Chapter VI: Part 6

The two Indians looked at him with a keen expectancy that meant woe indeed to the traitor.

“The river whispered it in my ear. I read it in the clouds. The winds are singing it in the pines--I can turn nowhere that it does not cry out to me from all the voices of the earth. For all day I have been in the woods--even as far as Great Tellico; your good horse may show my speed, Moy Toy. All your Cherokee country tells it--the fair land that was to have been rescued from the British, and with the aid of the French made the head and front of an independent Indian confederacy of a dozen tribes!”

The large scope of this harmonious scheme that, could it have been realized,--the combination of the tribes, ever warring against each other, into a union of massed strength against the colonies,--would doubtless have worked mighty changes in the history of this continent, appealed to the breathless hope of the Cherokee statesmen. The chief of Ioco Town hastened to say that Laroche was the cherished friend of the tribe; the town of Ioco loved to hold, to shelter his honored head; he was indeed deceived if he imagined from his distorted reading of dreams of Indians--for dream Indians were mischievous and would not appear right to white men, and thus loved to delude them--that the Cherokees, least of all the town of Ioco, sought to do him mischief; they valued too greatly his promise of instruction, the assurances he had brought from his government, and the prospects he had unfolded of that large freedom and independence he would teach the nation to secure.

“Those prospects are as nothing--as a mere breath--as that mist before the moon--even the moon’s light will scatter it.” Laroche glanced up at the great disk slowly rising over the serrated summit line of the gloomy Smoky Mountains, albeit the western sky was yet red and day lingered, dusky and doubtful, among the wigwams, and in the opalescent tints of the river, broken here and there with the tumultuous flashing of the white foam against the rocks.

“Nothing will I promise--not even that I will remain amongst you.”

He detected a significant hardening in the faces of the Indian chiefs--a sudden tyrannous gleam in the eyes of Moy Toy.

“You would say I have no choice, Moy Toy.” He took from his belt a pistol--a fine new weapon, secured from Jock Lesly’s own armament at the trading-house--primed and loaded. “I hold in my hand the opportunities of life and death. Unless all at the trading-station go in peace, go free, and I myself accompany them as far as the Keowee River, I will not remain with you.” Once more that dangerous gleam in Moy Toy’s eye. “I will place this at my temple,” he held the muzzle amidst the loosely curling rings of his light brown hair and deftly touched the trigger, “and in one moment your league with the great French king is a thing of the past. His trusted officer, holding his commission and acting by his authority, will have died in your country, in your custody, as definitely, in his estimation, slain by your hand as if your hand had sped the bullet.”

The two Cherokees, obviously at a loss, gazed at each other and hesitated.

“Never will the pettiaugres ascend your demon-infested, rocky rivers--never will the barrier towns rise above and below those defiant, malign obstructions and secure the passage of merchandise. Your vassalage to the British will be an accomplished fact, your independence a dream; for I who am sent to organize your armies and perfect your plans and equip your warriors for defense and legitimate aggression in war--I will do nothing! My mission is at an end, unless you comply with my conditions. I am a soldier and no murderer. I cannot and will not be placed in a position to answer to the British colonial authorities for the innocent blood, for murder, for massacre. I said to you once as I say to you now--Let the traders go! They shall not return! Then, with the aid of the French government, I will put into the field an army of Indian braves, officered by French experts in each arm of the service, and the very name of it shall strike more terror to the hearts of the perfidious English than a myriad of border massacres.”

Laroche had already known something of the swiftness with which the crafty savage could shift ground, but he was not prepared for the sudden _volte-face_, without a glance at each other or a sign, with which both Moy Toy and the chief of Ioco began to protest, albeit in decorous fugue, notwithstanding their haste,--it being a standing joke among the Indians, a matter of perennial ridicule, that the white people would talk at the same time or interrupt one another so that none could be distinctly heard. The two chiefs instantly declared that they would respect his words and abide by his promises, which they cherished like the blood of their own hearts. They admitted that they ought earlier to have told him the truth--which for shame they wished to conceal,--that only the mad young men of the town had conceived the ignoble scheme of revenge for some trivial insults which they fancied had been offered them by the young packmen--themselves hardly less insane than the bereft young braves. They had been reproved for their midnight mummeries and their threats thus expressed, and when opportunity should offer, after the departure of the trader and his pack-train, the offenders should be dry-scratched.

The Frenchman duly appraised the insincerity of all this. He well understood that the plea of the misdoings of their “mad young men,” so frequently urged, was now, as often before, merely their scapegoat, designed to bear the burden of the mischievous device of the headmen, which some change of policy or mischance in execution caused them to abandon. He hardly cared, however, to challenge their motive, since it tended to promote the result he desired to foster,--the peaceful withdrawal of the trader’s household. He stood decorously listening, with a face of suave acquiescence, until, in the midst of their antiphonal series of excuses and explanations, the chiefs stated, among their reasons for concealing the alleged comparatively innocuous source of the demonstration, that they had refrained from telling him this lest he might esteem his own life insecure among such an uproarious, ill-conditioned troop as their mad young men, and thus desire to leave them.

Laroche, at the imputation, could but laugh aloud in his martial consciousness of courage. The tact of the Indians instantly perceived the false step.

