. A printererror has been changed and is listed at the end. All otherinconsistencies are as in the original.

  THE STORY OF OLD FORT LOUDON

  "The officers expressed their earnest remonstrances."(See page 198.)]

  The Story

  of

  Old Fort Loudon

  By

  Charles Egbert Craddock

  Author of "In the Tennessee Mountains," "The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains," etc., etc.

  With Illustrations by Ernest C. Peixotto

  New York The Macmillan Company

  London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.

  1899

  _All rights reserved_

  Copyright, 1898, By The Macmillan Company.

  _Norwood Press_

  _J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Norwood, Mass., U.S.A._

  Illustrations

  "The officers expressed their earnest remonstrances" (see page 198) _Frontispiece_

  Facing page

  "What more wonderful? What more fearful?" 16

  "The canoe rocked in the swirls" 54

  "And oh, the moment of housewifely pride!" 128

  "Plunging through the gate and half across the parade ground" 240

  Belinda and the Ensign on the moonlit rampart 252

  "The men had been hastily formed into a square" 346

  "He stared forward blankly at the inevitable prospect" 376

  The Story of Old Fort Loudon

  CHAPTER I

  Along the buffalo paths, from one salt-lick to another, a group ofpioneers took a vagrant way through the dense cane-brakes. Never a wheelhad then entered the deep forests of this western wilderness; thefrontiersman and the packhorse were comrades. Dark, gloomy, with long,level summit-lines, a grim outlier of the mountain range, since known asthe Cumberland, stretched from northeast to southwest, seeming as theyapproached to interpose an insurmountable barrier to further progress,until suddenly, as in the miracle of a dream, the craggy wooded heightsshowed a gap, cloven to the heart of the steeps, opening out their pathas through some splendid gateway, and promising deliverance, a new life,and a new and beautiful land. For beyond the darkling cliffs on eitherhand an illuminated vista stretched in every lengthening perspective,with softly nestling sheltered valleys, and parallel lines of distantazure mountains, and many a mile of level woodland high on an elevatedplateau, all bedight in the lingering flare of the yellow, and deep red,and sere brown of late autumn, and all suffused with an opaline haze andthe rich, sweet languors of sunset-tide on an Indian-summer day.

  As that enchanted perspective opened to the view, a sudden joyousexclamation rang out on the still air. The next moment a woman, walkingbeside one of the packhorses, clapped both hands over her lips, andturning looked with apprehensive eyes at the two men who followed her.The one in advance cast at her a glance of keen reproach, and then thewhole party paused and with tense attention bent every faculty tolisten.

  Silence could hardly have been more profound. The regular respiration ofthe two horses suggested sound. But the wind did not stir; the growthsof the limitless cane-brakes in the valley showed no slight quiver inthe delicately poised fibers of their brown feathery crests; the haze,all shot through with glimmers of gold in its gauzy gray folds, restedon the mute woods; the suave sky hung above the purple western heightswithout a breath. No suggestion of motion in all the landscape, save thesudden melting away of a flake of vermilion cloud in a faintly greenexpanse of the crystal heavens.

  The elder man dropped his hand, that had been raised to impose silence,and lifted his eyes from the ground. "I cannot be rid of the idea thatwe are followed," he said. "But I hear nothing."

  Although the eldest of the group, he was still young,--twenty-five,perhaps. He was tall, strong, alert, with a narrow, long face; dark,slow eyes, that had a serious, steadfast expression; dark brown hair,braided in the queue often discarded by the hunters of this day. Acertain staid, cautious sobriety of manner hardly assorted with therough-and-ready import of his garb and the adventurous place and time.Both he and the younger man, who was in fact a mere boy not yetseventeen, but tall, muscular, sinewy,--stringy, one might say,--ofbuild, were dressed alike in loose hunting-shirts of buckskin, heavilyfringed, less for the sake of ornament than the handiness of a selectionof thongs always ready to be detached for use; for the same reason thedeerskin leggings, reaching to the thighs over the knee-breeches andlong stockings of that day, were also furnished with these substantialfringes; shot-pouch and powder-horn were suspended from a leather belt,and on the other side a knife-hilt gleamed close to the body. Both worecoonskin caps, but that of the younger preserved the tail to hang downlike a plume among his glossy brown tangles of curls, which, but for abit of restraining ribbon, resisted all semblance to the gentility of aqueue. The boy was like his brother in the clear complexion and thecolor of the dark eyes and hair, but the expression of his eyes waswild, alert, and although fired with the earnest ardor of first youth,they had certain roguish intimations, subdued now since they were stilland seriously expectant, but which gave token how acceptably he couldplay that cherished _role_, to a secluded and isolated fireside, offamily buffoon, and make gay mirth for the applause of thechimney-corner. The brothers were both shod with deerskin buskins, butthe other two of the party wore the shoe of civilization,--one abrodequin, that despite its rough and substantial materials could butreflect a grace from the dainty foot within it; the other showed thestubby shapes deemed meet for the early stages of the long tramp oflife. The little girl's shoes were hardly more in evidence than themother's, for the skirts of children were worn long, and only now andthen was betrayed a facetious skip of some active toes in the bluntfoot-gear. Their dresses were of the same material, a heavy gray serge,which fact gave the little one much satisfaction, for she consideredthat it made them resemble the cow and calf--both great personages inher mind. But she flattered herself; her aspect in the straight, shortbodice that enclosed her stout little rotund figure, and the quaintwhite mob-cap that encircled her chubby, roseate face, all smiles, andindeterminate nose, and expanded, laughing, red mouth, and white,glittering, irregular teeth, had little in common with the mother whomshe admired and imitated, and but for the remnant of the elder's stuffgown, of which her own was fashioned, the comparison with the cow andcalf would have failed altogether. She was not even a good imitator ofthe maternal methods. Of course the days of her own infancy, recentthough they were, had long been lost to her limited memory, and a tokenof the length of time that they had dwelt in the wilderness, and theimpressions her juvenile faculties had received therefrom might havebeen given by the fact that her doll was reared after pappoose fashion;on her back was slung a basket in the manner of the peripatetic cradleof the Indian women, and from this protruded the head and the widelyopen eyes of a cat slightly past kittenhood, that was adapting itspreferences to the conditions of the journey with a discretion whichmight argue an extension of the powers of instinct in pioneeranimals,--a claim which has often been advanced.

