Chapter III (2)

“The Lord made him--” muttered Ronald MacDonnell, in uncertainty, recognizing the coherence of this military maneuver, and said no more. Whether or not his theory was reduced to that simple incontrovertible proposition, thus modified by the soldier-like demonstration on the supply train, his cogitations were cut short by more familiar ideas, when in command of thirty-two picked men, he was ordered to make a detour through the defiles of a narrow adjacent ravine, and, issuing suddenly thence, seek to fall upon the flank of the enemy and surprise, rout, and pursue him. This was the kind of thing, that with all his limitations, Ronald MacDonnell most definitely understood. This set a-quiver, with keenest sensitiveness, every fiber of his phlegmatic nature, called out every working capacity of his slow, substantial brains, made his quiet pulses bound. He looked the men over strictly as they dressed their ranks, and then he stepped swiftly forward toward them, for it was the habit to speak a few words of encouragement to the troops about to enter on any extra-hazardous duty, so daunting seemed the very sight of the Cherokees and the sound of their blood-curdling whoops.

“Hech, callants!” he cried, in his simple joy; and so full of valiant elation was the exclamation that its spirit flared up amongst the wild “petticoat-men,” who cheered as lustily as if they had profited by the best of logic and the most finely flavored eloquence. Ronald MacDonnell felt that he had acquitted himself well in the usual way, and was under the impression that he had made a speech to the troops.

Now climbing the crags of the verges of the ravine, now deep in its trough, following the banks of its flashing torrent, they made their way--at a brisk double-quick when the ground would admit of such progress--and when they must, painfully dragging one another through the dense jungles of the dripping laurel, always holding well together, remembering the ever-frightful menace of the Cherokee to the laggard. The rain fell no longer; the sunlight slanted on the summit of the rocks above their heads; the wind was blowing fresh and free, and the mists scurried before it; now and again on the steep slopes as the vapors shifted, the horned heads of cattle showed with a familiar reminiscent effect as of mountain kyloes at home. But these were great stall-fed steers, running furiously at large, bellowing, frightened by the tumults of the conflict, plunging along the narrow defiles, almost dashing headlong into the little party of Highlanders who were now quickening their pace, for the crack of dropping shots and once and again a volley, the whoopings of the savages and shouts of the soldiers, betokened that the scene of carnage was near.

Only a few of the cattle were astray for, as MacDonnell and his men emerged into a little level glade, they could see in the distance that the herd was held well together by the cattle-guard, while the reinforcements sought to check the Cherokees, who, although continually sending forth their terribly accurate masked fire from behind trees and rocks, now and again with a mounted body struck out boldly for the supply train, assaulting with tremendous impetuosity the rear-guard. So still and clear was the evening air that, despite the clamors of battle, MacDonnell could hear the commands, could see in the distance the lines rallying on the reserve forming into solid masses, as the mounted savages hurled down upon them; could even discern where rallies by platoon had been earlier made judging from the position of the bodies of the dead soldiers, lying in a half-suggested circle.

The next moment, with a ringing shout and a smartly delivered volley of musketry the Highlanders flung themselves from out the mouth of the ravine. The Cherokee horsemen were going down like so many ten-pins. The first detachment of reinforcements set up a wild shout of joy to perceive the support, then flung themselves on their knees to load while a second volley from the Highlanders passed over their heads. The rear-guard had formed anew, faced about, and were advancing in the opposite direction. The Cherokee horsemen, almost surrounded, gave way; the fire of the others in ambush wavered, slackened, became only a dropping shot here and there, then sunk to silence. And the woods were filled with a wild rout, with the irregular musketry of the troops frenzied with sudden success, out of line, out of hearing, out of reason as they pursued the unmounted savages, dislodged at last from their masked position; with the bugles blowing, the bag-pipes playing; with the unheard, disregarded orders shouted by the officers; with that thrilling cry of the Highlanders “Claymore! Claymore!” the sun flashing on their drawn broadswords as they gained on the flying Indians, themselves as fleet;--a confused, disordered panorama of shadows and sunlight, of men in red coats and men in blue, and men in tartan, and savage Chickasaws and Cherokees in their wild barbaric array.

It had been desired that the repulse should be fierce and decisive, the pursuit bloody and relentless. The supply train represented the life of the army, and it was essential to deter the Cherokees from readily renewing the attack on so vital a point. But these ends compassed, every effort of the officers was concentrated on the necessity of recalling the scattered parties. Night was coming on; it was a strange and an alien country; the skulking Cherokees were doubtless in force somewhere in the dense coverts of the woods, and the vicarious terrors of the capture that menaced the valorous and venturesome soldiers began to press heavily upon the officers. Again and again the bugles summoned the stragglers, the rich golden notes drifting through the wilderness, rousing a thousand insistent echoes from many a dumb rock thus endowed with a voice. Certain of the more solicitous officers sent out, with much caution, small details, gathering together the stragglers as they went.

How Ronald MacDonnell became separated from one of these parties was never very clear afterward to his own mind. His attention was attracted first by the sight of a canny Scotch face or two, which he knew, lying very low and very still; he suffered a pang which he could never evade. These were the men who had followed him to the finish, and he took out his note-book and holding it against a tree, made a memorandum of the locality for the burial parties, and then, with great particularity, of the names, “For the auld folks at hame,” and he quoted, mournfully a line of the old Gaelic lament much sung by the Scotch emigrants “_Ha til mi tulidh_” (we return no more), which was sadly true of the Highland soldiery in the British ranks,--an instance is given of a regiment of twelve hundred men who served in America of whom only seventy-six ever saw their native hills again. Then, briskly putting up the book he went on a bit, glancing sharply about for the living of his command, even now thrusting their reckless heads into the den of the Cherokee lion. “Ill-fau’rd chields, and serve them right,” he said, struggling with the dismay in his heart for their sake.

