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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Frontiersmen, by Charles Egbert Craddock
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Frontiersmen
+
+Author: Charles Egbert Craddock
+
+Release Date: October 12, 2004  [eBook #13724]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FRONTIERSMEN***
+
+
+E-text prepared by the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team from images provided by the Million Book Project
+
+
+
+THE FRONTIERSMEN
+
+by
+
+CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK
+
+Author of _A Spectre of Power_, _The Prophet of the Great Smoky
+Mountains_, _In the Tennessee Mountains_, etc.
+
+1904
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+THE LINGUISTER
+
+A VICTOR AT CHUNGKE
+
+THE CAPTIVE OF THE ADA-WEHI
+
+THE FATE OF THE CHEERA-TAGHE
+
+THE BEWITCHED BALL-STICKS
+
+THE VISIT OF THE TURBULENT GRANDFATHER
+
+NOTES
+
+
+
+
+THE LINGUISTER
+
+
+The mental image of the world is of individual and varying compass. It
+may be likened to one of those curious Chinese balls of quaintly carved
+ivory, containing other balls, one within another, the proportions ever
+dwindling with each successive inclosure, yet each a more minute
+duplicate of the external sphere. This might seem the least world of
+all,--the restricted limits of the quadrangle of this primitive
+stockade,--but Peninnah Penelope Anne Mivane had known no other than
+such as this. It was large enough for her, for a fairy-like face, very
+fair, with golden brown hair, that seemed to have entangled the
+sunshine, and lustrous brown eyes, looked out of an embrasure (locally
+called "port-hole") of the blockhouse, more formidable than the swivel
+gun once mounted there, commanding the entrance to the stockade gate.
+Her aspect might have suggested that Titania herself had resorted to
+military methods and was ensconced in primitive defenses. It was even
+large enough for her name, which must have been conferred upon her, as
+the wits of the Blue Lick Station jocularly averred, in the hope of
+adding some size to her. It was large enough also for the drama of
+battle and the tragedy of bloody death--both had befallen within its
+limits.
+
+There had been a night, glooming very dark in the past, an unwary night
+when the row of log houses, all connected by the palisades from one to
+the other, presenting a blank wall without, broken only by loopholes for
+musketry, had been scaled by the crafty Cherokees, swarming over the
+roofs, and attacking the English settlers through the easy access of the
+unglazed windows and flimsy batten doors that opened upon the
+quadrangle. Although finally beaten off, the Indians had inflicted great
+loss. Her father had been one of the slain settlers who thus paid
+penalty for the false sense of security, fostered by long immunity. Even
+more troublous times came later,--the tumult of open war was rife in all
+the land; the station was repeatedly attacked, and although it held out
+stanchly, fear and suspense and grief filled the stockade,--yet still
+there was space for Cupid to go swaggering hither and thither within the
+guarded gates, and aim his arrows with his old-time dainty skill, albeit
+his bow and quiver might seem somewhat archaic in these days of powder
+and lead. For Peninnah Penelope Anne Mivane spent much of her time in
+the moulding of bullets. Perhaps it was appropriate, since both she and
+her young pioneer lover dealt so largely in missiles, that it was thus
+the sentimental dart was sped. Lead was precious in those days, but
+sundry bullets, that she had moulded, Ralph Emsden never rammed down
+into the long barrel of his flintlock rifle. Some question as to whether
+the balls had cooled, or perhaps some mere meditative pause, had carried
+the bits of lead in her fingers to her lips, as they sat together on the
+hearth and talked and worked in the fire-lit dusk for their common
+defense. He was wont to watch, lynx-eyed, the spot where these
+consecrated bullets were placed, and afterward carried them in a
+separate buckskin bag over his heart, and mentally called them his
+"kisses;" for the youths of those days were even such fools as now,
+although in the lapse of time they have come to pose successfully in the
+dignified guise of the "wise patriots of the pioneer period." More than
+once when the station was attacked and the women loaded the guns of the
+men to expedite the shooting, she kept stanchly at his elbow throughout
+the thunderous conflict, and charged and primed the alternate rifles
+which he fired.[1] Over the trigger, in fact, the fateful word was
+spoken.
+
+"Oh, Nan," he exclaimed, looking down at her while taking the weapon
+from her hand in the vague dusk where she knelt beside him,--he stood on
+the shelf that served as banquette to bring him within reach of the
+loophole, placed so high in the hope that a chance shot entering might
+range only among the rafters,--"How quick you are! How you help me!"
+
+The thunderous crash of the double volley of the settlers firing twice,
+by the aid of their feminine auxiliaries, to every volley of the
+Indians, overwhelmed for the moment the tumult of the fiendish whoops in
+the wild darkness outside, and then the fusillade of the return fire,
+like leaden hail, rattled against the tough log walls of the station.
+
+"Are you afraid, Nan?" he asked, as he received again the loaded weapon
+from her hand.
+
+"_Afraid?_--No!" exclaimed Peninnah Penelope Anne Mivane--hardly taller
+than the ramrod with which she was once more driving the charge home.
+
+He saw her face, delicate and blonde, in the vivid white flare from the
+rifle as he thrust it through the loophole and fired. "You think I can
+take care of you?" he demanded, while the echo died away, and a lull
+ensued.
+
+"I know you can," she replied, adjusting with the steady hand of an
+expert the patching over the muzzle of the discharged weapon in the
+semi-obscurity.
+
+A blood-curdling shout came from the Cherokees in the woods with a
+deeper roar of musketry at closer quarters; and a hollow groan within
+the blockhouse, where there was a sudden commotion in the dim light,
+told that some bullet had found its billet.
+
+"They are coming to the attack again--Hand me the
+rifle--quick--quick--Oh, Nan, how you help me! How brave you are--I love
+you! I love you!"
+
+"Look out now for a flash in the pan!" Peninnah Penelope Anne merely
+admonished him.
+
+Being susceptible to superstition and a ponderer on omens, Ralph Emsden
+often thought fretfully afterward on the double meaning of these words,
+and sought to displace them in their possible evil influence on his
+future by some assurance more cheerful and confident. With this view he
+often earnestly beset her, but could secure nothing more pleasing than a
+reference to the will of her grandfather and a protestation to abide by
+his decision in the matter.
+
+Now Peninnah Penelope Anne's grandfather was deaf. His was that hopeless
+variety of the infirmity which heard no more than he desired. His
+memory, however, was unimpaired, and it may be that certain
+recollections of his own experiences in the past remained with him,
+making him a fine judge of the signs of the present. Emsden, appalled by
+the necessity of shrieking out his love within the acute and
+well-applied hearing facilities of the families of some ten
+"stationers," to use the phrase of the day, diligently sought to decoy,
+on successive occasions, Richard Mivane out to the comparative solitudes
+of the hunting, the fishing, the cropping. In vain. Richard Mivane
+displayed sudden extreme prudential care against surprise and capture by
+Indians, when this was possible, and when impossible he developed
+unexpected and unexampled resources of protective rheumatism. The young
+lover was equally precluded from setting forth the state of his
+affections and the prospects of his future in writing. Apart from the
+absurdity of thus approaching a man whom he saw twenty times a day, old
+Mivane would permit no such intimation of the extent of his
+affliction,--it being a point of pride with him that he was merely
+slightly hard of hearing, and suffered only from the indistinctness of
+the enunciation of people in general. And indeed, it was variously
+contended that he was so deaf that he could not hear a gun fired at his
+elbow; and yet that he heard all manner of secrets which chanced to be
+detailed in his presence, in inadvertent reliance on his incapacity, and
+had not the smallest hesitation afterward in their disclosure, being
+entitled to them by right of discovery, as it were.
+
+Emsden, in keen anxiety, doubtful if his suit were seriously
+disapproved, or if these demonstrations were only prompted by old
+Mivane's selfish aversion to give away his granddaughter, finally
+summoned all his courage, and in a stentorian roar proclaimed to the old
+gentleman his sentiments.
+
+Richard Mivane was a man of many punctilious habitudes, who wore cloth
+instead of buckskin, however hard it might be to come by, and silver
+knee-buckles and well-knit hose on his still shapely calves, and a
+peruke carefully powdered and tended. He had a keen, wrinkled, bloodless
+face, discerning, clever, gray eyes, heavy, overhanging, grizzled
+eyebrows, and a gentlemanly mouth of a diplomatic, well-bred,
+conservative expression.
+
+It was said at Blue Lick Station that he had fled from his own country,
+the north of England, on account of an affair of honor,--a duel in early
+life,--and that however distasteful the hardships and comparative
+poverty of this new home, it was far safer for him than the land of his
+birth. His worldly position there gave him sundry claims of superiority,
+for all of which his hardy pioneer son had had scant sympathy; and Ralph
+Emsden, in the difficult crisis of the disclosure of the state of his
+affections, heaved many a sigh for this simple manly soul's untimely
+fate.
+
+The elder Mivane, with his head bent forward, his hand behind his ear,
+sat in his arm-chair while he hearkened blandly to the sentimental
+statements which Emsden was obliged to shout forth twice. Then Richard
+Mivane cleared his throat with a sort of preliminary gentlemanly
+embarrassment, and went fluently on with that suave low voice so common
+to the very deaf. "Command me, sir, command me! It will give me much
+pleasure to use my influence on your behalf to obtain an ensigncy. I
+will myself write at the first opportunity, the first express, to
+Lieutenant-Governor Bull, who is acquainted with my family connections
+in England. It is very praiseworthy, very laudable indeed, that you
+should aspire to a commission in the military service,--the provincial
+forces. I honor you for your readiness to fight--although, to be sure,
+being Irish, you can't help it. Still, it is to your credit that you are
+Irish. I am very partial to the Irish traits of character--was once in
+Ireland myself--visited an uncle there"--and so forth and so forth.
+
+And thus poor Ralph Emsden, who was only Irish by descent, and could not
+have found Ireland on the map were he to hang for his ignorance, and had
+been born and bred in the Royal province of South Carolina,--which
+country he considered the crown and glory of the world,--was constrained
+to listen to all the doings and sayings of Richard Mivane in Ireland
+from the time that he embarked on the wild Irish Sea, which scrupled not
+to take unprecedented liberties with so untried a sailor, till the
+entrance of other pioneers cut short a beguiling account of his first
+meeting with potheen in its native haunts, and the bewildering pranks
+that he and that tricksy sprite played together in those the
+irresponsible days of his youth.
+
+Emsden told no one, not even Peninnah Penelope Anne, of his
+discomfiture; but alack, there were youngsters in the family of
+unaffected minds and unimpaired hearing. This was made amply manifest a
+day or so afterward, when he chanced to pause at the door of the log
+cabin and glance in, hoping that, perhaps, the queen of his dreams might
+materialize in this humble domicile.
+
+The old gentleman slept in his chair, with dreams of his own, perchance,
+for his early life might have furnished a myriad gay fancies for his
+later years. The glare of noonday lay on the unshaded spaces of the
+quadrangle without; for all trees had been felled, even far around the
+inclosure, lest thence they might afford vantage and ambush for musketry
+fire or a flight of arrows into the stockade. Through rifts in the
+foliage at considerable distance one could see the dark mountain looming
+high above, and catch glimpses of the further reaches of the Great Smoky
+Range, blue and shimmering far away, and even distinguish the crest of
+"Big Injun Mountain" on the skyline. The several cabins, all connected
+by that row of protective palisades from one to another like a visible
+expression of the chord of sympathy and mutual helpful neighborliness,
+were quiet, their denizens dining within. At the blockhouse a guard was
+mounted--doubtless a watchful and stanch lookout, but unconforming to
+military methods, for he sang, to speed the time, a metrical psalm of
+David's; the awkward collocation of the words of this version would
+forever distort the royal poet's meaning if he had no other vehicle of
+his inspiration. There were long waits between the drowsy lines, and in
+the intervals certain callow voices, with the penetrating timbre of
+youth, came to Emsden's ear. His eyes followed the sound quickly.
+
+The little sisters of Peninnah Penelope Anne were on the floor before a
+playhouse, outlined by stones and sticks, and with rapt faces and
+competent fancies, saw whatsoever they would. In these riches of
+imagination a little brother also partook. A stick, accoutred in such
+wise with scraps of buckskin as to imitate a gallant of the place and
+period, was bowing respectfully before another stick, vested in the
+affabilities of age and the simulacrum of a dressing-gown.
+
+"I love your granddaughter, sir, and wish to make her my wife," said the
+bowing stick.
+
+"Command me, sir; command me!" suavely replied the stick stricken in
+years.
+
+The scene had been an eye-opener to the tender youth of the little
+Mivanes; the pomp and circumstance of a sentimental disclosure they
+would never forget.
+
+Emsden, as hardy a pioneer as ever drew a bead on a panther or an
+Indian, passed on, quaking at the thought of the wits of the Station as
+he had never yet feared man, and his respected Irish blood ran cold. And
+when it waxed warm with wrath once more it came to pass that to utter
+the simple phrase "Command me" was as much as a man's life was worth at
+Blue Lick Station.
+
+Emsden thought ruefully of the girl's mother and wondered if her
+intercession would avail aught with the old autocrat. But he had not yet
+ventured upon this. There was nothing certain about Mrs. Mivane but her
+uncertainty. She never gave a positive opinion. Her attitude of mind was
+only to be divined by inference. She never gave a categorical answer.
+And indeed he would not have been encouraged to learn that Richard
+Mivane himself had already consulted his daughter-in-law, as in this
+highhanded evasion of any decision he felt the need of support. For once
+the old gentleman was not displeased with her reply, comprehensive,
+although glancing aside from the point. Since there were so many young
+men in the country, said Mrs. Mivane, she saw no reason for despair!
+With this approval of his temporizing policy Richard Mivane left the
+matter to the development of the future.
+
+Emsden's depression would have been more serious had he not fortunately
+sundry tokens of the old man's favor to cherish in his memory, which
+seemed to intimate that this elusiveness was only a shrewd scheme to
+delay and thwart him rather than a positive and reasonable disposition
+to deny his suit. In short, Emsden began to realize that instead of a
+damsel of eighteen he had to court a coquette rising sixty, of the
+sterner sex, and deafer than an adder when he chose. His artful quirks
+were destined to try the young lover's diplomacy to the utmost, and
+Emsden appreciated this, but he reassured himself with the reflection
+that it was better thus than if it were the girl who vacillated and
+delighted to torture him with all the arts of a first-class jilt. He was
+constantly in and out of the house almost as familiarly as if he were
+already betrothed, for in the troublous period that seemed now closing,
+with its sudden flights, its panics, its desperate conflicts with the
+Indians, he had been able to give an almost filial aid to Richard Mivane
+in the stead of the son whom the old man had lost.
+
+Richard Mivane had always felt himself an alien, a sojourner in this new
+land, and perchance he might not have been able even partially to
+reconcile himself to the ruder conditions of his later life if the
+bursting of a financial bubble had not swept away all hope of returning
+to the status of his earlier home in England when the tragedy of the
+duel had been sunk in oblivion. The frontier was a fine place to hide
+one's poverty and fading graces, he had once remarked, and thereafter
+had seemed to resign himself to its hardships,--indeed, sometimes he
+consigned his negro body-servant, Cæsar, to other duties than his
+exclusive attendance. He had even been known to breakfast with his head
+tied up in a handkerchief when some domestic crisis had supervened, such
+as the escape of all the horses from the pinfold, to call away his
+barber. As this functionary was of an active temperament and not at all
+averse to the labor in the fields, he proved of more value thus utilized
+than in merely furnishing covert amusement to the stationers by his
+pompous duplication of his master's attitude of being too cultured,
+traveled, and polished for his surroundings. He was a trained valet,
+however, expert in all the details of dressing hair, powdering, curling,
+pomatuming, and other intricacies of the toilet of a man of fashion of
+that day. Cæsar had many arts at command touching the burnishing of
+buckles and buttons, and even in clear-starching steinkirks and the
+cambric ruffles of shirts. As he ploughed he was wont to tell of his
+wonderful experiences while in his master's service in London (although
+he had never crossed the seas); and these being accepted with seeming
+seriousness, he carried his travels a step farther and described the
+life he remembered in the interior of Guinea (although he had never seen
+the shores of Africa). This life so closely resembled that of London
+that it was often difficult to distinguish the locality of the
+incidents, an incongruity that enchanted the wags of the settlement, who
+continually incited him to prodigies of narration. The hairbreadth
+escapes that he and his fellow-servants, as well as the white people,
+had had from the wrath of the Indians, whom the negroes feared beyond
+measure, and their swift flights from one stockade to another in those
+sudden panics during the troubled period preceding the Cherokee War,
+might have seemed more exciting material for romancing for a venturesome
+Munchausen, but perhaps these realities were too stern to afford any
+interest in the present or glamour in the past.
+
+It was somewhat as a prelude to the siege of Fort Loudon by the
+Cherokees in 1760 that they stormed and triumphantly carried several
+minor stations to the southeast. Although Blue Lick sustained the
+attack, still, in view of the loss of a number of its gallant defenders,
+the settlers retreated at the first opportunity to the more sheltered
+frontier beyond Fort Prince George, living from hand to mouth, some at
+Long Cane and some at Ninety-Six, through those years when first
+Montgomerie and then Grant made their furious forays through the
+Cherokee country. Emsden, having served in the provincial regiment,
+eagerly coveted a commission, of which Richard Mivane had feigned to
+speak. Now that the Cherokees were ostensibly pacified,--that is,
+exhausted, decimated, their towns burned, their best and bravest slain,
+their hearts broken,--the fugitives from this settlement on the
+Eupharsee River, as the Hiwassee was then called, gathered their
+household gods and journeyed back to Blue Lick, to cry out in the
+wilderness that they were "home" once more, and clasp each other's hands
+in joyful gratulation to witness the roofs and stockade rise again,
+rebuilt as of yore. Strangely enough, there were old Cherokee friends to
+greet them anew and to be welcomed into the stockade; for even the rigid
+rule of war and hate must needs be proved by its exceptions. And there
+were one or two pensive philosophers among the English settlers vaguely
+sad to see all the Cherokee traditions and prestige, and remnants of
+prehistoric pseudo-civilization, shattered in the dust, and the
+tremulous, foreign, unaccustomed effort--half-hearted, half-believing,
+half-understanding--to put on the habitude of a new civilization.
+
+"The white man's religion permits poverty, but the Indian divides his
+store with the needy, and there are none suffered to be poor," said
+Atta-Kulla-Kulla, the famous chief. "The white men wrangle and quarrel
+together, even brother with brother; with us the inner tribal peace is
+ever unbroken. The white men slay and rob and oppress the poor, and with
+many cunning treaties take now our lands and now our lives; then they
+offer us their religion;--why does it seem so like an empty bowl?"
+
+"Atta-Kulla-Kulla, you know that I am deaf," said Richard Mivane, "and
+you ask me such hard questions that I am not able to hear them."
+
+It is more than probable that these stationers in the vanguard of the
+irrepressible march of western emigration had been trespassers, and thus
+earned their misfortunes, in some sort, by their encroachment on Indian
+territory; although since the war the Cherokee boundaries had become
+more vague than heretofore, it being considered that Grant's operations
+had extended the frontier by some seventy miles. It may be, too, that
+the Blue Lick settlers held their own by right of private purchase; for
+the inhibition to the acquisition of land in this way from the Indians
+was not enacted till the following year, 1763, after the events to be
+herein detailed, and, indeed, such purchases even further west and of an
+earlier date are of record, albeit of doubtful legality.
+
+Now that peace in whatever maimed sort had come to this stricken land
+and these adventurous settlers, who held their lives, their all, by such
+precarious tenure, internecine strife must needs arise among them; not
+the hand of brother against brother,--they were spared that grief,--but
+one tender, struggling community against another.
+
+And it came about in this wise.
+
+One day Peninnah Penelope Anne Mivane, watching from the "port-hole" of
+the blockhouse, where the muzzle of that dog of war the little swivel
+gun had once been wont to look forth, beheld Ralph Emsden ride out from
+the stockade gate for a week's absence with a party of hunters; with
+bluff but tender assurance he waved his hat and hand to her in farewell.
+
+"Before all the men!" she said to herself, half in prudish dismay at his
+effrontery, and yet pleased that he did not sheepishly seek to conceal
+his preference. And although the men (there were but two or three and
+not half the province, as her horror of this publicity would seem to
+imply) said with a grin "Command me!" they said it _sotto voce_ and only
+to each other.
+
+Spring was once more afoot in the land. They daily marked her advance as
+they went. Halfway up the mountains she had climbed: for the maples were
+blooming in rich dark reds that made the nearer slopes even more
+splendid of garb than the velvet azure of the distant ranges, the elms
+had put forth delicate sprays of emerald tint, and the pines all bore
+great wax-like tapers amidst their evergreen boughs, as if ready for
+kindling for some great festival. It is a wonderful thing to hear a wind
+singing in myriads of their branches at once. The surging tones of this
+oratorio of nature resounded for miles along the deep indented ravines
+and the rocky slopes of the Great Smoky Mountains. Now and again the
+flow of a torrent or the dash of a cataract added fugue-like effects.
+The men were constantly impressed by these paeans of the forests; the
+tuft of violets abloom beneath a horse's hoofs might be crushed
+unnoticed, but the acoustic conditions of the air and the high floating
+of the tenuous white clouds against a dense blue sky, promising rain in
+due season, evoked a throb of satisfaction in the farmer's heart not
+less sincere because unaesthetic. The farmer's toil had hardly yet
+begun, the winter's hunt being just concluded, and each of the
+stationers with a string of led horses was bound for his camps and
+caches to bring in the skins that made the profit of the season.
+
+One of this group of three was the psalm-singer of the blockhouse. His
+name was Xerxes Alexander Anxley, and he was unceremoniously called by
+the community "X," and by Mivane "the unknown quantity," for he was
+something of an enigma, and his predilections provoked much speculation.
+He was a religionist of ascetic, extreme views,--a type rare in this
+region,--coming originally from the colony of the Salzburgers
+established in Georgia.
+
+We are less disposed to be tolerant of individual persuasions which
+imply a personal and unpleasant reflection. Xerxes Alexander Anxley
+disapproved of dancing, and the community questioned his sanity; for
+these early pioneers in the region of the Great Smoky Range carried the
+rifle over one shoulder and the fiddle over the other. He disapproved of
+secular songs and idle stories, and the settlement questioned his taste;
+for it was the delight of the stationers, old and young, to gather
+around the hearth, and, while the chestnuts roasted in the fire for the
+juniors, and the jovial horn, as it was called, circulated among the
+elders, the oft-told story was rehearsed and the old song sung anew. He
+even disapproved of the jovial horn--and the settlement questioned his
+sincerity.
+
+This man Anxley looked his ascetic character. He had a hard pragmatic
+countenance, and one of those noses which though large and bony come
+suddenly short and blunted. His eyes, small, gray, and inscrutable,
+seemed unfriendly, so baffling, introspective, unnoting was their
+inattentiveness. His hair was of a sort of carrot tint, which color was
+reproduced in paler guise in his fringed buckskin shirt and leggings,
+worn on a sturdy and powerful frame. His mouth was shut hard and fast
+upon his convictions, as if to denote that he could not be argued out of
+them, and when the lips parted its lines were scarcely more mobile, and
+his words were usually framed to doubt one's state of grace and to
+contravene one's tenets as to final salvation. He rode much of the time
+with the reins loose on his horse's neck, and perhaps no man in the
+saddle had ever been so addicted to psalmody since the days of
+Cromwell's troopers. His theological disputations grated peculiarly upon
+Emsden's mood, and he always laid at his door the disaster that
+followed.
+
+"If I hadn't been so traveled that day,--dragged through hell and
+skirting of purgatory and knocking at the gates of heaven,--I wouldn't
+have lost my wits so suddenly when I came back to earth with a bounce,"
+Emsden afterward declared.
+
+For as the hunters were coming at a brisk trot in single file along the
+"old trading path," as it was called even then, the fleecy white clouds
+racing above in the dense blue of the sky, their violet shadows fleeting
+as swift along the slopes of the velvet-soft azure mountains, and the
+wind far outstripping them in the vernal budding woods, a sudden stir
+near at hand caused Emsden to turn his head. Just above him, on a rugged
+slope where no trees grew save a scraggy cedar here and there amidst the
+shelving ledges of rock outcropping through the soft verdant turf, he
+saw a stealthy, furtive shape; he was aware of a hasty cowed glance over
+the shoulder, and then a stretching of supple limbs in flight. Before he
+himself hardly knew it the sharp crack of his rifle rang out,--the aim
+was almost instinctive.
+
+And it was as true as instinct,--a large black wolf, his pelt glossy and
+fresh with the renewal of the season, lay stretched dead in an instant
+upon the slope. Emsden sprang from his horse, tossed the reins to "X,"
+and, drawing his knife, ran up the steep ascent to secure the animal's
+skin.
+
+Only vaguely, as in a dream, he heard a sudden deep roar, beheld a
+horned creature leaping heavily upon its fore quarters, tossing its hind
+legs and tail into the air. Then an infuriated bull, breaking from the
+bushes, charged fiercely down upon him. Emsden threw himself into a
+posture of defense as instantly as if he had been a trained bullfighter
+and the arena his wonted sphere, holding the knife close in front of
+him, presenting the blade with a quick keen calculation for the animal's
+jugular. The knife was Emsden's only weapon, for his pistols were in the
+holster on the saddle, and his discharged rifle lay where he had flung
+it on the ground after firing. He had only time to wonder that his
+comrades vouchsafed him no assistance in his extremity. Men of such
+accurate aim and constant practice could easily risk sending a
+rifle-ball past him to stop that furious career. He could see the pupil
+of the bull's wild dilated eyes, fiery as with a spark of actual flame.
+He could even feel the hot puffs of the creature's breath upon his
+cheeks, when all at once the horned head so close above his own swerved
+aside with a snort from the dead body of the wolf at his feet. The bull
+passed him like a thunderbolt, and he heard the infuriated stamping
+which fairly shook the ground in the thicket below, where this king of
+the herds paused to bellow and paw the earth, throwing clods high above
+the environing copse.
+
+The woods seemed full of maddened, frightened cattle, and Emsden's horse
+was frantically galloping after the cavalcade of hunters and their
+pack-train, all the animals more or less beyond the control of the men.
+He felt it an ill chance that left him thus alone and afoot in this
+dense wilderness, several days' travel from the station. He was hardly
+sure that he would be missed by his comrades, themselves scattered, the
+pack-horses having broken from the path which they had traveled in
+single file, and now with their burdens of value all foolishly careering
+wildly through the woods. The first prudential care of the hunters he
+knew would be to recover them and re-align the train, lest some
+miscreant, encountering the animals, plunder the estrays of their loads
+of hard-won deerskins and furs.
+
+The presence of cattle suggested to Emsden the proximity of human
+dwellings, and yet this was problematic, for beyond branding and
+occasional saltings the herds ranged within large bounds on lands
+selected for their suitability as pasturage. The dwellings of these
+pioneer herdsmen might be far away indeed, and in what direction he
+could not guess. Since the Cherokee War, and the obliteration of all
+previous marks of white settlements in this remote region, Emsden was
+unfamiliar with the more recent location of "cow-pens," as the ranches
+were called, and was only approximately acquainted with the new site of
+the settlers' stations. Nothing so alters the face of a country as the
+moral and physical convulsion of war. Even many of the Indian towns were
+deserted and half charred,--burned by the orders of the British
+commanders. One such stood in a valley through which he passed on his
+homeward way; the tender vernal aspect of this green cove, held in the
+solemn quiet of the encircling mountains, might typify peace itself. Yet
+here the blue sky could be seen through the black skeleton rafters of
+the once pleasant homes; and there were other significant skeletons in
+the absolute solitude,--the great ribs of dead chargers, together with
+broken bits and bridles, and remnants of exploded hand-grenades, and a
+burst gun-barrel, all lying on the bank of a lovely mountain stream at
+the point where he crossed it, as it flowed, crystal clear, through this
+sequestered bosky nook.
+
+Something of a job this transit was, for with the spring freshets the
+water was high and the current strong, and he was compelled to use only
+one hand for swimming, the other holding high out of the water's reach
+his powder horn. For, despite any treaties of peace, this was no country
+for a man to traverse unarmed, and an encounter with an inimical
+wandering Indian might serve to make for his comrades' curiosity
+concerning his fate, when they should chance to have leisure to feel it,
+a perpetual conundrum.
+
+He had never, however, made so lonely a journey. Not one human being did
+he meet--neither red man nor white--in all the long miles of the endless
+wilderness; naught astir save the sparse vernal shadows in the budding
+woods and the gentle spring zephyr swinging past and singing as it went.
+Now and again he noted how the sun slowly dropped down the skies that
+were so fine, so fair, so blue that it seemed loath to go and leave the
+majestic peace of the zenith. The stars scintillated in the dark night
+as if a thousand bivouac fires were kindled in those far spaces of the
+heavens responsive to the fire which he kept aglow to cook the supper
+that his rifle fetched him and to ward off the approach of wolf or
+panther while he slept. He was doubtless in jeopardy often enough, but
+chance befriended him and he encountered naught inimical till the fourth
+day when he came in at the gate of the station and met the partners of
+the hunt, themselves not long since arrived.
+
+They waited for no reproaches for their desertion. They were quick to
+upbraid. As they hailed him in chorus he was bewildered for a moment,
+and stood in the gateway leaning on his rifle, his coonskin cap thrust
+back on his brown hair, his bright, steady gray eyes concentrated as he
+listened. His tall, lithe figure in his buckskin hunting shirt and
+leggings, the habitual garb of the frontiersmen, grew tense and gave an
+intimation of gathering all its forces for the defensive as he noted how
+the aspect of the station differed from its wonted guise. Every house of
+the assemblage of little log cabins stood open; here and there in the
+misty air, for there had been a swift, short spring shower, fires could
+be seen aglow on the hearths within; the long slant of the red sunset
+rays fell athwart the gleaming wet roofs and barbed the pointed tops of
+the palisades with sharp glints of light, and a rainbow showed all the
+colors of the prism high against the azure mountain beyond, while a
+second arch below, a dim duplication, spanned the depths of a valley.
+The frontiersmen were all in the open spaces of the square excitedly
+wrangling--and suddenly he became conscious of a girlish face at the
+embrasure for the cannon at the blockhouse, a face with golden brown
+hair above it, and a red hood that had evidently been in the rain.
+"Looking out for me, I wonder?" he asked himself, and as this glow of
+agitated speculation swept over him the men who plied him with questions
+angrily admonished his silence.
+
+"He has seen a wolf! He has seen a wolf! 'Tis plain!" cried old Mivane,
+as he stood in his metropolitan costume among the buckskin-clad
+pioneers. "One would know that without being told!"
+
+"You shot the wolf and stampeded the cattle, and the herders at the
+cow-pens on the Keowee River can't round them up again!" cried one of
+the settlers.
+
+"The cattle have run to the Congarees by this time!" declared another
+pessimistically.
+
+"And it was _you_ that shot the wolf!" cried "X" rancorously.
+
+"The herders are holding _us_ responsible and have sent an ambassador,"
+explained John Ronackstone, anxiously knitting his brows, "to inform us
+that not a horse of the pack-train from Blue Lick Station shall pass
+down to Charlestown till we indemnify them for the loss of the cattle."
+
+"Gadso! they can't _all_ be lost!" exclaimed old Mivane floutingly.
+
+"No, no! the herders go too far for damages--too far! They are putting
+their coulter _too_ deep!" said a farmer fresh from the field. He had
+still a bag of seed-grain around his neck, and now and again he thrust
+in his hand and fingered the kernels.
+
+"They declare they'll seize our skins," cried another
+ambiguously,--then, conscious of this, he sought to amend the
+matter,--"Not the hides we wear,"--this was no better, for they were all
+arrayed in hides, save Richard Mivane. "Not the hides that we were born
+in, but our deerhides, our peltry,--they'll seize the pack-train from
+Blue Lick, and they declare they'll call on the commandant of Fort
+Prince George to oppose its passing with the king's troops."
+
+An appalled silence fell on the quadrangle,--save for the fresh notes of
+a mockingbird, perching in jaunty guise on the tower of the blockhouse,
+above which the rainbow glowed in the radiant splendors of a misty amber
+sky.
+
+"The king's troops? Would the commandant respond?" anxiously speculated
+one of the settlers.
+
+The little handful of pioneers, with their main possessions in the fate
+of the pack-train, looked at one another in dismay.
+
+"And tell me, friend Feather-pate, why did it seem good to you to shoot
+a wolf in the midst of a herd of cattle?" demanded Richard Mivane.
+
+Ralph Emsden, bewildered by the results of this untoward chance, and the
+further catastrophe shadowed forth in the threatened seizure of the
+train, rallied with all his faculties at the note of scorn from this
+quarter.
+
+"Sir, I did not shoot the wolf among the cattle. There was not a horn
+nor a hoof to be seen when I fired."
+
+Mivane turned to "X" with both hands outstretched as much as to say,
+"Take _that_ for your quietus!" and shouldering his stick, which had an
+ivory head and a sword within, strode off after his jaunty fashion as if
+there were no more to be said.
+
+It was now Alexander Anxley's turn to sustain the questioning clamor. "I
+will not deny"--"That is, I said"--"I meant to say,"--but these
+qualifications were lost in the stress of Emsden's voice, once more
+rising stridently.
+
+"Not a horn nor a hoof to be seen till after I had fired. I didn't know
+there were any cow-pens about--didn't use to be till after you had
+crossed the Keowee. But if there _had_ been, is a man to see a wolf pull
+down a yearling, say, and not fire a rifle because Madam Cow will take
+the high-strikes or Cap'n Bull will go on the rampage? Must I wait till
+I can make a leg,"--he paused to execute an exaggerated obeisance,
+graceful enough despite its mockery,--"'Under your favor, Cap'n Bull,'
+and 'With your ladyship's permission,' before I kill the ravening brute,
+big enough to pull down a yearling? Don't talk to me! Don't talk to me!"
+He held out the palms of his hands toward them in interdiction, and made
+as if to go--yet went not!
+
+For a reactionary sentiment toward him had set in, and there were those
+fair-minded enough, although with their little all at stake, to admit
+that he had acted with reasonable prudence, and that it was only an
+unlucky chance which had sent the panic through the herds with such
+disastrous effect.
+
+"The herders should not stop the pack-train, if I had my will," declared
+one of the settlers with a belligerent note.
+
+"No, no," proclaimed another; "not if it takes all the men at Blue Lick
+Station to escort it!"
+
+"Those blistered redcoats at Fort Prince George are a deal too handy to
+be called on by such make-bates as the herders on the Keowee River."
+
+"Fudge! The commandant would never let a bayonet stir."
+
+"Gad! I'd send an ambassador for an ambassador. Tit for tat," declared
+Emsden. "I'd ask 'em what's gone with all our horses,--last seen in
+those desolated cow-pens,--that the voice of mourning is now lifted
+about!"
+
+There was a chuckle of sheer joy, so abrupt and unexpected that it rose
+with a clatter and a cackle of delight, and culminated in a yell of
+pleasurable derision.
+
+Now everybody knew that the horses bought in that wild country would,
+unless restrained, return every spring to "their old grass," as it was
+called,--to the places where they had formerly lived. When this annual
+hegira took place in large numbers, some permanent losses were sure to
+ensue. The settlers at Blue Lick had experienced this disaster, and had
+accepted it as partly the result of their own lack of precaution during
+the homing fancy of the horses. But since the herders manifested so
+little of the suavity that graces commercial intercourse, and as some of
+the horses had been seen in their cow-pens, it was a happy thought to
+feather the arrow with this taunt.
+
+"And who do you suppose will promise to carry such a message to those
+desperate, misguided men, riding hither an' thither, searching this wild
+and woeful wilderness for hundreds o' head o' cattle lost like needles
+in a hayrick, and eat by wolves an' painters by this time?" demanded "X"
+derisively.
+
+"I promise, I promise!--and with hearty good will, too!" declared
+Emsden. "And I'll tell 'em that we are coming down soon armed to the
+teeth to guard our pack-train, and fight our way through any resistance
+to its passage through the country on the open trading-path. And I'll
+acquaint the commandant of Fort Prince George of the threats of the
+herders against the Blue Lick Stationers, and warn him how he attempts
+to interfere with the liberties of the king's loyal subjects in their
+peaceful vocations."
+
+Thus Emsden gayly volunteered for the mission.
+
+The next morning old Richard Mivane, thinking of it, shook his head over
+the fire,--and not only once, but shook it again, which was a great deal
+of trouble for him to take. Having thus exerted his altruistic interest
+to the utmost, Richard Mivane relapsed into his normal placidity. He
+leaned back in his arm-chair, the only one at the station, fingering his
+gold-lined silver snuffbox, with its chain and ladle, his eyes dwelling
+calmly on the fire, and his thoughts busy with far away and long ago.
+
+He was old enough now to enter into the past as a sort of heritage, a
+promised land which memory had glozed with a glamour that can never
+shine upon the uncertain aspects of the future. The burning sense of
+regret, the anguish of nostalgia, the relinquishment of an accustomed
+sphere, its prospects and ideals, the revolt against the uncouth and
+rude conditions of the new status, the gradual reluctant naturalization
+to a new world,--these were forgotten save as the picturesque elements
+of sorrow and despair that balanced the joys, the interest, the
+devil-may-care joviality, the adventure, the strange wild
+companionship,--all that made the tale worth rehearsing in the flare and
+the flicker of the fireside glow.
+
+The rains had come. The dark slate-tinted clouds hung low over the
+station, but every log house, freshly dight with whitewash of the marly
+clay, after the Indian method, still shone in the shadow as if the sun
+were upon it. The turf was green, despite the passing of many feet, and
+where a slight depression held water, a few ducks, Carolina bred, were
+quacking and paddling about; now and then these were counted with great
+interest, for they had a trick of taking to the woods with others of
+their kind, and relapsing to savagery,--truly distressing to the
+domestic poultry prospects of the station. The doors of the Mivane cabin
+were all ajar,--the one at the rear opening into a shed-room, unfloored,
+which gave a vista into more sheds, merely roofed spaces, inclosed at
+either end. A loom was in the shed-room, and at it was seated on the
+bench in front, as a lady sits at an organ, the mistress of the house,
+fair but faded, in a cap and a short gown and red quilted petticoat,
+giving some instruction, touching an intricate weave, to a negro woman,
+neatly arrayed in homespun, with a gayly turbaned head, evidently an
+expert herself, from the bland and smiling manner and many
+self-sufficient and capable nods with which she perceived and
+appropriated the knotty points of the discourse.
+
+In the outer shed, Cæsar, clad like the Indians and the pioneers in
+buckskin, was mending the plough-gear, and talking with great loquacity
+to another negro, of the type known then and later as "the new nigger,"
+the target of the plantation jokes, because of his "greenness," being of
+a fresh importation. He possibly remembered much of Africa, but he
+accepted without demur and with admiring and submissive meekness stories
+of the great sights that Cæsar protested he had seen there,--Vauxhall
+Gardens and Temple Bar (which last Cæsar thought in his simplicity was
+a bar for the refreshment of the inner man) and a certain resort
+indisputably for that purpose called White's Chocolate House,--all
+represented as pleasantly and salubriously situated in the interior of
+Guinea. But after all, if a story is well told, why carp at slight
+anachorisms?
+
+Richard Mivane's attention had been diverted from the thread of his own
+reminiscences by the fact that the little flax-wheel of Peninnah
+Penelope Anne had ceased to whirl, and the low musical monody of its
+whir that was wont to bear a pleasant accompaniment to the burden of his
+thoughts was suddenly silent. He lifted his eyes and saw that she was
+gazing dreamily into the flare of the great fire, the spinning-wheel
+still, the end of the thread motionless in her hand. The burnished waves
+of her golden brown hair were pushed a bit awry, and her face was so wan
+and thoughtful that even her dress of crimson wool did not lessen its
+pallor. The voices of the three children on the floor grated on the old
+man's mood as they were busied in defending a settler's fort, insecurely
+constructed of stones and sticks, and altogether roofless, garrisoned by
+a number of pebbles, while a poke full of wily Indian kernels of corn
+swarmed to the attack.
+
+"Why is my pretty pet so idle?" he asked, for while the wheel should
+whirl he could dream.
+
+She made no answer, only turned her troubled, soft hazel eyes upon him.
+
+"And have you seen a wolf, too, that you have lost your tongue?"
+
+At the word "wolf" she burst into tears. And then, discarding all
+caution in the breaking down of her reserve, she sprang up, overturning
+the wheel and rushing to his chair.
+
+Now Richard Mivane had never encouraged his grandchildren to clamber
+over his chair. He protested great fear of the sticky fingers of the
+more youthful in contact with his preternaturally fine clothes; he
+declared they reminded him of squirrels, which he detested; he was not
+sure they did not look like rats. All this was of great effect; for his
+many contemptuous whimsical prejudices were earnestly respected.
+
+For instance, whenever 'possum was served at the pioneer board they who
+partook carried their plates for the purpose to a side table. "The look
+of the animal's tail is enough for me--it curls," he would say.
+
+"So does a pig's tail curl," his son used to remonstrate sensibly.
+
+"Not having kept a straight course so long,--then twirling up
+deceitfully like a second thought. This fellow is a monstrosity,--and
+his wife has a pocket for a cradle,--and I don't know who they are nor
+where they came from,--they were left over from before the Flood,
+perhaps,--they look somehow prehistoric to me. I am not acquainted with
+the family."
+
+And turning his head aside he would wave away the dainty, the delight of
+the pioneer epicure time out of mind.
+
+The diplomatic reason, however, that Richard Mivane was wont to shove
+off his grandchildren from the arm of that stately chair was that here
+they got on his blind side,--his simple, grandfatherly, affectionate
+predilection. The touch of them, their scrambling, floundering, little
+bodies, their soft pink cheeks laid against his, their golden hair in
+his clever eyes, their bright glances at close range,--he was then like
+other men and could deny them nothing! His selfishness, his vanity, his
+idleness, his frippery were annulled in the instant. He was resolved
+into the simple constituent elements of a grandfather, one part doting
+folly, one part loving pride, and the rest leniency, and he was as wax
+in their hands.
+
+None of them had so definitely realized this, accurately discriminating
+cause and effect, as Peninnah Penelope Anne. She felt safe the moment
+that she was perched on the arm of her grandfather's chair, her soft
+clasp about his stiff old neck, her tears flowing over her cheeks, all
+pink anew, escaping upon his wrinkled, bloodless, pale visage and taking
+all the starch out of his old-fashioned steinkirk. He struggled futilely
+once or twice, but she only hugged him the closer.
+
+"Oh, don't let him go! Oh, don't let him go!" she cried.
+
+"The wolf that we were talking about? By no means! Lovely creature that
+he is! We'll preserve, if you like, wolves instead of pheasants! I
+remember a gentleman's estate in Northumberland--a little beyond the
+river"--
+
+"Oh, grandfather, don't let him go!" she sobbingly interrupted. "It was
+he who shot the wolf and stampeded the herds, and the cow-drivers will
+quarrel with him when they would not have angry words with another
+ambassador. They will kill him! They will kill him!"
+
+"What for? Poaching?--shooting their wolf?"
+
+"Any one else would be safe, grandfather--except poor Ralph!"
+
+"Go yourself then. May-day!"
+
+"I would, grandfather! I would not be afraid!" She put her soft little
+hand on his cheek to turn his head to look into her confident eyes.
+
+"An able and worshipful ambassador!" he said banteringly.
+
+"Oh, grandfather, this is no time to risk quarrels among the settlers,
+and bloodshed. Oh, the herders would kill him! And the Injuns all so
+unfriendly--they might take the chance to get on the war-path again when
+the settlers are busy killing each other--and oh, the cow-drivers will
+kill Ralph Emsden!"
+
+All this persuasion was of necessity in a distinct loud voice;
+unnoticed, however, for a crisis had supervened in the play of the
+children by the chimney-place settle, and the sanguinary struggles and
+scalping in the storming of the fort were blood-curdling to behold to
+any one with enough imagination to discern a full-armed and fierce
+savage in a kernel of corn, and a stanch and patriotic Carolinian in a
+pebble. But when Peninnah Penelope Anne, all attuned to this high key,
+burst out weeping with commensurate resonance, all the vocations of the
+household came to a standstill, and her mother appeared, surprised and
+reproving, in the doorway.
+
+"Peninnah Penelope Anne," she said with her peculiar exact deliberation
+and gift of circumlocution, "it is better to go and sew your sampler
+than to tease your grandfather."
+
+"She does not tease me--I have not shed a tear! That was not the sound
+of my weeping!" he declared facetiously, one arm protectingly about the
+little sobbing figure.
+
+"He does not like his grandchildren to climb about him like squirrels
+and wild cattle," the lady continued. Then irrelevantly, "Long stitches
+were always avoided in our family. The work you last did in your sampler
+has been taken out, child, and you can sew it again and to better
+advantage."
+
+"And earn your name of Penelope," said Richard Mivane.
+
+But he was putting on his hat and evidently had some effort in prospect,
+for how could he resist,--she looked so childish and appealing as she
+sat before the fire, weeping those large tears, and absently preparing
+to sew her sampler anew.
+
+While Richard Mivane, by virtue of his early culture, the scanty remains
+of his property, his fine-gentleman habits and traditions, and the
+anomaly of his situation, was the figure of most mark at the station,
+its ruling spirit was of far alien character. This was John Ronackstone,
+a stanch Indian fighter; a far-seeing frontier politician; a man of
+excellent native faculties, all sharpened by active use and frequent
+emergencies; skilled and experienced in devious pioneer craft; and
+withal infinitely stubborn, glorying in the fact of the unchangeableness
+of his opinions and his immutable abiding by his first statements. After
+one glance at his square countenance, his steady noncommittal black
+eyes, the upward bulldog cant of a somewhat massive nose, the firm
+compression of his long thin lips, one would no more expect him to
+depart from the conditions of a conclusion than that a signpost would
+enter into argument and in view of the fatigue of a traveler mitigate
+and recant its announcement.
+
+Nevertheless Richard Mivane expected "some sense," as he phrased it,
+from this adamantine pioneer. Such a man naturally arrogated and
+obtained great weight among his fellows, and perhaps his lack of
+vacillation furthered this preëminence. He was a good man in the main as
+well as forceful, but an early and a very apt expression of the
+demagogue. And as he tolerated amongst his mental furniture no illusions
+and fostered no follies, his home life harbored no fripperies. His
+domicile was a contrast to the better ordered homes of the station, but
+here one might have meat and shelter, and what more should mortal ask of
+a house! He often boasted that not an atom of iron entered into its
+structure more than into an Indian's wigwam. Even the clapboards were
+fastened on to the rafters with wooden pegs in lieu of nails, although
+nails were not difficult to procure. He had that antagonism to the mere
+conventions of civilization often manifested by those who have been
+irked by such fetters before finally casting them off. It was a
+wholesome life and a free, and if the inmates of the house did not mind
+the scent of the drying deerskins hanging from the beams, which made the
+nose of Richard Mivane very coy, the visitor saw no reason why they
+should not please themselves. The stone-flagged hearth extended half
+across the room, and sprawling upon it in frowsy disorder was a bevy of
+children of all ages, as fat as pigs and as happy-go-lucky. He had
+hardly seated himself, having stepped about carefully among their chubby
+fingers and toes lest a crushing disaster supervene, than he regretted
+his choice of a confidant. He had his own, unsuspected sensitiveness,
+which was suddenly jarred when the wife in the corner, rocking the
+cradle with one foot while she turned a hoe-cake baking on the hearth
+with a dextrous flip of a knife, and feeling secure in his deafness,
+cast a witty fling at his fastidious apparel. With that frequent yet
+unexplained phenomenon of acoustics, her voice was so strung that its
+vibrations reached his numb perceptions as duly as if intended for his
+ears. He made no sign, in his pride and politeness, both indigenous. But
+he said to himself, "I don't laugh at her gown,--it is what she likes
+and what she is accustomed to wear. And why can't she let me dress in
+peace as I was early trained to do? God knows I feel myself better than
+nobody."
+
+And he was sensible of his age, his infirmity, his isolation, and his
+jauntiness was eclipsed.
+
+Thus he entered the race with a handicap, and John Ronackstone would
+hear none of his reasons with grace. He could not and he would not
+consent to the nomination of an ambassador in the stead of Emsden, who
+had volunteered for the service, which was the more appropriate since it
+was he who had shot the wolf and brought the stampede and its attendant
+difficulties upon the herders of the Keowee River, and this threat of
+retaliation upon the Blue Lick Stationers. If there were danger at hand,
+let a volunteer encounter it! In vain Mivane argued that there was
+danger to no one else. John Ronackstone, who found an added liberty of
+disputation in the emphasis imposed by the necessity of roaring out his
+immutable opinions in an exceeding loud voice, retorted that so far as
+he was informed the "cow-drivers" on the Keowee were not certain who it
+was that had committed this atrocity, unless perhaps their messenger
+during his sojourn at Blue Lick Station had learned the name from "X."
+But this uncertainty, Mivane argued, was the very point of difficulty.
+It was the maddest folly to dispatch to angry men, smarting under a
+grievous injury, messages of taunt and defiance by the one person who in
+their opinion, perhaps, had carelessly or willfully wrought this wrong.
+His life would pay the forfeit of the folly of his fellow-stationers.
+
+Mivane noted suddenly that the woman rocking the cradle was laughing
+with an ostentatious affectation of covert slyness, and a responsive
+twinkle gleamed in the eyes of John Ronackstone. As he caught the grave
+and surprised glance of his visitor he made a point of dropping the air
+of a comment aside, which he, as well as she, had insistently brought to
+notice, and Mivane was aware that here was something which sought an
+opportunity of being revealed as if by necessity.
+
+"Well, sir," Ronackstone began in a tone of a quasi-apology, "we were
+just saying--that is, I sez to X, who was in here a while ago,--I sez,
+'I'll tell you what is goin' to happen,'--I sez, 'old Gentleman
+Rick,'--excuse the freedom, sir,--'he'll be wantin' to send somebody
+else in Ralph Emsden's place.' X, he see the p'int, just as you see it.
+He sez, 'Somebody that won't be missed--somebody not genteel enough to
+play loo with him after supper,' sez X. 'Or too religious,' sez I. 'Or
+can't sing a good song or tell a rousing tale,' sez X. 'Or listen an'
+laugh in the right places at the gentleman's old cracks about the great
+world,' sez I. 'He'll never let Ralph Emsden go,' sez X. 'Jus' some poor
+body will do,' sez I. 'Jus' man enough to be scalped by the Injuns if
+the red sticks take after him,' sez X. 'Or have his throat cut if the
+cow-drivers feel rough yet,' sez I. 'Jus' such a one ez me,' sez X. 'Or
+me,' sez I."
+
+"Sir," said old Mivane, rising, and the impressive dignity of his port
+was such that the cradle stopped rocking as if a spell were upon it, and
+every child paused in its play, sprawling where it lay, "I am obliged to
+you for your polite expression of opinion of me, which I have never done
+aught to justify. I have nothing more to urge upon the question of the
+details which brought me hither, but of one thing be certain,--if Emsden
+does not go upon this mission _I_ shall be the ambassador. I apprehend
+no danger whatever to myself, and I wish you a very good day."
+
+And he stepped forth with his wonted jaunty alacrity, leaving the man
+and his wife staring at each other with as much surprise as if the roof
+had fallen in.
+
+A greater surprise awaited Mivane without. The rain was falling anew. In
+vast transparent tissues it swept with the gusty wind over the nearest
+mountains of the Great Smoky Range, whose farther reaches were lost in
+fog. The slanting lines, vaguely discerned in the downpour, almost
+obliterated the presence of the encompassing forests about the stockade.
+He noted how wildly the great trees were yet swaying, and he realized,
+for he could not have heard the blast, that a sudden severe wind-storm
+had passed over the settlement while he was within doors. The
+blockhouse, the tallest of the buildings, loomed up darkly amidst the
+gathering gray vapor, and through the great gates of the stockade, which
+opened on the blank cloud, were coming at the moment several men bearing
+a rude litter, evidently hastily constructed. On this was stretched the
+insensible form of Ralph Emsden, who had been stricken down in the woods
+with a dislocated shoulder and a broken arm by the falling of a branch
+of a great tree uprooted by the violence of the gusts. He had almost
+miraculously escaped being crushed, and was not fatally hurt, but
+examination disclosed that he was absolutely and hopelessly disabled for
+the time being, and Richard Mivane realized that he himself was the duly
+accredited ambassador to the herders on the Keowee River.
+
+He went home in a pettish fume. No sooner was he within and the door
+fast shut, that none might behold save only those of his own household,
+who were accustomed to the aberrations of his temper and who regarded
+them with blended awe and respect, than he reft his cocked hat from his
+head and flung it upon the floor. Peninnah Penelope Anne sprang up so
+precipitately at the dread sight that she overturned her stool and drew
+a stitch awry in her sampler, longer than the women of her family were
+accustomed to take. The children gazed spellbound. The weavers at the
+loom were petrified; even the creak of the treadle and the noisy
+thumping of the batten--those perennial sounds of a pioneer home--sunk
+into silence. The two negroes at the end of the vista beyond the
+shed-room, with the ox-yoke and plough-gear which they were mending
+between them, opened wide mouths and became immovable save for the
+whites of astonished rolling eyes. Then, and this exceeded all
+precedent, Richard Mivane clutched his valued peruke and, with an inward
+plaintive deprecation of the extremity of this act of desperation, he
+cast it upon the hat, and looked around, bald, despairing, furious, and
+piteous.
+
+It was, however, past the fortitude of woman to behold without protest
+this desecration of decoration. Peninnah Penelope Anne sprang forward,
+snatched the glossy locks from the puncheons, and with a tender hand
+righted the structure, while the powder flew about in light puffs at her
+touch, readjusting a curl here and a cleverly wrought wave there. The
+valet's pious aspiration from the doorway, "Bress de Lord!" betokened
+the acuteness of the danger over-past.
+
+"Why, grandfather!" the girl admonished Mivane; "your beautiful
+peruke!--sure, sir, the loveliest curls in the world! And sets you like
+your own hair,--only that nobody _could really_ have such very genteel
+curls to grow--Oh--oh--grandfather!"
+
+She did not offer to return it, but stood with it poised on one hand,
+well out of harm's way, while she surveyed Mivane reproachfully yet with
+expectant sympathy.
+
+Perhaps he himself was glad that he could wreak no further damage which
+he would later regret, and contented himself with furiously pounding his
+cane upon the puncheon floor, a sturdy structure and well calculated to
+bear the brunt of such expressions of pettish rage.
+
+"Dolt, ass, fool, that I am!" he cried. "That I should so far forget
+myself as to offer to go as an ambassador to the herders on the Keowee!"
+And once more he banged the floor after a fashion that discounted the
+thumping of the batten, and the room resounded with the thwacks.
+
+An old dog, a favorite of yore, lying asleep on the hearth, only opened
+his eyes and wrinkled his brows to make sure, it would seem, who had the
+stick; then closing his lids peacefully snoozed away again, presently
+snoring in the fullness of his sense of security. But a late
+acquisition, a gaunt deerhound, after an earnest observation of his
+comrade's attitude, as if referring the crisis to his longer experience,
+scrutinized severally the faces of the members of the family, and,
+wincing at each resounding whack, finally gathered himself together
+apprehensively, as doubtful whose turn might come next, and discreetly
+slunk out unobserved by the back door.
+
+Peninnah Penelope Anne rushed to the rescue.
+
+"And why should you not be an ambassador, sir?" she demanded.
+
+"Why--why--because, girl, I am deafer than the devil's dam! I cannot
+fetch and carry messages of import. I could only give occasion for
+ridicule and scorn in even offering to assume such an office."
+
+Peninnah Penelope Anne had flushed with the keen sensitiveness of her
+pride. She instantly appreciated the irking of the dilemma into which he
+had thrust himself forgetting his infirmity, and she could have smitten
+with hearty enmity and a heavy stick any lips which had dared to smile.
+She responded, however, with something of her mother's indirection.
+
+"Under your favor, sir, you don't know how deaf the devil's dam may
+be--and it is not your wont to speak in that strain. I'm sure it reminds
+me of that man they call 'X,'--a sort of churl person,--who talks of the
+devil and blue blazes and brimstone and hell as if--as if he were a
+native."
+
+This was a turning of the sword of the pious "X" upon himself with a
+vengeance, for he was prone in his spiritual disquisitions to detail
+much of the discomfort of the future state that awaited his careless
+friends.
+
+The allusion so far pleased old Mivane, who resented a suspected
+relegation of himself to a warm station in the schemes of "X," that,
+although his head was still bald and shining like a billiard ball, he
+suffered himself to drop into his chair, his stick resting motionless on
+the long-suffering puncheon floor.
+
+"If I could only hear for a day I'd forgive twenty soundless years!" he
+declared piteously, for he so deprecated the enforced withdrawal from
+the enterprise that he had heedlessly undertaken, and felt so keenly the
+reflections upon his sentiments and sincerity surreptitiously canvassed
+between Ronackstone and "X," and then cavalierly rehearsed in his
+presence.
+
+"You are only deaf to certain whanging voices in queer keys," his
+granddaughter declared.
+
+"And how do I know in what sort of key the herders on the Keowee talk?
+They may 'moo' like the cow, or 'mew' like the cat! I should be in
+danger of losing half that was said. And that is what these varlets here
+in the station know right well. It must seem but a mere bit of bombast
+on my part. It could never be seriously countenanced--unless I had an
+interpreter. Stop me! but if you were a grandson instead of a
+granddaughter, I would not mind taking you with me to interpret for me,
+though, Gadzooks, I'd be like a heathen red Injun with a linguister!"
+
+"And why am I not as good as any grandson?" demanded Peninnah Penelope
+Anne, with a spirited flash of her bright hazel eyes and great temerity
+of speculation; for be it remembered the days of the theories of woman's
+equality with man had not yet dawned. "Sure, sir, I can speak when I am
+spoken to. I understand the English language; and"--her voice rising
+into a liquid crescendo of delight--"I can wear my gray sergedusoy sack
+made over my carnation taffeta bodice and cashmere petticoat, all
+pranked out with bows of black velvet, most genteel, and my hat of
+quilled primrose sarcenet, grandfather. I'd take them in a bundle, for
+if we should have rain I would rather be in my old red hood and blue
+serge riding-coat on the way, grandfather."
+
+And thus it was settled before she had fairly readjusted the peruke on
+his head as he sat in his great chair and she clambered on its arm.
+
+She had not heard of the disaster that had befallen Ralph Emsden, and
+she turned rather pale and wistful when the news was communicated to
+her. Then realizing how opportune was the accident, how slight was its
+ultimate danger in comparison with the jeopardy of the mission from
+which he was rescued, she fairly gloated upon the chance which had
+conferred it upon her grandfather, and made her an instrument in its
+execution.
+
+It was a queerly assorted embassy that rode out of the gates of the
+stockade, the ambassador and his linguister. Richard Mivane was mounted
+upon a strong, sprightly horse, with Peninnah Penelope Anne behind him
+upon a pillion. Following them at a little distance came his
+body-servant, Cæsar, more fitted by temperament than either to enjoy
+the change, the spirit of adventure, and reveling in a sense of
+importance which was scarcely diminished by the fact that it was
+vicarious. He rode a sturdy nag and had charge of a led horse, that bore
+a pack-saddle with a store of changes of raiment, of edible provisions,
+and tents to fend off the chances of inclement weather. They were to
+travel under the protection of a trader's pack-train, from a
+reëstablished trading-house in the Overhill Towns of the Cherokees on
+the Tennessee River; and so accurately did they time their departure and
+the stages of their journey that they met this caravan just at the hour
+and place designated, and risked naught from the unsettled state of the
+country or an encounter with some ignorant or inimical savage, prone to
+wreak upon inoffensive units vengeance for wrongs, real or fancied,
+wrought by a nation.
+
+The trader, being a man habituated by frequent sojourns in Charlestown
+to metropolitan customs and a worldly trend of thought, instantly
+recognized the quality of Mivane and his granddaughter, despite the old
+red hood and blue serge riding-coat and their residence here so far from
+all the graces that appertain to civilization; though, to be sure,
+Richard Mivane, in his trim "Joseph," his head cowled in an appropriate
+"trotcozy," and his jaunty self-possession quite restored by the cutting
+of the Gordian knot of his dilemma, demonstrating his capacity to duly
+perform all his undertakings, bore himself in a manner calculated to
+enhance even the high estimation of his fellow-traveler. After the
+custom of a gentleman, however, he was most augustly free from
+unwarrantable self-assertion, but he could not have failed to be
+flattered by the phrase of the trader, could he have heard it, in
+delivering over his charge to the herders on the Keowee River.
+"Gadzooks, neighbors, but I shouldn't be a whit surprised if that old
+party is a duke in disguise!"
+
+But the cow-drivers heard him not! They hardly heeded the coming and the
+going of the pack-train and their gossips the packmen! They cared naught
+for the news the caravan brought of the country-side far above, nor the
+commissions they were wont to give for the various settlements and the
+metropolis far below! For so featly came riding in to the humble prosaic
+precincts of the cow-pens and into their hearts the vernal beauty of
+Spring herself, the living Bloom of charm and love, all arrayed in
+delicate gray sergedusoy opening upon carnation taffeta, and crowned
+with sheer quillings of primrose sarcenet, with a cheek that repeated
+these roseate tints and a glint of golden brown tresses curling softly
+against a nape of pearl, that the ranchmen were bewitched and dazed, and
+knew no more of good common-sense. Their equilibrium thus shaken, some
+busied themselves in what might be called "housewifely cares," that the
+dainty visitant might be acceptably lodged and fed, and afterward they
+cursed their industry and hospitality that thus left her conversation
+and charming aspect to the shirks and drones, who languished about her,
+and affected to seek her comfort and minister to her entertainment. For
+the cow-drivers, like the other pioneer settlers of that region and day,
+represented various states of society and degrees of refinement, and to
+those to whom she was not as a blissful reminiscence of long ago, she
+appeared as a revelation, new and straight from heaven, a fancy, a
+dream! It seemed meet to them that she arrived in the illusory sunset of
+a sweet spring day, like some lovely forecast of the visions of the
+night.
+
+With their artless bucolic ideals of entertainment they invited her out
+to show her the new calves. One of these little creatures, being
+exquisitely white and eminently pleasing to look upon, was straightway
+named, with her gracious permission, "Peninnah Penelope Anne," and she
+was assured that because of this name its owner, a slim, sentimental,
+red-haired youth, would never part from it. And it may be presumed that
+he was sincere, and that at the time of this fervent asseveration he had
+not realized the incongruity of living his life out in the constant heed
+of the well-being and companionship of a large white cow of the name of
+"Peninnah Penelope Anne." A more interesting denizen of the pen was a
+fawn, a waif found there one morning, having prudently adopted as a
+mother a large red cow, and a heavy brindled calf as a foster-brother.
+The instant Peninnah admired this incongruous estray, bleating its queer
+alien note in resonant duet with the calf in the plea for supper, a cord
+was slipped about its neck and it was presented in due form. In order
+that she might not be harassed by its tendance, a gigantic Scotch
+herder, six feet six inches high and twenty-five years of age, showed
+how far involuntary inanity can coexist with presumptive sanity as he
+led it about, the creature holding back heavily at every step and now
+and again tangling itself, its cord, and its disconcerted bleats about
+its conductor's long and stalwart legs. Another of the herders,--all of
+whom were hunters and explorers as well,--whose mind was of a
+topographical cast, introduced her to much fine and high company in the
+various mountain peaks, gathered in solemn symposium dark and purple in
+the faintly tinted and opaline twilight. He repeated their Cherokee
+names and gave an English translation, and called her attention to marks
+of difference in their configuration which rendered them distinguishable
+at a distance; and when she lent some heed to this and noted on the
+horizon contours of the mountains about her home, faint and far in an
+elusive amethystine apotheosis against the red and flaming west, and
+called out her glad recognition in a voice as sweet as a thrush, his
+comrades waxed jealous, and contravened his statements and argued and
+wrangled upon landmarks to which they had never before given a second
+thought in all their mountaineering experience, so keenly they competed
+for her favor. It was her little day of triumph, and right royally she
+reigned in it and was wont to tell of it for forty years thereafter!
+
+At last the dusk was slipping down; the mountains grew a shadowy gray
+far away and a looming black close at hand; a star palpitated in the
+colorless crystal-clear concave of the fading skies; the vernal stretch
+of the savannas, whose intense green was somehow asserted till the
+latest glimmer of light, ceased to resound with the voices of the herds;
+only here and there a keen metallic note of a bell clanked forth and was
+silent, and again the sound came from a farther pen like a belated echo;
+the fire flaring out from the open door of the nearest hut of the
+ranchmen's little hamlet gave a pleasant sense of hospitality and homely
+hearth-side cheer, for it requires only a few nights under a tent or the
+open canopy of heaven to make a woman, always the most artificially
+disposed of all creatures, exceedingly respectful to a roof.
+
+To be sure the interior of this roof was well garnished with cobwebs,
+and Peninnah Penelope Anne's mother was so notable a housekeeper and had
+inculcated such horror of these untoward drapings and festoons that the
+girl was compelled to look sedulously away from them to avoid staring in
+amazement at their morbid development and proportions. The
+superintendent of the ranch--being an establishment of magnitude it had
+several sub-agents also--was so occupied in putting the best foot of his
+menage foremost, not being prepared for such company that, like many a
+modern housekeeper, he let the opportunity for pleasure slip. When he
+proffered tea--he had sent a negro servant all the way to Fort Prince
+George for the luxury, where it could be found among the hospital
+stores, for tea was too mild a tipple for the pioneer cow-drivers--he
+suffered the egregious mortification of pouring out plain hot water,
+having forgotten to put in the tea leaves to steep. He looked very hot
+and ruefully distressed as he repaired his error, and would not, could
+not meet the laughing eyes of his comrades, nor yet the polite glances
+of his guests resolutely seeing naught amiss. He was oppressed with a
+sense of the number and prominence of his dogs about the wide hearth of
+his cabin; when the animals were therefore vigorously kicked out to make
+more space, instead of retiring with the usual plaintive yelp of protest
+appropriate to such occasions they took advantage of the presence of
+guests of distinction and made the rafters ring and resound with their
+ear-splitting shrieks, and it was even necessary to chase them about the
+room before they could be ejected. Indeed, several with super-canine
+strategy succeeded in countermarching their tormentors and remained in
+the group about the fire, wearing that curiously attentive look peculiar
+to an intelligent animal when animated conversation is in progress.
+
+The blazing fire in the great chimney-place, that stretched almost half
+across one end of the herder's cabin, illumined the walls and showed the
+medley of articles suspended upon them,--horns, whips, branding-irons,
+skins, cattle-bells, lariats, and such-like appurtenances of the ranch.
+The little lady was seated in the centre of the group of ranchmen ranged
+in a wide semicircle about the hearth of flagstones; the ethereal tints
+of her shimmering attire showed all their highlights; her face and
+golden brown hair seemed particularly soft and delicate in contrast with
+the rough tousled heads and bearded countenances about her; here and
+there the muzzle of a great animal, the flash of fangs and red glow of
+formidable jaws, were half discriminated amidst the alternate flare of
+the flames and flicker of the shadows,--all might have suggested the
+"mystick Crew of Comus" to Richard Mivane, being the only person present
+who had ever heard of that motley company, had not his thoughts been
+otherwise engrossed. He meditatively cleared his throat, took a sip of
+brandy and water, for he had long ago lost his genteel affiliations with
+tea, and hopefully opened the subject of his mission.
+
+A change fell upon the scene, instant, definite, complete. In the mere
+broaching of business it might seem that beauty and charm are but
+tenuous at best, and powerless to subdue the fiercer nature of man when
+his acquisitive and aggressive commercial instincts are aroused. One of
+the most devout admirers of Peninnah Penelope Anne tossed his head with
+a very bellicose and bovine obduracy when he intimated an incredulity of
+the statement that the herd had been stampeded without an ulterior
+motive of malice or nefarious profit. The gentle soul who had assumed
+the tendance and protection of the fawn held down as he listened a
+shaggy intent head, like that of a bull about to charge, at the mere
+mention of the shooting of the wolf. In fact, the suggestion of shadowy
+monsters which the dusky flicker and evanescent flare of the fire
+fostered and which was intensified by the proximity of open jaws, sharp
+fangs, heavy muzzles, and standing bristles amongst them, owed much of
+its effect to the unanimous expression of truculent challenge and averse
+disfavor. There were frequent confirmatory emphatic nods of great
+disheveled heads, the scarlet flushing of angry faces, already florid,
+and now and again a violent descriptive gesture of a long brawny arm
+with a clenched fist at its extremity. Richard Mivane's well-rounded
+periods and gentlemanly phrasings were like the educated thrusts and
+feints of an expert fencer who opposes his single rapier to the
+bludgeons and missiles of a furious mob. He saw in less than five
+minutes that the scheme of extenuation and conciliation was futile, that
+retort and retaliation would be returned in kind, that the stoppage of
+the pack-train from Blue Lick on the way to Charlestown was inevitable,
+and that the redcoats, invoked by both parties, would doubtless become
+embroiled with one or the other,--in short, bloodshed was a foregone
+conclusion.
+
+Much as this was to be deprecated in any event, it was suicidal amongst
+these infant settlements by reason of the vicinage and antagonism of the
+fierce and only half-subdued Cherokees, sullenly nourishing schemes of
+revenge for their recent defeat and many woes. But when he urged this
+upon the attention of the herders, the retort came quick and pointed:
+"We ain't talkin' 'bout no Injuns!--the Cherokees never meddled with our
+cattle! We'll settle about the stampede first, an' 'tend to the
+Cherokees in good time--all in good time!"
+
+Richard Mivane was not possessed of much affinity with the ruder
+primitive qualities, the stalwart candor and uncultured forces of the
+natural man; and never had these inherent elements appeared to less
+advantage in his mind than when he was brought into disastrous conflict
+with them. He only held his ground for form's sake, and often his voice
+was overborne by the clamors of many responsive tones, all blaring and
+arguing together. Much that was said he could not hear, and refrained
+from speaking when he perceived from the loud contending faces that he
+was denied for the nonce a rejoinder. But ever and anon the silver
+vibrations of the little linguister's voice rose into the big bass
+tumult as she rehearsed what had been said for her grandfather's
+benefit, and the angry rush of sound stopped with an abrupt recoil for a
+moment, then surged on as before.
+
+She looked very mild and petite among them, quite like a sedate child,
+her cheeks pinker than any of the rose tints of her apparel that were
+her pride, her lips red and breathlessly parted, her eyes bright and
+very watchful, her golden brown hair all red gold in the flicker of the
+fire. There was one wild taunting threat that she did not repeat, as if
+she thought it of no consequence,--the threat of personal violence
+against Ralph Emsden. They had found out his name patly enough from
+their own messenger to Blue Lick Station. They would take out their
+grudge against him on his hide, they averred,--if they had to go all the
+way to Blue Lick to get it!
+
+Now and again they sufficiently remembered that indeterminate quantum of
+courtesy which they called their "manners" to interpolate "No offense to
+_you_, sir," or "Begging the lady's pardon." Throughout she preserved a
+cool, almost uncomprehending, passive manner; and it was in one of the
+moments of a heady tumult of words, in which they sometimes involved
+themselves beyond all interpretation or distinguishment, that she
+observed with a sort of childish inconsequence that they could get Ralph
+Emsden easily enough if they would go to Blue Lick Station,--he was
+there now, and his arm and shoulder were so hurt that he would not be
+able to make off,--they could get him easily enough, that is, if the
+French did not raze Blue Lick Station before the herders could reach
+there.
+
+If a bomb had exploded in the midst of the hearthstone, the astonishment
+that ensued upon this simple statement could not have been greater. A
+sudden blank silence supervened. A dozen excited infuriated faces, the
+angry contortions of the previous moment still stark upon their
+features, were bent upon her while their eyes stared only limitless
+amazement.
+
+"The French!" the herders cried at last in chorus. "Blue Lick Station!"
+
+"It was razed once," she said statistically, "to the ground. The
+Cherokees did it that time!"
+
+Her grandfather, always averse to admit that he did not hear, noted the
+influx of excitement, and was fain to lean forward. He even placed his
+hand behind his ear.
+
+"The French!" bellowed out one of the cow-drivers in a voice that might
+have graced the king of the herds. "The French! Threatening Blue Lick
+Station!"
+
+The elderly gentleman drew back from, the painful surcharged vibrations
+of sound and the unseemly aspect of this interpreter, who was in good
+sooth like a bull in disguise. "To be sure--the French," Richard Mivane
+said in response, repeating the only words which he had heard. "Our
+nearest white neighbors--the dangerous Alabama garrison!"
+
+A tumult of questions assailed the little linguister.
+
+"Be they mightily troubled at Blue Lick Station?" asked one
+sympathetically.
+
+The little flower-like head was nodded with meaning, deep and serious.
+"Oh, sure!" she cried. "And having the Cow-pens against them too--'tis
+sad!"
+
+"Zooks!" cried the bull in disguise, with a snort. "The Cow-pens ain't
+against 'em--when the French are coming!"
+
+"Why haven't they sent word to the soldiers?" demanded another of the
+cow-drivers suspiciously.
+
+"The soldiers?" she exclaimed incredulously. "Why--the Cow-pens sent
+word that the soldiers were against Blue Lick too, and were going to
+stop the station's pack-train. Maybe the stationers were afraid of the
+soldiers."
+
+To a torrent of questions as to how the news had first come, how the
+menace lowered, what disposition for defense the stationers could make,
+the little girl seemed bewildered. She only answered definitely and very
+indifferently that they could easily get Ralph Emsden if they would go
+now to Blue Lick, and take his hide,--that is, if the French and their
+Choctaw Indians had not already possessed themselves of that valuable
+integument,--as if this were their primal object.
+
+"Why, God-a-mercy, child," cried the superintendent of the ranch, "this
+news settles all scores; when it comes to a foreign foe the colonists
+are brothers."
+
+"And besides," admitted one of the most truculent of the cow-drivers,
+"the cattle are all pretty well rounded in again; I doubt if more are
+lost than the wolves would have pulled down anyhow."
+
+"And the Blue Lick Stationers' horses can be herded easy enough,--they
+are all on their old grass,--and be driven up to the settlement."
+
+A courier had been sent off full tilt to the commandant at Fort Prince
+George, and night though it was, a detail of mounted soldiers appeared
+presently with orders to escort the ambassador and his linguister into
+the presence of that officer.
+
+For this intelligence was esteemed serious indeed. Although hostilities
+had now practically ceased in America, the Seven Years' War being near
+its end, and peace negotiations actually in progress, still the treaty
+had not been concluded. So far on the frontier were such isolated
+garrisons as this of Fort Prince George, so imperfect and infrequent
+were their means of communicating with the outside world, that they were
+necessarily in ignorance of much that took place elsewhere, and a
+renewal of the conflict might have supervened long before their regular
+advices from headquarters could reach them. Even a chance rumor might
+bring them their first intimation of a matter of such great import to
+them. Therefore the commandant attached much significance to this
+account of an alarm at Blue Lick Station, because of a menace from the
+nearest French at Fort Toulouse, often called in that day, by reason of
+this propinquity, "the dangerous Alabama garrison."
+
+For this reason, also, the hospitable hosts made no protest against the
+removal of the guests to Fort Prince George, although it might seem that
+the age of the one and the tender youth of the other ill fitted them to
+encounter this sudden transition from the cosy fireside to the raw
+vernal air on a misty midnight jaunt of a dozen miles through a primeval
+wilderness. And in truth the little lady seemed loath to leave the
+hearth; she visibly hesitated as she stood beside her chair with her
+hand on its back, and looked out at the black night, and the vague vista
+which the ruddy flare, from the wide door, revealed amidst the dense
+darkness; at the vanishing point of this perspective stood a group of
+mounted soldiers, "in column of twos" with two led horses, the scarlet
+uniforms and burnished accoutrements appearing and disappearing
+elusively as the flames rose and fell. The sounds of the champing of
+bits and the pawing of hoofs and the jingle of spurs were keenly clear
+on the chill rare air and seemed somehow consonant with the frosty
+glitter of the stars, very high in the black concave of the moonless
+sky. The smell of the rich mould, permeated with its vernal growths; the
+cool, distinct, rarefied perfume of some early flower already abloom;
+the antiphonal chant of frogs roused in the marsh or stream hard by, so
+imbued her senses with the realization of the hour and season that she
+never afterward thought of the spring without a vivid renewal of these
+impressions.