They knew, they protested, the great bravery of the French officer, for no fear had he! His heart was so strong as even to make him contemplate taking his own life, merely should his plans be crossed. This they besought that he would consider no more, for they only desired to know his mind, that they might comply with his every thought. Still he might well deem that their wild young men could hardly be brought under reasonable authority, that they could be made the instruments of winning and wielding such an independence as he had planned for the splendid future. If he would but observe, he should see how plastic to command they could become, how rightful authority should reduce their turbulence and their clamors.

And indeed as they swarmed over the dusky “beloved square” and through the spaces among the shadowy cabins and wigwams and along the bank of the river, still red under the vague dream light of the faintly tinted sky, the wild excitement that had pervaded the tumultuous groups subsided upon the instant on the reappearance of the chiefs among them; whether a word, a look, a sign wrought the miracle one could hardly say. Laroche, standing gazing after his late interlocutors, could but admire the address with which they had selected the occasion of their withdrawal,--not that they had been faced down by argument, nor that their virulent threats were overborne by counter-threats, nor that their scheme was again proved foolish, futile, fatal to their own future prospects, but only to demonstrate how amenable, how subject to lawful authority were these very “mad young men” when adequate necessity caused it to be exerted. It seemed incredible how promptly all the aspects of peace were renewed. The long, lustrous, slanting rays of the moon, soon falling athwart the town, penetrating the dusky aisles among the Indian dwellings under the drooping boughs of the gigantic trees, flashing upon the foam of the river, or resting in full, unbroken placidity on the “beloved square,” scarcely showed the shadow of a quiver, or a firelock, or the flicker of a feathered head. Now and again the quiet echoed to the measured footfall of a sedate passer-by. An open door here and there might reveal a group about a fire where fish were frying for supper, and gossip was still stirring about the events of the day. Dogs clustered around the door and begged with all the insidious canine wiles of their kindred of civilization. The council-house, dome-like in its elevation on its mound above the town, was lighted by a party of young people setting forward some of their usual evening games or pantomimes for the general diversion. The two chiefs, respectively of Tellico and Ioco, had parted as if nothing more of importance were to be discussed, and Moy Toy, in the public office, as it were, the cabin of the aged councilors, deserted but for two or three of its frequenters, was talking over old times of hunting and fishing and was telling a tale of piscatorial captures which could hardly be matched even in these days of expanded imaginations,--his civil hosts now and again constrained to laugh with guttural remonstrance, or to interject an incredulous comment, “Ugh! Ugh!”

At the trading-house, lights flickered within, but the barricaded doors continued closed. The little garrison were to sleep upon their arms in view of possible treachery in some lapse of vigilance. Even thence, however, came loud, jesting voices, and now and again hilarious snatches of song; all were very mirthful and with a renewed sense of security under the double safeguard of adequate precaution against surprise and the apparent satisfaction and pacification of the Cherokees.

In the next few days preparations for an early and orderly departure were seriously inaugurated. It was not so much in advance of the usual time for the semiannual journey to Charlestown for the demonstration to augur undue fear of the Indians or to seem prompted by the recent suspicious events. With an apparent hardihood, that was yet the craft of caution, Jock Lesly more than once postponed the date for the flitting, openly alleging the reason for the delay: now it was the legitimate one of awaiting a consignment of deerskins which he had been notified was to be sent from Toquoe; now it seemed that a purely arbitrary wish of his own induced him to dispatch a messenger on a long wild-goose chase for a conference with an Indian friend of auld lang syne, for whom he had undertaken a personal commission to make sundry purchases in Charlestown,--which gear, when described from the aboriginal point of view, was found to have no counterpart in the material world; indeed the demand for it was prompted in the full faith that whatever wish the heart of man could fashion the great mart could furnish forth. The remonstrances sent on a second trip by the runner were productive only of very guarded modifications in the requisites, and all Ioco Town, in its excess of sophistication, was laughing both at the simplicity of the old Indian of remote Kanootare Town--who had never been as far as the Congarees, and who looked upon Jock Lesly as a master magician in the mechanical arts--and at the kindly worry and fret of the trader himself.

“Heard ever onybody the like o’ that--the daft auld carle! And where am I to find sic gear? And am na I a fule to try? A hammer, that suld hae a gun, like a pistol, in the eend, wi’ a sharp knife for skelpin’ that clasps under--sae he’ll be aye ready for wark or war. Ding it a’, I’ll no fash mysel’!”

As he strode about the place and discussed the absurdity with the various braves, all seeking to recognize some modern and simpler invention in the mists of his elaborate instructions, and the Indians came and went from the trading-house and loitered about its recesses with the young packmen, all in complete and obvious amity, there was not the vaguest suggestion of the antagonism that had threatened the destruction of the little party. The idea seemed a flout to credulity. Jock Lesly again doubted its reality at times. “Hegh, lad,” he said to Laroche, “ye hae gie us an unco stirrin’. I wad na tak a gliff at a potato-bogle. It’s ower easy to be frighted.”