Perhaps he did not realize how far those active strides were carrying him from the command. In fact the march continued that night until the sinking of the moon, the army pressing resolutely on through the broken region of the mountain defiles. MacDonnell noted no Cherokee in sight, that is to say, not a living one. Several of the dead lay on the ground, their still faces already bearing that wan, listening, attentive look of death; they were heedless indeed of the hands that had rifled them of their possessions, for there were a few of the Chickasaw allies intent on plunder.

Presently as he went down a sunset glade, MacDonnell saw advancing a notable figure, a Chickasaw chief, tall, lithe, active, muscular, with a gait of athletic grace. He was wearing the warrior’s “crown,” a towering head-dress in the form of a circlet of white swan’s feathers of graduated height, standing fifteen inches high in front, and at the bottom woven into a band of swan’s down--all so deftly constructed that the method of the manufacture of the whole could not be discerned, it is said, without taking it into the hand. To the fringed borders of a sort of sleeveless hunting shirt of otter-skin and his buckskin leggings bits of shells were attached and glittered, and this betokened his wealth, for these beads represented the money of the Indians, with the unique advantage that when not in active circulation, one’s currency could be worn as an ornament. It has been generally known under the generic name “wampum,” although several of the Southern tribes called it “roanoke” or “pe-ack.” It was made in tiny, tubular beads, of about an inch in length, of the conch and mussel-shells, requiring the illimitable leisure of the Indian to polish the cylinder to the desired glister, and drill through it the hollow no larger than a knitting-needle might fill. His chest and arms were painted symbolically in red and blue arabesques, and his face, of a proud, alert cast was smeared with vermilion and white. All his flesh glistened and shone with the polishing of some unguent. MacDonnell had heard a deal of preaching in his time of the Scotch Presbyterian persuasion, and in the dearth of expression Biblical phrases sometimes came to him. “Oil to give him a cheerful countenance,” he quoted, still gazing at the grim face and figure. So intently he gazed, indeed, that the Indian hesitated, doubting if the Highland officer recognized him as a friend. Breaking off a branch of a green locust hard by and holding it aloft at one side, after the manner of a peaceful embassy, he continued his stately advance until within a yard of the silent Scotchman, also advancing. Then they both paused.

“_Ish la chu; Angona?_” said the Indian, in a sonorous voice. (Are you come, a friend?)

With the true Briton’s aversion to palaver, intensified by his own incapacity for its practice, Ronald MacDonnell discovered little affinity for barbaric ceremonial. Nevertheless he was constrained by the punctilious sense that a gentleman must reply to a courteous greeting in the manner expected of him. His experience with the Chickasaws had acquainted him with the appropriate response.

“_Arabre--O, Angona_,” (I am come, a friend) he returned, a trifle sheepishly, and without the _ore rotunda_ effect of the elocution of the Indian.

The young chief looked hard at him, evidently desirous of engaging him in conversation, unaware that it was a game at which the Scotchman was incapacitated for playing.

“Big battle,” he observed, after a doubtful interval.

“A bonny ploy,” assented the officer, who had seen much bigger ones.

Then they both paused and gazed at each other.

“Cherokee--heap fight! Big damn--O!” remarked Choolah, the Fox, applausively.

The use of this most vocative vowel as an intensitive suffix is one of the peculiar methods of emphasis in the animated Chickasaw language--for instance the word _Yanas-O_ means the biggest kind of buffalo (_yanasa_ signifying buffalo in all the dialects). Choolah conversing in the cold and phlegmatic English evidently felt the need of these intensitives, and although a certain strong condemnatory monosyllable has been usually found sufficiently satisfying to the feelings of English speaking men seeking an expletive, the poor Aboriginal, wishing to be more wicked than he was, discovered its capacity for expansion with the prefix “Big” and devised an added emphasis with the explosive final “O.”

“The Cherokee warriors? Pretty men!” said MacDonnell laconically, according the enemy’s valor the meed of a soldier’s praise. “Very pretty men.”

Choolah had never piqued himself on his command of the English language, but he thought now his fluency was at least equal to that of this Scotchman, who really seemed to speak no tongue at all. As to the French--of that speech, _ookproo-se_ (forever despised) Choolah would not learn a syllable, so deadly a hatred did the Chickasaw tribe bear the whole Gallic nation, dating back indeed through many wars and feuds, to the massacre by Choctaws of certain of the tribe in 1704, while under the protection of Boisbriant with a French safeguard, the deed suspected to have been committed if not at the instigation, at least by the permission of the French commander who, however, himself wounded in the affray, was beyond doubt, helpless in the matter.

“Heap tired?” ventured Choolah, at last, pining for conversation, his searching eyes on the young Highlander’s face.

Ronald MacDonnell laughed a proud negation. He held out one of his long, heavily muscled arms, with the fist clenched, that the Indian might feel, through his sleeve, the swelling cords that betokened his strength.

But it was Choolah’s trait to cherish vanity in physical endowment, not to foster it in others. He only said, “Good! Swim river.”

“Why swim the river?” demanded the Lieutenant.

