Chapter XII: Part 12

Although the barracks of Fort Prince George had accommodations for a hundred men, the garrison often fell short of the complement. Therefore it was no surprise to Everard to meet here orders, in view of the disquiet of the upper country, to leave to reinforce the garrison such men as he could spare from his command, since the commissioners were now on the border of the frontier, and the region through which they were yet to pass was more or less settled with a white population and with friendly Indian tribes, the Chickasaws and Catawbas. Everard was instructed to select for this purpose those of the soldiers who could not soon rejoin their regiments from which they had been detached for service in the Cherokee country. Into this category fell the Highland contingent, for the Forty-Second had just landed in New York,--a winter in garrison at Fort Prince George seemed a bitter contrast. Everard was reminded of Callum and his equivocal position as he was going over the roll, and he felt a qualm of regret. It was not merely because of that partisan Damon-and-Pythias-like friendship to which young men are prone, soldiers most of all, and that this change would necessitate their parting, but that upon the lieutenant’s restoration to the fitting companionship of his brother officers the man of the ranks had of course sunk back out of notice and into his proper place. Everard could not feel himself to blame, yet the incongruity pained him. Despite Callum’s intrinsic equality with the best of the officers, Everard knew that it would be futile to urge upon them his own example in the exceptional circumstances, and indeed this had been fraught with much discomfort not to say danger in his instance.

Nevertheless, recollecting the episode of the Ancient Warrior’s disguise and the tender solicitude which the soldier had shown for his friend’s safety at so great a jeopardy of his own, risking not only death but the torture, the lieutenant felt very kindly to Callum and was minded to bestow upon him some parting gift. As he was canvassing in generous thoughts the character of this testimonial, he was beset by a sudden monition of the concomitant pride and penury of the Highlander. Everard would not wound him on either account for the world. He congratulated himself as on an escape, and as he was strolling from his quarters to the mess-hall, suddenly meeting Callum, he abruptly turned about and passed his arm fraternally through the soldier’s.

“Come, Callum Bane,” he said gayly. “I’m off to-morrow. Let’s go to the trader’s and get a keepsake. I’ll give you an Indian pipe if you will give me one, and as long as the _Nicotiana Tabacum_ holds out to burn we will never forget the big Injun at Chilhowee.”

Callum had no sense of supersedure or resentment upon his sudden dismissal from his friend’s society. He was too entirely the soldier to cavil at the obligations which the gradations of rank necessarily impose. He had himself some sharp experience that these restrictions cannot be ignored without involving a corresponding subversion of military subordination. Therefore he was not grudging nor envious, but accepted as the natural sequence of events the fact that Everard should be happily carousing with the young officers of the garrison while he, so lately the lieutenant’s chosen friend, stood guard on the ramparts in the chill midnight. Hence he cordially and smilingly assented, and the two, arm in arm, set forth together.

The weather still held lowering and gloomy. On the rampart at Fort Prince George one could scarce see through the chill mists, and beyond the bare space encircling the works, to the dense, leafless wilderness. At the verge of these woods, and looking backward, one could only make out the fort like a sketch in sepia, with its shadowy block-houses, its blurred barrack roofs sleek with sleet, its tall palisades surmounting the rampart with their pointed summits serrating the gray sky. The only note of color amidst all the dreary neutral tints was the red uniform of a squad of soldiers returning with several deer from the hunt that kept the post in fresh meat.

The trading-house was well within sight of the works and close on the river bank. The boughs of several leafless trees, white with the morning’s rime, although it was now past noon, swayed above its high peaked roof; within this seemed to hold great merchandise and store of shadows, for however the light might stream in at the broad barn-like door, or the fire flare on the hearth at the further extremity, only vague outlines of struts and rafters and interdependent timbers could be seen, while from the beams below swung various goods appropriate to the time and trade,--saddles, bridles, ropes, chains, blankets, cloths of various bright tints of red and yellow, all interwoven and rich of effect. Arms glittered on the shelves and racks below, and axes, hatchets, knives,--all sending out a metallic glitter here and there as the firelight flickered. Always about this fire stood or crouched at least half a dozen braves of various tribes, reveling in its luxury, albeit so well inured to the cold elsewhere, their presence necessitating cautious surveillance from the under-traders. For the Indians of the lower grades, it is said, considered it no derogation to steal, but infamy to be caught in stealing. A variety of articles calculated to attract the favorable regards of the officers and men at the fort were displayed,--buttons, hose, buckles, brushes, snuffboxes, ribbons, candlesticks and snuffers, mirrors, gambadoes,--even books, over the slow sale of which Jock Lesly often shook his head. “The carles at the fort are no readers.” Some exquisite feather-wrought mantles, Indian baskets, hemp-woven rugs, and quaint pottery were offered. There were a number of stone pipes showing an extraordinary skill in carving, for the material, soft when quarried, hardened on exposure to the air. The Cherokees excelled all other tribes in this branch of aboriginal art, and some of their work of this date may now be seen in museums or decorating the rooms of historical societies. Before the trader’s collection of pipes the two friends paused.