For Laroche, albeit aware how thin was this crust of peace that overlay the seething, fiery crater of conspiracy and murder, was forced to run the gauntlet in some sort,--to be the butt of the ridicule which the harbinger of danger that does not materialize always is called upon to suffer. Now and again he encountered this among the young packmen poking fun in a sly way. The high value which they had set upon his views because of his experience in actual encounters in the continental wars, in which he stated he had served, seemed suddenly inverted, and for this very reason his measures were derided. It was a point of almost religious exaction in those days, as indeed sometimes in these, to decry the regular soldier in aggrandizing the militia or the volunteer, on the somewhat absurd hypothesis that the entire devotion of a man’s time to a pursuit renders him necessarily inexpert at it, or that the more one learns of military science the less one knows. Whether this comes about from the instinctive arrogation of the civilian that he is as fit in a fight as any man, and knows by intuition all that the soldier learns by hard knocks, it is one of the dearest delusions of the popular mind and is not to be lightly trifled with. Laroche must needs have been more the diplomat and less the soldier than he was to have perceived this spirit without the usual snorting indignation and sentiment of baffled wonder at the presumption of the comparison. But it is of that grade of intimate persuasion in which argument or any certainty of demonstration is futile, and like other military men earlier and since he permitted it to pass unchallenged, with a secret scorn and a mocking acquiescence. It was only in the presence of Lilias that he winced under this derision, knowing that but for him the whole trading-station would be in ashes, its embers quenched with the blood of its inmates. Yet in the same instant he was saying to himself that her presence should be naught to him, and that this guying was a trifle.

How could her presence be naught, when across the supper table the tiny flame of the candle showed her blue eyes kindling like sapphires?

“Ou, ay, ay,”--her father was answering Callum’s inquiry,--“Tam is gaun wi’ us--Tam’s gaun to haud a care o’ us,--gin he no taks to dreamin’ agen!” He stopped his chuckle with half a scone.

Lilias had risen and turned away, for Callum MacIlvesty wanted more parritch and Laroche had matter other than Jock Lesly’s clumsy jest to canvass in secret agitation. That blue, jeweled light in her starry eyes--was it set aglow because the day of parting seemed yet distant?--how could he care for the trader’s flout!

The next day he had in some sort a revenge for his installation as laughing stock. He had repeatedly cautioned the young packmen against the lurking dangers of the fougasses which he had connected with the trading-house for its defense. There had supervened so general a scorn of the warning, the menace--even the sight of the Indian town under arms had been apparently only the reflex of their own acts of hostility--that the emergency mines seemed but a part of the whole invalid hoax until a stout, red-haired young packman, striking his flint hard by, communicated a spark to a saucisson, and upon the consequent explosion of the fougasse he was tossed like a feather into the air and had three fingers blown off. The ground for several yards was ripped open as if the ditch had never been filled, and the crags and chasms of the mountains rang and rang with the successive reverberations of the detonation.

Great as was the commotion among the trading folk, the incident was as a revelation to the Indians. Almost palsied by terror, as in some stupendous convulsion of nature, they no sooner comprehended the agency of the disaster than their anxiety was increased twofold. At this period, although the use of firearms was general among them and the ancient bow and arrow were superseded, save in cases of necessity, gunpowder was as yet an unaccustomed force except as confined to musketry. They still entertained great terror of artillery, and the effects of powder in mining and in so large a quantity seemed little short of miraculous. Seeing the trader’s band presently clustered about the scene of the disaster, several of the savages ventured to approach, suspiciously sniffing the sulphur laden air and eyeing the deep chasm in the ground with a grave, tentative aspect and a sort of serious disaffection, which was in itself a most portentous threat. It seemed to argue that scarcely any advantage was to be neglected against people who could bring to their aid so potent an auxiliary of destruction as this. Evidently the town itself might be thus destroyed. The Indians began to walk about the pit, gazing down at it with the sort of averse appropriation which one feels toward aught of menace designed with a personal application. They measured the inimical capacities of the fougasse, dwelling upon the intention of its device, and obviously felt that anger experienced when one heartily takes the ill will for the deed. Their state of mind was all at once so rancorous that albeit the explosion of the fougasse was only another indication of the strength of the defenses and the value of the resources of the white man, and thus would seem to reinforce the dangers of attack, the fact that it was planned to carry death and destruction to them, who had as yet given no overt cause of offense and failed in naught of open friendship, was as a challenge to strategy, invited reprisal, and made vain all protestations of good will.

“Eh, we maun be gangin’ the morn’s morn,” said Jock Lesly, wiping his brow with his great red handkerchief, and gazing down from the window of the spence at the curious crowds that came and looked silently upon the snare--riven and exploded and harmless now--that yet had been laid for them.

“An’ what for no?” cried Lilias impatiently. “Ye’re aye sayin’ ‘we maun be gangin’ an’ we maun be gangin’,’ an’ we aye bide here!”

“Whist, whist, my bairn.” Then perceiving some inconsistency, “The deil’s in the wimmen folk!” Jock Lesly cried indignantly. “’Twas only yesterday sennight that ye sat greetin’ on your creepie an’ said your heart was sair to leave thae grand mountains,--an’ go ye wad na!”

The girl laughed slyly. So dull he was! So well, too, for a father to be dull, when he had “sic a fule” for a daughter. She suddenly grew grave and blushed with a deep, serious, conscious glow. She had caught MacIlvesty’s eyes, bright, alert, with a world of speculation in them as they were fixed upon her face. Could it be that he connected her sudden change of will with the fact that on that tearful yesterday sennight she had not known that mad Tam Wilson was to join their march? For he had since announced that, designing to return to Virginia, he would accompany the trader’s cavalcade as far as the Keowee River,--a great detour and much out of his way.