Then Choolah detailed that through a scout he had thrown out he had learned that Colonel Grant’s force, still pushing on, had succeeded in crossing the Tennessee river, the herd of cattle and the pack animals giving incredible trouble in the fords, deeply swollen by the unprecedented rains. It suddenly occurred to MacDonnell that, in view of the passage of the troops beyond this barrier, much caution would be requisite in endeavoring to rejoin the main body, lest they fall into the clutch of the Cherokees on the hither side, who doubtless would seek the capture of parties of stragglers by carefully patrolling the banks. He suggested this to Choolah. The Indian listened for only a moment with a look of deep conviction; then suddenly calling to five Chickasaws who were still engaged in parceling out the booty they had brought away from the dead bodies, he beckoned to MacDonnell, and they set out on a line parallel with the river, in Indian file, in a long, steady trot, the Scotchman among them, half willing, half dismayed, repudiating with the distaste of a prosaic, unimaginative mind every evidence of barbarism; every unaccustomed thing seemed grotesque and uncouth, and lacking all in lacking the cachet of civilization. Each man, as he ran lightly along that marshy turf, almost without noting, as if by instinct placed his feet upon the steps of the man in advance; thus, although seven persons passed over the ground, the largest man coming last, the footprints would show as if but one had gone that way. Ronald MacDonnell, quick at all military or athletic exercises, readily achieved conformity, although the barbarous procedure compromised his sensitive dignity, and he growled between his teeth something about a commissioned officer and a “demented goose-step,” as if he found the practice of the one by the other a painful derogation. The moon came into the sky while still they sped along in this silent, crafty way, the wind in their faces, the pervasive scents of the damp, flowery June night filling every breath they drew with the impalpable essences of sylvan fragrance.

Even with the dangers that lurked at their heels, the Indians would never leap over a log, for this was unlucky, but made long detours around fallen trees, till Ronald MacDonnell could have belabored them with hearty good-will, and but for the fear of capture by the savage Cherokees, could not have restrained himself from crying aloud for rage for the waste of precious time. He had even less patience with their slow and respectful avoidance of stepping on a snake sinuously skirting their way, since, according to their belief, this would provoke the destruction of their own kindred by the serpent’s brothers; Choolah’s warning to the other Chickasaws in the half-suppressed hiss--“_Seente! Seente!_” (snake!) sounded far and sibilant in the quiet twilight. The Cherokee tribe also were wont to avoid with great heed any injury to snakes, and spoke of them always in terms of crafty compliment as “the bright old inhabitants.”

The shadows grew darker, more definite; the moon, of a whiter glister now, thoughtful, passive, very melancholy, illumined the long vistas of the woods, and although verging toward the west, limited the area of darkness that had become their protection. More than once Choolah had glanced up doubtfully at its clear effulgence, for the sky was unclouded and the constellations were only a vague bespanglement of the blue deeps; coming at length to a dense covert among the blooming laurel, he crept in among the boughs, that overhung a shallow grotto by the river bank. MacDonnell followed his example, and the group soon were in the cleft of the rocks under the dense shade, the Scotchman alone among the Indians, with such dubious sentiments as a good hound might entertain were he thrust, muzzled, among his natural enemies, the bears.

But the Chickasaws, as ever, were earnestly, ardently friendly to the British. There was no surly reservation in Choolah’s mind as he reached forth his hand and laid it upon the muscular arm of the Scotchman.

“Good arm,” he said, reverting to the young Highlander’s boast. “But--big damn--O!--good leg! Heap run!” he declared, with a smothered laugh, like any other young man’s, much resembling indeed the affectionate ridicule that was wont to go around the mess-table at Ronald’s unimaginative solemnities. But even MacDonnell could appreciate the jest at a brave man’s activities, and he laughed in pleasant accord with the others.

A scout that they had thrown out came presently creeping back under the boughs with the unwelcome intelligence that there was a party of Cherokees a little higher up on the river, a small band of about a dozen men, seeming intent on holding the ford. These were stationary, apparently, but lower down, patrolling the banks, were groups here and there beating the woods for stragglers, he fancied. As yet, however, he thought they had no prisoners. Still, their suspicions of hidden soldiers were unallayed, and they were keeping very quiet.

The scout was named Oop-pa, the Owl. Although himself a warrior of note he was of a far lower grade of Chickasaw than Choolah, in personal quality as well as in actual rank. Instead of manifesting the stanch courage with which the Indian Fox hearkened to this untoward intelligence, the alert gathering of all his forces of mind and body for defense and for victory, or to make his defeat and capture an exceedingly costly and bloody triumph, Oop-pa set himself, still in the guise of imparting news, to sullenly plaining. The Highland officer listened heedfully for in these repeated campaigns in the valley of the Tennessee River he had become somewhat familiar with the dialect of the Chickasaw allies and in a degree they comprehended the sound of the English, and thus the conversation of the little party was chiefly held each speaking in his own tongue. The English were all across the river, Oop-pa declared. The red-coats, and the green-coats, and the tartan-men, and the provincial regiment--he did not believe a man of the command was left--but them.

“Well, thank God for that much grace!” exclaimed Ronald MacDonnell, strictly limiting his gratitude; he would render to Providence due recognition for his own rescue when it should be accomplished. His thankfulness, however, for the extent of the blessing vouchsafed was very genuine. His military conscience had been sharply pricked lest he might have lost some of his own men in the confusion of the pursuit and the subsequent separation from the little band.