  The cat evidently realized the fact that it was a domesticated creature,that naught was possible for it in these strange woods but speedydest
ruction by savage beast or man, and that decorous submission becamea cat promoted to the estate of a juvenile settler's baby. The cat wasas silent and as motionless during the halt as the rest of the party,looking out watchfully over the shoulder of the little three-year-old,who, with perfect and mute trust, and great, serene eyes, gazed up atthe face of her father, nothing doubting his infinite puissance andwillingness to take care of her. When he spoke and the tension was over,she began to skip once more, the jostled cat putting out her claws tohold to the wicker-work of her basket; the two had ridden most of theday on one of the packhorses, their trifling weight adding but little tothe burden of the scanty store of clothing and bedding, the cooking andfarming utensils, the precious frying-pan and skillet, the invaluableaxe, hand-saw, auger, and hoe,--the lares and penates of the pioneer.There were some surveying-instruments, too, and in the momentaryrelaxation of suspense the elder of the brothers consulted a compass, ashe had done more than once that day.

  "I thought I heard something," said the boy, shouldering his rifle andturning westward, "but I couldn't say what."

  "Ah, _quelle barbarie_!" exclaimed the woman, with a sigh, halfpetulance, half relief.

  She seemed less the kind of timber that was to build up the greatstructure of western civilization than did the others,--all unfittedfor its hardships and privation and labor. Her gray serge gown was wornwith a sort of subtle elegance hardly discounted by the plainness of thematerial and make. The long, pointed waist accented the slender grace ofher figure; the skirt had folds clustered on the hips that gave a sortof fullness to the drapery and suggested the charm of elaborate costume.She wore a hood on her head,--a large calash, which had a curtain thathung about her shoulders. This was a dark red, of the tint called Indianred, and as she pushed it back and turned her face, realizing that theinterval of watching was over, the fairness of her complexion, thebeauty of her dark, liquid eyes, the suggestion of her well-ordered,rich brown hair above her high forehead, almost regal in its noble cast,the perfection of the details of her simple dress, all seemed infinitelyincongruous with her estate as a poor settler's wife, and the fact thatsince dawn and for days past she had, with the little all she possessed,fled from the pursuit of savage Indians. She returned with a severeglance the laughing grimace of the boy, with which, despite his own fearbut a moment ago, he had, in the mobility of the moods of youth,decorated his countenance.

  "If it were not for you, Hamish," she said to him, "I should not be soterrified. I have seen Indians many a time,--yes,--and when they wereon the war-path, too. But to add to their fury by an act of defiance onour part! It is fatal--they have only to overtake us."

  "What was I to do, Odalie?" said Hamish MacLeod, suddenly grave, andexcitedly justifying himself. "There was that red Injun, as still as astump. I thought he was a stump--it was nearly dark. And I heard thewild turkey gobbling,--you heard it yourself, you sent me out to get itfor supper,--you said that one more meal on buffalo meat would be thedeath of you,--and it was nearly dark,--and--gobble--gobble--gobble--soappetizing. I can hear it yet."

  With an expression of terror she caught suddenly at his hand as hewalked beside her, but he petulantly pulled away.

  "I mean _in my mind_, Odalie,--I hear it now _in my mind_. And all of asudden it came to me that it was that stump up on the slope that wasgobbling so cheerful, and gobbling me along into gunshot.[1] And justthen I was in rifle range, and I fired at the same minute that the stumpfired, or the turkey, whichever you choose to call him--What is thereason, Sandy, that Injuns are so apt to load with too little powder?"he broke off, speaking to his brother. "The turkey shot straight--hisball dropped spent just at my feet."

  "_Quelle barbarie!_" exclaimed Mrs. MacLeod, catching his handagain--this time to give it a little squeeze--impressed with theimminence of the boy's danger and their loss.

  But Hamish was quite as independent of caresses and approval as ofrebuke, and he carelessly twisted his hand away from his sister-in-lawas he cocked his head to one side to hear the more experienced hunter'sreply.

  "Because their powder is so precious, and scant, and hard to come by,they economize it," said Alexander MacLeod, as he trudged along behindthe packhorses, guarding the rear of his little party with his rifle onhis shoulder.

  "The turkey would better have economized his meat this time," said theboy, swinging round his belt to lift the lid of his powder-horn and peepgloatingly in at the reinforced stores. "He was economical with hispowder, but extravagant with his life; for that turkey will gobble nomore."

  He gobbled a brisk and agitated imitation of the cry of the fowl, andthen broke off to exclaim, "_Quelle barbarie!_--eh, Odalie?"