VIII

NOR only Tam Wilson, but Moy Toy himself, Quorinnah, a dozen braves from Tellico, and as many more of Ioco Town joined the escort, the Cherokee headmen having become impressed definitely with the idea that their interest was essentially involved in keeping faith with Laroche.

An early start was made the morn’s morn. The night had not yet revealed the aspect of the day, whether fair or foul; the world was sunk in darkness and swathed in mists. Now and again, glancing upward, one might see a star, augury that the sky was clear, and then the web of vapor annulled the scintillation and portended the gathering of clouds. Torches were here, there, everywhere, flaring through the gloom. The gable of the little home would show for a moment as one sped past, and anon would collapse into the similitude of a burly shadow. The trading-house stood forth with continuous distinctness; the light within streamed through the open doors as the final preparations of departure were in progress. It gave bizarre glimpses of the heavily laden train of horses standing--shadowy equine figures--outside, with now and again one of the packmen moving in the midst, readjusting a burden or examining the strength of the girths. In the chill matutinal air the bells on the animals gave out a keen jangling,--all the clamors of the raucous voices of the packmen crying here and there; the noisy movement of bales and boxes scraping upon the floors or against each other; the thud of pawing hoofs; the swift beat of human footsteps to and fro were punctuated by this continual, metallic vibration, which somehow was jarring to the senses and added a distinct element of confusion. Albeit, with the expectation of immediate departure, the preparations were deemed complete the night before, still, when the actual moment was at hand, it seemed that all was yet to be done--after the perverse manner of a journey’s start. Trifles developed into obstacles; obstacles became immovable; the impracticable asserted its inelastic limitations; and throughout was heard, from time to time, Jock Lesly’s half paternal, half petulant, admonitory upbraiding, “Oh fie!--oh fie!”

Occasionally he quitted the precincts of the trading-house, leaving the solution of its problems to his lieutenants, and plunged into the more dusky and shadowy domain of his own dwelling, where, however, he acquired no placidity, for now and again his favorite adjuration issued thence, invested with a sort of pathetic intonation of futility and associated with the name of Lilias. “Callum,” he would yell from the door in despair, “Lilias winna ride ahint ye on the pillion!” Then his stentorian roar, relaxing to domestic exhortation to the rebel of the interior, seemed in the distance a mere rumble of “Oh fie!” in conscious defeat; he would lift his voice anon as he was beaten back from one line of defense to another, “Callum, Lilias winna ride ahint me on the pillion!”

Callum’s face, half seen in the flare from the door, grew set and hard, as he stood saddling with his own well-descended hands the palfrey destined to bear the weight of the trader’s daughter. His action was significant, whether or not it was observed. He had begun to take the pillion off--since she would accompany neither him nor her father she should not ride behind the saddle of Tam Wilson, if that were her object. The other men looked at one another, laughing slyly, with a certain relish in the paternal discomfiture and the hardiness of the young insurgent, rejoicing in the ultimate victory of “little lassie Lilias,” after the manner of those who are indulgent to the whims and desirous of forwarding the power of a spoiled and imperious child--out of their own household. They discerned nothing more serious in the discussion, but Tam Wilson, busy in the group, was obviously expectant.

A longer interval of argument and remonstrance ensued. Then the great voice, with a hapless quaver in its tones issued forth anew.

“Callum, Callum! Lilias winna ride on the pillion at a’. Lord save us! The lassie vows she maun hae a tall horse all for her nainsel’--oh fie! oh fie!”

He was fairly beaten, for time was against him, and he must needs come out and see to the getting of his convoy together. Again and again in the extremity of his despair he protested that night would find them still hirpling about Ioco Town. But the first long slant of the sun met the pack-train in full march, descending one of those steep defiles among the mountains and the swirls of the Tennessee River, and the wind itself was not more blithe and free and fain to travel. The pack-horses swung in single file along the familiar ways of the old trading-path, now at a brisk trot, now carefully treading a ledge whence a false step would precipitate the creatures into the torrents below, without rein or guidance selecting their footing and balancing their burden with that strong animal intelligence and good will in labor which might seem to entitle them to be considered conscious factors in the commercial enterprise. Their chiming bells, blithely echoing from the crags, now loud, now softly vibrating, as the tones of those in the vanguard or far away in the rear came to the ear, made no dissonance in the free open air in their diversity of quality, and smote upon the dash of waters with the effect of sudden cymbals in the flutings and stringed vibrations of orchestral music. The mist had taken wings. Far and near the airy essences were rising from the mountains. The morning star, luminous, splendid, in her amber cloud, exhaled like a dewdrop in the glance of the sun. The spirit of May was in the air. The alert breeze had a keen, matutinal reviviscence, despite the languors of spring, and upon the mountains was a vague, blue presence, an efflorescence of haze like the bloom on a grape, that made their tint deeper, richer, softer, whether it were the azure of the furthest reaches of vision or the sombre purple of the nearer ranges, or the densely, darkly verdant slopes closing about the immediate vicinage of the series of cup-like coves.

