The Story of Old Fort Loudon, Page 2

  CHAPTER II

  The next day when Odalie turned her face once more toward her Mecca ofhome and peace she felt that she trod on air, although her shoes, illcalculated for hard usage, had given way at last, and suffered thethorns to pierce through the long rifts between sole and upper leatherand the stones to still further rend the gaping tatters. MacLeod wouldnot allow himself to comment on it even by a look, lest someuncontrollable sympathy should force him to call a halt, now when hefelt that their lives depended on pressing forward and taking advantageof the pacific mood of the Indian and the assumed character of Frenchtraders to reach the English fort. Hamish, however, with a dark-eyed,reproachful glance upbraided this apparently callous disregard, and thenaddressed himself to the task of making light of the matter to Odalie inlieu of other solace.

  "_Tu ne_ ought _pas l'avoir fait_," he gravely admonished her in hisqueer French. "_Tu_ ought known better, Odalie!"

  "Known what better?" demanded Odalie, resenting reprimand in a veryun-squawlike fashion.

  "_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 hadchanced to observe them; to suggest recollections that he resented, andthe reminder shared in his disfavor. He abruptly wreathed his fiercecountenance into a simulacrum of Hamish's facetious mug; he shrugged hisshoulders with a genuine French twist; and anything more incongruouslyand grotesquely frightful and less amusing could hardly be imagined.

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

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

  At Chote, it seemed, was this gay and facetious Frenchman, thisall-accomplished Baron Des Johnnes, who could speak seven differentIndian languages with equal facility, to say nothing of a trifle or twosuch as English, Spanish, German, and French, of course!--at Chote,City of Refuge, where, if he had shed the blood of the native Cherokeeon his own threshold, his life would have been sacred even from thevengeance of the Indian's brother! And suddenly came the CarolinaColonel Sumter, returning with an Indian delegation that had been toCharlestown, and found the Frenchman here. And with Colonel Sumter wasOconostota, king of the Cherokees, and other head-men, who had justsigned a treaty at Charlestown, promising to kill or arrest anyFrenchman discovered within the Cherokee Nation. And who so appalled asOconostota, to see his friend, the gay Baron Des Johnnes, lying on abuffalo skin before the fire, smoking his pipe in the chief's ownwigwam. And when Colonel Sumter demanded his arrest Oconostota refusedand pleaded the sanctity of the place--the City of Refuge. And Baron DesJohnnes arose very smiling and bland, and bowed very low, and remindedColonel Sumter that he was in Chote--Old Town!

  And what said Colonel Sumter? He spoke in the English, like a wolf mighttalk--"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 theever-sacred laws of the City of Refuge! Although surrounded by hisfriends he struck not one blow for his freedom, as man to man. Hesuffered himself to be arrested, single-handed, by this wolf of aColonel--Colonel Sumter--saying in gentle protest, "_Mais, M'sieur!_"

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

  Alexander knew that the Baron Des Johnnes had been taken to Charlestownand examined, and although nothing could be proved against him, it hadbeen deemed expedient to ship him off to England. Perhaps theauthorities were of opinion that a man with such conversationalfacilities as eight or ten languages had best be kept where "least said,soonest mended."

  But for the repeated harsh treatment that the Cherokees sustained fromthe English settlers, the ingratiating arts of the French might havefailed to find so ready a response. Sedate of manner and of a grave castof mind themselves, the Indians could ill tolerate the levity, the_gaiete de coeur_, of the French, whom they pronounced "light as afeather, fickle as the wind, and deceitful as serpents."

  With this intimation of Willinawaugh's reserves of irritability thepioneers journeyed on, a trifle more ill at ease in mind, which was anadded hardship, since their physical sufferings were intensifying withevery long mile of continued effort. They began to wonder how they,supposed to be French, would fare when they should meet otherCherokees, perhaps more disposed than Willinawaugh to adhere to theterms of their treaty to kill or make prisoner every Frenchman whoshould venture into the Cherokee Nation, yet on the other hand perhapsmore competent by virtue of a familiarity with the language to detectand resent the fact that they were not of the French nationality.Already Willinawaugh had counseled that they should go further thanChote, to ply their trade in furs, for Chote was dangerously near theEnglish fort for a Frenchman; one of the Tuckaleechee towns on the CanotRiver was a preferable location, and he promised to contrive to slipthem past Fort Loudon without the commandant's knowledge.