Oop-pa looked at him surlily. For his own part, the Indian said, he was tired. Let the English and French fight one another. They had left him to be captured by the Cherokees. He needed no words. White man hated red man. Big Colonel Grant would be glad. Proud Colonel Grant--much prouder than an Indian,--would not care if the terrible Cherokees tortured and burned his faithful Chickasaws. Let it be one of his own honey plaidsmen, though, and you would see a difference! For haughty Colonel Grant couldn’t abide for such little accidents to befall any of his pampered tartan-men, whom he loved as if they were his children.

With the word the world changed suddenly to Ronald MacDonnell. For this--this fearful fate menaced him. His was not a pictorial mind, but he had a sudden vision of a quiet house on a wild Scottish coast at nightfall within view of the surging Atlantic, with all the decorous habitudes about it of a kindly old home, with a window aglow, through which he could see, as if he stood just outside, a familiar room where there were old books and candlelight, and the flare of fire, and the collie on the rug, and the soft young pink cheeks of sisters, and a gray head with a pipe, intent upon the columns of a newspaper and the last intelligence from far America,--and oh! in the ingle-nook, a face sweeter for many a wrinkle, and eyes dearer for the loss of blue beauty, and soft hands grown nerveless, whose touch nevertheless he could feel across the ocean on his hard, weather-beaten young cheek. It had been a long time since this manly spirit had cried back to his mother, but it was only for a moment. If his fate came as he feared, he hoped they might never know how it had befallen. And the picture dissolved.

He did not fail to listen to the scornful reproaches with which Choolah upbraided Oop-pa. He had been left because he had lingered to rob the slain Cherokees. Look at the load there of hunting-shirts and blankets, and yes, even a plaid or two from a dead Highlander, that he had borne with him on his back from the field of battle; it was his avarice that had belated him.

And what then, Oop-pa retorted, had belated Choolah and the Highland officer? They had brought away nothing but their own hides, which they were at liberty to offer to the Cherokees, as early as they might.

The freedom of Oop-pa’s tongue was resented as evidently by Choolah as by Ronald, but the _Etissu_ occupied a semi-sacerdotal position toward the chief, a war-captain, the decrees of whose religion would not suffer him to touch a morsel of food or a drop of drink while on the war-path unless administered by the _Etissu_. The utmost abstemiousness was preserved among the Chickasaws throughout, and it continued a marvel to the British troops how men could march or fight so ill-nourished, practicing all the fasting austerities of religious observances. There were many similar customs implying consecration to war as holy duty, but they were gradually becoming modified by the introduction of foreign influences, for formerly the Indians would not have suffered among them on the march the unsanctified presence of a stranger like Ronald MacDonnell. He said naught in reply to the _Etissu_. His mind was grimly preoccupied. He was busied with the realization of how strong he was, how very strong. These lithe Indians, with all their supple elasticity, their activity, had no such staying power as he, no such muscular vitality. He was thinking what resources of anguish his stalwart physique offered for the hideous sport of the torture; how his stanch flesh would resist. How long, how long dying he would be!

The terrors of capture by the Cherokees had been by Grant’s orders described again and again to the troops to keep the rank and file constant to duty, close in camp, vigilant on outpost, and alert to respond to the call to arms. Never, as Ronald righteously repeated this grim detail, had he imagined he would ever be in case to remember it with a personal application. He now protested inwardly that he could die like a soldier. Even from the extremity of physical anguish he had never shrunk. But the hideous prospect of the malice of human fiends wreaked for hours and hours upon every quivering nerve, upon every sensitive fiber, with the wonderful ingenuity for which the Cherokees were famous, made him secretly wince as he crouched there among the friendly Chickasaws, beneath the boughs of the rhododendron splendidly a-bloom in the moonlight, while the rich, pearly glamours of the broken disk sunk down and down the sky, and the dew glimmered on the full-fleshed leaves, and through them a silver glitter from the Tennessee River hard by struck his eye, and a break in the woods, where the channel curved, showed the contour of a dome of the Great Smoky Mountains limiting the instarred heavens. As he looked out from the covert of the laurel--his flaxen hair visible here and there in rings on his sunburned forehead, from which his blue bonnet was pushed back; his strongly marked high features, hardly so immobile as was their wont; his belt, his plaid, his claymore, all the details of that ancient martial garb, readjusted with military precision since the fight; his long, rawboned figure, lean and muscular, but nevertheless with a suggestion of the roundness of youth, half reclining, supported on one arm--the Indian gazed at him with questioning intentness.

Suddenly Choolah spoke.

“_Angona_,” (friend) he said, with a poignant note of distrust, “you have a thought in your mind.”

It was seldom indeed, that Ronald MacDonnell could have been thus accused. He changed color a trifle, although he said, hastily, “Oh, no, my good man, not at all--not at all!”

“_Angona! Angona!_” cried Choolah, in reproach.

Perhaps a definite recognition of this thought in his mind came to MacDonnell with the fear that the Chickasaw, who so easily discerned it, would presently read it. “The fearsome Fox that he is,” thought Ronald with an almost superstitious thrill at his heart.