In the distinct light the convolutions of the train became easily discernible to the eye, as from lower ground one could look back up the winding slopes of the ravine, so narrow at times as to leave a passage but for two or three abreast. Several of the stoutest men, fully armed, rode in the vanguard, and after the pack animals and their drivers came another close squad of horsemen, for owing to the packmen that Callum MacIlvesty had brought with him, the guard of the pack-train was more numerous than it was wont to be. A salient feature of the long, winding troop was the waving feathers of the braves, themselves riding together, for albeit most friendly of aspect, it was deemed meet that they and the young packmen should have as scant opportunity as might be to fall at loggerheads.

“They can’t talk thegither, praise God!” said Jock Lesly, who had had little thought he should ever be in case to be thankful for the impiety of the builders of the Tower of Babel, that had brought about the confusion of tongues. “But they are a’ kittle cattle, and I’se no trust them thegither.”

As he himself rode between the packmen and the Cherokee braves, his own companions were Moy Toy and Quorinnah, who had attached themselves to the chief of the expedition as their only equal in point of rank. He had anticipated this and had directed Callum to ride at the bridle rein of Lilias, whose station was between the squad of extra packmen and the drivers of the pack-train. Tam Wilson had no place assigned to him in the line of march. He was aware, when he took up his position on the other side of her palfrey, that he might seem animated by a sentiment far alien to the spirit of resignation and renunciation that had lately possessed him, but in reality he was influenced by the knowledge of the added protection his proximity afforded her. Nevertheless, with the satisfaction of their safe departure, which he knew his own exertions had secured, the keen edge of exhilaration and expectancy that dangers still unmasked may give, the necessity to support the character he had assumed, the delirious joy that her presence and his knowledge of her preference could but diffuse through mind and heart, all overcame for a time his sense of regret for his idle delay, his disloyalty, his duplicity. He forgot the futile cruelty to Callum MacIlvesty, and the deceit practiced toward her; and the identity of Tam Wilson, which he claimed as his own true character, was never more definite, more consistent than as he fared gayly by her side down the devious ways of the mountain wilderness. The tinkling of the bells and the chiming of the echoes were in his ears. He breathed the fragrance that the herbs of the earth distilled into the rare air; the colors of the landscape glowed so rich, so fine, so fair; and all the heart of a beautiful woman who loved him was in her eyes as she looked at him.

It was plain to Callum MacIlvesty, and Lilias scarcely cared that it was. She had no realization of him save that his words, his face, his very existence irked her, and she would fain be rid of him--being in the nature of an interruption of the free thought of another. He wondered afterward that he could be so patient--to watch her fair face cloud as even casually she turned; to hear the inflection of annoyance in her voice when she spoke to him, and she did not speak unless she needs must answer; to mark her appeal to Tam Wilson for the buckling of her rein anew, and the readjustment of her saddle; for a flower growing beside the way; for a cluster of wild strawberries, which she ate to the manifest danger of life and limb, the reins falling on her horse’s neck as he gingerly picked his way, stumbling now and again down the rugged descent, until Tam Wilson himself gathered up the lines and guided the animal. And when the strawberries were eaten she rode on, laughing like a child, her head bare under the sun, her golden curls hanging down on her shoulder, and her milk-white face burning red, although her riding mask swung by its string to her belt.

Sometimes Laroche was summoned back by the requisition of Moy Toy, Jock Lesly, and Quorinnah, to give opinions or arbitrate on some moot point of the trading privileges as established by the treaty, the Cherokees secretly delighted that it was to a Frenchman, actively employed in the French interest, to whom the unwitting British trader was appealing, by whose decision he professed himself willing to abide, and that these fine-spun theories were to be of consequence no more.

Then--the two young Scotch people left together--Lilias would gravely grasp the reins and ride slowly along, gazing up continually at the massive ranges, for their aspect shifted as the route of the travelers deviated. When one majestic dome, always in view from the little window of the spence, seemed on the very border-land of vision, the turn around a crag about to cut it off forever, she checked her horse and paused to look her last upon it.

“I’ll never see it mair!” she cried, in accents of positive pain. “I’ll ne’er be sae happy again as I hae been, living in the sight. Fare ye weel, sweet friend. May the warld gae cannily wi’ ye!”

The blue dome still towered like a mirage in the distance above the purple of nearer heights and the green of the foothills; then the crag intervened, and suddenly she laid down the reins on the horse’s neck and began to tie on her mask.

“Ye’ll see mountains agen. There’s mountains enough elsewhere, Lilias,” said Callum, in awkward consolation, as he caught up the reins and held the horse to a steady gait.

“Nane like these,” she protested in a husky voice. “There’s mountains enough in Scotland, an’ that’s nae joy to you nor to me.”

And this was very true, as the poor exile realized; his heart might ache vainly for the rugged mountains he remembered and loved, and as for these mountains of this new land she, whom he loved best, loved them well for another man’s sake. He gazed upon them with dreary eyes and an inward protest against them. Happy in their shadow! in magnitude, in multitude they typified woe, unceasing, immeasurable, ineradicable. So these two rode on together in silence, save that she murmured now and again, “Thae sweet mountains!”