  They restrained all expression of objection or discomfort and bore theirgrowing distresses with a fortitude that might rival the stoicism of asavage. Only when an aside was possible, MacLeod besought his wife toloose the burden of one of the packhorses and mount the animal herself.She shook her head resolutely. She had already suffered grief enough forthe household stores she had left behind. To these precious remainingpossessions she clung desperately. "When I can no longer walk," shesaid, with a flash in her eye which admonished him to desist.

  They offered no comment on their route, although it seemed that theyhad climbed the mountain two days ago for the express purpose ofdescending it again, but on the eastern side. MacLeod, however, atlength realized that the Indian was following some faint trace, welldistinguishable to his skilled eye, and the difficulties of the steepdescent were rendered more tolerable by his faith in the competence ofhis guide. The packhorses found it hard work filing down the sharpdeclivities 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 notsupposed that the contents of the bales of goods were merchandise andtrinkets to be bartered with the Indians for peltry, instead of Odalie'sslim resources of housekeeping wares,--sheets, and table-linen andgarments, and frugal supplies of flax and seeds,--he would not havesuffered the slow progress.

  Through the new country below, that they had watched from the heights,they went now, the mountains standing sentinel all around thehorizon--east and west, and north and south, sometimes nearer, sometimesmore distant; always mountains in sight, like some everlastinglyuplifting thought, luring a life to a higher plane of being. Now andagain the way wended along the bank of a river, with the steeps showingin the waters below as well as against the sky above, and one day whenthey had but recently broken their camp on its shores there shot outfrom beneath an overhanging boscage of papaw trees a swift, arrowy thingakin to a fish, akin to a bird--an Indian canoe, in which were threebraves.

  The poor pioneers were exhausted with their long and swift journey;their hearts, which had been stanch within them, could but fail with thefailure of physical strength. Their courage only sufficed to hold themto a mute endurance of a dreadful expectation, and a suspense that setevery nerve a-quiver. The boatmen had cried out with a wild, fierce noteof surprise on perceiving the party, and the canoe was coming straightacross to the bank as fast as the winglike paddles could propel it.Willinawaugh rode slowly down to meet them, and in contrast to the usualimpassive manners of the Indians he replied to the agitated hail in atone of tense and eager excitement. There ensued evidently an exchangeof news,
of a nature which boded little good to the settlers. Dark angergathered on the brow of the chieftain as he listened when the braves hadbounded upon the bank, and more than once he cried out inarticulatelylike a wild beast in pain and rage. Perhaps it is rare that a man hassuch a moment in his life as Alexander experienced when one of thesavages, a ferocious brute, turned with a wild, untamed, indigenousfury kindling in his eyes, and drawing his tomahawk from his belt smiledfiercely upon the silent, motionless little band, his deadly racialhatred 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 magicwords--"Flanzy--Flinch!" Then still in English, as if to reassure thepioneers--"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 fromthe British interest, and even now the men who had abandoned FortDuquesne, escaping down the Ohio River, were sending emissaries up theTsullakee, to the Lower Towns, there finding fruitful soil in which tosow the seeds of dissension against the English. The assertion thatthese travelers were French, and the fact that by receiving persons ofthis nation the Cherokees could requite with even a trivial anddiplomatic injury some faint degree of the wrong which they consideredthey had sustained from the Virginians, was more than adequate tonullify for the time the rage they felt against these pioneers as of thewhite race.

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

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

  He did not mean literally "swim," and to offer them the facilities ofthe Tennessee River for that purpose, although this might have beeninferred. But the pioneers understood the proffer of the canoe for theremainder of their journey, and a deadly terror seized the heart ofOdalie as she marked the demonstrations of the others in pullingWillinawaugh 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 ofconscious distinction, was already seated in the boat, and pointed outAlexander as his preferred companion. For once the Scotchman disregardedthe wishes of his guide, philosopher, and friend, and taking his wife bythe hand motioned to her to step over the side of the little craft.Odalie could only look reproachfully at him; she could not contend withher lord and master in the presence of savages--such are the privilegesof civilization! The Indians, somewhat accustomed by the talk, and onoccasion the example, of the French traders, and perhaps by traditionsfrom the white settlements, to the idea of the extreme value that thepaleface was wont to place on wife or daughter, scornfully marked theinstance, but beyond an expressive "Ugh!" naught was said. The child waslifted to Odalie's arms--the cat strapped pappoose-wise to Josephine'sback and accommodating itself quiescently to the situation.