Jock Lesly had met Callum with no apparent diminution of their earlier cordiality when first he had returned to the fort. But it nettled the proud Highlander now to observe how obsequious was the trader’s manner to Everard, taking scant notice of his “far awa’ kinsman.” And why indeed should he not be attentive to the officer? Jock Lesly cared naught for him but to sell him an Indian pipe, and if the one found for him did not please him to diligently persuade him that it did. “Surely, surely, sir, a bonny bauble. Here, sir, is a fearsome cur’osity if you favor the heejus in Injun carving. That, sir,--why it stays in a corner, bein’ broken. An’ here, sir--look at this--a braw specimen, a real bit of sculpchur.” As far as Jock Lesly was concerned John Francis Everard was born and brought into this world expressly to buy that pipe, for Jock Lesly was essentially a trader--so superior a salesman, in fact, with an eye so keenly and accurately adjusted to the main chance, that without the least ceremony he abruptly deserted them for a matter of more moment, and Callum, angered but an instant since by the adroit pressure of these small wares by a man able to care naught whether the sale was made or lost, was inconsistently irritated, affronted, when Jock Lesly’s attention wavered. A couple of Indians bargaining their peltry for gear had become embroiled in rancorous words with the under-trader, who was about to lose his temper under great provocation and, what was worse in the estimation of Jock Lesly, the advantages of the trade. As he stepped swiftly to the rescue, suavely inquiring into the point at issue, the Cherokee words embellished with his Scotch accent, the two military men at the counter where the pipes were laid out, in the design of which they each sought something reminiscent of their experiences together, hesitated, at a loss, and a trifle out of countenance. Callum trembled lest by reason of this cavalier treatment aught disrespectful of auld Jock Lesly pass the lips of the officer, whom he supposed to be entirely ignorant of any concern or interest that he had in the trader’s household. But Jock Lesly was amply competent to maintain his own standing, and Everard, exacting as he might be, was no man to quarrel with a trader for postponing the sale of a trifle lest he lose the bargain for a hundredweight of choice peltry.

As they idly waited the firelight flickered in their faces; the steel of the weapons in the racks flashed in long, slender lines about the building; the wind, wet, fragrant with the odor of bark and dead leaves, came in from the wilderness without at the open door, and set all the gloomy dusk awavering; and suddenly, as if evolved from the necromancy of these immaterial elements, a slight shape compounded of light and shadow, of the sheen of golden hair and a dull brown dress, a pink and white face, with dark blue eyes and eyelashes still darker, stood on the other side of the counter with a submissive “What’s your wull?”

Everard stared speechless. Doubtless the girl was uncommonly pretty, but it had been full three months since he had seen a fair white brow in a woman, a blue eye, and a wealth of curling blond hair. She looked in the shadow an angel for beauty, a princess for dignity, and a nun for ascetic gravity. Yet she was only the trader’s daughter, ably seconding her father, whose heart she knew must be fairly rent for failure of the opportunity to sell the pipes. “John, Duncan, Malcom,” he had roared, and they came not; therefore gliding out from some hidden recess appeared Lilias.

Once more Callum trembled for the false position, for instantly the handsome Everard must needs seek to commend himself personally, and essay the language of gallantry.

“This represents, you say, an Indian queen with black locks,” he said, turning over in his hand one of the pipes curiously tinted that she had offered. “I should not care for that. It seems to me that the only hair for beauty is yellow, gilded as if with refined gold.”

He boldly lifted his handsome eyes to her fair tresses devoid of the concealing cap of the fashion and rolled, richly waving, high up from her forehead and held with a blue ribbon.

She did not even change color. It seemed that the image carved on the stone pipe might have smiled as readily. She only laid it aside with supreme gravity as a rejected commodity, and he was at once ill at ease, for he would have liked well to own it.

“May I ask you to choose one for me and one for my friend,” he persisted in the personal note, partly to cover his confusion. Then he added, “You understand the degree of aboriginal art they represent and what is most worth while.”

If he had expected to prolong the interview by reason of her vacillations in the discharge of this commission, he was mistaken. In two minutes he was furnished with an effigy of the head of a warrior crowned with a war-bonnet. Through its rudely simulated circle of feathers the smoke would curl as if merely an extension of their flamboyant glories. Callum had assigned to him a similitude of a bird, curiously wrought and with an elaborately decorated stem. Then she suddenly vanished, as if a vision of such delicate consistency could hardly withstand the freshening of the breeze. As it came in, flaring the fire and fluttering the fine show of fabrics swinging from the beams and circling about the building, it seemed as if it had extinguished the fair and dainty fancy that she must have been.

“The trader’s beautiful daughter, Miss Lilias, no doubt,” said Everard to Callum in a low voice, as they turned to settle for the pipes with Jock Lesly.

Although so low a voice, her father heard it.

“And I should be glad to know, sir, from whom you had her name so pat upon your tongue?” he demanded surlily.

He could not have said why, but he was angered by the phrase, “the trader’s beautiful daughter,” although he was not expected to overhear it. With his mind averse to Callum as it had lately grown, he speculated upon the possibility that it was he who had descanted upon her beauty to this young lordling, and that Everard, perhaps, had caused himself to be brought here that he might judge for himself.

For once Callum subjected himself to no misapprehension. “I hae never mentioned her name,” he said stiffly.

“No, no, indeed!” protested Everard hastily; for although he revolted at the pother over so slight a matter as he esteemed it, he wished to occasion no awkwardness to Callum, whose position seemed to bristle with unexpected difficulties. “I never heard of her from Callum--nor from any one at the fort. She--your daughter, Miss Lilias--was mentioned to me by a Virginian whom we saw in the Overhill towns--who claimed to be well acquainted with you. His name was--Tam Wilson--was it not, Callum?”

“I dinna ken his name,” said the dour Callum shortly.

“Ou, ay--Tam Wilson--I mind Tam Wilson weel enow,” said the trader curtly, his red face now blotched with white.