  He looked at his sister-in-law with a roguish eye, as he travestied thetone and manner of her favorite ejaculation, which he was wont to callthe "family oath." For indeed they had all come to make use of thephrase, in their varying accent, to express their disaffection with theordering of events, or the conduct of one another, or the provokingmischance of inanimate objects,--as the gun's hanging fire, or thereluctance of a spark to kindle from flint to make their camp-fire, orthe overturning of a pot of buffalo soup, or bear stew, when thefamished fugitives were ready to partake in reality of the feast whichtheir olfactory nerves and eyes had already begun. Even the little girlwould exclaim, "_Quelle barbarie!_" when thorns caught her skirts andheld her prisoner as she had skipped along so low down among thebrambles and dense high cane, that one must needs wonder at thesmallness of Empire, as expressed in her personality and funny cap,taking its westward way. "_Quelle barbarie!_" too, when the cat'sculture in elegant manners required of maternal solicitude a smart boxon the ear. And if the cat did not say "_Quelle barbarie!_" with anapproved French accent, we all know that she thought it.

  "So much better for the soul's health than swearing," Hamish was wont tosay, when Odalie showed signs of considering the phrase a bit ofridicule of her and her Frenchy forbears.

  Her grandfather had been a Huguenot refugee, driven out of his countryby the religious persecution about the time of the Revocation of theEdict of Nantes, seventy odd years previously. Her father had prosperedbut indifferently in the more civilized section of the New World, andhad died early. There his daughter had met her young Scotchman, who waspiqued by her dainty disdain of his French accent, which MacLeod hadrecklessly placed on exhibition, and was always seeking to redeem theimpression, finally feeling that he must needs improve it by having aperfect Mentor at hand. He had brought from the land of his birth, whichhe had quitted in early years, but few distinctive local expressions,yet a certain burr clung to his speech, and combined as incongruously asmight be with his French accent. She evidently considered the latterincurable, intolerable, and always eyed him, when he spoke in thatlanguage, with ostentatious wonder that such verbal atrocities could be,and murmured gently in lieu of reply--"_Quelle barbarie!_" He found hisrevenge in repeating a similar slogan, one that had often been as asupplement to this more usual phrase,--"_Partons pour la Franceaujourd'hui, pour l'amour de Dieu!_" It had been urged by hergrandmother in moments of depression, and Odalie, born and reared in theroyal province of South Carolina, had always the logic and grace towince at this ungrateful aspiration to return to France,--the dearFrance that had been so much too hot to hold them. For the family hadrejoiced to escape thence with their lives, even at the forfeiture ofall that they possessed.

  This jesting warfare of words had become established in the MacLeodhousehold, and often recurred, sometimes with a trifle of acrimony.Little they thought how significant it was to be and how it should servethem in their future lives.

  The sun was going down. Far, far purple mountains, that they might neverhave seen but for that great clifty gateway, were bathed in the glory ofthe last red suffusion of the west; the evening star of an unparalleledwhiteness pulsated in the amber-tinted lucidity of the sky. Thefragrance of the autumn woods was more marked on the dank night air. Onecould smell the rich mould along a watercourse near at hand, the branchfrom a spring bubbling
up in the solid rock hard by. Odalie had seatedherself on the horizontal ledge at the base of one of the crags and hadthrown back her hood, against which her head rested. Her large eyes weresoft and lustrous, but pensive and weary.

  "Rest, Odalie, while Hamish and I make the fire, and then you can fixthe things for supper," her husband admonished her.

  It was the first time that they had halted that day, and dinner had beenbut the fragments of breakfast eaten while on the march. There had beena sudden outbreak of the Cherokee Indians which had driven them from themore frequented way where they feared pursuit,--this, and the fate ofthe brave who had sought to lure Hamish to his death last night withthe mimicry of the gobbler, and was killed in consequence himself. Theycould not judge whether he had been alone or one of a party; whether hisbody might be discovered and his death avenged by the death or captureof them all; whether he had been a scout, thrown out to discover thedirection they took, and his natural blood-thirstiness had overmasteredhis instructions, and he must needs seek to kill the boy before hisreturn with his news.

  With this more recent fear that they were followed they had not to-daydared to build a fire lest its smoke betray to the crafty observation ofthe Indians, although at a great distance, their presence in this remotequarter of the wilderness, far even from the Indian war-path, that,striking down the valley between the Cumberland range and the easternmountains, was then not only the road that the Indians followed tobattle, but the highway of traffic and travel, the only recognized andknown path leading from the Cherokee settlements south of the TennesseeRiver through this great uninhabited park or hunting-ground to theregions of other Indian tribes on the Scioto and to Western Virginia.Now, however, rest and refreshment were necessary; even more imperativewas the need of a fire as a protection to the camp against theencroachments of wild beasts; for wolves were plentiful and roamed thenight-bound earth, and the active panther, the great American cougar,was wont to look down from the branches of overhanging trees. The horseswere not safe beyond the flare of the flames, to say nothing of wife andchild. Therefore the risk of attracting observation from Indians must berun, especially since it was abated by the descending dusk. The littletreacherous smoke escaping from the forest to curl against the blue skyneed not be feared at night. The darkness would hide all from adistance; as to foes lurking nearer at hand, why, if any such therewere, then their fate was already upon them. With the stout heart of thepioneer, Alexander MacLeod heaped the fagots upon the ground and struckthe flint and steel together after giving the officious little Josephinea chance to try her luck with the tinder. Soon the dry dead wood wastimidly ablaze, while Hamish led the horses to the water and picketedthem out.