+
+Her grandfather also seemed vaguely to hold back, even while he slowly
+mounted his horse; yet aware that naught is so imperative as military
+authority, it was only his inner consciousness that protested. Outwardly
+he professed alacrity, although in great surprise declaring that he
+could not imagine what the commandant could want with him. The little
+linguister, for her part, had no doubts. She was well aware indeed of
+the cause of the summons, and so dismayed by the prospect was even her
+doughty heart that the swift ride through the black forest was less
+terrible to her than the thought of the ordeal of the arrival. But the
+march was not without its peculiar trials. She shrank in instinctive
+affright from the unaccustomed escort of a dragoon on either side of
+her, looming up in the darkness like some phantom of the midnight. Even
+her volition seemed wrested from her by reason of the military training
+of the troop-horse which she rode;--he whirled about at the command
+"right-wheel!" ringing out in the darkness in the crisp peremptory tones
+of the non-commissioned officer, and plunged forward at the words "trot,
+march!" and adjusted his muscles instantaneously to the acceleration
+implied in "gallop!" and came to an abrupt and immovable pause at
+"halt!"--all with no more regard to her grasp on the reins than if she
+had been a fly on the saddle. As they went the wind beset her with cool,
+damp buffets on chin and cheek; the overhanging budding boughs, all
+unseen, drenched her with perfumed dew as she was whisked through their
+midst; the pace was adopted rather with reference to military custom and
+the expectation of the waiting commandant than her convenience; at every
+sudden whirl responsive to the word of command she was in momentary fear
+of being flung beneath the swiftly trampling hoofs of the horses on
+either side of her, and despite her recoil from the bigness and
+bluffness and presumable bloody-mindedness of the two troopers beside
+her she was sensible of their sympathy as they took heed of the
+instability with which she bounced about, perched up side-wise on a
+military saddle. Indeed, one was moved to ask her if she would not
+prefer to be strapped on with a girth, and to offer his belt for the
+purpose; and the other took the opportunity to gird at the forgetfulness
+of the cow-drivers to furnish her with her own pillion.
+
+Nevertheless she dreaded the journey's end; and as they came out of the
+forests on the banks of the Keowee River, and beheld the vague glimmers
+of the gray day slowly dawning, albeit night was yet in the woods, and
+the outline of the military works of Fort Prince George taking symmetry
+and wonted proportions against the dappled eastern sky, all of blended
+roseate tints and thin nebulous grays, her heart so sank, she felt so
+tremulously guilty that had all the sixteen guns from the four bastions
+opened fire upon her at once she would not have been surprised.
+
+No such welcome, however, did the party encounter. The officer
+commanding it stopped the ambassador and the linguister and let the
+soldiers go on at a round trot toward the great gate, which stood open,
+the bayonet on the musket of the sentry shining with an errant gleam of
+light like the sword of fire at the entrance of Paradise. For now the
+sun was up, the radiance suffusing the blue and misty mountains and the
+seas of fog in the valleys. Albeit its dazzling focus was hardly visible
+above the eastern heights, it sent a red glow all along the parapet of
+the covered way and the slope beyond to the river bank, where only two
+years before Captain Coytmore, then the commandant, had been murdered at
+a conference by the treacherous Cherokees. The senior officer, Captain
+Howard, being absent on leave, the present commandant, a jaunty
+lieutenant, smart enough although in an undress uniform, was standing at
+the sally-port now, all bland and smiling, to receive the ambassador and
+his linguister. He perceived at once that the old gentleman was deaf
+beyond any save adroit and accustomed communication. He looked puzzled
+for a moment, then spoke to the sergeant.
+
+"And who is this pretty little girl?" he asked.
+
+The sergeant, who had heard of her prowess in the havoc of hearts among
+the herders at the ranch, looked bewildered, then desperate, saluted
+mechanically, and was circumspectly silent.
+
+"I am not a little girl," said Peninnah Penelope Anne Mivane with adult
+dignity.
+
+"Ah, indeed," said the embarrassed and discomfited officer. Then,
+turning to lead the way, he added civilly, "Beg pardon, I'm sure!"
+
+If the sight of the sixteen guns on the four bastions of Fort Prince
+George had caused Peninnah Penelope Anne to shrink from her normal
+proportions, not too expansive at best, she dwindled visibly and
+continually when conducted within the palisaded parapets, across the
+parade, past the barracks, built for a hundred men but now somewhat
+lacking their complement, and into the officers' quarters, where in a
+large mess-hall there sat all the commissioned officers at a table, near
+the foot of which the two strangers were accommodated with chairs. It
+had so much the air of a court-martial, despite their bland and
+reassuring suavity, that Peninnah Penelope Anne, albeit a free lance and
+serving under no banner but her own whim, had much ado to keep up her
+courage to face them. Naturally she was disposed to lean upon her
+grandfather, but he utterly failed her. She had never known him so deaf!
+He could neither hear the officers nor her familiar voice. He would not
+even tell his name, although she had so often heard him voice it
+sonorously and in great pride, "Richard Mivane Huntley Mivane, youngest
+son of the late Sir Alexander Mivane Huntley Mivane, of Mivane Hall,
+Fenshire, Northumberland." Now he merely waved his hand to deputize her.
+In truth he shrank from rehearsing to these young men the reason of his
+flight from home, his duel and its fatal result, although his pride
+forbade him to suppress it. He had come to think the cause of quarrel a
+trifle, and the challenge a wicked folly. It was a bitter and remorseful
+recollection as his age came on, and its details were edifying in no
+sense. Hence, as Peninnah Penelope Anne knew naught of the story she
+could not tell it, and he escaped the distasteful pose of a merciless
+duelist.
+
+She gave his name with much pride, noting the respect with which the
+officers heard it. She accounted for the incongruities of his presence
+here as the result of a trip from England to the province, where, as she
+said, "he was detained by the snare of matrimony." It was his own
+phrase, for as a snare he regarded the holy estate; but the younger of
+the officers were pleased to find it funny, and ventured to laugh;
+whereat she grew red and silent, and they perforce became grave again
+that they might hear of the French. Here she was vague and discursive,
+and prone to detail at great length the feud between the Blue Lick
+Stationers and the "cow-drivers" on the Keowee, evidently hoping that it
+might lie within the latitude of the commandant's military authority to
+take some order with the herder gentry,--for which they would not have
+thanked her in the least! But the officers of the garrison of Fort
+Prince George had thought for naught but the French, and now and again
+conferred dubiously together on the unsatisfactory points of her
+evidence.
+
+"Do you suppose she really knows anything about it?" the commandant said
+aside to one of his advisers.
+
+Suddenly, however, her grandfather's hearing improved, and they were
+able to elicit from him the reports which he had had at second hand from
+the cow-drivers themselves, in retailing which he honestly conceived
+that he was repeating genuine news, never dreaming that the information
+had blossomed forth from his own mission.
+
+While less circumstantial and satisfactory than the commandant could
+have wished, the details were too significant and serious of import to
+be ignored, and therefore he acted upon his information as far as it was
+developed.
+
+He ordered out a scouting party of ten men, and, that he might utilize
+Blue Lick Station as an outpost in some sort where they might find
+refuge and aid, he dispatched to the settlement a present of gunpowder
+to serve in the defense of the station, in case of attack by the French,
+and two of the small coehorns of that day, each of which could be
+carried between two men, to assist the little piece already at the
+station. In return for the prospective courtesy and shelter to his
+troops, he wrote a very polite letter urging the settlers to hold out if
+practicable, relying on his succor with men, ammunition, and provisions;
+but if compelled to give way, assuring the stationers of a welcome at
+Fort Prince George.
+
+The herders at the cow-pens on the Keowee had also determined to
+reinforce Blue Lick Station, and with a number of the runaway horses of
+the settlers, rounded up and driven in strings, several of them set
+forth with the British soldiers from the fort. In this company Richard
+Mivane and his grand daughter also took their way to Blue Lick Station
+in lieu of waiting for a pack-train with provisions from Charlestown, as
+they had anticipated.
+
+It was a merry camping party as they fared along through the wilderness,
+and she had occasion to make many sage observations on the inconsistency
+and the unwisdom of man! That the prospect of killing some Frenchman, or
+being themselves cruelly killed, in a national quarrel which neither
+faction, the cow-drivers nor the Blue Lick Stationers, half understood,
+should so endear men to each other was a sentiment into which she could
+not enter. It was better, after all, to be a woman, she said to herself,
+and sit soberly at home and sew the rational sampler, and let the world
+wag on as it would and the cutthroats work their wild will on each
+other. The least suggestion that brought the thought of the French to
+their minds was received with eyes alight, and nerves aquiver, and blood
+all in a rush. The favorite of the whole camp was a young fellow who had
+achieved that enviable station by virtue of an inane yet inconceivably
+droll intonation of the phrase, "Bong chure" _(Bon jour_), delivered at
+all manner of unconformable times and in inappropriate connections, and
+invariably greeted with shouts of laughter. And when at last the party
+reached the vicinity of Blue Lick and the stationers swarmed out to meet
+them, taking the news of the French invasion at second hand, each
+repeating it to the other, and variously recounting it back again, never
+dreaming that it was supposed to have originally issued from the
+station, she meditated much upon this temperamental savagery in man, and
+the difficulty it occasioned in conforming him to those sagacious
+schemes for his benefit which she nourished in her inventive little
+pate. The antagonisms of the Blue Lick Stationers and the cow-drivers
+from the Keowee vanished like mist. On the one hand the stationers were
+assured that the stampede of the cattle was now regarded as inadvertent,
+and although it had occasioned an immense deal of vexatious trouble to
+the ranchmen, all were now well rounded up and restored to the cow-pens
+as of yore. And the ranchmen in turn received a thousand thanks for
+their neighborly kindness in the restoration of the horses of the Blue
+Lick Stationers, who knew that the animals had not been decoyed off by
+the herders, as a malicious report sought to represent, but had merely
+returned to their "old grass," according to their homing propensities.
+And both parties loved the British soldiers, who had reinforced them,
+and intended to go a-scouting with the military expedition; and the
+soldiers earnestly reciprocated by assisting in the preparations for the
+defense of the station. Especially active and efficient was the only
+artilleryman among them, and the paradisaic peace amidst all the
+preparations for war was so complete that his acrid scorn of that pride
+of the settlement, the little swivel gun, and of the stationers' methods
+of handling it, occasioned not even a murmur of resentment.
+
+Peninnah Penelope Anne, although restored to private life and the
+maternal domicile, having retired from statecraft and the functions of
+linguister to the embassy, did not altogether escape public utility in
+these bellicose preparations. The young gunner, who had had the
+opportunity of observing her during the march hither, shortly applied to
+her for assistance in his professional devoir. He wanted a deft-handed
+young person to construct the cartridge-bags for the ammunition which he
+was fixing for the little piece and the two coehorns. And thus it
+chanced that she found herself in the blockhouse, cheek by jowl with the
+little cannon, its grisly muzzle now looking out of the embrasure where
+she herself had once been fond of taking observations of the stockade
+entrance; the men came and went and speculated upon the chances of the
+scouting quest, now about to set forth, while spurs clanking, ramrods
+rattling down into gun-barrels, voices lifted in argument or joyous
+resonance, made the whitewashed walls ring anew. The gunner, seated at a
+table carefully and accurately measuring out the powder, now and again
+urged strict cautions against the lighting of pipes or striking of
+sparks from gun-flints. When he applied himself briskly to the cutting
+out of more bags from flannel for his cartridges, he looked very
+harmless and domestic in his solicitude to follow his wooden pattern, or
+"pathron" as he called it, for the creature was Irish. He gave minute
+and scrupulous directions to Peninnah Penelope Anne to sew the cylinder
+with no more than twelve stitches to the inch, and to baste down the
+seams, "now, moind ye that!--ivery wan!--that no powther might slip
+through beyant!"
+
+In the pride of the expert he was chary of commendation and eyed
+critically the circular bottom of every bag before he filled it with
+powder.
+
+"See that, now," he said, snipping briskly with the scissors; "that
+string of woolen yarn that yez left there, a-burnin' away outside, might
+burst the whole gun, an' ivery sowl in the blockhouse would be kilt
+intirely,--moind ye that, now!--an they would n't be the Frenchies,
+nayther!" He gave her a keen warning glance at rather close range, then
+once more renewed his labors.
+
+The mockingbirds were singing in the woods outside. The sun was in the
+trees. The leafage had progressed beyond the bourgeoning period and the
+branches flung broad green splendors of verdure to the breeze. The Great
+Smoky Mountains were hardly less blue than the sky as the distant
+summits deployed against the fair horizon; only the nearest, close at
+hand, were sombre, and showed dark luxuriant foliage and massive craggy
+steeps, and their austere, silent, magnificent domes looked over the
+scene with solemn uplifting meanings. Oh, life! life was so sweet, and
+love and friendship were so easy to come by and so hard to part withal,
+and glad, oh, glad was she that no men of the French nation or any other
+were on their march hitherward to be torn in cruel lacerations by those
+wicked cartridges, so cleverly and artfully and cheerfully
+constructed,--men with homes, wives, mothers, sisters, children, every
+soldier representing to some anxious, tender heart a whole world, a
+microcosm of affection, all illuminated with hope and joy or to be
+clouded with grief and terror and loss and despair,--oh, glad, glad was
+she that the French invasion was but a figment,--a tissue of
+misconceptions and vague innuendoes and groundless assumptions.
+
+And yet she was sad and sorry and ashamed, because of the futile bustle
+and bluster and cheerful courageous activity about her. Not a cheek had
+blenched; not a hand had trembled; not a voice had been lifted to
+protest or counsel surrender, despite their meagre capacities for
+defense and their number, but a handful. What would these men say to her
+if they knew that their patriotism and their valor were expended in
+vain,--above all, their mutual cause of quarrel wasted!--as pretty a bit
+of neighborhood spite as ever stopped a bullet--all foolishly and
+needlessly reconciled without a blow! She had saved them from a bloody
+feud, the chances of which were terrifying to her for their own sakes.
+But what would they say when discovery should come!
+
+Still, it might never come. And yet, should they patrol the woods in
+vain and at last disperse and return each to his own home, she had no
+placidity in prospect,--she was troubled and sad and her sorry heart was
+heavy. Her scheme had succeeded beyond her wildest hopes. Her beneficent
+artifice had fully worked its mission. And now, since there was no more
+to be done, she had time to repent her varied deceits. Was it right? she
+asked herself in conscientious alarm, not the less sincere because
+belated. Ought she to have interfered, with what forces it was possible
+for her limited capacity to wield? Had they an inalienable right to cut
+each other's throats? Should she have so presumed? And now--
+
+"Howly Moses!" a voice in shrill agitation broke in upon her
+preoccupation. "An' is it sheddin' tears ye are upon the blessed
+gunpowther? Sure the colleen's crazed! Millia Murther! the beautiful
+ca'tridges is ruint intoirely! Any man moight be proud an' plazed to be
+kilt by the loikes o' them! How many o' them big wathery tears have yez
+been after sheddin' into aich o' them lovely ca'tridges?"
+
+He had risen; one hand was laid protectingly upon the completed pile of
+fixed ammunition as if to ward off the damping influences of her woe,
+while he ruefully contemplated the suspected cartridge bags, all plump
+and tidy and workmanlike, save for their possible charge of tears. She
+made no answer, but sat quite motionless upon her low stool, a cartridge
+bag unfinished in her lap, her golden brown curls against the cannon,
+still weeping her large tears and looking very small.
+
+His clamors brought half the force to the scene of the disturbance. A
+keen question here, an inference heedfully taken there, and the
+situation was plain!
+
+In the abrupt pause in this headlong career it was difficult to sustain
+one's poise. Now and again, indeed, sheepish conscious glances were
+interchanged; for since the grievance of the cow-drivers had been
+publicly annulled and the horses of the Blue Lick Stationers had been
+restored in pure neighborly good-will, a resumption of the quarrel on
+the old invalid scores was impossible. Perhaps some token of their
+displeasure might have been visited upon her who had inaugurated so bold
+and extensive a wild goose chase, but she looked so small as she sat by
+the cannon weeping her large tears that she disarmed retaliation.
+
+So small she looked, indeed, that certain of the young blades, who filed
+in to gaze upon her and filed out again, would not believe that she
+could have invented so large a French invasion, and for several days
+they futilely scouted the woods in search of some errant "parlez-vous,"
+all of whom, however, were very discreetly tucked away within the strong
+defenses of Fort Toulouse.
+
+The young gunner alone was implacable. He was the first of the returning
+force to reach Fort Prince George, and he carried with him all the
+powder that had been sent under mistake to the Blue Lick Station,
+together with the tear-shotted cartridges, whose problematic interior
+damage he explained to the amazed, chagrined, and nonplussed commandant.
+
+"Oh, sor," the gunner said in conclusion, solemnly shaking his head,
+"that gurl, sor!--she is a wily one! An' I should n't be surprised, sor,
+if she is a dale taller than she looks!"
+
+The Blue Lick Station in time recovered its equilibrium, and was
+afterward prone to protest that of all frontier communities it bore the
+palm for the efficiency of its "linguister."
+
+
+
+
+A VICTOR AT CHUNGKE
+
+
+At Tennessee Town, on the Tennessee River, there used to be a great
+chungke-yard. It was laid off in a wide rectangular area nine hundred
+feet long, two feet lower than the surface of the ground, level as a
+floor, and covered with fine white sand. The ancient, curiously shaped
+chungke-stones, fashioned with much labor from the hardest rock, perfect
+despite immemorial use, kept with the strictest care, exempt by law from
+burial with the effects of the dead, were the property of this Cherokee
+town, and no more to be removed thence than the council-house,--the
+great rotunda at one side of the "beloved square," built upon a mound in
+the centre of the village.
+
+Surely no spot could seem more felicitously chosen for the favorite
+Indian game. The ground rose about the chungke-yard like the walls of an
+amphitheatre, on every side save the slope toward the "beloved square"
+and the river, furnishing an ideal position of vantage for spectators
+were they even more numerous than the hundreds of Cherokees of all ages
+that had gathered on the steep acclivities to overlook the game--some
+ranged on the terrace or turfy ridge around the chungke-yard, formed by
+the earth thrown out when the depressed area was delved down long ago,
+others disposed beneath the spreading trees, others still, precariously
+perched on clifty promontories beetling out from the sharp ascent. Above
+all, Chilhowee Mountain, aflare with the scarlet glow of its autumnal
+woods, touched the blue sky. The river, of a kindred blue, with a
+transient steely change under the shadow of a cloud, showed flashes of
+white foam, for the winds were rushing down from the Great Smoky
+Mountains, which were revealed for an instant in a clear hard azure
+against the pearl-tinted horizon--then again only a mirage, an illusion,
+a dream of stupendous ranges in the shimmering mist.
+
+In the idle, sylvan, tribal life of that date, one hundred and fifty
+years ago, it might seem that there was scant duty recognized, imposing
+serious occupation, to debar the population of Tennessee Town from
+witnessing the long-drawn game, which was continued sometimes half the
+day by the same hardy young warriors, indefatigable despite the hot sun
+and the tense exercise, straining every muscle. A few old women, their
+minds intent upon the preparation of dinner, a few of the very young
+children, relishing their own pottering devices as of a finer flavor of
+sport, a few old men, like other old men elsewhere, with thoughts of the
+past so vivid that the present could show but a pallid aspect--these
+were absent, and were not missed. For the most part, however, the little
+dwellings were vacant. The usual groups of loungers had deserted the
+public buildings, which consisted of a bark-and-log house of three
+rooms, or divisions, at each angle of the "beloved square," and in which
+were transacted the business affairs of the town;--one, painted red, was
+the "war-cabin," whence arms, ammunition, etc., were distributed, the
+divisions implying distinctions as to rank among the warriors; another,
+painted white, was devoted to the priestcraft of the "beloved men"--head
+men of note, conjurers, and prophets; the cabin of the aged councilors
+faced the setting sun, as an intimation that their wars were ended and
+their day done; and in the fourth cabin met the "second men," as the
+traders called the subordinate authorities who conducted municipal
+affairs, so to speak--the community labor of raising houses, and laying
+off and planting with maize and pompions the common fields to be tilled
+by the women, "who fret at the very shadow of a crow," writes an old
+trader. All these cabins were now still and silent in the sun. The
+dome-shaped town-house, of a different style of architecture, plastered
+within and without with red clay, placed high on the artificial mound,
+and reached by an ascent of stairs which were cut in regular gradations
+in the earth, lacked its strange religious ceremonies; its secret
+colloguing council of chiefs with the two princes of the town; its
+visitors of distinction, ambassadors from other towns or Indian nations;
+its wreaths of tobacco sent forth from diplomatically smoked pipes; its
+strategic "talks;" its exchange of symbolic belts and strings of wampum
+and of swans' wings--white, or painted red and black, as peace hovered
+or war impended--and other paraphernalia of the savage government. Even
+the trading-house showed a closed door, and the English trader, his pipe
+in his mouth, smoked with no latent significance, but merely to garner
+its nicotian solace, sat with a group of the elder braves and watched
+the barbaric sport with an interest as keen as if he had been born and
+bred an Indian instead of native to the far-away dales of Devonshire.
+Nay, he bet on the chances of the game with as reckless a nerve as a
+Cherokee,--always the perfect presentment of the gambler,--despite the
+thrift which characterized his transactions at the trading-house, where
+he was wont to drive a close bargain, and look with the discerning
+scrupulousness of an expert into the values of the dressing of a
+deerskin offered in barter. But the one pursuit was pleasure, and the
+other business. The deerskins which he was wearing were of phenomenal
+softness and beauty of finish, for the spare, dapper man was arrayed
+like the Indians, in fringed buckskin shirt and leggings; but he was
+experiencing a vague sentiment of contempt for his attire. He had been
+recently wearing a garb of good camlet-cloth and hose and a bravely
+cocked hat, for he was just returned from a journey to Charlestown, five
+hundred miles distant, where he had made a considerable stay, and his
+muscles and attitude were still adjusted to the pride of preferment and
+the consciousness of being unwontedly smart. Indeed, his pack-train,
+laden with powder and firearms, beads and cloth, cutlery and paints, for
+his traffic with the Indians under the license which he held from the
+British government, had but come in the previous day, and he had still
+the pulses of civilization beating in his veins.
+
+For this reason, perhaps, as he sat, one elbow on his knee, his chin in
+his hand, his sharp, commercially keen face softened by a thought not
+akin to trade, his eyes were darkened, while he gazed at one of the
+contestants, with a doubt that had little connection with the odds which
+he had offered. He was troubled by a vague regret, a speculation of
+restless futility, for it concerned a future so unusual that no detail
+could be predicted from the resources of the present. And yet this
+sentiment was without the poignancy of personal grief--it was only a
+vicarious interest that animated him. For himself, despite the
+flattering, smooth reminiscence of the camlet-cloth yet lingering in the
+nerves of his finger-tips, the recent relapse into English speech, the
+interval spent once more among the stir of streets and shops, splendid
+indeed to an unwonted gaze, the commercial validities, which he so
+heartily appreciated, of the warehouses, and crowded wharves, and laden
+merchantmen swinging at anchor in the great harbor, he was satisfied. He
+was possessed by that extraordinary renunciation of civilization which
+now and again was manifested by white men thrown among the Cherokee
+tribe--sometimes, as in his instance, a trader, advanced in years, "his
+pile made," to use the phrase of to-day, the world before him where to
+choose a home; sometimes a deserter from the British or French military
+forces, according to the faction which the shifting Cherokees affected
+at the time; more than once a captive, spared for some whim, set at
+liberty, free to go where he would--all deliberately and of choice cast
+their lot among the Cherokees; lived and died with the treacherous race.
+Whether the wild sylvan life had some peculiarly irresistible
+attraction; whether the world beyond held for them responsibilities and
+laborious vocations and irksome ties which they would fain evade;
+whether they fell under the bewitchment of "Herbert's Spring," named
+from an early commissioner of Indian affairs, after drinking whereof one
+could not quit the region of the Great Smoky Mountains, but remained in
+that enchanted country for seven years, fascinated, lapsed in perfect
+content--it is impossible to say. There is a tradition that when the
+attraction of the world would begin to reassert its subtle reminiscent
+forces, these renegades of civilization were wont to repair anew to this
+fountain to quaff again of the ancient delirium and to revive its potent
+spell. Abram Varney had no such necessity in his own case; he only
+doubted the values of his choice as fitted for another.
+
+Apart from this reflection, it was natural that his eyes should follow
+the contestant whom he had backed for a winner to the tune of more
+silver bangles, and "ear-bobs," and strings of "roanoke," and gunpowder,
+and red and white paint, than he was minded to lightly lose. He had laid
+his wagers with a keen calculation of the relative endowments of the
+players, their dexterity, their experience, their endurance. He was not
+influenced by any pride of race in the fact that his champion was also a
+white man, who, indeed, carried a good share of the favor of the
+spectators.
+
+A strange object was this champion, at once pathetic and splendid. No
+muscular development could have been finer, no athletic grace more
+pronounced than his physique displayed. The wild life and training of
+the woods and the savage wars had brought out all the constitutional
+endurance and strength inherited from his stanch English father and his
+hardy Scotch mother. Both had been murdered by the Cherokees in a
+frontier massacre, and as a boy of ten years of age, his life spared in
+some freak of the moment, he had been conveyed hither, exhorted to
+forget, adopted into the tribe, brought up with their peculiar kindness
+in the rearing of children, taught all the sylvan arts, and trained to
+the stern duties of war by the noted chief Colannah Gigagei, himself,
+the Great Red Raven of Tennessee Town (sometimes called Quorinnah, the
+name being a favorite war-title specially coveted). The youth had had
+his baptism of fire in the ceaseless wars which the Cherokees waged
+against the other Indian tribes. He had already won the "warrior's
+crown" and his "war-name," a title conferred only upon the bravest of
+the brave. He was now Otasite, the "Man-killer" of Tennessee Town. He
+was just twenty years of age, and Abram Varney, gazing at him, wondered
+what the people in Charlestown would think of him could they see him.
+For a few days, a week, perhaps, the trader would refer all his thoughts
+to this civilized standard.
+
+Tall, alert as an Indian, supple too, but heavier and more muscular,
+Otasite was instantly to be distinguished by his build from among the
+other young men, although, like the Indians, he wore a garb of dressed
+deerskin. His face, albeit no stranger to the use of their pigments and
+unguents, still showed fair and freckled. His hair bore no resemblance
+to their lank black locks; of an auburn hue and resolutely curling, it
+defied the tonsure to which it had been for years subjected, coming out
+crisp and ringleted close to his head where he was designed to be bald,
+and on the top, where the "war-lock" was permitted to grow, it floated
+backward in two long tangled red curls that gave the lie direct to the
+Indian similitude affected by the two surmounting tips of eagle
+feathers. He was arrayed in much splendor, according to aboriginal
+standards; the fringed seams of his hunting shirt and leggings,
+fashioned of fine white dressed doeskin, as pliable as "Canton silk
+crape," were hung with fawns' trotters; his moccasins were white and
+streaked with parti-colored paint; he had a curious prickly belt of
+wolves' teeth, which intimated his moral courage as well as sylvan
+prowess, for the slaying of these beasts was esteemed unlucky, and
+shooting at them calculated to spoil the aim of a gun; many glancing,
+glittering strings of "roanoke" swung around his neck.
+
+Nothing could have been finer, athletically considered, than his
+attitude at this moment of the trader's speculative observation. The
+discoidal quartz chungke-stone[2] had been hurled with a tremendous
+fling along the smooth sandy stretch of the yard, its flat edge, two
+inches wide, and the curiously exact equipoise of its fashioning causing
+it to bowl swiftly along a great distance, to fall only when the
+original impetus should fail; his competitor, Wyejah, a sinewy, powerful
+young brave, his buckskin garb steeped in some red dye that gave him the
+look when at full speed of the first flying leaf of the falling season,
+his ears split and barbarically distended on wire hoops[3] and hung with
+silver rings, his moccasins scarlet, his black hair decorated with
+cardinal wings, had just sent his heavy lance, twelve feet long,
+skimming through the air; then Otasite, running swiftly but lightly
+abreast with him, launched his own long lance with such force and nicety
+of aim that its point struck the end of Wyejah's spear, still in flight
+in mid-air, deflecting its direction, and sending it far afield from the
+chungke-stone which it was designed in falling to touch. This fine cast
+counted one point in the game, which is of eleven points, and the Indian
+braves among the spectators howled like civilized young men at a
+horse-race.
+
+The sport was very keen, the contest being exceedingly close, for Wyejah
+had long needed only one additional point to make him a winner, and when
+Otasite had failed to score he had also failed. The swift motion, the
+graceful agility, the smiling face of Otasite,--for it was a matter of
+the extremest exaction in the Indian games that however strenuous the
+exertion and tense the strain upon the nerves and grievous the
+mischances of the sport, the utmost placidity of manner and temper must
+be preserved throughout,--all appealed freshly to the trader, although
+it was a long-accustomed sight.
+
+"Many a man in Charlestown--a well-to-do man" (applying the commercial
+standard of value)--"would be proud to have such a son," he muttered, a
+trifle dismayed by the perverse incongruities of fate. "He would have
+sent the boy to school. If there was money enough he would have sent him
+to England to be educated--and none too good for him!"
+
+The shadows of the two players, all foreshortened by the approach of
+noontide, bobbed about in dwarfish caricature along the smooth sandy
+stretch. The great chungke-pole, an obelisk forty feet high planted on a
+low mound in the centre of the chungke-yard, and with a target at its
+summit used for trials of skill in marksmanship, cast a diminished
+simulacrum on the ground at its base scarcely larger than the
+chungke-lances. Now and again these heavy projectiles flew through the
+air, impelled with an incredible force and a skill so accurate that it
+seemed impossible that both contestants should not excel. There was a
+moment, however, when Otasite might have made the decisive point to
+score eleven had not the chungke-stone slipped from the hand of Wyejah
+as he cast it, falling only a few yards distant. Otasite's lance, flung
+instantly, shot far beyond that missile, for which, had the stone been
+properly thrown, he should have aimed. Wyejah, disconcerted and shaken
+by the mischance, launching his lance at haphazard, almost mechanically,
+struck by obvious accident the flying lance of his adversary, deflecting
+its course--the decisive cast, for which he had striven so long in vain,
+and which was now merely fortuitous.
+
+The crowds of Indian gamblers, with much money and goods at hazard upon
+the event, some, indeed, having staked the clothes upon their backs, the
+rifles and powder for their winter hunt that should furnish them with
+food, were at once in a clamor of discussion as to the fair adjustment
+of the throw in the score. The backers of Wyejah claimed the accidental
+hit as genuine and closing the game. The backers of Otasite protested
+that it could not be thus held, since Wyejah's defective cast of the
+chungke-stone debarred their champion from the possibility of first
+scoring the eleventh point, which chance was his by right, it being his
+turn to play; they met the argument caviling at Otasite's lack of aim by
+the counter-argument that one does not aim at a moving object where it
+is at the moment, but with an intuitive calculation of distance and
+speed where it will be when reached by the projectile hurled after it,
+illustrating cleverly by the example of shooting with bow and arrow at a
+bird on the wing.
+
+Otasite and Wyejah both, preserved an appearance of joyous indifference.
+With their lances poised high in the right hand they were together
+running swiftly up the long alley again to the starting-point, Otasite
+commenting on the evident lack of intention in Wyejah's lucky cast with
+a loud, jocosely satiric cry, "_Hala! Hala_!" (signifying, "You are too
+many for me!")
+
+"Lord! how the boy does yell!" Abram Varney exclaimed, a smile pervading
+the wrinkles wrought about his eyes by much pondering on the problems of
+the Indian trade, feeling incongruously a sort of elation in the youth's
+noisy shouts, which echoed blatantly from the rocky banks of the
+Tennessee River, and with reduced arrogance and in softer tones from the
+cliffs of towering Chilhowee.
+
+A sympathetic sentiment glowed in the dark eyes of an Indian chief on
+the slope hard by, the great Colannah Gigagei. He was fast aging now;
+the difficulties of diplomacy constantly increasing in view of
+individual aggressions and encroachments of the Carolina colonists on
+the east, and the ever specious wiles and suave allurements of the
+French on the west, to win the Cherokees from their British alliance;
+the impossibility, in the gentle patriarchal methods of the Cherokee
+government, to control the wild young men of the tribe, who, as the
+half-king, Atta-Kulla-Kulla said, "often acted like madmen rather than
+people of sense" (and it is respectfully submitted that this peculiarity
+has been observed in other young men elsewhere); the prophetic vision,
+doubtless, of the eventual crushing of his people in the collisions of
+the great international struggle of the Europeans for the possession of
+this country,--all fostered tokens of time in the face of Colannah, and
+bowed his straight back, and set an unwonted quiver in the nerves of his
+old hand that had been firm in his heyday, and strong and crafty and
+cruelly bloody. But his face now was softened with pleasure, and the
+pride it expressed was almost tender.
+
+"When a few years ago the Governor of South Carolina," he said
+majestically, speaking in the Cherokee tongue but for the English names
+(he pronounced the title "Goweno"), "offered to take some Cherokee
+youths to train in his schools and make _scholars_ of them, I thanked
+him with affection, for his thought was kind. But I told him that if he
+would send some South Carolina youths to the Cherokee nation to be
+trained, we would make _men_ of them!"
+
+His blanket, curiously woven of feathers and wild hemp, requiring years
+of labor in its intricate manufacture, fell away from one gaunt arm as
+he lifted it to point with a kingly gesture at the young white man as
+the illustration of his training. Every muscle of strength was on parade
+in the splendid pose of hurling the great chungke-spear through the air,
+as Otasite thus passed the interval while waiting the decision of the
+umpire of the game. Then, with a laugh, oddly blent of affection and
+pride, Colannah took his way down the slope and toward the
+council-house: the council sat there much in these days of 1753, clouded
+with smoke and perplexity.
+
+Judging by this specimen of his athletic training to feats of prowess,
+Colannah Gigagei might boast to the "Goweno" of South Carolina. It was
+not, however, merely in muscle that the young captive excelled. As Abram
+Varney thought of certain sterling manly traits of the highest type
+which this poor waif had developed here in this incongruous environment,
+one might suppose from the sheer force of heredity, he shook his head
+silently, and his eyes clouded, the pulses of Charlestown still beating
+in his veins. For he was wont to leave for months the treasures of his
+trading-house, not merely a matter of trinkets and beads, but powder,
+lead, and firearms, sufficient for accoutring an expedition for the
+"war-path," and great store of cloths, cutlery, paints, in the charge of
+this valiant gamester of chungke, stanch alike against friend and foe,
+as safely as if its wealth were beneath his own eye. So insecure had
+become the Cherokee allegiance to the government that it was impossible
+now under its uncertain protection to retain white men from the colonies
+here in his employ as agents and under-traders, or, indeed, those whose
+interest and profits amounted to an ownership in a share of the stock.
+The earlier traders in neighboring towns one by one had gone, affecting
+a base several hundred miles nearer the white settlements. Some had
+shifted altogether from the tribe, and secured a post among the
+Chickasaws, who were indubitably loyal to the British. While their
+withdrawal added to Varney's profits,--for each trader was allowed to
+hold at this time a license only for two Indian towns, it being before
+the date of the issuance of general licenses, and the custom which they
+had relinquished, the barter with the Cherokees for deerskins, now came
+from long distances, drawn as by a magnet to his trading-house at
+Tennessee Town,--it had resulted in his isolation, and for years he had
+been almost the only British subject west of the Great Smoky Mountains.
+He had no fear of the Cherokees, however--not even should the political
+sky, always somewhat overcast, become yet more lowering. He had long
+been accustomed to these Indians, and he felt that he had fast friends
+among them. His sane mercantile judgment appraised and appreciated the
+added opportunities of his peculiar position, which he would not lightly
+throw away, and the development of Otasite's incongruous commercial
+values not only removed the possibility of loss during his absence, but
+added to his facilities in enabling him to secure the fidelity of
+Indians as packmen, hitherto impracticable, but now rendered to Otasite
+as one of the tribe. He had recognized with satisfaction, mingled with
+amusement, national traits in the boy, who, despite his Indian training,
+would not, like them, barter strings of wampum measuring "from elbow to
+wrist" without regard to the relative length of arm. Yet he had none of
+the Indian deceit and treachery. He was blunt, sincere, and bold. His
+alertness in computation gave Varney genuine pleasure, although they
+wrangled much as to his method, for he used the Cherokee numeration, and
+it set the trader's mercantile teeth on edge to hear twenty called
+"_tahre skoeh_"--two tens.
+
+"And why not?" Otasite would demand, full of faith in his own education.
+"The Chickasaw will say '_pokoole toogalo_'--ten twos"--and he would
+smile superior. This was his world, and these his standards--the
+Cherokees and the Chickasaws!
+
+He was not to be easily influenced or turned save by some spontaneous
+acquiescence of his own mind, and Varney found himself counting "_skoeh
+chooke kaiere_" (the old one's hundred) before he ever induced Otasite
+to say instead "one thousand."
+
+The boy even ventured on censorship in his turn. "You say 'Cherokee_s_'
+and 'Chickasaw_s_' when you speak of the Tsullakee and the Chickasaw;
+why don't you then say the English-_es_ and the French-_es_?" For the
+plural designation of these tribes was a colonial invention.
+
+His bulldog tenacity, his orderly instincts, his providence, so contrary
+to the methods of the wasteful Indian, his cheerful industry, his
+indomitable energy and perseverance,--all were so national that in days
+gone past Varney used now and again to clap him on the shoulder with a
+loud, careless vaunt, "British to the marrow!"
+
+A fact, doubtless--and all of a sudden it had begun to seem a very
+serious fact. So very serious, indeed, that the old trader did not
+notice the crisis in the chungke-yard, the increasing excitement in the
+crowds of spectators, the clamors presently when the game was declared a
+draw and the bets off, the stir of the departing groups. It was silence
+at last that smote upon his senses with the effect of interruption which
+the continuance of sound had not been able to compass. He drew himself
+up with a perplexed sigh, and looked drearily over the expanse of the
+river. Its long glittering reaches were vacant, a rare circumstance, for
+the Cherokees of that date were almost amphibious in habit, reveling in
+the many lovely streams of their mountain country; on the banks their
+towns were situated, and this fact doubtless contributed to the neatness
+of their habitations and personal cleanliness, to which the travelers of
+those times bear a surprised testimony. The light upon the water was
+aslant now from a westering sun, and glittering on the snowy breasts of
+a cluster of swans drifting, dreaming perhaps, on the current. The
+scarlet boughs on the summit of Chilhowee were motionless against the
+azure zenith. Not even the vaguest tissue of mist now lingered about the
+majestic domes of the Great Smoky Mountains, painted clearly and
+accurately in fine and minute detail in soft dense velvet blues against
+the hard polished mineral blue of the horizon. The atmosphere was so
+exquisitely luminous and pellucid that it might have seemed a fit medium
+to dispel uncertainty in other than merely material subjects of
+contemplation. Nevertheless he did not see his way clearly, and when he
+came within view of his trading-house he paused as abruptly as if he had
+found his path blocked by an obstacle.
+
+There, seated on the step of the closed door which boasted the only lock
+and key in Tennessee Town, or for the matter of that in all the stretch
+of the Cherokee country west of the Great Smoky Range, was Otasite, the
+incongruity of his auburn curls and his Indian headdress seeming a
+trifle more pronounced than usual, since it had been for a time an
+unfamiliar sight. He was awaiting the coming of the trader, and was
+singing meanwhile in a loud and cheerful voice, "Drink with me a cup of
+wine," a ditty which he had heard in his half-forgotten childhood. The
+robust full tones gave no token of the draught made upon his endurance
+by the heavy exercise of the day, but he seemed a bit languid from the
+heat, and his doeskin shirt was thrown open at the throat, showing his
+broad white chest, and in its centre the barbarous blue discolorations
+of the "warrior's marks." These disfigurements, made by the puncturing
+of the flesh with gars' teeth and inserting in the wound paint and
+pitch, indelible testimonials to his deeds of courage and prowess,
+Otasite valued as he did naught else on earth, and he would have parted
+with his right hand as readily. The first had been bestowed upon him
+after he had gone, a mighty gun-man, against the Muscogees. The others
+he had won in the course of a long, furious, and stubborn contest of the
+tribe with the Chickasaws, who, always impolitic, headlong, and brave,
+were now reduced by their own valor in their many wars from ten thousand
+fighting men to a few hundred. He had attained the "warrior's crown"
+when he had shown their kindred Choctaws a mettle as fierce and a craft
+as keen as their own. And now he was looking at Abram Varney with kindly
+English eyes and an expression about the brow, heavily freckled, that
+almost smote the tears from the elder man. The trader knew from long
+experience what was coming, but suddenly he had begun to regard it
+differently. Always upon the end of each journey from Charlestown he had
+been met here within a day or two by Otasite on the same mission. The
+long years as they passed had wrought only external changes since, as a
+slender wistful boy of eleven years, heart-sick, homeless, forlorn,
+friendless, save for his Indian captors, likely, indeed, to forget all
+language but theirs, he had first come with his question, always in
+English, always with a faltering eyelash and a deprecatory lowered
+voice, "Did you hear anything in Charlestown of any people named
+'Queetlee'?"
+
+This was the distorted version of his father's name that Colannah had
+preserved. As to the child himself, his memory had perhaps been shaken
+by the events of that terrible night of massacre, which he only realized
+as a frightful awakening from sleep to smoke, flames, screams, the
+ear-splitting crack of rifle-shots at close quarters, the shock of a
+sudden hurt--and then, after an interval of unconsciousness, a
+transition to a new world of strange habitudes that grew speedily
+familiar, and of unexpected kindness that became dear to a frank,
+affectionate heart. Perhaps in the isolations of the frontier life he
+had never heard his father addressed by his surname by a stranger; he
+was called "Jan" by his wife, and her name was "Eelin," and this Otasite
+knew, and this was all he knew, save that he himself also had been
+called "Jan."
+
+"They don't want you, my buck, or they would have been after you," the
+trader used to reply, being harder, perhaps when he was younger.
+Besides, he honestly thought the cadaverous brat, all legs, like a
+growing colt, and skinny arms, was better off here in the free woodland
+life which he himself considered no hardship, and affected long after
+necessity or interest had dictated his environment. The little lad was
+safe in the care of the powerful chief Colannah Gigagei of Tennessee
+Town, who had adopted him, and who was a man of great force and
+influence. Why should the child seek a home among his own people,
+unwelcome doubtless, to eat the meagre crust of charity, or serve as an
+overworked drudge somewhere on the precarious frontier? The trader did
+not greatly deplore the lack of religious training, for in the remote
+settlements this was often still an unaccustomed luxury, albeit some
+thirty years had now gone by since Sir Francis Nicholson, then the
+Governor, declared that no colony could flourish without a wider
+diffusion of the gospel and education, and forthwith ordered spiritual
+drill, so to speak, in the way of preaching and schooling. Although
+himself described as "a profane, passionate, headstrong man, bred a
+soldier," as if the last fact were an excuse for the former, he
+contributed largely to the furtherance of these pious objects, "spending
+liberally all his salary and perquisites of office," for which generous
+trait of character an early and strait-laced historian is obviously of
+the opinion that General Nicholson should have been suffered to swear in
+peace and, as it were, in the odor of sanctity.
+
+More than once, when in Charlestown, Varney, notwithstanding his
+persuasions on the subject, had been minded to inquire concerning the
+"Queetlees," who he understood from Colannah had come originally from
+Cumberland in England. With his mercantile cronies he had canvassed the
+question whether the queer, evidently distorted name could have been
+"Peatley" or "Patey" or "Petrie,"--for the Cherokees always substituted
+"Q" for "P," as the latter letter they could not pronounce,--and after
+this transient consideration the matter would drop.
+
+As the child, running about the Indian town with his new-found
+playmates, grew robust and merry-hearted, and happiness, confidence, and
+strength brought their embellishing influence to the expression of his
+large dark gray eyes and straightened the nervous droop from his thin
+little shoulders, the trader noticed casually once or twice how comely
+the brat had become, and he experienced a fleeting, half-ridiculing pity
+for his mother--how the woman would have resented and resisted the
+persistent shearing and shaving of those silken, loosely twining red
+curls! Then he thought of her no more. But when the child had come to
+man's estate, when he was encased in a network of muscle like elastic
+steel wires, when stature and strength had made him alike formidable and
+splendid, when the development of his temperament illustrated virtues so
+stanch that they seemed the complement of his physical endowment and a
+part of his resolute personality, the old trader thought of the boy's
+father, and thought of him daily--how the sturdy Cumbrian yeoman would
+have rejoiced in so stalwart a son! Thus, with this vague bond of
+sympathy with a man whom he had never seen, never known, so long ago, so
+cruelly dead, this intuitive divination of his paternal sentiment,
+Varney's fatherly attitude grew more definite daily and became
+accustomed, and he was jealous of the influence of Colannah, who in turn
+was jealous of his influence.
+
+Now as Varney stood in the dusky trading-house among the kegs and bags
+and bales of goods, the high peak of the interior of the roof lost in
+the lofty shadows, he felt that he had been much in default in long-past
+years, and he experienced a very definite pang of conscience as Otasite
+swung abruptly around a stack of arms, a new rifle in his hand, the
+flint and pan of which he had been keenly examining.
+
+He lifted his eyes suddenly with that long-lashed dreary look of his
+childhood.
+
+"Did you hear of any Queetlees in Charlestown?" he asked.
+
+"It is _you_ who should seek your kindred, Jan Queetlee!" Varney said
+impulsively, calling him by his unaccustomed English name. "It is _you_
+who should go to Charlestown to find the Queetlees!"
+
+Otasite's face showed suddenly the unwonted expression of fear. He
+recoiled abruptly, and Abram Varney was sensible of a deep depression.
+It was as he had thought. The wish for restoration to those of his name
+and his kindred which had animated the boy's earlier years had now
+dwindled to a mere abstract sentiment of loyalty as of clanship, but was
+devoid of expectation, of intention. All the members of his immediate
+family had perished in the massacre, and he had been trained to regard
+this as the fortunes of war, cherishing no personal antagonism, as
+elsewhere among civilized people reconciliations are frequent between
+the victors and the friends of the slain in battle. Moreover, he was not
+brought close to it. The participators in the affray were of the distant
+Ayrate settlements of the tribe, southeast of the mountains, and not
+individualized. The Indians of Tennessee Town, which was then one of the
+most remote of the Cherokee villages of the Ottare division, and this
+perhaps was the reason it was selected as his home, were not concerned
+in the foray, nor were any others of the Overhill towns. Thus he had
+grown up without the thirst for vengeance, which showed how little the
+methods of his Cherokee environment had influenced his heart. And truly
+the far-away Queetlees, if any such were cognizant of his existence, had
+troubled themselves nothing about it, and had infinitely less claim on
+his gratitude and filial affection than Colannah. They had left him to
+be as a waif, a slave. He had been reared as a son, nursed and tended,
+fed and fostered, bedecked in splendor, armed in costly and formidable
+wise, given command and station, carefully trained in all that the
+Indian knew.
+
+"Colannah would never consent!" he said at last.
+
+Abram Varney afterward wondered why he should then have had a
+vision--oh, so futile, so fleeting, so fantastic!--of the twenty, the
+forty, nay, the sixty years that this man, so munificently endowed by
+nature, might pass here among the grotesque, uncouth barbarities of the
+savage Cherokee, while his heritage--his religion, the religion into
+which he was born of Christian parents, his name and nation, his tongue
+and station, his opportunity--doubtless some fair, valid, valuable
+future--all lay there to the eastward but scant five hundred miles away
+on the Carolina coast. He said as much, and the retort came succinctly,
+"You live here!"
+
+Otasite's English speech was as simple as a child's, but he thought as
+diplomatically as Colannah himself, whom he esteemed the greatest man in
+all the world, and he could argue in the strategic Cherokee method.
+Nevertheless, to give him full sway, that everything possible might be
+said in contravention of the proposition, the old trader lapsed into the
+Indian speech, that was indeed from long usage like a mother tongue to
+them both. He stayed here, he said, from choice, it was true, but for
+the sake of the trade that gave him wealth, and with wealth he could
+return to the colonies at any time, and go whither he would in all the
+world. But Otasite was restricted; he had no goods for trade, no
+adequate capital to invest; he could only return to the colonies while
+young, to work, to make a way, to secure betimes a place appropriate to
+his riper years. Even this could not be done without great
+difficulty,--witness how many settlers came empty-handed to barely exist
+on the frontier and wrest a reluctant living from the wilderness,--and
+it could not be done at all without friends. Now he, Abram Varney, was
+prepared to stand his friend; Otasite could take a place in the service
+of the company, in the main depot of the trade at Charlestown. His
+knowledge of the details of the business of which Abram Varney's long
+absences had given him experience; of the needs of the Cherokee nation;
+of the ever-continued efforts of the French traders, by means of the
+access to the Overhill towns afforded by the Cherokee and Tennessee
+rivers, despite the great distance from their settlements on the
+Mississippi, to insinuate their supplies at lower prices, in the teeth
+of the Cherokee treaty with the British monopolizing such traffic, and
+bring down profits--all would have a special and recognized value and be
+appreciated by his mercantile associates, who would further the young
+man's advancement. Thence he could at his leisure make inquiries
+concerning his father's family, and doubtless in the course of time be
+restored to his kindred.
+
+Otasite listened throughout with the courteous air of deliberation which
+his Indian training required him to accord to any discourse, without
+interruption, however unwelcome or trivial it might be esteemed. Then,
+smiling slowly, he shook his head.
+
+"You cannot be serious," he said. "It would break old Colannah's heart,
+who has been like a father to me."
+
+Abram Varney too had the British bulldog tenacity. "What will you do,
+then," he asked slowly and significantly, "when Colannah takes up arms
+against the British government? Will you fight men of your own blood?"
+
+He was reinforced in this argument by the habit of thought of the
+Indians--the absolute absence of tribal dissensions, of internecine
+strife, so marked among the Cherokees: here no man's hand was lifted
+against his brother.
+
+Jan Queetlee palpably winced. Come what might, he could never fight for
+the Cherokees against the British--his father's people, his mother's
+people--no more than he could fight for the British against his adopted
+tribe--the Cherokee--and he the "Man-killer!"
+
+"They will fight each other," said Varney weightily, "and the day is not
+far--the day is not far!"
+
+For in 1753 the cumulative discontents of the tribe were near the
+crisis, earnestly fostered by the French on the western boundaries, that
+vast domain then known as Louisiana, toward whose siren voice the
+Cherokees had ever lent a willing ear. The building by the British
+government, two or three years later, of those great defensive works,
+Fort Prince George and Fort Loudon, situated respectively at the eastern
+and western extremities of the Cherokee territory, mounted with cannon
+and garrisoned by British forces, served to hold them in check and
+quieted them for a time, but only for a time. Jan Queetlee, by reason of
+his close association with the chiefs, knew far more than Varney dreamed
+of the bitterness roused in the hearts of the Indians by friction with
+the government, the aggressions of the individual colonist, the
+infringements of their privileges in the treaty, and in opposition the
+influence of the ever seductive suavity of the French.
+
+As with a sudden hurt, Jan Queetlee cried out with a poignant voice
+against the government and its patent unfaith, striking his clinched
+fist so heavily on the head of a keg of powder that the stout fibres of
+the wood burst beneath the passionate blow, and in a moment he was
+covered with the flying particles of the black dust. Realizing the
+possibility of an explosion should a candle or a pipe be lighted here,
+Varney did not wait for the return of one of the brawny packmen to
+remove the keg to a cave beneath the trading-house, which he utilized
+for storage as a cellar, but addressed himself to the job. Jan Queetlee
+silently assisted, his face darker, more lowering with the thought in
+his mind than with the smears of the powder.
+
+Varney remembered this afterward, and that he himself, diverted by the
+accident from the trend of his argument, had launched out in a tirade
+against the government as they worked together, the young Briton's
+energy, industry, and persistence so at variance with the aspect of his
+tufted topknot of feathers on his auburn curls, and the big blue
+warrior's marks on his broad white chest. For Varney too had his
+grievances against the powers that were; but his woes were personal. He
+vehemently condemned the reconciliation which the government had
+effected between the Muscogees and the Cherokees, for although there
+were more deerskins to be had for export when the Indian hunters were at
+pacific leisure, Varney had considered the recent war between these
+tribes an admirable vent for gunpowder and its profitable sale; and
+since the savages must always be killing, it was manifestly best for all
+concerned that they should kill each other. He could not sufficiently
+deride the happy illustration which Governor Glen had given them (in his
+fatuity, Varney thought) of the values of peace and concord. In the
+presence of the two delegations the mediating Governor had taken an
+arrow and shown them with what ease it could be broken; then how
+impossible he found it to break a quiverful of arrows, thus
+demonstrating the strength in union. Varney argued that the Indians
+would readily perceive a further application of the principle and turn
+it to account, combining against the colonists. In the same spirit he
+animadverted upon a monopoly from which he was excluded in common with
+the traders in general, and which had been granted to a mercantile
+company seeking to establish posts among the Choctaws. The enterprise,
+although favored by the government, obviously because, undertaken on a
+scale of phenomenal magnitude, it promised to dislodge the French and
+their long-established trade among the Choctaws, and bring that powerful
+tribe to a British allegiance, had finally proved a failure; and with a
+bitter joy in this fact he alternately contemned and pitied the
+government, because it could not wrest this valuable opportunity from
+the iron grasp of the "Mississippi Louisianians." He had, too, a
+censorious word for the French commercially--called them "peddlers,"
+celebrated their deceitful wiles, underrated the quality of their
+cloths, and inconsistently berated them for their low prices, finding a
+logical parity in all these matters in the tenets of their religion,
+which they had so vainly and so zealously sought to instill into the
+unreceptive hearts of the unimpressionable Choctaw.[4]
+
+With the plethora of interest involved in these subjects, Varney grew
+oblivious of the theme that had earlier occupied his mind. It recurred
+no more to his thoughts until several days had passed. He then chanced
+to be occupied with his new goods in his cavern. It was illumined only
+from above; there was a trap-door in the floor of the trading-house, and
+thence a pale tempered light drifted down, scarcely convenient, but
+sufficient for his purposes. Once he noticed that a shadow flickered
+across it. He experienced a momentary surprise, for he had left no one
+in the building, and the outer door being locked, he imagined it could
+not be forced without noise enough to rouse him. Again the shadow
+flickered across the trap-door; then ensued a complete eclipse of the
+scant glimmer of light. There was a step upon the ladder which served as
+stairway--a man was descending.
+
+Varney felt a sudden constriction about his throat. He realized an
+impending crisis; the door above had been closed; by the sound he knew
+that the ladder was now removed and laid upon the ground. He had an
+idea--he could see naught--that the unknown invisible man had seated
+himself on the ladder on the ground, where he remained motionless,
+silent, in anger, in grief, or some strange savage whim hardly possible
+for a civilized creature to divine.
+
+The time that passed in this black nullity--he never could compute
+it--moments, doubtless, but it seemed hours, tried to the utmost the
+nerve of the entrapped trader, albeit inured by twenty years' experience
+to the capricious temper of the Cherokee Indians. He felt he could
+better endure the suspense could he only see his antagonist, identify
+him, and thus guess his purpose, and shape his own course from his
+knowledge of character. But with some acquired savage instinct he, too,
+remained silent, null, passive; one might have thought him absent.
+Perhaps his quiescence, indeed, fostered some doubt of his presence
+here, for suddenly there sounded the rasping of flint on steel, the
+spunk was aglow, and then in the timorous flame of the kindling candle,
+taken from his own stores above, Varney recognized the face and figure
+of the stately and imperious old chief Colannah. The next moment he
+remembered something far more pertinent. He called out in an agitated
+voice to the Indian to beware of the powder with which the place was
+largely stocked.
+
+"I came for that," said Colannah in Cherokee, with unaccustomed fingers
+snuffing the wick as he had seen Varney perform the process, for the
+Indians used torches and fires of split cane for purposes of
+illumination.
+
+"For God's sake, what have I done?" cried the trader in an agony of
+terror, desirous to bring his accusation to the point as early as might
+be and compass his release, thus forestalling the violent end of an
+explosion.
+
+"What do the English always?--you have robbed me!" said Colannah, the
+light strong on his fierce indignant features, his garb of fringed
+buckskin, his many rich strings of the ivory-like roanoke about his
+neck, his gayly bedecked and feathered head, and in shadowy wise
+revealing the rough walls of the cave, the boxes and bales of goods, the
+reserve stock, as it were, the stands of arms, and the kegs and bags of
+powder.
+
+As Varney, half crouching on the ground, noted the latter in the dusk,
+he cried out precipitately, "Robbed you of what? My God! let us go
+upstairs. I'll give it back, whatever it is, twice over, fourfold! Don't
+swing the candle around that way, Colannah! the powder will blow us and
+the whole trading-house into the Tennessee River."
+
+Colannah nodded acquiescence, the stately feathers on his head gleaming
+fitfully in the clare-obscure of the cavern. "That is why I came! Then
+the British government could demand no satisfaction for the life of the
+British subject--an accident--the old chief of Tennessee Town killed
+with him. And I should be avenged."
+
+"For what? My God!" Varney had not before called upon the Lord for
+twenty years. To hold a diplomatic conversation with an enraged wild
+Indian, flourishing a lighted candle in a powder magazine, is calculated
+to bring even the most self-sufficient and forgetful sinner to a sense
+of his dependence and helplessness. The lighted candle was a more
+subjugating weapon than a drawn sword. He had contemplated springing
+upon the stanch old warrior, although, despite the difference in age, he
+was no match for the Indian, in order to seek to extinguish it. He
+reflected, however, that in the struggle a flaring spark might cause the
+ignition of scattered particles of the powder about the floor, and thus
+precipitate the explosion which he shuddered to imagine. "For what,
+Colannah?" he asked again, in a soothing smooth cadence, "for what, my
+comrade, my benefactor for years, my best-beloved friend--avenged on me
+for what? Let's go upstairs!"
+
+The flicker of the wavering candle showed a smile of contempt on the
+face of the angry Indian for a moment, and admonished Varney that in
+view of the Cherokees' relish of the torture his manifestations of
+anxiety but prolonged his jeopardy. It brought, too, a fuller
+realization of the gravity of the situation in that the Indian should so
+valiantly risk himself. He evidently intended to take the trader's life,
+but in such wise that no vengeance for his death should fall upon the
+Cherokee nation. Abram Varney summoned all his courage, which was not
+inconsiderable, and had been cultivated by the wild and uncertain
+conditions of his life. Assured that he could do naught to hasten his
+release, he awaited the event in a sort of stoical patience, dreading,
+however, every motion, every sound, the least stir setting his expectant
+nerves aquiver. Silence, quiescence, brought the disclosure earlier than
+he had feared.
+
+"When I took the boy Jan Queetlee--why do I call him thus, instead of by
+the name he has earned for himself, the noble Otasite of Tennessee
+Town?"--the old chief began as deliberately, as disregardfully of the
+surroundings as if seated under the boughs of one of the giant oaks on
+the safe slopes of Chilhowee yonder--"when I took him away from the
+braves who had overcome the South Carolina stationers, I owed him no
+duty. He was puny and ill and white and despised! You British say the
+Indian has no pity. A man's son or brother or father or mother has
+claims upon him. Otasite was naught to me, a mere _eeankke_!" (a
+captive). "I owed the child no duty. My love was voluntary. I gave it a
+free gift; no duty! And he was little, and drooping, and meagre, and ill
+all the time! But he grew; soon no such boy in the Cherokee nation, soon
+hardly such a warrior in all the land--not even Otasite of Watauga, nor
+yet Otasite of Eupharsee; perhaps at his age Oconostota excelled"
+(Oconostota always was preeminently known as the "Great Warrior"). He
+paused to shake his head and meditate on difficult comparisons and
+instances of prowess. After an interval which, long enough, seemed to
+the trembling trader illimitable, he recommenced abruptly: "Says the
+Goweno long time ago to me, 'Is not there a white youth among you?' I
+say, 'He is content; he has no white friends, it seems.' Says the Goweno
+to me, 'Ah, ah, we must look into this!' and says no more."
+
+Colannah flung back his head and laughed so long and so loud that every
+echo of the sarcastic guttural tones, striking back from the stone walls
+of the cavern, smote Varney with as definite a shock as a blow.
+
+"And now," the Cherokee resumed, with a changed aspect and a pathetic
+cadence, "I am an old man, and I lean upon Otasite. My sons are all
+dead--one in the wars with the Muscogee and two slain by the Chickasaw.
+And the last he said to me, with his lingering latest breath, loath to
+go and leave me desolate, 'But you have an adopted son, you have the
+noble Otasite.' And now," his voice was firm again, "if I have him not,
+I go too, and you go. We go together."
+
+"I will not advise him to quit the nation--never again!" cried Varney,
+suddenly enlightened, fervently repudiating his interference. "Since you
+disapprove, he shall not return to Carolina. He _cannot_ go without
+me--my help; he could not find a place--a home. Bold and fine as he is
+here, he would be strange there; he knows naught of the ways of the
+colonists. He would be poor, despised, while here he has been like the
+first, the best. His pride could never stoop to a life like a slave's;
+his pride would break his heart. Let me undo the mischief I have
+wrought; let me unsay the unthinking, foolish words I have spoken."
+
+It was perhaps with the faith that the artful trader could best turn the
+young fellow's mind back to its wonted content, as his crafty arguments
+had already so potently aroused this wild, new dissatisfaction, that
+Colannah at last consented to liberate Varney for this essay, not
+without a cogent reminder that he would be held responsible for its
+failure. And indeed in recanting his former urgency, when he sought out
+Otasite, Varney exerted himself to the utmost.
+
+"You are satisfied here. You know the life. Like me, you love it. If I,
+who can choose, prefer it, why not you?"
+
+But Otasite shook his head.
+
+"When I talk to you of the colonies I speak as a man does of a dream,"
+Varney continued. "It is something true and something false. I add here
+and I let slip there to make out the connection, and give the symmetry
+of truth to the picture. But did I ever tell you how they love money in
+the colonies, how they cheat and strive and slave their lives away to
+add to their store; how they reverence and worship the wealth of others
+till it seems that a rich man can do no wrong--if he is rich enough? Did
+I ever tell you this? The poor, they are despised for being poor, and
+they are let to suffer. Here poverty is not permitted. If a man lose his
+dwelling by fire, the town builds him another house. You know this. If a
+man fail in his winter hunt, the others give of their abundance. Here
+one is rated by his personal worth. Here the deed is held to be fine,
+not the mere thing. Here you are valued as the great Otasite, and all
+men give you honor for your courage. There you are Jan Queetlee, a
+penniless clod, and all men despise you and pass you by."[5]
+
+But again Otasite shook his head.
+
+It was no spurious flare of ambition, ineffectual, illusory; no
+discontented yearning for a different, a wider life that the trader's
+ill-advised words had roused. That sentiment of loyalty to the British
+government, which had never sought to claim Jan Queetlee as a subject,
+seemed bred in his bone and born in his blood. Perhaps it was the stuff
+of which long afterward the Tories of the Revolution were made. He could
+not lift his hand against this aloof, indifferent fetich. And yet take
+part against the Cherokees, whom he loved as they loved him! For with
+his facilities for understanding the trend of the politics of the day he
+could no longer blind himself to the approach of the war of the tribe
+with the British government, which, indeed, came within the decade. The
+sons of Colannah, slain in the cruel wars with other Indians, had been
+to him like brothers, and in their loss he had felt his full and bitter
+share of the grief of a common household. Even yet he and Colannah were
+wont to sadly talk of them with that painful elimination of their names,
+a mark of Indian reverence to the dead, substituting the euphemism "the
+one who is gone," and linger for hours over the fire at night or on the
+shady river-bank in sunlit afternoons, rehearsing their deeds and
+recalling their traits, and repeating their sayings with that blending
+of affectionate pride and sorrow that is the consolation of bereavement
+when time has somewhat softened its pangs and made memory so dear. And
+Colannah had been like a father--it seemed to Jan Queetlee as if he had
+had no other father. He could not leave Colannah, old, desolate, and
+alone. Yet the war was surely coming apace, as they both knew, a war
+which already tore his heart in sunder, in which he could evade taking
+part against his own--his own of both factions--only by going at once
+and going far. He could decide no such weighty matter.
+
+At last he determined he would leave it to fate, to chance, showing how
+truly a gambler his Indian training had made him. He would stake the
+crisis on a game at chungke; if he won, as he told Varney, he would go
+to Carolina, and take sides with neither faction; if he lost, he would
+cast his future with the Cherokee nation.
+
+Varney, thoroughly uneasy, had come to feel a personal interest
+involved. If Otasite quitted the country, he felt his life would hardly
+be safe here, since the craft of Colannah had drawn from the
+unsuspecting young fellow the details of the plan of removal to
+Charlestown which he had proposed. And yet Varney himself was averse to
+any change, unless it was indeed necessary. When put to the test he felt
+he would rather live in the Cherokee nation than anywhere else in all
+the world, and he valued his commerce with the tribe and his license
+from the government, under duly approved bond and security, to conduct
+that traffic in Tennessee Town and Tellico as naught else on earth. He
+manifested so earnest and genuine a desire to repair the damage of his
+ill-starred suggestion that Colannah, showing his age in his haste and
+his tremulousness and excitement, disclosed to him in a flutter of
+triumphant glee that he had a spell to work which naught could
+withstand--a draught from Herbert's Spring to offer to Otasite. Thither
+some fifty miles he had dispatched a runner for a jar of the magic
+water, and after drinking of it Otasite could not quit for seven years
+the Cherokee nation even if he would.
+
+It was in the council-house that the mystic beverage was quaffed. There
+had been guests--head men from Great Tellico and Citico--during the
+afternoon, received in secret conclave, and now that their deliberations
+were concluded and they were gone, Otasite, not admitted to the council,
+being one of those warriors who did the fighting of the battles devised
+by the "beloved men," strolled into the deserted, dome-like place. Its
+walls, plastered with red clay, were yet more ruddy for a cast of the
+westering sun. The building was large enough to accommodate several
+hundred people, and around the walls were cane seats, deftly constructed
+and artificially whitened, making, according to an old writer, "very
+genteel settees or couches." Tired with the stress of mental depression
+and anxiety as physical effort could not tame him, and vaguely prescient
+of evil, Otasite had flung himself down on one of these, which was
+spread with dressed panther-skins, his hands clasped under his head, his
+scalp-lock of two auburn curls dangling over them.
+
+Through the tall narrow doorway the autumnal landscape was visible,
+blazing with all the fervors of summer; the mountains, however, were
+more softly blue, the sunlight of a richer glister; the river, now
+steel, now silver, now amber, reflected the atmosphere as a sensitive
+soul reflects the moods of those most dear; the forests, splendid with
+color, showed the lavish predominance of the rich reds characteristic of
+the Chilhowee woods; a dreamlike haze over all added a vague ideality
+that made the scene like some fondest memory or a glamourous forecast.
+
+"_Akoo-e-a!_" (summer yet!) said Colannah, his eyes too on the scene, as
+he sat on a buffalo-rug in the centre of the floor drawing in the last
+sweet fragrant breaths from his long-stemmed pipe, curiously wrought of
+stone, for in the manufacture of these pipes the Cherokees of that day
+were said to excel all other Indians. The young Briton experienced no
+mawkish pang to note that it was ornamented at one end by a dangling
+scalp, greatly treasured, the interior of the skin painted red for its
+preservation. He had, in fact, a pipe of his own with a scalp much like
+it. Indeed, his trophy was a fine specimen, and it had been a feat to
+take it, for it had once covered a hot Chickasaw head.
+
+"_Akoo-e-a!_ the day is warm!" remarked Colannah. He lifted his storied
+pipe, and with its long stem silently motioned to a young Indian woman,
+indicating a great jar of water. She quickly filled one of those quaint
+bowls, or cups, of the Cherokee manufacture, and advanced with it to
+Otasite; but the proffer was in the nature of an interruption of his
+troubled thoughts, and he irritably waved her away.
+
+"I am displeased with you," said Colannah sternly, lifting his dark,
+deeply sunken eyes to where the "Man-killer" lay at full length on the
+cane settee. "You set me aside. You have no thoughts for me--no words.
+Yet you can talk when you go to the trading-house. You have words and to
+spare for the trader. You can drink with him. You can sing, 'Drink with
+me a cup of wine.'" He lifted his raucous old voice in ludicrous
+travesty of the favorite catch, for sometimes the two Britons, so
+incongruous in point of age, education, sentiment, and occupation,
+cemented their bond as compatriots by carousing together in a mild way.
+
+But this ebullition of temper had naught of the ludicrous in Jan
+Queetlee's estimation. He was pierced to the heart.
+
+"_Aketohta!"_ (Father!) he cried reproachfully. He had sprung to his
+feet, and stood looking down at the old chief, who would not look at
+him, but kept his eyes on the landscape without, now and then drawing a
+long, lingering whiff from his pipe.
+
+"_Aketohta_! I have no thought for _you_!--who alone have taken thought
+for me! I have words for the trader and silence for _you_! You say keen
+things, and you know they are not true! You know that I had rather drink
+water with you than wine with him. I am not thirsty; but since it is you
+who offer it"--His expression changed; he broke into sudden pleasant
+laughter, and with a rollicking stave of the song, "Drink with me a cup
+of wine," he caught the bowl from the girl's hand and drained it at a
+draught.
+
+"_Seohsta-quo_!" (Good!) cried Colannah, visibly refreshed, as if his
+own thirst were vicariously slaked. But Otasite stood blankly staring,
+the bowl motionless in his hand. "It is well for wine to be old," he
+said wonderingly, "but not water."
+
+For his palate was accustomed to the exquisite sparkle and freshness of
+the mountain fountains, and this had come from far.
+
+The crafty Colannah stolidly repressed his delight, save for the glitter
+in his eyes fixed on the azure and crimson and silver landscape
+glimmering beyond the dusky portals of the terra-cotta walls. "_Nawohti!
+nawohti_!" (Rum!) he said, with an affectation of severity. "You drink
+too much of the trader's strong physic! You have no love now for the
+sweet, clear water." And he shook his head with the uncompromising
+reproof of a mentor of present times as he growled disjointedly,
+"_Nawohti! nawohti_!"
+
+Otasite nothing questioned the genuineness of this demonstration, for
+the Cherokee rulers, in common with those of other tribes, had long
+waged a vigorous opposition to the importation of strong drink into
+their country; indeed, as far back as 1704, when holding a solemn
+conference with Governor Daniel of North Carolina to form a general
+treaty of friendship, the chiefs of several tribes petitioned the
+government of the Lords Proprietors for a law, which was afterward
+enacted (and disregarded), forbidding any white man to sell or give rum
+to an Indian, and prescribing penalties for its infringement. It was not
+the first time that Otasite had heard unfavorably of the influences of
+"_nawohti_," which, by the way, with the Cherokees signified physic, as
+well as spirituous liquor, a synonymous definition which more civilized
+people have sought to apply. He was content that he and the old chief
+were once more in affectionate accord, and he did not seek to interpret
+the flash of triumph in Colannah's face.
+
+For seven years! for seven years! the white "Man-killer" could not, if
+he would, quit the Cherokee country. Well might the old chief's eyes
+glisten! The youth was like a son to his lonely age, and Otasite's
+prowess the pride of his life. And like others elsewhere he had softened
+as age came on, and loved the domestic fireside and the companionship
+about the hearth, hearing without participating in the hilarious talk of
+the young, and looking out at the world through the eyes of the new
+generation, undaunted, expectant, aglow with a spirit that had long ago
+smouldered in his own; for the fierce Indian at the last was but an old
+man.
+
+Abram Varney, too, experienced a recurrence of ease. He had unwittingly
+imbibed much outlandish superstition in his residence among the
+Cherokees, and indeed other traders and settlers long believed in the
+enchaining fascination of Herbert's Spring, and drank or refrained as
+they would stay or go.
+
+Otasite, however, was all unaware of the spell cast upon him when he
+came into the chungke-yard the next day, arrayed in his finest garb, the
+white dressed doeskin glittering in the sun, his necklaces of beads, his
+belt of wolf fangs, his flying feet in their white moccasins--all
+catching the light with a differing effect of brilliancy.
+
+Varney watched him;--with the two eagle feathers stiff and erect on his
+proud head, his two incongruous long auburn curls, that did duty as a
+"war-lock," floating backward in the breeze, he ran so deftly, so
+swiftly, with so assured and so graceful a gait that the mere
+observation of such symmetrical motion was a pleasure. The trader had
+scarcely a pulse of anxiety. Indeed, disingenuously profiting by the tip
+afforded by Herbert's Spring, he was heavily backing Wyejah as a winner!
+
+A windy day it was; the clouds raced through the sky, and their shadows
+skimming over the valleys and slopes challenged their speed. The
+Tennessee River was singing, singing! The mountains were as clearly and
+definitely blue as the heavens. That revelation of ranges on the far
+horizon unaccustomed to the view, only vouchsafed by some necromancy of
+the clarified autumnal air, never before seemed so distinct, so
+alluring--new lands, new hopes, new life they suggested. Wyejah's
+scarlet attire, its fringes tasseled with the spurs of the wild turkey,
+rendered his lithe figure strongly marked against these illusory
+ethereal tints as he sped abreast with Otasite along the level sandy
+stretch of the chungke-yard. And how well he played! Varney realized
+this with a satisfaction as of having already won his wagers, many and
+large, for Otasite would leave the nation should he be victorious, and
+having drunk unwittingly of Herbert's Spring, he could not quit the
+Cherokee country, although he himself was still unaware of having
+quaffed of those mystic waters. Therefore defeat was obviously his
+portion. Whenever the trader thought anew of his secret knowledge of
+this fact he offered odds on Wyejah, and glanced at him with
+approbation--at the young Indian warrior's face fiercely, eagerly
+smiling, his great flattened ears distended on their wire hoops, his
+dark eyes full of sombre brilliance. How well he played! and how hard
+the skill of his opponent pressed him! How accurate was the aim of the
+long lance of Otasite as he poised his weight on the supple tips of his
+white moccasins and hurled the missile through the air; how strong and
+firm his grasp that sent the circular, quartz chungke-stone, whirling
+along the sand; how tirelessly his long sinewy steps sped back and forth
+in the swift dashes up and down the smooth spaces of the chungke-yard;
+how faithfully he was doing his best, regardless of his own preference
+in the interests that he had adventured on the result! How like a Briton
+born it was, Abram Varney thought, for he alone knew of Otasite's
+resolution, and the significance of the game to him, that the boy could
+thus see fair play between the factions that warred within him for his
+future. He had staked the future on the event,--and suddenly it was the
+present!
+
+A wild clamor of excitement, of applause, rose up from the throats of
+the crowd in the natural amphitheatre, clanging and clattering in long
+guttural cries,--all intensified by a relish of the unexpected, a joy in
+a new sensation, for Wyejah had never before been beaten, and Otasite
+was the victor at chungke.