  Alexander had never intended to embark Odalie and Josephine alone withthe Indians, although his will was but a slight thing, so entirely werethey now in the power of the savages; he motioned to Hamish to take thepaddle, and with the slight mixture of French and Cherokee at hiscommand, intimated to the apparent owner of the boat that he wouldrather walk by his side and profit by his converse than to be able tosail at will on the water like the swan there--a large and handsomebird, who was giving the finest exhibition of that method of progressionto be easily found anywhere, with her white neck arched, her glidingmotion, and snowy breast reflected in the clear water.

  And so Odalie had parted from her husband, without so much as a glanceof farewell! Perhaps he dared not look at her. So far they had cometogether, and now in these wild fastnesses, among these blood-lovingfiends in the likeness of humanity, they were separated to meetwhen?--where? Perchance no more. She could not--would not--leave himthus. She would turn back at the last moment! She would go back!

  She rose to her feet so precipitately that with the shifting of herweight the canoe careened suddenly and was momentarily in danger ofcapsizing with all on board. Willinawaugh glanced up with a kindling eyeand a ferocious growl. Hamish, throwing himself skillfully on theopposite side, adroitly trimmed the boat. His look of warning,upbraiding and yet sympathizing, steadied Odalie's nerves as she sankback into her place. She tactfully made it appear that she hadaccidentally come near to dropping the little girl from her grasp andrising to recover her had shaken the poise of the frail craft.Willinawaugh's mutter of dissatisfaction showed that he esteemed thepossibility no very great mischance, and set no high store on Josephine.Now and again he eyed the cat, too, malevolently, as if he could illbrook her mannerisms and pampered mien. Hamish had an uncomfortable ideathat the Cherokee was not familiar with animals of this kind, and thathe harbored a wonder if Kitty would not serve her best and noblestpossibilities in a savory stew. But for himself Hamish avoided theIndian's eyes with their curious painted circles of black and white, asmuch as he might, for whenever their glances met, Willinawaugh's facialcontortion to deride the "fonny" disposition he deemed a part ofHamish's supposed French nature so daunted the boy that he bent hishead as well as his muscles to the work.

  That day was like a dream to Odalie, and, indeed, from the incongruityof 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 framemansion that she had always thought so fine, sitting on the arm of hergrandmother's chair, with her dark hair against the white locks and thesnowy cap, while she babbled, in the sweet household patois of Frenchchildren that has no lexicon, and no rules, and is handed down from onegeneration to another, her girlish hopes, and plans, and anxieties, tofind the grandmother's fine, old, deft hand smooth all the difficultiesaway and make life easy, and hope possible, and trouble a mere shadow.

  Alas! that brightening perspective of the colonial garden, where thejasmine, gold and white, clung to the tall trellises, and the clovegillyflower, and the lilies and roses grew in the borders in the broadsuffusions of the sunshine, was metamorphosed to the wide spread of theTennessee River, with the noon-day blaze on its burnished expanse ofripples; and grand'maman had long since ceased her ministry of soothingand consolation, and found her own comfort in the peace and quiet of thegrave. And ere Odalie could suffer more than a pang to realize that shewas 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 beautifulbridal dress in which she had looked a very queen, with hergrand'maman's pearl necklace, itself an heirloom, about her whitethroat. And so, standing at the altar of the little church withAlexander, and much light about her, and a white dress, oh, verywhite--and suddenly! all the church is stricken to darkness. No; thereis light again!

  It was a flash from a thunder cloud, reflected in sinister, forked linesin the Tennessee River, so that they seemed in the very midst of thelightning, until it vanished into the darkness of a lowering black sky,that overhung the water and made all the woods appear bleak andleafless, though here and there still a red tree blazed. The world wasdrearier for these grim portents of storm, for all the way hitherto fairweather had smiled upon their progress. Still she could not heed--shedid not care even when the rain came down and pitilessly beat upon herwhite face; she did not know when Fifine crept under the shawl whichHamish threw around her, and that the frightened little girl held to hertight with both arms around her waist, while the pioneer cat verydiscreetly nestled down in the basket on Josephine's back. She was notroused even by loud voices when later a pettiaugre, a much larger boatthan theirs, pulled alongside with eight or ten warriors and remained inclose 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 andrealized naught of her surroundings. His brother had been left in thesewild woods with a party of savages,
who were as likely to murder him fora whim or for the treasures of the bales which the packhorses carried,as to respect the safe conduct of Willinawaugh and the supposedcharacter of French traders. This, Hamish was aware, hardly sufficednow, so unrestrained was the ferocity of the glances cast upon them bythe Indians in the pettiaugre alongside--so like the glare of a savagecatamount, ready to leap upon its prey and yet with a joyance in itsferocity, as if this rage were not the pain of anger but the pleasure ofit.