  Odalie's eyes followed the boy with a sort of belated yet painfulanxiety, thinking how near he had been to parting with that stanch youngspirit, and what a bereavement would have been the loss of that blitheelement from their daily lives.

  "_Quelle barbarie!_" she exclaimed suddenly. "_Quelle barbarie!_"

  Perhaps her husband realized her fatigue and depression and was willingto put his French accent on parade for her amusement; perhaps it was forthe sake of the old flouting retort; he theatrically rejoined withoutlooking up, "_Partons pour la France aujourd'hui, pour l'amour deDieu._"

  And Josephine, taking the cat out of its basket and kissing its whiskersand the top of its head, was condoling with it on its longrestraint:--"_Quelle barbarie, ma poupee, quelle barbarie, ma doucemignonne,_" she poutingly babbled.

  Alexander MacLeod paused to listen to this affectionate motherlydiscourse; then glanced up at his wife with a smile, to call herattention to it.

  She had not moved. She had turned to stone. It seemed as if she couldnever move again. A waving blotch of red sumach leaves in a niche in thedark wall of the crag hard by had caught her notice. A waving blotch ofred leaves in the autumnal dusk,--what more natural?

  What more wonderful? What more fearful?

  There was no wind. How could the bough stir? There was no bough. Theblotch of color was the red and black of a hideous painted face that inthe dusk, the treacherous dusk, had approached very near and struck herdumb and turned her to stone. It had approached so near that she couldsee its expression change as the sound of the words spoken about thefireside arose on the air. Her mental faculties were rallying from thetorpor which still paralyzed her physical being; she understood thereason for this facial change, and by a mighty effort of the willsummoned all her powers to avail herself of it.

  Alexander MacLeod, glancing up with a casual laugh on his face, wasalmost stunned to see a full-armed and painted Cherokee rise up suddenlyfrom among the bushes about the foot of the cliff. Standing distinctlyoutlined against the softly tinted mountain landscape, which wasopalescent in its illumined hues, faint and fading, and extending hishand with a motion of inquiry toward Odalie, the savage demanded in alordly tone,--"Flinch? Flanzy?"

  As in a dream MacLeod beheld her, nodding her head in silentacquiescence,--as easily as she might were she humming a tune and hardlycared to desist from melody for words. She could not speak!

  The Cherokee, his face smeared with vermilion, with a great white circlearound one eye and a great black circle around the other, looked notill-pleased, yet baffled for a moment. "Me no talk him," he observed.

  "What more wonderful? What more fearful?"]

  He had never heard of Babel, poor soul, but he was as subject to theinconvenience of the confusion of tongues as if he had had an activeshare in the sacrilegious industry of those ambitious architects whobuilded in the plains of Shinar.

  "But I can speak English too," said Odalie.

  "Him?" said the Cherokee, "and him?" pointing at Alexander and then atHamish--at Hamish, with his recollection of that dead Indian, aCherokee, lying, face downward, somewhere there to the northward underthe dark trees, his blood crying aloud for the ferocious reprisal inwhich his tribe were wont to glut their vengeance.

  "Both speak French," said Odalie.

  The Indian gazed upon her doubtfully. He had evidently only a fewdisconnected sentences of English at command, although he understood farmore than he could frame, but he could merely discern and distinguishthe sound of the admired "Flanzy." Odalie realized with a shiver that itwas only this trifle that had preserved the lives of the whole party.For even previous to the present outbreak and despite the stipulationsof their treaties with the English, the Cherokees were known to havehesitated long in taking sides in the struggle between France and GreatBritain, still in progress now in 1758, for supremacy in this westerncountry, and many were suspected of yet inclining to the French, who hadmade great efforts to detach them from the British interest.

  "Where go?" demanded the chief, suspiciously.

  "To Chote, old town," she averred at haphazard, naming the famous"beloved town, [2]city of refuge," of the Cherokee nation.

  He nodded gravely. "I go Chote,--travel with white man," he remarked,still watchful-eyed.

  The shadows were deepening; the flames had revealed other dark figures,eight braves at the heels of the spokesman, all painted, all armed, allvisibly mollified by the aspect that the dialogue had taken on,--that ofan interpreting female for a French husband.

  "What do--Chote--old town?" demanded the chief.

  "Buy furs," said Odalie at a venture, pointing at her husband.

  The Cherokee listened intently, his blanket drawn up close around hisears, as if thus shrouded he took counsel of his own identity. Thegarment was one of those so curiously woven of the lustrous feathers ofwild-fowl that the texture had a rich tufted aspect. This lostmanufacture of the Cherokee Indians has been described by a traveler inthat region in 1730 as resembling a "fine flowered silk shag."

  "Ugh!" muttered the chief. "Ugh!" he said again.

  But the tone was one of satisfaction. The buying and shipping of peltrywas at that date a most lucrative business, furs bearing a high price inall the markets of the world, and this region bade fair to be one of thelarge sources of supply. The Indians pro
fited by selling them, and this,too, was the magnet that was beginning to draw the hardy Carolinahunters westward, despite the hazards. At no other industry elsewherecould commensurate sums of money be earned without outlay beyond a rifleand ammunition and a hunter's cheap lodgement and fare. The Indiansearly developed a dependence on the supplies of civilization,--guns,ammunition, knives, tools, paints, to say nothing of fire-water, quicklydemonstrating their superiority to primitive inventions, and thistraffic soon took on most prosperous proportions. Thus, although theCherokees resented the presence of the white man upon theirhunting-ground in the capacity of competitor, and still more ofcolonist, they were very tolerant of his entrance into their towns andpeaceful residence there as buyer and shipper--one of the earliestexpressions of middleman in the West--of the spoils of the chase, thetrophies of the Indian's skill in woodcraft. Although the Britishgovernment, through treaties with the Cherokees, sought a monopoly ofthis traffic as a means of controlling them by furnishing or withholdingtheir necessities as their conduct toward the English colonists on thefrontier might render judicious, many of the earlier of these traderswere French--indeed one of the name of Charleville was engaged in suchcommerce on the present site of the city of Nashville as early as theyear 1714, his base of supplies being in Louisiana, altogetherindependent of the English, as he was then one of the traders of AntoineCrozat, under the extensive charter of that enterprising speculator.