He took his money for the pipes, and as the two young men trudged away in the closing mist he took himself to task. He did not know what he would be at, he said to himself. He could not expect the trader’s beautiful daughter Lilias never to be mentioned among young men--why, the girl was celebrated for her beauty wherever she went. But somehow he knew that if Callum had been seriously in love he was of that earnest, reserved nature that would have guarded her name from other lips as if it had been a sacred thing; that her beauty would have been to him only an incident of her personality, dear because it characterized her, and never to be vaunted abroad by him.

Analyzing thus his anger, Jock Lesly discovered that he was not excited because her name was mentioned, but because he thought that it had come from Callum. This marked the measure of disappointment and discontent he experienced, to suspect that Callum’s attachment to Lilias was not of the serious nature hitherto supposed.

“But hegh, sirs,” he said to himself, “it’s no for the puir callant’s betterment that the lassie’s father hae aye a kind heart till him when Lilias hersel’ looks so glum an’ dour at him. I marked the glance o’ her eye whilst I was dealin’ with thae carles o’ Injuns. Lord--Lord!” he exclaimed in dismay, “man is but mortal an’ fitted for mortal wark! I canna trade wi’ the Injuns an’ yet hae the wisdom an’ leadin’ to guide the luve affairs o’ that freakish Lilias, that I’se warrant dinna ken her own mind! I’se e’en commit it a’ to Providence, that dootless hae mair experience than this puir tradin’ body, that disna even ken what will become o’ the station if they still hand otters at the price they are askin’ the noo!”

Having thus discharged his mind of the responsibility, although now and again he sighed heavily because of the soreness that the stress of his anxiety had left in his consciousness, he busied himself in the multitude of his duties, ever and anon returning to the haranguing of Duncan and Malcom and John, that they should have all been out of the way and left him with no one to wait on a wheen o’ callants frae the fort, it requiring both himself and Dougal to drive a bargain with the discerning chief of Nequassee.

This line of thought bringing up again the recollection of Callum’s offended face and wounded mien because of his ungracious and groundless suspicions, Jock Lesly grew pricked in conscience and desirous to be reconciled formally.

“Zounds!” he muttered, “I maun hae my friends, Lilias or no Lilias, an’ the man is my far awa’ cousin--sae far awa’ it canna be counted--but that’s neither here nor there. Hegh, Duncan,” he called out, “ye can gae ower to the fort an’ ask Callum MacIlvesty if he’ll no sup wi’ me the night if he isna on duty.”

It had been Callum’s impression during the few days that he had now been at the fort that the trader’s domicile must be one of the unoccupied cabins within the works, for he knew that during the earlier alarms of the Cherokee War certain houses had been placed at the disposal of the settlers’ families flocking there for safety. In his opinion this would have been much the safest method of sheltering the trader’s family, but his invitation to the domestic board at the trading-house itself was a definite negation to this supposition.

“Surely auld Jock is clean wud,” he said to himself as, furnished duly with leave, he went out from the fort and crossing the bridge of the fosse took his way over the glacis beyond the fields and those broad spaces filled with the stumps of the trees which Grant’s troops had felled while the army lay in camp outside the works.

He stumbled over one of these, so dim was the light of the chilly, misty dusk. As he regained his footing he turned to look back at the fort. It was but dimly outlined against the dreary evening sky; a steady gleam of light came from the window of the guard-house near the gate, while hovering above the works was a vague suffusion of rays that doubtless issued from various undiscriminated sources,--doors ajar, unseen windows, a lantern perchance swinging here and there,--all combining in this faint, dimly discerned aureola beneath the dense, overpowering weight of the blackness of the night. He heard the sentinel challenge the officer of the day on his rounds and then the measured tramp as the guard turned out. The lonely wind was sighing among the sad, rifled woods; the river’s dash over the rocks that fretted its currents came distinct to his ears; and just as he was thinking that without more guidance in the darkening gloom he might walk off its steep bluffs he perceived suddenly a light in front of him and heard the opening of a door. He was already at the trading-house, and here was Jock Lesly coming out to speculate on his delay, but seeing him at hand, he pretermitted this to reprove his tardiness.

“Hout, man! ye’ll get no sic vivers at the fort as I sail set before ye! My certie, when I was your age the board ne’er waited for my teeth to be sharpened.”

There was, however, no convivial board spread in the trading-house, where Callum now expected to see it. While he waited for Jock Lesly to rearrange a barricade at the door which could not be removed from without except with great clamor, he noted instead that the fire had died down almost to embers. Only now and again a feeble white flare, starting up from a mass of red coals, showed the proportions and usage of the trading-house, and set up such a flicker among the glancing arms and swaying fabrics as gave an uncomfortable suggestion of half seen figures lurking and ready to spring.

“Hegh, callant,” cried Jock Lesly’s voice with a tremor of relish and triumph in the disclosure he meditated. “Come along, and we’se see what we’se see!”

Lighting a lantern he pulled aside a secret door in the counter, and as he crept into the box-like place, Callum MacIlvesty heard the sound of another door opening in the flooring. The swaying light in the hand of the host began to slowly descend, and the young Highlander, following closely, bidden to slam the door of the counter behind him, found with his feet the rungs of a ladder but dimly discerned as the lantern swung. Presently, however, there was scant need of this humble illumination. A gush of red light from below revealed the long extent of the ladder, a stone floor at the bottom, the walls of a grotto of impenetrable unbroken rock, and naught besides. A projection of the rugged wall like a buttress shielded the apartment from view, while they themselves were fully visible throughout their descent. Jock Lesly barely gave the young fellow time to leap down without touching the last half dozen rungs, and lowered the ladder swiftly by means of a rope and pulley; the door which it had held open shut quickly, and if a man should seek to lift it or to descend thence, he could be picked off by a rifle from below before he could gain a glimpse of the place beneath or the group in the chamber beyond. If an intrusive foot should be placed on the ladder when in position, a mere touch from below would dislodge that structure, and the invader, falling from the great height, pay for his temerity with his life.