  What subtle influence roused Odalie at last she could hardly have said;perhaps the irresistible torpor of exhaustion had in some sort recruitedher faculties. The storm was gone, unseasonable and transient, and onlya broken remnant of its clouds hung about the western mountains. Towardthe east the sky was clear and a dull fluctuation of sunset, alternatingwith 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 thedark blue Chilhowee Mountain in the middle distance something glimmeringand waving, and as she strained her eyes it suddenly floated broadlyforth to the breeze,--the blended cross of St. George and St. Andrewblazoned on the British flag.

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

  Willinawaugh had the air of deigning much to consider the plea that theother Indians preferred. He only argued astutely that they all spokeFrench among themselves,--man, boy, squaw, and pappoose. They showedgratitude when he had promised them that they should not be obliged topass the English fort and risk the chance of detection. He intended toslip them up the Tellico River where it flows into the Tennessee a mileon the hither side of the fort and thence make their way to a remoterIndian town than Chote.

  The skeptical Cherokee, Savanukah, immediately asserted boastfully thathe spoke "Flinch" himself and would test the nationality of the boy.

  Hamish had never had great scholastic advantages and had sturdilyresisted those that Odalie would have given him. He remembered withdespair the long lines of French verbs in the little dog's-eared greenbook that all her prettiest sisterly arts could never induce him tolearn to conjugate. Why should he ever need more talking appliance thanhe already possessed, he used to argue. He could tell all he knew, andmore 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 deadlyaim?

  "The canoe rocked in the swirls."]

  He looked toward her once more in his despair. The boats were now amonga series of obstructions formed by floating debris of a recentstorm,--many branches of trees, here and there a bole itself, uprootedand flung into the river by the violence of the tempest,--whichnecessitated careful steering and paddling and watching the current totake them through safely. It threw the two boats apart for a space,prolonging Hamish's suspense, yet serving as a reprieve to the ordeal ofhis examination as to his proficiency in the French language by theerudite Cherokee. The canoe rocked in the swirls, and althoughWillinawaugh sat still in stately impassiveness, Odalie and Fifine clungto the gunwale. Hamish's eyes met Odalie's, which were clear, liquidlybright, as if fired with some delightful anticipation, and yet weary andfeverishly eager. Oh, this was delirium! She did not realize hersurroundings; her intelligence was gone! His poor young heart swellednearly to bursting as he turned back with aching arms and dazzled eyesand throbbing, feverish pulses to the careful balancing of the paddle,for Willinawaugh was an exacting coxswain. Hamish could not know whatvision had been vouchsafed to Odalie in the midst of the gloomy woodswhile the other Indians and Willinawaugh had wrangled and he had hungabsorbed upon their words as on the decrees of fate. Even she at firsthad deemed it but hallucination, the figment of some fever of thebrain--this had been a day of dreams! Yet there it had stood on theriver bank with the primeval woods around it, with the red sunsetamongst the clouds above it, with the sunset below it, reflected in thecurrent of the river, full of sheen and full of shadow,--a figure, ahunter, looking out at the boats; a white man,--a man she had neverbefore seen.

  How he stared! She dared make no signal of distress. She only turnedher 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 thecane-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 theconfluence of the Tellico River with the Tennessee might be sohopelessly near!

  The progress of both boats was very slow now, upstream against thecurrent and the debris of the storm; even the crew of Indian bravesneeded to pull with vigor to make the clear water again. When this wasreached they rested motionless, the duplication of the pettiaugre andthe feather headdress of the Cherokees as clearly pictured in thebright, still reaches of the river as above in the medium of the airbetween sunset and dusk.

  They were all looking back, all commenting on Hamish's slow progress. Hehad the current and his exhaustion both against him, and the mostearnest and well-equipped postulant of culture would hardly be eager togo to an examination in the French language when his life was to be theforfeit 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 forestof the few leaves it might still treasure; now and then a scurryingcloud of them fled before the blast against the sky; the evening hadgrown chill; the boy felt its dank depression in every nerve despite thedrops of perspiration that stood upon his brow as he too paddled intothe 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 riseup in the pettiaugre, looking toward him. The next moment the savageturned his head. There was an alien sound upon the air, so close at handthat despite the fret and turmoil of the water, the blare of the wildwind, the tumultuous clashing together of the bare boughs in the blackforest, it arrested the attention. Once more it asserted itself againstthe tumult, and then Hamish, his head spinning around until he thoughtthat the canoe had broken loose from his mechanical plying of thepaddle, recognized the regular rhythmical dash of oars.