+
+Abram Varney felt his heart leap into his throat, then sink like lead;
+Colannah, triumphant, knowing naught of the subtler significance of the
+contest, joyful, aglow with pride, rose up in his splendid feathered
+mantle, standing high on the slope, to sign to the boy his pleasure in
+the victory. The sunlight fell, glittering very white, on the young
+fellow's doeskin garb, his prickly belt of fangs, his bare chest with
+the blue warrior's marks, the curls of his auburn scalp-lock tossing in
+the wind. He had seemed hitherto stoical, unmoved by victory as he would
+have appeared in defeat; but Varney, eager to get at him, to combat his
+resolution, knew that he was stunned by the complications presented by
+this falling out of the event. He visibly faltered as his eye met the
+triumph and affection expressed in Colannah's quivering old face. He
+could not respond to its congratulation. He dropped on one knee
+suddenly, bending low, affecting to find something amiss with one of his
+moccasins.
+
+Wyejah, too, could seem unmoved by victory, but indifference to defeat
+was more difficult to simulate. He had in the first moment of its
+realization felt the blood rush to his head; despite his strong nerve
+his hand trembled; the smile of placidity which it was a point of honor
+to preserve became a fixed grin. Several other young braves had come
+into the yard, and were idly tossing the lance at the great
+chungke-pole--as a billiardist of the civilized life of that day might
+pocket the balls with a purposeless cue after a match. Wyejah, too, had
+cast his lance aslant; then he idly hurled the chungke-stone with a
+muscular fling along the spaces of the white sand. His nerve was shaken,
+his aim amiss, his great strength deflected. The heavy discoidal quartz
+stone skimmed through the air above the stretch of sand, and striking
+with its beveled edge the kneeling figure on the temple, the future of
+the victor at chungke became in one moment the past.
+
+The trader could only have likened the scene that ensued to the moment
+of an earthquake or some other stupendous convulsion of nature. In the
+midst of the confusion, the wild cries, the swift running figures, the
+surging of the crowds into the chungke-yard that obliterated the wide
+glare of the sun on the white sand, he made good his escape. He knew
+enough of the trend of Cherokee thought to be prescient of the fate of
+the scapegoat. Colannah in the first burst of grief he knew would blame
+himself that he should have tempted fate by the mystic draught from
+Herbert's Spring to hold here that bright young form for seven years
+longer. How sadly true!--for seven years Otasite would remain, and seven
+to that, and, alack, seven more, and forever! Soon, however, the natural
+impulses of the Indian's temper, intensified by long cultivation, would
+be reasserted. He would cast about for revenge, remembering the first
+suggestion of the departure of Otasite, and from whom it had emanated.
+But for the English trader and his specious wiles, the old chief would
+argue, would Otasite have thought of forsaking his foster nation, his
+adopted father, for the selfish, indifferent British, the "Goweno" at
+Charlestown, who cared for him nothing? The trader it was who had
+brought this calamity upon them, who had in effect, by the hand of
+another, administered the fatal draught. Seek for him!--hale him forth!
+--wreak upon him the just, unappeasable vengeance of the forever
+bereaved!
+
+The old trader had evinced an instinct in flight and concealment that an
+animal might envy. No probable hiding-place he selected, such as might
+be known or divined--a cave, the attic of his trading-house, the cellar
+beneath--all obvious, all instantly explored. Instead, he slipped into a
+rift in the rocks along the river-bank. Myriads of such crevices there
+were in the tilted strata--unheeded, unremarked, too strait and
+restricted to suggest the idea of refuge, too infinitely numerous for
+search. There, unable in the narrow compass to turn, even to shift a
+numbing muscle of his lean old body, in all the constraint of a standing
+posture, he was held in the flexure of the rock like some of its
+fossils,--as unsuspected as a ganoid of the days of eld that had once
+been imprisoned thus in the sediment of seas that had long ebbed
+hence,--or the fern vestiges in a later formation finding a witness in
+the imprint in the stone of the symmetry of its fronds. He listened to
+the hue and cry for him; then to the sudden tramp of hoofs as a pursuing
+party went out to overtake him, presumably on his way to Charlestown,
+maintaining a very high rate of speed, for the Cherokees of that period
+had some famously fine horses.
+
+Straining his senses--all unnaturally alert--he distinguished, as the
+afternoon wore on, the details of the preparations for the barbarous
+sepulture of the young Briton. Now and then the cracking of rifle-shots
+betokened the shooting of his horses and cattle and all the living
+things among his possessions--a practice already in its decadence among
+the Cherokees, and later, influenced by the utilitarian methods of
+civilization, altogether abandoned. Swift steps here and there
+throughout the town intimated errands to gather all his choicest effects
+to be buried with him, for his future use. To this custom, it is said,
+and the great security of the fashioning of the sepulchres of the
+Cherokees, may be attributed the fact that little of their pottery,
+arms, beads, medals, the more indestructible of their personal
+possessions, can be found in this region where so lately they were a
+numerous people; for the effects of the dead, however valued, were never
+removed or the graves robbed, even by an Indian enemy. The Cherokees
+rarely permitted the presence of an alien at the ceremonies of the
+interment of one of the tribe; but Varney in times past had seen and
+heard enough to realize, without any definite effort of the imagination,
+how Otasite, arrayed in his most gorgeous apparel, his beautiful English
+face painted vermilion, would be placed in a sitting posture in front of
+his house, and there in the sunlit afternoon remain for a space, looking
+in, as it were, at the open door. Presently sounded the wild
+lamentations and melancholy cadences of the funeral song; the tones rose
+successively from a deep bass to a tenor, then to a shrill treble,
+falling again to a full bass chorus, with the progression of the mystic
+syllables, "_Yah! Yo-he-wah! Yah! Yo-he-wah!"_ (said to signify
+"Jehovah"). This announced that the funeral procession, bearing the
+body, was going thrice around the house of the dead, where he had lived
+in familiar happiness these many years, and beneath which he would rest
+in solemn silence in his deep, deep grave, covered with heavy timbers
+and many layers of bark, and the stanch red clay, maintaining a sitting
+posture, and facing the east, while the domestic life of homely cheer
+would go on over his unheeding head as he awaited the distant and
+universal resurrection of the body, in which the Cherokee religion
+inculcated a full and firm faith.
+
+The sun went down, and through all the night sounded the plaints of
+grief. Late the moon rose, striking aslant on the melancholy Tennessee
+River, full of deep shadows and vaguely pathetic pallid glimmers. A wind
+sprang up for a time, then suddenly sank to silence and stillness. A
+frost fell with a keen icy chill. Mists gathered, and the day did not
+break,--it seemed as if it might never dawn again; only a pallid
+visibility came gradually upon clouds that had enshrouded all the world.
+The earth and the sky were alike indistinguishable; the mountains were
+as valleys, the valleys as plains. One might scarcely make shift to see
+a hand before the face. Through this white pall, this cloud of nullity,
+came ever the dolorous chant, "_Yo-he-ta-wah! Yo-he-ta-weh!
+Yo-he-ta-hah! Yo-he-ta-heh!_" as in their grief and poignant bereavement
+the ignorant and barbarous Indians called upon the God who made them,
+and He who made them savages doubtless heard them.
+
+Creeping out into the invisibility of the clouded day, Abram Varney had
+not great fear of detection. The mists that shielded him from view
+furthered still his flight, for his footsteps were hardly to be
+distinguished amidst the continual dripping of the moisture from the
+leaves of the dank autumnal woods. At night he knew the savages would be
+most on the alert. They would scarcely suspect his flight in the broad
+day. Moreover, their suspicions of his presence here were lulled;
+craftily enough he followed after the horsemen who fancied they were
+pursuing him--they would scarcely look for their quarry hard on their
+own heels. He experienced no sentiment but one of intense satisfaction
+when, as invisible as a spirit, he passed his own trading-house, and
+divined from the sounds within that the Indians were busy in sacking it,
+albeit a greater financial loss than seems probable at the present day;
+for the Indian trade was a very considerable commerce, as the accounts
+of those times will show. The English and French governments did not
+disdain to compete for its monopoly with various nations of Indians, for
+the sake of gaining control of the savages thereby, in view of supplies
+furnished by the white traders vending these commodities and resident in
+the tribes.
+
+Recollections of the items and values of his invoices, afflicting to
+Varney's commercial spirit, threaded his consciousness only when again
+safe in Charlestown. He reached that haven at last by the exercise of
+great good judgment. He realized that another party would presently be
+sent out when no news of capture came from the earlier pursuers; he
+divined that the second expedition would take the Chickasaw path, for
+being friendly to the British, that tribe would naturally be thought of
+as a refuge to an Englishman in trouble with the Cherokees; therefore
+Varney, lest he be overtaken on the way, avoided with a great struggle
+the temptation, mustered all his courage, and adopting an unprecedented
+expedient, turned off to the country of the Muscogees. These Indians,
+always more or less inimical to the colonists, bloodthirsty, cruel,
+crafty, and but recently involved in a furious war against the
+Cherokees, were glad to thwart Colannah in any cherished scheme of
+revenge, and received the fugitive kindly. Although but for this fact
+his temerity in venturing among them would have cost him his life, they
+ministered to his needs with great hospitality, and forwarded him on his
+way to Charlestown, sending a strong guard with him as far as Long Cane
+settlement, a little above Ninety-Six.
+
+Wyejah also made his escape. Appalled by the calamity of the accidental
+blow, he "took sanctuary." In the supreme moment of excitement he flung
+himself into the Tennessee River, and while eagerly sought by the
+emissaries of Colannah in the woods, he swam to Choté, "beloved town,"
+the city of refuge of the whole Cherokee nation, where the shedder of
+blood was exempt from vengeance. As years went by, however, either
+because of the death of Colannah, or because time had so far softened
+the bereavement of the friends of Otasite that they were prevailed upon
+to accept the "satisfaction," the presents required even from an in
+voluntary homicide, he was evidently freed from the restricted limits of
+the "ever-sacred soil," for his name is recorded in the list of warriors
+who went to Charlestown in 1759 to confer with Governor Lyttleton on the
+distracted state of the frontier, and being held as one of the hostages
+of that unlucky embassy, he perished in the massacre of the Cherokees by
+the garrison of Fort Prince George, after the treacherous murder of the
+commandant, Captain Coytmore, by a ruse of the Indian king, Oconostota.
+
+Abram Varney never ventured back among "the Nation," as he called the
+Cherokees, as if they were the only nation on the earth. Now and again
+in their frequent conferences with the Governor at Charlestown, rendered
+necessary by their ever-recurrent friction with the British government,
+he sought out members of the delegation for some news of his old
+friends, his old haunts. Not one of them would take his hand; not one
+would hear his voice; they looked beyond him, through him, as if he were
+the impalpable atmosphere, as if he did not exist.
+
+It was a little thing,--the displeasure of such men--mere savages,--but
+it cut him to the heart. So long they had been his friends, his
+associates, as the chief furniture of the world!
+
+He busied himself with the affairs of his firm at Charlestown, but for a
+time he was much changed, much cast down, for he had a sense of
+responsibility, and his conscience was involved, and although he had
+sought to do good he had only wrought harm, and irreparable harm. He
+grew old very fast, racked as he was by rheumatism, a continual reminder
+of the stern experiences of his flight. He had other reminders in his
+unquiet thoughts, but he grew garrulous at a much later date. Years
+intervened before he was wont to sit in front of the warehouse, with his
+stick between his knees, his hands clasped on the round knob at its top,
+his chin on his hands, and cheerily chirp of his days in "the Nation."
+The softening touch of time brought inevitably its glamours and its
+peace; his bleared old eyes, fixed on the glittering expanse of the
+harbor, beheld with pleasure, instead of the sea, the billowy reaches of
+that mighty main of mist-crested mountains known as the Great Smoky
+Range, and through all his talk, and continually through his mind,
+flitted the bright animated presence of the victor at chungke.
+
+
+
+
+THE CAPTIVE OF THE ADA-WEHI
+
+
+Attusah was obviously an impostor. Many, however, had full faith in his
+supernatural power, and often he seemed to believe in his own spectral
+account of himself.
+
+"_Tsida-wei-yu_!" (I am a great ada-wehi![6]) the young warrior would
+cry with his joyous grandiloquent gesture, waving his many braceleted
+right arm at full length as he held himself proudly erect.
+"_Akee-o-hoosa! Akee-o-hoosa!"_ (I am dead). Then triumphantly, "And
+behold I am still here."
+
+Attusah had gone unscathed through that bloody campaign of 1761 in which
+the Cherokees suffered such incredible rigors. After their total defeat
+at Etchoee the Indians could offer no further resistance to the troops
+of Colonel Grant, who triumphantly bore the authority of the British
+king from one end of the Cherokee country to the other, for there was no
+more powder to be had in the tribe. The French, from whom they had hoped
+a supply, failed them at their utmost need, and now those massive crags
+of the Great Smoky Mountains, overhanging the Tennessee River, no longer
+echoed the "whoo-whoop!" of the braves, the wild cry of the Highlanders,
+"Claymore! Claymore!" the nerve-thrilling report of the volleys of
+musketry from the Royal Scots, the hissing of the hand grenades flung
+bursting into the jungles of the laurel. Instead, all the clifty defiles
+of the ranges were filled with the roar of flames and the crackling of
+burning timbers as town after town was given to the firebrand, and the
+homeless, helpless Cherokees frantically fleeing to the densest coverts
+of the wilderness,--that powerful truculent tribe!--sought for shelter
+like those "feeble folk the conies" in the hollows of the rocks.
+
+Thus it was that Digatiski, the Hawk, of Eupharsee Town, long the terror
+of the southern provinces, must needs sit idle, forlorn, frenzied with
+rage and grief, in a remote and lofty cavity of a great cliff, and
+looking out over range and valley and river of this wild and beautiful
+country, see fire and sword work their mission of destruction upon it.
+By day a cloud of smoke afar off bespoke the presence of the soldiery.
+At night a tremulous red light would spring up amidst the darkness of
+the valley, and expanding into a great yellow flare summon mountains and
+sky into an infinitely sad and weird revelation of the landscape, as the
+great storehouses of corn were burned to the ground, leaving the hapless
+owners to starvation.
+
+His pride grudged his very eyes the sight of this humiliation, for
+despite the oft-repeated assertion of the improvidence of the Indian
+character, these public granaries, whence by the primitive Cherokee
+government food was dispensed gratis to all the needy, were always full,
+and their destruction meant national annihilation or subjugation. After
+one furtive glance at the purple obscurities of the benighted world he
+would bow his head, and with a smothered groan ask of the ada-wehi,
+"Where is it now, Attusah?"
+
+The young warrior, half reclining at the portal of the niche, would lift
+himself on one elbow,--the glow of the little camp-fire within the
+recess on his feather-crested head, his wildly painted face, the twenty
+strings of roanoke passed tight like a high collar around his neck,
+thence hanging a cascade of beads over his chest, the devious arabesques
+of tattooing on his bare, muscular arms, the embroideries of his
+buckskin raiment and gaudy quiver,--and searching with his gay young
+eyes through the stricken country reply, "Cowetchee," "Sinica,"
+"Tamotlee," whichever town might chance to be in flames.
+
+Doubtless Attusah realized equally the significance of the crisis. But a
+certain joyous irresponsibility characterized him, and indeed he had
+never seemed quite the same since he died. He had been much too
+reckless, however, even previous to that event. Impetuous, hasty,
+tumultuously hating the British colonists, he had participated several
+years earlier in a massacre of an outlying station, when the Cherokees
+were at peace, without warrant of tribal authority, and with so little
+caution as to be recognized. For this breach of the treaty his execution
+was demanded by the Royal Governor of South Carolina, and reluctantly
+conceded by the Cherokees to avert a war for the chastisement of the
+tribe. Powder must have been exceedingly scarce!
+
+Attusah was allowed to choose his method of departure to the happy
+hunting-grounds, and thus was duly stabbed to death. He was left
+weltering in his blood to be buried by his kindred. The half king,
+Atta-Kulla-Kulla, satisfied of his death, himself reported the execution
+to the Carolina authorities, and as in his long and complicated
+diplomatic relations with the colonial government this Cherokee chief
+had never broken faith, he was implicitly believed.
+
+Whether the extraordinary vitality and vigor of the young warrior were
+reasserted after life had been pronounced wholly extinct, and thus his
+relations were induced to defer the obsequies, or that he was enabled to
+exert supernatural powers and in the spirit reappear in his former
+semblance of flesh,--both theories being freely advanced,--certain it is
+that after a time he returned to his old haunts as gay, as reckless, as
+impetuous as ever. He bore no token of his strange experience save
+sundry healed-over scars of deep gashes in his breast, which he seemed
+at times to seek to shield from observation; and this he might have
+accomplished but for his solicitude that a very smart shirt, much
+embroidered and bedizened with roanoke, should not suffer by exposure to
+water; wherefore he took it off when it rained, and in swimming, and on
+the war-path. He manifested, too, a less puerile anxiety to escape the
+notice of Atta-Kulla-Kulla and other head men, who were supposed to be
+well affected at that time to the British government. This he was the
+better enabled to do as his habitat, Kanootare, was the most remote of
+the Cherokee towns, his name, Attusah, signifying the "Northward
+Warrior."
+
+After the capitulation of Fort Loudon and the massacre of the garrison
+the previous year, and the organized resistance the Cherokees had made
+in the field of battle against Colonel Montgomerie, then commanding the
+expeditionary forces, he had felt that the tribe's openly inimical
+relations with the British government warranted him in coming boldly
+forth from his retirement and competing for the honors of the present
+campaign of 1761. His friends sought to dissuade him. The government had
+had, as assurance of his death, the word of Atta-Kulla-Kulla, who might
+yet insist that the pledge be made good. That chief, they urged, had a
+delicate conscience, which is often an engine of disastrous efficiency
+when exerted on the affairs of other people. Attusah was advised that he
+had best stay dead. Although he finally agreed with this, he could not
+stay still, and thus as he appeared in various skirmishes it became
+gradually bruited abroad among the Cherokees that Attusah, the Northward
+Warrior, was a great ada-wehi, a being of magical power, or a ghost as
+it might be said, of special spectral distinctions. Thus he lived as
+gayly yet as before the dismal day of his execution, always carefully,
+however, avoiding the notice of Atta-Kulla-Kulla, whose word had been
+solemnly accepted by the British government as the pledge of his death.
+
+It is impossible to understand how a man like Digatiski of Eupharsee
+could believe this,--so sage, despite his ignorance, so crafty, so
+diplomatic and acute in subterfuge, yet he was sodden in superstition.
+
+"Can you see Colonel Grant, the Barbarous?"[7] he asked suddenly,
+lifting his head and gazing steadily at the young Indian's face, which
+was outlined against the pallid neutral tint of the sky. The dark
+topmost boughs of a balsam fir were just on a level with the clear
+high-featured profile; a single star glittering beyond and above his
+feathered crest looked as if it were an ornament of the headdress; the
+red glow of the smouldering fire within, which had been carefully masked
+in ashes as the darkness came on, that its sparkle might not betray
+their presence here to any wandering band of troopers, still sufficed to
+show the impostor's painted red cheek. He was armed with a tomahawk and
+a pistol, without powder as useless as a toy, and a bow borne in default
+of aught better lay on the floor beside him, while a gayly ornamented
+quiver full of poisoned arrows swung over his shoulder.
+
+"_Ha-tsida-wei-yu!_" he proclaimed. "I am a great ada-wehi! I see him!
+Of a surety I see him!"
+
+Attusah gazed at the sombre night with an expression as definitely
+perceptive as if the figure in his thoughts were actually before his
+eyes.
+
+"And he is not dead?" cried Digatiski, in despair.
+
+Some such wild rumor, as of hope gone mad, had pervaded the groups of
+Cherokee fugitives.
+
+"He would be if I could get close enough with a bare pinch of powder
+that might charge my gun!" declared Attusah disconsolately. Then himself
+again, "But I will tell you this! He is waiting for my poisoned arrow!
+And when he dies he will come back no more. He is not like me."
+
+He paused to throw out his hand with his splendid pompous gesture.
+"_Akee-o-hoo-sa! Tsida-wei-yu!_" (I am dead! I am a great ada-wehi!)
+
+Digatiski groaned. It mattered not to him whether Colonel Grant came
+back or abode in his proper place when dead. The grievous dispensation
+lay in the fact that he was here now, in the midst of the wreck he was
+so zealously wreaking.
+
+There were three women in the niche. One with her head muffled in her
+mantle of fringed deerskin sat against the wall, silently weeping,
+bemoaning her dead slain in the recent battle, or the national
+calamities, or perhaps the mere personal afflictions of fatigue and fear
+and hunger and suspense. Another crouched by the fire and gazed
+dolorously upon it with dreary tear-filled eyes, and swollen, reddened
+eyelids. The sorrowful aspect of a third was oddly incongruous with her
+gay attire, a garb of scarlet cloth trimmed with silver tinsel tassels,
+a fabric introduced among the Cherokees by an English trader of the name
+of Jeffreys, and which met with great favor. Her anklets, garters, and
+bracelets of silver "bell-buttons" tinkled merrily as she moved, for she
+had postponed her tears in the effort to concoct some supper from the
+various scraps left from the day's scanty food. The prefatory scraping
+of the coals together caused a sudden babbling of pleasure to issue from
+the wall, where, suspended on a projection of rock, was one of the
+curious upright cradles of the people, from which a pappoose, stiff and
+perpendicular, gazed down at the culinary preparations, evidently in the
+habit of participating to a limited extent in the result, having
+attained some ten months of age.
+
+The mother glanced up, and despite the tear stains about her eyes,
+dimpled and laughed in response. Griefs may come and pleasures go,
+nations rise and fall, the world wag on as it will, but this old joy of
+mother and child, each in the other, is ever new and yet ever the same.
+
+Resuming her occupation, the woman hesitated for a moment as she was
+about to lay the meat on the coals, the half of a wood duck, fortunately
+killed by an arrow, for larger game was not attainable, the wild beasts
+of the country being in flight as never heretofore. The conflagration of
+the towns of a whole district, the turmoils of the heady victorious
+troops, hitherto held together, but now sent through the region in
+separate detachments, each within reach of support, however, had
+stripped the tribe of this last means of subsistence. Years and years
+afterward the grim dismantled fragments of these buildings were still to
+be seen, the charred walls and rafters mere skeletons against the sky,
+standing, melancholy memorials of war, on the hillsides and in the
+valleys, along the watercourses "transparent as glass," of that lovely
+country where these pleasant homes had been.
+
+The Indian woman doubted if the bit of fat could be spared; then poising
+it in her hand under the watchful eyes of all, she flung it into the
+fire, the essential burnt-offering according to their old religious
+custom.
+
+Digatiski, bowing his head still lower, once more groaned aloud. He
+would not have stayed her hand,--but to hunger even for the offering to
+the fire! The woman whose head was muffled had only to repeat her sobs
+anew; she could not sorrow more! But the pappoose in its primitive
+cradle on the wall babbled out its simple pleasure, and now and again
+the tearful little mother must needs lift smiling eyes.
+
+The great ada-wehi looked out at the night. On the whole he was glad he
+was dead!
+
+He took no bite, nor did Digatiski. The Indian men were accustomed to
+long fasts in war and in hunting, and they left the trivial bits to the
+women. The muffled figure of grief held out her hand blindly and munched
+the share given her in the folds of her veil. Then, for tears are of no
+nutritive value, she held out her hand again. Feeling it still empty,
+she lifted the veil from a swollen tear-stained face to gaze aghast at
+the others. They silently returned the gaze, aghast themselves, and then
+all three women fell to sobbing once more. But the pappoose was crowing
+convivially over a bone.
+
+Hunger does not dispose to slumber, nor does war with the sight of a
+dozen towns aflame. They slept, but in fitful starts, and the first gray
+siftings of light through the desolate darkness found them all gazing
+drearily at it, for what might a new day signify to them but new
+dangers, fresh sorrows, and quickened fears.
+
+A flush was presently in the east, albeit dusk lingered westward. The
+wonderful crystalline white lustre of the morning star palpitated in the
+amber sky, seeming the very essence of light, then gradually vanished in
+a roseate haze. The black mountains grew purple, changing to a dark rich
+green. The deep, cool valleys were dewy in the midst of a shadowy gray
+vapor. The farthest ranges showed blue under a silver film, and suddenly
+here were the rays of the sun shooting over all the world, aiming high
+and far for the western hills.
+
+And abruptly said the ada-wehi, as he still lay at length on the floor
+of the niche,--
+
+"_Skee_!" (Listen!)
+
+Naught but the breeze of morning, delicately freighted with the breath
+of balsams, the dew, the fragrance of the awakening of the wild flowers,
+the indescribable matutinal freshness, the incense of a new day in June.
+
+"_Skee_!"
+
+Only the sound of the rippling Tennessee, so silver clear, beating and
+beating against the vibrant rocks as its currents swirl round the bend
+at the base of the cliff.
+
+"_Skee_!"
+
+The sudden fall of a fragment of rock from the face of the crag to the
+ground far below!--the interval of time between the scraping dislodgment
+and the impact with the clay beneath implies a proportional interval of
+distance.
+
+The conviction is the same in the mind of each. A living creature is
+climbing the ascent! A bear, it may be. A great bird, an eagle, or one
+of the hideous mountain vultures, very busy of late, alighting in quest
+of food--which it might find in plenty elsewhere, in the track of the
+invaders.
+
+Attusah does not rely, however, on a facile hypothesis with a triumphant
+enemy at hand, and a dozen towns charring to ashes in sight.
+
+As noiseless as a shadow, as swift, Attusah is on his feet. At the back
+of the great niche, so high that none could conceive that it might
+afford an exit, a fissure lets in a vague dreary blur of light from
+spaces beyond. Leaping high into the air, the lithe young warrior fixes
+his fingers on the ledge, crumbling at first, but holding firm under a
+closer grasp. The elder man, understanding the ruse as if by instinct,
+lays hold of the knees of the other, held out stiff and straight below.
+Then by a mighty effort Attusah lifts the double weight into the
+fissure, the elder Indian aiding the manoeuvre by walking up the wall,
+as it were, with his feet successively braced against it.
+
+Outside, now and again bits of rock continued to fall, seeming to herald
+a cautious approach, for after each sound a considerable interval of
+silence would ensue. So long continued was this silence at last that the
+three women, now alone, began to deem the alarm of an intrusion vain and
+fantastic. The elder of them motioned to one of the others to look out
+and terminate the painful suspense.
+
+The young squaw, brilliant in her scarlet dress and silver tassels, the
+pappoose piously quiet in his perpendicular cradle on her back, slipped
+with gingerly caution to the verge of the precipice and looked down.
+
+Nothing she saw, and in turn she was invisible from without. She wheeled
+around briskly to reassure the others, and at that moment a young
+soldier of the battalion of Scotch Highlanders stepped from the
+horizontal ledge alongside, which he had then gained, and into the
+niche, bringing up short against the pappoose, stiff and erect in its
+cradle.
+
+"Hegh, sirs!" he cried in jocular surprise, happy to find naught more
+formidable, perhaps, although a brave man, for he had volunteered to
+examine the source of the smoke from this precarious perch,--which had
+attracted the attention of the ensign commanding a little
+detachment,--despite the fact that a Cherokee in his den and brought to
+bay was likely to prove a dangerous beast.
+
+The Highlander had a piece of bread in his hand, from which he had been
+recklessly munching as he had stood for a moment's breathing spell on
+the horizontal ledge beside the niche before venturing to enter, for the
+command had broken camp with scant allowance of time for breakfast. With
+a genial laugh he thrust a morsel into the pappoose's open mouth and put
+the rest in its little fingers.
+
+Perhaps it was because of his relief to find no bigger Cherokee man
+stowed away here in ambush; perhaps because he was himself hearty and
+well-fed and disposed to be gracious; perhaps because he had a
+whole-souled gentle nature hardly consonant with the cruel arts of war
+which he practiced,--at all events he was thoughtful enough of others to
+mark the ravenous look which the women cast upon the food in the child's
+hand.
+
+"Gude guide us!" he exclaimed. "This is fearfu' wark! The hellicat
+hempies are half starved!"
+
+For if Colonel Grant compassionated the plight of the savages, as he has
+recorded, and shrank from the ruin wrought in the discharge of his duty
+of destroying their capacities for resistance and the maintenance of
+existence other than as peaceful dependents of the British colonies, the
+rank and file of his command, weighted with no such responsibilities,
+may well have indulged now and then a qualm of pity.
+
+The British soldier had been ordered to halloo for help should he
+encounter armed resistance, but otherwise to rest a bit at the top of
+the precipice before making the effort to descend, lest he become dizzy
+from fatigue and the long strain upon his faculties, and fall; the
+ensign added a pointed reminder that he had no means of transportation
+for "fules with brucken craigs." The opportunity was propitious. The
+Highlander utilized the interval to open his haversack and dispense such
+portion of its contents as he could spare. While thus engaged he was
+guilty of an oversight inexcusable in a soldier: the better to handle
+and divide the food, he leaned his loaded gun against the wall.
+
+A vague shadow flickered across the niche.
+
+The young Highlander was a fine man physically, although there was no
+great beauty in his long, thin, frank, freckled face, with its
+dare-devil expression and bantering blue eyes. But he was tall, heavily
+muscled, clean-limbed, of an admirable symmetry, and the smartest of
+smart soldiers. His kilt and plaid swung and fluttered with martial
+grace in his free, alert, military gait as he stepped about the
+restricted space of the cavity, bestowing his bounty on all three women.
+His "bonnet cocked fu' sprash" revealed certain intimations in his
+countenance of gentle nurture, no great pretensions truly, but
+betokening a higher grade of man than is usually found in the rank and
+file of an army. This fact resulted from the peculiar situation of the
+Scotch insurgents toward government after the "Forty-Five," and the
+consequent breaking up of the resources of many well-to-do middle-class
+families as well as the leaders of great clans.
+
+The Highlander hesitated after the first round of distribution, for
+there would be no means of revictualing that haversack until the next
+issuance of rations, and he was himself a "very valiant trencher-man."
+Nevertheless their dire distress and necessity so urged his generosity
+that he began his rounds anew.
+
+Once more a shadow. Whence should a shadow fall? It flickered through
+the niche.
+
+The three women stood as mute as statues. The pappoose in its cradle on
+its mother's back, its face turned ignominiously toward the wall, and
+perhaps aware that something of interest in the commissariat department
+was going forward, had begun to whimper in a very civilized manner, and
+doubtless it was this trivial noise that deterred the young Scotchman
+from hearing sounds of more moment, calculated to rouse his suspicions.
+He had already added to the portions of the elder women and was
+bestowing his donations upon the young mother, when suddenly the shadow
+materialized and whisked past him.
+
+It fell like a thunderbolt from above.
+
+Bewildered, agitated, before he could turn, his gun was seized and
+presented at his breast by a warrior who seemed to have fallen from the
+sky. The soldier, nevertheless, instantly laid his hand on the great
+basket-hilt of his claymore. Before he could draw the blade, the warrior
+and the three women flung themselves upon him, their arms so closely
+wound about him that his own arms were effectually pinioned to his
+sides. With a violent effort he shook himself free from their grasp for
+one moment; yet as the blade came glittering forth from the scabbard, a
+sharp blow scientifically administered upon the wrist by the ada-wehi
+almost broke the bone and sent the weapon flying from his hand and
+clattering to the floor of the niche. The women had taken advantage of
+the opportunity afforded by the struggle between the two men to
+substitute the coils of a heavy hempen rope for the clasp of their arms,
+and Attusah had only to give a final twist to the knots of their skilled
+contriving, when the captive was disarmed and bound.
+
+He had instantly bethought himself of his comrades and an appeal for
+rescue, and sent forth a wild, hoarse yell, which, had it been heard,
+must have apprised them of his plight. But as he had not at once given
+the signal of danger agreed upon, they had naturally supposed the coast
+clear, and while he rested presumably at the top of the precipice they
+gave their attention to other details of their mission, firing several
+houses at a little distance down the river. Therefore they would have
+heard naught, even if Attusah had not precluded further efforts of his
+captive to communicate with his comrades by swiftly fashioning a gag out
+of the Highlander's bonnet and gloves.
+
+Perhaps never was a brave man more dismayed and daunted. Not death
+alone, but fire and torture menaced him. The shining liquid delight in
+the eyes of the women reminded him of the strange fact that they were
+ever the most forward in these cruel pleasures, for the ingenuity of
+which the Cherokees were famous among all the tribes. Yet the
+realization of his peril did not so diminish his scope of feeling as to
+prevent him from inwardly upbraiding his ill-starred generosity as the
+folly of a hopeless fool, more especially as the elder woman--she of the
+many tears--held up the substantial gift of provisions, jeering at him
+with a look in her face that did not need to be supplemented by the
+scoffing of language.
+
+"The auld randy besom!" the soldier commented within himself. "But eh, I
+didna gie it to be thankit,--nae sic a fule as that comes to, neither!"
+
+Hoping against hope, he thought that the length of his absence would
+inevitably alarm the ensign for his scout's safety, when it should
+attract attention, and induce the officer to send a party for his relief
+and for further investigation of the precipice, whence the smoke
+intimated an ambush of the enemy. This expectation had no sooner
+suggested its solace and the exercise of patience in the certainty of
+ultimate rescue, than the Highlander began to mark the preparations
+among the Indians for a swift departure. But how? The precipice was a
+sheer descent for eighty feet, the ruggedness of its face barely
+affording foothold for a bird or a mountaineer; and at its base hovered
+the ensign's party within striking distance. A resisting captive could
+not be withdrawn by this perilous path. The soldier looked in doubt and
+suspense about the restricted limits of the cavity in the great crag.
+The mystery was soon solved.
+
+The position of all had changed in the struggle, and from where Kenneth
+MacVintie now stood he noted a scant suggestion of light flickering down
+from a black fissure in the roof of the cavity, and instantly realized
+that it must give an exit upon the mountain slope beyond. The agility
+with which Attusah of Kanootare sprang up and leaped into it was
+admirable to behold, but MacVintie did not believe that, although
+knotted up as he was in his own plaid passed under his arms and around
+his waist for the purpose, he could be lifted by the ends of the fabric
+through that aperture by the strength of any one man. Naturally he
+himself would make no effort to facilitate the enterprise. On the
+contrary, such inertness as the sheer exercise of will could compass was
+added to his dead weight. Nevertheless he rose slowly, slowly through
+the air. As he was finally dragged through the rift in the rocks, his
+first feeling was one of gratification to perceive that no one man could
+so handle him. The feat had required the utmost exertions of two
+athletic Indians pulling strenuously at the ends of the plaid passed
+over a projection of rock, thus acting pulley-wise, and the good Glasgow
+weave was shedding its frayed fragments through all the place by reason
+of the strain it had sustained.
+
+The next moment more serious considerations claimed his thoughts. He saw
+that two men, fully armed, for Digatiski had secured ammunition for his
+own gun from the cartouch-box of the soldier, could force his
+withdrawal, bound as he was, farther and farther from the ensign and his
+party, whose attention had been temporarily diverted from the scout's
+delay in returning by signs of the enemy ambushed in another direction.
+
+MacVintie still struggled, albeit he knew that it was vain to resist,
+more especially when another Cherokee joined the party and dedicated
+himself solely to the enterprise of pushing and haling the captive over
+the rugged way,--often at as fair a speed as if his good will had been
+enlisted in the endeavor. Now and again, however, the Highlander
+contrived to throw himself prone upon the ground, thus effectually
+hampering their progress and requiring the utmost exertions of all three
+to lift his great frame. The patience of the Indians seemed illimitable;
+again and again they performed this feat, only to renew it at the
+distance of a few hundred yards.
+
+At length the fact was divined by MacVintie. More than the ordinary fear
+of capture animated Attusah of Kanootare. Colonel Grant's treatment of
+his prisoners was humane as the laws of war require. Moreover, his
+authority, heavily reinforced by threats of pains and penalties, had
+sufficed, except in a few instances, to restrain the Chickasaw allies of
+the British from wreaking their vengeance on the captive Cherokees in
+the usual tribal method of fire and torture. The inference was obvious.
+Attusah of Kanootare was particularly obnoxious to the British
+government, the civil as well as the military authorities, and fleeing
+from death himself, he intended at all hazards to prevent the escape of
+his prisoner, who would give the alarm, and inaugurate pursuit from the
+party of the ensign.
+
+In this connection a new development attracted the attention of
+MacVintie. As they advanced deeper and deeper into the Cherokee country
+and the signs and sights of war grew remote,--no sounds of volleys nor
+even distant dropping shots clanging from the echoes, no wreaths of
+smoke floating among the hills, no flare of flames flinging crude red
+and yellow streaks across the luminous velvet azure of distant mountains
+with their silver haze, viewed through vistas of craggy chasms near at
+hand,--he observed a lessening of cordiality in the manner of the other
+two Indians toward the Northward Warrior, and a frequency on his part to
+protest that he was a great ada-wehi, and was dead although he appeared
+alive. The truth soon dawned upon the shrewd Scotchman, albeit he
+understood only so much Cherokee as he had chanced to catch up in his
+previous campaign in this region with Montgomerie and the present
+expedition. Attusah was for some reason obnoxious to his own people as
+well as to the British, and was in effect a fugitive from both factions.
+Indeed, the other two Indians presently manifested a disposition to
+avoid him. After much wrangling and obvious discontent and smouldering
+suspicion, one lagged systematically, and, the pace being speedy,
+contrived to fairly quit the party. Digatiski accompanied them two more
+days, then, openly avowing his intent, fell away from the line of march.
+It was instantly diverted toward the Little Tennessee River, on the
+western side of the Great Smoky Mountains; and as Attusah realized that
+without his connivance his captive's escape had become impossible,
+MacVintie found himself unbound, ungagged, and the society of the
+ada-wehi as pleasant as that of a savage ghost can well be.
+
+There was now no effort to escape. MacVintie's obvious policy was to
+await with what patience he might the appearance of the British
+vanguard, who in the sheer vaunt of victory would march from one end of
+the unresisting territory to the other, that all might witness and bow
+before the triumph of the royal authority. As yet remote from the
+advance of the troops, he dared not quit his captor in these sequestered
+regions lest he fall into the power of more inimical Cherokees, maddened
+by disaster, overwhelmed in ruin, furious, and thirsting for revenge for
+the slaughter of their nearest and dearest, and the ashes of their
+homes.
+
+Attusah made known his reason for his own uncharacteristic leniency to a
+soldier of this ruthless army, as they sat together by the shady
+river-side. He went through the dumb show of repeatedly offering to his
+captive guest the fish they had caught, pressing additional portions
+upon him, laughing significantly and joyously throughout his mimicry.
+Then suddenly grave, he seized the Highlander's left arm, giving it an
+earnest grasp about the wrist, the elbow, then close to the shoulder to
+intimate that he spared him for his gift to the needy and helpless.
+
+But Kenneth MacVintie, remembering his ill-starred generosity, flushed
+to the eyebrows, so little it became his record as a soldier, he
+thought, that he should be captured and stand in danger of his life by
+reason of the unmilitary performance of feeding a babbling pappoose.
+
+Attusah, however, could but love him for it; he loved the soldier for
+his kind heart, he said. For great as he himself was, the Northward
+Warrior, he had known how bitter it was to lack kindness.
+
+"It is not happy to be an ada-wehi!" he confessed, "for those who
+believe fear those who do not!"
+
+And tearing open the throat of his bead-embroidered shirt to reveal the
+frightful gashes of the wounds in his breast, he told the story of his
+legal death, with tears in his gay eyes, and a tremor of grief in the
+proud intonations of his voice, that thus had been requited a feat, the
+just guerdon of which should have been the warrior's crown,--in the
+bestowal of which, but for a cowardly fear of the English, all the tribe
+would have concurred.
+
+"_Akee-o-hoosa!_" (I am dead!) he said, pointing at the scars. And the
+Highlander felt that death had obviously been in every stroke, and
+hardly wondered that they who had seen the blows dealt should now
+account the appearance of the man a spectral manifestation, his unquiet
+ghost.
+
+Then, Attusah's mood changing suddenly, "_Tsida-wei-yu!_" (I am a great
+ada-wehi!) he boasted airily.
+
+That he was truly possessed of magical powers seemed to MacVintie least
+to be questioned when he angled, catching the great catfish, after the
+manner of the Indians, with the open palm of his hand. In these fresh
+June mornings he would dive down in some deep shady pool under the dark
+ledges of rock where the catfish are wont to lurk, his right arm wrapped
+to the fingers with a scarlet cloth. Tempted by the seeming bait, the
+catfish would take the finger-tips deep in its gullet, the strong hand
+would instantly clinch on its head, and Attusah would rise with his
+struggling gleaming prey, to be broiled on the coals for breakfast.
+
+But for these finny trophies they too might have suffered for food, in
+the scarcity of game and the lack of powder; but thus well fed, the two
+enemies, like comrades, would loiter beside their camp-fire on the
+banks, awaiting as it were the course of events. The dark green
+crystalline lustre of the shady reaches of the river, where the gigantic
+trees hung over the current, contrasted with the silver glister of the
+ripples far out, shimmering in the full glare of the sun. The breeze,
+exquisitely fragrant, would blow fresh and free from the dense forests.
+The mockingbird, a feathered miracle to the Highlander, would sway on a
+twig above them and sing jubilantly the whole day through and deep into
+the night. The distant mountains would show-softly blue on the horizon
+till the sun was going down, when they would assume a translucent
+jewel-like lustre, amethystine and splendid. And at night all the stars
+were in the dark sky, for the moon was new.
+
+So idle they were they must needs talk and talk. But this was an
+exercise requiring some skill and patience on the part of each, for the
+Scotchman could only by the closest attention gather the meaning of the
+Cherokee language as it was spoken, and the magic of the ada-wehi
+compassed but scanty English. Attusah was further hampered by the
+necessity of pausing now and then to spit out the words of the tongue he
+abhorred as if of an evil taste. Nevertheless it was by means of this
+imperfect linguistic communication that Kenneth MacVintie, keenly alive
+to aught of significance in this strange new world, surrounded with
+unknown unmeasured dangers, was enabled to note how the thoughts of his
+companion ran upon the half king Atta-Kulla-Kulla. Yet whenever a
+question was asked or curiosity suggested, the wary Attusah diverted the
+topic. This fact focused the observation of the shrewd, pertinacious
+Scotchman. At first he deemed the special interest lay in a jealousy of
+artistic handicraft.
+
+Atta-Kulla-Kulla's name implied the superlative of a skillful carver in
+wood, Attusah told him one day.
+
+"An' isna he a skilly man?" MacVintie asked.
+
+"Look at that!" cried the braggart, holding aloft his own work. He was
+carving a pipe from the soft stone of the region, which so lends itself
+to the purpose, hardening when heated. "_Tsida-wei-yu!_"
+
+There was a long pause while the mockingbird sang with an exuberant
+magic which might baffle the emulation of any ada-wehi of them all.
+MacVintie had almost forgotten the episode when Attusah said suddenly
+that the colonists translated the name of Atta-Kulla-Kulla as the
+"Little Carpenter."
+
+"Hegh! they hae a ship named for his honor!" exclaimed the Highlander.
+"I hae seen the Little Carpenter in the harbor in Charlestoun, swingin'
+an' bobbin' at her cables, just out frae the mither country! Her
+captain's name wull be Maitland."
+
+This evidence of the importance of the Cherokee magnate in the opinion
+of the British colonists did not please the ada-wehi. He spat upon the
+ship with ostentatious contempt as it were, and then went on silently
+with his carving.
+
+The mockingbird paused to listen to a note from the hermit thrush in the
+dense rhododendron, still splendidly abloom on the mountain slope. The
+Scotchman's eyes narrowed to distinguish if the white flake of light in
+the deep green water across a little bay were the reflection of the
+flower known as the Chilhowee lily, or the ethereal blossom itself.
+
+Attusah's mind seemed yet with the seagoing craft. He himself knew the
+name of another ship, he said presently; and the Highlander fancied that
+he ill liked to be outdone in knowledge of the outer world.
+
+But it was immediately developed that in this ship Atta-Kulla-Kulla had
+sailed to England many years before to visit King George II. in
+London.[8] Attusah could not at once anglicize the name "Chochoola," but
+after so long a time MacVintie was enabled to identify the Fox, then a
+noted British man-of-war.
+
+In these leisurely beguilements the days passed, until one morning
+Attusah's fears and presentiments were realized in their seizure by a
+party of Cherokees, who swooped down upon their hermitage and bore them
+off by force to the council-house of the town of Citico, where
+Atta-Kulla-Kulla and a number of other head men had assembled to discuss
+the critical affairs of the tribe, and decide on its future policy.
+
+So critical indeed was the situation that it seemed to MacVintie that
+they might well dispense with notice of two factors so inconsiderable in
+the scale of national importance as the ada-wehi and his captive. But
+one was a British prisoner, calculated to expiate in a degree with his
+life the woe and ruin his comrades had wrought. The more essential was
+this course since the triumph of putting him to the torture and death
+would gratify and reanimate many whose zeal was flagging under an
+accumulation of anguish and helpless defeat, and stimulate them to
+renewed exertions. For before the Cherokees would sue for peace they
+waited long in the hope that the French would yet be enabled to convey
+to them a sufficient supply of powder to renew and prosecute the war.
+
+As to the arrest of the other, Attusah of Kanootare, this was necessary
+in the event that submission to the British government became
+inevitable. For since he claimed to be a ghost, surely never was spectre
+so reckless. He had indeed appeared to so many favored individuals that
+the English might fairly have cause to doubt his execution in
+satisfaction of his crimes against the government; and the breach of
+faith on the part of the Cherokee rulers in this conspicuous instance
+might well preclude the granting of any reasonable terms of peace now,
+and subject the whole nation to added hardship.
+
+This was the argument advanced by Atta-Kulla-Kulla as he stood and
+addressed his colleagues, who sat on buffalo-skins in a circle on the
+floor of the council-house of Citico,--the usual dome-shaped edifice,
+daubed within and without with the rich red clay of the country, and
+situated on a high artificial mound in the centre of the town.
+
+The council-fire alone gave light, flashing upon the slender figure and
+animated face of this chief, who, although of slighter physique and
+lower stature than his compeers, wielded by reason of his more
+intellectual qualities so potent an influence among them.
+
+The oratorical gifts of Atta-Kulla-Kulla had signally impressed
+Europeans of culture and experience.[9] Imagine, then, the effect on the
+raw young Highland soldier, hearing the flow of language, watching the
+appropriate and forceful gestures, noting the responsive sentiment in
+the fire-lit countenances of the circle of feather-crested Indians, yet
+comprehending little save that it was a masterpiece of cogent reasoning,
+richly eloquent, and that every word was as a fagot to the flames and a
+pang to the torture.
+
+Attusah of Kanootare, the Northward Warrior, rose to reply in defense of
+himself and his captive, and Atta-Kulla-Kulla listened as courteously as
+the rest, although the speech of the ada-wehi depended, like the oratory
+of many young men, chiefly on a magical assurance. He had an ally,
+however, in the dominant superstition of the Cherokees. Numbers of the
+warriors now ascribed their recent disasters to the neglect of various
+omens, or the omission of certain propitiatory observances of their
+ancient religion, or the perpetration of deeds known to be adversely
+regarded by the ruling spirits of war.
+
+Moreover, they were all aware that this man had been killed, left for
+dead, reported as dead to the British government, which accepted the
+satisfaction thus offered for his crimes,--the deeds themselves,
+however, accounted by him and the rest of the tribe praiseworthy and the
+achievements of war.
+
+And here he was protesting that he was dead and a ghost. "_Akee-o-hoosa!
+Akee-o-hoosa! Tsida-wei-yu!_" he cried continually.
+
+Indeed, this seemed to be the only reasonable method of accounting for
+the renewed presence in the world of a man known to be dead. This was
+his status, he argued. He was a dead man, and this was his captive. The
+Cherokee nation could not pretend to follow with its control the actions
+of a dead man. They themselves had pronounced him dead. He had no place
+in the war. He had been forbidden, on account of his official death, to
+compete for the honors of the campaign. Apart from his former status as
+a Cherokee, merely as a supernatural being, a spirit, an ada-wehi, he
+had captured this British soldier, who was therefore the property of a
+dead man. And the Cherokee law of all things and before all things
+forbade interference with the effects of the dead.
+
+Despite the curling contempt on the lip of Atta-Kulla-Kulla the council
+did not immediately acquiesce in his view, and thus for a time flattered
+the hope of the ada-wehi that they were resting in suspension on the
+details of this choice argument. There was an illogical inversion of
+values in the experience of the tribe, and while they could not now
+accept the worthless figments of long ago, it was not vouchsafed to them
+to enjoy the substantial merits of the new order of things. Reason,
+powder, diplomacy, had brought the Cherokee nation to a point of
+humiliation to which superstition, savagery, and the simplicities of the
+tomahawk had never descended in "the good old times." Reason was never
+so befuddled of aspect, civilization never so undesired as now. In their
+own expanded outlook at life, however, they could not afford to ignore
+the views of Atta-Kulla-Kulla, the advocate of all the newer methods, in
+so important a matter as the release of a British prisoner of war on the
+strange pretext that his captor was a ghost of a peculiar spectral
+power, an ada-wehi, although this course would have been more agreeable
+to the "old beloved" theories of their halcyon days of eld, when the
+Cherokee name was a terror and a threat.
+
+Therefore, averse as they were to subscribe to the modern methods which
+had wrought them such woe and humiliation and defeat, the dominant
+superstition of the race now fell far short of the fantasy of liberating
+a British prisoner at this crisis under the influence of any spectral
+manifestation whatsoever. The council was obviously steeled against this
+proposition, as MacVintie shortly perceived, and equally determined that
+the ada-wehi must needs exert phenomenal and magical powers indeed to
+avoid yet making good the nation's pledge of his death to the British
+government, and becoming a ghost in serious earnest. MacVintie's heart
+sank within him as he noted the hardening of the lines of their grave
+harsh faces and the affirmative nodding of the feather-crested heads,
+conferring together, as the decision was reached.
+
+It accorded, however, with their ancient custom to postpone over a night
+the execution of any sentence of special weight, and therefore the
+council adjourned to the next day, the two prisoners being left in the
+deserted building, each securely bound with a rope to a pillar of the
+series which upheld the roof of the strange circular edifice. This
+colonnade stood about four feet from the wall, and the interval between
+was occupied by a divan, fashioned of dexterously woven cane, extending
+around the room; and as the prisoners could seat themselves here, or lie
+at full length, they were subjected to no greater hardship than was
+consistent with their safe custody.
+
+A sentinel with his musket on his shoulder stood at the door, and the
+sun was going down. Kenneth MacVintie could see through the open portal
+the red glow in the waters of the Tennessee River. Now and then a flake
+of a glittering white density glided through it, which his eyes,
+accustomed to long distances, discriminated as a swan. Thunder-heads,
+however, were gathering above the eastern slopes and the mountains were
+a lowering slate-toned purple, save when a sudden flash of lightning
+roused them to a vivid show of green.
+
+The dull red hue of the interior of the council-house darkened
+gradually; the embers of the council-fire faded into the gray ash, and
+the night came sullen and threatening before its time.
+
+The young Highlander sought to bend his mind to the realization that his
+days on earth were well-nigh ended, and that it behooved him to think on
+the morrow elsewhere. He had an old-fashioned religious faith presumed
+to be fitted for any emergency, but in seeking to recall its dogmas and
+find such consolation in its theories as might sustain a martyr at the
+stake, he was continually distracted with the momentous present.
+
+The two prisoners could no longer see each other, and the little
+gestures and significant glances which had supplemented their few words,
+and made up for the lack of better conversational facilities were
+impracticable in the darkness.
+
+The silent obscurity was strangely lonely. MacVintie began to doubt if
+the other still lived.
+
+"Attusah!" he said at length.
+
+"_Tsida-wei-yu!_" (I am a great ada-wehi) murmured the ghost
+mechanically.
+
+He was quite spent, exhausted by the effort to logically exist as a
+ghost in a world which had repudiated him as a live man.
+
+MacVintie, who found it hard enough to reconcile himself to die once,
+felt a poignant sympathy for him, who must needs die again. But the
+Highlander could not think. He could not even pray. He desisted from the
+fitful effort after a time. He had a depressing realization that a good
+soldier relies upon the proficiency acquired by the daily drill to serve
+in an emergency, not a special effort at smartness for an occasion. The
+battle or the review would show the quality of the stuff that was in
+him.
+
+Despite the stunned despair which possessed his mental faculties, his
+physical senses were keenly acute. He marked unconsciously the details
+of the rising of the wind bringing the storm hitherward. A searching
+flash of lightning showed the figure of the sentinel, half crouching
+before the blast, at his post in the open portal. The rain was presently
+falling heavily, and ever and anon a great suffusion of yellow glare in
+its midst revealed the myriads of slanting lines as it came. He inhaled
+the freshened fragrance it brought from the forests. He noted the
+repeated crash of the thunder, the far-away rote of the echoes, the
+rhythmic beat of the torrents on the ground, and their tumultuous swift
+dash down the slope of the dome-shaped roof, and suddenly among these
+turmoils,--he could hardly believe his ears,--a mild little whimper of
+protest.
+
+The sentinel heard it too. MacVintie saw his dark figure in the doorway
+as he turned his head to listen. A woman's voice sounded immediately,
+bidding a child beware how he cried, lest she call the great white owl,
+the Oo-koo-ne-kah, to catch him!
+
+The flare of the lightning revealed a pappoose the next moment, upright
+in his perpendicular cradle, as it swung on his mother's back, in the
+drenching downpour of the rain, for the woman had advanced to the
+sentinel and was talking loudly and eagerly.
+
+Kenneth silently recognized the small creature who had moved him to a
+trivial charity which had resulted in so strangely disproportionate a
+disaster. Doubtless, however, the squaws would never have been able to
+return to their accustomed place but for the food which he had given
+them, sustaining them on the journey home.
+
+It would imply some mission of importance surely, he thought, to induce
+the woman to expose the child to a tempest like this; and indeed the
+pappoose, buffeted by the wind, the rain full in his face, lifted up his
+voice again in a protest so loud and vehement that his mother was
+enabled to see the great white owl, whose business it is to remove
+troublesome little Cherokees from the sphere of worry of their elders,
+already winging his way hither. One might wonder if the Oo-koo-ne-kah
+would do worse for him than his maternal guardian, but pelted by the
+pitiless rain he promptly sank his bleatings to a mere babble of a
+whimper. Thereby Kenneth was better enabled to hear what the woman was
+saying to the sentinel.
+
+An important mission indeed, as MacVintie presently gathered, for she
+must needs lift her voice stridently to be heard above the din of the
+elements. Some powder, only a little it was true, had been sent by the
+French to the town, and a share had been left at the house of the
+sentinel that night in the general distribution. But there was no one at
+home. All his family were across the mountains, whither, according to
+the custom of the Cherokees, they had gone to find and bring back the
+body of his brother, who had been killed in the fight at Etchoee. And
+the leak in the roof! She, his nearest neighbor, had just bethought
+herself of the leak in the roof! Would not the powder, the precious
+powder, be ruined? Had he not best go to see at once about it?
+
+He hesitated, letting the butt of his gun sink to the ground. She seized
+the weapon promptly. She would stand guard here till he returned, she
+promised. The prisoners were bound. They could not move. It would
+require but an instant's absence,--and the powder was so scarce, so
+precious!
+
+The next moment the sentinel was gone! The darkness descended, doubly
+intense, after a succession of electric flashes; the rain fell with
+renewed force. MacVintie suddenly heard the babbling whimper quite close
+beside him, somewhat subdued by a fierce maternal admonition to listen
+to the terrible voice of the Oo-koo-ne-kah, coming to catch a Cherokee
+cry-baby!
+
+A stroke of a knife here and there, and the two prisoners were freed
+from their bonds. The Highland soldier did not know whether Attusah
+looked back while in flight, but his last glimpse of the Cherokee town
+of Citico showed the broad glare of lightning upon the groups of conical
+roofs in the slanting lines of rain; the woman on the high mound at the
+portal of the council-house, with the pappoose on her back and the gun
+in her hand; the sentinel once more climbing the ascent to his post. And
+the last words he heard were chronicling the adverse sentiments
+entertained toward bad children by the Oo-koo-ne-kah, the mysterious
+great white owl.
+
+The escape was not discovered till the next day, and was universally
+attributed to the magic of the ada-wehi. Even the sentinel himself
+doubted naught, having left a trusty deputy in his stead, for the
+devotion of the Cherokee women to the tribal cause was proverbial, and
+gratitude, even for a rescue from starvation, is not usually an urgent
+motive power.
+
+Kenneth MacVintie was seen again in the Cherokee country only in his
+place as a marker in the march of his regiment, and as he was evidently
+exceedingly desirous to permit no one to incur penalties for his
+liberation, his officers spared him questions concerning his escape,
+save in a general way.
+
+When the ada-wehi next reappeared in a remote town of the district and
+was sedulously interrogated as to how his freedom had been achieved, he
+threw out his right hand at arm's length in his old, boastful, airy
+gesture.
+
+"_Cheesto kaiere!_" (An old rabbit!) he exclaimed. "A little old rabbit
+ran down the slope. I turned the soldier into a rabbit, and he ran away.
+And I turned myself into a fish, and I swam away. Ha! _Tsida-wei-yu!_"
+(I am a great ada-wehi!)
+
+
+
+
+THE FATE OF THE CHEERA-TAGHE
+
+
+Along the old "trading-path" that was wont to wind from the Cherokee
+country among the innumerable spurs and gorges of the Great Smoky
+Mountains, and through the dense primeval forests full five hundred
+miles to the city of Charlestown, was visible for many years, on the
+banks of the Little Tennessee, an "old waste town," as the abandoned
+place was called in the idiom of the Indians. An early date it might
+seem, in 1744, in this new land, for the spectacle of the ruins of a
+race still in possession, still unsubdued. Nearly twenty years later,
+after the repeated aggressive expeditions which the British government
+sent against the Cherokees, such vestiges became more numerous. This
+"waste town," however, neither fire nor sword had desolated, and the
+grim deeds of British powder and lead were still of the future. The
+enemy came in more subtle sort.
+
+Only one of the white pack-men employed to drive a score of well-laden
+horses semi-annually from Charlestown to a trading-station farther along
+on the Great Tennessee--then called the Cherokee River--and back again
+used to glower fearfully at the "waste town" as he passed. He had ample
+leisure for speculation, for the experienced animals of the pack-train
+required scant heed, so regularly they swung along in single file, and
+the wild whoops of their drivers were for the sake of personal
+encouragement and the simple joy which very young men find in their own
+clamor. It grew specially boisterous always when they neared the site of
+Nilaque Great, the deserted place, as if to give warning to any vague
+spiritual essences, unmeet for mortal vision, that might be lurking
+about the "waste town," and bid them avaunt, for the place was reputed
+haunted.
+
+The rest of the Carolina pack-men, trooping noisily past, averted their
+eyes from the darkened doors of the empty houses; the weed-grown spaces
+of the "beloved square," where once the ceremonies of state, the
+religious rites, the public games and dances were held; the
+council-house on its high mound, whence had been wont to issue the bland
+vapors of the pipe of peace or the far more significant smoke emitted
+from the cheera, the "sacred fire," which only the cheera-taghe, the
+fire-prophets,[10] were permitted to kindle, and which was done with
+pomp and ceremony in the new year, when every spark of the last year's
+fire had been suffered to die out.
+
+Cuthbert Barnett, however, always looked to see what he might,--perhaps
+because he was a trifle bolder than the other stalwart pack-men, all
+riding armed to the teeth to guard the goods of the train from robbery
+as well as their own lives from treachery, for although the Cherokees
+professed friendship it was but half-hearted, as they loved the French
+always better than the English; perhaps because he had a touch of
+imagination that coerced his furtive glance; perhaps because he doubted
+more, or believed less, of the traditions of the day. And he
+saw--silence! the sunset in vacant spaces, with long, slanting,
+melancholy rays among the scattered houses of the hamlet; an empty
+doorway, here and there; a falling rotting roof; futile traces of
+vanished homes. Once a deer and fawn were grazing in the weed-grown
+fields that used to stand so thick with corn that they laughed and sung;
+once--it was close upon winter--he heard a bear humming and humming his
+content (the hunters called the sound "singing") from the den where the
+animal had bestowed himself among the fallen logs of a dwelling-house,
+half covered with great drifts of dead leaves; often an owl would cry
+out in alarm from some dark nook as the pack-train clattered past; and
+once a wolf with a stealthy and sinister tread was patrolling the
+"beloved square." These were but the natural incidents of the time and
+the ruins of the old Cherokee town.
+
+Little did Cuddy Barnett imagine, as he gazed on the deserted and
+desolate place, that he was yet to behold the smoke of the "sacred fire"
+flaring up into the blue sky from the portal of the temple, as the
+cheera-taghe would issue bearing the flame aloft, newly kindled in the
+opening year, and calling upon many assembled people to light therefrom
+their hearths, rekindling good resolutions and religious fervor for the
+future, and letting the faults of the unavailing past die out with the
+old year's fire; that he was to mark the clash of arms in the "beloved
+square," once more populous with the alert figures of warriors in
+martial array, making ready for the war-path; that he was to hear the
+joyful religious songs of greeting to the dawn, and the sonorous
+trumpeting of the conch-shells, as the vanished Indians of the "old
+waste town" would troop down at daybreak into the water of that bright
+stream where long ago they had been wont to plunge in their mystic
+religious ablutions. All this, however, the pack-men might see and hear,
+to believe the tradition of the day, in camping but a single night near
+the old "waste town."
+
+And so anxious were these gay itinerant companies to see and hear
+nothing of such ghostly sort that whatever the stress of the weather,
+the mischances of the journey, the condition of the pack-animals, this
+vicinity was always distinguished by the longest day's travel of the
+whole route, and the camp was pitched at the extreme limit of the
+endurance of man and horse to compass distance from Nilaque Great. For
+believe what one might, the fact remained indisputable, that a decade
+earlier, when the place was inhabited, strange sounds were rife about
+the locality, the "sacred fire" was unkindled on the great "Sanctified
+Day," the two cheera-taghe of the town mysteriously disappeared, and
+their fate had remained a dark riddle.
+
+One of these men, Oo-koo-koo, was well known in Charlestown. Both were
+of influence in the tribe, but often he had been specially chosen as one
+of the delegations of warriors and "beloved men" sent to wait in
+diplomatic conference on the Governor of South Carolina, to complain of
+injustice in the dealings of the licensed traders or the encroachments
+of the frontier settlers, or to crave the extension of some privilege of
+the treaty which the Cherokee tribe had lately made with the British
+government.
+
+Two white men, who had become conspicuous in a short stay in the town of
+Nilaque Great, disappeared simultaneously, and the suspicion of foul
+dealing on their part against the cheera-taghe, which the Cherokee
+nation seemed disposed to entertain, threatened at one time the peace
+that was so precious to the "infant settlements," as the small, remote,
+stockaded stations of the Carolina frontiersmen were tenderly called.
+
+Therefore the Governor of South Carolina, now a royal province,--the
+event occurred during the incumbency of Robert Johnson, who having acted
+in that capacity for the Lords Proprietors, well understood the menace
+of the situation,--busied himself with extreme diligence to discover the
+subsequent movements of the two white men, whose names were Terence
+O'Kimmon and Adrien L'Épine, in order to ascertain the fate of the
+cheera-taghe, and if evilly entreated, to bring the perpetrators of the
+deed to justice.
+
+With a long, unguarded, open frontier such as his province presented to
+the incursions of the warlike and fierce Cherokees, who, despite their
+depopulating wars with other tribes, could still bring to the field six
+thousand braves from their sixty-four towns, the inhabitants of which
+were estimated at twenty thousand souls, he was by no means disposed to
+delay or to indulge doubts or to foster compatriot commiseration in
+meting out the penalty of the malefactors. The united militia of South
+Carolina and Georgia at this time numbered but thirty-five hundred rank
+and file, these colonies being so destitute of white men for the common
+defense that a memorial addressed to his majesty King George II. a
+little earlier than this event, bearing date April 9, 1734, pathetically
+states that "money itself cannot here raise a sufficient body of them."
+The search for the suspects, however, although long, exhaustive, and of
+such diligence as to convince the Indians of its sincerity of purpose,
+resulted fruitlessly. The government presently took occasion to made
+some valuable presents to the tribe, not as indemnity, for it could
+recognize no responsibility in the strange disaster, but for the sake of
+seeming to comply with the form of offering satisfaction for the loss,
+which otherwise the Indians would retaliate with massacre.
+
+Nilaque Great with this cloud upon it grew dreary. The strange
+disappearance of its cheera-taghe was canvassed again and again,
+reaching no surmise of the truth. Speculations, futile as they were
+continuous, began to be reinforced with reminiscences of the date of the
+event, and certain episodes became strangely significant now, although
+hardly remarked at the time; people remembered unexplained and curious
+noises that had sounded like muffled thunder in the deep midnight, and
+again, scarcely noted, in the broad daylight. The "sacred fire" remained
+unkindled, and sundry misfortunes were attributed to this unprecedented
+neglect; an expert warrior, young and notably deft-handed, awkwardly
+shot himself with his own gun; the crops, cut short by a late and
+long-continued drought, were so meagre as to be hardly worth the
+harvesting; the days appointed for the annual feasts and thanksgiving
+were like days of mourning; discontents waxed and grew strong.
+Superstitious terrors became rife, and at length it was known at
+Charlestown that the Cherokees of Nilaque Great had settled a new place
+farther down upon the river, for at the old town the vanished
+cheera-taghe were abroad in the spirit, pervading the "beloved square"
+at night with cries of "_A-kee-o-hoo-sa! A-kee-o-hoo-sa!_" (I am dead! I
+am dead!) clamoring for their graves and the honors of sepulture due to
+them and denied. And this was a grief to the head men of the town, for
+of all tribes the Cherokees loved and revered their dead. Thus when
+other cheera-taghe kindled for the municipality the "sacred fire" for a
+new year it was distributed to hearths far away, and Nilaque Great,
+deserted and depopulated, had become a "waste town."
+
+A fair place it had been in its prime, and so it had seemed one
+afternoon in June, 1734, when for the first time the two white strangers
+had entered it. Mountains more splendid than those which rose about it
+on every hand it would be difficult to imagine. The dense, rich woods
+reach in undiminished vigor along the slopes covering them at a height
+of six thousand feet, till the "tree line" interposes; thence the great
+bare domes lift their stately proportions among the clouds. Along these
+lofty perspectives the varying distance affords the vision a vast array
+of gradations of color,--green in a thousand shades, and bronze, and
+purple, and blue,--blue growing ever fainter and more remote till it is
+but an illusion of azure, and one may believe that the summits seen
+through a gap to the northeast are sheer necromancy of the facile
+horizon.
+
+In the deep verdant cove below, groups of the giant trees common to the
+region towered above the stanchly constructed cabins that formed the
+homes of the Indians, for the Cherokees, detesting labor and experts in
+procrastination, builded well and wisely that they might not be forced
+to rebuild, and many of the distinctive features of the stout frontier
+architecture were borrowed by the pioneers from aboriginal example. Out
+beyond the shadows were broad stretches of fields with the lush June in
+the wide and shining blade and the flaunting tassel. The voices of women
+and young girls came cheerily from the breezy midst as they tilled the
+ground, where flourished in their proper divisions the three varieties
+of maize known to Indian culture, "the six weeks' corn, the hominy corn,
+and the bread corn." A shoal of canoes skimmed down the river, each with
+its darting shadow upon that lucent current and seeming as native, as
+indigenous to the place as the minnows in a crystal brown pool there by
+the waterside--each too with its swift javelin-like motion and a darting
+shadow. Sundry open doors here and there showed glimpses of passing
+figures within, but the arrival of the strangers was unnoticed till some
+children playing beside the river caught sight of the unaccustomed
+faces. With a shrill cry of discovery, they sped across the square,
+agitated half by fright and half by the gusto of novelty. In another
+moment there were two score armed men in the square.
+
+"Now hould yer tongue still, an' I'll do the talkin'," said one of the
+white adventurers to the other, speaking peremptorily, but with a suave
+and delusive smile. "If yez weren't Frinch ye'd be a beautiful
+Englishman; but I hev got the advantage of ye in that, an' faix I'll
+kape it."
+
+He was evidently of a breeding inferior to that of his companion, but he
+had so sturdy and swinging a gait, so stalwart and goodly a build, so
+engaging a manner, and so florid a smile, that the very sight of him was
+disarming, despite the patent crafty deceit in his face. It seemed as if
+it could not be very deep or guileful, it was so frankly expressed. It
+was suggestive of the roguish machinations of a child. He had twinkling
+brown eyes, and reddish hair, plaited in a club and tied with a thong of
+leather. His features were blunt, but his red, well-shaped lips parted
+in a ready, reassuring smile, and showed teeth as even and white as the
+early corn. Both men were arrayed in the buckskin shirt and leggings
+generally worn by the frontiersmen, but the face of the other had a
+certain incongruity with his friend's, and was more difficult to
+decipher. It looked good,--not kind, but true. It had severe pragmatic
+lines about the mouth, and the lips were thin and somewhat fixedly set.
+His eyes were dark, serious, and very intent, as if he could argue and
+protest very earnestly on matters of no weight. He would in a question
+of theory go very far if set on the wrong line, and just as far on the
+right. The direction was the matter of great moment, and this seemed now
+in the hands of the haphazard but scheming Irishman.
+
+"If it plaze yer honor," said O'Kimmon in English, taking off his
+coonskin cap with a lavish flourish as a tall and stately Indian hastily
+garbed in fine raiment of the aboriginal type, a conspicuous article of
+which was a long feather-wrought mantle, both brilliant and delicate of
+effect, detached himself from the group and came forward, "I can't spake
+yer illigant language,--me eddication bein' that backward,--but I kin
+spake me own so eloquent that it would make a gate-post prick up the
+ears of understanding. We've come to visit yez, sor."
+
+The smile which the Hibernian bent upon the savage was of a honeyed
+sweetness, but the heart of his companion sank as he suddenly noted the
+keen, intuitive power of comprehension expressed in the face of the old
+Indian. Here was craft too, but of a different quality, masked, potent,
+impossible to divine, to measure, to thwart. The sage Oo-koo-koo stood
+motionless, his eyes narrowing, his long, flat, cruel mouth compressed
+as with a keen scrutiny he marked all the characteristics of the
+strangers,--first of one, then deliberately of the other. A war captain
+(his flighty name was Watatuga, the Dragon-fly, although he looked with
+his high nose and eagle glance more like a bird of prey), assuming
+precedence of the others, pressed up beside the prophet, and the
+challenge of his eyes and the contempt that dilated his nostrils might
+have seemed more formidable of intent than the lacerating gaze of the
+cheera-taghe, except that to an Irishman there is always a subtle joy
+even in the abstract idea of fight. The rest of the braves, with their
+alert, high-featured cast of countenance, inimical, threatening,
+clustered about, intent, doubtful, listening.
+
+Adrien L'Épine had his secret doubts as to the efficacy of the bold,
+blunt, humorous impudence which Terence O'Kimmon fancied such masterful
+policy,--taking now special joy in the fact that its meaning was
+partially veiled because of the presumable limitations of the Indian's
+comprehension of the English language. The more delicate nurture that
+L'Épine obviously had known revolted at times from this unkempt
+brusquerie, although he had a strong pulse of sympathy with the wild,
+lawless disregard of conventional standards which characterized much of
+the frontier life. He feared, too, that O'Kimmon underrated the extent
+of the Cherokee's comprehension of the language of which, however, the
+Indians generally spoke only a few disconnected phrases. So practiced
+were the savages in all the arts of pantomime, in the interpretation of
+facial expression and the intonation of the voice, that L'Épine had
+known in his varied wanderings of instances of tribes in conference,
+each ignorant of the other's language, who nevertheless reached a
+definite and intricate mutual understanding without the services of an
+interpreter. L'Épine felt entrapped, regretful, and wished to recede. He
+winced palpably as O'Kimmon's rich Irish voice, full of words, struck
+once more upon the air.
+
+"Me godson, the Governor o' South Carolina," Terence O'Kimmon resumed,
+lying quite recklessly, "sint his humble respects,--an' he's that swate
+upon yez that he licks his fingers ter even sphake yer name! (Pity I
+furgits ut, bein' I never knew ut!)"
+
+Although possessing an assurance that he could get the better of the
+devil, "could he but identify him," as O'Kimmon frequently said, he felt
+for one moment as if he were now in the presence. Despite his nerve the
+silence terrified him. He was beginning to cringe before the steady
+glare of those searching eyes. It was even as a refreshment of spirit to
+note a sudden bovine snort of rage from the lightsome Dragon-fly, as if
+he could ill bridle his inimical excitement.
+
+The adventurers had not anticipated a reception of this sort, for the
+hospitality of the Indians was proverbial. Credentials surely were not
+necessary in the social circles of the Cherokees, and two men to six
+thousand offered no foundation for fear. O'Kimmon had such confidence in
+his own propitiating wiles and crafty policy that he did not realize how
+his genial deceit was emblazoned upon his face, how blatant it was in
+his voice. But for its challenging duplicity there would hardly have
+arisen a suggestion of suspicion. Many men on various errands easily
+found their way into the Indian tribes when at peace with the British,
+and suffered no injury. Nevertheless as the wise Oo-koo-koo looked at
+O'Kimmon thus steadily, with so discerning a gaze, the Irishman felt
+each red hair of his scalp rise obtrusively into notice, as if to
+suggest the instant taking of it. He instinctively put on his coonskin
+cap again to hold his scalp down, as he said afterward.
+
+"Why come?" Oo-koo-koo demanded sternly.
+
+"Tell the truth, for God's sake!" L'Épine adjured O'Kimmon in a low
+voice.
+
+"I'm not used to it! 'T would give me me death o' cold!" quavered the
+Irishman, in sad sincerity, at a grievous loss.
+
+"_Asgaya uneka_ (White man), but no Ingliss," said the astute Indian,
+touching the breast of each with the bowl of his pipe, still in his hand
+and still alight as it was when the interruption of their advent had
+occurred.
+
+"No, by the powers,--not English!" exclaimed the Irishman impulsively,
+seeing he was already discovered. "I'm me own glorious nation!--the
+pride o' the worruld,--I was born in the Emerald Isle, the gem o' the
+say! I'm an Oirishman from the tip o' me scalp--in the name o' pity
+_why_ should I mintion the contrivance" (dropping his voice to an
+appalled muffled tone)--"may the saints purtect ut! But surely, Mister
+Injun, I've no part nor lot with the bloody bastes o' Englishers either
+over the say or in the provinces. If I were the brother-in-law o' the
+Governor o' South Carolina I'd hev a divorce from the murtherin'
+Englisher before he could cry, 'Quarter!'"
+
+Oo-koo-koo, the wise Owl, made no direct answer.
+
+"_Asgaya uneka_ (White man), but no Ingliss," he only said, now
+indicating L'Épine.
+
+"Frinch in the mornin', plaze yer worship, an' only a bit o' English
+late in the afternoon o' the day," cried O'Kimmon, officiously, himself
+once more.
+
+"French father, English mother," explained L'Épine, feeling that the
+Indian was hardly a safe subject for the pleasantries of conundrums.
+
+"But his mother was but a wee bit of a woman," urged O'Kimmon; "the most
+of him is Frinch,--look at the size of him!"
+
+For O'Kimmon was now bidding as high against the English aegis as
+earlier he had been disposed to claim its protection, when he had
+protested his familiarity with the Royal Governor of South Carolina. In
+an instant he was once more gay, impudent, confident of carrying
+everything before him. He divined that some recent friction had
+supervened in the ever-clashing interests subsisting between the
+Cherokee nation and the British government, and was relying on the
+recurrent inclination of this tribe to fraternize with the French. Their
+influence from their increasing western settlements was exerted
+antagonistically to the British colonists, by whom it was dreaded in
+anticipation of the war against a French and Cherokee alliance which
+came later. Oo-koo-koo, complacent in his own sagacity in having
+detected a difference in the speech of the new-comers from the English
+which he had been accustomed to hear in Charlestown, and animated by a
+wish to believe, hearkened with the more credulity to an expansive
+fiction detailed by the specious Irishman as to their mission here.