He was none the happier when Tam Wilson came spurring up again, and Lilias was suddenly blithe and bonny once more. She was as gay as a child when they reached the first unfordable river, where the singular methods of ferriage of those days came into requisition. Through the shallow waters of the fords the knowing pack animals had cheerfully trudged, scarcely needing and certainly not noticing the halloos and cracking of whips with which the packmen beguiled the passage. Here, however, was a river deep enough to threaten damage to the packs and to require swimming, and the horses lined up on the margin, still with their tinkling bells fitfully jingling, and staidly awaited, more than one with expectant whinnies, the removal of their burdens. A delay ensued, as always, and each section of the guard coming up, kept apart to this time for reasons of policy, halted in a medley on the high and rocky banks which resounded and reëchoed with the various calls in Cherokee and English and braid Scots, with the jangling of bells and stamping of hoofs. Here and there an active and agitated search was in progress for the boat, constructed of buffalo skins and always hidden among the willows or rocks on shore when not in requisition by the traders and packmen and their Indian coadjutors,--the headmen of Ioco, the town where the station was situated, being admitted to the secret of the cache.

“Gone! gone!”--a frenzied exclamation arose. “Stolen! Carried away!”

Perhaps hidden anew! A score of active figures dashed hither and thither, now bursting out of the willows with exclamations of dismay, now plunging down the bank to a new point of search. Some as they sped up and down showed above the rocks heads polled and feathered, others, most genteel, with cocked hats, and again the coonskin cap or Callum’s Highland bonnet was in evidence. Lilias, in the flickering, glinting shade of a low-hanging beech tree, her head bare and golden, her face so fair, looking as some dryad might, captured by this wild and varied rout, waited like one apart, without a pulse of the impatience that swayed the whole cavalcade. She was living in the present. For aught she cared the journey might last forever. The past, it was naught to her; the future was so strangely veiled--and somehow she trembled at the thought. To-day! to-day!

The disaster threatened a long delay; a new boat must be built, new hides procured, all suitably tanned, and the incident itself suggested treachery and fomented suspicion. More than once the eyes of Callum MacIlvesty and Tam Wilson met in secret comment, an interchange of inquiry, a fraternal interdependence, all other considerations forgotten in the realization of a common danger. But Moy Toy’s face was frankly clouded, and Quorinnah was already suggesting ways and means by which, going into camp here, help might be fetched from Ioco Town. Only Jock Lesly gave no outward sign of his inward perturbation as he strode up and down the bank, save that now and again he admonished his cohorts with a shake of the head and a vehement “Oh fie! oh fie!”

And at last and suddenly, quiet descended on all the disordered crew, bating a word or two of rancorous upbraiding and a retort of raucous yet sheepish protest, for the boat was found where first it had been presumed to be. It had been overlooked, so well had it been hidden, and once declared to be missing the place of its usual and most obvious bestowal was not searched again till desperation suggested the retracing of all the various steps that had been taken. And so it was presently launched. A queer craft we of to-day would deem it, and perhaps would prefer something more stanch and less picturesque, seeing how swift and deep and rocky was the river. But the capsizing of such a boat meant only some slight injury of the goods and the swift swimming of the hardy passengers ashore, none the worse for the plunge into the clear waters of the mountain stream. The hides stretched between stout saplings, serving as gunwale and keel and tightly bound at each end, were distended toward the centre by crosspieces of the same fashioning, holding the boat in the conventional canoe shape, and the structure would convey ten horse loads at once. The method of progression was still more singular--no oars nor poles were used in its propulsion. The hardy packmen of the day, being lightly clad in buckskins, were wont boldly to fling themselves into the river and swim across, pushing the pettiaugre before them, their horses all gallantly swimming in the rear. When the first boat’s load had been piled upon the craft, Lilias was conducted down the steep bank and seated in the boat, the only passenger, upon the bales of fine dressed deerskins. Callum MacIlvesty and a number of other young men were instantly in the water, wading first, then swimming, with the liberated horses following after. The girl liked the novelty. She smiled down from her high perch at each strong stroke that sent the curious structure throbbing and quivering on its way, with its silver wake and a little ripple of foam at the prow. The river was crystal clear, smooth, and shining in its centre under the sun, deeply, duskily green beneath the shadow of the trees on the further shore. Beyond, where the stream rounded a sort of peninsula, a great glittering stretch of water seemed to extend indefinitely in a haze that hung about a flat margin and there met the sun in a vaporous shimmer, dazzling yet soft. All the group on the hither shore gazed at the progress of the boat, but only the cultivated imagination of the French officer suggested similitudes of aught that it was not. Against that green and white and misty background the shell-shaped craft and the still and smiling golden-haired figure recalled some legendary sea nymph, some Venus in the gliding shallop; the sleek heads of the attendant train suggested dolphins and sea horses, gleaming in the sunset as they swam swiftly after.

There was scant space for the flattery of illusions, for the deep shadows of the leafy bank opposite were falling upon this misty presentment of myths, the necromancy of the sheen and shimmer, and obliterating it as the little craft was pushed in to the land. Those of the packmen who had crossed were shaking the water from their dripping garments with no more care for a drenching than so many shaggy dogs, and presently were resaddling their horses, while Lilias, quite dry and fresh, stood apart on a little promontory of rock and with a scornful wave of the hand bade Callum in his saturated kilt keep his distance.