Naturally he could not know how open was that frank face of his, and that the keen discernment of the savage, though perceiving the presence of the withheld thought, was yet inadequate to translate its meaning. This thought was one which he would in no wise share with Choolah. MacDonnell’s most coherent mental process was always of a military trend; without a definite effort of discrimination, or even voluntarily reverting to the events of the day, it had suddenly occurred to him that the Cherokee with the essential improvidence of the Indian nature, could not have developed that plan of attack on the provision train, so determined and definitely designed, so difficult to repulse, so repeated, renewed again and again with a desperation of the extremest sacrifice to the end. And small wonder! Its success would have involved the practical destruction of Grant’s whole army. Hundreds of miles distant from any sufficient base of supplies, the provision train was the life of the expedition. The beef-herds to be subsequently driven out from the province to Fort Prince George for the use of the army were to be timed with a view to the gradual consumption of the provisions already furnished, and to communicate by messenger to Charlestown, now distant nearly four hundred miles, the disaster of the capture of stores would obviously involve a delay fatal to the troops.

The Indians, however, were a hand-to-mouth nation. Subsisting on the chances of game in their long hunts and marches, enduring in its default incredible rigors of hunger as a matter of course, sustaining life and even strength when in hard luck by roots and fruits and nuts, they could not have realized the value of the provision train to civilized troops who must needs have beef and bacon, flour and tobacco, soap and medicine--or they cannot fight. There was but one explanation--French officers were among the Cherokees and directed these demonstrations. Their presence had been earlier suspected, and this, Ronald thought, was indisputable proof. The strange selection of the ground where in the previous year the Cherokees had massed in force and given battle to Colonel Montgomery’s troops had occasioned much surprise, and later the same phenomenon occurred in their engagements with Colonel Grant. It seemed to amount to an exhibition of an intuitive military genius. No great captain of Europe, it was said, could have acted with finer discernment of the opportunities and the dangers, could with greater acumen have avoided and nullified the risks. But Colonel Grant, who was always loath to accord credit to aught but military science, believed the ground was chosen by men who had studied the tactics of the great captains of Europe, and although he had learned to beware of the wily devices of the savage, and to meet his masked fire with skulking scouts and native allies, fighting in their own way, he preserved all the precise tactical methods in which he had been educated, and kept a sharp edge on his expectation for the warlike feints and strategy of the equally trained French officer.

If he could only meet one now, Ronald MacDonnell was thinking. In case it should prove impossible to cross the river and rejoin his command, if he could only surrender to Johnny Crapaud!

To be sure the creature spoke French and ate frogs! More heinous still he was always a Romanist, and diatribes on the wicked sorceries and idolatries of papistry had been hurled through MacDonnell’s consciousness from the Presbyterian pulpit since his earliest recollection. But a soldier, a French officer--surely he would be acquainted with higher methods than the barbarities of the savage; he would be instructed in the humanities, subject to those amenities which in all civilized countries protect a prisoner of war. Surely he would not stand by and see a fellow-soldier--a white man, a Christian, like himself--put to the torture and the stake. And if his authority could not avail for protection--“I’d beg a bullet of him; in charity he could not deny me that!” If the opportunity were but vouchsafed, MacDonnell resolved to appeal to the Frenchman by every sanction that can control a gentleman, by their fellow feeling as soldiers, by the bond of their common religion. He hesitated a moment, realizing a certain hiatus here, a gulf--and then he reconciled all things with a triumphant stroke of potent logic. “They may call it idolatry or Mariolatry, if they want to,--but I never heard anybody deny that the Lord _did_ have a mother. And it’s a mighty good thing to have!”

This was the thought in his mind--the chance, the hope of surrendering to a French officer.

The stir of the Indians recalled him. The moon was lower in the sky, sinking further and further toward that great purple dome of the many summits of the Great Smoky Mountains. All the glistening lines of light upon the landscape--the glossy foliage, the shining river, the shimmering mists--seemed drawn along as if some fine-spun seine, some glittering enmeshment were being hauled into the boat-shaped moon, still rocking and riding the waves off the headlands that the serrated mountains thrust forth like a coast-line on the seas of the sky. Now and again the voices of creatures of prey--wolves, panthers, wildcats--came shrilly snarling through the summer night from the deep interior of the woods, where they wrangled over the gain that the battle had wrought for them in the slain of horses and men,--of the Cherokee force doubtless; MacDonnell had scarcely a fear that these were of Grant’s command, for that officer’s care for such protection of his dead as was possible was always immediate and peculiarly marked, and it was his habit to have the bodies sunk with great weights into the rivers to prevent the scalping of them by the Cherokees. Ronald wearied of the melancholy hours, the long, long night, although light would have but added dangers of discovery. It was the lagging time he would hasten, would fain stride into the future and security, so did the suspense wear on his nerves. It told heavily even on the Indian, and Ronald felt a certain sympathy when Choolah’s half-suppressed voice greeted the scout, creeping into the grotto once more, with the wistful inquiry, “_Onna He-tak?_” (Is it day?)

But the news that the _Etissu_ brought was not indeed concerned with the hour. In his opinion, they would all soon have little enough to do with time. His intelligence was in truth alarming. While the Cherokees patrolling the river had gradually withdrawn to the interior of the forest and disappeared, those at the ford above were suspiciously astir. They had received evidently some intimation of the presence here of the lurking Chickasaws, and were on the watch. To seek to flee would precipitate an instant attack; to escape hence would be merely to fall into the hands of the marauders in the forest beyond; to plunge into the Tennessee River would furnish a floating target for the unerring marksmen. Yet the crisis was immediate.

Choolah suddenly raised the hand of authority.