+
+They were awaiting the coming of certain pettiaugres from New
+Orleans,--a long journey by way of the Mississippi, the Ohio, the
+Cherokee, and the Tennessee rivers,--with a cargo of French goods
+cheaper than the English. They designed to establish a trading-post at
+some convenient point, out of reach of the grasping British, and thus to
+compete with the monopoly of the Cherokee commerce which the English
+government sought to foster. And then, to furnish a leaven of truth to
+this mass of lies, he detailed, with such a relish as only an Irishman
+can feel in a happy incongruity, that the French, having no market in
+old France for deerskins, the chief commodity of barter that the Indians
+possessed, disposed of them to ships of the British colonies, from New
+York and elsewhere, lured thus to New Orleans, in exchange for English
+cloths and other British manufactures, which the French then
+surreptitiously furnished to the Indians of the British alliance,
+underselling them on every hand.
+
+"The intellects of the Frinch are so handsome!" cried O'Kimmon, the
+tears of delighted laughter in his eyes. "Faix, that is what makes 'em
+so close kin to the Oirish!"
+
+Albeit the Cherokee treaty with the British forbade the Indians to trade
+with white men of any other nationality than the English, these
+professed aliens were promised protection and concealment from the
+British government, and the pretext of their mission served to
+countenance their lingering stay.
+
+Soon their presence seemed a matter of course. The Indians had recurred
+to their methods of suave hospitality. The two strangers encountered
+only friendly looks and words, while affecting to gratify curiosity by
+peering into all the unaccustomed habitudes,--the preparation of food,
+the manufacture of deerskin garments, the care of the sick, the modeling
+of bowls and jars of clay, in which the Cherokees were notably expert as
+well as in the weaving of feather-wrought fabrics and baskets, the
+athletic games, the horse-races, the continual dances and pantomimic
+plays,--and were presently domiciled as it were in the tribe. Of so
+little note did they soon become that when they gradually ceased these
+manifestations of interest, as if familiarity had sated their curiosity,
+it seemed to occasion no comment. They were obviously free to rove, to
+stay, to live their lives as they would without interference or
+surveillance.
+
+Nevertheless, they still maintained the utmost caution. Sometimes,
+idleness being no phenomenon, they would lie half the day in the shade
+on the river-bank. The Tennessee was shrunken now in the heated season,
+and great gravelly slopes were exposed. The two loiterers were
+apparently motionless at first, but as their confidence increased and
+the chances of being observed lessened, L'Épine, always dreading
+discovery, began to casually pass the gravel and sand through his
+fingers as he lay; sometimes he idly trifled with the blade of a hoe in
+a shallow pool left by the receding waters, while the jolly Irishman,
+now grave and solicitous, watched him breathlessly. Then L'Épine would
+shake his head, and the mercurial O'Kimmon groaned his deep despondency.
+
+Once the Frenchman's head was not shaken. A flush sprang up among the
+pragmatic lines of L'Épine's face; his dark eyes glittered; his hand
+shook; for as he held out the hoe, on its blade were vaguely glimmering
+particles among the sand.
+
+Later the two adventurers cherished a small nugget of red, red gold!
+
+This find chanced below a bluff in a sort of grotto of rock, which the
+water filled when the river was high, and left quite dry and exposed as
+it receded in the droughts of summer.
+
+Whether the two strangers were too much and too long out of sight;
+whether attention was attracted by certain perforated dippers or pans
+which they now brought into assiduous use, but which they sought to
+conceal; whether they had been all the time furtively watched, with a
+suspicion never abated, one can hardly say. They had observed every
+precaution of secrecy that the most zealous heed could suggest. Only one
+worked with the pan while the other lay motionless and idle, and
+vigilantly watched and listened for any stealthy sign of approach. They
+fully realized the jealousy of the Indians concerning the mineral wealth
+of their territory, lest its discovery bring hordes of the craving white
+people to dispossess them. This prophetic terror was later fulfilled in
+the Ayrate division of the tribe, but to the northward, along the
+Tennessee River, they sedulously guarded this knowledge. Traditions
+there are to the present day in the Great Smoky Mountains concerning
+mines of silver and lead, and of localities rich in auriferous gravel
+which are approximately ascertained, but which the Cherokees knew
+accurately and worked as far as they listed;--they carried their secret
+with them to the grave or the far west.
+
+The exploration of L'Épine and O'Kimmon of necessity was conducted
+chiefly by day, but one night the prospectors could not be still, the
+moon on the sand was so bright!
+
+The time which they had fixed for a silent, secret departure was drawing
+near. Their bags were almost filled, but they lingered for a little
+more, and covetously a little more still. And this night, this memorable
+night, the moon on the sand was as bright as day!
+
+The light slanted across the Tennessee River and shimmered in the
+ripples. One could see, if one would, the stately lines of dark summits
+along a far horizon. A mockingbird was singing from out the boscage of
+the laurel near at hand, and the night wind was astir. And suddenly the
+two gold-washers in the depths of the grotto became conscious that they
+were not alone.
+
+There, sitting like stone figures one on each side of the narrow portal,
+were the two cheera-taghe of the town, silent, motionless, watching with
+eyes how long alert, listening with ears how discerningly attentive, it
+is impossible to divine.
+
+The gold-washers sprang to their feet, each instinctively grasping for
+his weapon, but alack, neither was armed! The pan had come to seem the
+most potent of accoutrements, with which, in good sooth, one might take
+the world by storm, and the rifle and knife were forgotten, in their
+absorption. Doubtless the Cherokees interpreted aright the gesture, so
+significant, so obvious to their methods of life. Both the cheera-taghe
+were armed with pistol as well as tomahawk and scalping-knife.
+
+Perhaps because of this they felt secure, at leisure, acquiescently
+allowing the event to develop as it needs must,--or perhaps realizing
+the significance of the discovery to the young strangers, their
+palpitant eagerness to gauge its result, their dread of reprisal, of
+forced renunciation of their booty, the Indians permitted themselves a
+relish of the torture of an enemy on a more aesthetic scheme than their
+wont.
+
+The two cheera-taghe, the shadow of their feather-crested heads in the
+moonlight on the sand of the grotto almost as distinct as the reality,
+spoke suddenly to each other, and the discomfited gold-seekers, who had
+learned to comprehend to a certain extent the language, perceived with
+dismay the sarcasm that lengthened their suspense. For it was thus that
+the rulers among the Cherokees rebuked their own young people, not
+upbraiding them with their misdeeds, but with gentle satire
+complimenting them for that in which they had notably failed.
+
+"A reward for hospitality we find in these young men," said one, whose
+voice was hoarse and croaking and guttural and who was called Kanoona
+(the Bull-frog).
+
+"Strangers to us, yet they requite us, for we treated them as our own,"
+said Oo-koo-koo.
+
+"They treat us as _their own!_" the croaking, satiric, half-smothered
+laughter of this response intimated an aside. Then Kanoona in full voice
+went on, "Open and frank as the day, they keep no secrets from us!"
+
+"They are honest! They rob us not of the yellow stone which the Carolina
+people think so precious!" rejoined Oo-koo-koo, while O'Kimmon and
+L'Épine looked from one to the other as the cheera-taghe sustained this
+fugue of satiric accusation.
+
+"Not they," croaked the responsive voice, "for behold, we have long time
+fed and lodged them and given them of our best. We have believed them
+and trusted them. We have befriended them and loved them."
+
+"And they have befriended and loved us!" said Oo-koo-koo.
+
+Then silence. The river sang, but only a murmurous rune; the mute
+moonlight lay still on the mountains; the wind had sunk, and the
+motionless leaves glistened as the dew fell; a nighthawk swept past the
+portal of the grotto with the noiseless wing of its kind.
+
+"Had they desired to explore our land they would have asked our
+consent," the croaking voice of Kanoona resumed the antiphonal reproach.
+"They would not have brought upon us the hordes of British colonists,
+who would fain drive us from our habitations for their greed of the
+yellow stone."
+
+"Oh, no! never would they make so base a recompense!--to bring upon us
+the destruction of our men and women and children, the wresting from us
+of our land, the casting of us forth from our homes,--because the poor,
+unsuspecting Indians gave them food and shelter and a haven of rest
+while waiting for the pettiaugres that are coming up from New Orleans."
+
+"_The pettiaugres from New Orleans_!" Kanoona repeated with a burst of
+raucous laughter. "Hala! Hala!"
+
+But Oo-koo-koo preserved his gravity. "They would not lie! Surely the
+white men would not lie!"
+
+Then turning to O'Kimmon he asked point-blank, "Chee-a-koh-ga?" (Do you
+lie?)
+
+The direct address was a relief to O'Kimmon. He had often wondered to
+see the young braves reduced almost to tears by this seemingly gentle
+discipline; he felt its poignancy when the keen blade of satire was
+turned against himself.
+
+"I did lie!" he admitted, as unreservedly as it he were at confession.
+"But Oo-koo-koo, we will pay for what we've got. This is all of ut! An'
+faix, yez have thrated us well,--an' begorra, we would have axed yer
+consint, if we had dramed we could have got ut!" he concluded
+ingenuously.
+
+The two Indians gazed at him with a surprise so evident that a chill ran
+through his every nerve.
+
+"We will never reveal the secret,--the place of the gold," declared
+L'Épine. Then perceiving in his turn something uncomprehended in their
+expression he reinforced his promise with argument. "We will want to
+come back--alone--to get more of it--all for ourselves. We will not be
+willing to share our discovery with others."
+
+The cheera-taghe still silently gazed at the two young men; then turned
+toward each other with that patent astonishment yet on their faces. At
+last they burst forth into sarcastic laughter.
+
+L'Épine and O'Kimmon, albeit half bewildered, exchanged appalled
+glances. There was no need of speech. Each understood at last.
+
+Return! There was no chance of departure. They were to pay the penalty
+of the dangerous knowledge they had acquired. Already some vague report,
+some suspicion of the hidden gold of the locality had been bruited
+abroad,--thus the Indians must reason,--or these white men would not
+have come so far to seek it. Should they be permitted to depart, their
+sudden wealth would proclaim its source, even though as they had
+promised they should keep silence.
+
+This was equally true should they eventually escape. Therefore--hideous
+realization!--the actual possession by the Indians of their own country
+depended upon the keeping of the secret inviolate. Dead men tell no
+tales!
+
+O'Kimmon, with a swelling heart, bethought himself of his status as a
+British subject and the possible vengeance of the province. It would
+come, if at all, too late. For the Cherokees believed the two to be
+without the pale of the English protection. One had repudiated the
+government, declaring himself an Irishman, a nationality then unknown to
+the Cherokees. The other was French,--no reprisal for his sake was
+possible to a tribe under British allegiance. Death it must
+be!--doubtless with all the pomp and circumstance of the torture, for
+from the standpoint of the Indians they had requited hospitality with
+robbery. Death was inevitable,--unless they could now escape. Had they
+but one weapon between them they might yet make good their flight.
+
+An Irishman rarely stops to count the odds. With the thought O'Kimmon,
+heavy, muscular, yet alert, threw himself upon Oo-koo-koo, and in an
+instant he had almost wrenched the knife from the Indian's belt.
+
+The other Cherokee cried warningly, "_Akee-rooka! Akee-rooka_!" (I will
+shoot!) Then drew his pistol and fired.
+
+The next moment, perhaps for many moments thereafter, none of them knew
+very definitely what had happened. There was a cloud of dust, a terrific
+detonation, a sudden absolute darkness, as in some revulsion of nature,
+a stifling sensation. They were penned within the grotto by a great
+fragment of the beetling cliff. Doubtless it had been previously
+fractured by the action of continuous freezes, and the concussion of the
+pistol shot in the restricted space of the cave below had brought it
+down.
+
+The days went on. The men were missed after a time, but a considerable
+interval had elapsed. The two strangers had of late kept themselves much
+apart, owing to their absorption and their covert methods of seeking for
+gold. It was an ill-ordered, roaming, sylvan life they led at best. The
+cheera-taghe, although "beloved men" and priests of their strange and
+savage religion, were but wild Indians, and their temporary absence
+created no surprise. In fact, until sought with anxiety when the drought
+had become excessive and threatened the later crops, and the services of
+the cheera-taghe were necessary to invoke and with wild barbaric
+ceremonials bring down the lightning and thunder to clear the atmosphere
+and the rain to refresh the soil, it was not ascertained that the
+prophets had definitely disappeared.
+
+Then it was that excitement supervened, search, anxiety, grief, fear.
+There began to be vague rumors of untoward sounds, remembered rather
+than noticed at the time. Faint explosions had been heard in the night
+as if under the ground, and again in broad daylight as if in the air.
+None could imagine that the doomed men had sought to attract the
+attention of the town by firing off their pistols, thus utilizing their
+scanty ammunition. The strain grew intense; superstitious fancies
+supplemented the real mystery; the place was finally abandoned, and thus
+Nilaque Great became a "waste town."
+
+It was ten years, perhaps, after this blight had fallen upon it, that
+one day as the pack-train came down the valley of the Little Tennessee,
+on its autumnal return trip to Charlestown, the snow began to sift down.
+An unseasonable storm it was, for the winter had hardly set in. A north
+wind sprang up; the snow was soon heavily driving; within an hour the
+woods, still in the red leafage of autumn, were covered with snow and
+encased in ice. Only by a strenuous effort would the train be able to
+pass the old "waste town" before the early dusk,--a mile or two at most;
+but it was hoped that this might suffice to keep the ghosts out of the
+bounds of visibility. The roaring bacchanalian glees with which the
+pack-men set the melancholy sheeted woods aquiver might well send the
+ghosts out of earshot, presuming them endowed with volition.
+
+Suddenly Cuddy Barnett discovered that one of the pack-horses of his own
+especial charge was missing,--a good bay with a load of fine dressed
+deerskins to take to Charlestown, then the great mart of all this far
+region. A recollection of a sharp curve in the trading-path, running
+dangerously near a bluff bank, came abruptly into his mind. Drifts had
+lodged in its jagged crevices, and it might well have chanced that here
+the animal had lost his footing and slipped out of the steadily trotting
+file along the river bank unnoticed in the blinding snow.
+
+This theory seemed eminently plausible to his comrades, but when they
+learned that he was of the opinion that the disaster had happened at the
+old "waste town," as he had there first missed the animal in the file,
+not one would go back with him to search the locality,--not for the
+horse, not for the peltry, not even to avert the displeasure of their
+employer in Charlestown. Barnett besought their aid for a time, urging
+the project of rescue as they all sat around the roaring camp-fire under
+the sheltering branches of a cluster of fir trees that, acting as
+wind-break, served to fend off in some degree the fury of the storm. The
+ruddy flare illumined far shadowy aisles of the snowy wilderness, all
+agloom with the early dusk. Despite the falling flakes, they could still
+see the picketed pack-horses, now freed from their burdens, huddling
+together and holding down their heads to the icy blast as they munched
+their forage. The supper of the young pack-men was broiling on the
+coals; their faces were florid with the keen wind, their coonskin caps
+all crested with snow; and the fringes of their buckskin raiment had
+tinkling pendants of icicles; but although they had found good cheer in
+a chortling jug, uncorked as the first preliminary of encamping, they
+had not yet imbibed sufficient fictitious courage to set at naught their
+fears of the old "waste town."
+
+Barnett at last acquiesced in the relinquishment of his desire of
+rescue. Some losses must needs occur in a great trade, and considering
+the stress of the weather, the long distances traversed, the dangers of
+the lonely wildernesses in the territory of savages, the incident would
+doubtless be leniently overlooked. And then he bethought himself of the
+horse,--a good horse, stout, swift, kindly disposed; a hard fate the
+animal had encountered,--abandoned here to starve in these bleak winter
+woods. Perhaps he might be lying there at the foot of the cliffs with a
+broken leg, suffering the immeasurable agonies of a dumb beast, for the
+lack of a merciful pistol-ball to put him at peace. Barnett could not
+resist the mute appeal of his fancy.
+
+Presently he was trudging alone along the icy path. The flare of the red
+fire grew dim behind him; the last flicker faded. The woods were all
+unillumined, ghastly white, with a hovering gray shadow. The song of the
+bivouac fainted in the distance and failed; the echo grew doubtful and
+dull; and now in absolute silence that somehow set his nerves aquiver he
+was coming in with the dreary dusk and the driving snow to the old
+"waste town," Nilaque Great.
+
+More silent even than the wilderness it seemed with the muffling drifts
+heavy on the roofs, blocking the dark open doors of the tenantless
+dwellings, lying in fluffy masses on the boughs of the trees that had
+once made the desert spaces so pleasantly umbrageous in those sweet
+summers so long ago. The great circular council-house, shaped like a
+dome, was whitely aglimmer against the gray twilight and the wintry
+background of the woods and mountains,--only the vaguest suggestions of
+heights seen through the ceaseless whirl of the crystalline flakes. No
+wolf now, although remembering the casual glimpse he had had he was
+prepared with rifle and pistol, and held his knife in his hand; no bear;
+no sign of living creature until, as he skirted the jagged bluff of the
+river where he fancied the horse might have lost his footing, he heard a
+sudden whinny of welcome, the sound keen and eerie and intrusive in the
+strange breathless solemnity of the silent place.
+
+Gazing cautiously over the verge of the precipice, he saw the animal
+despite the gathering shadows. The horse was quite safe, having
+doubtless slipped down in the soft densities of a great drift dislodged
+from the crevice by his own weight. His pack was still on his back, now
+piled twice as high with snow. He lifted his arched neck as he sprang
+about with undiminished activity, vainly seeking to ascend the almost
+sheer precipice.
+
+Daylight, however, was essential for his rescue. The effort now on these
+icy steeps might cost either man or beast a broken limb, if no more.
+With an instinct of self-protection the animal had chosen the lee of a
+great buttress of the cliff, and could stand there safely all night
+though the temperature should fall still lower. The young pack-man
+called out a word or two of encouragement, listening fearfully as the
+sound struck back in the silence from the icy bank of the river, the
+craggy hillsides, and the resonant walls of the deserted houses in the
+old "waste town." Himself suddenly stricken to silence, he realized as
+he turned that the night had at last closed in. It lay dark and desolate
+in the limitless woods, where a vague sense of motion gave token that
+the snow was still viewlessly falling in the dense obscurities.
+
+But in the "waste town" itself a pallid visibility lingered in the open
+spaces where the trees were few, and gloomily showed the empty cabins,
+the deserted council-house, the vacant "beloved square." Somehow, turn
+as he would, this dim scene in the midst of the dense darkness of the
+stormy night was before his eyes. Again and again he plunged into the
+woods seeking to follow the well-known trail of the trading-path to the
+camp and rejoin his companions, but invariably he would emerge from the
+wilderness after a toilsome tramp, entering the old "waste town" at a
+different angle.
+
+He perceived at length that he could not keep the direction, that he was
+wandering in a circle after the manner of those lost in forests. His
+clothing, freezing upon his body, was calculated for warmer weather; the
+buckskin shirt and leggings, the garb of the frontiersmen, copied from
+the attire of the Indians, were of a thin and pliable texture, owing to
+the peculiar skill of the savages in dressing peltry. An early historian
+describes such costume in a curiously sophisticated phrase as the
+"summer visiting dress of the Indians." The southern tribes were
+intensely averse to cold, for in winter they wore furs and garments made
+of buffalo hides, the shaggy side inward; this raiment was sewed with
+the sinews of deer and a kind of wild hemp for thread, and with needles
+dexterously fashioned of fishbone.
+
+Barnett had now no thought of the ghosts of the old "waste town." His
+first care was to save his life this cruel night; without fire, without
+food, without shelter, it might be that he had indeed come to the end.
+He was induced by this reflection to climb the mound to the old
+council-house. For here the walls, plastered both within and without
+with the strong adhesive red clay of the region, admitted no wind, while
+in the cabins which had been dwellings the drifts lay deep beneath the
+rifts in the dilapidated roofs and the crevices in the wall, and the
+flying flakes sifted in as the keen gusts surged through. He had had the
+forethought to gather as he went bits of wood, now a loose clapboard or
+piece of bark from low-hanging eaves, now a fragment of half-rotten
+puncheon from a doorstep, and as he groped into the dense darkness of
+the council-house with his steel and flint he set them alight on the
+hearth in the centre of the floor.
+
+When he was once more warm and free of the fear of death, other fears
+took hold upon him. In the first glimmers of the fire he could see
+through the tall narrow doorless portal only the dark night outside and
+a flickering glimpse against its blackness of the quivering crystals of
+the snow,--these but vaguely, for the blue smoke eddying through the
+great room veiled the opposite side, there being no chimney or window,
+and he sat in the interior behind the fire.
+
+He gazed furtively over his shoulder ever and anon, as the flames flared
+up, revealing the deeply red walls of the dome-like place with here and
+there a buffalo skin suspended against them, the inside of the hide
+showing, painted in curious hieroglyphics, brilliant with color, and
+instinct with an untranslated meaning; a number of conch shells lay
+about, with jars and vases of clay, and those quaintly fashioned earthen
+drums, the heads of tightly stretched deerskin,--all paraphernalia of
+the savage worship which the cheera-taghe had conducted, now abandoned
+as bewitched.
+
+Sitting here comfortably in the place of those men of the "divine fire,"
+Cuthbert Barnett, his rifle by his side, his knife in his belt, his
+coonskin cap pushed back from his face, once more florid, warm, tingling
+from the keen wind of the day and the change to this heated air, and
+with perchance a drowsy eyelid, began to marvel anew as to the fate of
+the cheera-taghe. Hardly a drowsy eyelid, he consciously had, however,
+for he had resolved that he would not sleep. His situation here alone
+was too dangerous; he feared wolves,--the fire that would otherwise
+affright them might untended sink too low. He feared also some wandering
+Indian. Should he be discovered here by means of the unaccustomed light
+he might be wantonly murdered as he slept, or in revenge for the
+sacrilege of his intrusion among these things that the savages had
+esteemed sacred.
+
+Therefore, when he suddenly saw the cheera-taghe he saw them quite
+plainly. Tall, stately, splendidly arrayed in their barbaric garb,
+draped with their iridescent feather-wrought mantles, their heads
+dressed with white plumes, a staff of cane adorned with white feathers
+in the right hand, a green bough in the left, preceded by those
+curiously sonorous earthen drums, of which the drone blended with the
+notes of the religious song, _Yo-he-wah-yah! Yo-he-wah-yah!_ they thrice
+led the glittering procession of the "holy dance" around and around the
+"beloved square."
+
+A blank interval ensued. And then again he saw them, nearer now, more
+distinct; they were entering the temple; they were close at hand;
+triumphant of mien, assured, so full of life!--he could laugh to think
+that he had had a dream, or had heard somehow, that they were dead or
+lost or vaguely gone. For here, without seeming in the least to notice
+his presence, they kindled anew with friction of bits of poplar or white
+oak the fire for the new year, the _cheera_, the "sacred flame," to bear
+it outside to distribute it to the assembled people of Nilaque Great.
+Without was summer; the trees were full of green leaves; canoes were
+glancing along the shimmering river; the "beloved square" was crowded
+with braves,--he saw their feathered crests wave and glisten; the wind
+was blowing fresh and cool; the sun shone.
+
+And suddenly it was shining in his face, as it came up over the Great
+Smoky Mountains, sending its first long slanting wintry beams through
+the narrow portal to the hearth where he had lain asleep before the
+ashes of the once "sacred fire," covered with the fresh ashes of last
+night's vigil, for they too were dead. He staggered to his feet and went
+out into the glistening dawn of this snowy sunlit day, hardly able to
+reconcile its aspect with the summer-tide scene he had just quitted. Now
+and again he paused, half-bewildered, as if unfamiliar with the pathetic
+miseries of the old "waste town"--the scene in his mind savored far more
+of reality.
+
+The necessity of caring for the pack-horse, perhaps better than aught
+else, served to restore his faculties. He found it easy now to climb
+down the jagged face of the bluffs of the river bank, whence the snow
+had vanished, for in the changeable southern climate a sudden thaw had
+begun in the earlier hours and now the warm sun was setting all the
+trees and eaves adrip. As he stood below the cliff on the sandy slope
+whence the snow had slipped down into the river, the volume of which the
+storm of last night would much increase after the long drought of the
+summer, he carefully examined the horse to ascertain what injuries he
+might have sustained; a few abrasions on the right flank seemed to be
+all, until the animal moved, a bit stiffly with the near fore leg. This
+attracted Barnett's attention to a gash on the knee received doubtless
+when the horse first fell on the ground,--a queer gash, long, jagged,
+unaccountable, as if it had been made by a dull blade. Glancing down to
+search the gravel, the pack-man discerned, half-imbedded in the sand,
+the edge of a fragment of a knife, a scalping-knife, broken half in two;
+and there, lying not three yards away, was a handle attached to a belt
+heavily wrought with roanoke,--only a bit of the belt,--and the other
+half of the knife.
+
+The pack-man's hand trembled and his florid cheek went pale, for these
+lay just under the sharp edge of a huge fragment of rock that had
+evidently fallen from the cliff above, breaking the blade and holding
+the belt fast.
+
+How long he stood and stared he did not know. For a time he heard
+without realizing the significance of the sounds the whoops and shouts
+of his comrades, wildly racing back through the old "waste town" in
+search of him; but although in the strenuous duty of his rescue they
+would venture to pass it in broad daylight, no ardor of persuasion could
+induce them to linger there to investigate the locality of his find, or
+to aid in moving the rock and exploring the grotto that had evidently
+proved a sepulchre.
+
+On the contrary, they deemed the discovery might be resented by the
+Indians as intrusive, and, keeping the secret, they made haste to get
+out of the country with even more speed than their wont. Cuthbert
+Barnett, however, carried his information to the authorities in
+Charlestown, who, promptly acting upon it, solved the mystery of the
+fate of the cheera-taghe.
+
+Since peace with the Cherokees was becoming more and more precarious,
+some satisfaction was experienced by the Royal Governor of South
+Carolina, James Glen, at that time, in being able to urge upon the
+attention of the head-men of the tribe the fact that, although the two
+white strangers had obviously been captured in the act of robbing
+Cherokee soil of its gold, they had as evidently been unarmed, and the
+Irishman, a British subject, had been shot down by one of the
+cheera-taghe, for there was the bullet still imbedded firmly in the
+sternum of his broad chest. Thus a political crisis, which the event had
+threatened, was averted.
+
+Despite the evil chance that had befallen the gold-seekers, now widely
+bruited abroad, stealthy efforts were ever and anon made by the hardy
+frontier prospectors of those days, already busy in the richer deposits
+of the Ayrate division of the Cherokee country, to pan also the sands of
+the banks of the Tennessee; but the yield here was never again worth the
+work, and the interest in the possibility of securing "pay gravel" in
+this region died out, until the later excitements of the discovery of
+the precious metal in a neighboring locality, Coca Creek, during the
+last century.
+
+The old "waste town" long remained a ruin, and at last fell away to a
+mere memory.
+
+
+
+
+THE BEWITCHED BALL-STICKS
+
+
+At no time in the history of mankind, except during that brief
+Paradisiac courtship in the Garden of Eden, has the heart of a lover
+been altogether unvexed by the presence, or even the sheer suspicion, of
+that baleful being commonly denominated "another." Here, however, it
+would seem that the field must needs be almost as clear. The aspect of
+the world was as if yet young; the swan, long ago driven from the
+rivers, still snowily drifted down the silver Tennessee; the deer, the
+bear, the buffalo, the wolf in countless hordes roamed at will
+throughout the dense primeval wildernesses; the line of Cherokee towns
+along the banks represented almost the only human habitations for many
+hundred miles, but to Tus-ka-sah the country seemed to groan under a
+surplus of population, for there yet dwelt right merrily at Ioco Town
+the youthful Amoyah, the gayest of all gay birds, and a painful sense of
+the superfluous pressed upon the brain at the very sight of him.
+
+This trait of frivolity was to Tus-ka-sah the more revolting, since he
+himself was of a serious cast of mind and possessed of faculties, rare
+in an Indian, which are called "fine business capacity." He was esteemed
+at an English trading-house down on the Eupharsee River as the best
+"second man" in any of the towns; this phrase "second man" expressing
+the united functions of alderman, chief of police, chairman of boards of
+public improvements, and the various executive committees of
+civilization. His were municipal duties,--the apportionment of community
+labor, the supervision of the building of houses and the planting of
+crops, the distribution of public bounty, the transaction of any
+business of Ioco Town with visitors whom individual interest might bring
+thither. So well did he acquit himself when these errands involved
+questions of commercial policy that the English traders were wont to
+declare that Tus-ka-sah, the Terrapin, had "horse sense"--which
+certainly was remarkable in a terrapin!
+
+His clear-headed qualities, however, valued commercially, seemed hardly
+calculated to adorn the fireside. In sensible cumbrous silence and
+disastrous eclipse he could only contemplate with dismayed aversion the
+palpable effect of Amoyah's gay sallies of wit, his fantastic lies, his
+vainglorious boastings, and his wonderful stories, which seemed always
+to enchant his audience, the household of the damsel to whom in
+civilized parlance they were both paying their addresses. These
+audiences were usually large, and far too lenient in the estimation of
+Tus-ka-sah. First there was present, of course, Amoyah himself, seeming
+a whole flock instead of one Pigeon. Then must be counted Altsasti, who
+although a widow was very young, and as slight, as lissome, as graceful
+as the "wreath" which her name signified. She was clad now in her winter
+dress of otter skins, all deftly sewn together so that the fur might lie
+one way, the better to enable the fabric to shed the rain; the petticoat
+was longer than the summer attire of doeskin, for although the tinkle of
+the metal "bell buttons" of her many garters might be heard as she
+moved, only the anklets were visible above her richly beaded moccasins.
+She seldom moved, however; sitting beside the fire on a buffalo rug, she
+monotonously strung rainbow-hued beads for hours at a time. Her glossy,
+straight black hair was threaded with a strand of opaque white beads
+passing through the coils, dressed high, and copiously anointed with
+bear's oil, and on her forehead she wore a single pendant wrought of the
+conch-shell, ivory-white and highly polished. She maintained a busy
+silence, but the others of the group--her father, sometimes her mother
+and grandmother and the younger sisters and brothers--preserved no such
+semblance of gravity, and indulged in appreciative chuckles responsive
+to Amoyah's jests, idly watching him with twinkling eyes as long as he
+would talk.
+
+It would be difficult to say how long this might be, for there were no
+windows to the winter houses of the Cherokees; in point of architecture
+these structures resembled the great dome-shaped council-house,
+plastered within and without with red clay; the floor was some three
+feet lower than the surface of the ground outside, and the exit
+fashioned with a narrow winding passage before reaching the outlet of
+the door. The sun might rise or set; the night might come or go; no
+token how the hour waxed or waned could penetrate this seclusion. The
+replenishing of the fire on the chimneyless hearth in the centre of the
+floor afforded the only comment on the passage of time. Its glow gave to
+view the red walls; the curious designs of the painted interior of the
+buffalo hides stretched upon them, by way of decoration; the cane divans
+or couches that were contrived to run all around the circular apartment,
+and on which were spread skins of bear and panther and wolves, covering
+even the heads of the slumbering members of the household, for the
+Cherokees slept away much of the tedious winter weather.
+
+The fire would show, too, how gayly bedight and feather-crested was
+Amoyah, wearing a choice garb of furs;--often, so great was his vanity,
+his face was elaborately painted as if for some splendid festive
+occasion, a dance or the ball-play, instead of merely to impress with
+his magnificence this simple domestic circle. Tus-ka-sah dated the
+events that followed from one night when this facial decoration of his
+rival was even more fantastic than usual. Like a fish was one side of
+the young Cherokee's profile; the other in glaring daubs of white and
+black and red craftily represented the head of a woodpecker. The effect
+in front was the face of a nondescript monster, that only a gleeful
+laughing eye, and now and then a flash of narrow white teeth, identified
+as the jovial Amoyah, the Pigeon of Ioco.
+
+The snow lay on the ground without, he said as he shook a wreath of it
+from a fold of his fur and it fell hissing among the coals. The shadows
+were long, he told them, for the moon was up and the world was dimly
+white and duskily blue. The wind was abroad, and indeed they could hear
+the swirl of its invisible wings as it swooped past; the boughs of the
+trees clashed together and ice was in the Tennessee River. The winter
+had come, he declared.
+
+Not yet, Tus-ka-sah pragmatically averred. There would be fine weather
+yet.
+
+For the snowfall so early in the season was phenomenal and the red
+leaves were still clinging to the trees.
+
+Had they been together among men Amoyah would not have cared enough for
+the subject to justify contention, but in the presence of women he would
+suffer no contradiction. He must needs be paramount,--the infinitely
+admired! He shook his head.
+
+The winter had surely come, he insisted. Why, he argued, the bears
+knew,--they always knew! And already each had walked the round with his
+shadow.
+
+For in the approach of winter, in the light of the first mystic, icicled
+moon, the night when it reaches its full, a grotesque pageant is afoot
+in that remote town of the bears, immemorially fabled to be hidden in
+the dense coverts of the Great Smoky Mountains,--the procession of the
+bears, each walking with his shadow, seven times around the illuminated
+spaces of the "beloved square."
+
+The bears knew undoubtedly, the "second man," the man of facts and
+method and management, soberly admitted. But how did Amoyah know that
+already they had trodden those significant circles, each with his
+shadow? He smiled triumphant in his incontrovertible logic.
+
+And now Amoyah's face was wonderful to view, whether as a fish on one
+side or a woodpecker on the other, with that most human expression of
+surprise and indignation and aversion as distinctly limned upon it as if
+in pigments, for he loved the "second man's" facts no more than the
+"second man" loved his fancies. How did he know, forsooth? Because,
+Amoyah hardily declared, he himself had witnessed the march,--he had
+been permitted to behold that weird and grotesque progress!
+
+He took note of the blank silence that ensued upon this startling
+asseveration. Then emboldened to add circumstance to sheer statement he
+protested, "I attended the ceremony by invitation. I had a place in the
+line of march--I walked beside the Great Bear as his shadow!"
+
+For, according to tradition, each bear, burly, upright in the moonlight,
+follows the others in Indian file, but at the side of each walks his
+shadow, and that shadow is not the semblance of a bear, but of a
+Cherokee Indian!
+
+Now, as everybody has heard, the bears were once a band of Cherokee
+Indians, but wearying of the rigors and artificialities of tribal
+civilization they took to the woods, became bears, and have since dwelt
+in seclusion.
+
+The thoughts, however, persistently reach out for the significance of
+the fact that in the tradition of this immemorial progress each creature
+is accompanied by the shadow, not of the thing that he is, but of the
+higher entity that he was designed to be.
+
+Whether this inference is merely the mechanical deduction of a lesson,
+or a subtlety of moralizing, with a definite intention, on the part of
+the Cherokees, always past-masters in the intricacies of symbolism, it
+is difficult to determine, but the bears are certainly not alone in this
+illustration of retrogression, and memory may furnish many an image of a
+lost ideal to haunt the paths of beings of a higher plane.
+
+The picture was before the eyes of all the fireside group,--the looming
+domes of the Great Smoky Mountains, where the clouds, white and opaline,
+hung in the intervals beneath the ultimate heights; the silences of the
+night were felt in the dense dark lonely forest that encompassed the
+open spaces of that mysterious city, with the conical thatched roofs of
+its winter houses and the sandy stretch of the "beloved square; "--and
+there was the line of bears, clumsy, heavy-footed, lumbering, ungainly,
+and beside each the feather-crested similitude of what he had been,
+alert, powerful, gifted with human ingenuity, the craft of weapons,
+mental endowment, and an immortal soul,--so they went in the wintry
+moonlight!
+
+There was naught in this detail of the annual procession of the bears,
+always taking place before the period of their hibernation, that
+surprised or angered Tus-ka-sah; but that they should break from their
+ancient law, their established habit of exclusiveness, single out Amoyah
+(of all the people in the world), summon him to attend their tribal
+celebration, and participate in their parade, as the shadow of Eeon-a,
+the Great Bear,--this passed the bounds of the possibilities. This
+fantasy had not the shreds of verisimilitude!
+
+Yet even while he argued within himself Tus-ka-sah noted the old
+warrior's gaze fix spellbound upon Amoyah, the hands of Altsasti
+petrify, the bead in one, the motionless thread in the other. The eyes
+of the more remote of the group, who were seated on rugs around the
+fire, glistened wide and startled, in the shadow, as Amoyah proceeded to
+relate how it had chanced.
+
+A frosty morning he said it was, and he was out in the mountain
+a-hunting. He repeated the song which he had been singing, and the wind
+as it swirled about the house must have caught his voice and carried it
+far. It was a song chronicling the deeds of the Great Bear, and had a
+meaningless refrain, "_Eeon-a, Ha-hoo-jah! Eeon-a, Ha-hoo-jah!"_ But
+when he reached the advent upon the scene of the secondary hero, the
+Great Bear himself, very polite, speaking excellent Cherokee ("since we
+are alone," he said), very recognizant of the merits of Amoyah,--the
+fame of which indeed was represented to have resounded through the
+remotest seclusions of the ursine realm,--fiction though it all
+obviously was, the man of facts could no longer endure this
+magnification of his rival.
+
+"The great Eeon-a said all that to you?" he sneered. "The fire-water at
+the trading-house makes your heart very strong and your tongue crooked.
+This sounds to me like the language of a simple seequa, not the Great
+Bear--a mere bit of an opossum!"
+
+Amoyah paused with a sudden gasp. He was not without an aggressive
+temper, albeit, persuaded of his own perfection, he feared no rival, and
+least of all Tus-ka-sah.
+
+"You, Tus-ka-sah," he retorted angrily, "have evidently strongly shaken
+hands with the discourse of the opossum, speaking its language like the
+animal itself, and also the wolfish English. You have too many tongues,
+and, more than all, the deceitful, forked tongue of the snake, which is
+not agreeable to the old beloved speech. For myself, the Great Bear made
+me welcome in the only language that does not make my heart weigh
+heavy,--the elegant Cherokee language."
+
+The spellbound listeners had broken out with irritated protests against
+the interruption, and Tus-ka-sah said no more.
+
+As the blasts went sonorously over the house and the flames swirled anew
+into the murky atmosphere of the interior, a weird, half-smothered voice
+suddenly invaded the restored quiet of the hearthstone: "_Eeon-a,
+Ha-hoo-jah! Eeon-a, Ha-hoo-jah!_"
+
+Like an echo the barbaric chant vibrated through the room. One of the
+sleepers, a half-grown youth, had semi-consciously caught the familiar
+refrain and sang it in that strange uncanny voice of slumber. The tones
+gave fitting effect to the grotesque details of the supernatural
+adventure, and as Tus-ka-sah rose and surlily took his way toward the
+door his departure did not attract even casual notice from the
+listeners, hanging enthralled upon the words of the Great Eeon-a, so
+veraciously repeated for their behoof. Their eyes showed intent even in
+the murky gloom and glistened lustrous in the alternate fitful flare;
+the red walls seemed to recede and advance as the flames rose and fell;
+the sleeping boy on the broad bed-place stirred uneasily, flinging now
+and again a restless arm from out the panther skins in which he was
+enveloped, and ever and anon his cry, "_Eeon-a, Ha-hoo-jah! Eeon-a,
+Ha-hoo-jah!"_ punctuated the impressive dramatic tones of the raconteur.
+
+The next instant Tus-ka-sah was in the utter darkness of the narrow
+tortuous little passage, but after threading this he came out of the
+doorway into the keen chill air of a snowy world, the scintillations of
+frosty stars, the languid, glamourous radiance of the yellow moon, low
+in the sky, and his accustomed mental atmosphere of the plainest of
+plain prose. His thoughts were with the group he had just left, and he
+marveled if no influence could be brought to reduce the prestige with
+which the immaterial chief of the bears, the fabled Eeon-a, had
+contrived to invest the illusory Amoyah.
+
+Tus-ka-sah's expectations concerning the weather were promptly
+justified. A continual dripping from the roofs and trees pervaded the
+early hours of the morning, and soon the snow was all gone here in the
+valley; even the domes of the mountains so early whitened with drifts
+showed now a bare, dark, sketch-like outline against the horizon and
+above the garnet tint of the massed sere boughs of the forests of the
+slopes. A warm sun shone. Not a summer bird was yet lingering, but here
+and there a crisp red leaf winged the blue sky as gallantly as any
+crested cardinal of them all. The town of Ioco was now astir, and
+Tus-ka-sah noted how the softening of the air had brought out the
+inhabitants from their winter houses. Children played about the
+doorways; boys in canoes shot down the shimmering reaches of the river;
+warriors congregated in the council-house and the half-open buildings
+surrounding the "beloved square," and in its sunny sandy spaces sundry
+old men were placidly engaged in the game of "roll the bullet."
+
+It was at this group that Tus-ka-sah looked with an intent gaze and a
+sort of indignant question in his manner, and presently an elderly
+Cherokee, one of the cheera-taghe of the town, detached himself from it
+and came toward him. Despite this show of alacrity Cheesto distinctly
+winced as he contemplated the sullen and averse mien of his client or
+parishioner, for the relation in which Tus-ka-sah stood toward him
+partook of the characteristics of both. The professional wiseacre,
+however, made shift to recover himself.
+
+"I will tell you what you have come to tell me," the prophet said
+quickly. "The spell on Amoyah does not work."
+
+Tus-ka-sah assented surlily, gazing meanwhile at the face of the
+conjurer. It was a face in which the eyes were set so close together as
+to suggest a squint, although they were not crossed. He had an uncertain
+and dilatory tread, the trait of one who hesitates, and decides in
+doubt, and forthwith repents; being in his prophetic character an
+appraiser of the probable, and the sport of the possible. He wore many
+beads in strings around his neck, and big earrings of silver, heavy and
+costly. His fur garments reached long and robe-like almost to his feet,
+the shaggy side of the pelt outward, the weather being damp, for when it
+was dry and cold it was customary to wear the fur turned inward.
+
+The wise man had been recently unfortunate in his sorcery. The corn crop
+had been cut short by reason of a lack of rain which he had promised
+should fall in June. He had justified the drought, in the opinion of
+most of the Indians, by feigning illness and taking to his bed; for by
+these it was believed that if he had been able to be up and about his
+ordinary vocations the preposterous conduct of the weather must needs
+have been restrained. The fields about Ioco had suffered especially, and
+Tus-ka-sah, as the chief business man of that town, had manifested half
+veiled suspicions that the art of the conjurer was incompetent; this
+rendered Cheesto particularly solicitous to succeed when his magic had
+been invoked to reduce the attractions of Amoyah in the eyes of Altsasti
+and turn her heart toward Tus-ka-sah. For among the Indians the lives of
+the weather-prophets were not safe from the aggrieved agriculturists,
+and there are authentic cases in which the cheera-taghe suffered death
+by tribal law as false conjurers. Cheesto fixed an anxious gaze upon his
+interlocutor as Tus-ka-sah rehearsed, by way of illustrating how
+worthless were the charms wrought, the unsubstantial fiction that had so
+beguiled the fancy of Altsasti, and posed Amoyah in the splendid guise
+of the representative of the great Eeon-a in the shadow-march of the
+bears.
+
+The fate of the over-wise is ever the sorrowful dispensation. The fool
+may be merry and irresponsible. Cheesto was at his wit's end. With that
+unlucky drought in June to confront him, and dealing with the sharp
+business man of Ioco, who exacted his due in the exchange of the Fates
+as rigorously as if in a merely mundane market, the jeopardy of the
+magician was great and his discredit almost assured.
+
+Old Cheesto set his jaw firmly. Somehow, somewhere, something must be
+wrought that would place Amoyah at a disadvantage and bring ridicule
+upon him. No great matter, it might be said, to compass the change of a
+fickle woman's mind, to disconcert a giddy young man. But how? Cheesto
+was aweary of his own incantations and his ineffectual spells. He would
+fain lend Fate a muscular hand.
+
+This thought was uppermost in his mind for several days, even when he
+went with the other cheera-taghe of Ioco to share in the conjurations
+and incantations of the preliminary ceremonials of the Ball-Play,
+without which success would never be anticipated, for a great match
+between the towns of Ioco and Niowee was impending.
+
+This game was usually played in the mid-summer or fall, but it would
+seem that the unseasonable cold weather was well suited for such violent
+exercise and the severe physical training which preceded it, and
+although Amoyah noticed ice in the river as he dashed in for the
+ceremonial plunge which accompanies the incantations, he remembered the
+fact for a different reason than discomfort.
+
+The eighty ball-players of Ioco stood in a row near the bank, submerged
+to the knees. They had gone in with a tumultuous rush, and with their
+faces painted, their heads crested with feathers, clad fantastically and
+gorgeously but scantily, they were holding their ball-sticks high in the
+air with an eager grasp,--all except Amoyah. Although still in his place
+in the line, he was looking over his shoulder with an amazed and
+startled gaze.
+
+For there upon the bank, as if struck from his hand in the confusion and
+turmoil of first entering the water, lay his ball-sticks. He seemed
+about to return for them, as the implement of the game must be dipped
+also in the water at the appropriate moment of the incantation. But old
+Cheesto, the Rabbit, motioned him to forbear lest by this unprecedented
+quitting of the line during the ceremonial the efficacy of the spell be
+annulled; he himself stooped down and picked up the ball-sticks. Then,
+notwithstanding his age and his fierce rheumatism, notwithstanding his
+long and cumbrous robe of buffalo skin, the skirt of which he seemed to
+clutch with difficulty, he plunged into the icy water, waded out to the
+young man, handed him the ball-sticks, and regained the bank just as the
+other cheera-taghe standing at the margin of the river began the
+incantations supposed to influence the success of the competition.
+
+This Indian game, which has left its name on one of the watercourses of
+Tennessee, Ball-Play Creek, required a level space of some five or six
+hundred yards in length but no other preparation of the ground. At one
+end, in the direction of Niowee, two tall poles were fixed firmly in the
+earth about three yards apart, and slanting outward. At the end toward
+Ioco a similar goal was prepared. Every time the ball should be thrown
+over either goal the play would count one for the proximate town, and
+the game was of twelve or twenty points according to compact, the
+catcher of the twentieth ball being entitled to especial honor. It was
+of course the object of each side to throw the ball over the goal toward
+their own town, and to prevent it from going in the direction of the
+town of the opposing faction.
+
+All the morning crowds of Cherokees of all ages and both sexes had been
+gathering from the neighboring towns, and were congregated in the wide
+spaces about the course at Ioco. These fields had earlier been planted
+in corn, but the harvest had stripped the plain, and now the trampling
+of hundreds of feet erased all vestiges of the growth except for the
+yellow-gray tint of the stubble, spreading out on every side to the
+brown of the dense fallen leaves on the slopes where the forests began
+to climb the mountain sides. Here and there fires were kindled where
+some spectator felt the keen chill of the approaching winter, and more
+than one meal was in progress,--perhaps such groups had come from far.
+Pack-horses were in evidence laden with rich garments of fur, various
+peltry, blankets, valuable gear of every sort to be staked on the result
+of the game, and soon the men were betting heavily. All the various
+tones of the gamut were on the air,--the deep bass guttural laugh of the
+braves; the shrill callow yelping of boys; the absent-minded bawl of
+spoiled pappooses interested in the stir, but with an ever-recurrent
+recollection of the business of vocally disciplining their patient
+mothers; the keen treble chatter of women,--all were suddenly resolved
+into a strong dominant chord of sound as a tremendous shout arose upon
+the appearance of the ball-players of Ioco. Fresh from the river, they
+made a glittering show with the tossing feathers of their crested heads,
+their faces painted curiously and fantastically in white, the bright
+tints of their gaudy though scanty raiment, their bare arms and legs
+suppled with unguents and shining in the sun. This note of welcome had
+hardly died away and the echo of the encompassing mountains grown
+silent, when an agitated murmur of excitement went sibilantly through
+the throng.
+
+A cloud of dust was approaching in the distance, heralding a band of
+men. A new sound invoked the echoes. The breath was held to hear it. The
+throb of a drum--faint--far. And here thunderously beating, hard at
+hand, overpowering all lesser sounds, the drums of loco responded. To
+the vibrations of these sonorous earthen cylinders, the sticks plied
+with a will on the heads of wet deerskins tightly stretched, the
+ball-players of Niowee advanced. In a diagonal direction and at a sturdy
+trot they came for a space,--a sudden halt ensued, and eighty pairs of
+muscular feet smote tumultuously on the ground. Then once more forward
+diagonally, at that swinging jaunty pace, and the stamping pause as
+before. The sound seemed to shake the ground, the impact of the feet
+with the earth was heard despite the turmoil of the drums; the stamping
+vibrations were felt in the midst of the stir of the crowds, and now in
+the nearer approach the individual faces could be distinguished, wildly
+painted; the athletic figures, gaudily clad and barbarically decorated;
+the ball-sticks, held aloft in a sort of rhythmic vibration as if
+quivering for a chance at the ball; and fourscore wild young voices
+howled defiance at loco Town, whose youth in return howled its municipal
+pride, failing only with failing breath.
+
+They were all in the course at last. The judges, elderly warriors and
+absolutely impartial, chosen from towns which had no interest at stake
+in the match, were seated on a little knoll, commanding a view of the
+ground, but at a sufficient distance to be in no danger from a maladroit
+handling of the ball. This was made of deerskin, stuffed hard with hair,
+and sewn up with deer sinews. The ball-sticks, of which each player
+owned his pair, were also partly made of deerskin, the two scoops or
+ladles being fashioned of a network of thongs on a wooden hoop, each
+furnished with a handle of hickory three feet long, worked together with
+a thong of deerskin to catch the ball between the rackets,--it being of
+course prohibited to catch the ball in the hand.
+
+The drums beat furiously; the word was given; the ball was flung high in
+the air in the middle of the course, and the next instant one hundred
+and sixty young athletes rushed together with a mighty shock the force
+of which seemed to shake the ground. Some fell and were trampled in the
+crush; others madly clutched one another, friend or foe, with the
+ill-aimed ball-sticks, inflicting a snapping hurt like a bite,--a wound
+by no means to be despised. One, an expert, sent the ball with an artful
+twirl through the air toward the Ioco goal, and in the midst of a shout
+that rent the sky the whole rout of players went frantically flying
+after it, whirling with an incredible swiftness and agility when it was
+caught midway, and hurled back toward Niowee with a force as if it had
+been flung from a catapult. Here and there individual players in the
+frenzied chase made wonderful records of leaps in their efforts to catch
+the ball, springing into the air with a surprising strength and
+elasticity, and a lightness as of creatures absolutely without weight.
+
+A good match they were playing; for more than half an hour neither side
+was permitted by the other to score a single point. The ball seemed for
+a time as if it were awing forever, and would fall to the ground no
+more. The casualties were many; almost always after one of those sudden
+rushes together of both factions that had a tremendous momentum as of
+galloping squadrons, the ground would show as the moving masses receded
+half a dozen figures prone upon the course; one with a broken arm
+perhaps; another badly snapped by the inartistically plied ball-sticks
+of friend or foe and crawling off with a bloody pate; sometimes another
+lying quite still, evidently stunned and to be hastily dragged off the
+course by spectators, before another stampede of the ball-players crush
+the life out of the unconscious and prostrate wight. Nevertheless only
+the normal interest, which however was very great, appertained to the
+match until at a crisis a strange thing happened, inexplicable then, and
+perhaps never fully understood.
+
+The ball was flying toward the Niowee goal and the whole field was in
+full run after it. The blow that had impelled it had been something
+tremendous. A shout of triumph was already welling up from the throat of
+all Niowee, for to prevent the scoring of a point in its favor it would
+seem that there must be a thing afoot whose fleetness could exceed the
+speed of a thing awing.
+
+Amoyah, the deftest runner of all the Tennessee River country, was
+foremost in the crown of swift athletes; presently he was detached by
+degrees from it; now he was definitely in advance; and soon, spurting
+tremendously, he had so neared the Niowee goal that the ball just above
+must needs pass over it if a spring might not enable him to capture it
+at the last moment. As agile as a deer, and as light as a bird, he
+leaped into the air, both arms upstretched, holding the rackets aloft
+and ready. He was a far-famed player, and even now the Ioco spectators
+were shouting, Amoyah needs must win!
+
+A mysterious silence fell suddenly. They all saw what had happened.
+There could be no mistake. The rackets parted at the propitious moment
+to receive the ball. The netting closed about it. And then, as if it had
+met with no impediment whatever, the ball passed through the stanch web
+of thongs and over the poles, and falling to the ground counted one for
+Niowee.
+
+The spectators from that town in their astonishment forgot to shout. The
+onrushing crowd of players, bearing down upon Amoyah, having intended to
+force him to drop the ball, which he had seemed predestined to catch, or
+to throw it so ill as to deliver it into the power of Niowee still to
+secure the point, could not arrest their own momentum, and went over the
+startled and dumfounded player in a swift dash, leaving him prone upon
+the ground. He was on his feet in an instant, his physical faculties
+rallying promptly, but so bewildered and doubtful that he had but one
+definite mental process, the resolve to regain for Ioco the point he had
+so mysteriously lost. Twice afterward his fine playing focused the
+attention of the crowd. Twice their plaudits of his skill rang through
+the vibrating air. Then the ball, hardly checked by the web of his
+racket, passed through the ball-sticks, and all realized their
+bewitchment.
+
+Amoyah heard the gossip afloat concerning the matter before he had well
+quitted the course. The Great Bear had torn the net of the ball-sticks
+with his claw, one brave was telling another as he passed, because
+Amoyah had unveraciously boasted that he had walked by invitation in the
+procession of the bears during their annual march with their shadows at
+their hidden mysterious town in the Great Smoky Mountains.
+
+Amoyah paused, tired, excited, panting, and critically examined the web.
+Surely enough the interlacing thongs had parted in twain in two straight
+lines, invisible save on close inspection, as deftly and as evenly
+severed as if cut with a keen knife.
+
+It was late in the day. The sun was now on a westering slant. The
+parties of spectators were breaking up, some to journey homeward, others
+going into the town with friends. The place that the crowd had occupied
+had that peculiarly dreary aspect characteristic of a deserted pleasure
+ground. Trampled heavily it was, and the charred remnant of a fire
+showed black here and there; broken bits of food were scattered in
+places where feasting had been; a great gourd that had held some gallons
+of water lay shattered on the ground at his feet; a group at a distance
+were doubtfully retracing their steps, searching for something they had
+lost; at the farthest limits a wolf like a dog, or a dog like a wolf,
+was gnawing at a bone, and snarling as he gnawed. It was all frowzy,
+jaded, forlorn.
+
+Somehow suddenly he had a sense of freshness, an illumination, as it
+were a vision, of the early morning light striking through a network of
+bare trees upon the shimmering reaches of a river. And there on the bank
+lay his ball-sticks,--quite good and sound then, he would have staked
+his life. And now a picture was before him,--being a man of fancy, he
+thought in pictures,--a picture of old Cheesto the Rabbit holding the
+ball-sticks half hidden in the folds of his great fur robe and wading
+out into the ice-cold water to restore them. And old Cheesto, he
+reflected, was one of the cheera-taghe of Ioco, and could work a spell
+quite as well as the Great Bear, who had gone to bed for the winter two
+weeks ago, and had not heard of ball-sticks within the memory of
+man,--perhaps not since he was a Cherokee himself, and playing with the
+rest on the course at Tennessee Town.
+
+In fact, old Cheesto, in common with many men not Cherokees, cared
+little for the public weal when it interfered with private interest. But
+he had not realized how much he had jeopardized the success of Ioco Town
+in cutting the netting of the ball-sticks. He had imagined the
+incompleteness of the racket would merely show Amoyah as incompetent,
+render his play futile and ineffective, and discredit him with both
+friend and foe. Never, however, had the play of any one man been so
+important and conspicuous as his to-day when the bewitched ball-sticks
+became the salient feature and the living tradition of the match between
+Ioco and Niowee. For despite these points, thus lost by supernatural
+agency to Niowee, the bewitchment of the ball-sticks only served to
+illustrate the superior skill of the Ioco team, and to embellish their
+victory.
+
+Amoyah had nothing but his imagination to support his theory, but it
+seemed singularly credible to Altsasti, to whom he rehearsed it, finding
+her seated on the ground before the door of her winter house in great
+dreariness of spirit, that he should in playing so well have won nothing
+and merely jeopardized the game.
+
+"I am afraid of that Great Bear," she declared, eying the ball-sticks
+askance as he came up.
+
+Then revealing his theory of the spell that old Cheesto had wrought upon
+him in Tus-ka-sah's interest, Amoyah proposed a counter-spell which
+would defeat Tus-ka-sah.
+
+"But Cheesto can still send you trouble if you have a wife," she argued.
+
+"Ah, no," the specious Amoyah replied. "Everybody knows that a man's
+wife makes him all the trouble that he needs."
+
+To save him from these woes devised by others Altsasti undertook to give
+him all the trouble he needed. But he seemed quite cheerful in the
+prospect, and as she cooked the supper within doors he sat at the
+entrance, much at home, singing, "_Eeon-a, Ha-hoo-jah! Eeon-a,
+Ha-hoo-jah!_"
+
+Tus-ka-sah upbraided the magician with the result of this victory, by
+which he was defeated. And the wise man threw up eyes and hands at his
+ingratitude.
+
+"I set the Great Bear after Amoyah for you! I made the Eeon-a acquainted
+with his boastful lies, and he bewitched Amoyah's ball-sticks that his
+fine play might come to nothing."
+
+Very little to the purpose, the disaffected man of facts reflected,
+remembering the impression produced by his rival's display of skill.
+Somehow Amoyah seemed beyond the reach of logic. "Why did you not
+instead bewitch the woman?" Tus-ka-sah asked.
+
+But this wiliest of the cheera-taghe shook his head.
+
+"If she had been a _mere_ woman," he said. "But a widow is a witch
+herself."
+
+"_Eeon-a, Ha-hoo-jah! Eeon-a, Ha-hoo-jah!"_ sang Amoyah at the door of
+the winter house.
+
+Eeon-a, the Great Bear, made no sign and slept in peace at his town
+house in the mountains.
+
+And since then, as always before, under the first icy moon of the winter
+the company of bears with their feather-crested shadows take up their
+mysterious march seven times around the "beloved square" of their
+ancient secluded town in the Great Smoky Mountains, which it is said may
+be seen to this day--by all who can find it!
+
+
+
+
+THE VISIT OF THE TURBULENT GRANDFATHER
+
+
+It was long remembered in the Cherokee nation. Their grandfather came to
+the Overhill towns on the banks of the Tennessee River in a most
+imperious frame of mind.
+
+"Give me a belt!" he cried in irrelevant response to every gracious
+overture of hospitality. For although presents were heaped upon him, the
+official belt of the Cherokee nation was not among them, and he cast
+them all aside as mere baubles.
+
+Even the clever subterfuges of that master of statecraft, the half-king,
+Atta-Kulla-Kulla, might not avail. "_N'tschutti!_" (Dear friend) he said
+once in eager propitiation; "_Gooch ili lehelecheu_?" (Does your father
+yet live?) He spoke in a gentle voice and slowly, the Delaware language
+being unaccustomed to his lips. "Tell the great sakimau I well remember
+him!" And he laid a string of beads on the arm of the quivering Lenape,
+for their grandfather was of that nationality.
+
+But what flout of Fate was this? Not the coveted string of wampum, the
+official token, its significance not to be argued away, or overlooked,
+or mistaken--but instead a necklace of pearls, the fine freshwater gems
+of the region, so often mentioned by the elder writers and since held to
+be mythical or exaggeration of the polish of mere shell beads till the
+recent discoveries have placed once more the yield of the _Unio
+margaritiferus_ of the rivers of Tennessee on metropolitan markets.
+
+A personal gift--of the rarest, it is true--but a mere trifle in the
+estimation of Tscholens, in comparison with that national recognition
+which he craved and which a tribe of warriors awaited.
+
+The irate grandfather flung the glossy trinket from him down among the
+ashes of the fire, which glowed in the centre of the floor of the great
+council-house of the town of Citico, one of the dome-shaped buildings,
+plastered as usual within and without with richly tinted red clay. The
+flicker from the coals revealed the rows of posts that like a colonnade
+upheld the roof; the cane-wrought divan encircling the apartment between
+these columns and the windowless walls; the astonished faces and
+feather-crested heads of the conclave of Cherokee chiefs from half a
+dozen towns as they clustered around the fire and stared at Tscholens.
+
+The grave emotion in his face dignified its expression despite its
+savagery. Paradoxically the grandfather was young, slender, and, rated
+by any other standard than that of the Cherokees, an unusually tall
+people, would have been considered of fine height. His muscular arms
+were bare except for his heavy silver bracelets; a tuft of feathers
+quivered high on his head; his leggings were of deerskin, embroidered
+with parti-colored quills of the porcupine, and his shirt was of fine
+sable fur. His voice was sonorously insistent.
+
+"_N'petalogalgun_!" (I am sent as a messenger) he declared urgently.
+"Give me a belt."
+
+He turned his flaming eyes directly upon Atta-Kulla-Kulla, himself in
+the prime of life now, in 1745, who it seemed must act definitely under
+this coercion. He must either refuse to testify to the truth, which he
+knew, or involve his people, the Cherokees, in a quarrel which did not
+concern them, of which a century was tired, between the Lenni Lenape and
+the Mengwe.
+
+So long ago it had begun! The Mengwe, hard pressed by other nations and
+long at war with the Lenape, besought peace of this foe, and that they
+would use their influence with the others. Usually women, prompted
+always by the losing side, protested against the further effusion of
+blood and went with intercessions from one faction to the other. This,
+in view of the number and devious interests of the warring forces, was
+then impracticable, and therefore the Mengwe besought the Lenape to act
+as mediator for the occasion. Only so noted a race of warriors could
+afford this magnanimity, the Mengwe argued. It might impair the prestige
+of a less high-couraged and powerful tribe. And with these specious
+wiles the cat was duly belled.
+
+But alas for the Lenape! Magnanimity is the most dangerous of all the
+virtues--to its possessor! Presently the Mengwe claimed to have
+conquered the Lenape in battle, and cited the well-known fact that they
+had inaugurated peace proposals. As the Mengwe confederation grew more
+powerful they assumed all the arrogance of a protectorate. They sold the
+lands of their dependents. They resented all action of the Lenape on
+their own account. If the Lenape went to war on some quarrel of their
+making, they had the Mengwe to reckon with as well as the enemy. As the
+years rolled by in scores, this fiction gradually assumed all the
+binding force of fact, till now it was felt that only by the avowal of
+the truth by some powerful tribe, both ancient and contemporary, such as
+the Cherokee,--who, although allied neither linguistically nor
+consanguineously, by some abstruse figment of Indian etiquette affected
+an affiliation to the Lenape and called them "grandfather,"--could their
+rightful independence be recognized, reëstablished, and maintained.
+Therefore, "Give me a belt!" cried Tscholens pertinaciously, offering in
+exchange the official belt of the Delawares, or, as they were called,
+Lenni Lenape.
+
+Nothing less would content him. He hardened himself as flint against all
+suave beguilements tending to effect a diversion of interest. He would
+not see the horse-race. He would not "roll the bullet." He would not
+witness the game of chungke, expressly played in honor of his visit. He
+even refused to join in the dance, although young and nimble. But it
+chanced that the three circles were awhirl on the sandy spaces
+contiguous to the "beloved square" when the first break in the cohesion
+of his pertinacity occurred. The red sunset was widely aflare; the dizzy
+rout of the shadows of the dancers, all gregarious and intricately
+involved in the three circles, kept the moving figures company. These
+successive circles, one within another, followed each a different
+direction in their revolutions to the music of the primitive flute,
+fashioned of the bone of a deer (the tibia), and the stertorous
+sonorities of the earthen drums; and as the fantastically attired
+figures whirled around and around, their dull gray shadows whisked to
+and fro on the golden brown sand, all in the red sunset glow.
+
+Tscholens, quitting the council-house, glanced but indifferently at them
+and then away at the lengthening perspective of the azure mountains of
+the Great Smoky range. The harbingers of the twilight were advancing in
+a soft blue haze over the purple and garnet tinted slopes near at hand,
+their forests all leafless now, although the autumn had lingered long,
+and the burnished golden days of the Indian summer were loath to go.
+Lights were springing up here and there in the town as the glow of the
+hearths of the dwellings, where supper was cooking, flickered out to
+meet on the threshold the rays of the departing sun, which seemed to
+pause there for a farewell glance in at the open door. In the centre of
+the "beloved square" the fire which always burned here was slowly
+smouldering. It flung a red reflection on the front of the building
+devoted to the conferences of the aged councilors, painted a peaceful
+white and facing the setting sun. At this moment was emerging from it a
+figure which Tscholens had not before seen.
+
+A man so old he was that even the Indian's back was bent. His face was
+of weird effect, for amid its many wrinkles were streaks of
+parti-colored paint such as he had worn more than three quarters of a
+century earlier, when his fleet foot and the old war-trace were
+familiar. In common with all the Cherokees, his head was polled and bare
+save for a tuft, always spared to afford a grasp for any hand bold
+enough and strong enough to take the scalp; but this lock, although
+still dense and full, was of a snowy whiteness, contrasting sharply with
+the red paint and belying the warlike aspect of the red-feathered crest
+that trembled and shivered with the infirmities of his step. A heavy
+robe of fur reached almost to his feet, and a mantle, curiously wrought
+of the iridescent feathers of the neck and breast of the wild turkey,
+bespoke his consequence and added to the singularity of his aspect; for
+Indians seldom attained such age in those wild days, the warriors being
+usually cut off in their prime. It is to be doubted if Tscholens had
+ever seen so old a man, for this was Tsiskwa of Citico, reputed then to
+be one hundred and ten years of age.
+
+The step of the young grandfather, sauntering along, came to an abrupt
+halt. He stood staring, exclaiming to the Cherokee warrior Savanukah,
+"_Pennau wullih! Auween won gintsch pat_?" (Look yonder! Who is that who
+has just come?)
+
+It was an eagle-like majesty which looked forth from the eyes of Tsiskwa
+of Citico, as he seated himself on the long cane-wrought divan, just
+within the entrance of the cabin on the eastern side of the "beloved
+square." Time can work but little change in such a spirit. An eagle,
+however old, is always an eagle.
+
+The sage lifted one august claw and majestically waved it at the young
+Delaware _illau_ (war-captain) standing before him, while Savanukah
+turned away to join the dancers. "Lenni Lenape?--I remember--I remember
+very well when you came from the West!"
+
+Tscholens was not stricken with astonishment, although that migration is
+held by investigators of pre-Columbian myths[11] to have occurred before
+the ninth century! It was formerly a general trait among the Indians to
+use the, first person singular in speaking of the tribe, and to avoid,
+even in its name, the plural termination. Tsiskwa went on with the tone
+of reminiscence rather than legendary lore, and with an air of bated
+rancor, as of one whose corroding grievance still works at the heart, to
+describe how the Lenni Lenape crossed the Mississippi and fell upon the
+widespread settlements of the Alligewi (or Tallegwi) Indians--considered
+identical with the Cherokee (Tsullakee)--and warred with them many years
+in folly, in futility, in hopeless defeat.
+
+He lifted his eyes and gazed at the sun. A curve of pride steadied his
+old lips. His face was as resolute, as victorious, in looking backward
+as ever it had been in vaunting forecast. His was the temperament that
+always saw in prophecy or retrospect what he would wish to see. And that
+sun, now going down, had lighted him all his life along a path of
+conscious triumph.
+
+And then, he continued, the Lenni Lenape, after years of futile war,
+combined with the Mengwe,[12] and before their united force the Cherokee
+retired into the impregnable stronghold of their mountains, their
+beautiful country, the pride of the world!
+
+He waved his hand toward the landscape--lying out there in the lustre of
+its exquisite coloring, in the clarified air and the enhancing sunset;
+in the ideality of the contour of its majestic lofty mountains; in the
+splendor of its silver rivers, its phenomenally lush forests, its rich
+soil--pitying the rest of the world who must needs dwell elsewhere.
+
+"And here," he went on, "the European found me two centuries ago."
+
+He proceeded to narrate the advent of De Soto and his followers into the
+country of the Cherokees, embellishing his account with unrecorded
+particulars of their stay, especially in their digging for gold and
+silver, in which enterprise he himself seemed to have actively
+participated--only some two centuries previous!
+
+Tscholens, listening, looked about absently at the "beloved square,"
+which was vacant, with its open piazza-like building on each of the four
+sides. Two or three men were talking in the "war cabin," painted a vivid
+red. On the western side of the square the roof of the "holy cabin"
+showed dark against a lustrous reach of the shimmering river; despite
+the shadows within the broad entrance, the "sacred white seat" and the
+red clay transverse wall that partitioned off the _sanctum sanctorum_
+were plainly visible, but all was empty, deserted--the cheera-taghe had
+departed for the night.
+
+As Tsiskwa paused to cough, the Delaware, suddenly taking heart of
+grace, observed that it had always been the boast of the Lenni Lenape
+that they were the first tribe to welcome the European, the Dutch, to
+the land that they now called New York.
+
+Whereupon Tsiskwa retorted in a tempest of racking coughs that, whoever
+welcomed the Europeans here or there, it was no credit that the Lenape
+should be so forward to appropriate it! The white people were not the
+friends of the red man. They wanted the whole country. Finally they
+would have it.
+
+"_Mattapewiwak nik, schwannakwak_!" (The white people are a deceiving
+lot!) said Tscholens, seeking some common ground on which they could
+meet with a mutual sentiment.
+
+And at once Tsiskwa was all animation and as aggressive as at twenty.
+Well, indeed, might the Lenape say that! They were forever an easy
+prey--not only of the astute Europeans, but of the simple Indian as
+well. For a hundred years they had been the dupe of the Mengwe! As the
+mind of Tsiskwa dwelt on the various subtleties of the diplomatic
+attitude of the Mengwe toward the Lenape, its craft so appealed to him
+that his lips curved with relish; a smile irradiated his blurred eyes
+and intensified his wrinkles; his cough, shaking the folds of his outer
+fur garments above his wasted chest, mingled with his gay chuckle of
+merriment, as young as a boy's, while he cried, "Iroquois!
+Iroquois!"--the characteristic exclamation of the Mengwe confederation,
+whence they take their modern and popular name, and signifying, "I have
+spoken! I have spoken!"
+
+At the familiar and detested sound the Lenape suddenly smote his breast
+with his braceleted arms, and a strong cry involuntarily broke from
+him--so poignant, so bitter, so shrill, that it sounded high above the
+bleating flute, the guttural drone of the drum, the vibratory throb of
+the dancing feet, and brought the pastime to a sudden close. In another
+moment the "beloved square" was filled with crowds of the Cherokees and
+their huddling shadows, all a medley in the last red suffusions of the
+sinking sun. To the tumult of eager, anxious, polite questions,
+Tscholens faltered to Savanukah, who had hastily returned:--
+
+"_N'schauwihilla! N'dagotschi! Lowanneunk undchen_!" (I am fainting! I
+am cold! The wind comes from the north!)
+
+He looked ill enough, but Savanukah's sharp eyes scanned suspiciously
+the aged countenance of Tsiskwa of Citico. Tsiskwa was, however, the
+image of venerable and respected innocence. His aged lips mumbled one
+upon the other silently. He hardly seemed to take note of the tumult.
+When the afflicted "grandfather" was being led away from the scene,
+Savanukah loitered to ask, with well-couched phrase and the show of deep
+reverence, what had been the tenor of the discourse, and it was with a
+galvanic jerk that the old man appeared to gather his faculties
+together.
+
+"Of what did he talk?" Tsiskwa fixed august eyes upon Savanukah as he
+repeated the query. "Am _I_ to remember of what young men talk?--the mad
+young men?--mad, mad--all quite mad!"
+
+For not to Savanukah, surely, would he confess; and although because of
+this reticence that discerning party believed that Tsiskwa had wittingly
+wounded their emotional "grandfather" in his tenderest pride till he
+roared like a bull, Savanukah afterward had cause to repudiate this
+opinion in a conviction which was less to the credit of the acumen of
+Tsiskwa than a full confession of his breach of etiquette in tormenting
+his young "grandfather" might have been. At the time Savanukah felt a
+certain, malicious pride in the old man's keenness and poise and
+capacity, and he said apart to the inquisitive bystanders that, as might
+have been expected, the big bird, Tsiskwa-yah, had pounced upon the
+little bird, Tscholen-tit--for the name of each signifies a bird in
+their respective languages, and the suffixes imply great and small. And
+mightily pleased was Savanukah with his own wit.
+
+That night came a sudden change. A keen frost was falling soon after the
+sun went down, for the wind was laid, and such a chill glittering white
+moon came gliding out of the mists about the dark Great Smoky domes that
+it seemed the winter incarnate. All adown the desert aisles of the
+leafless woods the light lay with a flocculent glister like snow, so
+enhanced was its whiteness in the rare air and the blackness of the
+forest shadows--spare, clearly drawn, all filar and fine like the
+intricacies of a delicate line engraving. Something that the daylight
+might have shown, blue and blurred, was about the mountains; it followed
+the progress of that wintry moon westward. Presently, drawn up from
+across the ranges, it proved to be a purple cloud, and despite the broad
+section of the heavens still clear and the glittering whorls of the
+constellations, that cloud held snow.
+
+As the loitering southern winter had been long in abeyance, many of the
+Cherokees of Citico Town were still in their airy summer residences, but
+in one of the conical "winter houses," stove-like, air-tight,
+windowless, plastered within and without with the impervious red clay of
+the region, after the fashion of the great rotunda, Tscholens, in view
+of his sudden seizure and complaint of the gentle breeze of the south as
+freighted with the chill of the north, was consigned to rest. Half a
+dozen Cherokee braves were detailed to accompany him, nominally as a
+guard; but, there being no menace, this was in recognition of his
+importance and distinction, his escort of Delaware Indians having been
+billeted about in the town. There was no chimney, and although the fire
+which burned in the centre of the clay floor exhaled but little smoke,
+it hung in the air for the lack of the means of escape, and seemed to
+add to the warmth which the fuel sent forth. Now and again the
+superfluity of ashes encroached on the live coals. Whereupon one or
+another of the occupants of the restricted apartment, silent and
+recumbent upon the cane divan, which served now as bed and extended all
+ground the room between the walls and the row of posts that upheld the
+roof, would reach out a long stick, furnished for the purpose to each
+sleeper, and touch off the incumbering ash from the glow of the embers.
+As the night wore deeper into the dark hours these intervals of waking
+were rarer.
+
+Tscholens, muffled in bed draperies of otter furs and feathered mantles,
+his cane-wrought couch softened with panther and wolf skins, heard the
+wind going its rounds, and he realized that the direction of the
+currents of the air had veered and it came straight from the north. With
+the mere suggestion his heart sank. How should he return whence it
+came?--baffled, denied, empty-handed!--from these specious Cherokees,
+who yet called the Lenape "grandfather."
+
+The young war-captain had divined since he had been among them that the
+Cherokees were making ready for war against the British government; they
+would attack the South Carolina colonists, and for this reason, if for
+no other, they would do nothing to anger the Mengwe, the Iroquois, whom,
+however, they had often fought: for they loved war--they loved war!
+
+Gradually the room grew less warm. A sudden stir sounded under the
+divan, and a dog presently crept out to the fire, stretching lengthily
+and yawning widely as he went. He bestowed himself in an upright posture
+by the coals and looked down with drowsy gravity at the glow. His
+pendant ears, his long, pointed muzzle, his upright, rotund body, and
+his pose of solemn pondering made a queer shadow on the wall. He was no
+Cherokee, so to speak, but was the property of a French officer, and,
+following his master here from Fort Toulouse, _aux Alibamons_, had been
+left in the care of a Cherokee friend to await his owner's return from a
+mission to Fort Chartres and other French settlements "in the Illinois."