This was a device put into practice by those constrained to dwell among the inimical Indians in Tennessee, both before and afterward, but to Callum it was an undreamed-of expedient, and he must needs pause to admire the completeness of its features before Jock Lesly, pointing them out in detail, would permit him to turn to survey the subterranean home.

“The conies are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rock,” the trader quoted.

A lofty but narrow chamber had its elements of comfort. Hickory logs were flaring in a great fireplace, and remembering the plan of the building above Callum realized that the flue connected with the chimney of the trading-house, and thus no smoke or light betrayed the cavern to the Indians or, if it were already known to them, this usage of it. The walls, roof, and floor, of rock of unimaginable thickness, were without a break, save that on the side next the river, in a passage like an anteroom, was a series of apertures high among the shadows and round like portholes, affording ample ventilation,--a curiosity that occurs here and there among the bluffs of this region, relics of some forgotten cataclysmal period when the outbursting waters sculptured the rocks. Beyond another arch or tunnel seemed a more limited chamber adjoining the main grotto, whence a golden glow of lamplight betokened occupation, and a wooden partition and door added to its seclusion. “A cubby hole yon where Lilias sleeps an’ keeps her bit duds, an’ rins awa’ to sulk, an’ here on this end is a passage where the gillies foregather an’ ane always is on watch to guard the door. An’ this big room is the parlor, an’ we sit here to receive our company like gentles. Hegh, callant, if we had only had sic a ha’ house on the sweet Tennessee River!”

Before the fire now Lilias sat as if she were indeed in some safely guarded and softly lined parlor. She was arrayed in a brilliant yet dainty gown of striped sarcenet, blue and white, with pink roses scattered at intervals down the white stripe. Her shining golden hair was rolled high from her forehead and a long thick curl hung to her shoulder at one side. An embroidered cape of sheer cambric made visible the white neck that it affected to shield. Her feet were cased in high-heeled red slippers, over one of which the old collie had put a restraining paw, that she might not move without his knowledge, as he lay on the rug beside her spinning wheel. She was now busy with this little flax wheel, while the supper was cooking under the ministrations of an elderly wrinkled Scotch dame, the mother of one of the gillies, who officiated in the household in many capacities,--cook, laundress, dairy woman,--and not the least valued by Jock Lesly as his adviser how to manage the fractious Lilias, whose nurse she had been.

“Gude guide us!” she would exclaim. “Maun ye always be harryin’ the bairn’s life out? Let her alane! Let her alane! or else since ye are sae cruel jus’ tak your big fist an’ knock her harns out at ance!”

Thus berated Jock Lesly would feel that he was indeed a disciplinarian and must needs moderate his severities, or Luckie Meg, as she was called, would be telling at the fort and elsewhere how he tyrannized over his household.

Here Lilias, in the unbounded wisdom of eighteen years, had elected to set up her staff, and hither had she transported the bulk of her effects. She ordered her life much as she would if yet in Charlestown, and seemed incongruously content. If the sight of her in her plain dark brown serge had been overwhelming to Everard, what would be the effect of this vision of dainty loveliness Callum wondered.

Very serious she was when she sat at the table, with a sort of absolute impervious dignity that was not even impaired when the collie stood up on his hindlegs beside her chair with his forepaws on the cloth, looking about him with eager curiosity, and betraying like an ill-bred child that there were more elaborate “vivers” for this occasion than he was in the habit of seeing. Callum could hear the rushing of the river so close outside that he thought their cavern of refuge must be lower than the surface of the water. The flames flared and roared up the chimney; the young packmen or gillies laughed and talked with muttered gibes and boyish sniggers and chuckles in their anteroom; the shadows flickered over the lofty vault; Jock Lesly was once more his old genial self, and Callum felt that the fort was so far away that it was garrisoned in another existence, that the Indians were extinct, that sorrow and pain and loss were but the untoward incidents of an old dream called life, and that he had entered into Paradise,--a bit doubtful, a bit tremulous, a bit prayerful, and very humble, for Lilias, though quite casual, though only carelessly kind, had smiled at him!

“Tam Wilson, now,” said Jock Lesly.

And all at once this grim old world of troubles and fears, of grief and gloom, had whisked back again.

“Now that chiel, Tam Wilson!” reiterated Jock Lesly.

He was amazingly comfortable, the trader, still sitting at the table thrown back in a seat, cleverly constructed to imitate a cushioned armchair, drinking Scotch whiskey till the smell of the peat of the still fires seemed to fill the room, and then a fine French brandy that but inflamed his patriotism and insular prejudice. “What’s that callant doing all this long time in the Cherokee country?”

Callum glanced down at the firelight flashing through his own glass, now like a ruby and now like a topaz. He dared not meet the eyes of Lilias. But when he looked up at last, as he needs must at a repetition of the question, she was busied with a comfit.

“I hae my ain thoughts,” he said.

Jock Lesly was beginning to nod. It had been a long hard day, and now warmth and comfort and “vivers” and brandy were telling on his powers of discrimination.