Ronald MacDonnell had seen much service, and had traveled far out of the beaten paths of life. He was born a gentleman of good means and of long descent--for if the MacDonnells were to be believed, Adam was hardly a patch upon the antiquity of the great Clan-Colla. He had already made an excellent record in his profession. It seemed to him the veriest reversal of all the probabilities that he should now be called upon to take his orders from Choolah the Fox, the savage Chickasaw. Yet he felt no immediate vocation for the command, had it been within his reach. With all his military talent and training he could devise no other resource than to withstand the attack of the larger party with half their number; to swim the river, and drown there with a musket-ball in his brain; to flee into the woods to certain capture. He watched, therefore, with intensest curiosity the movements of the men under Choolah’s direction. The moon was now very low, the light golden, dully burnished, far-striking, with a long shadow. First one, then another of the Chickasaws showed themselves openly upon the bank of the river in a clear space high above the current of the water. Choolah beckoned to the Scotchman, and MacDonnell alertly sprang to his feet and joined the wily tactician without a question, aware that he was assisting to baffle the terrible enemy. His bonnet, his fluttering plaid, his swinging claymore, his great muscular height and long stride, all defined in the moonlight against the soft sky and the mountains beyond, were enough to acquaint the watching Cherokees with the welcome fact that here was not only an enemy but a white man of the Highland battalion, the friends of the Chickasaw. The artful Chickasaws swiftly and confusedly came and went from the densities of the laurel. Impossible it would have been for the Cherokees to judge definitely of their numbers, so quickly did they appear and disappear and succeed one another. Thus cleverly the attack was postponed.

Ronald MacDonnell gave full credit to the strategy of Choolah. For it would now seem--it needs must--that their little party no longer feared the enemies in the quiet woods! They must have presumed the Cherokees all gone! The Chickasaws were building a fire since the moon was sinking. Probably they felt they could not lie down to sleep without its protection and wolves very near in the woods. Listen to that shrill, blood-curdling cry! They were surely disposing themselves to rest! Already as the blaze began to leap up and show in the water of the river below like a great red jewel, with the deep crystalline lusters of a many-faceted ruby, figures might be seen by the flare of the mounting flames, recumbent on the ground, wrapped in blankets; here and there was tartan, an end of the plaid thrown over the face as the Highlanders always slept; here and there a hunting-shirt and leggings were plainly visible--all lying like the spokes of a wheel around the central point of the fire.

“It is only the Muscogees who sleep in line,” Choolah explained to MacDonnell, who had criticised the disposition.

The crafty Cherokees, stealthily approaching ever nearer and nearer, had not seen in the first feeble glimmers of the flames the figures of the seven men crawling gingerly back to the grotto in the covert of the laurel, leaving around the fire merely billets of wood arrayed in the blankets and stolen gear which the Owl had brought off from the battle-field.

“But I am always in the wrong,” plained Oop-pa, sarcastically. “What would you and the big tartan-man have to dress those warriors in if I had not stayed for my goods?”

MacDonnell had urged his scruples. This was hardly according to the rules of war. “But if the Cherokees fire on sleeping men,” he argued--

“_Angona_,” the wily Chickasaw assured him, suavely, “they are disarmed. We can rush out and overpower them before they can load.”

“They ought to be able to fire three times to the minute,” thought MacDonnell, who was a good drill.

But the Cherokees were not held to the rigorous manual of arms, and did not attain to that degree of dexterity considered excellent efficiency in that day although a breech-loading musket invented by Colonel Patrick Ferguson, who met his death at King’s Mountain, was capable of being fired seven times a minute, and was used not many years after these events, with destructive effect, by his own command at the battle of the Brandywine, in 1777.

MacDonnell, lying prone on the ground in the laurel, his face barely lifted, saw the last segment of the moon slip down behind the great mountain, the following mists glister in the after-glow and fade, a soft, dull shadow drop upon the landscape then sink to darkness, and in the blaze of the fire a quivering feather-crested head protrude above the river-bank. There were other crafty approaches--here, there, the woods seemed alive! Suddenly an alien flare of light, a series of funnel-shaped evanescent darts, the simultaneous crack of a volley, and a dozen swift figures dashed to the scalping of their victims by the fire--to lay hold on the logs in the likeness of sleeping men, to break a knife in the hard fibers of one that seemed to stir, to cry aloud, inarticulate, wild, frenzied in rage, in amaze, in grief, to find themselves at the mercy of the Chickasaws darting out from the laurel!

There was a tumultuous rush, then a frantic, futile attempt to reload; two or three of the prisoners wielding knives with undue effect were shot down, and Choolah, triumphant, majestic in victory, stately, erect, his crown of tall white swan’s feathers, his glittering fringes of roanoke, the red and blue of his glossy war-paint, all revealed by the flaring fire, waved his hand to his “_Angona_” to call upon him to admire his prowess in battle.

The next moment his attention was caught by a sudden swift alarm in the face of one of the Cherokees, a faraway glance that the wily Choolah followed with his quick eye. Something had happened at the camp the Cherokees had abandoned--was there still movement there?

It was some one who had been away, returning, startled to see the bivouac fire sunken to an ember,--for the Cherokees had let it die out to further the advantages of the attack,--then evidently reassured to note the flare a little further down the stream, as if the camp had been shifted for some reason.

Choolah drew his primed and loaded pistol. No Cherokee, however, would have dared to venture a warning sign. And Ronald MacDonnell, with what feelings he could hardly analyze, could never describe, saw leaping along the jagged bank of the river toward them a white man, young, active, wearing a gayly-fringed hunting-shirt and leggings of buckskin, but a military hat and the gorget of a French officer. He was among them before he saw his mistake--his fatal mistake! The delighted shrieks of the Chickasaws overpowered every sense, filling the woods with their fierce shrill joy and seeming to strike against the very sky, “_French! hottuk ook-proo-se!_” (The accursed people!)