  The French had exerted all their suavest arts of ingratiation with theCherokees, and as the Indians were now on the point of breaking out intoopen enmity against the English, the idea of a French trader in furs,which Odalie had suggested, was so acceptable to the Cherokee scheme ofthings, that for the time all doubt and suspicion vanished from thesavage's mind. Vanished so completely, in fact, that within thehalf-hour the chief was seated with the family-party beside theircamp-fire and sharing their supper, and the great Willinawaugh, withevery restraint of pride broken down, with characteristic reserve castto the winds, speaking to the supposed Frenchman, Alexander MacLeod, asto a brother, was detailing with the utmost frankness and ferocity thestory of the treatment of the Indians by the Virginians, their allies,in the late expedition against Fort Duquesne. The Cherokees had marchedthither to join General Forbes's army, agreeably to their treaty withthe English, by which, in consideration of the building of a fort withinthe domain of their nation to afford them protection against theirIndian enemies and the French, now the enemies of their English allies,and to shelter their old men and women and children during such absencesof the warriors of the tribe, they had agreed to take up arms under theBritish flag whenever they were so required. And this the Cherokees haddone.

  Then his painted, high-cheek-boned face grew rigid with excitement, andthe eagle feathers bound to his scalp-lock quivered in the light of thefire as he told of the result. His braves hovered near to hear, nowcatching the broad flare of the flames on their stalwart, erect formsand flashing fire-locks, now obscured in the fluctuating shadow. Thepale-faced group listened, too, scarcely moving a muscle, for by longfamiliarity with the sound, they understood something of the generaldrift of the Cherokee language, which, barring a few phrases, they couldnot speak.

  There had been only a very bloody skirmish,--since known as "Grant'sdefeat,"--but no fight at Fort Duquesne, not even a formal defence ofthe works. The French had surely forgotten General Braddock! They hadforgotten the fleeing red-coated _Unaka_[A] soldiers who, three yearsbefore, had been beaten near there with such terrible slaughter, andtheir chief warrior, the great Braddock, himself, had been tamed bydeath--the only foe that could tame him!--and lay now somewhere in thoseeastern woods. He pointed vaguely with his hand as he spoke, forBraddock's grave had been left unmarked, in the middle of the militaryroad, in order that, passing over it without suspicion, it might not berifled and desecrated by those savage Indians who had fought with suchfurious efficiency in the French interest.[3]

  Willinawaugh paused, and all his braves muttered in applause "Ugh! Ugh!"

  To the warlike Cherokee the event of a battle was not paramount. Victoryor defeat they realized was often the result of fortuitous circumstance.Courage was their passion. "We cannot live without war," was theirofficial reply to an effort on the part of the government to mediatebetween them and another tribe, the Tuscaroras, their hereditaryenemies.

  But upon this second attempt on Fort Duquesne the British had only toplant their flag, and repair the dismantled works, and change the nameto Fort Pitt. For in the night the French had abandoned and fired thestronghold, and finally made their escape down the Ohio River. In allgood faith, however, the Cherokees had marched thither to help theVirginians defend their frontier,--far away from home! So far, that thehorses of a few of the warriors had given out, and finding some horsesrunning wild as they came on their homeward way through the westernregion of Virginia, these braves appropriated the animals for thetoilsome march of so many hundred miles, meaning no harm; whereupon aband of Virginians fell upon these Cherokees, their allies, and killedthem! And his voice trembled with rage as he rehearsed it.

  For all her address Odalie could not sustain her _role_. She uttered alow moan and put her hand before her eyes. For he had not entered uponthe sequel,--a sequel that she knew well;--the sudden summaryretaliation of the Cherokees upon the defenseless settlers in the regioncontiguous to the line of march of the returning warriors,--blood forblood is the invariable Cherokee rule!

  Never, never could she forget the little cabin on the west side of NewRiver where she and her adventurous husband had settled on the Virginiafrontier not far from other adventurous and scattered pioneers. They hadthought themselves safe enough; many people in these days of the westernadvance relied on the community strength of a small station, wellstockaded, with the few settlers in the cabins surrounded by thepalisades; others, and this family of the number, felt it sufficientprotection to be within the sound of a signal gun from a neighboringhouse. But the infuriated homeward-bound Cherokees fell on the first ofthese cabins that lay in their way, massacred the inmates, and marchedon in straggling blood-thirsty bands, burning and slaying as they went.So few were the settlers in that region that there was no hope inuniting for defense. They fled wildly in scattered groups, and thislittle household found itself in the untried, unfrequented region westof the great Indian trail, meditating here a temporary encampment, untilthe aggrieved Cherokees on their homeward march should all have passeddown the "Warrior's Path" to their far-away settlements south of theTennessee River. Then, the way being clear, the fugitives hoped toretrace their journey, cross New River and regain the more easternsection of Virginia. Meantime they were slipping like shadows throughthe dark night into the great unknown realms of this uninhabitedsouthwestern wilderness, itself a land of shadow, of dreams, of thevague unreality of mere rumor. Some intimation of their flight must havebeen given, for following their trail had skulked the Indian whom Hamishhad killed,--a spy doubtless, the forerunner of these Cherokees, who,but for thinking them French, would have let out their spirits into thetruly unknown, by way of that great mountain pass opening on an unknownworld. If the savages but dreamed of the fate that had befallen theirscout!--she hardly dared look at Hamish when she thought of the deadIndian, lest her thought be read.