+The dog spoke any language, it might seem; for when one of the braves,
+half-awakened by his loud, unmannerly yawn, called out a reproof to him
+in Cherokee, he wagged his tail among the cold ashes till he stirred up
+a cloud of gritty particles; then he made his way across the room to the
+speaker, wheezing and sniffing, and bantering for a romp, till he was
+caught by the muzzle and, squeaking and shrilling, thrust under the
+divan anew.
+
+Once more silence, save for the patrol of the wind again on its rounds.
+Once more the flare of the fire, dying gradually down to a smouldering
+red glow, akin to the smothered red tone of the terra-cotta wall. Once
+more the hot, angry eyes of the young war-captain, staring hopelessly,
+sleeplessly into the red gloom and the dull mischance of the future,
+sequel of the past.
+
+Suddenly a thought struck him. It seemed at first to take his breath
+away. He gasped at the mere suggestion of its temerity. Then it set his
+blood beating furiously in his veins. After a space, in which he sought
+to calm himself, to still his nerves, to tame his quivering muscles, he
+rose slowly to a sitting posture, then stepped deftly, lightly to the
+floor. Standing motionless, he glanced keenly about in the dull red
+gloom. All silence--no stir save the regular rise and fall of the
+breathing of the slumbering Indians. Nevertheless, with his keen
+perceptions all alert and tense, he felt an eye upon him. He looked back
+warily over his shoulder through the lucid red gloom, like a palpable
+medium, as one looks, through a veil or tinted glass.
+
+It was the eye of the dog! The animal lay under the couch, his muzzle
+flat on the clay floor. A serious yet doubtful vigilance was in his
+aspect. Tscholens was already at the exit, which was a narrow winding
+passage serving as a wind-break, and with a sudden turn leading to the
+outer world. He heard the abrupt patter of the dog's feet on the clay
+floor, and a drowsy voice calling to the animal in Cherokee, admonishing
+him to be still. Tscholens waited without, and, as the dog issued and
+with half-aroused suspicions sniffed dubiously around him, he stooped
+down and patted the creature's head. It was well, after all, that he
+should follow; the noise of the dog's exit and return would serve to
+cover his own absence.
+
+He sought craftily to make friends with the dog. "_Mon chou! Mon
+cochon_!" he said, aping the endearments addressed to dog or horse which
+he had heard from the French officers at Fort Chartres, where he had
+recently been. Then suddenly in agitation: "_Tais toi! Sois sage_!"
+
+For the animal was indeed no Cherokee. At the sound of his native
+tongue, as it were, he demonstrated how little he cared to be in his
+skin, for his joyous bounces almost took him out of that integument.
+Luckily his gambols were noiseless,--for the ground was covered with
+snow.
+
+Tscholens stood for a moment motionless, his brain still afire with the
+imminent emprise, but his hot heart turning cold, and failing; for the
+snow--oh, treacherous cloud!--the snow would betray his steps and the
+trail disclose the mystery.
+
+"Oh, _Lowannachen_!" (Oh, north wind!) he moaned, holding up both hands
+outstretched to the north. "Oh, _wischiksil! Witschemil_!" (Oh, be thou
+vigilant! Help me!)
+
+Then suddenly lowering his head, he sped like the wind itself through
+the town, along the river bank and into the sacred precincts of the
+"beloved square." Ah! here he had stood this evening with what different
+hope and heart. Here in front of the eastern cabin he had sat beside the
+wily Tsiskwa of Citico, who might hardly make feeble shift to sway a
+reed, and yet with sharp sarcasms had stabbed him again and again to the
+very heart.
+
+"_Pihmtonheu_! Oh, _pihmtonheu_!" (He has the crooked mouth! Oh, he has
+the crooked mouth!) Tscholens muttered between his set teeth as he
+crossed the open space and paused before the western "holy cabin."
+
+But for his rage, perhaps, but for his smarting wounds, Tscholens might
+have labored with some deterrent sense of sacrilege. But no! With one
+elastic bound he leaped upon the "holy white seat," whence he surmounted
+the tier of places still behind and higher; then he lightly swung
+himself down into the intervening space in front of the inner partition
+formed by a red clay wall.
+
+A momentary pause--a monition of caution. He looked back over his
+shoulder at the pallid world without, visible across the barrier of
+seats through the broad entrance of the loggia-like place. With the
+reflection from the drifts on the ground and the tempered radiance of
+the moon behind the tissues of cloud, the scene seemed more wan, more
+illumined with ghastly light, because of the density of the gloom
+wherein he stood. The conical-shaped winter tenements had each a thatch
+of snow; the great circular council-house, with its whitened dome,
+glimmered as stately as some marble rotunda, on its high mound, distinct
+against the blurring blue shadow of the night and the gray clouds and
+the bare boughs of the encompassing forest. No living creature was to be
+seen, save the dog that had followed him, and that had paused to
+investigate some real or fancied find beneath the snow,--a bone,
+perhaps, flung out from the feastings of overnight; perhaps some little
+animal, young or hurt, whelmed in the drift. Now the dog thrust down a
+tense, inquiring muzzle, sniffing tentatively, cautiously, and again he
+plied alternately his forefeet and his hindfeet, digging out the snow
+from the quarry; then once more, with a motionless body and a straight,
+quivering tail, he applied his sensitive nostrils to the examination.
+
+Tscholens with gratification noted his absorption. This was indeed well.
+The animal's persistent following further might have hampered his plans
+and revealed his intrusion. The next moment, as the _illau_ turned to
+his purpose, densest night seemed to have encompassed him. The shadows
+cloaked all, save only the blank wall of clay and, down close to the
+ground, an arched opening into the _sanctum sanctorum_,--an opening so
+limited that it might barely suffice to admit a man's body, creeping
+prone upon the earth, and so whelmed in night that it seemed to give a
+new and adequate interpretation of the idea of darkness. Could he hope,
+all unaccustomed here, to turn in that restricted space to retrace the
+way? Could a ray of guiding light be caught from without across this
+high, guarding barrier of tiers of seats? And what perchance might lurk
+within instead of the object of this search?
+
+At the mere thought of this object of search all fear, all vestige of
+anxiety vanished. Tscholens felt his heart beat fast. His blood throbbed
+in his temples. He dropped upon his knees--a sinuous, supple motion, a
+vague rustle, and he had passed into the unimagined dark precincts
+beyond the aperture.
+
+Absolute quietude now reigned in the "holy cabin." The darkness filled
+it with a solemnity and awe that made a compact with silence and
+accounted the slightest sound, the softest stir, as a sacrilege.
+
+When an owl--a tiny thing, the familiar little "wahuhu" of the
+Cherokees--flitted down with its noiseless wings from out the sky and
+sat, a mere tuft of feathers and big round eyes, on one of the eaves,
+its shrill cry and convulsive chatter smote the night with a sudden
+affright--all the breathless listening spaces of the "beloved square"
+seemed to shiver at the sound, and the keen sleety lines of snow were
+tremulously vibrant with it as the flakes came slanting down once more
+from the north.
+
+For as Tscholens plunged out from the sanctuary his first consciousness
+of the world without was the chill touch of the falling snow on his
+cheek, its moist, icy breath on his lips beating back his own quick,
+agitated respiration. The little "wahuhu," all startled by his sudden
+exit, rose with a sharp, cat-like mew from the eaves above his head,
+dislodging a drift upon his hair, and fluttered away to a branch of a
+tree, still gazing after him as he sped swiftly, joyously, to the winter
+house where he lodged,--the descending snow would soon fill the trace of
+his light footsteps and none be the wiser.
+
+All danger of discovery, however, was not over-past. One of the braves
+in the winter house experienced a vague intimation of an entrance into
+the building, that peculiar chill which accompanies even to the warmest
+fireside an intruder from the outer air. It seemed explained when he
+roused himself and saw standing by the fire the French officer's dog,
+now gazing at the glow with meditative eyes, now diverted to
+industriously licking his sides. As the long cane of the waking Indian
+threw off the summit of the ashes and touched up the embers to a more
+cordial warmth, the dog, always relishing companionship, repaired to the
+side of the divan, and the young Cherokee, pushing him off, noticed the
+dripping sides of the animal where the snow had melted on the hair.
+
+"It must be raining," he said to himself, all unaware that aught had
+entered except the dog, coming and going after the manner of his
+restless kind. The incident recurred no more to his mind save for a
+vague recollection of his error when he perceived in the morning that it
+was snow that had fallen in the night and not rain.
+
+A new sensation pervaded the town upon its awakening. The "grandfather"
+announced the termination of his visit.
+
+"_N'matschi_!" (I shall go home) he said. And in explanation of this
+sudden resolution, "_N'matunguam_." (I have had a bad dream.)
+
+Now a dream among the Indians was of hardly less significance than among
+the Hebrews of old. It was sufficient justification for the undertaking
+of any enterprise or for any change of intention. Thus the departure of
+the Delaware delegation was shorn of all surprise or imputation of
+discourtesy. The head-men among the Cherokees felt it very definitely a
+relief to be freed from the importunities of their "grandfather."
+
+"Good speed to the journey of the _illau_ Tscholens!" Atta-Kulla-Kulla
+said that evening after the departure, as the head-men of several towns
+sat discussing the matter around the council-fire in the great
+state-house of Citico.
+
+"A turbulent 'grandfather' has a stormy voice and makes the heart of a
+young man like me very poor for fear!" the aged Tsiskwa coughed out, and
+they all greeted the great man's jest with a laugh of appreciation, and
+felt it was well that one so old could at once be so sage and so merry.
+But there came a time when they were of a different mind.
+
+A most important crisis had supervened in the policy of the Cherokee
+Indians toward the British government when their attention was diverted
+from their projected demonstration against the South Carolina colonists
+by a sudden attack from their ancient enemy, the Mengwe (the Iroquois,
+as the colonists called them). It was an altogether unprovoked attack,
+it seemed. The martial Cherokees, however, always eager to fight,
+demanded no explanations, but at once took the war-path with a great
+array of their brisk young braves, and because of this interruption, it
+was said, the war of the Cherokees against the British was long delayed.
+
+When at last the _casus belli_ of the Iroquois was disclosed it struck
+the Cherokees of Citico Town like a thunderbolt. The Cherokee nation,
+said the Mengwe, had presumed to recognize the independence of the Lenni
+Lenape, whom they knew to have been conquered by the Mengwe more than a
+century earlier.
+
+This, of course, elicited from the Cherokees a denial of any such
+recognition. Whereupon the Lenni Lenape themselves produced in
+counter-asseveration the official belt of the Cherokees, given in
+exchange for their own, and brought to the hand of their chief sachem by
+their young _illau_ Tscholens, from Citico Town, the residence of the
+Chief Tsiskwa.
+
+A deep amazement fell upon the Cherokees of Citico--the sort of
+superstitious consternation that a somnambulist might feel in
+contemplating in broad daylight the deeds he had wrought in
+sleep-walking. As to the rest of the nation, it was in vain that Tsiskwa
+denied; for there were many confirmatory details in support of the
+incontestable fact of the official belt openly shown in the possession
+of the Lenni Lenape. The gossips recapitulated the long and solitary
+audience with Tsiskwa to which Tscholens had been admitted--that strange
+wild cry with which it had terminated seeming now a cry of joy, not
+pain; and this interpretation was borne out by the obvious affectation
+of illness by which he had sought to hide the true import of the
+interview. More than all, the matter was put beyond reasonable doubt by
+the discovery of the official belt of the Delawares in the _sanctum
+sanctorum_ of the "holy cabin" in the "beloved square" among the
+treasures of the blended religion and statecraft which pertained to the
+government of the Cherokees. That Tscholens could have surreptitiously
+exchanged the belts, as Tsiskwa of Citico, dismayed, overwhelmed, yet
+blusteringly contended, was held to be preposterous; for there was not a
+moment, sleeping or waking, when the Delawares were not in the company
+and close charge of the Cherokees, who must needs have been cognizant of
+any such demonstration.
+
+Only one explanation was deemed plausible: the old man, doubtless in his
+dotage despite his seeming mental poise, had lost sight of the political
+significance of the bauble; he had bestowed it after the manner of the
+presents that all were unofficially heaping upon the "grandfather," and
+had mechanically, unthinkingly, received in exchange the Delaware belt.
+
+After one reeling moment of doubt the town of Citico recovered its
+balance and loyally supported its prince, but the rest of the nation was
+unanimous in the acceptance of the popular interpretation.
+
+How far extended the influence of this recognition by the Cherokees of
+the independence of the Lenni Lenape it is impossible to say, but it is
+well known that they acted independently in the American phase of the
+Seven Years' War and fought on behalf of the French, and in the
+Revolution they took the part of the Americans against the British,
+contrary to the policy of the Mengwe. About the time of the treaty of
+the United States with the Indians in 1795, the Mengwe, who had been
+greatly cast down by the defeat of their allies, the British, came
+forward of their own accord and desired publicly to acknowledge the
+independence of the Lenni Lenape.
+
+The masterly political machinations of Tscholens and the mystery in
+which they were enveloped did not permanently impair the cordial
+relations existing between his tribe and the Cherokees, for so late as
+1779 a delegation of fourteen Cherokees is chronicled as appearing in
+the country of the Lenni Lenape at their council-fire, to condole with
+them on the death of their head-chief; but neither before nor since is
+there any record of another visit of the turbulent "grandfather" to the
+banks of the Tennessee River.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES
+
+
+1. _Page_ 6. The annals of the southwestern settlements commemorate many
+instances of daring hearts in delicate frames, and the pioneer woman who
+perhaps under softer and safer circumstances would have screamed at a
+mouse often shouldered a rifle and bravely joined the frontiersmen in
+the defense of the stockade against the most cruel, most wily, most
+warlike savage foe that ever a civilized force encountered. Courage, of
+all the qualities of the moral panoply, is the least to be reckoned with
+by logic. Perhaps after all it is not inherent, even in the nobler
+organisms, but evolved by a conscientious sense of responsibility and
+the dynamic potencies of emergency. La Bruyère says: "_Jetez-moi dans
+les troupes comme un simple soldat, je suis Thersite: mettezmoi à la
+tête d'une armée don't j'aie à répondre à toute l'Europe, je suis
+Achille_!"
+
+2. _Page_ 114. The chungke stone of this favorite game of the southern
+Indians bears a certain resemblance to the ancient discus of the Greek
+athlete. This, it will be remembered, fashioned of metal or stone,
+circular, almost flat, was clasped by the fingers of one hand and held
+in the bend of the forearm, extending almost to the elbow. The genuine
+chungke stone is solid and discoidal in shape, beautifully polished,
+wrought of quartz, or agate, the most distinctive being concave on both
+sides, beveled toward the flat outer edge, and having a depression in
+the centre of both surfaces for the convenience of holding it with the
+second finger and thumb, the first finger clasping the periphery. Its
+usual dimensions are about six or eight inches in diameter. There are
+several varieties of these archaic relics, some flat, others lenticular
+or of a wedge-shell shape, and others, still, concave on one side and
+convex on the other. An absolutely spherical stone, bearing the
+extraordinarily high polish that distinguishes these unique objects,
+found in an ancient mound and supposed to have relation to the same or a
+similar game, calls to mind the globular quoit of the classical athletes
+and that "enormous round" described by Homer, "Aëtion's quoit"--to hurl
+which bowl they vie, "who teach the disk to sound along the sky."
+
+The exquisite finish of the chungke stone was compassed without the aid
+of a single tool, merely by the attrition of one stone upon another,
+"from time immemorial rubbed smooth upon the rocks, with prodigious
+labor," resulting in an object of such symmetrical beauty that even in
+the museums of the present day, out of which it is rarely seen, it
+challenges admiration. Antiquaries variously contend that it was hurled
+through the air and that it was bowled on the edge along the ground, its
+equilibrium being so perfect that on a level space it will roll a great
+distance, falling only when its impetus is expended.
+
+The chungke stone is often confounded with the Indian quoit, likewise
+circular and fashioned of smoothly wrought stone, but with an orifice in
+the centre, rendering it in effect a ring to be flung over a stake at a
+distance, or to be caught on the point of a lance.
+
+It has been inferred that Adair is mistaken in his assertion that by the
+Indian law the chungke stones were exempt from burial with the effects
+of the dead, since certain of the most perfect specimens known to modern
+archaeological collections were found in the exploration of mounds in
+the valley of the Tennessee River. By many these mounds are supposed to
+be prehistoric, and the game is doubtless of an unimaginable antiquity.
+As late as his day, among the Cherokees; 1736, the stones were kept with
+the "strictest religious care," and were the property of the town where
+the game was played.
+
+Adair, despite his roving life, had evidently scant sympathy with
+athletics. He may have been growing old and indolent when he speaks of
+the game as a "task of stupid drudgery" and opines that instead of a
+sport it might "with propriety of language" be described as "running
+hard labor." Other eye-witnesses, however, vaunt the great beauty and
+grace of the game. Captain Bernard Romany chronicles with relish the
+dexterity requisite, the great strength and skill displayed by the
+participants in the violent exercise, although demurely moralizing the
+while on its perilous fascination to both players and spectators, by
+reason of the inordinate temptation presented by its doubtful chances to
+the reckless gambler. Lieutenant Timberlake alone calls it
+"_nettecawaw_."
+
+As there are moot points concerning the stones themselves and the
+conduct of the sport, so the chungke spears differ in the accounts of
+the early adventurers in this region. The length is variously given as
+eight, ten, twelve feet. The shape is sometimes represented as a lance
+or pole heavy in the centre and tapering at both ends to a blunt point,
+and others describe an implement resembling a magnified golf club of the
+present day.
+
+3. _Page_ 114. This choice decoration, popular though it was, could not
+be attained without a penalty commensurate with its valuation. It is
+stated by early travelers among the Indian tribes that thirty days were
+required to properly heal an ear thus distended _à la mode_. The
+patient, if one so prideful might be so called, could only have one ear
+in the painful process at a time, in order that he might be able to lie
+in sleeping on the other side until such time as his embellished ear
+should be again serviceable for this prosaic purpose, and permit the
+like decoration of the opposite member.
+
+4. _Page_ 142. An illustration of how the Choctaws profited by these
+earnest labors may be given in the fate of a chapel erected for their
+benefit at Chickasaha by the French and placed in charge of a Jesuit
+missionary. The Choctaws so far accepted Christianity as to be able to
+travesty the services and mimic the priest with surprising humor and
+verisimilitude when the English came in, and were wont to go to the old
+chapel for this profane exhibition to the mingled delight and
+reprobation of the military new-comers. The chapel was soon afterward
+destroyed, but Captain Romans records that in 1771 he saw the cross
+still standing on the site, a melancholy memorial of futile missionary
+endeavor.
+
+All the Indians, however, were temperamentally averse to the services
+and tenets of the Christian religion, and Timberlake gives an instance
+among the Cherokees in 1760 in which a missionary was balked by a unique
+interruption. "Mr. Martin, who having preached Scripture till both he
+and his audience were heartily tired, was told at last that they knew
+very well that if they were good they would go up; if bad, down; that he
+could tell no more; that he had long plagued them with what they no ways
+understood, and they desired that he would depart the country."
+
+The epitome of theology thus deduced was so far a just conclusion. But
+doubtless the Indians labored greatly with imperfect comprehension.
+Humboldt describes a service among a South American tribe, in which a
+missionary preaching in Spanish was at his wits' end to make his
+audience differentiate between _infierno_ and _invierno_. They persisted
+in shivering with horror at the picture of the hell of his warnings in
+which the wicked were supposed to be subjected to everlasting winter.
+One is tempted to think that the end might have justified the means if
+the good padre had fallen in with the prejudice against the rainy season
+and adopted, in lieu of the fire-and-brimstone of Scripture, as a future
+state of punishment, the icy Ninth Circle of Dante's Inferno, where
+
+    "_Eran l' ombre dolenti nella ghiaccia,
+    Mettendo i denti in nota di cicogna_."
+
+5. _Page_ 151. The cultivation of personal pride was an essential
+element of training among the Indians. They held the lower ranks of
+white people in great contempt, and Timberlake records that in some
+athletic diversions at which he and other members of the Virginia
+regiment were present they refused to play or to hold conference with
+any of the troops except the officers.
+
+6. _Page_ 179. The primary and somewhat complex significance of the word
+_ada-wehi_ is suggested by the idea of sorcery,--a man, or animal, or
+even element endowed with uncontrolled superlative and supernatural
+powers. It has been stated that since the introduction of Christianity
+and the printing of the New Testament in the Cherokee typographical
+character the word has been utilized with its subtleties of
+signification to express spirit or angel. In this story, however, the
+scene of which is laid in a period long previous to the conversion of
+the tribe, or even the accepted date of the invention of the Cherokee
+alphabet, the word is used in its early and original sense to denote a
+magician of special and expansive gifts of sorcery.
+
+7. _Page_ 186. Although this officer's name was regularly incorporated
+into the Cherokee vocabulary as a synonym of disaster, he seemed to
+revolt at the unhappy plight of the people whom in the discharge of his
+duty he had succeeded in reducing to so abject a condition of despair
+and woe, and has left on record expressions of compassion incongruous
+with his deeds and his position as a professed soldier of long
+experience. He had served in Flanders and Ireland in his youth as
+captain in the Royal Scots before he first came to America as major in
+Montgomerie's regiment of Highlanders.
+
+Some adequate idea of the desolation and destitution of the Indians may
+be gleaned from the reports to the British government: "The Cherokees
+must certainly starve or come into terms, and even in that case Colonel
+Grant thinks it is hardly in the power of the provincials to save them.
+He proposed in a few days to send for The Great Warrior (Oconostota) and
+The Little Carpenter (Atta-Kulla-Kulla) to come and treat for peace, if
+they choose to save their nation from destruction. Till he receives
+their answer he will endeavor to save the small remains of the Lower
+Towns. In the mean time Colonel Grant intends to put Fort Prince George
+into repair, and to wait there or at Ninety-Six till he receives orders
+from Sir Jeffrey Amherst."
+
+The idea of the pangs of hunger and the sight of starvation and
+deprivation may have been the more repugnant to Colonel Grant since he
+was himself famous as a _bon vivant_ and gourmet. Indeed, even yet, in
+turning old pages we come upon records of his dinners. Bartram, the
+Philadelphia botanist, whom the Muscogee Indians quaintly called
+_Puc-Puggy_ (the Flower Hunter) details the great size of a rattlesnake,
+"six feet long and as thick as the leg of an ordinary man" which he
+chanced to kill in his bosky researches near Fort Picolata in Florida,
+and not the least surprising feature of the incident was a message from
+the commandant inviting both combatants to dinner, "Governor Grant being
+very fond of rattlesnake flesh." This officer, at that time Royal
+Governor of East Florida, was holding a congress with the Creek Indians
+hard by the fort, having come from St. Augustine with a detachment of
+its garrison for the purpose. Bartram, dining in company with Grant that
+day, saw his enemy served up in several different styles,--and he, too,
+must turn softhearted!--he could not partake of the dish,--and "was
+sorry after killing the serpent, when coolly recollecting every
+circumstance of it." However, neither the rattlesnake nor the Cherokees
+were in condition to profit by these belated graces of magnanimity.
+
+Through Grant's scattered correspondence there is a flavor of "vivers."
+Frederick George Mulcaster, still with the garrison of St. Augustine, in
+a letter addressed to Grant, then in Boston, laughingly alludes to his
+constant good cheer. "Captain Urquhart writes to his brother officers
+here that '_General Grant lives like a General_!'" And later, in piteous
+contrast, "His Excellency (the new Royal Governor) gave a dinner
+yesterday to the officers of the Fourteenth and some others. It is the
+only dinner he has given since the one he gave to John Stuart (famous as
+the survivor of Fort Loudon) upon his arrival here,"--a matter of two
+months. He further notes as a point of interest, "Your black man,
+Alexander, was with me this instant to inquire after your health, and
+has loaded me with _beaucoup de complimens_. He wishes much to come to
+make your bread." Doubtless it was well made, for Grant, prospering,
+went on from dinner to dinner, from promotion to promotion, attaining
+the rank of General in the army and great corpulency, representing
+Sutherlandshire in the British Parliament many years, and dying at the
+age of eighty-six at his birthplace, Ballindalloch, in the north of
+Scotland.
+
+8. _Page_ 212. The "Annual Register" in giving among State Papers the
+text of a treaty between Governor Lyttleton of South Carolina,
+Captain-General, etc., and Atta-Kulla-Kulla, "deputy for the whole
+Cherokee Nation," dated at Fort Prince George, Dec. 26, 1759, adds in a
+note: "Atta-Kulla-Kulla, the Little Carpenter, who concluded this treaty
+in behalf of the Cherokee Indians, was in England and at court several
+times in the year 1730."
+
+9. _Page_ 215. The oratorical gifts of this Indian (under the name
+Chollochcullah, supposed to be a phonetic variant of Atta-Kulla-Kulla)
+are thus described in _The Gentleman's Magazine_ for October, 1755,
+chronicling the details of an earlier diplomatic occasion: "The speaker
+rose up, and holding a bow in one hand and a sheaf of arrows in the
+other, he delivered himself in the following words, with all the
+distinctness imaginable, with the dignity and graceful action of a Roman
+or Grecian orator, and with all their ease and eloquence."
+
+10. _Page_ 231. Their tribal name, "men of fire," and their great
+veneration for that element have given rise to the conjecture that the
+Cherokees were originally fire-worshipers, as well as polytheistic. The
+interpolation of the intensative syllable "ta" is, according to Adair, a
+"note of magnitude," and the title of their prophets, whose functions
+are blended as priests, conjurers, physicians, and councilors,--the
+cheera-taghe,--signifies "men of divine fire." But Adair protests that
+the theistic ideals of the Indians were wholly spiritual, and that they
+had no plurality of gods. They paid their devotions merely to the "great
+beneficent supreme holy spirit of fire, who resides as they think above
+the clouds," and he argues plausibly that if they worshiped fire itself
+they would not have willfully extinguished the sanctified element
+annually on the last day of the old year throughout the nation, the
+invariable custom, before the cheera-taghe of each town kindled the
+"holy fire" anew, this being one of their exclusive functions. It may be
+that in their ancient rhapsodies (many of which Mr. James Mooney has
+collected for the Smithsonian Institution) addressed to bird or flame or
+beast the Indians adopted a poetic license no more significant of
+polytheism than the flights of fancy of many Christian poets in odes to
+the moon, to Fate, "to the red planet Mars," to the "wild west wind."
+Mere impersonation and invocation in apostrophe and paeans are not
+necessarily worship. Doubtless these spells and charms often arose from
+a superstitious half-belief, an imaginative freak, such as possesses the
+civilized visionary who shows a coin to the new moon to propitiate its
+fancied waxing influence in behalf of a balance at the banker's, or the
+Christianized Scotch Highlander of even the early nineteenth century who
+threw a piece of hasty pudding over the left shoulder on the anniversary
+of _Bealdin_ (the Gaelic for no other than Baal) to appease the spirits
+of the mists, the winds, the ravens, the eagles, and thus protect the
+crops and flocks. There is a thin boundary line as difficult to define
+as "to distinguish and divide a hair 'twixt south and southwest side,"
+between true belief and feigned credence.
+
+The veneration of the ancient Cherokees for the element of fire, in
+addition to their name, its careful conservation throughout the year,
+their addresses to its spirit, _Higayuli Tsunega, hatu ganiga_ (O
+Ancient White, you have drawn near to listen), is farther manifested by
+its traces found in the exploration of burial mounds, intimating a
+ceremonial introduction of the element at the remote period of
+interment,--if, indeed, the construction of these mounds can he ascribed
+to the Cherokees. Those on which their town houses were erected at a
+later date, the clay-covered rotunda forming a superstructure looking
+like a small mountain at a little distance, according to Timberlake,
+wherein were held the assemblies, whether for amusement or council or
+religious observances, served also as a substitute for the modern
+bulletin-board. Two stands of colors were flying, one from the top of
+the town house, the other at the door. These ensigns were white for
+peace, and exchanged for red when war impended. "The news hollow," as
+Timberlake phrases the cry, sounded from the summit of the mound, would
+occasion the assembling of all the community in the rotunda to hear the
+details from the lips of the chief. How much more the: "death hollow,"
+harbinger of woe!
+
+11. _Page_ 323. They are hardly to be regarded as myths perhaps, rather
+as dislocated relics of fact. In treating of the "Origin of American
+Nations," Dr. Barton says: "These traditions are entitled to much
+consideration, for, notwithstanding the rude condition of most of the
+tribes, they are often perpetuated in great purity, as I have discovered
+by much attention to their history." It is generally accepted that the
+first historical mention of the Cherokees occurs under the name of
+_Chelaque_ in the chronicles of De Soto's expedition in 1540 when they
+already occupied the Great Smoky Mountains and the contiguous region,
+but the Indians themselves had a tradition, according to Haywood's
+_Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee_, which was recited
+annually at the Green Corn Dance, in which they claimed that they were
+the earlier mound builders on the upper Ohio, whence they had migrated
+at a remote date. They can be identified with the ancient Talega or
+Tallegwi if the records of the _Walam Olum_ (painted sticks) may be
+believed, the wooden originals of which are said to have been preserved
+till 1822 and considered inexplicable, till their mnemonic signs and a
+manuscript song in the Lenni Lenape language, obtained from a remnant of
+the Delaware Indians, were translated by Professor C.S. Rafinesque "with
+deep study of the Delaware and the aid of Zeisberger's manuscript
+Dictionary in the library of the Philosophical Society."
+
+In this, a dynasty of Lenni Lenape chiefs and the events of their reigns
+are successively named, and from the first mention of their encounter
+with the warlike Tallegwi or Cherokee to the discovery of Columbus there
+is necessarily implied the passage of many centuries. Even the time that
+has elapsed since the Tallegwi were overthrown by them is estimated as
+somewhat more than a thousand years, thus placing this defeat in the
+ninth century. Professor Cyrus Thomas in "The Cherokees of Pre-Columbian
+Times" states that he thinks it would be more nearly correct to credit
+the event to the eleventh or twelfth century. He quotes in support of
+his theory from the _Walam-Olum_ as translated by Dr. Brinton, who
+giving the original in parallel pages, with the mnemonic signs, does not
+use in the English version the Indian names of the chiefs.
+
+This record of the _Walam-Olum_ is really very curious. After passing
+the account of the Creation, the Flood, the Migrations, and entering
+upon the Chronicles, the _Walam-Olum_ reads much like a Biblical
+genealogy, save that in lieu of scions of a parent tree these are
+military successors, war-captains. The following quotations are from the
+version given by Squier:
+
+     47. _Opekasit_ (East-looking) being next chief, was sad
+     because of so much warfare.
+
+     48. Said let us go to the Sun-rising (_Wapagishek_) and
+     many went east together.
+
+     49. The Great River _(Messussipu)_ divided the land and
+     being tired they tarried there.
+
+     50. _Yagawanend_ (Hut-Maker) was next sakimau, and then
+     the Tallegwi were found possessing the east.
+
+     51. Followed _Chitanitis_ (Strong Friend), who longed for
+     the rich east land.
+
+     52. Some went to the east but the Tallegwi killed a
+     portion.
+
+     53. Then all of one mind exclaimed war, war!
+
+     54. The _Talamatan_ (Not-of-themselves) and the Nitilowan
+     all united (to the war).
+
+     55. _Kinnehepend_ (Sharp-looking) was their leader, and
+     they went over the river.
+
+     56. And they took all that was there and despoiled and
+     slew the Tallegwi.
+
+     57. _Pimokhasuwi_ (Stirring About) was next chief, and
+     then the Tallegwi were much too strong.
+
+     58. _Tenchekensit_ (Open Path) followed and many towns
+     were given up to him.
+
+     59. _Paganchihilla_ was chief,--and the Tallegwi all went
+     southward.
+
+After the earliest mention of the Tallegwi in verse 50 of the First
+Chronicle there are about fifty chieftains enumerated, and characterized
+with their successive reigns before the entrance of the white
+discoverers of the continent at the end of the Second Chronicle. In this
+it is stated at verse--
+
+     56. _Nenachipat_ was chief toward the sea.
+
+     57. Now from north and south came the _Wapagachik_ (white
+     comers).
+
+     58. Professing to be friends, in big birds (ships). Who
+     are they?
+
+And with this dramatic climax the ancient picture record closes.
+
+What is known as the Modern Chronicle, a fragment, begins with the
+answer, "Alas! Alas! we know now who they are, these _Wapinsis_ (East
+People) who came out of the sea to rob us of our lands."
+
+And that the modern chronicle shall be certainly correct the successor
+of _Lekhibit_ (the compiler of the ancient story) is assisted by
+critical philologists, and Rafinesque takes issue with Holm touching a
+Swedish suffix in an Indian name. "Mattanikum was chief in 1645. He is
+called 'Mattahorn' by Holm, and 'horn' is not Lenapi!"
+
+It is difficult to adjust one's credulity to accept as history this
+singular Indian picture-record. Its authenticity is supported by the
+great scope of the system and the reputed subtlety and close accuracy by
+which abstract ideas, the origin of things, the powers of nature, the
+elements of religion, could be expressed and read by those conversant
+with the mnemonic signs,--as easily, Heckewelder says, as a piece of
+writing. The noted antiquary Squier, however, who in this connection has
+lauded Rafinesque's industry, scientific attainments, and eager
+researches, states that since writing in this vein he has seen fit to
+read this author's _American Nations_ and finds it "a singular jumble of
+facts and fancies," and adds that it is unfortunate that the manuscript
+in question should fall in this category. To praise, even with
+qualifications, the author without reading all his work on the subject,
+while certainly more amiable, is hardly more conducive to an impartial
+estimate than to disparage on hearsay, according to that travesty of
+critical judgment: "'_Que dites-vous du livre d'Hermodore?' 'Qu'il est
+mauvais,' répond Anthime ... 'Mais l'aves-vous lu?' 'Non.' dit Anthime.
+Quen'ajoute-t-il que Fulvie et Mélanie l'ont condamné sans l'avoir lu,
+et qu'il est ami de Fulvie et de Mélanie_?"
+
+In contrast with this method the caution and critical scrutiny with
+which Dr. Brinton, in his work on "The Lenape," deliberates upon the
+question of the authenticity of the _Walam Olum_ are indeed marked. He
+carefully examines all the details both favorable and adverse, and
+finally adduces the evidence of the text itself. The manuscript
+submitted by him to educated Indians of the Lenni Lenape is pronounced
+to be a genuine oral composition of a Delaware Indian in an ancient
+dialect, evidently dictated to one not wholly conversant with, all the
+terminal inflections of the words, which occasional omissions form the
+chief defect of the curious "Red Score."
+
+12. _Page_ 324. Some authorities hold that the _Talamatan_
+(Not-of-themselves) mentioned by the _Walam-Olum_ were the Hurons who
+allied themselves with the Delawares against the Tallegwi, and that
+Heckewelder is mistaken in stating that these confederates were the
+Mengwe. This story, however, follows the account of the war and the
+subsequent subjection of the Delawares as given by Heckewelder.
+
+
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Frontiersmen, by Charles Egbert Craddock</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The Frontiersmen</p>
+<p>Author: Charles Egbert Craddock</p>
+<p>Release Date: October 12, 2004  [eBook #13724]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FRONTIERSMEN***</p>
+<br><br><h4>E-text prepared by the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br>
+            from images provided by the Million Book Project</h4><br><br>
+<hr class="full" noshade>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+
+
+<h1>THE FRONTIERSMEN</h1>
+
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+
+<h2>CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK</h2>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<h4>Author of <i>A Spectre of Power</i>,<br>
+ <i>The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains</i>,
+ <i>In the Tennessee Mountains</i>, etc.</h4>
+<br />
+
+<h4>1904</h4>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+
+
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+ <a href='#THE_LINGUISTER'><b>THE LINGUISTER</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#A_VICTOR_AT_CHUNGKE'><b>A VICTOR AT CHUNGKE</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#THE_CAPTIVE_OF_THE_ADA_WEHI'><b>THE CAPTIVE OF THE ADA-WEHI</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#THE_FATE_OF_THE_CHEERA_TAGHE'><b>THE FATE OF THE CHEERA-TAGHE</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#THE_BEWITCHED_BALL_STICKS'><b>THE BEWITCHED BALL-STICKS</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#THE_VISIT_OF_THE_TURBULENT_GRANDFATHER'><b>THE VISIT OF THE TURBULENT GRANDFATHER</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#NOTES'><b>NOTES</b></a><br />
+
+
+
+
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+<a name='THE_LINGUISTER'></a><h2>THE LINGUISTER</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>The mental image of the world is of individual and varying compass. It
+may be likened to one of those curious Chinese balls of quaintly carved
+ivory, containing other balls, one within another, the proportions ever
+dwindling with each successive inclosure, yet each a more minute
+duplicate of the external sphere. This might seem the least world of
+all,&mdash;the restricted limits of the quadrangle of this primitive
+stockade,&mdash;but Peninnah Penelope Anne Mivane had known no other than
+such as this. It was large enough for her, for a fairy-like face, very
+fair, with golden brown hair, that seemed to have entangled the
+sunshine, and lustrous brown eyes, looked out of an embrasure (locally
+called &quot;port-hole&quot;) of the blockhouse, more formidable than the swivel
+gun once mounted there, commanding the entrance to the stockade gate.
+Her aspect might have suggested that Titania herself had resorted to
+military methods and was ensconced in primitive defenses. It was even
+large enough for her name, which must have been conferred upon her, as
+the wits of the Blue Lick Station jocularly averred, in the hope of
+adding some size to her. It was large enough also for the drama of
+battle and the tragedy of bloody death&mdash;both had befallen within its
+limits.</p>
+
+<p>There had been a night, glooming very dark in the past, an unwary night
+when the row of log houses, all connected by the palisades from one to
+the other, presenting a blank wall without, broken only by loopholes for
+musketry, had been scaled by the crafty Cherokees, swarming over the
+roofs, and attacking the English settlers through the easy access of the
+unglazed windows and flimsy batten doors that opened upon the
+quadrangle. Although finally beaten off, the Indians had inflicted great
+loss. Her father had been one of the slain settlers who thus paid
+penalty for the false sense of security, fostered by long immunity. Even
+more troublous times came later,&mdash;the tumult of open war was rife in all
+the land; the station was repeatedly attacked, and although it held out
+stanchly, fear and suspense and grief filled the stockade,&mdash;yet still
+there was space for Cupid to go swaggering hither and thither within the
+guarded gates, and aim his arrows with his old-time dainty skill, albeit
+his bow and quiver might seem somewhat archaic in these days of powder
+and lead. For Peninnah Penelope Anne Mivane spent much of her time in
+the moulding of bullets. Perhaps it was appropriate, since both she and
+her young pioneer lover dealt so largely in missiles, that it was thus
+the sentimental dart was sped. Lead was precious in those days, but
+sundry bullets, that she had moulded, Ralph Emsden never rammed down
+into the long barrel of his flintlock rifle. Some question as to whether
+the balls had cooled, or perhaps some mere meditative pause, had carried
+the bits of lead in her fingers to her lips, as they sat together on the
+hearth and talked and worked in the fire-lit dusk for their common
+defense. He was wont to watch, lynx-eyed, the spot where these
+consecrated bullets were placed, and afterward carried them in a
+separate buckskin bag over his heart, and mentally called them his
+&quot;kisses;&quot; for the youths of those days were even such fools as now,
+although in the lapse of time they have come to pose successfully in the
+dignified guise of the &quot;wise patriots of the pioneer period.&quot; More than
+once when the station was attacked and the women loaded the guns of the
+men to expedite the shooting, she kept stanchly at his elbow throughout
+the thunderous conflict, and charged and primed the alternate rifles
+which he fired.<a name="anchor_1"></a>[<a href="#footnote_1">1</a>] Over the trigger, in fact, the fateful word was
+spoken.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, Nan,&quot; he exclaimed, looking down at her while taking the weapon
+from her hand in the vague dusk where she knelt beside him,&mdash;he stood on
+the shelf that served as banquette to bring him within reach of the
+loophole, placed so high in the hope that a chance shot entering might
+range only among the rafters,&mdash;&quot;How quick you are! How you help me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The thunderous crash of the double volley of the settlers firing twice,
+by the aid of their feminine auxiliaries, to every volley of the
+Indians, overwhelmed for the moment the tumult of the fiendish whoops in
+the wild darkness outside, and then the fusillade of the return fire,
+like leaden hail, rattled against the tough log walls of the station.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are you afraid, Nan?&quot; he asked, as he received again the loaded weapon
+from her hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Afraid?</i>&mdash;No!&quot; exclaimed Peninnah Penelope Anne Mivane&mdash;hardly taller
+than the ramrod with which she was once more driving the charge home.</p>
+
+<p>He saw her face, delicate and blonde, in the vivid white flare from the
+rifle as he thrust it through the loophole and fired. &quot;You think I can
+take care of you?&quot; he demanded, while the echo died away, and a lull
+ensued.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know you can,&quot; she replied, adjusting with the steady hand of an
+expert the patching over the muzzle of the discharged weapon in the
+semi-obscurity.</p>
+
+<p>A blood-curdling shout came from the Cherokees in the woods with a
+deeper roar of musketry at closer quarters; and a hollow groan within
+the blockhouse, where there was a sudden commotion in the dim light,
+told that some bullet had found its billet.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They are coming to the attack again&mdash;Hand me the
+rifle&mdash;quick&mdash;quick&mdash;Oh, Nan, how you help me! How brave you are&mdash;I love
+you! I love you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Look out now for a flash in the pan!&quot; Peninnah Penelope Anne merely
+admonished him.</p>
+
+<p>Being susceptible to superstition and a ponderer on omens, Ralph Emsden
+often thought fretfully afterward on the double meaning of these words,
+and sought to displace them in their possible evil influence on his
+future by some assurance more cheerful and confident. With this view he
+often earnestly beset her, but could secure nothing more pleasing than a
+reference to the will of her grandfather and a protestation to abide by
+his decision in the matter.</p>
+
+<p>Now Peninnah Penelope Anne's grandfather was deaf. His was that hopeless
+variety of the infirmity which heard no more than he desired. His
+memory, however, was unimpaired, and it may be that certain
+recollections of his own experiences in the past remained with him,
+making him a fine judge of the signs of the present. Emsden, appalled by
+the necessity of shrieking out his love within the acute and
+well-applied hearing facilities of the families of some ten
+&quot;stationers,&quot; to use the phrase of the day, diligently sought to decoy,
+on successive occasions, Richard Mivane out to the comparative solitudes
+of the hunting, the fishing, the cropping. In vain. Richard Mivane
+displayed sudden extreme prudential care against surprise and capture by
+Indians, when this was possible, and when impossible he developed
+unexpected and unexampled resources of protective rheumatism. The young
+lover was equally precluded from setting forth the state of his
+affections and the prospects of his future in writing. Apart from the
+absurdity of thus approaching a man whom he saw twenty times a day, old
+Mivane would permit no such intimation of the extent of his
+affliction,&mdash;it being a point of pride with him that he was merely
+slightly hard of hearing, and suffered only from the indistinctness of
+the enunciation of people in general. And indeed, it was variously
+contended that he was so deaf that he could not hear a gun fired at his
+elbow; and yet that he heard all manner of secrets which chanced to be
+detailed in his presence, in inadvertent reliance on his incapacity, and
+had not the smallest hesitation afterward in their disclosure, being
+entitled to them by right of discovery, as it were.</p>
+
+<p>Emsden, in keen anxiety, doubtful if his suit were seriously
+disapproved, or if these demonstrations were only prompted by old
+Mivane's selfish aversion to give away his granddaughter, finally
+summoned all his courage, and in a stentorian roar proclaimed to the old
+gentleman his sentiments.</p>
+
+<p>Richard Mivane was a man of many punctilious habitudes, who wore cloth
+instead of buckskin, however hard it might be to come by, and silver
+knee-buckles and well-knit hose on his still shapely calves, and a
+peruke carefully powdered and tended. He had a keen, wrinkled, bloodless
+face, discerning, clever, gray eyes, heavy, overhanging, grizzled
+eyebrows, and a gentlemanly mouth of a diplomatic, well-bred,
+conservative expression.</p>
+
+<p>It was said at Blue Lick Station that he had fled from his own country,
+the north of England, on account of an affair of honor,&mdash;a duel in early
+life,&mdash;and that however distasteful the hardships and comparative
+poverty of this new home, it was far safer for him than the land of his
+birth. His worldly position there gave him sundry claims of superiority,
+for all of which his hardy pioneer son had had scant sympathy; and Ralph
+Emsden, in the difficult crisis of the disclosure of the state of his
+affections, heaved many a sigh for this simple manly soul's untimely
+fate.</p>
+
+<p>The elder Mivane, with his head bent forward, his hand behind his ear,
+sat in his arm-chair while he hearkened blandly to the sentimental
+statements which Emsden was obliged to shout forth twice. Then Richard
+Mivane cleared his throat with a sort of preliminary gentlemanly
+embarrassment, and went fluently on with that suave low voice so common
+to the very deaf. &quot;Command me, sir, command me! It will give me much
+pleasure to use my influence on your behalf to obtain an ensigncy. I
+will myself write at the first opportunity, the first express, to
+Lieutenant-Governor Bull, who is acquainted with my family connections
+in England. It is very praiseworthy, very laudable indeed, that you
+should aspire to a commission in the military service,&mdash;the provincial
+forces. I honor you for your readiness to fight&mdash;although, to be sure,
+being Irish, you can't help it. Still, it is to your credit that you are
+Irish. I am very partial to the Irish traits of character&mdash;was once in
+Ireland myself&mdash;visited an uncle there&quot;&mdash;and so forth and so forth.</p>
+
+<p>And thus poor Ralph Emsden, who was only Irish by descent, and could not
+have found Ireland on the map were he to hang for his ignorance, and had
+been born and bred in the Royal province of South Carolina,&mdash;which
+country he considered the crown and glory of the world,&mdash;was constrained
+to listen to all the doings and sayings of Richard Mivane in Ireland
+from the time that he embarked on the wild Irish Sea, which scrupled not
+to take unprecedented liberties with so untried a sailor, till the
+entrance of other pioneers cut short a beguiling account of his first
+meeting with potheen in its native haunts, and the bewildering pranks
+that he and that tricksy sprite played together in those the
+irresponsible days of his youth.</p>
+
+<p>Emsden told no one, not even Peninnah Penelope Anne, of his
+discomfiture; but alack, there were youngsters in the family of
+unaffected minds and unimpaired hearing. This was made amply manifest a
+day or so afterward, when he chanced to pause at the door of the log
+cabin and glance in, hoping that, perhaps, the queen of his dreams might
+materialize in this humble domicile.</p>
+
+<p>The old gentleman slept in his chair, with dreams of his own, perchance,
+for his early life might have furnished a myriad gay fancies for his
+later years. The glare of noonday lay on the unshaded spaces of the
+quadrangle without; for all trees had been felled, even far around the
+inclosure, lest thence they might afford vantage and ambush for musketry
+fire or a flight of arrows into the stockade. Through rifts in the
+foliage at considerable distance one could see the dark mountain looming
+high above, and catch glimpses of the further reaches of the Great Smoky
+Range, blue and shimmering far away, and even distinguish the crest of
+&quot;Big Injun Mountain&quot; on the skyline. The several cabins, all connected
+by that row of protective palisades from one to another like a visible
+expression of the chord of sympathy and mutual helpful neighborliness,
+were quiet, their denizens dining within. At the blockhouse a guard was
+mounted&mdash;doubtless a watchful and stanch lookout, but unconforming to
+military methods, for he sang, to speed the time, a metrical psalm of
+David's; the awkward collocation of the words of this version would
+forever distort the royal poet's meaning if he had no other vehicle of
+his inspiration. There were long waits between the drowsy lines, and in
+the intervals certain callow voices, with the penetrating timbre of
+youth, came to Emsden's ear. His eyes followed the sound quickly.</p>
+
+<p>The little sisters of Peninnah Penelope Anne were on the floor before a
+playhouse, outlined by stones and sticks, and with rapt faces and
+competent fancies, saw whatsoever they would. In these riches of
+imagination a little brother also partook. A stick, accoutred in such
+wise with scraps of buckskin as to imitate a gallant of the place and
+period, was bowing respectfully before another stick, vested in the
+affabilities of age and the simulacrum of a dressing-gown.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I love your granddaughter, sir, and wish to make her my wife,&quot; said the
+bowing stick.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Command me, sir; command me!&quot; suavely replied the stick stricken in
+years.</p>
+
+<p>The scene had been an eye-opener to the tender youth of the little
+Mivanes; the pomp and circumstance of a sentimental disclosure they
+would never forget.</p>
+
+<p>Emsden, as hardy a pioneer as ever drew a bead on a panther or an
+Indian, passed on, quaking at the thought of the wits of the Station as
+he had never yet feared man, and his respected Irish blood ran cold. And
+when it waxed warm with wrath once more it came to pass that to utter
+the simple phrase &quot;Command me&quot; was as much as a man's life was worth at
+Blue Lick Station.</p>
+
+<p>Emsden thought ruefully of the girl's mother and wondered if her
+intercession would avail aught with the old autocrat. But he had not yet
+ventured upon this. There was nothing certain about Mrs. Mivane but her
+uncertainty. She never gave a positive opinion. Her attitude of mind was
+only to be divined by inference. She never gave a categorical answer.
+And indeed he would not have been encouraged to learn that Richard
+Mivane himself had already consulted his daughter-in-law, as in this
+highhanded evasion of any decision he felt the need of support. For once
+the old gentleman was not displeased with her reply, comprehensive,
+although glancing aside from the point. Since there were so many young
+men in the country, said Mrs. Mivane, she saw no reason for despair!
+With this approval of his temporizing policy Richard Mivane left the
+matter to the development of the future.</p>
+
+<p>Emsden's depression would have been more serious had he not fortunately
+sundry tokens of the old man's favor to cherish in his memory, which
+seemed to intimate that this elusiveness was only a shrewd scheme to
+delay and thwart him rather than a positive and reasonable disposition
+to deny his suit. In short, Emsden began to realize that instead of a
+damsel of eighteen he had to court a coquette rising sixty, of the
+sterner sex, and deafer than an adder when he chose. His artful quirks
+were destined to try the young lover's diplomacy to the utmost, and
+Emsden appreciated this, but he reassured himself with the reflection
+that it was better thus than if it were the girl who vacillated and
+delighted to torture him with all the arts of a first-class jilt. He was
+constantly in and out of the house almost as familiarly as if he were
+already betrothed, for in the troublous period that seemed now closing,
+with its sudden flights, its panics, its desperate conflicts with the
+Indians, he had been able to give an almost filial aid to Richard Mivane
+in the stead of the son whom the old man had lost.</p>
+
+<p>Richard Mivane had always felt himself an alien, a sojourner in this new
+land, and perchance he might not have been able even partially to
+reconcile himself to the ruder conditions of his later life if the
+bursting of a financial bubble had not swept away all hope of returning
+to the status of his earlier home in England when the tragedy of the
+duel had been sunk in oblivion. The frontier was a fine place to hide
+one's poverty and fading graces, he had once remarked, and thereafter
+had seemed to resign himself to its hardships,&mdash;indeed, sometimes he
+consigned his negro body-servant, C&aelig;sar, to other duties than his
+exclusive attendance. He had even been known to breakfast with his head
+tied up in a handkerchief when some domestic crisis had supervened, such
+as the escape of all the horses from the pinfold, to call away his
+barber. As this functionary was of an active temperament and not at all
+averse to the labor in the fields, he proved of more value thus utilized
+than in merely furnishing covert amusement to the stationers by his
+pompous duplication of his master's attitude of being too cultured,
+traveled, and polished for his surroundings. He was a trained valet,
+however, expert in all the details of dressing hair, powdering, curling,
+pomatuming, and other intricacies of the toilet of a man of fashion of
+that day. C&aelig;sar had many arts at command touching the burnishing of
+buckles and buttons, and even in clear-starching steinkirks and the
+cambric ruffles of shirts. As he ploughed he was wont to tell of his
+wonderful experiences while in his master's service in London (although
+he had never crossed the seas); and these being accepted with seeming
+seriousness, he carried his travels a step farther and described the
+life he remembered in the interior of Guinea (although he had never seen
+the shores of Africa). This life so closely resembled that of London
+that it was often difficult to distinguish the locality of the
+incidents, an incongruity that enchanted the wags of the settlement, who
+continually incited him to prodigies of narration. The hairbreadth
+escapes that he and his fellow-servants, as well as the white people,
+had had from the wrath of the Indians, whom the negroes feared beyond
+measure, and their swift flights from one stockade to another in those
+sudden panics during the troubled period preceding the Cherokee War,
+might have seemed more exciting material for romancing for a venturesome
+Munchausen, but perhaps these realities were too stern to afford any
+interest in the present or glamour in the past.</p>
+
+<p>It was somewhat as a prelude to the siege of Fort Loudon by the
+Cherokees in 1760 that they stormed and triumphantly carried several
+minor stations to the southeast. Although Blue Lick sustained the
+attack, still, in view of the loss of a number of its gallant defenders,
+the settlers retreated at the first opportunity to the more sheltered
+frontier beyond Fort Prince George, living from hand to mouth, some at
+Long Cane and some at Ninety-Six, through those years when first
+Montgomerie and then Grant made their furious forays through the
+Cherokee country. Emsden, having served in the provincial regiment,
+eagerly coveted a commission, of which Richard Mivane had feigned to
+speak. Now that the Cherokees were ostensibly pacified,&mdash;that is,
+exhausted, decimated, their towns burned, their best and bravest slain,
+their hearts broken,&mdash;the fugitives from this settlement on the
+Eupharsee River, as the Hiwassee was then called, gathered their
+household gods and journeyed back to Blue Lick, to cry out in the
+wilderness that they were &quot;home&quot; once more, and clasp each other's hands
+in joyful gratulation to witness the roofs and stockade rise again,
+rebuilt as of yore. Strangely enough, there were old Cherokee friends to
+greet them anew and to be welcomed into the stockade; for even the rigid
+rule of war and hate must needs be proved by its exceptions. And there
+were one or two pensive philosophers among the English settlers vaguely
+sad to see all the Cherokee traditions and prestige, and remnants of
+prehistoric pseudo-civilization, shattered in the dust, and the
+tremulous, foreign, unaccustomed effort&mdash;half-hearted, half-believing,
+half-understanding&mdash;to put on the habitude of a new civilization.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The white man's religion permits poverty, but the Indian divides his
+store with the needy, and there are none suffered to be poor,&quot; said
+Atta-Kulla-Kulla, the famous chief. &quot;The white men wrangle and quarrel
+together, even brother with brother; with us the inner tribal peace is
+ever unbroken. The white men slay and rob and oppress the poor, and with
+many cunning treaties take now our lands and now our lives; then they
+offer us their religion;&mdash;why does it seem so like an empty bowl?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Atta-Kulla-Kulla, you know that I am deaf,&quot; said Richard Mivane, &quot;and
+you ask me such hard questions that I am not able to hear them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It is more than probable that these stationers in the vanguard of the
+irrepressible march of western emigration had been trespassers, and thus
+earned their misfortunes, in some sort, by their encroachment on Indian
+territory; although since the war the Cherokee boundaries had become
+more vague than heretofore, it being considered that Grant's operations
+had extended the frontier by some seventy miles. It may be, too, that
+the Blue Lick settlers held their own by right of private purchase; for
+the inhibition to the acquisition of land in this way from the Indians
+was not enacted till the following year, 1763, after the events to be
+herein detailed, and, indeed, such purchases even further west and of an
+earlier date are of record, albeit of doubtful legality.</p>
+
+<p>Now that peace in whatever maimed sort had come to this stricken land
+and these adventurous settlers, who held their lives, their all, by such
+precarious tenure, internecine strife must needs arise among them; not
+the hand of brother against brother,&mdash;they were spared that grief,&mdash;but
+one tender, struggling community against another.</p>
+
+<p>And it came about in this wise.</p>
+
+<p>One day Peninnah Penelope Anne Mivane, watching from the &quot;port-hole&quot; of
+the blockhouse, where the muzzle of that dog of war the little swivel
+gun had once been wont to look forth, beheld Ralph Emsden ride out from
+the stockade gate for a week's absence with a party of hunters; with
+bluff but tender assurance he waved his hat and hand to her in farewell.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Before all the men!&quot; she said to herself, half in prudish dismay at his
+effrontery, and yet pleased that he did not sheepishly seek to conceal
+his preference. And although the men (there were but two or three and
+not half the province, as her horror of this publicity would seem to
+imply) said with a grin &quot;Command me!&quot; they said it <i>sotto voce</i> and only
+to each other.</p>
+
+<p>Spring was once more afoot in the land. They daily marked her advance as
+they went. Halfway up the mountains she had climbed: for the maples were
+blooming in rich dark reds that made the nearer slopes even more
+splendid of garb than the velvet azure of the distant ranges, the elms
+had put forth delicate sprays of emerald tint, and the pines all bore
+great wax-like tapers amidst their evergreen boughs, as if ready for
+kindling for some great festival. It is a wonderful thing to hear a wind
+singing in myriads of their branches at once. The surging tones of this
+oratorio of nature resounded for miles along the deep indented ravines
+and the rocky slopes of the Great Smoky Mountains. Now and again the
+flow of a torrent or the dash of a cataract added fugue-like effects.
+The men were constantly impressed by these paeans of the forests; the
+tuft of violets abloom beneath a horse's hoofs might be crushed
+unnoticed, but the acoustic conditions of the air and the high floating
+of the tenuous white clouds against a dense blue sky, promising rain in
+due season, evoked a throb of satisfaction in the farmer's heart not
+less sincere because unaesthetic. The farmer's toil had hardly yet
+begun, the winter's hunt being just concluded, and each of the
+stationers with a string of led horses was bound for his camps and
+caches to bring in the skins that made the profit of the season.</p>
+
+<p>One of this group of three was the psalm-singer of the blockhouse. His
+name was Xerxes Alexander Anxley, and he was unceremoniously called by
+the community &quot;X,&quot; and by Mivane &quot;the unknown quantity,&quot; for he was
+something of an enigma, and his predilections provoked much speculation.
+He was a religionist of ascetic, extreme views,&mdash;a type rare in this
+region,&mdash;coming originally from the colony of the Salzburgers
+established in Georgia.</p>
+
+<p>We are less disposed to be tolerant of individual persuasions which
+imply a personal and unpleasant reflection. Xerxes Alexander Anxley
+disapproved of dancing, and the community questioned his sanity; for
+these early pioneers in the region of the Great Smoky Range carried the
+rifle over one shoulder and the fiddle over the other. He disapproved of
+secular songs and idle stories, and the settlement questioned his taste;
+for it was the delight of the stationers, old and young, to gather
+around the hearth, and, while the chestnuts roasted in the fire for the
+juniors, and the jovial horn, as it was called, circulated among the
+elders, the oft-told story was rehearsed and the old song sung anew. He
+even disapproved of the jovial horn&mdash;and the settlement questioned his
+sincerity.</p>
+
+<p>This man Anxley looked his ascetic character. He had a hard pragmatic
+countenance, and one of those noses which though large and bony come
+suddenly short and blunted. His eyes, small, gray, and inscrutable,
+seemed unfriendly, so baffling, introspective, unnoting was their
+inattentiveness. His hair was of a sort of carrot tint, which color was
+reproduced in paler guise in his fringed buckskin shirt and leggings,
+worn on a sturdy and powerful frame. His mouth was shut hard and fast
+upon his convictions, as if to denote that he could not be argued out of
+them, and when the lips parted its lines were scarcely more mobile, and
+his words were usually framed to doubt one's state of grace and to
+contravene one's tenets as to final salvation. He rode much of the time
+with the reins loose on his horse's neck, and perhaps no man in the
+saddle had ever been so addicted to psalmody since the days of
+Cromwell's troopers. His theological disputations grated peculiarly upon
+Emsden's mood, and he always laid at his door the disaster that
+followed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If I hadn't been so traveled that day,&mdash;dragged through hell and
+skirting of purgatory and knocking at the gates of heaven,&mdash;I wouldn't
+have lost my wits so suddenly when I came back to earth with a bounce,&quot;
+Emsden afterward declared.</p>
+
+<p>For as the hunters were coming at a brisk trot in single file along the
+&quot;old trading path,&quot; as it was called even then, the fleecy white clouds
+racing above in the dense blue of the sky, their violet shadows fleeting
+as swift along the slopes of the velvet-soft azure mountains, and the
+wind far outstripping them in the vernal budding woods, a sudden stir
+near at hand caused Emsden to turn his head. Just above him, on a rugged
+slope where no trees grew save a scraggy cedar here and there amidst the
+shelving ledges of rock outcropping through the soft verdant turf, he
+saw a stealthy, furtive shape; he was aware of a hasty cowed glance over
+the shoulder, and then a stretching of supple limbs in flight. Before he
+himself hardly knew it the sharp crack of his rifle rang out,&mdash;the aim
+was almost instinctive.</p>
+
+<p>And it was as true as instinct,&mdash;a large black wolf, his pelt glossy and
+fresh with the renewal of the season, lay stretched dead in an instant
+upon the slope. Emsden sprang from his horse, tossed the reins to &quot;X,&quot;
+and, drawing his knife, ran up the steep ascent to secure the animal's
+skin.</p>
+
+<p>Only vaguely, as in a dream, he heard a sudden deep roar, beheld a
+horned creature leaping heavily upon its fore quarters, tossing its hind
+legs and tail into the air. Then an infuriated bull, breaking from the
+bushes, charged fiercely down upon him. Emsden threw himself into a
+posture of defense as instantly as if he had been a trained bullfighter
+and the arena his wonted sphere, holding the knife close in front of
+him, presenting the blade with a quick keen calculation for the animal's
+jugular. The knife was Emsden's only weapon, for his pistols were in the
+holster on the saddle, and his discharged rifle lay where he had flung
+it on the ground after firing. He had only time to wonder that his
+comrades vouchsafed him no assistance in his extremity. Men of such
+accurate aim and constant practice could easily risk sending a
+rifle-ball past him to stop that furious career. He could see the pupil
+of the bull's wild dilated eyes, fiery as with a spark of actual flame.
+He could even feel the hot puffs of the creature's breath upon his
+cheeks, when all at once the horned head so close above his own swerved
+aside with a snort from the dead body of the wolf at his feet. The bull
+passed him like a thunderbolt, and he heard the infuriated stamping
+which fairly shook the ground in the thicket below, where this king of
+the herds paused to bellow and paw the earth, throwing clods high above
+the environing copse.</p>
+
+<p>The woods seemed full of maddened, frightened cattle, and Emsden's horse
+was frantically galloping after the cavalcade of hunters and their
+pack-train, all the animals more or less beyond the control of the men.
+He felt it an ill chance that left him thus alone and afoot in this
+dense wilderness, several days' travel from the station. He was hardly
+sure that he would be missed by his comrades, themselves scattered, the
+pack-horses having broken from the path which they had traveled in
+single file, and now with their burdens of value all foolishly careering
+wildly through the woods. The first prudential care of the hunters he
+knew would be to recover them and re-align the train, lest some
+miscreant, encountering the animals, plunder the estrays of their loads
+of hard-won deerskins and furs.</p>
+
+<p>The presence of cattle suggested to Emsden the proximity of human
+dwellings, and yet this was problematic, for beyond branding and
+occasional saltings the herds ranged within large bounds on lands
+selected for their suitability as pasturage. The dwellings of these
+pioneer herdsmen might be far away indeed, and in what direction he
+could not guess. Since the Cherokee War, and the obliteration of all
+previous marks of white settlements in this remote region, Emsden was
+unfamiliar with the more recent location of &quot;cow-pens,&quot; as the ranches
+were called, and was only approximately acquainted with the new site of
+the settlers' stations. Nothing so alters the face of a country as the
+moral and physical convulsion of war. Even many of the Indian towns were
+deserted and half charred,&mdash;burned by the orders of the British
+commanders. One such stood in a valley through which he passed on his
+homeward way; the tender vernal aspect of this green cove, held in the
+solemn quiet of the encircling mountains, might typify peace itself. Yet
+here the blue sky could be seen through the black skeleton rafters of
+the once pleasant homes; and there were other significant skeletons in
+the absolute solitude,&mdash;the great ribs of dead chargers, together with
+broken bits and bridles, and remnants of exploded hand-grenades, and a
+burst gun-barrel, all lying on the bank of a lovely mountain stream at
+the point where he crossed it, as it flowed, crystal clear, through this
+sequestered bosky nook.</p>
+
+<p>Something of a job this transit was, for with the spring freshets the
+water was high and the current strong, and he was compelled to use only
+one hand for swimming, the other holding high out of the water's reach
+his powder horn. For, despite any treaties of peace, this was no country
+for a man to traverse unarmed, and an encounter with an inimical
+wandering Indian might serve to make for his comrades' curiosity
+concerning his fate, when they should chance to have leisure to feel it,
+a perpetual conundrum.</p>
+
+<p>He had never, however, made so lonely a journey. Not one human being did
+he meet&mdash;neither red man nor white&mdash;in all the long miles of the endless
+wilderness; naught astir save the sparse vernal shadows in the budding
+woods and the gentle spring zephyr swinging past and singing as it went.
+Now and again he noted how the sun slowly dropped down the skies that
+were so fine, so fair, so blue that it seemed loath to go and leave the
+majestic peace of the zenith. The stars scintillated in the dark night
+as if a thousand bivouac fires were kindled in those far spaces of the
+heavens responsive to the fire which he kept aglow to cook the supper
+that his rifle fetched him and to ward off the approach of wolf or
+panther while he slept. He was doubtless in jeopardy often enough, but
+chance befriended him and he encountered naught inimical till the fourth
+day when he came in at the gate of the station and met the partners of
+the hunt, themselves not long since arrived.</p>
+
+<p>They waited for no reproaches for their desertion. They were quick to
+upbraid. As they hailed him in chorus he was bewildered for a moment,
+and stood in the gateway leaning on his rifle, his coonskin cap thrust
+back on his brown hair, his bright, steady gray eyes concentrated as he
+listened. His tall, lithe figure in his buckskin hunting shirt and
+leggings, the habitual garb of the frontiersmen, grew tense and gave an
+intimation of gathering all its forces for the defensive as he noted how
+the aspect of the station differed from its wonted guise. Every house of
+the assemblage of little log cabins stood open; here and there in the
+misty air, for there had been a swift, short spring shower, fires could
+be seen aglow on the hearths within; the long slant of the red sunset
+rays fell athwart the gleaming wet roofs and barbed the pointed tops of
+the palisades with sharp glints of light, and a rainbow showed all the
+colors of the prism high against the azure mountain beyond, while a
+second arch below, a dim duplication, spanned the depths of a valley.
+The frontiersmen were all in the open spaces of the square excitedly
+wrangling&mdash;and suddenly he became conscious of a girlish face at the
+embrasure for the cannon at the blockhouse, a face with golden brown
+hair above it, and a red hood that had evidently been in the rain.