“Seems strange! Remember Callum,” he said suddenly, “how afeared o’ Moy Toy the callant was!” He laughed sleepily. “He fairly pined to get us out o’ reach o’”--He paused, nodding.

Once more Callum glanced furtively at Lilias. She sat idly toying with her spoon in the red glow, her blue and white apparel, her golden head, her glimmering neck and shoulders, half revealed by their sheer broideries, all indescribably dainty, fairy-like of effect amid these rude surroundings. Her soft and delicate countenance was calm, inexpressive, inscrutable.

“Hegh, Callum,” said Jock Lesly, seizing the subject again in a waking interval, “that captain-lieutenant--what’s his name? Everard? Aye, Everard! A-weel, Everard was saying that chiel was bein’ passed off on him for a Frenchy. Hegh! my certie! Tam Wilson a Frenchy--Johnny Crapaud”--

His head fell more definitely forward--he was gone at last; the low luxurious susurrus of his breath, almost a snore, filled the room at regular intervals.

Afterward Callum could not appraise the impulse, the instinct, that animated him. The room had dulled to a deep crimson glow; in the waning light of the fire the gray walls of the cave showed without shadows, for the light was not so strong as to duplicate an image. Luckie Meg slept on her stool by the hearth, the collie snored under the table, the gillies were silent in the antechamber; the only suggestion of the world outside was the sound of the river rushing on like life to its ultimate destination, to be lost in the tides of the sea like eternity. In the red gloom Callum was hardly aware if her face were yet so distinct, or because in his memory never a shadow could rest upon it.

He gazed directly into her eyes and beheld them dilate expectantly.

“_You_ knew that he was French, Lilias. _You_ knew it all the time!”

She replied as to an accusation. “No--not all the time--_no_--Callum!”

“And you knew how I loved you--so long--so true--never one else--never another thought! And to cast me aside for him--for _him_! A spy, an emissary, sent to spirit up the Indians against the frontier--for the hideous massacres of women and children.”

“He declared it was not for that. He said his government only sought to utilize the Indians in the same way that the English hae used them in our armies, as soldiers. He only obeyed his orders, as you do yours--being a soldier, forbye an officer.”

“An officer! O Lilias, war is one thing and this is another!”

“I think like you, Callum; though after I heard him tell his plan it didna seem the same; that is--forbye”--Lilias hesitated, sore beset--“I could see how it all had a different face to him. An’ he was na cruel to us--he keepit the Injuns aff us.”

“Because the French plans were not ripe enough for our murder then--and Lilias, you knew it! And let your father warm this serpent by his hearth--in his bosom!”

“I didna ken it at first. No, Callum,” exclaimed Lilias, eager in self-defense, her own fealty to the hamely ingle-neuk in question. “No, and not till the last,” she protested, her voice trembling as she remembered that he had offered to renounce king and country, duty and honor for her. This was not Tam Wilson, however. Tam Wilson would never have done this. And it was Tam Wilson who had been so dear!

“He told me at the last!--the last day but twa or three!--or else I couldna hae abided him!”

Callum, fingering his glass, looked off drearily into the glowing mass of red coals. He was recalling the details of that memorable journey,--those days when she declared that she had had dreams. Dreams, dear indeed, since their tenuity warranted the bitter realities of those hot despairing tears. Dreams, alas, which could not come true! Callum doubted if his persistence had won for him much of value,--the certainty that she had wept for Tam Wilson, because he was not--Tam Wilson!

Jock Lesly was beginning to stir. He snorted, yawned, stretched his arms, then sat up straight and opened his eyes. The walls of the cavern first caught his attention. “Hegh, Callum lad, this is like thae auld days fowk are sae fond o’ talkin’ about, the Feifteen an’ the Forty-five, when the attainted Jacobites hid about in caves an’ hollows, an’ limekilns an’ cellars. Remind ye o’ it?”

Callum slowly appraised the glowing dream-light, the luxurious warmth, the comfortable “vivers,” the half emptied decanters, and thought of the ditch in the moorland and the crevice in the mountain, the cold and the starvation, the loss of fortune and favor, the end in exile or on the scaffold. No--he could not just say that he was reminded of it.

And as Jock Lesly was about to demonstrate the points of similarity in the situation a sudden iterative throbbing shook the earth, and the Highlander sprang to his feet, recognizing the vibrations of the drum beating the tattoo, and saying that he would have a run for it to reach the fort, the barracks, and bed by taps.

XVI

THE detachment of Highlanders that Lieutenant Everard left to reinforce Fort Prince George proved of no great interest to the troops already stationed there pining in the weariness of long inaction. The natural expectation of the revival of zest in life incident to new companionship, fresh experiences, stories still untold, and songs as yet unsung all fell flat in the reality; for few of the newcomers could speak aught but the Gaelic, and they clung together with a pertinacity and a suspiciousness of the “Sassenach sidier,” with whom they were thus unequally yoked, that threatened faction in the little garrison. Hence, to accustom them to their new comrades and break up the clique whenever it was possible, the Highlanders were separately detailed to duty among the English, although on parade, at roll call, and at drill they were segregated and kept within their own ranks.