  She wondered what had become of her neighbors; where had they gone, andhow had they fared, and where was she herself going in this journey toChote,--a name, a mere name, heard by chance, and repeated at haphazard,to which she had committed the future.

  This fresh anxiety served to renew her attention. Willinawaugh, stillrehearsing the griefs of his people, and the perfidy, as he construedit, of the government, was detailing the perverse distortion of theEnglish compliance with their treaty to erect a great defensive work inthe Cherokee nation--the heart of the nation--to aid them in their warson Indian enemies, and to protect their country and the non-combatantswhen the warriors should be absent in the service of their allies, theEnglish. Such a work had the government indeed erected, on the s
outhbank of the Tennessee River, mounted with twelve great cannon, not fivemiles from Chote, old town, and there, one hundred and fifty miles inadvance of Anglo-American civilization, lay within it now the garrisonof two hundred English soldiers!

  Odalie's heart gave a great bound! She felt already safe. To be underthe protection of British cannon once more! To listen to an Englishvoice! Her brain was a-whirl. She could hear the drums beat. She couldhear the sentry's challenge. She even knew the countersign--"God savethe king!"--they were saying that to-night at Fort Loudon as the guardturned out;--she did not know it; she never knew it; she was only sureof it!

  Willinawaugh had never heard of the agriculturist who sowed dragon'steeth and whose crop matured into full-armed soldiers. But he acutelyrealized this plight as he detailed how the Cherokees had protested, andhad sent a "talk" (letter) to the Earl of Loudon, who had been at thetime commander-in-chief of the British forces in America, setting forththe fact that the Cherokees did not like the presence of so many whitepeople among them as the two hundred soldiers and the settlers that hadgathered about the place. The military occupation made the fort acoercion and menace to the Cherokee people, and they requested him totake away the soldiers and relinquish the fort with its twelve greatguns and other munitions of war to the Cherokee nation,--to whichsuggestion the Earl of Loudon had seemed to turn a deaf ear.

  Alexander MacLeod, deliberating gravely, realized that under suchcircumstances the fort would ultimately be used against the Englishinterest that it was designed to foster, by reason of the ever-readymachinations of the French influence among the Cherokees. The fort wasevidently intended to afford protection to the Cherokees, but only solong as they were the allies of the English.

  Much of the night passed in this discourse, but at length Willinawaughslept, his feet toward the fire, around which the other Indians, allrolled in their blankets, like the spokes of a wheel about a hub, werealready disposed. Alexander MacLeod had been nearly the last man to dropout of the conversation. He glanced up to note that Odalie sat stillwide awake with her back against the trunk of a great chestnut-oak, hereyes on the fire, the child in her arms. They exchanged a glance whichsaid as plain as speech that he and Hamish and she would divide thewatch. Each would rest for two or three hours and watch while the othersslept. It behooved them to be cautious and guard against surprise. Therecollection of that dead Indian, lying on his face in the woods milesto the north of them, and the doubt whether or not he belonged to thisparty, and the sense of vengeance suspended like a sword by a hair,--allimpinged very heavily on Hamish's consciousness, and in his own phrasehe had to harry himself to sleep. Alexander, realizing that, as theablest of the family, he was their chief means of defense, betookhimself to much-needed repose, and Odalie was the only waking humanbeing in many and many a mile. Now and again she heard far away thehooting of an owl, or the scream of a panther, and once, close at hand,the leaves stirred with a stealthy tread and the horses snorted aloud.She rose and threw more lightwood on the flaring fire, and as the flamesleaped up anew two bright green eyes in the dusk on the shadowy side ofthe circle vanished; she saw the snarl of fierce fangs and no more, forthe fire burned brilliantly that night as she fed the flames, and fardown the aisles of the primeval forest the protective light wasdispensed. Above were the dense boughs of the trees, all red and yellow,but through that great gate, the gap in the mountain wall, she couldlook out on the stars that she had always known, keeping their steadfastwatch above this strange, new land. So accustomed was she to nature thatshe was not awed by the presence of the somber, wooded, benightedmountain range, rising in infinite gloom, and austere silence, andindefinable extent against the pallid, instarred sky.

  She began to think, woman-like, of that home she had left; in her mindit was like a deserted living thing. And the poor sticks of furnitureall standing aghast and alone, the door open and flapping in the wind!And when she remembered a blue pitcher,--a squat little blue jug thathad come from France,--left on a shelf by the window with some redleaves in it to do duty as a bouquet,--so relieved was she now of herfears for the lives of them all that she must needs shed tears of regretfor the little blue pitcher,--the squat little blue jug that came fromFrance. And how had she selected so ill among her belongings as to whatshe should bring and what leave? Fifine had a better frock than thatserge thing; it would not wear so well, but her murrey-colored pelissetrimmed with the sarcenet ribbon would have added warmth enough. If itwere not such a waste of goods she would make over her paduasoy coat forFifine, for she loved to see a small child very fine of attire. Butprecious little time she would have for remodeling the paduasoy coat,--aprimrose-tinted ground with dark red roses, that had been her"grand'maman's" when new. "I wonder if I expected to live always in ahollow tree, that I should have left that pair of sheets, new tenhundred linen, the ones that I have just woven," she arraigned herselfindignantly, as she mentally went over the stock in the pack. "And did Ithink I should be so idle that I must bring instead so much spun-truckso as to weave others. To think of those new linen sheets! And then toothat lovely, quaint little jug--the little squat blue jug that came fromFrance!"