+&quot;Looking out for me, I wonder?&quot; he asked himself, and as this glow of
+agitated speculation swept over him the men who plied him with questions
+angrily admonished his silence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He has seen a wolf! He has seen a wolf! 'Tis plain!&quot; cried old Mivane,
+as he stood in his metropolitan costume among the buckskin-clad
+pioneers. &quot;One would know that without being told!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You shot the wolf and stampeded the cattle, and the herders at the
+cow-pens on the Keowee River can't round them up again!&quot; cried one of
+the settlers.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The cattle have run to the Congarees by this time!&quot; declared another
+pessimistically.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And it was <i>you</i> that shot the wolf!&quot; cried &quot;X&quot; rancorously.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The herders are holding <i>us</i> responsible and have sent an ambassador,&quot;
+explained John Ronackstone, anxiously knitting his brows, &quot;to inform us
+that not a horse of the pack-train from Blue Lick Station shall pass
+down to Charlestown till we indemnify them for the loss of the cattle.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gadso! they can't <i>all</i> be lost!&quot; exclaimed old Mivane floutingly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, no! the herders go too far for damages&mdash;too far! They are putting
+their coulter <i>too</i> deep!&quot; said a farmer fresh from the field. He had
+still a bag of seed-grain around his neck, and now and again he thrust
+in his hand and fingered the kernels.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They declare they'll seize our skins,&quot; cried another
+ambiguously,&mdash;then, conscious of this, he sought to amend the
+matter,&mdash;&quot;Not the hides we wear,&quot;&mdash;this was no better, for they were all
+arrayed in hides, save Richard Mivane. &quot;Not the hides that we were born
+in, but our deerhides, our peltry,&mdash;they'll seize the pack-train from
+Blue Lick, and they declare they'll call on the commandant of Fort
+Prince George to oppose its passing with the king's troops.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>An appalled silence fell on the quadrangle,&mdash;save for the fresh notes of
+a mockingbird, perching in jaunty guise on the tower of the blockhouse,
+above which the rainbow glowed in the radiant splendors of a misty amber
+sky.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The king's troops? Would the commandant respond?&quot; anxiously speculated
+one of the settlers.</p>
+
+<p>The little handful of pioneers, with their main possessions in the fate
+of the pack-train, looked at one another in dismay.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And tell me, friend Feather-pate, why did it seem good to you to shoot
+a wolf in the midst of a herd of cattle?&quot; demanded Richard Mivane.</p>
+
+<p>Ralph Emsden, bewildered by the results of this untoward chance, and the
+further catastrophe shadowed forth in the threatened seizure of the
+train, rallied with all his faculties at the note of scorn from this
+quarter.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sir, I did not shoot the wolf among the cattle. There was not a horn
+nor a hoof to be seen when I fired.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mivane turned to &quot;X&quot; with both hands outstretched as much as to say,
+&quot;Take <i>that</i> for your quietus!&quot; and shouldering his stick, which had an
+ivory head and a sword within, strode off after his jaunty fashion as if
+there were no more to be said.</p>
+
+<p>It was now Alexander Anxley's turn to sustain the questioning clamor. &quot;I
+will not deny&quot;&mdash;&quot;That is, I said&quot;&mdash;&quot;I meant to say,&quot;&mdash;but these
+qualifications were lost in the stress of Emsden's voice, once more
+rising stridently.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not a horn nor a hoof to be seen till after I had fired. I didn't know
+there were any cow-pens about&mdash;didn't use to be till after you had
+crossed the Keowee. But if there <i>had</i> been, is a man to see a wolf pull
+down a yearling, say, and not fire a rifle because Madam Cow will take
+the high-strikes or Cap'n Bull will go on the rampage? Must I wait till
+I can make a leg,&quot;&mdash;he paused to execute an exaggerated obeisance,
+graceful enough despite its mockery,&mdash;&quot;'Under your favor, Cap'n Bull,'
+and 'With your ladyship's permission,' before I kill the ravening brute,
+big enough to pull down a yearling? Don't talk to me! Don't talk to me!&quot;
+He held out the palms of his hands toward them in interdiction, and made
+as if to go&mdash;yet went not!</p>
+
+<p>For a reactionary sentiment toward him had set in, and there were those
+fair-minded enough, although with their little all at stake, to admit
+that he had acted with reasonable prudence, and that it was only an
+unlucky chance which had sent the panic through the herds with such
+disastrous effect.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The herders should not stop the pack-train, if I had my will,&quot; declared
+one of the settlers with a belligerent note.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, no,&quot; proclaimed another; &quot;not if it takes all the men at Blue Lick
+Station to escort it!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Those blistered redcoats at Fort Prince George are a deal too handy to
+be called on by such make-bates as the herders on the Keowee River.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Fudge! The commandant would never let a bayonet stir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gad! I'd send an ambassador for an ambassador. Tit for tat,&quot; declared
+Emsden. &quot;I'd ask 'em what's gone with all our horses,&mdash;last seen in
+those desolated cow-pens,&mdash;that the voice of mourning is now lifted
+about!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was a chuckle of sheer joy, so abrupt and unexpected that it rose
+with a clatter and a cackle of delight, and culminated in a yell of
+pleasurable derision.</p>
+
+<p>Now everybody knew that the horses bought in that wild country would,
+unless restrained, return every spring to &quot;their old grass,&quot; as it was
+called,&mdash;to the places where they had formerly lived. When this annual
+hegira took place in large numbers, some permanent losses were sure to
+ensue. The settlers at Blue Lick had experienced this disaster, and had
+accepted it as partly the result of their own lack of precaution during
+the homing fancy of the horses. But since the herders manifested so
+little of the suavity that graces commercial intercourse, and as some of
+the horses had been seen in their cow-pens, it was a happy thought to
+feather the arrow with this taunt.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And who do you suppose will promise to carry such a message to those
+desperate, misguided men, riding hither an' thither, searching this wild
+and woeful wilderness for hundreds o' head o' cattle lost like needles
+in a hayrick, and eat by wolves an' painters by this time?&quot; demanded &quot;X&quot;
+derisively.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I promise, I promise!&mdash;and with hearty good will, too!&quot; declared
+Emsden. &quot;And I'll tell 'em that we are coming down soon armed to the
+teeth to guard our pack-train, and fight our way through any resistance
+to its passage through the country on the open trading-path. And I'll
+acquaint the commandant of Fort Prince George of the threats of the
+herders against the Blue Lick Stationers, and warn him how he attempts
+to interfere with the liberties of the king's loyal subjects in their
+peaceful vocations.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thus Emsden gayly volunteered for the mission.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning old Richard Mivane, thinking of it, shook his head over
+the fire,&mdash;and not only once, but shook it again, which was a great deal
+of trouble for him to take. Having thus exerted his altruistic interest
+to the utmost, Richard Mivane relapsed into his normal placidity. He
+leaned back in his arm-chair, the only one at the station, fingering his
+gold-lined silver snuffbox, with its chain and ladle, his eyes dwelling
+calmly on the fire, and his thoughts busy with far away and long ago.</p>
+
+<p>He was old enough now to enter into the past as a sort of heritage, a
+promised land which memory had glozed with a glamour that can never
+shine upon the uncertain aspects of the future. The burning sense of
+regret, the anguish of nostalgia, the relinquishment of an accustomed
+sphere, its prospects and ideals, the revolt against the uncouth and
+rude conditions of the new status, the gradual reluctant naturalization
+to a new world,&mdash;these were forgotten save as the picturesque elements
+of sorrow and despair that balanced the joys, the interest, the
+devil-may-care joviality, the adventure, the strange wild
+companionship,&mdash;all that made the tale worth rehearsing in the flare and
+the flicker of the fireside glow.</p>
+
+<p>The rains had come. The dark slate-tinted clouds hung low over the
+station, but every log house, freshly dight with whitewash of the marly
+clay, after the Indian method, still shone in the shadow as if the sun
+were upon it. The turf was green, despite the passing of many feet, and
+where a slight depression held water, a few ducks, Carolina bred, were
+quacking and paddling about; now and then these were counted with great
+interest, for they had a trick of taking to the woods with others of
+their kind, and relapsing to savagery,&mdash;truly distressing to the
+domestic poultry prospects of the station. The doors of the Mivane cabin
+were all ajar,&mdash;the one at the rear opening into a shed-room, unfloored,
+which gave a vista into more sheds, merely roofed spaces, inclosed at
+either end. A loom was in the shed-room, and at it was seated on the
+bench in front, as a lady sits at an organ, the mistress of the house,
+fair but faded, in a cap and a short gown and red quilted petticoat,
+giving some instruction, touching an intricate weave, to a negro woman,
+neatly arrayed in homespun, with a gayly turbaned head, evidently an
+expert herself, from the bland and smiling manner and many
+self-sufficient and capable nods with which she perceived and
+appropriated the knotty points of the discourse.</p>
+
+<p>In the outer shed, C&aelig;sar, clad like the Indians and the pioneers in
+buckskin, was mending the plough-gear, and talking with great loquacity
+to another negro, of the type known then and later as &quot;the new nigger,&quot;
+the target of the plantation jokes, because of his &quot;greenness,&quot; being of
+a fresh importation. He possibly remembered much of Africa, but he
+accepted without demur and with admiring and submissive meekness stories
+of the great sights that C&aelig;sar protested he had seen there,&mdash;Vauxhall
+Gardens and Temple Bar (which last C&aelig;sar thought in his simplicity was
+a bar for the refreshment of the inner man) and a certain resort
+indisputably for that purpose called White's Chocolate House,&mdash;all
+represented as pleasantly and salubriously situated in the interior of
+Guinea. But after all, if a story is well told, why carp at slight
+anachorisms?</p>
+
+<p>Richard Mivane's attention had been diverted from the thread of his own
+reminiscences by the fact that the little flax-wheel of Peninnah
+Penelope Anne had ceased to whirl, and the low musical monody of its
+whir that was wont to bear a pleasant accompaniment to the burden of his
+thoughts was suddenly silent. He lifted his eyes and saw that she was
+gazing dreamily into the flare of the great fire, the spinning-wheel
+still, the end of the thread motionless in her hand. The burnished waves
+of her golden brown hair were pushed a bit awry, and her face was so wan
+and thoughtful that even her dress of crimson wool did not lessen its
+pallor. The voices of the three children on the floor grated on the old
+man's mood as they were busied in defending a settler's fort, insecurely
+constructed of stones and sticks, and altogether roofless, garrisoned by
+a number of pebbles, while a poke full of wily Indian kernels of corn
+swarmed to the attack.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why is my pretty pet so idle?&quot; he asked, for while the wheel should
+whirl he could dream.</p>
+
+<p>She made no answer, only turned her troubled, soft hazel eyes upon him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And have you seen a wolf, too, that you have lost your tongue?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At the word &quot;wolf&quot; she burst into tears. And then, discarding all
+caution in the breaking down of her reserve, she sprang up, overturning
+the wheel and rushing to his chair.</p>
+
+<p>Now Richard Mivane had never encouraged his grandchildren to clamber
+over his chair. He protested great fear of the sticky fingers of the
+more youthful in contact with his preternaturally fine clothes; he
+declared they reminded him of squirrels, which he detested; he was not
+sure they did not look like rats. All this was of great effect; for his
+many contemptuous whimsical prejudices were earnestly respected.</p>
+
+<p>For instance, whenever 'possum was served at the pioneer board they who
+partook carried their plates for the purpose to a side table. &quot;The look
+of the animal's tail is enough for me&mdash;it curls,&quot; he would say.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So does a pig's tail curl,&quot; his son used to remonstrate sensibly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not having kept a straight course so long,&mdash;then twirling up
+deceitfully like a second thought. This fellow is a monstrosity,&mdash;and
+his wife has a pocket for a cradle,&mdash;and I don't know who they are nor
+where they came from,&mdash;they were left over from before the Flood,
+perhaps,&mdash;they look somehow prehistoric to me. I am not acquainted with
+the family.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And turning his head aside he would wave away the dainty, the delight of
+the pioneer epicure time out of mind.</p>
+
+<p>The diplomatic reason, however, that Richard Mivane was wont to shove
+off his grandchildren from the arm of that stately chair was that here
+they got on his blind side,&mdash;his simple, grandfatherly, affectionate
+predilection. The touch of them, their scrambling, floundering, little
+bodies, their soft pink cheeks laid against his, their golden hair in
+his clever eyes, their bright glances at close range,&mdash;he was then like
+other men and could deny them nothing! His selfishness, his vanity, his
+idleness, his frippery were annulled in the instant. He was resolved
+into the simple constituent elements of a grandfather, one part doting
+folly, one part loving pride, and the rest leniency, and he was as wax
+in their hands.</p>
+
+<p>None of them had so definitely realized this, accurately discriminating
+cause and effect, as Peninnah Penelope Anne. She felt safe the moment
+that she was perched on the arm of her grandfather's chair, her soft
+clasp about his stiff old neck, her tears flowing over her cheeks, all
+pink anew, escaping upon his wrinkled, bloodless, pale visage and taking
+all the starch out of his old-fashioned steinkirk. He struggled futilely
+once or twice, but she only hugged him the closer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, don't let him go! Oh, don't let him go!&quot; she cried.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The wolf that we were talking about? By no means! Lovely creature that
+he is! We'll preserve, if you like, wolves instead of pheasants! I
+remember a gentleman's estate in Northumberland&mdash;a little beyond the
+river&quot;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, grandfather, don't let him go!&quot; she sobbingly interrupted. &quot;It was
+he who shot the wolf and stampeded the herds, and the cow-drivers will
+quarrel with him when they would not have angry words with another
+ambassador. They will kill him! They will kill him!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What for? Poaching?&mdash;shooting their wolf?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Any one else would be safe, grandfather&mdash;except poor Ralph!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Go yourself then. May-day!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I would, grandfather! I would not be afraid!&quot; She put her soft little
+hand on his cheek to turn his head to look into her confident eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;An able and worshipful ambassador!&quot; he said banteringly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, grandfather, this is no time to risk quarrels among the settlers,
+and bloodshed. Oh, the herders would kill him! And the Injuns all so
+unfriendly&mdash;they might take the chance to get on the war-path again when
+the settlers are busy killing each other&mdash;and oh, the cow-drivers will
+kill Ralph Emsden!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>All this persuasion was of necessity in a distinct loud voice;
+unnoticed, however, for a crisis had supervened in the play of the
+children by the chimney-place settle, and the sanguinary struggles and
+scalping in the storming of the fort were blood-curdling to behold to
+any one with enough imagination to discern a full-armed and fierce
+savage in a kernel of corn, and a stanch and patriotic Carolinian in a
+pebble. But when Peninnah Penelope Anne, all attuned to this high key,
+burst out weeping with commensurate resonance, all the vocations of the
+household came to a standstill, and her mother appeared, surprised and
+reproving, in the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Peninnah Penelope Anne,&quot; she said with her peculiar exact deliberation
+and gift of circumlocution, &quot;it is better to go and sew your sampler
+than to tease your grandfather.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She does not tease me&mdash;I have not shed a tear! That was not the sound
+of my weeping!&quot; he declared facetiously, one arm protectingly about the
+little sobbing figure.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He does not like his grandchildren to climb about him like squirrels
+and wild cattle,&quot; the lady continued. Then irrelevantly, &quot;Long stitches
+were always avoided in our family. The work you last did in your sampler
+has been taken out, child, and you can sew it again and to better
+advantage.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And earn your name of Penelope,&quot; said Richard Mivane.</p>
+
+<p>But he was putting on his hat and evidently had some effort in prospect,
+for how could he resist,&mdash;she looked so childish and appealing as she
+sat before the fire, weeping those large tears, and absently preparing
+to sew her sampler anew.</p>
+
+<p>While Richard Mivane, by virtue of his early culture, the scanty remains
+of his property, his fine-gentleman habits and traditions, and the
+anomaly of his situation, was the figure of most mark at the station,
+its ruling spirit was of far alien character. This was John Ronackstone,
+a stanch Indian fighter; a far-seeing frontier politician; a man of
+excellent native faculties, all sharpened by active use and frequent
+emergencies; skilled and experienced in devious pioneer craft; and
+withal infinitely stubborn, glorying in the fact of the unchangeableness
+of his opinions and his immutable abiding by his first statements. After
+one glance at his square countenance, his steady noncommittal black
+eyes, the upward bulldog cant of a somewhat massive nose, the firm
+compression of his long thin lips, one would no more expect him to
+depart from the conditions of a conclusion than that a signpost would
+enter into argument and in view of the fatigue of a traveler mitigate
+and recant its announcement.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless Richard Mivane expected &quot;some sense,&quot; as he phrased it,
+from this adamantine pioneer. Such a man naturally arrogated and
+obtained great weight among his fellows, and perhaps his lack of
+vacillation furthered this pre&euml;minence. He was a good man in the main as
+well as forceful, but an early and a very apt expression of the
+demagogue. And as he tolerated amongst his mental furniture no illusions
+and fostered no follies, his home life harbored no fripperies. His
+domicile was a contrast to the better ordered homes of the station, but
+here one might have meat and shelter, and what more should mortal ask of
+a house! He often boasted that not an atom of iron entered into its
+structure more than into an Indian's wigwam. Even the clapboards were
+fastened on to the rafters with wooden pegs in lieu of nails, although
+nails were not difficult to procure. He had that antagonism to the mere
+conventions of civilization often manifested by those who have been
+irked by such fetters before finally casting them off. It was a
+wholesome life and a free, and if the inmates of the house did not mind
+the scent of the drying deerskins hanging from the beams, which made the
+nose of Richard Mivane very coy, the visitor saw no reason why they
+should not please themselves. The stone-flagged hearth extended half
+across the room, and sprawling upon it in frowsy disorder was a bevy of
+children of all ages, as fat as pigs and as happy-go-lucky. He had
+hardly seated himself, having stepped about carefully among their chubby
+fingers and toes lest a crushing disaster supervene, than he regretted
+his choice of a confidant. He had his own, unsuspected sensitiveness,
+which was suddenly jarred when the wife in the corner, rocking the
+cradle with one foot while she turned a hoe-cake baking on the hearth
+with a dextrous flip of a knife, and feeling secure in his deafness,
+cast a witty fling at his fastidious apparel. With that frequent yet
+unexplained phenomenon of acoustics, her voice was so strung that its
+vibrations reached his numb perceptions as duly as if intended for his
+ears. He made no sign, in his pride and politeness, both indigenous. But
+he said to himself, &quot;I don't laugh at her gown,&mdash;it is what she likes
+and what she is accustomed to wear. And why can't she let me dress in
+peace as I was early trained to do? God knows I feel myself better than
+nobody.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And he was sensible of his age, his infirmity, his isolation, and his
+jauntiness was eclipsed.</p>
+
+<p>Thus he entered the race with a handicap, and John Ronackstone would
+hear none of his reasons with grace. He could not and he would not
+consent to the nomination of an ambassador in the stead of Emsden, who
+had volunteered for the service, which was the more appropriate since it
+was he who had shot the wolf and brought the stampede and its attendant
+difficulties upon the herders of the Keowee River, and this threat of
+retaliation upon the Blue Lick Stationers. If there were danger at hand,
+let a volunteer encounter it! In vain Mivane argued that there was
+danger to no one else. John Ronackstone, who found an added liberty of
+disputation in the emphasis imposed by the necessity of roaring out his
+immutable opinions in an exceeding loud voice, retorted that so far as
+he was informed the &quot;cow-drivers&quot; on the Keowee were not certain who it
+was that had committed this atrocity, unless perhaps their messenger
+during his sojourn at Blue Lick Station had learned the name from &quot;X.&quot;
+But this uncertainty, Mivane argued, was the very point of difficulty.
+It was the maddest folly to dispatch to angry men, smarting under a
+grievous injury, messages of taunt and defiance by the one person who in
+their opinion, perhaps, had carelessly or willfully wrought this wrong.
+His life would pay the forfeit of the folly of his fellow-stationers.</p>
+
+<p>Mivane noted suddenly that the woman rocking the cradle was laughing
+with an ostentatious affectation of covert slyness, and a responsive
+twinkle gleamed in the eyes of John Ronackstone. As he caught the grave
+and surprised glance of his visitor he made a point of dropping the air
+of a comment aside, which he, as well as she, had insistently brought to
+notice, and Mivane was aware that here was something which sought an
+opportunity of being revealed as if by necessity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, sir,&quot; Ronackstone began in a tone of a quasi-apology, &quot;we were
+just saying&mdash;that is, I sez to X, who was in here a while ago,&mdash;I sez,
+'I'll tell you what is goin' to happen,'&mdash;I sez, 'old Gentleman
+Rick,'&mdash;excuse the freedom, sir,&mdash;'he'll be wantin' to send somebody
+else in Ralph Emsden's place.' X, he see the p'int, just as you see it.
+He sez, 'Somebody that won't be missed&mdash;somebody not genteel enough to
+play loo with him after supper,' sez X. 'Or too religious,' sez I. 'Or
+can't sing a good song or tell a rousing tale,' sez X. 'Or listen an'
+laugh in the right places at the gentleman's old cracks about the great
+world,' sez I. 'He'll never let Ralph Emsden go,' sez X. 'Jus' some poor
+body will do,' sez I. 'Jus' man enough to be scalped by the Injuns if
+the red sticks take after him,' sez X. 'Or have his throat cut if the
+cow-drivers feel rough yet,' sez I. 'Jus' such a one ez me,' sez X. 'Or
+me,' sez I.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sir,&quot; said old Mivane, rising, and the impressive dignity of his port
+was such that the cradle stopped rocking as if a spell were upon it, and
+every child paused in its play, sprawling where it lay, &quot;I am obliged to
+you for your polite expression of opinion of me, which I have never done
+aught to justify. I have nothing more to urge upon the question of the
+details which brought me hither, but of one thing be certain,&mdash;if Emsden
+does not go upon this mission <i>I</i> shall be the ambassador. I apprehend
+no danger whatever to myself, and I wish you a very good day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And he stepped forth with his wonted jaunty alacrity, leaving the man
+and his wife staring at each other with as much surprise as if the roof
+had fallen in.</p>
+
+<p>A greater surprise awaited Mivane without. The rain was falling anew. In
+vast transparent tissues it swept with the gusty wind over the nearest
+mountains of the Great Smoky Range, whose farther reaches were lost in
+fog. The slanting lines, vaguely discerned in the downpour, almost
+obliterated the presence of the encompassing forests about the stockade.
+He noted how wildly the great trees were yet swaying, and he realized,
+for he could not have heard the blast, that a sudden severe wind-storm
+had passed over the settlement while he was within doors. The
+blockhouse, the tallest of the buildings, loomed up darkly amidst the
+gathering gray vapor, and through the great gates of the stockade, which
+opened on the blank cloud, were coming at the moment several men bearing
+a rude litter, evidently hastily constructed. On this was stretched the
+insensible form of Ralph Emsden, who had been stricken down in the woods
+with a dislocated shoulder and a broken arm by the falling of a branch
+of a great tree uprooted by the violence of the gusts. He had almost
+miraculously escaped being crushed, and was not fatally hurt, but
+examination disclosed that he was absolutely and hopelessly disabled for
+the time being, and Richard Mivane realized that he himself was the duly
+accredited ambassador to the herders on the Keowee River.</p>
+
+<p>He went home in a pettish fume. No sooner was he within and the door
+fast shut, that none might behold save only those of his own household,
+who were accustomed to the aberrations of his temper and who regarded
+them with blended awe and respect, than he reft his cocked hat from his
+head and flung it upon the floor. Peninnah Penelope Anne sprang up so
+precipitately at the dread sight that she overturned her stool and drew
+a stitch awry in her sampler, longer than the women of her family were
+accustomed to take. The children gazed spellbound. The weavers at the
+loom were petrified; even the creak of the treadle and the noisy
+thumping of the batten&mdash;those perennial sounds of a pioneer home&mdash;sunk
+into silence. The two negroes at the end of the vista beyond the
+shed-room, with the ox-yoke and plough-gear which they were mending
+between them, opened wide mouths and became immovable save for the
+whites of astonished rolling eyes. Then, and this exceeded all
+precedent, Richard Mivane clutched his valued peruke and, with an inward
+plaintive deprecation of the extremity of this act of desperation, he
+cast it upon the hat, and looked around, bald, despairing, furious, and
+piteous.</p>
+
+<p>It was, however, past the fortitude of woman to behold without protest
+this desecration of decoration. Peninnah Penelope Anne sprang forward,
+snatched the glossy locks from the puncheons, and with a tender hand
+righted the structure, while the powder flew about in light puffs at her
+touch, readjusting a curl here and a cleverly wrought wave there. The
+valet's pious aspiration from the doorway, &quot;Bress de Lord!&quot; betokened
+the acuteness of the danger over-past.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, grandfather!&quot; the girl admonished Mivane; &quot;your beautiful
+peruke!&mdash;sure, sir, the loveliest curls in the world! And sets you like
+your own hair,&mdash;only that nobody <i>could really</i> have such very genteel
+curls to grow&mdash;Oh&mdash;oh&mdash;grandfather!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She did not offer to return it, but stood with it poised on one hand,
+well out of harm's way, while she surveyed Mivane reproachfully yet with
+expectant sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps he himself was glad that he could wreak no further damage which
+he would later regret, and contented himself with furiously pounding his
+cane upon the puncheon floor, a sturdy structure and well calculated to
+bear the brunt of such expressions of pettish rage.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dolt, ass, fool, that I am!&quot; he cried. &quot;That I should so far forget
+myself as to offer to go as an ambassador to the herders on the Keowee!&quot;
+And once more he banged the floor after a fashion that discounted the
+thumping of the batten, and the room resounded with the thwacks.</p>
+
+<p>An old dog, a favorite of yore, lying asleep on the hearth, only opened
+his eyes and wrinkled his brows to make sure, it would seem, who had the
+stick; then closing his lids peacefully snoozed away again, presently
+snoring in the fullness of his sense of security. But a late
+acquisition, a gaunt deerhound, after an earnest observation of his
+comrade's attitude, as if referring the crisis to his longer experience,
+scrutinized severally the faces of the members of the family, and,
+wincing at each resounding whack, finally gathered himself together
+apprehensively, as doubtful whose turn might come next, and discreetly
+slunk out unobserved by the back door.</p>
+
+<p>Peninnah Penelope Anne rushed to the rescue.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And why should you not be an ambassador, sir?&quot; she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why&mdash;why&mdash;because, girl, I am deafer than the devil's dam! I cannot
+fetch and carry messages of import. I could only give occasion for
+ridicule and scorn in even offering to assume such an office.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Peninnah Penelope Anne had flushed with the keen sensitiveness of her
+pride. She instantly appreciated the irking of the dilemma into which he
+had thrust himself forgetting his infirmity, and she could have smitten
+with hearty enmity and a heavy stick any lips which had dared to smile.
+She responded, however, with something of her mother's indirection.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Under your favor, sir, you don't know how deaf the devil's dam may
+be&mdash;and it is not your wont to speak in that strain. I'm sure it reminds
+me of that man they call 'X,'&mdash;a sort of churl person,&mdash;who talks of the
+devil and blue blazes and brimstone and hell as if&mdash;as if he were a
+native.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This was a turning of the sword of the pious &quot;X&quot; upon himself with a
+vengeance, for he was prone in his spiritual disquisitions to detail
+much of the discomfort of the future state that awaited his careless
+friends.</p>
+
+<p>The allusion so far pleased old Mivane, who resented a suspected
+relegation of himself to a warm station in the schemes of &quot;X,&quot; that,
+although his head was still bald and shining like a billiard ball, he
+suffered himself to drop into his chair, his stick resting motionless on
+the long-suffering puncheon floor.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If I could only hear for a day I'd forgive twenty soundless years!&quot; he
+declared piteously, for he so deprecated the enforced withdrawal from
+the enterprise that he had heedlessly undertaken, and felt so keenly the
+reflections upon his sentiments and sincerity surreptitiously canvassed
+between Ronackstone and &quot;X,&quot; and then cavalierly rehearsed in his
+presence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are only deaf to certain whanging voices in queer keys,&quot; his
+granddaughter declared.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And how do I know in what sort of key the herders on the Keowee talk?
+They may 'moo' like the cow, or 'mew' like the cat! I should be in
+danger of losing half that was said. And that is what these varlets here
+in the station know right well. It must seem but a mere bit of bombast
+on my part. It could never be seriously countenanced&mdash;unless I had an
+interpreter. Stop me! but if you were a grandson instead of a
+granddaughter, I would not mind taking you with me to interpret for me,
+though, Gadzooks, I'd be like a heathen red Injun with a linguister!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And why am I not as good as any grandson?&quot; demanded Peninnah Penelope
+Anne, with a spirited flash of her bright hazel eyes and great temerity
+of speculation; for be it remembered the days of the theories of woman's
+equality with man had not yet dawned. &quot;Sure, sir, I can speak when I am
+spoken to. I understand the English language; and&quot;&mdash;her voice rising
+into a liquid crescendo of delight&mdash;&quot;I can wear my gray sergedusoy sack
+made over my carnation taffeta bodice and cashmere petticoat, all
+pranked out with bows of black velvet, most genteel, and my hat of
+quilled primrose sarcenet, grandfather. I'd take them in a bundle, for
+if we should have rain I would rather be in my old red hood and blue
+serge riding-coat on the way, grandfather.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And thus it was settled before she had fairly readjusted the peruke on
+his head as he sat in his great chair and she clambered on its arm.</p>
+
+<p>She had not heard of the disaster that had befallen Ralph Emsden, and
+she turned rather pale and wistful when the news was communicated to
+her. Then realizing how opportune was the accident, how slight was its
+ultimate danger in comparison with the jeopardy of the mission from
+which he was rescued, she fairly gloated upon the chance which had
+conferred it upon her grandfather, and made her an instrument in its
+execution.</p>
+
+<p>It was a queerly assorted embassy that rode out of the gates of the
+stockade, the ambassador and his linguister. Richard Mivane was mounted
+upon a strong, sprightly horse, with Peninnah Penelope Anne behind him
+upon a pillion. Following them at a little distance came his
+body-servant, C&aelig;sar, more fitted by temperament than either to enjoy
+the change, the spirit of adventure, and reveling in a sense of
+importance which was scarcely diminished by the fact that it was
+vicarious. He rode a sturdy nag and had charge of a led horse, that bore
+a pack-saddle with a store of changes of raiment, of edible provisions,
+and tents to fend off the chances of inclement weather. They were to
+travel under the protection of a trader's pack-train, from a
+re&euml;stablished trading-house in the Overhill Towns of the Cherokees on
+the Tennessee River; and so accurately did they time their departure and
+the stages of their journey that they met this caravan just at the hour
+and place designated, and risked naught from the unsettled state of the
+country or an encounter with some ignorant or inimical savage, prone to
+wreak upon inoffensive units vengeance for wrongs, real or fancied,
+wrought by a nation.</p>
+
+<p>The trader, being a man habituated by frequent sojourns in Charlestown
+to metropolitan customs and a worldly trend of thought, instantly
+recognized the quality of Mivane and his granddaughter, despite the old
+red hood and blue serge riding-coat and their residence here so far from
+all the graces that appertain to civilization; though, to be sure,
+Richard Mivane, in his trim &quot;Joseph,&quot; his head cowled in an appropriate
+&quot;trotcozy,&quot; and his jaunty self-possession quite restored by the cutting
+of the Gordian knot of his dilemma, demonstrating his capacity to duly
+perform all his undertakings, bore himself in a manner calculated to
+enhance even the high estimation of his fellow-traveler. After the
+custom of a gentleman, however, he was most augustly free from
+unwarrantable self-assertion, but he could not have failed to be
+flattered by the phrase of the trader, could he have heard it, in
+delivering over his charge to the herders on the Keowee River.
+&quot;Gadzooks, neighbors, but I shouldn't be a whit surprised if that old
+party is a duke in disguise!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the cow-drivers heard him not! They hardly heeded the coming and the
+going of the pack-train and their gossips the packmen! They cared naught
+for the news the caravan brought of the country-side far above, nor the
+commissions they were wont to give for the various settlements and the
+metropolis far below! For so featly came riding in to the humble prosaic
+precincts of the cow-pens and into their hearts the vernal beauty of
+Spring herself, the living Bloom of charm and love, all arrayed in
+delicate gray sergedusoy opening upon carnation taffeta, and crowned
+with sheer quillings of primrose sarcenet, with a cheek that repeated
+these roseate tints and a glint of golden brown tresses curling softly
+against a nape of pearl, that the ranchmen were bewitched and dazed, and
+knew no more of good common-sense. Their equilibrium thus shaken, some
+busied themselves in what might be called &quot;housewifely cares,&quot; that the
+dainty visitant might be acceptably lodged and fed, and afterward they
+cursed their industry and hospitality that thus left her conversation
+and charming aspect to the shirks and drones, who languished about her,
+and affected to seek her comfort and minister to her entertainment. For
+the cow-drivers, like the other pioneer settlers of that region and day,
+represented various states of society and degrees of refinement, and to
+those to whom she was not as a blissful reminiscence of long ago, she
+appeared as a revelation, new and straight from heaven, a fancy, a
+dream! It seemed meet to them that she arrived in the illusory sunset of
+a sweet spring day, like some lovely forecast of the visions of the
+night.</p>
+
+<p>With their artless bucolic ideals of entertainment they invited her out
+to show her the new calves. One of these little creatures, being
+exquisitely white and eminently pleasing to look upon, was straightway
+named, with her gracious permission, &quot;Peninnah Penelope Anne,&quot; and she
+was assured that because of this name its owner, a slim, sentimental,
+red-haired youth, would never part from it. And it may be presumed that
+he was sincere, and that at the time of this fervent asseveration he had
+not realized the incongruity of living his life out in the constant heed
+of the well-being and companionship of a large white cow of the name of
+&quot;Peninnah Penelope Anne.&quot; A more interesting denizen of the pen was a
+fawn, a waif found there one morning, having prudently adopted as a
+mother a large red cow, and a heavy brindled calf as a foster-brother.
+The instant Peninnah admired this incongruous estray, bleating its queer
+alien note in resonant duet with the calf in the plea for supper, a cord
+was slipped about its neck and it was presented in due form. In order
+that she might not be harassed by its tendance, a gigantic Scotch
+herder, six feet six inches high and twenty-five years of age, showed
+how far involuntary inanity can coexist with presumptive sanity as he
+led it about, the creature holding back heavily at every step and now
+and again tangling itself, its cord, and its disconcerted bleats about
+its conductor's long and stalwart legs. Another of the herders,&mdash;all of
+whom were hunters and explorers as well,&mdash;whose mind was of a
+topographical cast, introduced her to much fine and high company in the
+various mountain peaks, gathered in solemn symposium dark and purple in
+the faintly tinted and opaline twilight. He repeated their Cherokee
+names and gave an English translation, and called her attention to marks
+of difference in their configuration which rendered them distinguishable
+at a distance; and when she lent some heed to this and noted on the
+horizon contours of the mountains about her home, faint and far in an
+elusive amethystine apotheosis against the red and flaming west, and
+called out her glad recognition in a voice as sweet as a thrush, his
+comrades waxed jealous, and contravened his statements and argued and
+wrangled upon landmarks to which they had never before given a second
+thought in all their mountaineering experience, so keenly they competed
+for her favor. It was her little day of triumph, and right royally she
+reigned in it and was wont to tell of it for forty years thereafter!</p>
+
+<p>At last the dusk was slipping down; the mountains grew a shadowy gray
+far away and a looming black close at hand; a star palpitated in the
+colorless crystal-clear concave of the fading skies; the vernal stretch
+of the savannas, whose intense green was somehow asserted till the
+latest glimmer of light, ceased to resound with the voices of the herds;
+only here and there a keen metallic note of a bell clanked forth and was
+silent, and again the sound came from a farther pen like a belated echo;
+the fire flaring out from the open door of the nearest hut of the
+ranchmen's little hamlet gave a pleasant sense of hospitality and homely
+hearth-side cheer, for it requires only a few nights under a tent or the
+open canopy of heaven to make a woman, always the most artificially
+disposed of all creatures, exceedingly respectful to a roof.</p>
+
+<p>To be sure the interior of this roof was well garnished with cobwebs,
+and Peninnah Penelope Anne's mother was so notable a housekeeper and had
+inculcated such horror of these untoward drapings and festoons that the
+girl was compelled to look sedulously away from them to avoid staring in
+amazement at their morbid development and proportions. The
+superintendent of the ranch&mdash;being an establishment of magnitude it had
+several sub-agents also&mdash;was so occupied in putting the best foot of his
+menage foremost, not being prepared for such company that, like many a
+modern housekeeper, he let the opportunity for pleasure slip. When he
+proffered tea&mdash;he had sent a negro servant all the way to Fort Prince
+George for the luxury, where it could be found among the hospital
+stores, for tea was too mild a tipple for the pioneer cow-drivers&mdash;he
+suffered the egregious mortification of pouring out plain hot water,
+having forgotten to put in the tea leaves to steep. He looked very hot
+and ruefully distressed as he repaired his error, and would not, could
+not meet the laughing eyes of his comrades, nor yet the polite glances
+of his guests resolutely seeing naught amiss. He was oppressed with a
+sense of the number and prominence of his dogs about the wide hearth of
+his cabin; when the animals were therefore vigorously kicked out to make
+more space, instead of retiring with the usual plaintive yelp of protest
+appropriate to such occasions they took advantage of the presence of
+guests of distinction and made the rafters ring and resound with their
+ear-splitting shrieks, and it was even necessary to chase them about the
+room before they could be ejected. Indeed, several with super-canine
+strategy succeeded in countermarching their tormentors and remained in
+the group about the fire, wearing that curiously attentive look peculiar
+to an intelligent animal when animated conversation is in progress.</p>
+
+<p>The blazing fire in the great chimney-place, that stretched almost half
+across one end of the herder's cabin, illumined the walls and showed the
+medley of articles suspended upon them,&mdash;horns, whips, branding-irons,
+skins, cattle-bells, lariats, and such-like appurtenances of the ranch.
+The little lady was seated in the centre of the group of ranchmen ranged
+in a wide semicircle about the hearth of flagstones; the ethereal tints
+of her shimmering attire showed all their highlights; her face and
+golden brown hair seemed particularly soft and delicate in contrast with
+the rough tousled heads and bearded countenances about her; here and
+there the muzzle of a great animal, the flash of fangs and red glow of
+formidable jaws, were half discriminated amidst the alternate flare of
+the flames and flicker of the shadows,&mdash;all might have suggested the
+&quot;mystick Crew of Comus&quot; to Richard Mivane, being the only person present
+who had ever heard of that motley company, had not his thoughts been
+otherwise engrossed. He meditatively cleared his throat, took a sip of
+brandy and water, for he had long ago lost his genteel affiliations with
+tea, and hopefully opened the subject of his mission.</p>
+
+<p>A change fell upon the scene, instant, definite, complete. In the mere
+broaching of business it might seem that beauty and charm are but
+tenuous at best, and powerless to subdue the fiercer nature of man when
+his acquisitive and aggressive commercial instincts are aroused. One of
+the most devout admirers of Peninnah Penelope Anne tossed his head with
+a very bellicose and bovine obduracy when he intimated an incredulity of
+the statement that the herd had been stampeded without an ulterior
+motive of malice or nefarious profit. The gentle soul who had assumed
+the tendance and protection of the fawn held down as he listened a
+shaggy intent head, like that of a bull about to charge, at the mere
+mention of the shooting of the wolf. In fact, the suggestion of shadowy
+monsters which the dusky flicker and evanescent flare of the fire
+fostered and which was intensified by the proximity of open jaws, sharp
+fangs, heavy muzzles, and standing bristles amongst them, owed much of
+its effect to the unanimous expression of truculent challenge and averse
+disfavor. There were frequent confirmatory emphatic nods of great
+disheveled heads, the scarlet flushing of angry faces, already florid,
+and now and again a violent descriptive gesture of a long brawny arm
+with a clenched fist at its extremity. Richard Mivane's well-rounded
+periods and gentlemanly phrasings were like the educated thrusts and
+feints of an expert fencer who opposes his single rapier to the
+bludgeons and missiles of a furious mob. He saw in less than five
+minutes that the scheme of extenuation and conciliation was futile, that
+retort and retaliation would be returned in kind, that the stoppage of
+the pack-train from Blue Lick on the way to Charlestown was inevitable,
+and that the redcoats, invoked by both parties, would doubtless become
+embroiled with one or the other,&mdash;in short, bloodshed was a foregone
+conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>Much as this was to be deprecated in any event, it was suicidal amongst
+these infant settlements by reason of the vicinage and antagonism of the
+fierce and only half-subdued Cherokees, sullenly nourishing schemes of
+revenge for their recent defeat and many woes. But when he urged this
+upon the attention of the herders, the retort came quick and pointed:
+&quot;We ain't talkin' 'bout no Injuns!&mdash;the Cherokees never meddled with our
+cattle! We'll settle about the stampede first, an' 'tend to the
+Cherokees in good time&mdash;all in good time!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Richard Mivane was not possessed of much affinity with the ruder
+primitive qualities, the stalwart candor and uncultured forces of the
+natural man; and never had these inherent elements appeared to less
+advantage in his mind than when he was brought into disastrous conflict
+with them. He only held his ground for form's sake, and often his voice
+was overborne by the clamors of many responsive tones, all blaring and
+arguing together. Much that was said he could not hear, and refrained
+from speaking when he perceived from the loud contending faces that he
+was denied for the nonce a rejoinder. But ever and anon the silver
+vibrations of the little linguister's voice rose into the big bass
+tumult as she rehearsed what had been said for her grandfather's
+benefit, and the angry rush of sound stopped with an abrupt recoil for a
+moment, then surged on as before.</p>
+
+<p>She looked very mild and petite among them, quite like a sedate child,
+her cheeks pinker than any of the rose tints of her apparel that were
+her pride, her lips red and breathlessly parted, her eyes bright and
+very watchful, her golden brown hair all red gold in the flicker of the
+fire. There was one wild taunting threat that she did not repeat, as if
+she thought it of no consequence,&mdash;the threat of personal violence
+against Ralph Emsden. They had found out his name patly enough from
+their own messenger to Blue Lick Station. They would take out their
+grudge against him on his hide, they averred,&mdash;if they had to go all the
+way to Blue Lick to get it!</p>
+
+<p>Now and again they sufficiently remembered that indeterminate quantum of
+courtesy which they called their &quot;manners&quot; to interpolate &quot;No offense to
+<i>you</i>, sir,&quot; or &quot;Begging the lady's pardon.&quot; Throughout she preserved a
+cool, almost uncomprehending, passive manner; and it was in one of the
+moments of a heady tumult of words, in which they sometimes involved
+themselves beyond all interpretation or distinguishment, that she
+observed with a sort of childish inconsequence that they could get Ralph
+Emsden easily enough if they would go to Blue Lick Station,&mdash;he was
+there now, and his arm and shoulder were so hurt that he would not be
+able to make off,&mdash;they could get him easily enough, that is, if the
+French did not raze Blue Lick Station before the herders could reach
+there.</p>
+
+<p>If a bomb had exploded in the midst of the hearthstone, the astonishment
+that ensued upon this simple statement could not have been greater. A
+sudden blank silence supervened. A dozen excited infuriated faces, the
+angry contortions of the previous moment still stark upon their
+features, were bent upon her while their eyes stared only limitless
+amazement.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The French!&quot; the herders cried at last in chorus. &quot;Blue Lick Station!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It was razed once,&quot; she said statistically, &quot;to the ground. The
+Cherokees did it that time!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her grandfather, always averse to admit that he did not hear, noted the
+influx of excitement, and was fain to lean forward. He even placed his
+hand behind his ear.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The French!&quot; bellowed out one of the cow-drivers in a voice that might
+have graced the king of the herds. &quot;The French! Threatening Blue Lick
+Station!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The elderly gentleman drew back from, the painful surcharged vibrations
+of sound and the unseemly aspect of this interpreter, who was in good
+sooth like a bull in disguise. &quot;To be sure&mdash;the French,&quot; Richard Mivane
+said in response, repeating the only words which he had heard. &quot;Our
+nearest white neighbors&mdash;the dangerous Alabama garrison!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A tumult of questions assailed the little linguister.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Be they mightily troubled at Blue Lick Station?&quot; asked one
+sympathetically.</p>
+
+<p>The little flower-like head was nodded with meaning, deep and serious.
+&quot;Oh, sure!&quot; she cried. &quot;And having the Cow-pens against them too&mdash;'tis
+sad!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Zooks!&quot; cried the bull in disguise, with a snort. &quot;The Cow-pens ain't
+against 'em&mdash;when the French are coming!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why haven't they sent word to the soldiers?&quot; demanded another of the
+cow-drivers suspiciously.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The soldiers?&quot; she exclaimed incredulously. &quot;Why&mdash;the Cow-pens sent
+word that the soldiers were against Blue Lick too, and were going to
+stop the station's pack-train. Maybe the stationers were afraid of the
+soldiers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>To a torrent of questions as to how the news had first come, how the
+menace lowered, what disposition for defense the stationers could make,
+the little girl seemed bewildered. She only answered definitely and very
+indifferently that they could easily get Ralph Emsden if they would go
+now to Blue Lick, and take his hide,&mdash;that is, if the French and their
+Choctaw Indians had not already possessed themselves of that valuable
+integument,&mdash;as if this were their primal object.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, God-a-mercy, child,&quot; cried the superintendent of the ranch, &quot;this
+news settles all scores; when it comes to a foreign foe the colonists
+are brothers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And besides,&quot; admitted one of the most truculent of the cow-drivers,
+&quot;the cattle are all pretty well rounded in again; I doubt if more are
+lost than the wolves would have pulled down anyhow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And the Blue Lick Stationers' horses can be herded easy enough,&mdash;they
+are all on their old grass,&mdash;and be driven up to the settlement.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A courier had been sent off full tilt to the commandant at Fort Prince
+George, and night though it was, a detail of mounted soldiers appeared
+presently with orders to escort the ambassador and his linguister into
+the presence of that officer.</p>
+
+<p>For this intelligence was esteemed serious indeed. Although hostilities
+had now practically ceased in America, the Seven Years' War being near
+its end, and peace negotiations actually in progress, still the treaty
+had not been concluded. So far on the frontier were such isolated
+garrisons as this of Fort Prince George, so imperfect and infrequent
+were their means of communicating with the outside world, that they were
+necessarily in ignorance of much that took place elsewhere, and a
+renewal of the conflict might have supervened long before their regular
+advices from headquarters could reach them. Even a chance rumor might
+bring them their first intimation of a matter of such great import to
+them. Therefore the commandant attached much significance to this
+account of an alarm at Blue Lick Station, because of a menace from the
+nearest French at Fort Toulouse, often called in that day, by reason of
+this propinquity, &quot;the dangerous Alabama garrison.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For this reason, also, the hospitable hosts made no protest against the
+removal of the guests to Fort Prince George, although it might seem that
+the age of the one and the tender youth of the other ill fitted them to
+encounter this sudden transition from the cosy fireside to the raw
+vernal air on a misty midnight jaunt of a dozen miles through a primeval
+wilderness. And in truth the little lady seemed loath to leave the
+hearth; she visibly hesitated as she stood beside her chair with her
+hand on its back, and looked out at the black night, and the vague vista
+which the ruddy flare, from the wide door, revealed amidst the dense
+darkness; at the vanishing point of this perspective stood a group of
+mounted soldiers, &quot;in column of twos&quot; with two led horses, the scarlet
+uniforms and burnished accoutrements appearing and disappearing
+elusively as the flames rose and fell. The sounds of the champing of
+bits and the pawing of hoofs and the jingle of spurs were keenly clear
+on the chill rare air and seemed somehow consonant with the frosty
+glitter of the stars, very high in the black concave of the moonless
+sky. The smell of the rich mould, permeated with its vernal growths; the
+cool, distinct, rarefied perfume of some early flower already abloom;
+the antiphonal chant of frogs roused in the marsh or stream hard by, so
+imbued her senses with the realization of the hour and season that she
+never afterward thought of the spring without a vivid renewal of these
+impressions.</p>
+
+<p>Her grandfather also seemed vaguely to hold back, even while he slowly
+mounted his horse; yet aware that naught is so imperative as military
+authority, it was only his inner consciousness that protested. Outwardly
+he professed alacrity, although in great surprise declaring that he
+could not imagine what the commandant could want with him. The little
+linguister, for her part, had no doubts. She was well aware indeed of
+the cause of the summons, and so dismayed by the prospect was even her
+doughty heart that the swift ride through the black forest was less
+terrible to her than the thought of the ordeal of the arrival. But the
+march was not without its peculiar trials. She shrank in instinctive
+affright from the unaccustomed escort of a dragoon on either side of
+her, looming up in the darkness like some phantom of the midnight. Even
+her volition seemed wrested from her by reason of the military training
+of the troop-horse which she rode;&mdash;he whirled about at the command
+&quot;right-wheel!&quot; ringing out in the darkness in the crisp peremptory tones
+of the non-commissioned officer, and plunged forward at the words &quot;trot,
+march!&quot; and adjusted his muscles instantaneously to the acceleration
+implied in &quot;gallop!&quot; and came to an abrupt and immovable pause at
+&quot;halt!&quot;&mdash;all with no more regard to her grasp on the reins than if she
+had been a fly on the saddle. As they went the wind beset her with cool,
+damp buffets on chin and cheek; the overhanging budding boughs, all
+unseen, drenched her with perfumed dew as she was whisked through their
+midst; the pace was adopted rather with reference to military custom and
+the expectation of the waiting commandant than her convenience; at every
+sudden whirl responsive to the word of command she was in momentary fear
+of being flung beneath the swiftly trampling hoofs of the horses on
+either side of her, and despite her recoil from the bigness and
+bluffness and presumable bloody-mindedness of the two troopers beside
+her she was sensible of their sympathy as they took heed of the
+instability with which she bounced about, perched up side-wise on a
+military saddle. Indeed, one was moved to ask her if she would not
+prefer to be strapped on with a girth, and to offer his belt for the
+purpose; and the other took the opportunity to gird at the forgetfulness
+of the cow-drivers to furnish her with her own pillion.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless she dreaded the journey's end; and as they came out of the
+forests on the banks of the Keowee River, and beheld the vague glimmers
+of the gray day slowly dawning, albeit night was yet in the woods, and
+the outline of the military works of Fort Prince George taking symmetry
+and wonted proportions against the dappled eastern sky, all of blended
+roseate tints and thin nebulous grays, her heart so sank, she felt so
+tremulously guilty that had all the sixteen guns from the four bastions
+opened fire upon her at once she would not have been surprised.</p>
+
+<p>No such welcome, however, did the party encounter. The officer
+commanding it stopped the ambassador and the linguister and let the
+soldiers go on at a round trot toward the great gate, which stood open,
+the bayonet on the musket of the sentry shining with an errant gleam of
+light like the sword of fire at the entrance of Paradise. For now the
+sun was up, the radiance suffusing the blue and misty mountains and the
+seas of fog in the valleys. Albeit its dazzling focus was hardly visible
+above the eastern heights, it sent a red glow all along the parapet of
+the covered way and the slope beyond to the river bank, where only two
+years before Captain Coytmore, then the commandant, had been murdered at
+a conference by the treacherous Cherokees. The senior officer, Captain
+Howard, being absent on leave, the present commandant, a jaunty
+lieutenant, smart enough although in an undress uniform, was standing at
+the sally-port now, all bland and smiling, to receive the ambassador and
+his linguister. He perceived at once that the old gentleman was deaf
+beyond any save adroit and accustomed communication. He looked puzzled
+for a moment, then spoke to the sergeant.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And who is this pretty little girl?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>The sergeant, who had heard of her prowess in the havoc of hearts among
+the herders at the ranch, looked bewildered, then desperate, saluted
+mechanically, and was circumspectly silent.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am not a little girl,&quot; said Peninnah Penelope Anne Mivane with adult
+dignity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, indeed,&quot; said the embarrassed and discomfited officer. Then,
+turning to lead the way, he added civilly, &quot;Beg pardon, I'm sure!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>If the sight of the sixteen guns on the four bastions of Fort Prince
+George had caused Peninnah Penelope Anne to shrink from her normal
+proportions, not too expansive at best, she dwindled visibly and
+continually when conducted within the palisaded parapets, across the
+parade, past the barracks, built for a hundred men but now somewhat
+lacking their complement, and into the officers' quarters, where in a
+large mess-hall there sat all the commissioned officers at a table, near
+the foot of which the two strangers were accommodated with chairs. It
+had so much the air of a court-martial, despite their bland and
+reassuring suavity, that Peninnah Penelope Anne, albeit a free lance and
+serving under no banner but her own whim, had much ado to keep up her
+courage to face them. Naturally she was disposed to lean upon her
+grandfather, but he utterly failed her. She had never known him so deaf!
+He could neither hear the officers nor her familiar voice. He would not
+even tell his name, although she had so often heard him voice it
+sonorously and in great pride, &quot;Richard Mivane Huntley Mivane, youngest
+son of the late Sir Alexander Mivane Huntley Mivane, of Mivane Hall,
+Fenshire, Northumberland.&quot; Now he merely waved his hand to deputize her.
+In truth he shrank from rehearsing to these young men the reason of his
+flight from home, his duel and its fatal result, although his pride
+forbade him to suppress it. He had come to think the cause of quarrel a
+trifle, and the challenge a wicked folly. It was a bitter and remorseful
+recollection as his age came on, and its details were edifying in no
+sense. Hence, as Peninnah Penelope Anne knew naught of the story she
+could not tell it, and he escaped the distasteful pose of a merciless
+duelist.</p>
+
+<p>She gave his name with much pride, noting the respect with which the
+officers heard it. She accounted for the incongruities of his presence
+here as the result of a trip from England to the province, where, as she
+said, &quot;he was detained by the snare of matrimony.&quot; It was his own
+phrase, for as a snare he regarded the holy estate; but the younger of
+the officers were pleased to find it funny, and ventured to laugh;
+whereat she grew red and silent, and they perforce became grave again
+that they might hear of the French. Here she was vague and discursive,
+and prone to detail at great length the feud between the Blue Lick
+Stationers and the &quot;cow-drivers&quot; on the Keowee, evidently hoping that it
+might lie within the latitude of the commandant's military authority to
+take some order with the herder gentry,&mdash;for which they would not have
+thanked her in the least! But the officers of the garrison of Fort
+Prince George had thought for naught but the French, and now and again
+conferred dubiously together on the unsatisfactory points of her
+evidence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you suppose she really knows anything about it?&quot; the commandant said
+aside to one of his advisers.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, however, her grandfather's hearing improved, and they were
+able to elicit from him the reports which he had had at second hand from
+the cow-drivers themselves, in retailing which he honestly conceived
+that he was repeating genuine news, never dreaming that the information
+had blossomed forth from his own mission.</p>
+
+<p>While less circumstantial and satisfactory than the commandant could
+have wished, the details were too significant and serious of import to
+be ignored, and therefore he acted upon his information as far as it was
+developed.</p>
+
+<p>He ordered out a scouting party of ten men, and, that he might utilize
+Blue Lick Station as an outpost in some sort where they might find
+refuge and aid, he dispatched to the settlement a present of gunpowder
+to serve in the defense of the station, in case of attack by the French,
+and two of the small coehorns of that day, each of which could be
+carried between two men, to assist the little piece already at the
+station. In return for the prospective courtesy and shelter to his
+troops, he wrote a very polite letter urging the settlers to hold out if
+practicable, relying on his succor with men, ammunition, and provisions;
+but if compelled to give way, assuring the stationers of a welcome at
+Fort Prince George.</p>
+
+<p>The herders at the cow-pens on the Keowee had also determined to
+reinforce Blue Lick Station, and with a number of the runaway horses of
+the settlers, rounded up and driven in strings, several of them set
+forth with the British soldiers from the fort. In this company Richard
+Mivane and his grand daughter also took their way to Blue Lick Station
+in lieu of waiting for a pack-train with provisions from Charlestown, as
+they had anticipated.</p>
+
+<p>It was a merry camping party as they fared along through the wilderness,
+and she had occasion to make many sage observations on the inconsistency
+and the unwisdom of man! That the prospect of killing some Frenchman, or
+being themselves cruelly killed, in a national quarrel which neither
+faction, the cow-drivers nor the Blue Lick Stationers, half understood,
+should so endear men to each other was a sentiment into which she could
+not enter. It was better, after all, to be a woman, she said to herself,
+and sit soberly at home and sew the rational sampler, and let the world
+wag on as it would and the cutthroats work their wild will on each
+other. The least suggestion that brought the thought of the French to
+their minds was received with eyes alight, and nerves aquiver, and blood
+all in a rush. The favorite of the whole camp was a young fellow who had
+achieved that enviable station by virtue of an inane yet inconceivably
+droll intonation of the phrase, &quot;Bong chure&quot; <i>(Bon jour</i>), delivered at
+all manner of unconformable times and in inappropriate connections, and
+invariably greeted with shouts of laughter. And when at last the party
+reached the vicinity of Blue Lick and the stationers swarmed out to meet
+them, taking the news of the French invasion at second hand, each
+repeating it to the other, and variously recounting it back again, never
+dreaming that it was supposed to have originally issued from the
+station, she meditated much upon this temperamental savagery in man, and
+the difficulty it occasioned in conforming him to those sagacious
+schemes for his benefit which she nourished in her inventive little
+pate. The antagonisms of the Blue Lick Stationers and the cow-drivers
+from the Keowee vanished like mist. On the one hand the stationers were
+assured that the stampede of the cattle was now regarded as inadvertent,
+and although it had occasioned an immense deal of vexatious trouble to
+the ranchmen, all were now well rounded up and restored to the cow-pens
+as of yore. And the ranchmen in turn received a thousand thanks for
+their neighborly kindness in the restoration of the horses of the Blue
+Lick Stationers, who knew that the animals had not been decoyed off by
+the herders, as a malicious report sought to represent, but had merely
+returned to their &quot;old grass,&quot; according to their homing propensities.
+And both parties loved the British soldiers, who had reinforced them,
+and intended to go a-scouting with the military expedition; and the
+soldiers earnestly reciprocated by assisting in the preparations for the
+defense of the station. Especially active and efficient was the only
+artilleryman among them, and the paradisaic peace amidst all the
+preparations for war was so complete that his acrid scorn of that pride
+of the settlement, the little swivel gun, and of the stationers' methods
+of handling it, occasioned not even a murmur of resentment.</p>
+
+<p>Peninnah Penelope Anne, although restored to private life and the
+maternal domicile, having retired from statecraft and the functions of
+linguister to the embassy, did not altogether escape public utility in
+these bellicose preparations. The young gunner, who had had the
+opportunity of observing her during the march hither, shortly applied to
+her for assistance in his professional devoir. He wanted a deft-handed
+young person to construct the cartridge-bags for the ammunition which he
+was fixing for the little piece and the two coehorns. And thus it
+chanced that she found herself in the blockhouse, cheek by jowl with the
+little cannon, its grisly muzzle now looking out of the embrasure where
+she herself had once been fond of taking observations of the stockade
+entrance; the men came and went and speculated upon the chances of the
+scouting quest, now about to set forth, while spurs clanking, ramrods
+rattling down into gun-barrels, voices lifted in argument or joyous
+resonance, made the whitewashed walls ring anew. The gunner, seated at a
+table carefully and accurately measuring out the powder, now and again
+urged strict cautions against the lighting of pipes or striking of
+sparks from gun-flints. When he applied himself briskly to the cutting
+out of more bags from flannel for his cartridges, he looked very
+harmless and domestic in his solicitude to follow his wooden pattern, or
+&quot;pathron&quot; as he called it, for the creature was Irish. He gave minute
+and scrupulous directions to Peninnah Penelope Anne to sew the cylinder
+with no more than twelve stitches to the inch, and to baste down the
+seams, &quot;now, moind ye that!&mdash;ivery wan!&mdash;that no powther might slip
+through beyant!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In the pride of the expert he was chary of commendation and eyed
+critically the circular bottom of every bag before he filled it with
+powder.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;See that, now,&quot; he said, snipping briskly with the scissors; &quot;that
+string of woolen yarn that yez left there, a-burnin' away outside, might
+burst the whole gun, an' ivery sowl in the blockhouse would be kilt
+intirely,&mdash;moind ye that, now!&mdash;an they would n't be the Frenchies,
+nayther!&quot; He gave her a keen warning glance at rather close range, then
+once more renewed his labors.</p>
+
+<p>The mockingbirds were singing in the woods outside. The sun was in the
+trees. The leafage had progressed beyond the bourgeoning period and the
+branches flung broad green splendors of verdure to the breeze. The Great
+Smoky Mountains were hardly less blue than the sky as the distant
+summits deployed against the fair horizon; only the nearest, close at
+hand, were sombre, and showed dark luxuriant foliage and massive craggy
+steeps, and their austere, silent, magnificent domes looked over the
+scene with solemn uplifting meanings. Oh, life! life was so sweet, and
+love and friendship were so easy to come by and so hard to part withal,
+and glad, oh, glad was she that no men of the French nation or any other
+were on their march hitherward to be torn in cruel lacerations by those
+wicked cartridges, so cleverly and artfully and cheerfully
+constructed,&mdash;men with homes, wives, mothers, sisters, children, every
+soldier representing to some anxious, tender heart a whole world, a
+microcosm of affection, all illuminated with hope and joy or to be
+clouded with grief and terror and loss and despair,&mdash;oh, glad, glad was
+she that the French invasion was but a figment,&mdash;a tissue of
+misconceptions and vague innuendoes and groundless assumptions.</p>
+
+<p>And yet she was sad and sorry and ashamed, because of the futile bustle
+and bluster and cheerful courageous activity about her. Not a cheek had
+blenched; not a hand had trembled; not a voice had been lifted to
+protest or counsel surrender, despite their meagre capacities for
+defense and their number, but a handful. What would these men say to her
+if they knew that their patriotism and their valor were expended in
+vain,&mdash;above all, their mutual cause of quarrel wasted!&mdash;as pretty a bit
+of neighborhood spite as ever stopped a bullet&mdash;all foolishly and
+needlessly reconciled without a blow! She had saved them from a bloody
+feud, the chances of which were terrifying to her for their own sakes.
+But what would they say when discovery should come!</p>
+
+<p>Still, it might never come. And yet, should they patrol the woods in
+vain and at last disperse and return each to his own home, she had no
+placidity in prospect,&mdash;she was troubled and sad and her sorry heart was
+heavy. Her scheme had succeeded beyond her wildest hopes. Her beneficent
+artifice had fully worked its mission. And now, since there was no more
+to be done, she had time to repent her varied deceits. Was it right? she
+asked herself in conscientious alarm, not the less sincere because
+belated. Ought she to have interfered, with what forces it was possible
+for her limited capacity to wield? Had they an inalienable right to cut
+each other's throats? Should she have so presumed? And now&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Howly Moses!&quot; a voice in shrill agitation broke in upon her
+preoccupation. &quot;An' is it sheddin' tears ye are upon the blessed
+gunpowther? Sure the colleen's crazed! Millia Murther! the beautiful
+ca'tridges is ruint intoirely! Any man moight be proud an' plazed to be
+kilt by the loikes o' them! How many o' them big wathery tears have yez
+been after sheddin' into aich o' them lovely ca'tridges?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He had risen; one hand was laid protectingly upon the completed pile of
+fixed ammunition as if to ward off the damping influences of her woe,
+while he ruefully contemplated the suspected cartridge bags, all plump
+and tidy and workmanlike, save for their possible charge of tears. She
+made no answer, but sat quite motionless upon her low stool, a cartridge
+bag unfinished in her lap, her golden brown curls against the cannon,
+still weeping her large tears and looking very small.</p>
+
+<p>His clamors brought half the force to the scene of the disturbance. A
+keen question here, an inference heedfully taken there, and the
+situation was plain!</p>
+
+<p>In the abrupt pause in this headlong career it was difficult to sustain
+one's poise. Now and again, indeed, sheepish conscious glances were
+interchanged; for since the grievance of the cow-drivers had been
+publicly annulled and the horses of the Blue Lick Stationers had been
+restored in pure neighborly good-will, a resumption of the quarrel on
+the old invalid scores was impossible. Perhaps some token of their
+displeasure might have been visited upon her who had inaugurated so bold
+and extensive a wild goose chase, but she looked so small as she sat by
+the cannon weeping her large tears that she disarmed retaliation.</p>
+
+<p>So small she looked, indeed, that certain of the young blades, who filed
+in to gaze upon her and filed out again, would not believe that she
+could have invented so large a French invasion, and for several days
+they futilely scouted the woods in search of some errant &quot;parlez-vous,&quot;
+all of whom, however, were very discreetly tucked away within the strong
+defenses of Fort Toulouse.</p>
+
+<p>The young gunner alone was implacable. He was the first of the returning
+force to reach Fort Prince George, and he carried with him all the
+powder that had been sent under mistake to the Blue Lick Station,
+together with the tear-shotted cartridges, whose problematic interior
+damage he explained to the amazed, chagrined, and nonplussed commandant.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, sor,&quot; the gunner said in conclusion, solemnly shaking his head,
+&quot;that gurl, sor!&mdash;she is a wily one! An' I should n't be surprised, sor,
+if she is a dale taller than she looks!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Blue Lick Station in time recovered its equilibrium, and was
+afterward prone to protest that of all frontier communities it bore the
+palm for the efficiency of its &quot;linguister.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+<a name='A_VICTOR_AT_CHUNGKE'></a><h2>A VICTOR AT CHUNGKE</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>At Tennessee Town, on the Tennessee River, there used to be a great
+chungke-yard. It was laid off in a wide rectangular area nine hundred
+feet long, two feet lower than the surface of the ground, level as a
+floor, and covered with fine white sand. The ancient, curiously shaped
+chungke-stones, fashioned with much labor from the hardest rock, perfect
+despite immemorial use, kept with the strictest care, exempt by law from
+burial with the effects of the dead, were the property of this Cherokee
+town, and no more to be removed thence than the council-house,&mdash;the
+great rotunda at one side of the &quot;beloved square,&quot; built upon a mound in
+the centre of the village.</p>
+
+<p>Surely no spot could seem more felicitously chosen for the favorite
+Indian game. The ground rose about the chungke-yard like the walls of an
+amphitheatre, on every side save the slope toward the &quot;beloved square&quot;
+and the river, furnishing an ideal position of vantage for spectators
+were they even more numerous than the hundreds of Cherokees of all ages
+that had gathered on the steep acclivities to overlook the game&mdash;some
+ranged on the terrace or turfy ridge around the chungke-yard, formed by
+the earth thrown out when the depressed area was delved down long ago,
+others disposed beneath the spreading trees, others still, precariously
+perched on clifty promontories beetling out from the sharp ascent. Above
+all, Chilhowee Mountain, aflare with the scarlet glow of its autumnal
+woods, touched the blue sky. The river, of a kindred blue, with a
+transient steely change under the shadow of a cloud, showed flashes of
+white foam, for the winds were rushing down from the Great Smoky
+Mountains, which were revealed for an instant in a clear hard azure
+against the pearl-tinted horizon&mdash;then again only a mirage, an illusion,
+a dream of stupendous ranges in the shimmering mist.</p>
+
+<p>In the idle, sylvan, tribal life of that date, one hundred and fifty
+years ago, it might seem that there was scant duty recognized, imposing
+serious occupation, to debar the population of Tennessee Town from
+witnessing the long-drawn game, which was continued sometimes half the
+day by the same hardy young warriors, indefatigable despite the hot sun
+and the tense exercise, straining every muscle. A few old women, their
+minds intent upon the preparation of dinner, a few of the very young
+children, relishing their own pottering devices as of a finer flavor of
+sport, a few old men, like other old men elsewhere, with thoughts of the
+past so vivid that the present could show but a pallid aspect&mdash;these
+were absent, and were not missed. For the most part, however, the little
+dwellings were vacant. The usual groups of loungers had deserted the
+public buildings, which consisted of a bark-and-log house of three
+rooms, or divisions, at each angle of the &quot;beloved square,&quot; and in which
+were transacted the business affairs of the town;&mdash;one, painted red, was
+the &quot;war-cabin,&quot; whence arms, ammunition, etc., were distributed, the
+divisions implying distinctions as to rank among the warriors; another,
+painted white, was devoted to the priestcraft of the &quot;beloved men&quot;&mdash;head
+men of note, conjurers, and prophets; the cabin of the aged councilors
+faced the setting sun, as an intimation that their wars were ended and
+their day done; and in the fourth cabin met the &quot;second men,&quot; as the
+traders called the subordinate authorities who conducted municipal
+affairs, so to speak&mdash;the community labor of raising houses, and laying
+off and planting with maize and pompions the common fields to be tilled
+by the women, &quot;who fret at the very shadow of a crow,&quot; writes an old
+trader. All these cabins were now still and silent in the sun. The
+dome-shaped town-house, of a different style of architecture, plastered
+within and without with red clay, placed high on the artificial mound,
+and reached by an ascent of stairs which were cut in regular gradations
+in the earth, lacked its strange religious ceremonies; its secret
+colloguing council of chiefs with the two princes of the town; its
+visitors of distinction, ambassadors from other towns or Indian nations;
+its wreaths of tobacco sent forth from diplomatically smoked pipes; its
+strategic &quot;talks;&quot; its exchange of symbolic belts and strings of wampum
+and of swans' wings&mdash;white, or painted red and black, as peace hovered
+or war impended&mdash;and other paraphernalia of the savage government. Even
+the trading-house showed a closed door, and the English trader, his pipe
+in his mouth, smoked with no latent significance, but merely to garner
+its nicotian solace, sat with a group of the elder braves and watched
+the barbaric sport with an interest as keen as if he had been born and
+bred an Indian instead of native to the far-away dales of Devonshire.
+Nay, he bet on the chances of the game with as reckless a nerve as a
+Cherokee,&mdash;always the perfect presentment of the gambler,&mdash;despite the
+thrift which characterized his transactions at the trading-house, where
+he was wont to drive a close bargain, and look with the discerning
+scrupulousness of an expert into the values of the dressing of a
+deerskin offered in barter. But the one pursuit was pleasure, and the
+other business. The deerskins which he was wearing were of phenomenal
+softness and beauty of finish, for the spare, dapper man was arrayed
+like the Indians, in fringed buckskin shirt and leggings; but he was
+experiencing a vague sentiment of contempt for his attire. He had been
+recently wearing a garb of good camlet-cloth and hose and a bravely
+cocked hat, for he was just returned from a journey to Charlestown, five
+hundred miles distant, where he had made a considerable stay, and his
+muscles and attitude were still adjusted to the pride of preferment and
+the consciousness of being unwontedly smart. Indeed, his pack-train,
+laden with powder and firearms, beads and cloth, cutlery and paints, for
+his traffic with the Indians under the license which he held from the
+British government, had but come in the previous day, and he had still
+the pulses of civilization beating in his veins.</p>
+
+<p>For this reason, perhaps, as he sat, one elbow on his knee, his chin in
+his hand, his sharp, commercially keen face softened by a thought not
+akin to trade, his eyes were darkened, while he gazed at one of the
+contestants, with a doubt that had little connection with the odds which
+he had offered. He was troubled by a vague regret, a speculation of
+restless futility, for it concerned a future so unusual that no detail
+could be predicted from the resources of the present. And yet this
+sentiment was without the poignancy of personal grief&mdash;it was only a
+vicarious interest that animated him. For himself, despite the
+flattering, smooth reminiscence of the camlet-cloth yet lingering in the
+nerves of his finger-tips, the recent relapse into English speech, the
+interval spent once more among the stir of streets and shops, splendid
+indeed to an unwonted gaze, the commercial validities, which he so
+heartily appreciated, of the warehouses, and crowded wharves, and laden
+merchantmen swinging at anchor in the great harbor, he was satisfied. He
+was possessed by that extraordinary renunciation of civilization which
+now and again was manifested by white men thrown among the Cherokee
+tribe&mdash;sometimes, as in his instance, a trader, advanced in years, &quot;his
+pile made,&quot; to use the phrase of to-day, the world before him where to
+choose a home; sometimes a deserter from the British or French military
+forces, according to the faction which the shifting Cherokees affected
+at the time; more than once a captive, spared for some whim, set at
+liberty, free to go where he would&mdash;all deliberately and of choice cast
+their lot among the Cherokees; lived and died with the treacherous race.
+Whether the wild sylvan life had some peculiarly irresistible
+attraction; whether the world beyond held for them responsibilities and
+laborious vocations and irksome ties which they would fain evade;
+whether they fell under the bewitchment of &quot;Herbert's Spring,&quot; named
+from an early commissioner of Indian affairs, after drinking whereof one
+could not quit the region of the Great Smoky Mountains, but remained in
+that enchanted country for seven years, fascinated, lapsed in perfect
+content&mdash;it is impossible to say. There is a tradition that when the
+attraction of the world would begin to reassert its subtle reminiscent
+forces, these renegades of civilization were wont to repair anew to this
+fountain to quaff again of the ancient delirium and to revive its potent
+spell. Abram Varney had no such necessity in his own case; he only
+doubted the values of his choice as fitted for another.</p>
+
+<p>Apart from this reflection, it was natural that his eyes should follow
+the contestant whom he had backed for a winner to the tune of more
+silver bangles, and &quot;ear-bobs,&quot; and strings of &quot;roanoke,&quot; and gunpowder,
+and red and white paint, than he was minded to lightly lose. He had laid
+his wagers with a keen calculation of the relative endowments of the
+players, their dexterity, their experience, their endurance. He was not
+influenced by any pride of race in the fact that his champion was also a
+white man, who, indeed, carried a good share of the favor of the
+spectators.</p>
+
+<p>A strange object was this champion, at once pathetic and splendid. No
+muscular development could have been finer, no athletic grace more
+pronounced than his physique displayed. The wild life and training of
+the woods and the savage wars had brought out all the constitutional
+endurance and strength inherited from his stanch English father and his
+hardy Scotch mother. Both had been murdered by the Cherokees in a
+frontier massacre, and as a boy of ten years of age, his life spared in
+some freak of the moment, he had been conveyed hither, exhorted to
+forget, adopted into the tribe, brought up with their peculiar kindness
+in the rearing of children, taught all the sylvan arts, and trained to
+the stern duties of war by the noted chief Colannah Gigagei, himself,
+the Great Red Raven of Tennessee Town (sometimes called Quorinnah, the
+name being a favorite war-title specially coveted). The youth had had
+his baptism of fire in the ceaseless wars which the Cherokees waged
+against the other Indian tribes. He had already won the &quot;warrior's
+crown&quot; and his &quot;war-name,&quot; a title conferred only upon the bravest of
+the brave. He was now Otasite, the &quot;Man-killer&quot; of Tennessee Town. He
+was just twenty years of age, and Abram Varney, gazing at him, wondered
+what the people in Charlestown would think of him could they see him.
+For a few days, a week, perhaps, the trader would refer all his thoughts
+to this civilized standard.</p>
+
+<p>Tall, alert as an Indian, supple too, but heavier and more muscular,
+Otasite was instantly to be distinguished by his build from among the
+other young men, although, like the Indians, he wore a garb of dressed
+deerskin. His face, albeit no stranger to the use of their pigments and
+unguents, still showed fair and freckled. His hair bore no resemblance
+to their lank black locks; of an auburn hue and resolutely curling, it
+defied the tonsure to which it had been for years subjected, coming out
+crisp and ringleted close to his head where he was designed to be bald,
+and on the top, where the &quot;war-lock&quot; was permitted to grow, it floated
+backward in two long tangled red curls that gave the lie direct to the
+Indian similitude affected by the two surmounting tips of eagle
+feathers. He was arrayed in much splendor, according to aboriginal
+standards; the fringed seams of his hunting shirt and leggings,
+fashioned of fine white dressed doeskin, as pliable as &quot;Canton silk
+crape,&quot; were hung with fawns' trotters; his moccasins were white and
+streaked with parti-colored paint; he had a curious prickly belt of
+wolves' teeth, which intimated his moral courage as well as sylvan
+prowess, for the slaying of these beasts was esteemed unlucky, and
+shooting at them calculated to spoil the aim of a gun; many glancing,
+glittering strings of &quot;roanoke&quot; swung around his neck.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing could have been finer, athletically considered, than his
+attitude at this moment of the trader's speculative observation. The
+discoidal quartz chungke-stone<a name="anchor_2"></a>[<a href="#footnote_2">2</a>] had been hurled with a tremendous
+fling along the smooth sandy stretch of the yard, its flat edge, two
+inches wide, and the curiously exact equipoise of its fashioning causing
+it to bowl swiftly along a great distance, to fall only when the
+original impetus should fail; his competitor, Wyejah, a sinewy, powerful
+young brave, his buckskin garb steeped in some red dye that gave him the
+look when at full speed of the first flying leaf of the falling season,
+his ears split and barbarically distended on wire hoops<a name="anchor_3"></a>[<a href="#footnote_3">3</a>] and hung with
+silver rings, his moccasins scarlet, his black hair decorated with
+cardinal wings, had just sent his heavy lance, twelve feet long,
+skimming through the air; then Otasite, running swiftly but lightly
+abreast with him, launched his own long lance with such force and nicety
+of aim that its point struck the end of Wyejah's spear, still in flight
+in mid-air, deflecting its direction, and sending it far afield from the
+chungke-stone which it was designed in falling to touch. This fine cast
+counted one point in the game, which is of eleven points, and the Indian
+braves among the spectators howled like civilized young men at a
+horse-race.</p>
+
+<p>The sport was very keen, the contest being exceedingly close, for Wyejah
+had long needed only one additional point to make him a winner, and when
+Otasite had failed to score he had also failed. The swift motion, the
+graceful agility, the smiling face of Otasite,&mdash;for it was a matter of
+the extremest exaction in the Indian games that however strenuous the
+exertion and tense the strain upon the nerves and grievous the
+mischances of the sport, the utmost placidity of manner and temper must
+be preserved throughout,&mdash;all appealed freshly to the trader, although
+it was a long-accustomed sight.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Many a man in Charlestown&mdash;a well-to-do man&quot; (applying the commercial
+standard of value)&mdash;&quot;would be proud to have such a son,&quot; he muttered, a
+trifle dismayed by the perverse incongruities of fate. &quot;He would have
+sent the boy to school. If there was money enough he would have sent him
+to England to be educated&mdash;and none too good for him!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The shadows of the two players, all foreshortened by the approach of
+noontide, bobbed about in dwarfish caricature along the smooth sandy
+stretch. The great chungke-pole, an obelisk forty feet high planted on a
+low mound in the centre of the chungke-yard, and with a target at its
+summit used for trials of skill in marksmanship, cast a diminished
+simulacrum on the ground at its base scarcely larger than the
+chungke-lances. Now and again these heavy projectiles flew through the
+air, impelled with an incredible force and a skill so accurate that it
+seemed impossible that both contestants should not excel. There was a
+moment, however, when Otasite might have made the decisive point to
+score eleven had not the chungke-stone slipped from the hand of Wyejah
+as he cast it, falling only a few yards distant. Otasite's lance, flung
+instantly, shot far beyond that missile, for which, had the stone been
+properly thrown, he should have aimed. Wyejah, disconcerted and shaken
+by the mischance, launching his lance at haphazard, almost mechanically,
+struck by obvious accident the flying lance of his adversary, deflecting
+its course&mdash;the decisive cast, for which he had striven so long in vain,
+and which was now merely fortuitous.</p>
+
+<p>The crowds of Indian gamblers, with much money and goods at hazard upon
+the event, some, indeed, having staked the clothes upon their backs, the
+rifles and powder for their winter hunt that should furnish them with
+food, were at once in a clamor of discussion as to the fair adjustment
+of the throw in the score. The backers of Wyejah claimed the accidental
+hit as genuine and closing the game. The backers of Otasite protested
+that it could not be thus held, since Wyejah's defective cast of the
+chungke-stone debarred their champion from the possibility of first
+scoring the eleventh point, which chance was his by right, it being his
+turn to play; they met the argument caviling at Otasite's lack of aim by
+the counter-argument that one does not aim at a moving object where it
+is at the moment, but with an intuitive calculation of distance and
+speed where it will be when reached by the projectile hurled after it,
+illustrating cleverly by the example of shooting with bow and arrow at a
+bird on the wing.</p>
+
+<p>Otasite and Wyejah both, preserved an appearance of joyous indifference.
+With their lances poised high in the right hand they were together
+running swiftly up the long alley again to the starting-point, Otasite
+commenting on the evident lack of intention in Wyejah's lucky cast with
+a loud, jocosely satiric cry, &quot;<i>Hala! Hala</i>!&quot; (signifying, &quot;You are too
+many for me!&quot;)</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lord! how the boy does yell!&quot; Abram Varney exclaimed, a smile pervading
+the wrinkles wrought about his eyes by much pondering on the problems of
+the Indian trade, feeling incongruously a sort of elation in the youth's
+noisy shouts, which echoed blatantly from the rocky banks of the
+Tennessee River, and with reduced arrogance and in softer tones from the
+cliffs of towering Chilhowee.</p>
+
+<p>A sympathetic sentiment glowed in the dark eyes of an Indian chief on
+the slope hard by, the great Colannah Gigagei. He was fast aging now;
+the difficulties of diplomacy constantly increasing in view of
+individual aggressions and encroachments of the Carolina colonists on
+the east, and the ever specious wiles and suave allurements of the
+French on the west, to win the Cherokees from their British alliance;
+the impossibility, in the gentle patriarchal methods of the Cherokee
+government, to control the wild young men of the tribe, who, as the
+half-king, Atta-Kulla-Kulla said, &quot;often acted like madmen rather than
+people of sense&quot; (and it is respectfully submitted that this peculiarity
+has been observed in other young men elsewhere); the prophetic vision,
+doubtless, of the eventual crushing of his people in the collisions of
+the great international struggle of the Europeans for the possession of
+this country,&mdash;all fostered tokens of time in the face of Colannah, and
+bowed his straight back, and set an unwonted quiver in the nerves of his
+old hand that had been firm in his heyday, and strong and crafty and
+cruelly bloody. But his face now was softened with pleasure, and the
+pride it expressed was almost tender.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When a few years ago the Governor of South Carolina,&quot; he said
+majestically, speaking in the Cherokee tongue but for the English names
+(he pronounced the title &quot;Goweno&quot;), &quot;offered to take some Cherokee
+youths to train in his schools and make <i>scholars</i> of them, I thanked
+him with affection, for his thought was kind. But I told him that if he
+would send some South Carolina youths to the Cherokee nation to be
+trained, we would make <i>men</i> of them!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His blanket, curiously woven of feathers and wild hemp, requiring years
+of labor in its intricate manufacture, fell away from one gaunt arm as
+he lifted it to point with a kingly gesture at the young white man as
+the illustration of his training. Every muscle of strength was on parade
+in the splendid pose of hurling the great chungke-spear through the air,
+as Otasite thus passed the interval while waiting the decision of the
+umpire of the game. Then, with a laugh, oddly blent of affection and
+pride, Colannah took his way down the slope and toward the
+council-house: the council sat there much in these days of 1753, clouded
+with smoke and perplexity.</p>
+
+<p>Judging by this specimen of his athletic training to feats of prowess,
+Colannah Gigagei might boast to the &quot;Goweno&quot; of South Carolina. It was
+not, however, merely in muscle that the young captive excelled. As Abram
+Varney thought of certain sterling manly traits of the highest type
+which this poor waif had developed here in this incongruous environment,
+one might suppose from the sheer force of heredity, he shook his head
+silently, and his eyes clouded, the pulses of Charlestown still beating
+in his veins. For he was wont to leave for months the treasures of his
+trading-house, not merely a matter of trinkets and beads, but powder,
+lead, and firearms, sufficient for accoutring an expedition for the
+&quot;war-path,&quot; and great store of cloths, cutlery, paints, in the charge of
+this valiant gamester of chungke, stanch alike against friend and foe,
+as safely as if its wealth were beneath his own eye. So insecure had
+become the Cherokee allegiance to the government that it was impossible
+now under its uncertain protection to retain white men from the colonies
+here in his employ as agents and under-traders, or, indeed, those whose
+interest and profits amounted to an ownership in a share of the stock.
+The earlier traders in neighboring towns one by one had gone, affecting
+a base several hundred miles nearer the white settlements. Some had
+shifted altogether from the tribe, and secured a post among the
+Chickasaws, who were indubitably loyal to the British. While their
+withdrawal added to Varney's profits,&mdash;for each trader was allowed to
+hold at this time a license only for two Indian towns, it being before
+the date of the issuance of general licenses, and the custom which they
+had relinquished, the barter with the Cherokees for deerskins, now came
+from long distances, drawn as by a magnet to his trading-house at
+Tennessee Town,&mdash;it had resulted in his isolation, and for years he had
+been almost the only British subject west of the Great Smoky Mountains.