It seems incredible that such a man as Laroche should fear a little guying, but perhaps it was only the spectacle of Callum’s discomfiture that reconciled him to the knowledge of the scoffs at him, covert and otherwise, which he knew he should receive from the other young men when with Jock Lesly and the Indian headmen he should cross in the boat on its second trip, his condition as a recent invalid entitling him to share their honors and ease. It was barely possible, however, that Lilias would have found no occasion, even were he also dripping from the short swim, to place an embargo on his near approach. Why it was that this watery quarantine should have roused Callum MacIlvesty’s spirit of revolt, of self-assertion, of pride, it is difficult to say. Perhaps merely the limit of his endurance was reached when he was cried out upon like a too affectionate and dripping water dog.

“I winna sprinkle your kirtle,” he said with some dignity, despite the triviality of the theme. And he withdrew himself--not merely till the hot sun and the reflected heat of sand and rocks should dry off his garments, which, aided by the swift running to and fro on the errands of the pack-train, the brisk wind, and the warmth of his own body, was shortly effected.

The whole train was in motion again incredibly soon, considering the abnormal difficulties which these primitive methods of ferriage would seem to present. The young packmen, by reason of being detailed to the earliest crossing, were kept separated from the braves, the “mad young men,” with whom it was feared some quarrel might arise through their perverse ingenuity, independent of verbal communication. These tribesmen came last of all, after the dignitaries of both factions, and thus when once more on the march the original formation of the little cavalcade was preserved.

Only Callum MacIlvesty had shifted his position. He no longer rode at the right hand of Lilias, but ahead with the squad of packmen, and Tam Wilson succeeded to the position he had occupied; but Lilias appeared hardly to have noticed Callum’s absence, and certainly did not waste a thought upon it. Her radiant spirit seemed to shine through her eyes--she was gay, whimsically, childishly fascinating one moment; soft, serious, deeply emotional the next; now showing her more earnest traits, careful, womanly, unselfish; and again the veriest flutterer of a butterfly. She had never been so protean of mood, so beautiful, so charming. And yet Laroche looked upon her with changed eyes, a newly aroused and upbraiding conscience. The frightful bodily danger in which they had all recently stood from the murderous Cherokees, his triumphant scheming to avert their impending fate, had been as a reprieve to thoughts that now in this leisure again clamored for a hearing. His long, idle lingering amongst them and enforced concealment of his identity had brought this menace upon them. He had not yet annulled all its evils. And now--whither was he tending? Daily he considered the question.

He was a man of education, having had superior facilities and both the talent and the will to avail himself of them. He was not without social culture, and he moved in coteries of refinement. While not of the higher nobility, he was still a man of good birth, of degree, and of some fortune, and this had enabled him to tolerate the more kindly the bourgeois, nay the peasant-like aspect of the Lesly household, since it was but a matter of contemplation, and by no means of assimilation. He had regarded it with all its homely traits and habitudes as impersonally as if it were a scene on a stage.

In addition he was consumed by professional ambition; he had always been accounted an efficient, superior officer; he believed that his military abilities were great. Upon the successful issue of his plans among the Cherokees and other tribes high preferment would await him in the gift of the French government. To hamper by a _mésalliance_ with a simple Scotch girl, the daughter of a bourgeois trader, his future, his pride of diplomatic achievement, his opportunity to render great services to his government--he was appalled by the very thought. He promised himself that he would make no such sacrifice for any woman on earth! Seriously contemplated, he could not raise her to his level, and he would not sink to hers. All must be renounced should he dream of her in any sense but to kiss her hand in gallantry and bless her goodness in gratitude.

Yet what was he doing? Separating forever two young people whose kindness had been so largely instrumental in saving his life. Lapsed in the luxury of a sweet, delicate, almost abstract emotion, flattered by the consciousness of her love, he had supplanted her true suitor by this ghastly simulacrum of a lover, and was wrecking the happiness of both. He was sentimental enough, in the abstract, to care much for a sentimental woe. He was conscientious enough to appraise the unjustified intermeddling of the course he had pursued, and sensitive enough to shrink from bearing the consciousness of it all his days. With the policy of the confessional of the faith in which he had been trained, that restitution must accompany repentance and peace only follow penance, he was canvassing how to undo in days all that he had wrought in months. It should not be, he declared arbitrarily. He cared honestly, kindly, too much for her, loved her too truly, for herself, as a friend! And toward Callum himself he was not indifferent. Yet how could he bring them together again? Difficulties hedged him about. He feared the English in his character of French emissary. Now, daily, he was approaching the Englishman’s country. He adventured, indeed, much for the sake of her and hers. Knowing his prejudice, he would not trust Jock Lesly with his secret. But the girl loved him. He would trust Lilias! She would doubtless expect him to follow her to Charlestown. She would watch and wait for him. She would pine. But should he disclose his nationality, his employ, it must appear that their parting was final; in all probability, so divided by distance and prejudice, they would never meet again. It would be a poignant pang to them both, and Lilias he could never forget! If thus unhampered she could find her happiness in Callum MacIlvesty--he sighed--but he would not grudge it. At all events he owed her this: she must not waste her sweet young life in devotion to an illusion.