All thought of caution, all fears of wandering Cherokees were lost in the supreme ecstasy of their triumph--the capture of one of the detested French, that the tribe had hated with an inconceivable and savage rancor for generations.

“_Shukapa! Shukapa!_” (Swine-eater!) they exclaimed in disgust and derision, for the aversion of the Indians to pork was equaled only by that of the Jews, and this was an extreme expression of contempt.

The captive was handled rudely enough in the process of disarming him, which the Owl and Choolah accomplished, while his Cherokees stood at the muzzles of the firelocks of the others. There was blood on his face and hands as he turned a glance on the Scotchman. He uttered a few eager words in French, unintelligible to MacDonnell save the civil preface, “_Pardon, Monsieur, mais puis-je vous demander--_”

The rest of the sentence was lost in the fierce derisive shrieks of the Chickasaws recognizing the inflections of the detested language, “_Seente soolish! Seente soolish!_” (snake’s tongue!) they vociferated.

But had the conclusion of the request been audible it would have been incomprehensible to Ronald MacDonnell.

The impassive Highlander silently shook his head, and a certain fixity of despair settled on the face of the French officer. It was a young face--he seemed not more than twenty-five, MacDonnell thought. It was narrow, delicately molded, with very bright eyes, that had a sort of youthful daring in them--adventurous looking eyes. They were gray, with long black lashes and strongly defined eyebrows. His complexion was of a clear healthy pallor, his hair dark but a trifle rough, and braided in the usual queue. So often did Ronald MacDonnell have to describe this man, both on paper and off, that every detail of his appearance grew very familiar to him. The stranger’s lips were red and full, and the upper one was short and curving; he did not laugh or smile, of course, but he showed narrow white teeth, for now and again he gasped as if for breath, and more than once that sensitive upper lip quivered. Not that Ronald MacDonnell ever gave the portraiture in this simple wise, for his descriptions were long and involved, minute and yet vague, and proved the despair of all interested in fixing the identity of the man; but gleaning from his accounts this is the way the stranger must have appeared to the young Scotchman. His figure was tall and lightly built, promising more activity than muscular force, and while one hand was held on the buckle of his belt, the left went continually to the hilt of a sword, _which he did not wear_, but the habit was betrayed by this gesture. There was nothing about him to intimate his rank, beyond the gorget, and on this point Ronald MacDonnell could never give any satisfaction.

The Indian is seldom immoderate in laughter, but Choolah could not restrain his wicked mirth to discover that the two officers could not speak to each other. And yet the pale-faces were so often amazed that the Cherokees and the Chickasaws and the Creeks had not the same language, as if a variety of tongues were thrown away on the poor Indian, who might well be expected to put up with one speech! For only the Chickasaw and Choctaw dialects were inter-comprehensible, both tribes being descended, it is said, from the ancient Chickemicaws, and in fact much of the variation in their speech was but a matter of intonation. The tears of mirth stood in Choolah’s eyes. He held his hand to his side--he could scarcely calm himself, even when he discerned a special utility in this lack of a medium of communication, for the enterprising scout came back once more to say that there were some Chickasaws lower down on the river, where the ford was better. Choolah received this assurance with most uncommon demonstrations of pleasure, evidently desiring their assistance in guarding the prisoners to Grant’s camp, being ambitious of securing the commander’s commendation and intending to afford ocular proof of his exploit by exhibiting the number of his captives. But MacDonnell detected a high note of elation in Choolah’s voice which no mere pride could evoke, and he recognized a danger signal. He instantly bethought himself of the fate at the hands of the Chickasaws, more than a score of years before, of the gallant D’Artaguette, the younger, and his brave lieutenant Vincennes, burned at the stake by slow fires, after their unhappy defeat at the fortified town, _Ash-wick-boo-ma_ (Red Grass), the noble Jesuit, Sénat, sharing their death, although he might have escaped, remaining to comfort their last moments with his ghostly counsels.

MacDonnell listened as warily to the talk as he might, and although Choolah said no more than was eminently natural in planning to turn over his prisoners to these Chickasaws by reason of their superior numbers, MacDonnell’s alert sense detected the same vibration when he expressed his decision to leave the _Etissu_ and the Highland officer to guard the Frenchman till his return.

“Then we will together cross the Tennessee river here,” he said.

MacDonnell yawned widely as he nodded his head, his hand over his stretched mouth and shielding his face. He would not trust its expression to the discerning Choolah, for he had again that infrequent guest, “a thought in his mind.”

In truth, Choolah had no intention to take the Frenchman to Grant’s camp. The praise he would receive as a reward was a petty consideration indeed as compared with the delights of torturing and burning so rare, so choice a victim as a French officer. To be sure his excuse must be good and devised betimes, for Colonel Grant was squeamish and queer, objecting to the scalping and burning of prisoners, and seemed indeed at times of a weak stomach in regard to such details. And that came about naturally enough. He did not fast, as behooves a war-captain. He ate too much on the war-path. He had two cooks! He had also a man to dress his hair, and another to groom his horse. Naturally his heart had softened, and he was averse to the stern pleasures of recompensing an enemy with the anguish of the stake. This Choolah intended to enjoy, summoning the Chickasaws at the ford below to the scene of his triumph. Besides it requires a number of able-bodied assistants to properly roast in wet weather a vigorous and protesting captive. The Scotchman should suspect naught until his return. True, he might not object, for were not the French as ever the inveterate enemies of the English? But if he should it could avail naught against the will of a round dozen or more of Chickasaws. Besides, was not the prisoner of the detested nation of the French--_Nana-Ubat_? (Nothings and brothers to nothing.) Nevertheless, it was well they could not speak to each other and possibly canvass fears and offer persuasions. He could spare only one man, the scout, to aid in the watch, but he felt quite assured. Ronald MacDonnell was always notoriously vigilant and exacting, and was held in great fear by guards and outposts and sentinels, for often his rounds were attended by casualties in the way of reprimand, and arrests, and guard-tent sojourns and discipline. Choolah felt quite safe as he set off at a brisk pace with his squad of four Chickasaws, driving the disarmed Cherokees, silent and sullen, before him.