+He had no fear of the Cherokees, however&mdash;not even should the political
+sky, always somewhat overcast, become yet more lowering. He had long
+been accustomed to these Indians, and he felt that he had fast friends
+among them. His sane mercantile judgment appraised and appreciated the
+added opportunities of his peculiar position, which he would not lightly
+throw away, and the development of Otasite's incongruous commercial
+values not only removed the possibility of loss during his absence, but
+added to his facilities in enabling him to secure the fidelity of
+Indians as packmen, hitherto impracticable, but now rendered to Otasite
+as one of the tribe. He had recognized with satisfaction, mingled with
+amusement, national traits in the boy, who, despite his Indian training,
+would not, like them, barter strings of wampum measuring &quot;from elbow to
+wrist&quot; without regard to the relative length of arm. Yet he had none of
+the Indian deceit and treachery. He was blunt, sincere, and bold. His
+alertness in computation gave Varney genuine pleasure, although they
+wrangled much as to his method, for he used the Cherokee numeration, and
+it set the trader's mercantile teeth on edge to hear twenty called
+&quot;<i>tahre skoeh</i>&quot;&mdash;two tens.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And why not?&quot; Otasite would demand, full of faith in his own education.
+&quot;The Chickasaw will say '<i>pokoole toogalo</i>'&mdash;ten twos&quot;&mdash;and he would
+smile superior. This was his world, and these his standards&mdash;the
+Cherokees and the Chickasaws!</p>
+
+<p>He was not to be easily influenced or turned save by some spontaneous
+acquiescence of his own mind, and Varney found himself counting &quot;<i>skoeh
+chooke kaiere</i>&quot; (the old one's hundred) before he ever induced Otasite
+to say instead &quot;one thousand.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The boy even ventured on censorship in his turn. &quot;You say 'Cherokee<i>s</i>'
+and 'Chickasaw<i>s</i>' when you speak of the Tsullakee and the Chickasaw;
+why don't you then say the English-<i>es</i> and the French-<i>es</i>?&quot; For the
+plural designation of these tribes was a colonial invention.</p>
+
+<p>His bulldog tenacity, his orderly instincts, his providence, so contrary
+to the methods of the wasteful Indian, his cheerful industry, his
+indomitable energy and perseverance,&mdash;all were so national that in days
+gone past Varney used now and again to clap him on the shoulder with a
+loud, careless vaunt, &quot;British to the marrow!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A fact, doubtless&mdash;and all of a sudden it had begun to seem a very
+serious fact. So very serious, indeed, that the old trader did not
+notice the crisis in the chungke-yard, the increasing excitement in the
+crowds of spectators, the clamors presently when the game was declared a
+draw and the bets off, the stir of the departing groups. It was silence
+at last that smote upon his senses with the effect of interruption which
+the continuance of sound had not been able to compass. He drew himself
+up with a perplexed sigh, and looked drearily over the expanse of the
+river. Its long glittering reaches were vacant, a rare circumstance, for
+the Cherokees of that date were almost amphibious in habit, reveling in
+the many lovely streams of their mountain country; on the banks their
+towns were situated, and this fact doubtless contributed to the neatness
+of their habitations and personal cleanliness, to which the travelers of
+those times bear a surprised testimony. The light upon the water was
+aslant now from a westering sun, and glittering on the snowy breasts of
+a cluster of swans drifting, dreaming perhaps, on the current. The
+scarlet boughs on the summit of Chilhowee were motionless against the
+azure zenith. Not even the vaguest tissue of mist now lingered about the
+majestic domes of the Great Smoky Mountains, painted clearly and
+accurately in fine and minute detail in soft dense velvet blues against
+the hard polished mineral blue of the horizon. The atmosphere was so
+exquisitely luminous and pellucid that it might have seemed a fit medium
+to dispel uncertainty in other than merely material subjects of
+contemplation. Nevertheless he did not see his way clearly, and when he
+came within view of his trading-house he paused as abruptly as if he had
+found his path blocked by an obstacle.</p>
+
+<p>There, seated on the step of the closed door which boasted the only lock
+and key in Tennessee Town, or for the matter of that in all the stretch
+of the Cherokee country west of the Great Smoky Range, was Otasite, the
+incongruity of his auburn curls and his Indian headdress seeming a
+trifle more pronounced than usual, since it had been for a time an
+unfamiliar sight. He was awaiting the coming of the trader, and was
+singing meanwhile in a loud and cheerful voice, &quot;Drink with me a cup of
+wine,&quot; a ditty which he had heard in his half-forgotten childhood. The
+robust full tones gave no token of the draught made upon his endurance
+by the heavy exercise of the day, but he seemed a bit languid from the
+heat, and his doeskin shirt was thrown open at the throat, showing his
+broad white chest, and in its centre the barbarous blue discolorations
+of the &quot;warrior's marks.&quot; These disfigurements, made by the puncturing
+of the flesh with gars' teeth and inserting in the wound paint and
+pitch, indelible testimonials to his deeds of courage and prowess,
+Otasite valued as he did naught else on earth, and he would have parted
+with his right hand as readily. The first had been bestowed upon him
+after he had gone, a mighty gun-man, against the Muscogees. The others
+he had won in the course of a long, furious, and stubborn contest of the
+tribe with the Chickasaws, who, always impolitic, headlong, and brave,
+were now reduced by their own valor in their many wars from ten thousand
+fighting men to a few hundred. He had attained the &quot;warrior's crown&quot;
+when he had shown their kindred Choctaws a mettle as fierce and a craft
+as keen as their own. And now he was looking at Abram Varney with kindly
+English eyes and an expression about the brow, heavily freckled, that
+almost smote the tears from the elder man. The trader knew from long
+experience what was coming, but suddenly he had begun to regard it
+differently. Always upon the end of each journey from Charlestown he had
+been met here within a day or two by Otasite on the same mission. The
+long years as they passed had wrought only external changes since, as a
+slender wistful boy of eleven years, heart-sick, homeless, forlorn,
+friendless, save for his Indian captors, likely, indeed, to forget all
+language but theirs, he had first come with his question, always in
+English, always with a faltering eyelash and a deprecatory lowered
+voice, &quot;Did you hear anything in Charlestown of any people named
+'Queetlee'?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This was the distorted version of his father's name that Colannah had
+preserved. As to the child himself, his memory had perhaps been shaken
+by the events of that terrible night of massacre, which he only realized
+as a frightful awakening from sleep to smoke, flames, screams, the
+ear-splitting crack of rifle-shots at close quarters, the shock of a
+sudden hurt&mdash;and then, after an interval of unconsciousness, a
+transition to a new world of strange habitudes that grew speedily
+familiar, and of unexpected kindness that became dear to a frank,
+affectionate heart. Perhaps in the isolations of the frontier life he
+had never heard his father addressed by his surname by a stranger; he
+was called &quot;Jan&quot; by his wife, and her name was &quot;Eelin,&quot; and this Otasite
+knew, and this was all he knew, save that he himself also had been
+called &quot;Jan.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They don't want you, my buck, or they would have been after you,&quot; the
+trader used to reply, being harder, perhaps when he was younger.
+Besides, he honestly thought the cadaverous brat, all legs, like a
+growing colt, and skinny arms, was better off here in the free woodland
+life which he himself considered no hardship, and affected long after
+necessity or interest had dictated his environment. The little lad was
+safe in the care of the powerful chief Colannah Gigagei of Tennessee
+Town, who had adopted him, and who was a man of great force and
+influence. Why should the child seek a home among his own people,
+unwelcome doubtless, to eat the meagre crust of charity, or serve as an
+overworked drudge somewhere on the precarious frontier? The trader did
+not greatly deplore the lack of religious training, for in the remote
+settlements this was often still an unaccustomed luxury, albeit some
+thirty years had now gone by since Sir Francis Nicholson, then the
+Governor, declared that no colony could flourish without a wider
+diffusion of the gospel and education, and forthwith ordered spiritual
+drill, so to speak, in the way of preaching and schooling. Although
+himself described as &quot;a profane, passionate, headstrong man, bred a
+soldier,&quot; as if the last fact were an excuse for the former, he
+contributed largely to the furtherance of these pious objects, &quot;spending
+liberally all his salary and perquisites of office,&quot; for which generous
+trait of character an early and strait-laced historian is obviously of
+the opinion that General Nicholson should have been suffered to swear in
+peace and, as it were, in the odor of sanctity.</p>
+
+<p>More than once, when in Charlestown, Varney, notwithstanding his
+persuasions on the subject, had been minded to inquire concerning the
+&quot;Queetlees,&quot; who he understood from Colannah had come originally from
+Cumberland in England. With his mercantile cronies he had canvassed the
+question whether the queer, evidently distorted name could have been
+&quot;Peatley&quot; or &quot;Patey&quot; or &quot;Petrie,&quot;&mdash;for the Cherokees always substituted
+&quot;Q&quot; for &quot;P,&quot; as the latter letter they could not pronounce,&mdash;and after
+this transient consideration the matter would drop.</p>
+
+<p>As the child, running about the Indian town with his new-found
+playmates, grew robust and merry-hearted, and happiness, confidence, and
+strength brought their embellishing influence to the expression of his
+large dark gray eyes and straightened the nervous droop from his thin
+little shoulders, the trader noticed casually once or twice how comely
+the brat had become, and he experienced a fleeting, half-ridiculing pity
+for his mother&mdash;how the woman would have resented and resisted the
+persistent shearing and shaving of those silken, loosely twining red
+curls! Then he thought of her no more. But when the child had come to
+man's estate, when he was encased in a network of muscle like elastic
+steel wires, when stature and strength had made him alike formidable and
+splendid, when the development of his temperament illustrated virtues so
+stanch that they seemed the complement of his physical endowment and a
+part of his resolute personality, the old trader thought of the boy's
+father, and thought of him daily&mdash;how the sturdy Cumbrian yeoman would
+have rejoiced in so stalwart a son! Thus, with this vague bond of
+sympathy with a man whom he had never seen, never known, so long ago, so
+cruelly dead, this intuitive divination of his paternal sentiment,
+Varney's fatherly attitude grew more definite daily and became
+accustomed, and he was jealous of the influence of Colannah, who in turn
+was jealous of his influence.</p>
+
+<p>Now as Varney stood in the dusky trading-house among the kegs and bags
+and bales of goods, the high peak of the interior of the roof lost in
+the lofty shadows, he felt that he had been much in default in long-past
+years, and he experienced a very definite pang of conscience as Otasite
+swung abruptly around a stack of arms, a new rifle in his hand, the
+flint and pan of which he had been keenly examining.</p>
+
+<p>He lifted his eyes suddenly with that long-lashed dreary look of his
+childhood.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you hear of any Queetlees in Charlestown?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is <i>you</i> who should seek your kindred, Jan Queetlee!&quot; Varney said
+impulsively, calling him by his unaccustomed English name. &quot;It is <i>you</i>
+who should go to Charlestown to find the Queetlees!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Otasite's face showed suddenly the unwonted expression of fear. He
+recoiled abruptly, and Abram Varney was sensible of a deep depression.
+It was as he had thought. The wish for restoration to those of his name
+and his kindred which had animated the boy's earlier years had now
+dwindled to a mere abstract sentiment of loyalty as of clanship, but was
+devoid of expectation, of intention. All the members of his immediate
+family had perished in the massacre, and he had been trained to regard
+this as the fortunes of war, cherishing no personal antagonism, as
+elsewhere among civilized people reconciliations are frequent between
+the victors and the friends of the slain in battle. Moreover, he was not
+brought close to it. The participators in the affray were of the distant
+Ayrate settlements of the tribe, southeast of the mountains, and not
+individualized. The Indians of Tennessee Town, which was then one of the
+most remote of the Cherokee villages of the Ottare division, and this
+perhaps was the reason it was selected as his home, were not concerned
+in the foray, nor were any others of the Overhill towns. Thus he had
+grown up without the thirst for vengeance, which showed how little the
+methods of his Cherokee environment had influenced his heart. And truly
+the far-away Queetlees, if any such were cognizant of his existence, had
+troubled themselves nothing about it, and had infinitely less claim on
+his gratitude and filial affection than Colannah. They had left him to
+be as a waif, a slave. He had been reared as a son, nursed and tended,
+fed and fostered, bedecked in splendor, armed in costly and formidable
+wise, given command and station, carefully trained in all that the
+Indian knew.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Colannah would never consent!&quot; he said at last.</p>
+
+<p>Abram Varney afterward wondered why he should then have had a
+vision&mdash;oh, so futile, so fleeting, so fantastic!&mdash;of the twenty, the
+forty, nay, the sixty years that this man, so munificently endowed by
+nature, might pass here among the grotesque, uncouth barbarities of the
+savage Cherokee, while his heritage&mdash;his religion, the religion into
+which he was born of Christian parents, his name and nation, his tongue
+and station, his opportunity&mdash;doubtless some fair, valid, valuable
+future&mdash;all lay there to the eastward but scant five hundred miles away
+on the Carolina coast. He said as much, and the retort came succinctly,
+&quot;You live here!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Otasite's English speech was as simple as a child's, but he thought as
+diplomatically as Colannah himself, whom he esteemed the greatest man in
+all the world, and he could argue in the strategic Cherokee method.
+Nevertheless, to give him full sway, that everything possible might be
+said in contravention of the proposition, the old trader lapsed into the
+Indian speech, that was indeed from long usage like a mother tongue to
+them both. He stayed here, he said, from choice, it was true, but for
+the sake of the trade that gave him wealth, and with wealth he could
+return to the colonies at any time, and go whither he would in all the
+world. But Otasite was restricted; he had no goods for trade, no
+adequate capital to invest; he could only return to the colonies while
+young, to work, to make a way, to secure betimes a place appropriate to
+his riper years. Even this could not be done without great
+difficulty,&mdash;witness how many settlers came empty-handed to barely exist
+on the frontier and wrest a reluctant living from the wilderness,&mdash;and
+it could not be done at all without friends. Now he, Abram Varney, was
+prepared to stand his friend; Otasite could take a place in the service
+of the company, in the main depot of the trade at Charlestown. His
+knowledge of the details of the business of which Abram Varney's long
+absences had given him experience; of the needs of the Cherokee nation;
+of the ever-continued efforts of the French traders, by means of the
+access to the Overhill towns afforded by the Cherokee and Tennessee
+rivers, despite the great distance from their settlements on the
+Mississippi, to insinuate their supplies at lower prices, in the teeth
+of the Cherokee treaty with the British monopolizing such traffic, and
+bring down profits&mdash;all would have a special and recognized value and be
+appreciated by his mercantile associates, who would further the young
+man's advancement. Thence he could at his leisure make inquiries
+concerning his father's family, and doubtless in the course of time be
+restored to his kindred.</p>
+
+<p>Otasite listened throughout with the courteous air of deliberation which
+his Indian training required him to accord to any discourse, without
+interruption, however unwelcome or trivial it might be esteemed. Then,
+smiling slowly, he shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You cannot be serious,&quot; he said. &quot;It would break old Colannah's heart,
+who has been like a father to me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Abram Varney too had the British bulldog tenacity. &quot;What will you do,
+then,&quot; he asked slowly and significantly, &quot;when Colannah takes up arms
+against the British government? Will you fight men of your own blood?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was reinforced in this argument by the habit of thought of the
+Indians&mdash;the absolute absence of tribal dissensions, of internecine
+strife, so marked among the Cherokees: here no man's hand was lifted
+against his brother.</p>
+
+<p>Jan Queetlee palpably winced. Come what might, he could never fight for
+the Cherokees against the British&mdash;his father's people, his mother's
+people&mdash;no more than he could fight for the British against his adopted
+tribe&mdash;the Cherokee&mdash;and he the &quot;Man-killer!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They will fight each other,&quot; said Varney weightily, &quot;and the day is not
+far&mdash;the day is not far!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For in 1753 the cumulative discontents of the tribe were near the
+crisis, earnestly fostered by the French on the western boundaries, that
+vast domain then known as Louisiana, toward whose siren voice the
+Cherokees had ever lent a willing ear. The building by the British
+government, two or three years later, of those great defensive works,
+Fort Prince George and Fort Loudon, situated respectively at the eastern
+and western extremities of the Cherokee territory, mounted with cannon
+and garrisoned by British forces, served to hold them in check and
+quieted them for a time, but only for a time. Jan Queetlee, by reason of
+his close association with the chiefs, knew far more than Varney dreamed
+of the bitterness roused in the hearts of the Indians by friction with
+the government, the aggressions of the individual colonist, the
+infringements of their privileges in the treaty, and in opposition the
+influence of the ever seductive suavity of the French.</p>
+
+<p>As with a sudden hurt, Jan Queetlee cried out with a poignant voice
+against the government and its patent unfaith, striking his clinched
+fist so heavily on the head of a keg of powder that the stout fibres of
+the wood burst beneath the passionate blow, and in a moment he was
+covered with the flying particles of the black dust. Realizing the
+possibility of an explosion should a candle or a pipe be lighted here,
+Varney did not wait for the return of one of the brawny packmen to
+remove the keg to a cave beneath the trading-house, which he utilized
+for storage as a cellar, but addressed himself to the job. Jan Queetlee
+silently assisted, his face darker, more lowering with the thought in
+his mind than with the smears of the powder.</p>
+
+<p>Varney remembered this afterward, and that he himself, diverted by the
+accident from the trend of his argument, had launched out in a tirade
+against the government as they worked together, the young Briton's
+energy, industry, and persistence so at variance with the aspect of his
+tufted topknot of feathers on his auburn curls, and the big blue
+warrior's marks on his broad white chest. For Varney too had his
+grievances against the powers that were; but his woes were personal. He
+vehemently condemned the reconciliation which the government had
+effected between the Muscogees and the Cherokees, for although there
+were more deerskins to be had for export when the Indian hunters were at
+pacific leisure, Varney had considered the recent war between these
+tribes an admirable vent for gunpowder and its profitable sale; and
+since the savages must always be killing, it was manifestly best for all
+concerned that they should kill each other. He could not sufficiently
+deride the happy illustration which Governor Glen had given them (in his
+fatuity, Varney thought) of the values of peace and concord. In the
+presence of the two delegations the mediating Governor had taken an
+arrow and shown them with what ease it could be broken; then how
+impossible he found it to break a quiverful of arrows, thus
+demonstrating the strength in union. Varney argued that the Indians
+would readily perceive a further application of the principle and turn
+it to account, combining against the colonists. In the same spirit he
+animadverted upon a monopoly from which he was excluded in common with
+the traders in general, and which had been granted to a mercantile
+company seeking to establish posts among the Choctaws. The enterprise,
+although favored by the government, obviously because, undertaken on a
+scale of phenomenal magnitude, it promised to dislodge the French and
+their long-established trade among the Choctaws, and bring that powerful
+tribe to a British allegiance, had finally proved a failure; and with a
+bitter joy in this fact he alternately contemned and pitied the
+government, because it could not wrest this valuable opportunity from
+the iron grasp of the &quot;Mississippi Louisianians.&quot; He had, too, a
+censorious word for the French commercially&mdash;called them &quot;peddlers,&quot;
+celebrated their deceitful wiles, underrated the quality of their
+cloths, and inconsistently berated them for their low prices, finding a
+logical parity in all these matters in the tenets of their religion,
+which they had so vainly and so zealously sought to instill into the
+unreceptive hearts of the unimpressionable Choctaw.<a name="anchor_4"></a>[<a href="#footnote_4">4</a>]</p>
+
+<p>With the plethora of interest involved in these subjects, Varney grew
+oblivious of the theme that had earlier occupied his mind. It recurred
+no more to his thoughts until several days had passed. He then chanced
+to be occupied with his new goods in his cavern. It was illumined only
+from above; there was a trap-door in the floor of the trading-house, and
+thence a pale tempered light drifted down, scarcely convenient, but
+sufficient for his purposes. Once he noticed that a shadow flickered
+across it. He experienced a momentary surprise, for he had left no one
+in the building, and the outer door being locked, he imagined it could
+not be forced without noise enough to rouse him. Again the shadow
+flickered across the trap-door; then ensued a complete eclipse of the
+scant glimmer of light. There was a step upon the ladder which served as
+stairway&mdash;a man was descending.</p>
+
+<p>Varney felt a sudden constriction about his throat. He realized an
+impending crisis; the door above had been closed; by the sound he knew
+that the ladder was now removed and laid upon the ground. He had an
+idea&mdash;he could see naught&mdash;that the unknown invisible man had seated
+himself on the ladder on the ground, where he remained motionless,
+silent, in anger, in grief, or some strange savage whim hardly possible
+for a civilized creature to divine.</p>
+
+<p>The time that passed in this black nullity&mdash;he never could compute
+it&mdash;moments, doubtless, but it seemed hours, tried to the utmost the
+nerve of the entrapped trader, albeit inured by twenty years' experience
+to the capricious temper of the Cherokee Indians. He felt he could
+better endure the suspense could he only see his antagonist, identify
+him, and thus guess his purpose, and shape his own course from his
+knowledge of character. But with some acquired savage instinct he, too,
+remained silent, null, passive; one might have thought him absent.
+Perhaps his quiescence, indeed, fostered some doubt of his presence
+here, for suddenly there sounded the rasping of flint on steel, the
+spunk was aglow, and then in the timorous flame of the kindling candle,
+taken from his own stores above, Varney recognized the face and figure
+of the stately and imperious old chief Colannah. The next moment he
+remembered something far more pertinent. He called out in an agitated
+voice to the Indian to beware of the powder with which the place was
+largely stocked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I came for that,&quot; said Colannah in Cherokee, with unaccustomed fingers
+snuffing the wick as he had seen Varney perform the process, for the
+Indians used torches and fires of split cane for purposes of
+illumination.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For God's sake, what have I done?&quot; cried the trader in an agony of
+terror, desirous to bring his accusation to the point as early as might
+be and compass his release, thus forestalling the violent end of an
+explosion.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What do the English always?&mdash;you have robbed me!&quot; said Colannah, the
+light strong on his fierce indignant features, his garb of fringed
+buckskin, his many rich strings of the ivory-like roanoke about his
+neck, his gayly bedecked and feathered head, and in shadowy wise
+revealing the rough walls of the cave, the boxes and bales of goods, the
+reserve stock, as it were, the stands of arms, and the kegs and bags of
+powder.</p>
+
+<p>As Varney, half crouching on the ground, noted the latter in the dusk,
+he cried out precipitately, &quot;Robbed you of what? My God! let us go
+upstairs. I'll give it back, whatever it is, twice over, fourfold! Don't
+swing the candle around that way, Colannah! the powder will blow us and
+the whole trading-house into the Tennessee River.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Colannah nodded acquiescence, the stately feathers on his head gleaming
+fitfully in the clare-obscure of the cavern. &quot;That is why I came! Then
+the British government could demand no satisfaction for the life of the
+British subject&mdash;an accident&mdash;the old chief of Tennessee Town killed
+with him. And I should be avenged.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For what? My God!&quot; Varney had not before called upon the Lord for
+twenty years. To hold a diplomatic conversation with an enraged wild
+Indian, flourishing a lighted candle in a powder magazine, is calculated
+to bring even the most self-sufficient and forgetful sinner to a sense
+of his dependence and helplessness. The lighted candle was a more
+subjugating weapon than a drawn sword. He had contemplated springing
+upon the stanch old warrior, although, despite the difference in age, he
+was no match for the Indian, in order to seek to extinguish it. He
+reflected, however, that in the struggle a flaring spark might cause the
+ignition of scattered particles of the powder about the floor, and thus
+precipitate the explosion which he shuddered to imagine. &quot;For what,
+Colannah?&quot; he asked again, in a soothing smooth cadence, &quot;for what, my
+comrade, my benefactor for years, my best-beloved friend&mdash;avenged on me
+for what? Let's go upstairs!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The flicker of the wavering candle showed a smile of contempt on the
+face of the angry Indian for a moment, and admonished Varney that in
+view of the Cherokees' relish of the torture his manifestations of
+anxiety but prolonged his jeopardy. It brought, too, a fuller
+realization of the gravity of the situation in that the Indian should so
+valiantly risk himself. He evidently intended to take the trader's life,
+but in such wise that no vengeance for his death should fall upon the
+Cherokee nation. Abram Varney summoned all his courage, which was not
+inconsiderable, and had been cultivated by the wild and uncertain
+conditions of his life. Assured that he could do naught to hasten his
+release, he awaited the event in a sort of stoical patience, dreading,
+however, every motion, every sound, the least stir setting his expectant
+nerves aquiver. Silence, quiescence, brought the disclosure earlier than
+he had feared.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When I took the boy Jan Queetlee&mdash;why do I call him thus, instead of by
+the name he has earned for himself, the noble Otasite of Tennessee
+Town?&quot;&mdash;the old chief began as deliberately, as disregardfully of the
+surroundings as if seated under the boughs of one of the giant oaks on
+the safe slopes of Chilhowee yonder&mdash;&quot;when I took him away from the
+braves who had overcome the South Carolina stationers, I owed him no
+duty. He was puny and ill and white and despised! You British say the
+Indian has no pity. A man's son or brother or father or mother has
+claims upon him. Otasite was naught to me, a mere <i>eeankke</i>!&quot; (a
+captive). &quot;I owed the child no duty. My love was voluntary. I gave it a
+free gift; no duty! And he was little, and drooping, and meagre, and ill
+all the time! But he grew; soon no such boy in the Cherokee nation, soon
+hardly such a warrior in all the land&mdash;not even Otasite of Watauga, nor
+yet Otasite of Eupharsee; perhaps at his age Oconostota excelled&quot;
+(Oconostota always was preeminently known as the &quot;Great Warrior&quot;). He
+paused to shake his head and meditate on difficult comparisons and
+instances of prowess. After an interval which, long enough, seemed to
+the trembling trader illimitable, he recommenced abruptly: &quot;Says the
+Goweno long time ago to me, 'Is not there a white youth among you?' I
+say, 'He is content; he has no white friends, it seems.' Says the Goweno
+to me, 'Ah, ah, we must look into this!' and says no more.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Colannah flung back his head and laughed so long and so loud that every
+echo of the sarcastic guttural tones, striking back from the stone walls
+of the cavern, smote Varney with as definite a shock as a blow.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And now,&quot; the Cherokee resumed, with a changed aspect and a pathetic
+cadence, &quot;I am an old man, and I lean upon Otasite. My sons are all
+dead&mdash;one in the wars with the Muscogee and two slain by the Chickasaw.
+And the last he said to me, with his lingering latest breath, loath to
+go and leave me desolate, 'But you have an adopted son, you have the
+noble Otasite.' And now,&quot; his voice was firm again, &quot;if I have him not,
+I go too, and you go. We go together.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will not advise him to quit the nation&mdash;never again!&quot; cried Varney,
+suddenly enlightened, fervently repudiating his interference. &quot;Since you
+disapprove, he shall not return to Carolina. He <i>cannot</i> go without
+me&mdash;my help; he could not find a place&mdash;a home. Bold and fine as he is
+here, he would be strange there; he knows naught of the ways of the
+colonists. He would be poor, despised, while here he has been like the
+first, the best. His pride could never stoop to a life like a slave's;
+his pride would break his heart. Let me undo the mischief I have
+wrought; let me unsay the unthinking, foolish words I have spoken.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was perhaps with the faith that the artful trader could best turn the
+young fellow's mind back to its wonted content, as his crafty arguments
+had already so potently aroused this wild, new dissatisfaction, that
+Colannah at last consented to liberate Varney for this essay, not
+without a cogent reminder that he would be held responsible for its
+failure. And indeed in recanting his former urgency, when he sought out
+Otasite, Varney exerted himself to the utmost.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are satisfied here. You know the life. Like me, you love it. If I,
+who can choose, prefer it, why not you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But Otasite shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When I talk to you of the colonies I speak as a man does of a dream,&quot;
+Varney continued. &quot;It is something true and something false. I add here
+and I let slip there to make out the connection, and give the symmetry
+of truth to the picture. But did I ever tell you how they love money in
+the colonies, how they cheat and strive and slave their lives away to
+add to their store; how they reverence and worship the wealth of others
+till it seems that a rich man can do no wrong&mdash;if he is rich enough? Did
+I ever tell you this? The poor, they are despised for being poor, and
+they are let to suffer. Here poverty is not permitted. If a man lose his
+dwelling by fire, the town builds him another house. You know this. If a
+man fail in his winter hunt, the others give of their abundance. Here
+one is rated by his personal worth. Here the deed is held to be fine,
+not the mere thing. Here you are valued as the great Otasite, and all
+men give you honor for your courage. There you are Jan Queetlee, a
+penniless clod, and all men despise you and pass you by.&quot; <a name="anchor_5"></a>[<a href="#footnote_5">5</a>]</p>
+
+<p>But again Otasite shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>It was no spurious flare of ambition, ineffectual, illusory; no
+discontented yearning for a different, a wider life that the trader's
+ill-advised words had roused. That sentiment of loyalty to the British
+government, which had never sought to claim Jan Queetlee as a subject,
+seemed bred in his bone and born in his blood. Perhaps it was the stuff
+of which long afterward the Tories of the Revolution were made. He could
+not lift his hand against this aloof, indifferent fetich. And yet take
+part against the Cherokees, whom he loved as they loved him! For with
+his facilities for understanding the trend of the politics of the day he
+could no longer blind himself to the approach of the war of the tribe
+with the British government, which, indeed, came within the decade. The
+sons of Colannah, slain in the cruel wars with other Indians, had been
+to him like brothers, and in their loss he had felt his full and bitter
+share of the grief of a common household. Even yet he and Colannah were
+wont to sadly talk of them with that painful elimination of their names,
+a mark of Indian reverence to the dead, substituting the euphemism &quot;the
+one who is gone,&quot; and linger for hours over the fire at night or on the
+shady river-bank in sunlit afternoons, rehearsing their deeds and
+recalling their traits, and repeating their sayings with that blending
+of affectionate pride and sorrow that is the consolation of bereavement
+when time has somewhat softened its pangs and made memory so dear. And
+Colannah had been like a father&mdash;it seemed to Jan Queetlee as if he had
+had no other father. He could not leave Colannah, old, desolate, and
+alone. Yet the war was surely coming apace, as they both knew, a war
+which already tore his heart in sunder, in which he could evade taking
+part against his own&mdash;his own of both factions&mdash;only by going at once
+and going far. He could decide no such weighty matter.</p>
+
+<p>At last he determined he would leave it to fate, to chance, showing how
+truly a gambler his Indian training had made him. He would stake the
+crisis on a game at chungke; if he won, as he told Varney, he would go
+to Carolina, and take sides with neither faction; if he lost, he would
+cast his future with the Cherokee nation.</p>
+
+<p>Varney, thoroughly uneasy, had come to feel a personal interest
+involved. If Otasite quitted the country, he felt his life would hardly
+be safe here, since the craft of Colannah had drawn from the
+unsuspecting young fellow the details of the plan of removal to
+Charlestown which he had proposed. And yet Varney himself was averse to
+any change, unless it was indeed necessary. When put to the test he felt
+he would rather live in the Cherokee nation than anywhere else in all
+the world, and he valued his commerce with the tribe and his license
+from the government, under duly approved bond and security, to conduct
+that traffic in Tennessee Town and Tellico as naught else on earth. He
+manifested so earnest and genuine a desire to repair the damage of his
+ill-starred suggestion that Colannah, showing his age in his haste and
+his tremulousness and excitement, disclosed to him in a flutter of
+triumphant glee that he had a spell to work which naught could
+withstand&mdash;a draught from Herbert's Spring to offer to Otasite. Thither
+some fifty miles he had dispatched a runner for a jar of the magic
+water, and after drinking of it Otasite could not quit for seven years
+the Cherokee nation even if he would.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the council-house that the mystic beverage was quaffed. There
+had been guests&mdash;head men from Great Tellico and Citico&mdash;during the
+afternoon, received in secret conclave, and now that their deliberations
+were concluded and they were gone, Otasite, not admitted to the council,
+being one of those warriors who did the fighting of the battles devised
+by the &quot;beloved men,&quot; strolled into the deserted, dome-like place. Its
+walls, plastered with red clay, were yet more ruddy for a cast of the
+westering sun. The building was large enough to accommodate several
+hundred people, and around the walls were cane seats, deftly constructed
+and artificially whitened, making, according to an old writer, &quot;very
+genteel settees or couches.&quot; Tired with the stress of mental depression
+and anxiety as physical effort could not tame him, and vaguely prescient
+of evil, Otasite had flung himself down on one of these, which was
+spread with dressed panther-skins, his hands clasped under his head, his
+scalp-lock of two auburn curls dangling over them.</p>
+
+<p>Through the tall narrow doorway the autumnal landscape was visible,
+blazing with all the fervors of summer; the mountains, however, were
+more softly blue, the sunlight of a richer glister; the river, now
+steel, now silver, now amber, reflected the atmosphere as a sensitive
+soul reflects the moods of those most dear; the forests, splendid with
+color, showed the lavish predominance of the rich reds characteristic of
+the Chilhowee woods; a dreamlike haze over all added a vague ideality
+that made the scene like some fondest memory or a glamourous forecast.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Akoo-e-a!</i>&quot; (summer yet!) said Colannah, his eyes too on the scene, as
+he sat on a buffalo-rug in the centre of the floor drawing in the last
+sweet fragrant breaths from his long-stemmed pipe, curiously wrought of
+stone, for in the manufacture of these pipes the Cherokees of that day
+were said to excel all other Indians. The young Briton experienced no
+mawkish pang to note that it was ornamented at one end by a dangling
+scalp, greatly treasured, the interior of the skin painted red for its
+preservation. He had, in fact, a pipe of his own with a scalp much like
+it. Indeed, his trophy was a fine specimen, and it had been a feat to
+take it, for it had once covered a hot Chickasaw head.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Akoo-e-a!</i> the day is warm!&quot; remarked Colannah. He lifted his storied
+pipe, and with its long stem silently motioned to a young Indian woman,
+indicating a great jar of water. She quickly filled one of those quaint
+bowls, or cups, of the Cherokee manufacture, and advanced with it to
+Otasite; but the proffer was in the nature of an interruption of his
+troubled thoughts, and he irritably waved her away.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am displeased with you,&quot; said Colannah sternly, lifting his dark,
+deeply sunken eyes to where the &quot;Man-killer&quot; lay at full length on the
+cane settee. &quot;You set me aside. You have no thoughts for me&mdash;no words.
+Yet you can talk when you go to the trading-house. You have words and to
+spare for the trader. You can drink with him. You can sing, 'Drink with
+me a cup of wine.'&quot; He lifted his raucous old voice in ludicrous
+travesty of the favorite catch, for sometimes the two Britons, so
+incongruous in point of age, education, sentiment, and occupation,
+cemented their bond as compatriots by carousing together in a mild way.</p>
+
+<p>But this ebullition of temper had naught of the ludicrous in Jan
+Queetlee's estimation. He was pierced to the heart.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Aketohta!&quot;</i> (Father!) he cried reproachfully. He had sprung to his
+feet, and stood looking down at the old chief, who would not look at
+him, but kept his eyes on the landscape without, now and then drawing a
+long, lingering whiff from his pipe.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Aketohta</i>! I have no thought for <i>you</i>!&mdash;who alone have taken thought
+for me! I have words for the trader and silence for <i>you</i>! You say keen
+things, and you know they are not true! You know that I had rather drink
+water with you than wine with him. I am not thirsty; but since it is you
+who offer it&quot;&mdash;His expression changed; he broke into sudden pleasant
+laughter, and with a rollicking stave of the song, &quot;Drink with me a cup
+of wine,&quot; he caught the bowl from the girl's hand and drained it at a
+draught.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Seohsta-quo</i>!&quot; (Good!) cried Colannah, visibly refreshed, as if his
+own thirst were vicariously slaked. But Otasite stood blankly staring,
+the bowl motionless in his hand. &quot;It is well for wine to be old,&quot; he
+said wonderingly, &quot;but not water.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For his palate was accustomed to the exquisite sparkle and freshness of
+the mountain fountains, and this had come from far.</p>
+
+<p>The crafty Colannah stolidly repressed his delight, save for the glitter
+in his eyes fixed on the azure and crimson and silver landscape
+glimmering beyond the dusky portals of the terra-cotta walls. &quot;<i>Nawohti!
+nawohti</i>!&quot; (Rum!) he said, with an affectation of severity. &quot;You drink
+too much of the trader's strong physic! You have no love now for the
+sweet, clear water.&quot; And he shook his head with the uncompromising
+reproof of a mentor of present times as he growled disjointedly,
+&quot;<i>Nawohti! nawohti</i>!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Otasite nothing questioned the genuineness of this demonstration, for
+the Cherokee rulers, in common with those of other tribes, had long
+waged a vigorous opposition to the importation of strong drink into
+their country; indeed, as far back as 1704, when holding a solemn
+conference with Governor Daniel of North Carolina to form a general
+treaty of friendship, the chiefs of several tribes petitioned the
+government of the Lords Proprietors for a law, which was afterward
+enacted (and disregarded), forbidding any white man to sell or give rum
+to an Indian, and prescribing penalties for its infringement. It was not
+the first time that Otasite had heard unfavorably of the influences of
+&quot;<i>nawohti</i>,&quot; which, by the way, with the Cherokees signified physic, as
+well as spirituous liquor, a synonymous definition which more civilized
+people have sought to apply. He was content that he and the old chief
+were once more in affectionate accord, and he did not seek to interpret
+the flash of triumph in Colannah's face.</p>
+
+<p>For seven years! for seven years! the white &quot;Man-killer&quot; could not, if
+he would, quit the Cherokee country. Well might the old chief's eyes
+glisten! The youth was like a son to his lonely age, and Otasite's
+prowess the pride of his life. And like others elsewhere he had softened
+as age came on, and loved the domestic fireside and the companionship
+about the hearth, hearing without participating in the hilarious talk of
+the young, and looking out at the world through the eyes of the new
+generation, undaunted, expectant, aglow with a spirit that had long ago
+smouldered in his own; for the fierce Indian at the last was but an old
+man.</p>
+
+<p>Abram Varney, too, experienced a recurrence of ease. He had unwittingly
+imbibed much outlandish superstition in his residence among the
+Cherokees, and indeed other traders and settlers long believed in the
+enchaining fascination of Herbert's Spring, and drank or refrained as
+they would stay or go.</p>
+
+<p>Otasite, however, was all unaware of the spell cast upon him when he
+came into the chungke-yard the next day, arrayed in his finest garb, the
+white dressed doeskin glittering in the sun, his necklaces of beads, his
+belt of wolf fangs, his flying feet in their white moccasins&mdash;all
+catching the light with a differing effect of brilliancy.</p>
+
+<p>Varney watched him;&mdash;with the two eagle feathers stiff and erect on his
+proud head, his two incongruous long auburn curls, that did duty as a
+&quot;war-lock,&quot; floating backward in the breeze, he ran so deftly, so
+swiftly, with so assured and so graceful a gait that the mere
+observation of such symmetrical motion was a pleasure. The trader had
+scarcely a pulse of anxiety. Indeed, disingenuously profiting by the tip
+afforded by Herbert's Spring, he was heavily backing Wyejah as a winner!</p>
+
+<p>A windy day it was; the clouds raced through the sky, and their shadows
+skimming over the valleys and slopes challenged their speed. The
+Tennessee River was singing, singing! The mountains were as clearly and
+definitely blue as the heavens. That revelation of ranges on the far
+horizon unaccustomed to the view, only vouchsafed by some necromancy of
+the clarified autumnal air, never before seemed so distinct, so
+alluring&mdash;new lands, new hopes, new life they suggested. Wyejah's
+scarlet attire, its fringes tasseled with the spurs of the wild turkey,
+rendered his lithe figure strongly marked against these illusory
+ethereal tints as he sped abreast with Otasite along the level sandy
+stretch of the chungke-yard. And how well he played! Varney realized
+this with a satisfaction as of having already won his wagers, many and
+large, for Otasite would leave the nation should he be victorious, and
+having drunk unwittingly of Herbert's Spring, he could not quit the
+Cherokee country, although he himself was still unaware of having
+quaffed of those mystic waters. Therefore defeat was obviously his
+portion. Whenever the trader thought anew of his secret knowledge of
+this fact he offered odds on Wyejah, and glanced at him with
+approbation&mdash;at the young Indian warrior's face fiercely, eagerly
+smiling, his great flattened ears distended on their wire hoops, his
+dark eyes full of sombre brilliance. How well he played! and how hard
+the skill of his opponent pressed him! How accurate was the aim of the
+long lance of Otasite as he poised his weight on the supple tips of his
+white moccasins and hurled the missile through the air; how strong and
+firm his grasp that sent the circular, quartz chungke-stone, whirling
+along the sand; how tirelessly his long sinewy steps sped back and forth
+in the swift dashes up and down the smooth spaces of the chungke-yard;
+how faithfully he was doing his best, regardless of his own preference
+in the interests that he had adventured on the result! How like a Briton
+born it was, Abram Varney thought, for he alone knew of Otasite's
+resolution, and the significance of the game to him, that the boy could
+thus see fair play between the factions that warred within him for his
+future. He had staked the future on the event,&mdash;and suddenly it was the
+present!</p>
+
+<p>A wild clamor of excitement, of applause, rose up from the throats of
+the crowd in the natural amphitheatre, clanging and clattering in long
+guttural cries,&mdash;all intensified by a relish of the unexpected, a joy in
+a new sensation, for Wyejah had never before been beaten, and Otasite
+was the victor at chungke.</p>
+
+<p>Abram Varney felt his heart leap into his throat, then sink like lead;
+Colannah, triumphant, knowing naught of the subtler significance of the
+contest, joyful, aglow with pride, rose up in his splendid feathered
+mantle, standing high on the slope, to sign to the boy his pleasure in
+the victory. The sunlight fell, glittering very white, on the young
+fellow's doeskin garb, his prickly belt of fangs, his bare chest with
+the blue warrior's marks, the curls of his auburn scalp-lock tossing in
+the wind. He had seemed hitherto stoical, unmoved by victory as he would
+have appeared in defeat; but Varney, eager to get at him, to combat his
+resolution, knew that he was stunned by the complications presented by
+this falling out of the event. He visibly faltered as his eye met the
+triumph and affection expressed in Colannah's quivering old face. He
+could not respond to its congratulation. He dropped on one knee
+suddenly, bending low, affecting to find something amiss with one of his
+moccasins.</p>
+
+<p>Wyejah, too, could seem unmoved by victory, but indifference to defeat
+was more difficult to simulate. He had in the first moment of its
+realization felt the blood rush to his head; despite his strong nerve
+his hand trembled; the smile of placidity which it was a point of honor
+to preserve became a fixed grin. Several other young braves had come
+into the yard, and were idly tossing the lance at the great
+chungke-pole&mdash;as a billiardist of the civilized life of that day might
+pocket the balls with a purposeless cue after a match. Wyejah, too, had
+cast his lance aslant; then he idly hurled the chungke-stone with a
+muscular fling along the spaces of the white sand. His nerve was shaken,
+his aim amiss, his great strength deflected. The heavy discoidal quartz
+stone skimmed through the air above the stretch of sand, and striking
+with its beveled edge the kneeling figure on the temple, the future of
+the victor at chungke became in one moment the past.</p>
+
+<p>The trader could only have likened the scene that ensued to the moment
+of an earthquake or some other stupendous convulsion of nature. In the
+midst of the confusion, the wild cries, the swift running figures, the
+surging of the crowds into the chungke-yard that obliterated the wide
+glare of the sun on the white sand, he made good his escape. He knew
+enough of the trend of Cherokee thought to be prescient of the fate of
+the scapegoat. Colannah in the first burst of grief he knew would blame
+himself that he should have tempted fate by the mystic draught from
+Herbert's Spring to hold here that bright young form for seven years
+longer. How sadly true!&mdash;for seven years Otasite would remain, and seven
+to that, and, alack, seven more, and forever! Soon, however, the natural
+impulses of the Indian's temper, intensified by long cultivation, would
+be reasserted. He would cast about for revenge, remembering the first
+suggestion of the departure of Otasite, and from whom it had emanated.
+But for the English trader and his specious wiles, the old chief would
+argue, would Otasite have thought of forsaking his foster nation, his
+adopted father, for the selfish, indifferent British, the &quot;Goweno&quot; at
+Charlestown, who cared for him nothing? The trader it was who had
+brought this calamity upon them, who had in effect, by the hand of
+another, administered the fatal draught. Seek for him!&mdash;hale him forth!
+&mdash;wreak upon him the just, unappeasable vengeance of the forever
+bereaved!</p>
+
+<p>The old trader had evinced an instinct in flight and concealment that an
+animal might envy. No probable hiding-place he selected, such as might
+be known or divined&mdash;a cave, the attic of his trading-house, the cellar
+beneath&mdash;all obvious, all instantly explored. Instead, he slipped into a
+rift in the rocks along the river-bank. Myriads of such crevices there
+were in the tilted strata&mdash;unheeded, unremarked, too strait and
+restricted to suggest the idea of refuge, too infinitely numerous for
+search. There, unable in the narrow compass to turn, even to shift a
+numbing muscle of his lean old body, in all the constraint of a standing
+posture, he was held in the flexure of the rock like some of its
+fossils,&mdash;as unsuspected as a ganoid of the days of eld that had once
+been imprisoned thus in the sediment of seas that had long ebbed
+hence,&mdash;or the fern vestiges in a later formation finding a witness in
+the imprint in the stone of the symmetry of its fronds. He listened to
+the hue and cry for him; then to the sudden tramp of hoofs as a pursuing
+party went out to overtake him, presumably on his way to Charlestown,
+maintaining a very high rate of speed, for the Cherokees of that period
+had some famously fine horses.</p>
+
+<p>Straining his senses&mdash;all unnaturally alert&mdash;he distinguished, as the
+afternoon wore on, the details of the preparations for the barbarous
+sepulture of the young Briton. Now and then the cracking of rifle-shots
+betokened the shooting of his horses and cattle and all the living
+things among his possessions&mdash;a practice already in its decadence among
+the Cherokees, and later, influenced by the utilitarian methods of
+civilization, altogether abandoned. Swift steps here and there
+throughout the town intimated errands to gather all his choicest effects
+to be buried with him, for his future use. To this custom, it is said,
+and the great security of the fashioning of the sepulchres of the
+Cherokees, may be attributed the fact that little of their pottery,
+arms, beads, medals, the more indestructible of their personal
+possessions, can be found in this region where so lately they were a
+numerous people; for the effects of the dead, however valued, were never
+removed or the graves robbed, even by an Indian enemy. The Cherokees
+rarely permitted the presence of an alien at the ceremonies of the
+interment of one of the tribe; but Varney in times past had seen and
+heard enough to realize, without any definite effort of the imagination,
+how Otasite, arrayed in his most gorgeous apparel, his beautiful English
+face painted vermilion, would be placed in a sitting posture in front of
+his house, and there in the sunlit afternoon remain for a space, looking
+in, as it were, at the open door. Presently sounded the wild
+lamentations and melancholy cadences of the funeral song; the tones rose
+successively from a deep bass to a tenor, then to a shrill treble,
+falling again to a full bass chorus, with the progression of the mystic
+syllables, &quot;<i>Yah! Yo-he-wah! Yah! Yo-he-wah!&quot;</i> (said to signify
+&quot;Jehovah&quot;). This announced that the funeral procession, bearing the
+body, was going thrice around the house of the dead, where he had lived
+in familiar happiness these many years, and beneath which he would rest
+in solemn silence in his deep, deep grave, covered with heavy timbers
+and many layers of bark, and the stanch red clay, maintaining a sitting
+posture, and facing the east, while the domestic life of homely cheer
+would go on over his unheeding head as he awaited the distant and
+universal resurrection of the body, in which the Cherokee religion
+inculcated a full and firm faith.</p>
+
+<p>The sun went down, and through all the night sounded the plaints of
+grief. Late the moon rose, striking aslant on the melancholy Tennessee
+River, full of deep shadows and vaguely pathetic pallid glimmers. A wind
+sprang up for a time, then suddenly sank to silence and stillness. A
+frost fell with a keen icy chill. Mists gathered, and the day did not
+break,&mdash;it seemed as if it might never dawn again; only a pallid
+visibility came gradually upon clouds that had enshrouded all the world.
+The earth and the sky were alike indistinguishable; the mountains were
+as valleys, the valleys as plains. One might scarcely make shift to see
+a hand before the face. Through this white pall, this cloud of nullity,
+came ever the dolorous chant, &quot;<i>Yo-he-ta-wah! Yo-he-ta-weh!
+Yo-he-ta-hah! Yo-he-ta-heh!</i>&quot; as in their grief and poignant bereavement
+the ignorant and barbarous Indians called upon the God who made them,
+and He who made them savages doubtless heard them.</p>
+
+<p>Creeping out into the invisibility of the clouded day, Abram Varney had
+not great fear of detection. The mists that shielded him from view
+furthered still his flight, for his footsteps were hardly to be
+distinguished amidst the continual dripping of the moisture from the
+leaves of the dank autumnal woods. At night he knew the savages would be
+most on the alert. They would scarcely suspect his flight in the broad
+day. Moreover, their suspicions of his presence here were lulled;
+craftily enough he followed after the horsemen who fancied they were
+pursuing him&mdash;they would scarcely look for their quarry hard on their
+own heels. He experienced no sentiment but one of intense satisfaction
+when, as invisible as a spirit, he passed his own trading-house, and
+divined from the sounds within that the Indians were busy in sacking it,
+albeit a greater financial loss than seems probable at the present day;
+for the Indian trade was a very considerable commerce, as the accounts
+of those times will show. The English and French governments did not
+disdain to compete for its monopoly with various nations of Indians, for
+the sake of gaining control of the savages thereby, in view of supplies
+furnished by the white traders vending these commodities and resident in
+the tribes.</p>
+
+<p>Recollections of the items and values of his invoices, afflicting to
+Varney's commercial spirit, threaded his consciousness only when again
+safe in Charlestown. He reached that haven at last by the exercise of
+great good judgment. He realized that another party would presently be
+sent out when no news of capture came from the earlier pursuers; he
+divined that the second expedition would take the Chickasaw path, for
+being friendly to the British, that tribe would naturally be thought of
+as a refuge to an Englishman in trouble with the Cherokees; therefore
+Varney, lest he be overtaken on the way, avoided with a great struggle
+the temptation, mustered all his courage, and adopting an unprecedented
+expedient, turned off to the country of the Muscogees. These Indians,
+always more or less inimical to the colonists, bloodthirsty, cruel,
+crafty, and but recently involved in a furious war against the
+Cherokees, were glad to thwart Colannah in any cherished scheme of
+revenge, and received the fugitive kindly. Although but for this fact
+his temerity in venturing among them would have cost him his life, they
+ministered to his needs with great hospitality, and forwarded him on his
+way to Charlestown, sending a strong guard with him as far as Long Cane
+settlement, a little above Ninety-Six.</p>
+
+<p>Wyejah also made his escape. Appalled by the calamity of the accidental
+blow, he &quot;took sanctuary.&quot; In the supreme moment of excitement he flung
+himself into the Tennessee River, and while eagerly sought by the
+emissaries of Colannah in the woods, he swam to Chot&eacute;, &quot;beloved town,&quot;
+the city of refuge of the whole Cherokee nation, where the shedder of
+blood was exempt from vengeance. As years went by, however, either
+because of the death of Colannah, or because time had so far softened
+the bereavement of the friends of Otasite that they were prevailed upon
+to accept the &quot;satisfaction,&quot; the presents required even from an in
+voluntary homicide, he was evidently freed from the restricted limits of
+the &quot;ever-sacred soil,&quot; for his name is recorded in the list of warriors
+who went to Charlestown in 1759 to confer with Governor Lyttleton on the
+distracted state of the frontier, and being held as one of the hostages
+of that unlucky embassy, he perished in the massacre of the Cherokees by
+the garrison of Fort Prince George, after the treacherous murder of the
+commandant, Captain Coytmore, by a ruse of the Indian king, Oconostota.</p>
+
+<p>Abram Varney never ventured back among &quot;the Nation,&quot; as he called the
+Cherokees, as if they were the only nation on the earth. Now and again
+in their frequent conferences with the Governor at Charlestown, rendered
+necessary by their ever-recurrent friction with the British government,
+he sought out members of the delegation for some news of his old
+friends, his old haunts. Not one of them would take his hand; not one
+would hear his voice; they looked beyond him, through him, as if he were
+the impalpable atmosphere, as if he did not exist.</p>
+
+<p>It was a little thing,&mdash;the displeasure of such men&mdash;mere savages,&mdash;but
+it cut him to the heart. So long they had been his friends, his
+associates, as the chief furniture of the world!</p>
+
+<p>He busied himself with the affairs of his firm at Charlestown, but for a
+time he was much changed, much cast down, for he had a sense of
+responsibility, and his conscience was involved, and although he had
+sought to do good he had only wrought harm, and irreparable harm. He
+grew old very fast, racked as he was by rheumatism, a continual reminder
+of the stern experiences of his flight. He had other reminders in his
+unquiet thoughts, but he grew garrulous at a much later date. Years
+intervened before he was wont to sit in front of the warehouse, with his
+stick between his knees, his hands clasped on the round knob at its top,
+his chin on his hands, and cheerily chirp of his days in &quot;the Nation.&quot;
+The softening touch of time brought inevitably its glamours and its
+peace; his bleared old eyes, fixed on the glittering expanse of the
+harbor, beheld with pleasure, instead of the sea, the billowy reaches of
+that mighty main of mist-crested mountains known as the Great Smoky
+Range, and through all his talk, and continually through his mind,
+flitted the bright animated presence of the victor at chungke.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+<a name='THE_CAPTIVE_OF_THE_ADA_WEHI'></a><h2>THE CAPTIVE OF THE ADA-WEHI</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>Attusah was obviously an impostor. Many, however, had full faith in his
+supernatural power, and often he seemed to believe in his own spectral
+account of himself.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Tsida-wei-yu</i>!&quot; (I am a great ada-wehi!<a name="anchor_6"></a>[<a href="#footnote_6">6</a>]) the young warrior would
+cry with his joyous grandiloquent gesture, waving his many braceleted
+right arm at full length as he held himself proudly erect.
+&quot;<i>Akee-o-hoosa! Akee-o-hoosa!&quot;</i> (I am dead). Then triumphantly, &quot;And
+behold I am still here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Attusah had gone unscathed through that bloody campaign of 1761 in which
+the Cherokees suffered such incredible rigors. After their total defeat
+at Etchoee the Indians could offer no further resistance to the troops
+of Colonel Grant, who triumphantly bore the authority of the British
+king from one end of the Cherokee country to the other, for there was no
+more powder to be had in the tribe. The French, from whom they had hoped
+a supply, failed them at their utmost need, and now those massive crags
+of the Great Smoky Mountains, overhanging the Tennessee River, no longer
+echoed the &quot;whoo-whoop!&quot; of the braves, the wild cry of the Highlanders,
+&quot;Claymore! Claymore!&quot; the nerve-thrilling report of the volleys of
+musketry from the Royal Scots, the hissing of the hand grenades flung
+bursting into the jungles of the laurel. Instead, all the clifty defiles
+of the ranges were filled with the roar of flames and the crackling of
+burning timbers as town after town was given to the firebrand, and the
+homeless, helpless Cherokees frantically fleeing to the densest coverts
+of the wilderness,&mdash;that powerful truculent tribe!&mdash;sought for shelter
+like those &quot;feeble folk the conies&quot; in the hollows of the rocks.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it was that Digatiski, the Hawk, of Eupharsee Town, long the terror
+of the southern provinces, must needs sit idle, forlorn, frenzied with
+rage and grief, in a remote and lofty cavity of a great cliff, and
+looking out over range and valley and river of this wild and beautiful
+country, see fire and sword work their mission of destruction upon it.
+By day a cloud of smoke afar off bespoke the presence of the soldiery.
+At night a tremulous red light would spring up amidst the darkness of
+the valley, and expanding into a great yellow flare summon mountains and
+sky into an infinitely sad and weird revelation of the landscape, as the
+great storehouses of corn were burned to the ground, leaving the hapless
+owners to starvation.</p>
+
+<p>His pride grudged his very eyes the sight of this humiliation, for
+despite the oft-repeated assertion of the improvidence of the Indian
+character, these public granaries, whence by the primitive Cherokee
+government food was dispensed gratis to all the needy, were always full,
+and their destruction meant national annihilation or subjugation. After
+one furtive glance at the purple obscurities of the benighted world he
+would bow his head, and with a smothered groan ask of the ada-wehi,
+&quot;Where is it now, Attusah?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The young warrior, half reclining at the portal of the niche, would lift
+himself on one elbow,&mdash;the glow of the little camp-fire within the
+recess on his feather-crested head, his wildly painted face, the twenty
+strings of roanoke passed tight like a high collar around his neck,
+thence hanging a cascade of beads over his chest, the devious arabesques
+of tattooing on his bare, muscular arms, the embroideries of his
+buckskin raiment and gaudy quiver,&mdash;and searching with his gay young
+eyes through the stricken country reply, &quot;Cowetchee,&quot; &quot;Sinica,&quot;
+&quot;Tamotlee,&quot; whichever town might chance to be in flames.</p>
+
+<p>Doubtless Attusah realized equally the significance of the crisis. But a
+certain joyous irresponsibility characterized him, and indeed he had
+never seemed quite the same since he died. He had been much too
+reckless, however, even previous to that event. Impetuous, hasty,
+tumultuously hating the British colonists, he had participated several
+years earlier in a massacre of an outlying station, when the Cherokees
+were at peace, without warrant of tribal authority, and with so little
+caution as to be recognized. For this breach of the treaty his execution
+was demanded by the Royal Governor of South Carolina, and reluctantly
+conceded by the Cherokees to avert a war for the chastisement of the
+tribe. Powder must have been exceedingly scarce!</p>
+
+<p>Attusah was allowed to choose his method of departure to the happy
+hunting-grounds, and thus was duly stabbed to death. He was left
+weltering in his blood to be buried by his kindred. The half king,
+Atta-Kulla-Kulla, satisfied of his death, himself reported the execution
+to the Carolina authorities, and as in his long and complicated
+diplomatic relations with the colonial government this Cherokee chief
+had never broken faith, he was implicitly believed.</p>
+
+<p>Whether the extraordinary vitality and vigor of the young warrior were
+reasserted after life had been pronounced wholly extinct, and thus his
+relations were induced to defer the obsequies, or that he was enabled to
+exert supernatural powers and in the spirit reappear in his former
+semblance of flesh,&mdash;both theories being freely advanced,&mdash;certain it is
+that after a time he returned to his old haunts as gay, as reckless, as
+impetuous as ever. He bore no token of his strange experience save
+sundry healed-over scars of deep gashes in his breast, which he seemed
+at times to seek to shield from observation; and this he might have
+accomplished but for his solicitude that a very smart shirt, much
+embroidered and bedizened with roanoke, should not suffer by exposure to
+water; wherefore he took it off when it rained, and in swimming, and on
+the war-path. He manifested, too, a less puerile anxiety to escape the
+notice of Atta-Kulla-Kulla and other head men, who were supposed to be
+well affected at that time to the British government. This he was the
+better enabled to do as his habitat, Kanootare, was the most remote of
+the Cherokee towns, his name, Attusah, signifying the &quot;Northward
+Warrior.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>After the capitulation of Fort Loudon and the massacre of the garrison
+the previous year, and the organized resistance the Cherokees had made
+in the field of battle against Colonel Montgomerie, then commanding the
+expeditionary forces, he had felt that the tribe's openly inimical
+relations with the British government warranted him in coming boldly
+forth from his retirement and competing for the honors of the present
+campaign of 1761. His friends sought to dissuade him. The government had
+had, as assurance of his death, the word of Atta-Kulla-Kulla, who might
+yet insist that the pledge be made good. That chief, they urged, had a
+delicate conscience, which is often an engine of disastrous efficiency
+when exerted on the affairs of other people. Attusah was advised that he
+had best stay dead. Although he finally agreed with this, he could not
+stay still, and thus as he appeared in various skirmishes it became
+gradually bruited abroad among the Cherokees that Attusah, the Northward
+Warrior, was a great ada-wehi, a being of magical power, or a ghost as
+it might be said, of special spectral distinctions. Thus he lived as
+gayly yet as before the dismal day of his execution, always carefully,
+however, avoiding the notice of Atta-Kulla-Kulla, whose word had been
+solemnly accepted by the British government as the pledge of his death.</p>
+
+<p>It is impossible to understand how a man like Digatiski of Eupharsee
+could believe this,&mdash;so sage, despite his ignorance, so crafty, so
+diplomatic and acute in subterfuge, yet he was sodden in superstition.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Can you see Colonel Grant, the Barbarous?&quot; <a name="anchor_7"></a>[<a href="#footnote_7">7</a>] he asked suddenly,
+lifting his head and gazing steadily at the young Indian's face, which
+was outlined against the pallid neutral tint of the sky. The dark
+topmost boughs of a balsam fir were just on a level with the clear
+high-featured profile; a single star glittering beyond and above his
+feathered crest looked as if it were an ornament of the headdress; the
+red glow of the smouldering fire within, which had been carefully masked
+in ashes as the darkness came on, that its sparkle might not betray
+their presence here to any wandering band of troopers, still sufficed to
+show the impostor's painted red cheek. He was armed with a tomahawk and
+a pistol, without powder as useless as a toy, and a bow borne in default
+of aught better lay on the floor beside him, while a gayly ornamented
+quiver full of poisoned arrows swung over his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Ha-tsida-wei-yu!</i>&quot; he proclaimed. &quot;I am a great ada-wehi! I see him!
+Of a surety I see him!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Attusah gazed at the sombre night with an expression as definitely
+perceptive as if the figure in his thoughts were actually before his
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And he is not dead?&quot; cried Digatiski, in despair.</p>
+
+<p>Some such wild rumor, as of hope gone mad, had pervaded the groups of
+Cherokee fugitives.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He would be if I could get close enough with a bare pinch of powder
+that might charge my gun!&quot; declared Attusah disconsolately. Then himself
+again, &quot;But I will tell you this! He is waiting for my poisoned arrow!
+And when he dies he will come back no more. He is not like me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He paused to throw out his hand with his splendid pompous gesture.
+&quot;<i>Akee-o-hoo-sa! Tsida-wei-yu!</i>&quot; (I am dead! I am a great ada-wehi!)</p>
+
+<p>Digatiski groaned. It mattered not to him whether Colonel Grant came
+back or abode in his proper place when dead. The grievous dispensation
+lay in the fact that he was here now, in the midst of the wreck he was
+so zealously wreaking.</p>
+
+<p>There were three women in the niche. One with her head muffled in her
+mantle of fringed deerskin sat against the wall, silently weeping,
+bemoaning her dead slain in the recent battle, or the national
+calamities, or perhaps the mere personal afflictions of fatigue and fear
+and hunger and suspense. Another crouched by the fire and gazed
+dolorously upon it with dreary tear-filled eyes, and swollen, reddened
+eyelids. The sorrowful aspect of a third was oddly incongruous with her
+gay attire, a garb of scarlet cloth trimmed with silver tinsel tassels,
+a fabric introduced among the Cherokees by an English trader of the name
+of Jeffreys, and which met with great favor. Her anklets, garters, and
+bracelets of silver &quot;bell-buttons&quot; tinkled merrily as she moved, for she
+had postponed her tears in the effort to concoct some supper from the
+various scraps left from the day's scanty food. The prefatory scraping
+of the coals together caused a sudden babbling of pleasure to issue from
+the wall, where, suspended on a projection of rock, was one of the
+curious upright cradles of the people, from which a pappoose, stiff and
+perpendicular, gazed down at the culinary preparations, evidently in the
+habit of participating to a limited extent in the result, having
+attained some ten months of age.</p>
+
+<p>The mother glanced up, and despite the tear stains about her eyes,
+dimpled and laughed in response. Griefs may come and pleasures go,
+nations rise and fall, the world wag on as it will, but this old joy of
+mother and child, each in the other, is ever new and yet ever the same.</p>
+
+<p>Resuming her occupation, the woman hesitated for a moment as she was
+about to lay the meat on the coals, the half of a wood duck, fortunately
+killed by an arrow, for larger game was not attainable, the wild beasts
+of the country being in flight as never heretofore. The conflagration of
+the towns of a whole district, the turmoils of the heady victorious
+troops, hitherto held together, but now sent through the region in
+separate detachments, each within reach of support, however, had
+stripped the tribe of this last means of subsistence. Years and years
+afterward the grim dismantled fragments of these buildings were still to
+be seen, the charred walls and rafters mere skeletons against the sky,
+standing, melancholy memorials of war, on the hillsides and in the
+valleys, along the watercourses &quot;transparent as glass,&quot; of that lovely
+country where these pleasant homes had been.</p>
+
+<p>The Indian woman doubted if the bit of fat could be spared; then poising
+it in her hand under the watchful eyes of all, she flung it into the
+fire, the essential burnt-offering according to their old religious
+custom.</p>
+
+<p>Digatiski, bowing his head still lower, once more groaned aloud. He
+would not have stayed her hand,&mdash;but to hunger even for the offering to
+the fire! The woman whose head was muffled had only to repeat her sobs
+anew; she could not sorrow more! But the pappoose in its primitive
+cradle on the wall babbled out its simple pleasure, and now and again
+the tearful little mother must needs lift smiling eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The great ada-wehi looked out at the night. On the whole he was glad he
+was dead!</p>
+
+<p>He took no bite, nor did Digatiski. The Indian men were accustomed to
+long fasts in war and in hunting, and they left the trivial bits to the
+women. The muffled figure of grief held out her hand blindly and munched
+the share given her in the folds of her veil. Then, for tears are of no
+nutritive value, she held out her hand again. Feeling it still empty,
+she lifted the veil from a swollen tear-stained face to gaze aghast at
+the others. They silently returned the gaze, aghast themselves, and then
+all three women fell to sobbing once more. But the pappoose was crowing
+convivially over a bone.</p>
+
+<p>Hunger does not dispose to slumber, nor does war with the sight of a
+dozen towns aflame. They slept, but in fitful starts, and the first gray
+siftings of light through the desolate darkness found them all gazing
+drearily at it, for what might a new day signify to them but new
+dangers, fresh sorrows, and quickened fears.</p>
+
+<p>A flush was presently in the east, albeit dusk lingered westward. The
+wonderful crystalline white lustre of the morning star palpitated in the
+amber sky, seeming the very essence of light, then gradually vanished in
+a roseate haze. The black mountains grew purple, changing to a dark rich
+green. The deep, cool valleys were dewy in the midst of a shadowy gray
+vapor. The farthest ranges showed blue under a silver film, and suddenly
+here were the rays of the sun shooting over all the world, aiming high
+and far for the western hills.</p>
+
+<p>And abruptly said the ada-wehi, as he still lay at length on the floor
+of the niche,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Skee</i>!&quot; (Listen!)</p>
+
+<p>Naught but the breeze of morning, delicately freighted with the breath
+of balsams, the dew, the fragrance of the awakening of the wild flowers,
+the indescribable matutinal freshness, the incense of a new day in June.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Skee</i>!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Only the sound of the rippling Tennessee, so silver clear, beating and
+beating against the vibrant rocks as its currents swirl round the bend
+at the base of the cliff.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Skee</i>!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The sudden fall of a fragment of rock from the face of the crag to the
+ground far below!&mdash;the interval of time between the scraping dislodgment
+and the impact with the clay beneath implies a proportional interval of
+distance.</p>
+
+<p>The conviction is the same in the mind of each. A living creature is
+climbing the ascent! A bear, it may be. A great bird, an eagle, or one
+of the hideous mountain vultures, very busy of late, alighting in quest
+of food&mdash;which it might find in plenty elsewhere, in the track of the
+invaders.</p>
+
+<p>Attusah does not rely, however, on a facile hypothesis with a triumphant
+enemy at hand, and a dozen towns charring to ashes in sight.</p>
+
+<p>As noiseless as a shadow, as swift, Attusah is on his feet. At the back
+of the great niche, so high that none could conceive that it might
+afford an exit, a fissure lets in a vague dreary blur of light from
+spaces beyond. Leaping high into the air, the lithe young warrior fixes
+his fingers on the ledge, crumbling at first, but holding firm under a
+closer grasp. The elder man, understanding the ruse as if by instinct,
+lays hold of the knees of the other, held out stiff and straight below.
+Then by a mighty effort Attusah lifts the double weight into the
+fissure, the elder Indian aiding the manoeuvre by walking up the wall,
+as it were, with his feet successively braced against it.</p>
+
+<p>Outside, now and again bits of rock continued to fall, seeming to herald
+a cautious approach, for after each sound a considerable interval of
+silence would ensue. So long continued was this silence at last that the
+three women, now alone, began to deem the alarm of an intrusion vain and
+fantastic. The elder of them motioned to one of the others to look out
+and terminate the painful suspense.</p>
+
+<p>The young squaw, brilliant in her scarlet dress and silver tassels, the
+pappoose piously quiet in his perpendicular cradle on her back, slipped
+with gingerly caution to the verge of the precipice and looked down.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing she saw, and in turn she was invisible from without. She wheeled
+around briskly to reassure the others, and at that moment a young
+soldier of the battalion of Scotch Highlanders stepped from the
+horizontal ledge alongside, which he had then gained, and into the
+niche, bringing up short against the pappoose, stiff and erect in its
+cradle.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hegh, sirs!&quot; he cried in jocular surprise, happy to find naught more
+formidable, perhaps, although a brave man, for he had volunteered to
+examine the source of the smoke from this precarious perch,&mdash;which had
+attracted the attention of the ensign commanding a little
+detachment,&mdash;despite the fact that a Cherokee in his den and brought to
+bay was likely to prove a dangerous beast.</p>
+
+<p>The Highlander had a piece of bread in his hand, from which he had been
+recklessly munching as he had stood for a moment's breathing spell on
+the horizontal ledge beside the niche before venturing to enter, for the
+command had broken camp with scant allowance of time for breakfast. With
+a genial laugh he thrust a morsel into the pappoose's open mouth and put
+the rest in its little fingers.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it was because of his relief to find no bigger Cherokee man
+stowed away here in ambush; perhaps because he was himself hearty and
+well-fed and disposed to be gracious; perhaps because he had a
+whole-souled gentle nature hardly consonant with the cruel arts of war
+which he practiced,&mdash;at all events he was thoughtful enough of others to
+mark the ravenous look which the women cast upon the food in the child's
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gude guide us!&quot; he exclaimed. &quot;This is fearfu' wark! The hellicat
+hempies are half starved!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For if Colonel Grant compassionated the plight of the savages, as he has
+recorded, and shrank from the ruin wrought in the discharge of his duty
+of destroying their capacities for resistance and the maintenance of
+existence other than as peaceful dependents of the British colonies, the
+rank and file of his command, weighted with no such responsibilities,
+may well have indulged now and then a qualm of pity.</p>
+
+<p>The British soldier had been ordered to halloo for help should he
+encounter armed resistance, but otherwise to rest a bit at the top of
+the precipice before making the effort to descend, lest he become dizzy
+from fatigue and the long strain upon his faculties, and fall; the
+ensign added a pointed reminder that he had no means of transportation
+for &quot;fules with brucken craigs.&quot; The opportunity was propitious. The
+Highlander utilized the interval to open his haversack and dispense such
+portion of its contents as he could spare. While thus engaged he was
+guilty of an oversight inexcusable in a soldier: the better to handle
+and divide the food, he leaned his loaded gun against the wall.</p>
+
+<p>A vague shadow flickered across the niche.</p>
+
+<p>The young Highlander was a fine man physically, although there was no
+great beauty in his long, thin, frank, freckled face, with its
+dare-devil expression and bantering blue eyes. But he was tall, heavily
+muscled, clean-limbed, of an admirable symmetry, and the smartest of
+smart soldiers. His kilt and plaid swung and fluttered with martial
+grace in his free, alert, military gait as he stepped about the
+restricted space of the cavity, bestowing his bounty on all three women.
+His &quot;bonnet cocked fu' sprash&quot; revealed certain intimations in his
+countenance of gentle nurture, no great pretensions truly, but
+betokening a higher grade of man than is usually found in the rank and
+file of an army. This fact resulted from the peculiar situation of the
+Scotch insurgents toward government after the &quot;Forty-Five,&quot; and the
+consequent breaking up of the resources of many well-to-do middle-class
+families as well as the leaders of great clans.</p>
+
+<p>The Highlander hesitated after the first round of distribution, for
+there would be no means of revictualing that haversack until the next
+issuance of rations, and he was himself a &quot;very valiant trencher-man.&quot;
+Nevertheless their dire distress and necessity so urged his generosity
+that he began his rounds anew.</p>
+
+<p>Once more a shadow. Whence should a shadow fall? It flickered through
+the niche.</p>
+
+<p>The three women stood as mute as statues. The pappoose in its cradle on
+its mother's back, its face turned ignominiously toward the wall, and
+perhaps aware that something of interest in the commissariat department
+was going forward, had begun to whimper in a very civilized manner, and
+doubtless it was this trivial noise that deterred the young Scotchman
+from hearing sounds of more moment, calculated to rouse his suspicions.
+He had already added to the portions of the elder women and was
+bestowing his donations upon the young mother, when suddenly the shadow
+materialized and whisked past him.</p>
+
+<p>It fell like a thunderbolt from above.</p>
+
+<p>Bewildered, agitated, before he could turn, his gun was seized and
+presented at his breast by a warrior who seemed to have fallen from the
+sky. The soldier, nevertheless, instantly laid his hand on the great
+basket-hilt of his claymore. Before he could draw the blade, the warrior
+and the three women flung themselves upon him, their arms so closely
+wound about him that his own arms were effectually pinioned to his
+sides. With a violent effort he shook himself free from their grasp for
+one moment; yet as the blade came glittering forth from the scabbard, a
+sharp blow scientifically administered upon the wrist by the ada-wehi
+almost broke the bone and sent the weapon flying from his hand and
+clattering to the floor of the niche. The women had taken advantage of
+the opportunity afforded by the struggle between the two men to
+substitute the coils of a heavy hempen rope for the clasp of their arms,
+and Attusah had only to give a final twist to the knots of their skilled
+contriving, when the captive was disarmed and bound.</p>
+
+<p>He had instantly bethought himself of his comrades and an appeal for
+rescue, and sent forth a wild, hoarse yell, which, had it been heard,
+must have apprised them of his plight. But as he had not at once given
+the signal of danger agreed upon, they had naturally supposed the coast
+clear, and while he rested presumably at the top of the precipice they
+gave their attention to other details of their mission, firing several
+houses at a little distance down the river. Therefore they would have
+heard naught, even if Attusah had not precluded further efforts of his
+captive to communicate with his comrades by swiftly fashioning a gag out
+of the Highlander's bonnet and gloves.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps never was a brave man more dismayed and daunted. Not death
+alone, but fire and torture menaced him. The shining liquid delight in
+the eyes of the women reminded him of the strange fact that they were
+ever the most forward in these cruel pleasures, for the ingenuity of
+which the Cherokees were famous among all the tribes. Yet the
+realization of his peril did not so diminish his scope of feeling as to
+prevent him from inwardly upbraiding his ill-starred generosity as the
+folly of a hopeless fool, more especially as the elder woman&mdash;she of the
+many tears&mdash;held up the substantial gift of provisions, jeering at him
+with a look in her face that did not need to be supplemented by the
+scoffing of language.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The auld randy besom!&quot; the soldier commented within himself. &quot;But eh, I
+didna gie it to be thankit,&mdash;nae sic a fule as that comes to, neither!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Hoping against hope, he thought that the length of his absence would
+inevitably alarm the ensign for his scout's safety, when it should
+attract attention, and induce the officer to send a party for his relief
+and for further investigation of the precipice, whence the smoke
+intimated an ambush of the enemy. This expectation had no sooner
+suggested its solace and the exercise of patience in the certainty of
+ultimate rescue, than the Highlander began to mark the preparations
+among the Indians for a swift departure. But how? The precipice was a
+sheer descent for eighty feet, the ruggedness of its face barely
+affording foothold for a bird or a mountaineer; and at its base hovered
+the ensign's party within striking distance. A resisting captive could
+not be withdrawn by this perilous path. The soldier looked in doubt and
+suspense about the restricted limits of the cavity in the great crag.