  Oh, no; Odalie was not at all lonely during the long watch through thenight, and did not lack subjects of meditation. The time did not hangheavily on her hands!

  It hardly seemed that an hour had passed when Hamish, in obedience tosome inward monition, turned himself suddenly, looked up, stretchedhimself to a surprising length, then sat up by the fire, motioning toher to close her eyes.

  His face was compassionate; perhaps he saw traces of tears about hereyes. He could not know why she had been weeping, or he might haveaccounted his sympathy wasted. For Hamish looked upon crockery asinanimate and a mere manufacture, yet endowed with a perverse ingenuityin finding occasions to come into disastrous contact with a boy'sunsuspecting elbow, and get itself broken and the boy into disgrace. Hehad his gentle interpretation of her sorrow, and motioned to her, oncemore, to close her eyes, and pointed up at the skies, where Orion wasunsheathing his glittering blade above the eastern mountains--a warningthat the night was well-nigh spent and a chill day of early December onthe way. And it seemed only an inappreciable interval of time beforeOdalie opened her eyes again, upon a crimson dawn, with the rime whiteon the sparse red and brown leaves and bare boughs; to see breakfastcooking under Hamish's ministrations; to see Fifine washing the cat'sface with fresh water from the spring--very cold it was, as Fifineherself found it, when it came her turn to try it herself and cry"_Quelle barbarie!_"--to see the Indians getting a party to horse to goback and search for one of their number, who had become separated insome way; to see poor Hamish's face pale with fear and consciousness,and then harden with resolution to meet the worst like a man.

  At length they set forth in the frosty dawn of a new day, changing theirroute and making their progress further southward along untried ways shehad never thought to travel. The sun came grandly up; the mountainrange, wooded to the summit, flaunted in splendid array, red, andyellow, and even purple, with the heavy growths of the sweet-gum trees,and their wealth of lingering foliage. Here and there, along theheights, grim crags showed their beetling precipices, and where theleaves had fallen, covering great slopes with russet hues, the bareboles and branches of the forest rose frosted with fine lace-likeeffects. Sometimes, with a wild woodland call and a flash of white foam,a cataract dashed down the valley. The feeding deer lifted their headsto gaze after the party with evanescent curiosity and then fell toquietly grazing again: they had not known enough of man to acquire afear of him. Sometimes arose the bellowing of distant herds of buffalo,filling the Cumberland spurs and coves with a wonted sound, to whichthey have now long been strangers.

  Wild turkey, quail, wild duck, wild geese, the latter already beginningtheir southward migration, were as abundant, one might say, as leaves onthe trees or on the ground. There were trout of the finest flavor inthese mountain streams, and one might call for what one would fordinner. If one cared for sweets there was hone
y in the honeycomb inalmost any hollow tree, where the wild bees worked and the bearprofited; and for fruit and nuts there were the delicious amberpersimmons, and the sprightly frost grapes, and walnuts and hickory-nutsand chestnuts galore.

  The march was far swifter now than the rate that the settlers hadmaintained before the Indians had joined the party, and the little girlwas added to the burden of one of the packhorses, but Odalie, light,active, with her native energy tense in every nerve, and with everypulse fired by the thought that each moment carried her nearer to thecannon of Fort Loudon and safety, kept step valiantly with thepedestrians. Willinawaugh sat at his ease on his horse, which wassomewhat jaded by long and continuous marches, or perhaps his patiencewould not have sufficed to restrain him to the pace of the pioneers andhis own unmounted followers. A grave spirit of amity still pervaded theparty, but there was little talk. Odalie relegated herself to thesubservient manner and subordinate silence befitting a squaw; MacLeod,restricted to the French language and his bit of Cherokee, feared thathis interest might lead him beyond the bounds of the simulation theirsafety required; Hamish was silent, too, partly tamed by the halt whichthey now and then made on rising ground, when the chief would turn hiskeen, high-nosed profile, distinct upon the faint tints of the bluemountains beyond, his eagle feathers on his scalp-lock blowing backagainst the sky, and cast a sharp-eyed glance over the landscape todiscern if perchance the search party, from which they had separated,was now coming to rejoin them. These frequent halts were discontinuedafter two days, when the Indian saw fit to change his proposed line ofmarch, and the rest of his party, if following, could hardly be expectedto also deviate from the agreed plan and overtake them.

  They had hitherto proceeded down a valley, between clifty mountain wallson the one hand, and a high, steep, frowning ridge on the other, runningwith the same trend in unbroken parallelism. Now it suited Willinawaughto turn his horse's head straight up these seemingly inaccessibleslopes; and without exchanging a glance or venturing a comment hisfellow-travelers obediently followed his lead, conscious of the sly andfurtive observation of his tribesmen and even of Willinawaugh himself,for the suspicion of the Indian never seems quite allayed but onlydormant for a time. He noted naught that could excite it afresh,although it was only by the toil of hours that they could surmount theobstacles of great rocks, could find a deer-path through the densejungle of the laurel, otherwise impenetrable, could cross foamingmountain torrents so swift and so deep that more than once it seemedthat the packhorses, with Odalie also mounted now for the ford, mustsuccumb to the strength of the current.