Callum MacIlvesty was one of the few who could speak English; but although, being a “gentleman ranker,” his lowly station involved association with his military equals, he seemed hardly likely to contribute notably to the mirth of nations. He was preoccupied, gravely brooding much of the time, and even when roused showed a temperament averse to the familiar horseplay of the jocund Britisher. Among his Scotch comrades he was little subject to the irksome constraints of his position as a common soldier. They could gauge and realize his claims to a higher station, and, more than conceding them, showed him a consideration and respect to which he had been accustomed from his earliest youth. He returned their kindness, which thus manifested a touch of the magnanimous, with earnest fellow feeling, and his relations with them were affectionate and even fraternal. To the English contingent at the fort, however, he was merely “a bare-kneed Sawney who held his head stiff and stepped high,” with no justification that they could discriminate, for he, like them, shouldered a musket for pay.

Even in this humble station it seemed to him that fortune was singularly adverse, and that his enforced absence from his regiment had cost him the signal opportunity of his life to achieve distinction or aught of value. Recovering from a wound, but yet unfit for duty, he had been granted a furlough early in the year, which he had spent at Jock Lesly’s trading-house, and afterward, at the moment of eager expectation of sailing to join the Forty-Second in the West Indies, he had been ordered with the small detachment of Highlanders in Charlestown to reinforce the commissioners’ escort because of previous familiarity with the Cherokee country. While he was engaged in this distasteful pacific duty, Moro Castle had been carried by storm and the city of Havanna had capitulated, and the Forty-Second, returning to America, was flushed with victory and elated with glory. There was to be no more fighting, it seemed, and in this tame inaction the winter at Fort Prince George was but a dreary prospect.

The inglorious return of the commissioners’ force from the Cherokee country, and the futile arrest which Everard had attempted, were matters of great moment to the garrison, lying as it did within the borders of the Cherokee possessions; but since the event had been all bloodless, the defeat had been esteemed something of a farce. The English soldiers of the escort, who could understand the fun poked at them, one of the essential constituents of mirthful ridicule, had been mercilessly guyed before their departure for Charlestown; and one memorable night the subject came up anew in the guardroom, when, in pursuance of the plan of detailing the Highlanders to duty separately among the English, Callum chanced to be one of the main-guard.

The firelight from the great stone chimney place flashed on the whitewashed walls and with a metallic glitter was reflected from the stack of arms, in the centre of the puncheon floor, ready for instant use, although the cry “Guard, turn out!” seemed many hours distant down the watches of the night, unless indeed some unforeseen chance should betide. There were several bunks against the wall, which were somewhat superfluous at this hour, for at night the guard were not permitted to seek repose thereon, although not a vigilant eye should be closed. A large door led without to the parade, and a smaller one gave upon an inner apartment which bore the huge lock common to that day and a curiosity in this. The key was evidently turned upon some wight who had found liberty joyous while it lasted, and who now and again sent forth drunken snatches of song, occasionally varied with vociferous affectations of woe, weeping and sniffing and groaning by merry turns, till a freshened joyous impulse would set the catch trolling once more.

The group about the guardroom fire took slight note of these aberrations from the regulation deportment appropriate to the rôle of melancholy prisoner. They were all used to these frequent incarcerations of their jolly comrade, and realized that the rigor of his punishment would befall him when he should be sober enough to profit by it.

A heavy rain beating tumultuously against the walls and splashing from the eaves added zest to the luxury of the great blazing logs and the talk of the group ranged around on the broad hearth of flagstones.

“An’ d’ ye mean to say, Callum,” began a leathern-visaged, weather-beaten soldier, the corporal of the guard, leaning his elbows on his knees as he sat on a great billet of wood, “that as soon as old Moy Toy sneezed three times your Lieutenant Everard give the word ‘_Double-quick while ye can! For’ard, by the rear!_’ and the whole command faced right about and footed it out of the Cherokee country?”

He winked jovially at the others as the big Highlander, half reclining on the floor at one side of the hearth, turned his head slowly and came gradually to a realization of his surroundings.

“I said naething o’ the sort, an’ ye ken it full weel,” Callum replied gruffly.

“That’s not the way to answer your s’perior officer,” the jolly corporal admonished him, with a leer.

“Ye never asked no sic a fule question as my superior officer,” Callum deigned to respond after a pause. “Ask me now if my firelock is clean an’ my cartouch box is ready, an’ I’se gie ye a ceevil answer; but my superior officer hae naught to do wi’ Moy Toy’s sneeshin’.”

“There!” exclaimed the corporal with the affectation of delighted triumph and discovery. “He have said it! He said that Moy Toy sneezed and fairly frighted Lieutenant Everard out of the Cherokee country!”

A roar of laughter rewarded this pleasantry, and hearing the gay sound, the incarcerated soldier struck up with rather a dreary quaver, “‘I’ll ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross!’”

“You will ride a wooden horse as soon as you are sober enough to mount one!” called out the corporal.

A great whining and wheezing and affectations of lamentation ensued on the other side of the door, at which all the guard laughed uproariously.

One of the English contingent, a short, stocky fellow, who had been carefully greasing a pair of feet always kept in the prime order for marching essential to the regular infantry-man, now presented those members glistening and perfect on the edge of the hearth, that the unguents might take full effect by aid of the heat of the fire. He had just been admonished by the corporal of that regulation which forbids the guard to lay aside any of their clothing or accoutrements. He first argued that stockings were neither arms nor garments, then pleaded with the corporal for a momentary respite that the grease might soak into the flesh instead of the fabric of his hose. To take full advantage of the official clemency he sought to create a diversion by resuming with animation the previous subject.

“I wonder,” he said, “if that furriner up there in the Cherokee country is French or a Spaniard. When I was stationed at Gibraltar I learned a deal o’ the lingo of that country.”