In reaching this resolution he was far too acute, too accustomed to introspection, not to perceive that he had postponed the shattering of the romance that had delighted him until its enchantment had at the most but a few days’ lease. He took some credit, however, that he had determined to submit to the ordeal and the jeopardy it involved before these were passed, that he might have space for an earnest effort to bring the young people to their former understanding. Besides, he argued, he might easily, in the interests of his own safety, hold his peace. Surely it was not a part of his duty, in going about the country, to warn susceptible maidens against losing their hearts to him.

Notwithstanding the stress of this absorption, he conducted a dual train of thought, listened to her talk, answered in character, followed the manifold changing theme, commented on the varying aspects of the country,--all the region being new to him,--found even space for a keen notice of her flattered consciousness that it was for her sake that he made this long and laborious detour in his journey to delay their parting--if ever they should part again; and only once did he answer at random, and only once did he fall into silence, to be merrily rallied and asked when and where did he see that wolf.

One day the camp was pitched about sunset, the blue twilight yet in abeyance. This, too, was the first halt since breakfast, dinner having been eaten on the march. A substantial meal, therefore, was this supper _al fresco_. Kettles were swung gypsy fashion; venison was broiled on the coals; some wild ducks, brought down by a volley in the course of the march, were split and toasted on a long stick at the general camp, but brandered at the fire of the “gentlefolks” as the contingent of Moy Toy and Jock Lesly was called,--it boasting a branding iron. The “gentles” also rejoiced in a case bottle of brandy, while the lower grades were content with rum, and only Lilias and the Frenchman drank a “dish of chocolate.” By a watercourse, necessarily, the halt was made and in the neighborhood of one of those exquisite springs for which the region is noted.

It seemed illimitably deep as Laroche and Lilias stood amidst the sweet-scented ferns on its rocky verge and then sat down on one of the fractured fragments fallen from the great crag beetling from the mountain slope above their heads.

Lured by the fascination that this sort of fountain in the wilderness seems to exert on all travelers, each of the cavalcade had come to gaze upon the crystalline depths which were like topaz in the lucent tints imparted by the golden gravel beneath. The hewing of the circular basin was almost as symmetrical as if wrought by hand. The down-dropping branches of the sycamore and beech nearly veiled the crags closing about them, and the far-away mountains across a stretch of valleys and lesser ranges were purple and sombre under the light of the sinking and vermilion sun. Only these two lingered here, quite silent at first, and Laroche wondered if he could speak at all. He glanced about doubtfully.

“Lilias,” he said slowly, “I have something to say to you.”

The shadow of a homing bird sped across the sunlit valley. Down the current of the river was visible a red reflection that was not a cast of the western sun, but was caught from a camp-fire on the bluff. At these he looked, not at her, lest the sight of her face disarm his resolution; yet somehow he was aware of the sudden flutter of her heart and the quickening of her pulses, and he knew that for all his art and all his tact he had begun amiss. He hastened to nullify the impression she might have taken, nay, nay, must have taken from his words.

“It is a secret,” he said hurriedly. “You must promise that you will tell no one--not even your father.”

He wondered, his eyes still fixed on those furthest western mountains, if her heart had ceased to beat, so still she suddenly was; then he realized rather than saw the slow motion of surprise, of protest, as her head turned toward him on its long and slender white neck.

“Not even your father,” he reiterated, for he must needs go on.

So sudden had been the revulsion of feeling, so complete, so paralyzing, that she could not trust her voice. And this was well, for he perceived that even in these few steps he had stumbled into a second pitfall. Exclude the paternal idol, know a secret forbidden to that paragon of wisdom and crown of creation, Jock Lesly! In another moment he would have a downright refusal of the trust. He must quickly involve her in the safety, the confidence of another, and even filial fealty would not warrant her in breaking faith with him.

“No,” he qualified hastily, “don’t promise. I will throw myself on your honor--in the fullest assurance of safety. Lilias, I am not what I seem; I am an emissary of the French government, an officer of the army!”

She recoiled violently, suddenly shaken, shocked; and albeit ghastly pale she fixed a challenging stare upon him.

“A spy?” she demanded in a husky voice, impressive with its deliberate tone and weighty yet incredulous rebuke.

Laroche hastily collected his faculties. This untoward trend of his disclosures must needs be checked in sheer consideration of the safety of his neck.

“Ah, Lilias, _bien aimée_,” he cried, in half petulant, half affectionate protest. “How can you misunderstand? Remember how I came to you--was it of my own intention, my own volition?”

The recollection of those weeks of illness, of helplessness, when he lay under their roof unconscious, brought thither by her father, was supplemented by the thought of the simple domestic routine in which he had grown a factor and had made the dear sense of home in these savage wilds so doubly dear, his eager care for their safety, his suspicions of the Indians, his precautions for the defense of the trading-station, his oft ridiculed anxieties and prognostications of savage treachery that had at last proved stern truth,--only foiled by his foresight and ingenuity and sagacity. As these reflections flitted through her mind, his eyes read the changing expressions of her face like an open book. He spoke as if in response.

“Remember,” he said with emotion, “for believe me I can never forget, dear heart”--

Suddenly, seeing the roseate color at the word beginning to return, to deepen, to glow in her cheek with a subtle, conscious emotion, he was admonished of that far more significant secret of his mission which must be disclosed, and that quickly, for the sake of both.