  At length the party stood upon the summit, with a dozen wild outliers ofthe Cumberland and the intervenient coves below their feet; then came avast spread of undulating country to the eastward, broken here and thereby parallel ridges; and beyond rose mountains brown, and mountainspurple, and still further, mountains blue; and still beyond and above,a-glimmering among the clouds, so high and so vague, apparently so likethe gossamer texture of the vapor that one could hardly judge whetherthese congeners of the very heavens were earth or sky, mythical peaks orcloud mountains--the Great Smoky Range. In the wide, wide world below,noble rivers flowed, while aloft, like the gods on Olympus, it seemedthe travelers could overlook the universe, so vast as to discount alltheories of measurement, and mark its varying mood. So clear and limpidwas the air that trivial incidents of that great scene were asserteddespite the distance, and easily of note,--a herd of buffalo wasdistinguishable in an open, trodden space about a salt-lick; a fleet ofcanoes, like a bevy of swallows, winged along the broad surface of thelargest of these splendid streams, called the Tsullakee (Cherokee) asWillinawaugh informed them, for these Indians never used the soundrepresented by our letter R. In the phonetically spelled words in whichit seems to occur the sound is more accurately indicated by the letterL. A notable philological authority states that the English rendering ofthe word "Cherokee" and others of the language in which the letter Rappears is derived from the mistaken pronunciation of neighboring tribesand of the French, who called the Tsullakee[B]--_La riviere desCheraquis_.

  Odalie could not refrain from asking in what direction was Chote,"beloved town, city of refuge." She had the art to affect to interpretfor her husband, but she could not keep the light from her eyes, thescarlet flush of joyful expectation from her cheek, when the savage,with a sweeping wave of his pipe-stem, indicated a region toward thesoutheast on the banks of a tributary (the Little Tennessee) of thatbroad and splendid river, which was now running crimson and gold andwith a steely glitter, reflecting the sunset, in the midst of the dusky,dull-blue landscape, with the languor of evening slipping down upon it.

  There it lay in primeval beauty,--the land of hope. Oh, for the spiritof a soothsayer; for one prophetic moment! What did that landhold,--what days should dawn upon it; what hearthstones should bealight; who should be the victor in the conquests of the future, andwhat of the victim?

  But they loved this country--the Cherokees; their own, they said, forthe Great Spirit gave it them. They even sought to associate with thosesplendid eastern mountains the origin of the Cherokee people by theoft-reiterated claim that the first of their race sprung from the soilof those noble summits or dropped from the clouds that hover about thelofty domes. And now Willinawaugh broke from the silence that the lackof a common tongue had fostered, and despite that embargo on theexchange of ideas he grew fluent and his enthusiasm seemed to whet theunderstanding of his listeners, who could realize in some sort thelanguage that they could not speak. They caught the names of the greatlandmarks. The vast range, on an outlier of which they pitched theircamp, as insignificant in proportion as an atom to the universe, hecalled the Wasioto Mountain, and one of the rivers was the Hoho-hebee,and others were the Coot-cla, the Agiqua, the Canot, the Nonachuckeh.Hamish remembered these names long after they were forgotten by others,and the re-christened Clinch and Holston and French Broad flowed asfairly with their uncouth modern nomenclature as when they wereidentified by as liquid musical syllables as the lapsing of their owncurrents; for never did he lose the impression of this night;--neverfaded the mental picture of the Cherokee chief, the war-paint, vermilionand black and white, on his face as he sat before the fire, the wavingof the eagle-feathers on his tufted scalp-lock blotting out half thedull-blue landscape below, which had the first hour of the night uponit, and the moon, blooming like a lily, with a fair white chalicereflected in the dark deeps of the Tsullakee River. And in this hourwhile Odalie reached out with all tender, tremulous hope to the futurethe savage told of the past.

  Of the past,--mysterious, mythical. Of the strange lack of tradition ofthis new world that was yet so old. For here, in the midst of theCherokee hunting-ground,--the whole country was but a great uninhabitedpark heavily stocked with game, the Cherokee settlements being merely afringe upon its verges,--were vestiges of a previous population;remains of works of defense like forts; fragments of pottery and othermanufactures; unfading allegorical paintings high on the face ofinaccessible cliffs; curious tiny stone sarcophagi containing pygmybones, the mysterious evidence of the actual existence of theprehistoric "little people";[4] great burial mounds, with molderingskeletons, and caves entombing mummies of splendid stature and longyellow hair, evidently placed there ages ago, still wearing ornaments ofbeads and metals, with remnants of strange fabrics of fibers andfeathers, and with weapons befitting a high rank and a warlike race. Andwho were they? And whence did they come? They were always here, saidWillinawaugh. So said all the Cherokees. They were always here.

  And whither did this unknown people go? The Indian shook his head, theflicker of the fire on his painted face. They were gone, he said, whenthe Tsullakee came. Long gone--long gone!

  And alas, what was their fate? Odalie looked about at the violet night,at the white moon and the dun shadows, with an upbraiding question, andthe night was silent with a keen chill fall of a frost. This was no newworld into which they were adventuring. It had witnessed tragedies. Itheld death. It sealed its lip
s and embodied oblivion. Oh, for the hopesof the future,--and oh, for the hopes of the dead and gone past!

  FOOTNOTES:

  [Footnote A: White.]

  [Footnote B: It is known now as the Tennessee River.]