A long silence ensued. No surprise was intimated at the extent of the soldier’s service, for so often had he recounted the details of his experiences at Gibraltar and the observations he had collated from Spain that they had grown a burden and had earned for him the sobriquet of “the Señor,”--appropriately, perhaps, mispronounced “the Sinner.”

The recent hostilities between England and Spain gave additional and phenomenal interest to his prelections now.

“The Spaniards are a great people for all that’s come an’ gone,” he resumed presently. “’Twas them strengthened the fortifications at Gibraltar so they are now what they be,” he added significantly.

“They did so! An’ they done it well, begorra!” retorted a big Irishman. “An’,” with a rollicking laugh from his full red lips, “bedad, by the same token we tuk it away from ’um.”

“The Sinner” took no notice of this pertinent corollary of his proposition. He was looking reflectively at his feet, stretched out straight before him as he sat flat on the hearth. His hair stood up straight from his brow and was tied in a thin queue behind. He had small bright eyes, heavy-lidded and downcast now. His face was clear and youthful, with a large jowl, that narrowed toward the mouth, and a short blunt nose. He was a good soldier by line and rule, and of a particularly clean aspect. In fact he had so fresh, scraped, washed an appearance that with his porcine resemblance he suggested, as he sat with his plump pink and white feet and shins bare of hose to the knee, some punctual pig that had accommodatingly cleaned and scalded himself--if such a process were ever possible in the lifetime of swine.

The flames flared furiously up the chimney. Outside the roar of water that intimated the swift flow of the Keowee River could be differentiated from the sound of the rain in a fusillade on the roof and its splashing sweep from the eaves. A roll of thunder far away shook the earth, unseasonable, seemingly irrelevant to the occasion, hardly appurtenant to this steady torrent of wintry rain.

“If that furriner is one of them Dons,” said “the Sinner,” resuming his speculations, his eyes critically on the contour of his great toe, “he knows what’s what. He ain’t there among them Injuns for nothin’. They are the strategists--them Spaniards.”

“Arrah,” exclaimed the Irishman, blowing out his contempt with a cloud of strong tobacco as he smoked his little cutty pipe, “it is just as well, thin, that they have got nothin’ I want. Cubia will contint me--that is, for the presint,” he added, with a bland air of moderation.

For this was before the treaty restoring “the Havannah” to Spain.

“I’m talkin’ about the hold they are takin’ on this country,” argued “the Sinner.” “They are surrounding us”--an apprehension at that time entertained by wiser men than he--“amongst all these wildernesses an’ with no defenses but two or three flimsy mud forts. They will retaliate for the Havannah an’ Manilla on the frontier of the British colonies in Ameriky. _Diablo!_ I tell you now, if that man in the Cherokee country is one o’ them caballeros, what between the Spaniard an’ the French an’ the Injuns the southern colonies is crushed.”

He brought his two shining feet together with a clap, the smart impact denoting the small chance that aught intervening would have of escape.

The other men looked reflectively at the fire. They were as brave as soldiers need to be, but the conditions of the frontier were of various adverse interpretations. While they could march against an open enemy readily enough, the chances of traps and massacres, of torture and slavery in captivity, supplemented by the wiles of a civilized power coalescing with the savages, and the ever recurrent doubt of the ability of distant superior officers to cope with these untoward circumstances so far removed from their observation, all combined to give the soldiery many a more serious thought than appertained to their humble functions as the hands that execute rather than the brain that devises.

The corporal eyed “the Sinner” rancorously.

“Ye must be gittin’ them feet ready to gallopade up an’ down on extra drill,” he said. “I’ll report you for spreading discontent among the troops with your tomfool talk about them Dons.”

“Why,” said “the Sinner,” with a look of innocent surprise, “I was just thinkin’ about all this talk o’ silk wums in Carolina an’ Georgia--when in Spain--why you ought jus’ to see the wum farms amongst the mulberries on the”--

“No--no--ye were talkin’ about that fellow up in the Cherokee country!” persisted the corporal.

“Oh, yes,” admitted the wily “Sinner,” perceiving the evasion was useless. “I was wonderin’ if the lad was a Spaniard to be stirrin’ up such a commotion. There’s a deal too many o’ them on the continent now to make it surprisin’ if he is one too!”

“I’ll tell ye, thin, me bye! ’tis Oirish he is,” declared the Hibernian genially. “One o’ me own pattern. Whenever ye meet a distinguished compatriot an’ don’t know wher he comes from, set him down for an’ Oirishman, bein’ a man o’ ganius!”

“He is a Scotchman I’ll wager,” said a native South Carolinian, for already the leaven of disaffection against that nationality that had helped to make the province strong and thrifty was beginning to work. “A Scotchman, and not just one too many, either. A Scotch trader, I’ll be bound, turned Cherokee. Some o’ the French get regularly adopted into the tribes. I know some Scotch fellows among the Chickasaws that are trying it, to trade the more handily, and I dare be sworn that this makebate among the Cherokees is another Injun Sawney!”

This stirred Callum’s patriotism, the master key of a Scotchman’s heart.

“The man’s a Frenchman,” he said curtly.

“Did he sneeze in French?” demanded the jocose corporal.

Callum did not laugh. His eyes were fixed on the masses of red coals beneath the flames of the fire that cast their continual flicker over his dreamy retrospective face.

“I wad hae thought mysel’ he had been an Englishman, that is, a Firginian,” he said reflectively, as if speaking to himself. “But no, the man is French!”

The corporal scarce drew a breath. “Hey, Callum lad,” he contrived to say with a casual intonation, “had ye ever seen him afore that day?”