They were hardly out of sight when MacDonnell, kicking the enveloping blanket out of the way, sat down on one of the logs by the fire and spread his big bony hands out to the blaze. It was growing chill; the June night was wearing on toward the dawn; it was that hour of reduced vitality when hope seems of least value, and the blood runs low, and conscience grows keen, and the future and the past bear heavily alike on the present. The prisoner was shivering slightly. He glanced expectantly at the Scotchman’s impassive countenance. No man knew better than Ronald MacDonnell the churlishness of a lack of consideration of the comfort of others in small matters. No man could offer little attentions more genially. They comported essentially with his evident breeding, and his rank in the army; once more the prisoner looked expectantly at him, and then, wounded, like a Frenchman, as for a host’s lack of consideration, he sat down on a log uninvited, casting but one absent glance, from which curiosity seemed expunged, at the effigies which explained how the Cherokees came to their fate. It mattered little now, his emotional, sensitive face said. Naught mattered! Naught! Naught!

In the sudden nervous shock his vitality was at its lowest ebb. He could not spread his hands to the blaze, for his arms had been pinioned cruelly tight. He shivered again, for the fire was low. MacDonnell noticed it, but he did not stir; perhaps he thought Johnny Crapaud would soon find the fire hot enough. The scout himself mended it, as he sat tailorwise on the ground between the other two men. Now and again the _Etissu_ gazed at MacDonnell’s impassive, rather lowering countenance, with a certain awe; if he had expected the officer to show the squeamishness which Colonel Grant developed in such matters, or any pity, he was mistaken; then he looked with curiosity at the Frenchman. The prisoner’s lips were vaguely moving, and Ronald MacDonnell caught a suggestion of the sound--half-whispered words, not French, or he would not have understood; Latin!--paters and aves! As he had expected--frogs, papistry, French, and fool!

“What’s that?” the Highland officer said, so suddenly that the scout started in affright.

“Nothing,” said the Indian; “the wind, perhaps.”

“Sticks cracking in the laurel--a bear, perhaps,” suggested MacDonnell, taking up a loaded musket and laying it across his knee. Then “Only a bear,” he repeated reassuringly.

“Choolah ought to leave more men here,” said the _Etissu_.

“It’s nothing!” declared MacDonnell, rising and looking warily about. “Perhaps Choolah on his way back.”

The scout was true to his vagrant tendencies, or perhaps because of those tendencies he felt himself safer in the dense, impenetrable jungle, crawling along flat like a lizard or a snake, than seated perched up here on a bluff by a flaring camp-fire with only two other men, a mark for “Brown Bess”--the Cherokees were all armed with British muskets, although they were in revolt, and perhaps it was one reason why they were in revolt--for many a yard up and down the Tennessee River. “I go see,” he suggested.

“No, no,” said MacDonnell, “only a bear.”

“I come back soon,” declared the _Etissu_, half crouching and gazing about, “soon, soon. _Alooska, Ko-e-u-que-ho._” (I do not lie, I do not indeed.)

MacDonnell lifted his head and gazed about with a frowning mien of reluctance “_Maia cha!_” (Go along) he said at last. Then called out, “Come back _soon_,” as his attention returned to the priming and loading of a pistol which he had in progress. “Soon! remember!”

The scout was off like a rabbit. For a moment or two MacDonnell did not lift his eyes, while they heard him crashing through the thicket. Then as he looked up he met the dull despair in the face of the bound and helpless Frenchman. It mattered little to him who came, who went. He gasped suddenly in amazement. The Highland officer was gazing at him with a genial, boyish smile, reassuring, almost tender.

“Run, now, run for your life!” he said, leaning forward, and with a pass or two of a knife he severed the prisoner’s bonds.

In the revulsion of feeling the man seemed scarcely able to rise to his feet. There were tears in his eyes; his face quivered as he looked at his deliverer.

“Danger--big fire--burn,” said the astute MacDonnell, as if the English words thus detached were more comprehensible to the French limitations. Perhaps his gestures aided their effect, and as he held out his hand in his whole-souled, genial way, the Frenchman grasped it in a hard grip of fervent gratitude and started off swiftly. The next moment the young officer turned back, caught the British soldier in his arms, and to MacDonnell’s everlasting consternation kissed him in the foreign fashion, first on one cheek and then on the other.

Ronald MacDonnell’s mess often preyed upon the disclosures which his open, ingenuous nature afforded them. But his simplicity stopped far short of revealing to them this Gallic demonstration of gratitude--so exquisitely ludicrous it seemed to his unemotional methods and mind. They were debarred the pleasure of racking him on this circumstance. They never knew it. He disclosed it only years afterward, and then by accident, to a member of his own family.