“Ou, ay, many a time,” replied Callum, intent on his memories.

“Where, lad? where?”

Callum roused himself in returning consciousness.

“In the Cherokee country, man! At Ioco Town, at Jock Lesly’s trading-house. We a’ took him for a Firginian.”

“And why do you think now he is French? Lieutenant Everard gave that p’int up, they tell me.”

Callum hesitated. “I hae my ain reasons,” he said, but with such finality of tone that the corporal pressed the matter no further.

When the guard was relieved the next morning, the officer of the day found a point of importance noted in the written report of the officer of the guard, and as a consequence Callum was surprised by a summons to the presence of the commandant of the fort, to reply to a very queer and childish question, as it seemed to him.

“How do you know that that man in the Cherokee country whom Lieutenant Everard was--about to arrest”--Captain Howard put it as euphemistically as possible, out of respect to a brother officer--“how do you know that he is French?”

“I heard him speak French, sir, to himself--when he thought he was alane.”

“But you know that an Englishman, any one who can learn the language, can speak French.”

“Not like a Frenchman, sir,” persisted Callum.

Captain Howard hesitated. Of all things he would like to secure this makebate, this formidable influence among the Cherokees, nay among all the tribes, that had rendered the costly peace which had been so difficult to secure, so long sought, but a hollow semblance, a menacing sham. Moreover, he would be very glad to succeed where Everard had failed. A very close clutch on distinction had the dapper young lieutenant let slip. And here was the man who in the first instance had afforded information.

“Have you no other reason for your belief?” Captain Howard asked anxiously.

“Aye, sir, I ken he is French frae himsel’,” Callum replied calmly. “He tauld a woman, sir, an’ she tauld me; but you will no ask me to mention her name.”

“Certainly not,” said the officer, thinking that he wished to avoid implicating others in responsibility; “a noncombatant in any event. But,” eagerly, “would you know the fellow if you should see him again?”

“I wad, sir.”

“In any disguise?” the officer persisted.

“I wad indeed, sir, fu’ weel.”

“That is all for the present,” said Captain Howard. Callum gave him an amazed stare, then saluted and withdrew, wondering at this puerile futility. Would he know the man indeed!

XVII

WITH all its advantages civilization bears also its disadvantages to the postulant of culture. Perhaps no one has adequately appreciated the stress of that period to the mental and moral nature of the Indian when, detached from his _ancien régime_, its methods and manners, growing scornful of its sanctities and questioning its values, he was yet unaccustomed to the new order of things, unversed in its utilities, incompetent of its comprehension--alienated from the one and not acclimated to the other.

Many an Indian roamed about the little mart, beginning to gather under the guns of Fort Prince George, alike surly with contempt for the old and aversion for the new, unsettled, dissatisfied, dull, and dangerous. Now and again, with a dark, restless eye, one would pause and look out unallured to the forest and river--not the same, never again to be the same! Then he would turn his gaze, with loathing disgust, to the busy mercantile Europeans, with their quick trading talk, their bearded faces, their knee breeches, and the long woolen stockings on their stout, thick calves. A queer and odious presentment of humanity they seemed. Even the military did not impress the Indians as the soldiers whirled and ranged about to the sound of fife and drum in that close order so favorable to being mowed down by the very musket and ball with which they themselves were armed. A strange mental atmosphere it was--charged with the fumes from the embers of the burned-out past and the miasma exhaled from the poisonous present. No wonder their outlook was beclouded and drear.

All the conditions of life hitherto were reversed for many of them. Never had they met the representatives of certain tribes, immemorial enemies, save with weapons in their hands. Now, because of the intrusion of the white man and the diversion of interest that he had effected, a hollow peace or a simulated indifference had been patched up. Between many the semblance was fast growing into reality under the influence of that secret hope, nay, that earnest, triumphant, almost holy expectation of national independence that had been held in abeyance of late and which the colonists perceived without interpreting. It made for a universal friendship among them, and the traders chafed at its result, for intertribal war sold gunpowder, utilized the venomous activities of the savages against each other, and thus gave immunity to the white settlers. This almost visible bond in the unity of friendship of these hereditary enemies was a menace to all the English colonies from the mountains to the Atlantic, outnumbered by their negro slaves, and with the threatening Spaniard on the south and the inimical French on the west. The frontier traders scanned the horizon that showed so strange a portent, and muttered much together and shook their heads.

To Mingo Push-koosh this prospect of universal brotherhood among the tribes promised little. He wandered drearily about the world, a vagrant indeed, almost an outcast. There had been much ill blood between the Cherokees and Choctaws on his account, although no definite national war was inaugurated, since the French influence had been exerted to maintain intertribal peace and secure satisfaction. However, sundry individual reprisals for the iniquities that celebrated the _congé_ of Mingo Push-koosh at Great Tellico had resulted in counter-reprisals till, when two braves of the respective factions chanced to meet in the settlement about Fort Prince George, nervous people instinctively dodged in expectation of the smartly sped arrow or the impulsively hurled tomahawk, and prudent people sought the nearest shelter. Indeed Mingo Push-koosh would not have ventured here within the borders of the Cherokee country but for the protection of the guns of the British fort. He was not safe inside the French boundaries, his wonted sphere, for he had been bereft of all the honors and privileges he had once enjoyed. In fact he had been sought with a view to condign punishment, a price being placed on his head when the authorities at New Orleans had learned of his betrayal of trust and desertion of Laroche, leaving him after the massacre in the hands of the Cherokees, which must have proved fatal to him and the interests he represented but for his own perseverance and address.