+The mystery was soon solved.</p>
+
+<p>The position of all had changed in the struggle, and from where Kenneth
+MacVintie now stood he noted a scant suggestion of light flickering down
+from a black fissure in the roof of the cavity, and instantly realized
+that it must give an exit upon the mountain slope beyond. The agility
+with which Attusah of Kanootare sprang up and leaped into it was
+admirable to behold, but MacVintie did not believe that, although
+knotted up as he was in his own plaid passed under his arms and around
+his waist for the purpose, he could be lifted by the ends of the fabric
+through that aperture by the strength of any one man. Naturally he
+himself would make no effort to facilitate the enterprise. On the
+contrary, such inertness as the sheer exercise of will could compass was
+added to his dead weight. Nevertheless he rose slowly, slowly through
+the air. As he was finally dragged through the rift in the rocks, his
+first feeling was one of gratification to perceive that no one man could
+so handle him. The feat had required the utmost exertions of two
+athletic Indians pulling strenuously at the ends of the plaid passed
+over a projection of rock, thus acting pulley-wise, and the good Glasgow
+weave was shedding its frayed fragments through all the place by reason
+of the strain it had sustained.</p>
+
+<p>The next moment more serious considerations claimed his thoughts. He saw
+that two men, fully armed, for Digatiski had secured ammunition for his
+own gun from the cartouch-box of the soldier, could force his
+withdrawal, bound as he was, farther and farther from the ensign and his
+party, whose attention had been temporarily diverted from the scout's
+delay in returning by signs of the enemy ambushed in another direction.</p>
+
+<p>MacVintie still struggled, albeit he knew that it was vain to resist,
+more especially when another Cherokee joined the party and dedicated
+himself solely to the enterprise of pushing and haling the captive over
+the rugged way,&mdash;often at as fair a speed as if his good will had been
+enlisted in the endeavor. Now and again, however, the Highlander
+contrived to throw himself prone upon the ground, thus effectually
+hampering their progress and requiring the utmost exertions of all three
+to lift his great frame. The patience of the Indians seemed illimitable;
+again and again they performed this feat, only to renew it at the
+distance of a few hundred yards.</p>
+
+<p>At length the fact was divined by MacVintie. More than the ordinary fear
+of capture animated Attusah of Kanootare. Colonel Grant's treatment of
+his prisoners was humane as the laws of war require. Moreover, his
+authority, heavily reinforced by threats of pains and penalties, had
+sufficed, except in a few instances, to restrain the Chickasaw allies of
+the British from wreaking their vengeance on the captive Cherokees in
+the usual tribal method of fire and torture. The inference was obvious.
+Attusah of Kanootare was particularly obnoxious to the British
+government, the civil as well as the military authorities, and fleeing
+from death himself, he intended at all hazards to prevent the escape of
+his prisoner, who would give the alarm, and inaugurate pursuit from the
+party of the ensign.</p>
+
+<p>In this connection a new development attracted the attention of
+MacVintie. As they advanced deeper and deeper into the Cherokee country
+and the signs and sights of war grew remote,&mdash;no sounds of volleys nor
+even distant dropping shots clanging from the echoes, no wreaths of
+smoke floating among the hills, no flare of flames flinging crude red
+and yellow streaks across the luminous velvet azure of distant mountains
+with their silver haze, viewed through vistas of craggy chasms near at
+hand,&mdash;he observed a lessening of cordiality in the manner of the other
+two Indians toward the Northward Warrior, and a frequency on his part to
+protest that he was a great ada-wehi, and was dead although he appeared
+alive. The truth soon dawned upon the shrewd Scotchman, albeit he
+understood only so much Cherokee as he had chanced to catch up in his
+previous campaign in this region with Montgomerie and the present
+expedition. Attusah was for some reason obnoxious to his own people as
+well as to the British, and was in effect a fugitive from both factions.
+Indeed, the other two Indians presently manifested a disposition to
+avoid him. After much wrangling and obvious discontent and smouldering
+suspicion, one lagged systematically, and, the pace being speedy,
+contrived to fairly quit the party. Digatiski accompanied them two more
+days, then, openly avowing his intent, fell away from the line of march.
+It was instantly diverted toward the Little Tennessee River, on the
+western side of the Great Smoky Mountains; and as Attusah realized that
+without his connivance his captive's escape had become impossible,
+MacVintie found himself unbound, ungagged, and the society of the
+ada-wehi as pleasant as that of a savage ghost can well be.</p>
+
+<p>There was now no effort to escape. MacVintie's obvious policy was to
+await with what patience he might the appearance of the British
+vanguard, who in the sheer vaunt of victory would march from one end of
+the unresisting territory to the other, that all might witness and bow
+before the triumph of the royal authority. As yet remote from the
+advance of the troops, he dared not quit his captor in these sequestered
+regions lest he fall into the power of more inimical Cherokees, maddened
+by disaster, overwhelmed in ruin, furious, and thirsting for revenge for
+the slaughter of their nearest and dearest, and the ashes of their
+homes.</p>
+
+<p>Attusah made known his reason for his own uncharacteristic leniency to a
+soldier of this ruthless army, as they sat together by the shady
+river-side. He went through the dumb show of repeatedly offering to his
+captive guest the fish they had caught, pressing additional portions
+upon him, laughing significantly and joyously throughout his mimicry.
+Then suddenly grave, he seized the Highlander's left arm, giving it an
+earnest grasp about the wrist, the elbow, then close to the shoulder to
+intimate that he spared him for his gift to the needy and helpless.</p>
+
+<p>But Kenneth MacVintie, remembering his ill-starred generosity, flushed
+to the eyebrows, so little it became his record as a soldier, he
+thought, that he should be captured and stand in danger of his life by
+reason of the unmilitary performance of feeding a babbling pappoose.</p>
+
+<p>Attusah, however, could but love him for it; he loved the soldier for
+his kind heart, he said. For great as he himself was, the Northward
+Warrior, he had known how bitter it was to lack kindness.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is not happy to be an ada-wehi!&quot; he confessed, &quot;for those who
+believe fear those who do not!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And tearing open the throat of his bead-embroidered shirt to reveal the
+frightful gashes of the wounds in his breast, he told the story of his
+legal death, with tears in his gay eyes, and a tremor of grief in the
+proud intonations of his voice, that thus had been requited a feat, the
+just guerdon of which should have been the warrior's crown,&mdash;in the
+bestowal of which, but for a cowardly fear of the English, all the tribe
+would have concurred.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Akee-o-hoosa!</i>&quot; (I am dead!) he said, pointing at the scars. And the
+Highlander felt that death had obviously been in every stroke, and
+hardly wondered that they who had seen the blows dealt should now
+account the appearance of the man a spectral manifestation, his unquiet
+ghost.</p>
+
+<p>Then, Attusah's mood changing suddenly, &quot;<i>Tsida-wei-yu!</i>&quot; (I am a great
+ada-wehi!) he boasted airily.</p>
+
+<p>That he was truly possessed of magical powers seemed to MacVintie least
+to be questioned when he angled, catching the great catfish, after the
+manner of the Indians, with the open palm of his hand. In these fresh
+June mornings he would dive down in some deep shady pool under the dark
+ledges of rock where the catfish are wont to lurk, his right arm wrapped
+to the fingers with a scarlet cloth. Tempted by the seeming bait, the
+catfish would take the finger-tips deep in its gullet, the strong hand
+would instantly clinch on its head, and Attusah would rise with his
+struggling gleaming prey, to be broiled on the coals for breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>But for these finny trophies they too might have suffered for food, in
+the scarcity of game and the lack of powder; but thus well fed, the two
+enemies, like comrades, would loiter beside their camp-fire on the
+banks, awaiting as it were the course of events. The dark green
+crystalline lustre of the shady reaches of the river, where the gigantic
+trees hung over the current, contrasted with the silver glister of the
+ripples far out, shimmering in the full glare of the sun. The breeze,
+exquisitely fragrant, would blow fresh and free from the dense forests.
+The mockingbird, a feathered miracle to the Highlander, would sway on a
+twig above them and sing jubilantly the whole day through and deep into
+the night. The distant mountains would show-softly blue on the horizon
+till the sun was going down, when they would assume a translucent
+jewel-like lustre, amethystine and splendid. And at night all the stars
+were in the dark sky, for the moon was new.</p>
+
+<p>So idle they were they must needs talk and talk. But this was an
+exercise requiring some skill and patience on the part of each, for the
+Scotchman could only by the closest attention gather the meaning of the
+Cherokee language as it was spoken, and the magic of the ada-wehi
+compassed but scanty English. Attusah was further hampered by the
+necessity of pausing now and then to spit out the words of the tongue he
+abhorred as if of an evil taste. Nevertheless it was by means of this
+imperfect linguistic communication that Kenneth MacVintie, keenly alive
+to aught of significance in this strange new world, surrounded with
+unknown unmeasured dangers, was enabled to note how the thoughts of his
+companion ran upon the half king Atta-Kulla-Kulla. Yet whenever a
+question was asked or curiosity suggested, the wary Attusah diverted the
+topic. This fact focused the observation of the shrewd, pertinacious
+Scotchman. At first he deemed the special interest lay in a jealousy of
+artistic handicraft.</p>
+
+<p>Atta-Kulla-Kulla's name implied the superlative of a skillful carver in
+wood, Attusah told him one day.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;An' isna he a skilly man?&quot; MacVintie asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Look at that!&quot; cried the braggart, holding aloft his own work. He was
+carving a pipe from the soft stone of the region, which so lends itself
+to the purpose, hardening when heated. &quot;<i>Tsida-wei-yu!</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was a long pause while the mockingbird sang with an exuberant
+magic which might baffle the emulation of any ada-wehi of them all.
+MacVintie had almost forgotten the episode when Attusah said suddenly
+that the colonists translated the name of Atta-Kulla-Kulla as the
+&quot;Little Carpenter.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hegh! they hae a ship named for his honor!&quot; exclaimed the Highlander.
+&quot;I hae seen the Little Carpenter in the harbor in Charlestoun, swingin'
+an' bobbin' at her cables, just out frae the mither country! Her
+captain's name wull be Maitland.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This evidence of the importance of the Cherokee magnate in the opinion
+of the British colonists did not please the ada-wehi. He spat upon the
+ship with ostentatious contempt as it were, and then went on silently
+with his carving.</p>
+
+<p>The mockingbird paused to listen to a note from the hermit thrush in the
+dense rhododendron, still splendidly abloom on the mountain slope. The
+Scotchman's eyes narrowed to distinguish if the white flake of light in
+the deep green water across a little bay were the reflection of the
+flower known as the Chilhowee lily, or the ethereal blossom itself.</p>
+
+<p>Attusah's mind seemed yet with the seagoing craft. He himself knew the
+name of another ship, he said presently; and the Highlander fancied that
+he ill liked to be outdone in knowledge of the outer world.</p>
+
+<p>But it was immediately developed that in this ship Atta-Kulla-Kulla had
+sailed to England many years before to visit King George II. in
+London.<a name="anchor_8"></a>[<a href="#footnote_8">8</a>] Attusah could not at once anglicize the name &quot;Chochoola,&quot; but
+after so long a time MacVintie was enabled to identify the Fox, then a
+noted British man-of-war.</p>
+
+<p>In these leisurely beguilements the days passed, until one morning
+Attusah's fears and presentiments were realized in their seizure by a
+party of Cherokees, who swooped down upon their hermitage and bore them
+off by force to the council-house of the town of Citico, where
+Atta-Kulla-Kulla and a number of other head men had assembled to discuss
+the critical affairs of the tribe, and decide on its future policy.</p>
+
+<p>So critical indeed was the situation that it seemed to MacVintie that
+they might well dispense with notice of two factors so inconsiderable in
+the scale of national importance as the ada-wehi and his captive. But
+one was a British prisoner, calculated to expiate in a degree with his
+life the woe and ruin his comrades had wrought. The more essential was
+this course since the triumph of putting him to the torture and death
+would gratify and reanimate many whose zeal was flagging under an
+accumulation of anguish and helpless defeat, and stimulate them to
+renewed exertions. For before the Cherokees would sue for peace they
+waited long in the hope that the French would yet be enabled to convey
+to them a sufficient supply of powder to renew and prosecute the war.</p>
+
+<p>As to the arrest of the other, Attusah of Kanootare, this was necessary
+in the event that submission to the British government became
+inevitable. For since he claimed to be a ghost, surely never was spectre
+so reckless. He had indeed appeared to so many favored individuals that
+the English might fairly have cause to doubt his execution in
+satisfaction of his crimes against the government; and the breach of
+faith on the part of the Cherokee rulers in this conspicuous instance
+might well preclude the granting of any reasonable terms of peace now,
+and subject the whole nation to added hardship.</p>
+
+<p>This was the argument advanced by Atta-Kulla-Kulla as he stood and
+addressed his colleagues, who sat on buffalo-skins in a circle on the
+floor of the council-house of Citico,&mdash;the usual dome-shaped edifice,
+daubed within and without with the rich red clay of the country, and
+situated on a high artificial mound in the centre of the town.</p>
+
+<p>The council-fire alone gave light, flashing upon the slender figure and
+animated face of this chief, who, although of slighter physique and
+lower stature than his compeers, wielded by reason of his more
+intellectual qualities so potent an influence among them.</p>
+
+<p>The oratorical gifts of Atta-Kulla-Kulla had signally impressed
+Europeans of culture and experience.<a name="anchor_9"></a>[<a href="#footnote_9">9</a>] Imagine, then, the effect on the
+raw young Highland soldier, hearing the flow of language, watching the
+appropriate and forceful gestures, noting the responsive sentiment in
+the fire-lit countenances of the circle of feather-crested Indians, yet
+comprehending little save that it was a masterpiece of cogent reasoning,
+richly eloquent, and that every word was as a fagot to the flames and a
+pang to the torture.</p>
+
+<p>Attusah of Kanootare, the Northward Warrior, rose to reply in defense of
+himself and his captive, and Atta-Kulla-Kulla listened as courteously as
+the rest, although the speech of the ada-wehi depended, like the oratory
+of many young men, chiefly on a magical assurance. He had an ally,
+however, in the dominant superstition of the Cherokees. Numbers of the
+warriors now ascribed their recent disasters to the neglect of various
+omens, or the omission of certain propitiatory observances of their
+ancient religion, or the perpetration of deeds known to be adversely
+regarded by the ruling spirits of war.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, they were all aware that this man had been killed, left for
+dead, reported as dead to the British government, which accepted the
+satisfaction thus offered for his crimes,&mdash;the deeds themselves,
+however, accounted by him and the rest of the tribe praiseworthy and the
+achievements of war.</p>
+
+<p>And here he was protesting that he was dead and a ghost. &quot;<i>Akee-o-hoosa!
+Akee-o-hoosa! Tsida-wei-yu!</i>&quot; he cried continually.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, this seemed to be the only reasonable method of accounting for
+the renewed presence in the world of a man known to be dead. This was
+his status, he argued. He was a dead man, and this was his captive. The
+Cherokee nation could not pretend to follow with its control the actions
+of a dead man. They themselves had pronounced him dead. He had no place
+in the war. He had been forbidden, on account of his official death, to
+compete for the honors of the campaign. Apart from his former status as
+a Cherokee, merely as a supernatural being, a spirit, an ada-wehi, he
+had captured this British soldier, who was therefore the property of a
+dead man. And the Cherokee law of all things and before all things
+forbade interference with the effects of the dead.</p>
+
+<p>Despite the curling contempt on the lip of Atta-Kulla-Kulla the council
+did not immediately acquiesce in his view, and thus for a time flattered
+the hope of the ada-wehi that they were resting in suspension on the
+details of this choice argument. There was an illogical inversion of
+values in the experience of the tribe, and while they could not now
+accept the worthless figments of long ago, it was not vouchsafed to them
+to enjoy the substantial merits of the new order of things. Reason,
+powder, diplomacy, had brought the Cherokee nation to a point of
+humiliation to which superstition, savagery, and the simplicities of the
+tomahawk had never descended in &quot;the good old times.&quot; Reason was never
+so befuddled of aspect, civilization never so undesired as now. In their
+own expanded outlook at life, however, they could not afford to ignore
+the views of Atta-Kulla-Kulla, the advocate of all the newer methods, in
+so important a matter as the release of a British prisoner of war on the
+strange pretext that his captor was a ghost of a peculiar spectral
+power, an ada-wehi, although this course would have been more agreeable
+to the &quot;old beloved&quot; theories of their halcyon days of eld, when the
+Cherokee name was a terror and a threat.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, averse as they were to subscribe to the modern methods which
+had wrought them such woe and humiliation and defeat, the dominant
+superstition of the race now fell far short of the fantasy of liberating
+a British prisoner at this crisis under the influence of any spectral
+manifestation whatsoever. The council was obviously steeled against this
+proposition, as MacVintie shortly perceived, and equally determined that
+the ada-wehi must needs exert phenomenal and magical powers indeed to
+avoid yet making good the nation's pledge of his death to the British
+government, and becoming a ghost in serious earnest. MacVintie's heart
+sank within him as he noted the hardening of the lines of their grave
+harsh faces and the affirmative nodding of the feather-crested heads,
+conferring together, as the decision was reached.</p>
+
+<p>It accorded, however, with their ancient custom to postpone over a night
+the execution of any sentence of special weight, and therefore the
+council adjourned to the next day, the two prisoners being left in the
+deserted building, each securely bound with a rope to a pillar of the
+series which upheld the roof of the strange circular edifice. This
+colonnade stood about four feet from the wall, and the interval between
+was occupied by a divan, fashioned of dexterously woven cane, extending
+around the room; and as the prisoners could seat themselves here, or lie
+at full length, they were subjected to no greater hardship than was
+consistent with their safe custody.</p>
+
+<p>A sentinel with his musket on his shoulder stood at the door, and the
+sun was going down. Kenneth MacVintie could see through the open portal
+the red glow in the waters of the Tennessee River. Now and then a flake
+of a glittering white density glided through it, which his eyes,
+accustomed to long distances, discriminated as a swan. Thunder-heads,
+however, were gathering above the eastern slopes and the mountains were
+a lowering slate-toned purple, save when a sudden flash of lightning
+roused them to a vivid show of green.</p>
+
+<p>The dull red hue of the interior of the council-house darkened
+gradually; the embers of the council-fire faded into the gray ash, and
+the night came sullen and threatening before its time.</p>
+
+<p>The young Highlander sought to bend his mind to the realization that his
+days on earth were well-nigh ended, and that it behooved him to think on
+the morrow elsewhere. He had an old-fashioned religious faith presumed
+to be fitted for any emergency, but in seeking to recall its dogmas and
+find such consolation in its theories as might sustain a martyr at the
+stake, he was continually distracted with the momentous present.</p>
+
+<p>The two prisoners could no longer see each other, and the little
+gestures and significant glances which had supplemented their few words,
+and made up for the lack of better conversational facilities were
+impracticable in the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>The silent obscurity was strangely lonely. MacVintie began to doubt if
+the other still lived.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Attusah!&quot; he said at length.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Tsida-wei-yu!</i>&quot; (I am a great ada-wehi) murmured the ghost
+mechanically.</p>
+
+<p>He was quite spent, exhausted by the effort to logically exist as a
+ghost in a world which had repudiated him as a live man.</p>
+
+<p>MacVintie, who found it hard enough to reconcile himself to die once,
+felt a poignant sympathy for him, who must needs die again. But the
+Highlander could not think. He could not even pray. He desisted from the
+fitful effort after a time. He had a depressing realization that a good
+soldier relies upon the proficiency acquired by the daily drill to serve
+in an emergency, not a special effort at smartness for an occasion. The
+battle or the review would show the quality of the stuff that was in
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Despite the stunned despair which possessed his mental faculties, his
+physical senses were keenly acute. He marked unconsciously the details
+of the rising of the wind bringing the storm hitherward. A searching
+flash of lightning showed the figure of the sentinel, half crouching
+before the blast, at his post in the open portal. The rain was presently
+falling heavily, and ever and anon a great suffusion of yellow glare in
+its midst revealed the myriads of slanting lines as it came. He inhaled
+the freshened fragrance it brought from the forests. He noted the
+repeated crash of the thunder, the far-away rote of the echoes, the
+rhythmic beat of the torrents on the ground, and their tumultuous swift
+dash down the slope of the dome-shaped roof, and suddenly among these
+turmoils,&mdash;he could hardly believe his ears,&mdash;a mild little whimper of
+protest.</p>
+
+<p>The sentinel heard it too. MacVintie saw his dark figure in the doorway
+as he turned his head to listen. A woman's voice sounded immediately,
+bidding a child beware how he cried, lest she call the great white owl,
+the Oo-koo-ne-kah, to catch him!</p>
+
+<p>The flare of the lightning revealed a pappoose the next moment, upright
+in his perpendicular cradle, as it swung on his mother's back, in the
+drenching downpour of the rain, for the woman had advanced to the
+sentinel and was talking loudly and eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>Kenneth silently recognized the small creature who had moved him to a
+trivial charity which had resulted in so strangely disproportionate a
+disaster. Doubtless, however, the squaws would never have been able to
+return to their accustomed place but for the food which he had given
+them, sustaining them on the journey home.</p>
+
+<p>It would imply some mission of importance surely, he thought, to induce
+the woman to expose the child to a tempest like this; and indeed the
+pappoose, buffeted by the wind, the rain full in his face, lifted up his
+voice again in a protest so loud and vehement that his mother was
+enabled to see the great white owl, whose business it is to remove
+troublesome little Cherokees from the sphere of worry of their elders,
+already winging his way hither. One might wonder if the Oo-koo-ne-kah
+would do worse for him than his maternal guardian, but pelted by the
+pitiless rain he promptly sank his bleatings to a mere babble of a
+whimper. Thereby Kenneth was better enabled to hear what the woman was
+saying to the sentinel.</p>
+
+<p>An important mission indeed, as MacVintie presently gathered, for she
+must needs lift her voice stridently to be heard above the din of the
+elements. Some powder, only a little it was true, had been sent by the
+French to the town, and a share had been left at the house of the
+sentinel that night in the general distribution. But there was no one at
+home. All his family were across the mountains, whither, according to
+the custom of the Cherokees, they had gone to find and bring back the
+body of his brother, who had been killed in the fight at Etchoee. And
+the leak in the roof! She, his nearest neighbor, had just bethought
+herself of the leak in the roof! Would not the powder, the precious
+powder, be ruined? Had he not best go to see at once about it?</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated, letting the butt of his gun sink to the ground. She seized
+the weapon promptly. She would stand guard here till he returned, she
+promised. The prisoners were bound. They could not move. It would
+require but an instant's absence,&mdash;and the powder was so scarce, so
+precious!</p>
+
+<p>The next moment the sentinel was gone! The darkness descended, doubly
+intense, after a succession of electric flashes; the rain fell with
+renewed force. MacVintie suddenly heard the babbling whimper quite close
+beside him, somewhat subdued by a fierce maternal admonition to listen
+to the terrible voice of the Oo-koo-ne-kah, coming to catch a Cherokee
+cry-baby!</p>
+
+<p>A stroke of a knife here and there, and the two prisoners were freed
+from their bonds. The Highland soldier did not know whether Attusah
+looked back while in flight, but his last glimpse of the Cherokee town
+of Citico showed the broad glare of lightning upon the groups of conical
+roofs in the slanting lines of rain; the woman on the high mound at the
+portal of the council-house, with the pappoose on her back and the gun
+in her hand; the sentinel once more climbing the ascent to his post. And
+the last words he heard were chronicling the adverse sentiments
+entertained toward bad children by the Oo-koo-ne-kah, the mysterious
+great white owl.</p>
+
+<p>The escape was not discovered till the next day, and was universally
+attributed to the magic of the ada-wehi. Even the sentinel himself
+doubted naught, having left a trusty deputy in his stead, for the
+devotion of the Cherokee women to the tribal cause was proverbial, and
+gratitude, even for a rescue from starvation, is not usually an urgent
+motive power.</p>
+
+<p>Kenneth MacVintie was seen again in the Cherokee country only in his
+place as a marker in the march of his regiment, and as he was evidently
+exceedingly desirous to permit no one to incur penalties for his
+liberation, his officers spared him questions concerning his escape,
+save in a general way.</p>
+
+<p>When the ada-wehi next reappeared in a remote town of the district and
+was sedulously interrogated as to how his freedom had been achieved, he
+threw out his right hand at arm's length in his old, boastful, airy
+gesture.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Cheesto kaiere!</i>&quot; (An old rabbit!) he exclaimed. &quot;A little old rabbit
+ran down the slope. I turned the soldier into a rabbit, and he ran away.
+And I turned myself into a fish, and I swam away. Ha! <i>Tsida-wei-yu!</i>&quot;
+(I am a great ada-wehi!)</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+<a name='THE_FATE_OF_THE_CHEERA_TAGHE'></a><h2>THE FATE OF THE CHEERA-TAGHE</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>Along the old &quot;trading-path&quot; that was wont to wind from the Cherokee
+country among the innumerable spurs and gorges of the Great Smoky
+Mountains, and through the dense primeval forests full five hundred
+miles to the city of Charlestown, was visible for many years, on the
+banks of the Little Tennessee, an &quot;old waste town,&quot; as the abandoned
+place was called in the idiom of the Indians. An early date it might
+seem, in 1744, in this new land, for the spectacle of the ruins of a
+race still in possession, still unsubdued. Nearly twenty years later,
+after the repeated aggressive expeditions which the British government
+sent against the Cherokees, such vestiges became more numerous. This
+&quot;waste town,&quot; however, neither fire nor sword had desolated, and the
+grim deeds of British powder and lead were still of the future. The
+enemy came in more subtle sort.</p>
+
+<p>Only one of the white pack-men employed to drive a score of well-laden
+horses semi-annually from Charlestown to a trading-station farther along
+on the Great Tennessee&mdash;then called the Cherokee River&mdash;and back again
+used to glower fearfully at the &quot;waste town&quot; as he passed. He had ample
+leisure for speculation, for the experienced animals of the pack-train
+required scant heed, so regularly they swung along in single file, and
+the wild whoops of their drivers were for the sake of personal
+encouragement and the simple joy which very young men find in their own
+clamor. It grew specially boisterous always when they neared the site of
+Nilaque Great, the deserted place, as if to give warning to any vague
+spiritual essences, unmeet for mortal vision, that might be lurking
+about the &quot;waste town,&quot; and bid them avaunt, for the place was reputed
+haunted.</p>
+
+<p>The rest of the Carolina pack-men, trooping noisily past, averted their
+eyes from the darkened doors of the empty houses; the weed-grown spaces
+of the &quot;beloved square,&quot; where once the ceremonies of state, the
+religious rites, the public games and dances were held; the
+council-house on its high mound, whence had been wont to issue the bland
+vapors of the pipe of peace or the far more significant smoke emitted
+from the cheera, the &quot;sacred fire,&quot; which only the cheera-taghe, the
+fire-prophets,<a name="anchor_10"></a>[<a href="#footnote_10">10</a>] were permitted to kindle, and which was done with
+pomp and ceremony in the new year, when every spark of the last year's
+fire had been suffered to die out.</p>
+
+<p>Cuthbert Barnett, however, always looked to see what he might,&mdash;perhaps
+because he was a trifle bolder than the other stalwart pack-men, all
+riding armed to the teeth to guard the goods of the train from robbery
+as well as their own lives from treachery, for although the Cherokees
+professed friendship it was but half-hearted, as they loved the French
+always better than the English; perhaps because he had a touch of
+imagination that coerced his furtive glance; perhaps because he doubted
+more, or believed less, of the traditions of the day. And he
+saw&mdash;silence! the sunset in vacant spaces, with long, slanting,
+melancholy rays among the scattered houses of the hamlet; an empty
+doorway, here and there; a falling rotting roof; futile traces of
+vanished homes. Once a deer and fawn were grazing in the weed-grown
+fields that used to stand so thick with corn that they laughed and sung;
+once&mdash;it was close upon winter&mdash;he heard a bear humming and humming his
+content (the hunters called the sound &quot;singing&quot;) from the den where the
+animal had bestowed himself among the fallen logs of a dwelling-house,
+half covered with great drifts of dead leaves; often an owl would cry
+out in alarm from some dark nook as the pack-train clattered past; and
+once a wolf with a stealthy and sinister tread was patrolling the
+&quot;beloved square.&quot; These were but the natural incidents of the time and
+the ruins of the old Cherokee town.</p>
+
+<p>Little did Cuddy Barnett imagine, as he gazed on the deserted and
+desolate place, that he was yet to behold the smoke of the &quot;sacred fire&quot;
+flaring up into the blue sky from the portal of the temple, as the
+cheera-taghe would issue bearing the flame aloft, newly kindled in the
+opening year, and calling upon many assembled people to light therefrom
+their hearths, rekindling good resolutions and religious fervor for the
+future, and letting the faults of the unavailing past die out with the
+old year's fire; that he was to mark the clash of arms in the &quot;beloved
+square,&quot; once more populous with the alert figures of warriors in
+martial array, making ready for the war-path; that he was to hear the
+joyful religious songs of greeting to the dawn, and the sonorous
+trumpeting of the conch-shells, as the vanished Indians of the &quot;old
+waste town&quot; would troop down at daybreak into the water of that bright
+stream where long ago they had been wont to plunge in their mystic
+religious ablutions. All this, however, the pack-men might see and hear,
+to believe the tradition of the day, in camping but a single night near
+the old &quot;waste town.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And so anxious were these gay itinerant companies to see and hear
+nothing of such ghostly sort that whatever the stress of the weather,
+the mischances of the journey, the condition of the pack-animals, this
+vicinity was always distinguished by the longest day's travel of the
+whole route, and the camp was pitched at the extreme limit of the
+endurance of man and horse to compass distance from Nilaque Great. For
+believe what one might, the fact remained indisputable, that a decade
+earlier, when the place was inhabited, strange sounds were rife about
+the locality, the &quot;sacred fire&quot; was unkindled on the great &quot;Sanctified
+Day,&quot; the two cheera-taghe of the town mysteriously disappeared, and
+their fate had remained a dark riddle.</p>
+
+<p>One of these men, Oo-koo-koo, was well known in Charlestown. Both were
+of influence in the tribe, but often he had been specially chosen as one
+of the delegations of warriors and &quot;beloved men&quot; sent to wait in
+diplomatic conference on the Governor of South Carolina, to complain of
+injustice in the dealings of the licensed traders or the encroachments
+of the frontier settlers, or to crave the extension of some privilege of
+the treaty which the Cherokee tribe had lately made with the British
+government.</p>
+
+<p>Two white men, who had become conspicuous in a short stay in the town of
+Nilaque Great, disappeared simultaneously, and the suspicion of foul
+dealing on their part against the cheera-taghe, which the Cherokee
+nation seemed disposed to entertain, threatened at one time the peace
+that was so precious to the &quot;infant settlements,&quot; as the small, remote,
+stockaded stations of the Carolina frontiersmen were tenderly called.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore the Governor of South Carolina, now a royal province,&mdash;the
+event occurred during the incumbency of Robert Johnson, who having acted
+in that capacity for the Lords Proprietors, well understood the menace
+of the situation,&mdash;busied himself with extreme diligence to discover the
+subsequent movements of the two white men, whose names were Terence
+O'Kimmon and Adrien L'&Eacute;pine, in order to ascertain the fate of the
+cheera-taghe, and if evilly entreated, to bring the perpetrators of the
+deed to justice.</p>
+
+<p>With a long, unguarded, open frontier such as his province presented to
+the incursions of the warlike and fierce Cherokees, who, despite their
+depopulating wars with other tribes, could still bring to the field six
+thousand braves from their sixty-four towns, the inhabitants of which
+were estimated at twenty thousand souls, he was by no means disposed to
+delay or to indulge doubts or to foster compatriot commiseration in
+meting out the penalty of the malefactors. The united militia of South
+Carolina and Georgia at this time numbered but thirty-five hundred rank
+and file, these colonies being so destitute of white men for the common
+defense that a memorial addressed to his majesty King George II. a
+little earlier than this event, bearing date April 9, 1734, pathetically
+states that &quot;money itself cannot here raise a sufficient body of them.&quot;
+The search for the suspects, however, although long, exhaustive, and of
+such diligence as to convince the Indians of its sincerity of purpose,
+resulted fruitlessly. The government presently took occasion to made
+some valuable presents to the tribe, not as indemnity, for it could
+recognize no responsibility in the strange disaster, but for the sake of
+seeming to comply with the form of offering satisfaction for the loss,
+which otherwise the Indians would retaliate with massacre.</p>
+
+<p>Nilaque Great with this cloud upon it grew dreary. The strange
+disappearance of its cheera-taghe was canvassed again and again,
+reaching no surmise of the truth. Speculations, futile as they were
+continuous, began to be reinforced with reminiscences of the date of the
+event, and certain episodes became strangely significant now, although
+hardly remarked at the time; people remembered unexplained and curious
+noises that had sounded like muffled thunder in the deep midnight, and
+again, scarcely noted, in the broad daylight. The &quot;sacred fire&quot; remained
+unkindled, and sundry misfortunes were attributed to this unprecedented
+neglect; an expert warrior, young and notably deft-handed, awkwardly
+shot himself with his own gun; the crops, cut short by a late and
+long-continued drought, were so meagre as to be hardly worth the
+harvesting; the days appointed for the annual feasts and thanksgiving
+were like days of mourning; discontents waxed and grew strong.
+Superstitious terrors became rife, and at length it was known at
+Charlestown that the Cherokees of Nilaque Great had settled a new place
+farther down upon the river, for at the old town the vanished
+cheera-taghe were abroad in the spirit, pervading the &quot;beloved square&quot;
+at night with cries of &quot;<i>A-kee-o-hoo-sa! A-kee-o-hoo-sa!</i>&quot; (I am dead! I
+am dead!) clamoring for their graves and the honors of sepulture due to
+them and denied. And this was a grief to the head men of the town, for
+of all tribes the Cherokees loved and revered their dead. Thus when
+other cheera-taghe kindled for the municipality the &quot;sacred fire&quot; for a
+new year it was distributed to hearths far away, and Nilaque Great,
+deserted and depopulated, had become a &quot;waste town.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A fair place it had been in its prime, and so it had seemed one
+afternoon in June, 1734, when for the first time the two white strangers
+had entered it. Mountains more splendid than those which rose about it
+on every hand it would be difficult to imagine. The dense, rich woods
+reach in undiminished vigor along the slopes covering them at a height
+of six thousand feet, till the &quot;tree line&quot; interposes; thence the great
+bare domes lift their stately proportions among the clouds. Along these
+lofty perspectives the varying distance affords the vision a vast array
+of gradations of color,&mdash;green in a thousand shades, and bronze, and
+purple, and blue,&mdash;blue growing ever fainter and more remote till it is
+but an illusion of azure, and one may believe that the summits seen
+through a gap to the northeast are sheer necromancy of the facile
+horizon.</p>
+
+<p>In the deep verdant cove below, groups of the giant trees common to the
+region towered above the stanchly constructed cabins that formed the
+homes of the Indians, for the Cherokees, detesting labor and experts in
+procrastination, builded well and wisely that they might not be forced
+to rebuild, and many of the distinctive features of the stout frontier
+architecture were borrowed by the pioneers from aboriginal example. Out
+beyond the shadows were broad stretches of fields with the lush June in
+the wide and shining blade and the flaunting tassel. The voices of women
+and young girls came cheerily from the breezy midst as they tilled the
+ground, where flourished in their proper divisions the three varieties
+of maize known to Indian culture, &quot;the six weeks' corn, the hominy corn,
+and the bread corn.&quot; A shoal of canoes skimmed down the river, each with
+its darting shadow upon that lucent current and seeming as native, as
+indigenous to the place as the minnows in a crystal brown pool there by
+the waterside&mdash;each too with its swift javelin-like motion and a darting
+shadow. Sundry open doors here and there showed glimpses of passing
+figures within, but the arrival of the strangers was unnoticed till some
+children playing beside the river caught sight of the unaccustomed
+faces. With a shrill cry of discovery, they sped across the square,
+agitated half by fright and half by the gusto of novelty. In another
+moment there were two score armed men in the square.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now hould yer tongue still, an' I'll do the talkin',&quot; said one of the
+white adventurers to the other, speaking peremptorily, but with a suave
+and delusive smile. &quot;If yez weren't Frinch ye'd be a beautiful
+Englishman; but I hev got the advantage of ye in that, an' faix I'll
+kape it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was evidently of a breeding inferior to that of his companion, but he
+had so sturdy and swinging a gait, so stalwart and goodly a build, so
+engaging a manner, and so florid a smile, that the very sight of him was
+disarming, despite the patent crafty deceit in his face. It seemed as if
+it could not be very deep or guileful, it was so frankly expressed. It
+was suggestive of the roguish machinations of a child. He had twinkling
+brown eyes, and reddish hair, plaited in a club and tied with a thong of
+leather. His features were blunt, but his red, well-shaped lips parted
+in a ready, reassuring smile, and showed teeth as even and white as the
+early corn. Both men were arrayed in the buckskin shirt and leggings
+generally worn by the frontiersmen, but the face of the other had a
+certain incongruity with his friend's, and was more difficult to
+decipher. It looked good,&mdash;not kind, but true. It had severe pragmatic
+lines about the mouth, and the lips were thin and somewhat fixedly set.
+His eyes were dark, serious, and very intent, as if he could argue and
+protest very earnestly on matters of no weight. He would in a question
+of theory go very far if set on the wrong line, and just as far on the
+right. The direction was the matter of great moment, and this seemed now
+in the hands of the haphazard but scheming Irishman.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If it plaze yer honor,&quot; said O'Kimmon in English, taking off his
+coonskin cap with a lavish flourish as a tall and stately Indian hastily
+garbed in fine raiment of the aboriginal type, a conspicuous article of
+which was a long feather-wrought mantle, both brilliant and delicate of
+effect, detached himself from the group and came forward, &quot;I can't spake
+yer illigant language,&mdash;me eddication bein' that backward,&mdash;but I kin
+spake me own so eloquent that it would make a gate-post prick up the
+ears of understanding. We've come to visit yez, sor.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The smile which the Hibernian bent upon the savage was of a honeyed
+sweetness, but the heart of his companion sank as he suddenly noted the
+keen, intuitive power of comprehension expressed in the face of the old
+Indian. Here was craft too, but of a different quality, masked, potent,
+impossible to divine, to measure, to thwart. The sage Oo-koo-koo stood
+motionless, his eyes narrowing, his long, flat, cruel mouth compressed
+as with a keen scrutiny he marked all the characteristics of the
+strangers,&mdash;first of one, then deliberately of the other. A war captain
+(his flighty name was Watatuga, the Dragon-fly, although he looked with
+his high nose and eagle glance more like a bird of prey), assuming
+precedence of the others, pressed up beside the prophet, and the
+challenge of his eyes and the contempt that dilated his nostrils might
+have seemed more formidable of intent than the lacerating gaze of the
+cheera-taghe, except that to an Irishman there is always a subtle joy
+even in the abstract idea of fight. The rest of the braves, with their
+alert, high-featured cast of countenance, inimical, threatening,
+clustered about, intent, doubtful, listening.</p>
+
+<p>Adrien L'&Eacute;pine had his secret doubts as to the efficacy of the bold,
+blunt, humorous impudence which Terence O'Kimmon fancied such masterful
+policy,&mdash;taking now special joy in the fact that its meaning was
+partially veiled because of the presumable limitations of the Indian's
+comprehension of the English language. The more delicate nurture that
+L'&Eacute;pine obviously had known revolted at times from this unkempt
+brusquerie, although he had a strong pulse of sympathy with the wild,
+lawless disregard of conventional standards which characterized much of
+the frontier life. He feared, too, that O'Kimmon underrated the extent
+of the Cherokee's comprehension of the language of which, however, the
+Indians generally spoke only a few disconnected phrases. So practiced
+were the savages in all the arts of pantomime, in the interpretation of
+facial expression and the intonation of the voice, that L'&Eacute;pine had
+known in his varied wanderings of instances of tribes in conference,
+each ignorant of the other's language, who nevertheless reached a
+definite and intricate mutual understanding without the services of an
+interpreter. L'&Eacute;pine felt entrapped, regretful, and wished to recede. He
+winced palpably as O'Kimmon's rich Irish voice, full of words, struck
+once more upon the air.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Me godson, the Governor o' South Carolina,&quot; Terence O'Kimmon resumed,
+lying quite recklessly, &quot;sint his humble respects,&mdash;an' he's that swate
+upon yez that he licks his fingers ter even sphake yer name! (Pity I
+furgits ut, bein' I never knew ut!)&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Although possessing an assurance that he could get the better of the
+devil, &quot;could he but identify him,&quot; as O'Kimmon frequently said, he felt
+for one moment as if he were now in the presence. Despite his nerve the
+silence terrified him. He was beginning to cringe before the steady
+glare of those searching eyes. It was even as a refreshment of spirit to
+note a sudden bovine snort of rage from the lightsome Dragon-fly, as if
+he could ill bridle his inimical excitement.</p>
+
+<p>The adventurers had not anticipated a reception of this sort, for the
+hospitality of the Indians was proverbial. Credentials surely were not
+necessary in the social circles of the Cherokees, and two men to six
+thousand offered no foundation for fear. O'Kimmon had such confidence in
+his own propitiating wiles and crafty policy that he did not realize how
+his genial deceit was emblazoned upon his face, how blatant it was in
+his voice. But for its challenging duplicity there would hardly have
+arisen a suggestion of suspicion. Many men on various errands easily
+found their way into the Indian tribes when at peace with the British,
+and suffered no injury. Nevertheless as the wise Oo-koo-koo looked at
+O'Kimmon thus steadily, with so discerning a gaze, the Irishman felt
+each red hair of his scalp rise obtrusively into notice, as if to
+suggest the instant taking of it. He instinctively put on his coonskin
+cap again to hold his scalp down, as he said afterward.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why come?&quot; Oo-koo-koo demanded sternly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell the truth, for God's sake!&quot; L'&Eacute;pine adjured O'Kimmon in a low
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm not used to it! 'T would give me me death o' cold!&quot; quavered the
+Irishman, in sad sincerity, at a grievous loss.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Asgaya uneka</i> (White man), but no Ingliss,&quot; said the astute Indian,
+touching the breast of each with the bowl of his pipe, still in his hand
+and still alight as it was when the interruption of their advent had
+occurred.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, by the powers,&mdash;not English!&quot; exclaimed the Irishman impulsively,
+seeing he was already discovered. &quot;I'm me own glorious nation!&mdash;the
+pride o' the worruld,&mdash;I was born in the Emerald Isle, the gem o' the
+say! I'm an Oirishman from the tip o' me scalp&mdash;in the name o' pity
+<i>why</i> should I mintion the contrivance&quot; (dropping his voice to an
+appalled muffled tone)&mdash;&quot;may the saints purtect ut! But surely, Mister
+Injun, I've no part nor lot with the bloody bastes o' Englishers either
+over the say or in the provinces. If I were the brother-in-law o' the
+Governor o' South Carolina I'd hev a divorce from the murtherin'
+Englisher before he could cry, 'Quarter!'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Oo-koo-koo, the wise Owl, made no direct answer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Asgaya uneka</i> (White man), but no Ingliss,&quot; he only said, now
+indicating L'&Eacute;pine.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Frinch in the mornin', plaze yer worship, an' only a bit o' English
+late in the afternoon o' the day,&quot; cried O'Kimmon, officiously, himself
+once more.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;French father, English mother,&quot; explained L'&Eacute;pine, feeling that the
+Indian was hardly a safe subject for the pleasantries of conundrums.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But his mother was but a wee bit of a woman,&quot; urged O'Kimmon; &quot;the most
+of him is Frinch,&mdash;look at the size of him!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For O'Kimmon was now bidding as high against the English aegis as
+earlier he had been disposed to claim its protection, when he had
+protested his familiarity with the Royal Governor of South Carolina. In
+an instant he was once more gay, impudent, confident of carrying
+everything before him. He divined that some recent friction had
+supervened in the ever-clashing interests subsisting between the
+Cherokee nation and the British government, and was relying on the
+recurrent inclination of this tribe to fraternize with the French. Their
+influence from their increasing western settlements was exerted
+antagonistically to the British colonists, by whom it was dreaded in
+anticipation of the war against a French and Cherokee alliance which
+came later. Oo-koo-koo, complacent in his own sagacity in having
+detected a difference in the speech of the new-comers from the English
+which he had been accustomed to hear in Charlestown, and animated by a
+wish to believe, hearkened with the more credulity to an expansive
+fiction detailed by the specious Irishman as to their mission here.</p>
+
+<p>They were awaiting the coming of certain pettiaugres from New
+Orleans,&mdash;a long journey by way of the Mississippi, the Ohio, the
+Cherokee, and the Tennessee rivers,&mdash;with a cargo of French goods
+cheaper than the English. They designed to establish a trading-post at
+some convenient point, out of reach of the grasping British, and thus to
+compete with the monopoly of the Cherokee commerce which the English
+government sought to foster. And then, to furnish a leaven of truth to
+this mass of lies, he detailed, with such a relish as only an Irishman
+can feel in a happy incongruity, that the French, having no market in
+old France for deerskins, the chief commodity of barter that the Indians
+possessed, disposed of them to ships of the British colonies, from New
+York and elsewhere, lured thus to New Orleans, in exchange for English
+cloths and other British manufactures, which the French then
+surreptitiously furnished to the Indians of the British alliance,
+underselling them on every hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The intellects of the Frinch are so handsome!&quot; cried O'Kimmon, the
+tears of delighted laughter in his eyes. &quot;Faix, that is what makes 'em
+so close kin to the Oirish!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Albeit the Cherokee treaty with the British forbade the Indians to trade
+with white men of any other nationality than the English, these
+professed aliens were promised protection and concealment from the
+British government, and the pretext of their mission served to
+countenance their lingering stay.</p>
+
+<p>Soon their presence seemed a matter of course. The Indians had recurred
+to their methods of suave hospitality. The two strangers encountered
+only friendly looks and words, while affecting to gratify curiosity by
+peering into all the unaccustomed habitudes,&mdash;the preparation of food,
+the manufacture of deerskin garments, the care of the sick, the modeling
+of bowls and jars of clay, in which the Cherokees were notably expert as
+well as in the weaving of feather-wrought fabrics and baskets, the
+athletic games, the horse-races, the continual dances and pantomimic
+plays,&mdash;and were presently domiciled as it were in the tribe. Of so
+little note did they soon become that when they gradually ceased these
+manifestations of interest, as if familiarity had sated their curiosity,
+it seemed to occasion no comment. They were obviously free to rove, to
+stay, to live their lives as they would without interference or
+surveillance.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, they still maintained the utmost caution. Sometimes,
+idleness being no phenomenon, they would lie half the day in the shade
+on the river-bank. The Tennessee was shrunken now in the heated season,
+and great gravelly slopes were exposed. The two loiterers were
+apparently motionless at first, but as their confidence increased and
+the chances of being observed lessened, L'&Eacute;pine, always dreading
+discovery, began to casually pass the gravel and sand through his
+fingers as he lay; sometimes he idly trifled with the blade of a hoe in
+a shallow pool left by the receding waters, while the jolly Irishman,
+now grave and solicitous, watched him breathlessly. Then L'&Eacute;pine would
+shake his head, and the mercurial O'Kimmon groaned his deep despondency.</p>
+
+<p>Once the Frenchman's head was not shaken. A flush sprang up among the
+pragmatic lines of L'&Eacute;pine's face; his dark eyes glittered; his hand
+shook; for as he held out the hoe, on its blade were vaguely glimmering
+particles among the sand.</p>
+
+<p>Later the two adventurers cherished a small nugget of red, red gold!</p>
+
+<p>This find chanced below a bluff in a sort of grotto of rock, which the
+water filled when the river was high, and left quite dry and exposed as
+it receded in the droughts of summer.</p>
+
+<p>Whether the two strangers were too much and too long out of sight;
+whether attention was attracted by certain perforated dippers or pans
+which they now brought into assiduous use, but which they sought to
+conceal; whether they had been all the time furtively watched, with a
+suspicion never abated, one can hardly say. They had observed every
+precaution of secrecy that the most zealous heed could suggest. Only one
+worked with the pan while the other lay motionless and idle, and
+vigilantly watched and listened for any stealthy sign of approach. They
+fully realized the jealousy of the Indians concerning the mineral wealth
+of their territory, lest its discovery bring hordes of the craving white
+people to dispossess them. This prophetic terror was later fulfilled in
+the Ayrate division of the tribe, but to the northward, along the
+Tennessee River, they sedulously guarded this knowledge. Traditions
+there are to the present day in the Great Smoky Mountains concerning
+mines of silver and lead, and of localities rich in auriferous gravel
+which are approximately ascertained, but which the Cherokees knew
+accurately and worked as far as they listed;&mdash;they carried their secret
+with them to the grave or the far west.</p>
+
+<p>The exploration of L'&Eacute;pine and O'Kimmon of necessity was conducted
+chiefly by day, but one night the prospectors could not be still, the
+moon on the sand was so bright!</p>
+
+<p>The time which they had fixed for a silent, secret departure was drawing
+near. Their bags were almost filled, but they lingered for a little
+more, and covetously a little more still. And this night, this memorable
+night, the moon on the sand was as bright as day!</p>
+
+<p>The light slanted across the Tennessee River and shimmered in the
+ripples. One could see, if one would, the stately lines of dark summits
+along a far horizon. A mockingbird was singing from out the boscage of
+the laurel near at hand, and the night wind was astir. And suddenly the
+two gold-washers in the depths of the grotto became conscious that they
+were not alone.</p>
+
+<p>There, sitting like stone figures one on each side of the narrow portal,
+were the two cheera-taghe of the town, silent, motionless, watching with
+eyes how long alert, listening with ears how discerningly attentive, it
+is impossible to divine.</p>
+
+<p>The gold-washers sprang to their feet, each instinctively grasping for
+his weapon, but alack, neither was armed! The pan had come to seem the
+most potent of accoutrements, with which, in good sooth, one might take
+the world by storm, and the rifle and knife were forgotten, in their
+absorption. Doubtless the Cherokees interpreted aright the gesture, so
+significant, so obvious to their methods of life. Both the cheera-taghe
+were armed with pistol as well as tomahawk and scalping-knife.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps because of this they felt secure, at leisure, acquiescently
+allowing the event to develop as it needs must,&mdash;or perhaps realizing
+the significance of the discovery to the young strangers, their
+palpitant eagerness to gauge its result, their dread of reprisal, of
+forced renunciation of their booty, the Indians permitted themselves a
+relish of the torture of an enemy on a more aesthetic scheme than their
+wont.</p>
+
+<p>The two cheera-taghe, the shadow of their feather-crested heads in the
+moonlight on the sand of the grotto almost as distinct as the reality,
+spoke suddenly to each other, and the discomfited gold-seekers, who had
+learned to comprehend to a certain extent the language, perceived with
+dismay the sarcasm that lengthened their suspense. For it was thus that
+the rulers among the Cherokees rebuked their own young people, not
+upbraiding them with their misdeeds, but with gentle satire
+complimenting them for that in which they had notably failed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A reward for hospitality we find in these young men,&quot; said one, whose
+voice was hoarse and croaking and guttural and who was called Kanoona
+(the Bull-frog).</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Strangers to us, yet they requite us, for we treated them as our own,&quot;
+said Oo-koo-koo.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They treat us as <i>their own!</i>&quot; the croaking, satiric, half-smothered
+laughter of this response intimated an aside. Then Kanoona in full voice
+went on, &quot;Open and frank as the day, they keep no secrets from us!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They are honest! They rob us not of the yellow stone which the Carolina
+people think so precious!&quot; rejoined Oo-koo-koo, while O'Kimmon and
+L'&Eacute;pine looked from one to the other as the cheera-taghe sustained this
+fugue of satiric accusation.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not they,&quot; croaked the responsive voice, &quot;for behold, we have long time
+fed and lodged them and given them of our best. We have believed them
+and trusted them. We have befriended them and loved them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And they have befriended and loved us!&quot; said Oo-koo-koo.</p>
+
+<p>Then silence. The river sang, but only a murmurous rune; the mute
+moonlight lay still on the mountains; the wind had sunk, and the
+motionless leaves glistened as the dew fell; a nighthawk swept past the
+portal of the grotto with the noiseless wing of its kind.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Had they desired to explore our land they would have asked our
+consent,&quot; the croaking voice of Kanoona resumed the antiphonal reproach.
+&quot;They would not have brought upon us the hordes of British colonists,
+who would fain drive us from our habitations for their greed of the
+yellow stone.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, no! never would they make so base a recompense!&mdash;to bring upon us
+the destruction of our men and women and children, the wresting from us
+of our land, the casting of us forth from our homes,&mdash;because the poor,
+unsuspecting Indians gave them food and shelter and a haven of rest
+while waiting for the pettiaugres that are coming up from New Orleans.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>The pettiaugres from New Orleans</i>!&quot; Kanoona repeated with a burst of
+raucous laughter. &quot;Hala! Hala!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But Oo-koo-koo preserved his gravity. &quot;They would not lie! Surely the
+white men would not lie!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then turning to O'Kimmon he asked point-blank, &quot;Chee-a-koh-ga?&quot; (Do you
+lie?)</p>
+
+<p>The direct address was a relief to O'Kimmon. He had often wondered to
+see the young braves reduced almost to tears by this seemingly gentle
+discipline; he felt its poignancy when the keen blade of satire was
+turned against himself.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I did lie!&quot; he admitted, as unreservedly as it he were at confession.
+&quot;But Oo-koo-koo, we will pay for what we've got. This is all of ut! An'
+faix, yez have thrated us well,&mdash;an' begorra, we would have axed yer
+consint, if we had dramed we could have got ut!&quot; he concluded
+ingenuously.</p>
+
+<p>The two Indians gazed at him with a surprise so evident that a chill ran
+through his every nerve.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We will never reveal the secret,&mdash;the place of the gold,&quot; declared
+L'&Eacute;pine. Then perceiving in his turn something uncomprehended in their
+expression he reinforced his promise with argument. &quot;We will want to
+come back&mdash;alone&mdash;to get more of it&mdash;all for ourselves. We will not be
+willing to share our discovery with others.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The cheera-taghe still silently gazed at the two young men; then turned
+toward each other with that patent astonishment yet on their faces. At
+last they burst forth into sarcastic laughter.</p>
+
+<p>L'&Eacute;pine and O'Kimmon, albeit half bewildered, exchanged appalled
+glances. There was no need of speech. Each understood at last.</p>
+
+<p>Return! There was no chance of departure. They were to pay the penalty
+of the dangerous knowledge they had acquired. Already some vague report,
+some suspicion of the hidden gold of the locality had been bruited
+abroad,&mdash;thus the Indians must reason,&mdash;or these white men would not
+have come so far to seek it. Should they be permitted to depart, their
+sudden wealth would proclaim its source, even though as they had
+promised they should keep silence.</p>
+
+<p>This was equally true should they eventually escape. Therefore&mdash;hideous
+realization!&mdash;the actual possession by the Indians of their own country
+depended upon the keeping of the secret inviolate. Dead men tell no
+tales!</p>
+
+<p>O'Kimmon, with a swelling heart, bethought himself of his status as a
+British subject and the possible vengeance of the province. It would
+come, if at all, too late. For the Cherokees believed the two to be
+without the pale of the English protection. One had repudiated the
+government, declaring himself an Irishman, a nationality then unknown to
+the Cherokees. The other was French,&mdash;no reprisal for his sake was
+possible to a tribe under British allegiance. Death it must
+be!&mdash;doubtless with all the pomp and circumstance of the torture, for
+from the standpoint of the Indians they had requited hospitality with
+robbery. Death was inevitable,&mdash;unless they could now escape. Had they
+but one weapon between them they might yet make good their flight.</p>
+
+<p>An Irishman rarely stops to count the odds. With the thought O'Kimmon,
+heavy, muscular, yet alert, threw himself upon Oo-koo-koo, and in an
+instant he had almost wrenched the knife from the Indian's belt.</p>
+
+<p>The other Cherokee cried warningly, &quot;<i>Akee-rooka! Akee-rooka</i>!&quot; (I will
+shoot!) Then drew his pistol and fired.</p>
+
+<p>The next moment, perhaps for many moments thereafter, none of them knew
+very definitely what had happened. There was a cloud of dust, a terrific
+detonation, a sudden absolute darkness, as in some revulsion of nature,
+a stifling sensation. They were penned within the grotto by a great
+fragment of the beetling cliff. Doubtless it had been previously
+fractured by the action of continuous freezes, and the concussion of the
+pistol shot in the restricted space of the cave below had brought it
+down.</p>
+
+<p>The days went on. The men were missed after a time, but a considerable
+interval had elapsed. The two strangers had of late kept themselves much
+apart, owing to their absorption and their covert methods of seeking for
+gold. It was an ill-ordered, roaming, sylvan life they led at best. The
+cheera-taghe, although &quot;beloved men&quot; and priests of their strange and
+savage religion, were but wild Indians, and their temporary absence
+created no surprise. In fact, until sought with anxiety when the drought
+had become excessive and threatened the later crops, and the services of
+the cheera-taghe were necessary to invoke and with wild barbaric
+ceremonials bring down the lightning and thunder to clear the atmosphere
+and the rain to refresh the soil, it was not ascertained that the
+prophets had definitely disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Then it was that excitement supervened, search, anxiety, grief, fear.
+There began to be vague rumors of untoward sounds, remembered rather
+than noticed at the time. Faint explosions had been heard in the night
+as if under the ground, and again in broad daylight as if in the air.
+None could imagine that the doomed men had sought to attract the
+attention of the town by firing off their pistols, thus utilizing their
+scanty ammunition. The strain grew intense; superstitious fancies
+supplemented the real mystery; the place was finally abandoned, and thus
+Nilaque Great became a &quot;waste town.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was ten years, perhaps, after this blight had fallen upon it, that
+one day as the pack-train came down the valley of the Little Tennessee,
+on its autumnal return trip to Charlestown, the snow began to sift down.
+An unseasonable storm it was, for the winter had hardly set in. A north
+wind sprang up; the snow was soon heavily driving; within an hour the
+woods, still in the red leafage of autumn, were covered with snow and
+encased in ice. Only by a strenuous effort would the train be able to
+pass the old &quot;waste town&quot; before the early dusk,&mdash;a mile or two at most;
+but it was hoped that this might suffice to keep the ghosts out of the
+bounds of visibility. The roaring bacchanalian glees with which the
+pack-men set the melancholy sheeted woods aquiver might well send the
+ghosts out of earshot, presuming them endowed with volition.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Cuddy Barnett discovered that one of the pack-horses of his own
+especial charge was missing,&mdash;a good bay with a load of fine dressed
+deerskins to take to Charlestown, then the great mart of all this far
+region. A recollection of a sharp curve in the trading-path, running
+dangerously near a bluff bank, came abruptly into his mind. Drifts had
+lodged in its jagged crevices, and it might well have chanced that here
+the animal had lost his footing and slipped out of the steadily trotting
+file along the river bank unnoticed in the blinding snow.</p>
+
+<p>This theory seemed eminently plausible to his comrades, but when they
+learned that he was of the opinion that the disaster had happened at the
+old &quot;waste town,&quot; as he had there first missed the animal in the file,
+not one would go back with him to search the locality,&mdash;not for the
+horse, not for the peltry, not even to avert the displeasure of their
+employer in Charlestown. Barnett besought their aid for a time, urging
+the project of rescue as they all sat around the roaring camp-fire under
+the sheltering branches of a cluster of fir trees that, acting as
+wind-break, served to fend off in some degree the fury of the storm. The
+ruddy flare illumined far shadowy aisles of the snowy wilderness, all
+agloom with the early dusk. Despite the falling flakes, they could still
+see the picketed pack-horses, now freed from their burdens, huddling
+together and holding down their heads to the icy blast as they munched
+their forage. The supper of the young pack-men was broiling on the
+coals; their faces were florid with the keen wind, their coonskin caps
+all crested with snow; and the fringes of their buckskin raiment had
+tinkling pendants of icicles; but although they had found good cheer in
+a chortling jug, uncorked as the first preliminary of encamping, they
+had not yet imbibed sufficient fictitious courage to set at naught their
+fears of the old &quot;waste town.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Barnett at last acquiesced in the relinquishment of his desire of
+rescue. Some losses must needs occur in a great trade, and considering
+the stress of the weather, the long distances traversed, the dangers of
+the lonely wildernesses in the territory of savages, the incident would
+doubtless be leniently overlooked. And then he bethought himself of the
+horse,&mdash;a good horse, stout, swift, kindly disposed; a hard fate the
+animal had encountered,&mdash;abandoned here to starve in these bleak winter
+woods. Perhaps he might be lying there at the foot of the cliffs with a
+broken leg, suffering the immeasurable agonies of a dumb beast, for the
+lack of a merciful pistol-ball to put him at peace. Barnett could not
+resist the mute appeal of his fancy.</p>
+
+<p>Presently he was trudging alone along the icy path. The flare of the red
+fire grew dim behind him; the last flicker faded. The woods were all
+unillumined, ghastly white, with a hovering gray shadow. The song of the
+bivouac fainted in the distance and failed; the echo grew doubtful and
+dull; and now in absolute silence that somehow set his nerves aquiver he
+was coming in with the dreary dusk and the driving snow to the old
+&quot;waste town,&quot; Nilaque Great.</p>
+
+<p>More silent even than the wilderness it seemed with the muffling drifts
+heavy on the roofs, blocking the dark open doors of the tenantless
+dwellings, lying in fluffy masses on the boughs of the trees that had
+once made the desert spaces so pleasantly umbrageous in those sweet
+summers so long ago. The great circular council-house, shaped like a
+dome, was whitely aglimmer against the gray twilight and the wintry
+background of the woods and mountains,&mdash;only the vaguest suggestions of
+heights seen through the ceaseless whirl of the crystalline flakes. No
+wolf now, although remembering the casual glimpse he had had he was
+prepared with rifle and pistol, and held his knife in his hand; no bear;
+no sign of living creature until, as he skirted the jagged bluff of the
+river where he fancied the horse might have lost his footing, he heard a
+sudden whinny of welcome, the sound keen and eerie and intrusive in the
+strange breathless solemnity of the silent place.</p>
+
+<p>Gazing cautiously over the verge of the precipice, he saw the animal
+despite the gathering shadows. The horse was quite safe, having
+doubtless slipped down in the soft densities of a great drift dislodged
+from the crevice by his own weight. His pack was still on his back, now
+piled twice as high with snow. He lifted his arched neck as he sprang
+about with undiminished activity, vainly seeking to ascend the almost
+sheer precipice.</p>
+
+<p>Daylight, however, was essential for his rescue. The effort now on these
+icy steeps might cost either man or beast a broken limb, if no more.
+With an instinct of self-protection the animal had chosen the lee of a
+great buttress of the cliff, and could stand there safely all night
+though the temperature should fall still lower. The young pack-man
+called out a word or two of encouragement, listening fearfully as the
+sound struck back in the silence from the icy bank of the river, the
+craggy hillsides, and the resonant walls of the deserted houses in the
+old &quot;waste town.&quot; Himself suddenly stricken to silence, he realized as
+he turned that the night had at last closed in. It lay dark and desolate
+in the limitless woods, where a vague sense of motion gave token that
+the snow was still viewlessly falling in the dense obscurities.</p>
+
+<p>But in the &quot;waste town&quot; itself a pallid visibility lingered in the open
+spaces where the trees were few, and gloomily showed the empty cabins,
+the deserted council-house, the vacant &quot;beloved square.&quot; Somehow, turn
+as he would, this dim scene in the midst of the dense darkness of the
+stormy night was before his eyes. Again and again he plunged into the
+woods seeking to follow the well-known trail of the trading-path to the
+camp and rejoin his companions, but invariably he would emerge from the
+wilderness after a toilsome tramp, entering the old &quot;waste town&quot; at a
+different angle.</p>
+
+<p>He perceived at length that he could not keep the direction, that he was
+wandering in a circle after the manner of those lost in forests. His
+clothing, freezing upon his body, was calculated for warmer weather; the
+buckskin shirt and leggings, the garb of the frontiersmen, copied from
+the attire of the Indians, were of a thin and pliable texture, owing to
+the peculiar skill of the savages in dressing peltry. An early historian
+describes such costume in a curiously sophisticated phrase as the
+&quot;summer visiting dress of the Indians.&quot; The southern tribes were
+intensely averse to cold, for in winter they wore furs and garments made
+of buffalo hides, the shaggy side inward; this raiment was sewed with
+the sinews of deer and a kind of wild hemp for thread, and with needles
+dexterously fashioned of fishbone.</p>
+
+<p>Barnett had now no thought of the ghosts of the old &quot;waste town.&quot; His
+first care was to save his life this cruel night; without fire, without
+food, without shelter, it might be that he had indeed come to the end.
+He was induced by this reflection to climb the mound to the old
+council-house. For here the walls, plastered both within and without
+with the strong adhesive red clay of the region, admitted no wind, while
+in the cabins which had been dwellings the drifts lay deep beneath the
+rifts in the dilapidated roofs and the crevices in the wall, and the
+flying flakes sifted in as the keen gusts surged through. He had had the
+forethought to gather as he went bits of wood, now a loose clapboard or
+piece of bark from low-hanging eaves, now a fragment of half-rotten
+puncheon from a doorstep, and as he groped into the dense darkness of
+the council-house with his steel and flint he set them alight on the
+hearth in the centre of the floor.</p>
+
+<p>When he was once more warm and free of the fear of death, other fears
+took hold upon him. In the first glimmers of the fire he could see
+through the tall narrow doorless portal only the dark night outside and
+a flickering glimpse against its blackness of the quivering crystals of
+the snow,&mdash;these but vaguely, for the blue smoke eddying through the
+great room veiled the opposite side, there being no chimney or window,
+and he sat in the interior behind the fire.</p>
+
+<p>He gazed furtively over his shoulder ever and anon, as the flames flared
+up, revealing the deeply red walls of the dome-like place with here and
+there a buffalo skin suspended against them, the inside of the hide
+showing, painted in curious hieroglyphics, brilliant with color, and
+instinct with an untranslated meaning; a number of conch shells lay
+about, with jars and vases of clay, and those quaintly fashioned earthen
+drums, the heads of tightly stretched deerskin,&mdash;all paraphernalia of
+the savage worship which the cheera-taghe had conducted, now abandoned
+as bewitched.</p>
+
+<p>Sitting here comfortably in the place of those men of the &quot;divine fire,&quot;
+Cuthbert Barnett, his rifle by his side, his knife in his belt, his
+coonskin cap pushed back from his face, once more florid, warm, tingling
+from the keen wind of the day and the change to this heated air, and
+with perchance a drowsy eyelid, began to marvel anew as to the fate of
+the cheera-taghe. Hardly a drowsy eyelid, he consciously had, however,
+for he had resolved that he would not sleep. His situation here alone
+was too dangerous; he feared wolves,&mdash;the fire that would otherwise
+affright them might untended sink too low. He feared also some wandering
+Indian. Should he be discovered here by means of the unaccustomed light
+he might be wantonly murdered as he slept, or in revenge for the
+sacrilege of his intrusion among these things that the savages had
+esteemed sacred.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, when he suddenly saw the cheera-taghe he saw them quite
+plainly. Tall, stately, splendidly arrayed in their barbaric garb,
+draped with their iridescent feather-wrought mantles, their heads
+dressed with white plumes, a staff of cane adorned with white feathers
+in the right hand, a green bough in the left, preceded by those
+curiously sonorous earthen drums, of which the drone blended with the
+notes of the religious song, <i>Yo-he-wah-yah! Yo-he-wah-yah!</i> they thrice
+led the glittering procession of the &quot;holy dance&quot; around and around the
+&quot;beloved square.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A blank interval ensued. And then again he saw them, nearer now, more
+distinct; they were entering the temple; they were close at hand;
+triumphant of mien, assured, so full of life!&mdash;he could laugh to think
+that he had had a dream, or had heard somehow, that they were dead or
+lost or vaguely gone. For here, without seeming in the least to notice
+his presence, they kindled anew with friction of bits of poplar or white
+oak the fire for the new year, the <i>cheera</i>, the &quot;sacred flame,&quot; to bear
+it outside to distribute it to the assembled people of Nilaque Great.
+Without was summer; the trees were full of green leaves; canoes were
+glancing along the shimmering river; the &quot;beloved square&quot; was crowded
+with braves,&mdash;he saw their feathered crests wave and glisten; the wind
+was blowing fresh and cool; the sun shone.</p>
+
+<p>And suddenly it was shining in his face, as it came up over the Great
+Smoky Mountains, sending its first long slanting wintry beams through
+the narrow portal to the hearth where he had lain asleep before the
+ashes of the once &quot;sacred fire,&quot; covered with the fresh ashes of last
+night's vigil, for they too were dead. He staggered to his feet and went
+out into the glistening dawn of this snowy sunlit day, hardly able to
+reconcile its aspect with the summer-tide scene he had just quitted. Now
+and again he paused, half-bewildered, as if unfamiliar with the pathetic
+miseries of the old &quot;waste town&quot;&mdash;the scene in his mind savored far more
+of reality.</p>
+
+<p>The necessity of caring for the pack-horse, perhaps better than aught
+else, served to restore his faculties. He found it easy now to climb
+down the jagged face of the bluffs of the river bank, whence the snow
+had vanished, for in the changeable southern climate a sudden thaw had
+begun in the earlier hours and now the warm sun was setting all the
+trees and eaves adrip. As he stood below the cliff on the sandy slope
+whence the snow had slipped down into the river, the volume of which the
+storm of last night would much increase after the long drought of the
+summer, he carefully examined the horse to ascertain what injuries he
+might have sustained; a few abrasions on the right flank seemed to be
+all, until the animal moved, a bit stiffly with the near fore leg. This
+attracted Barnett's attention to a gash on the knee received doubtless
+when the horse first fell on the ground,&mdash;a queer gash, long, jagged,
+unaccountable, as if it had been made by a dull blade. Glancing down to
+search the gravel, the pack-man discerned, half-imbedded in the sand,
+the edge of a fragment of a knife, a scalping-knife, broken half in two;
+and there, lying not three yards away, was a handle attached to a belt
+heavily wrought with roanoke,&mdash;only a bit of the belt,&mdash;and the other
+half of the knife.</p>
+
+<p>The pack-man's hand trembled and his florid cheek went pale, for these
+lay just under the sharp edge of a huge fragment of rock that had
+evidently fallen from the cliff above, breaking the blade and holding
+the belt fast.</p>
+
+<p>How long he stood and stared he did not know. For a time he heard
+without realizing the significance of the sounds the whoops and shouts
+of his comrades, wildly racing back through the old &quot;waste town&quot; in
+search of him; but although in the strenuous duty of his rescue they
+would venture to pass it in broad daylight, no ardor of persuasion could
+induce them to linger there to investigate the locality of his find, or
+to aid in moving the rock and exploring the grotto that had evidently
+proved a sepulchre.</p>
+
+<p>On the contrary, they deemed the discovery might be resented by the
+Indians as intrusive, and, keeping the secret, they made haste to get
+out of the country with even more speed than their wont. Cuthbert
+Barnett, however, carried his information to the authorities in
+Charlestown, who, promptly acting upon it, solved the mystery of the
+fate of the cheera-taghe.</p>
+
+<p>Since peace with the Cherokees was becoming more and more precarious,
+some satisfaction was experienced by the Royal Governor of South
+Carolina, James Glen, at that time, in being able to urge upon the
+attention of the head-men of the tribe the fact that, although the two
+white strangers had obviously been captured in the act of robbing
+Cherokee soil of its gold, they had as evidently been unarmed, and the
+Irishman, a British subject, had been shot down by one of the
+cheera-taghe, for there was the bullet still imbedded firmly in the
+sternum of his broad chest. Thus a political crisis, which the event had
+threatened, was averted.</p>
+
+<p>Despite the evil chance that had befallen the gold-seekers, now widely
+bruited abroad, stealthy efforts were ever and anon made by the hardy
+frontier prospectors of those days, already busy in the richer deposits
+of the Ayrate division of the Cherokee country, to pan also the sands of
+the banks of the Tennessee; but the yield here was never again worth the
+work, and the interest in the possibility of securing &quot;pay gravel&quot; in
+this region died out, until the later excitements of the discovery of
+the precious metal in a neighboring locality, Coca Creek, during the
+last century.</p>
+
+<p>The old &quot;waste town&quot; long remained a ruin, and at last fell away to a
+mere memory.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+<a name='THE_BEWITCHED_BALL_STICKS'></a><h2>THE BEWITCHED BALL-STICKS</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>At no time in the history of mankind, except during that brief
+Paradisiac courtship in the Garden of Eden, has the heart of a lover
+been altogether unvexed by the presence, or even the sheer suspicion, of
+that baleful being commonly denominated &quot;another.&quot; Here, however, it
+would seem that the field must needs be almost as clear. The aspect of
+the world was as if yet young; the swan, long ago driven from the
+rivers, still snowily drifted down the silver Tennessee; the deer, the
+bear, the buffalo, the wolf in countless hordes roamed at will
+throughout the dense primeval wildernesses; the line of Cherokee towns
+along the banks represented almost the only human habitations for many
+hundred miles, but to Tus-ka-sah the country seemed to groan under a
+surplus of population, for there yet dwelt right merrily at Ioco Town
+the youthful Amoyah, the gayest of all gay birds, and a painful sense of
+the superfluous pressed upon the brain at the very sight of him.</p>
+
+<p>This trait of frivolity was to Tus-ka-sah the more revolting, since he
+himself was of a serious cast of mind and possessed of faculties, rare
+in an Indian, which are called &quot;fine business capacity.&quot; He was esteemed
+at an English trading-house down on the Eupharsee River as the best
+&quot;second man&quot; in any of the towns; this phrase &quot;second man&quot; expressing
+the united functions of alderman, chief of police, chairman of boards of
+public improvements, and the various executive committees of
+civilization. His were municipal duties,&mdash;the apportionment of community
+labor, the supervision of the building of houses and the planting of
+crops, the distribution of public bounty, the transaction of any
+business of Ioco Town with visitors whom individual interest might bring
+thither. So well did he acquit himself when these errands involved
+questions of commercial policy that the English traders were wont to
+declare that Tus-ka-sah, the Terrapin, had &quot;horse sense&quot;&mdash;which
+certainly was remarkable in a terrapin!</p>
+
+<p>His clear-headed qualities, however, valued commercially, seemed hardly
+calculated to adorn the fireside. In sensible cumbrous silence and
+disastrous eclipse he could only contemplate with dismayed aversion the
+palpable effect of Amoyah's gay sallies of wit, his fantastic lies, his
+vainglorious boastings, and his wonderful stories, which seemed always
+to enchant his audience, the household of the damsel to whom in
+civilized parlance they were both paying their addresses. These
+audiences were usually large, and far too lenient in the estimation of
+Tus-ka-sah. First there was present, of course, Amoyah himself, seeming
+a whole flock instead of one Pigeon. Then must be counted Altsasti, who
+although a widow was very young, and as slight, as lissome, as graceful
+as the &quot;wreath&quot; which her name signified. She was clad now in her winter
+dress of otter skins, all deftly sewn together so that the fur might lie
+one way, the better to enable the fabric to shed the rain; the petticoat
+was longer than the summer attire of doeskin, for although the tinkle of
+the metal &quot;bell buttons&quot; of her many garters might be heard as she
+moved, only the anklets were visible above her richly beaded moccasins.
+She seldom moved, however; sitting beside the fire on a buffalo rug, she
+monotonously strung rainbow-hued beads for hours at a time. Her glossy,
+straight black hair was threaded with a strand of opaque white beads
+passing through the coils, dressed high, and copiously anointed with
+bear's oil, and on her forehead she wore a single pendant wrought of the
+conch-shell, ivory-white and highly polished. She maintained a busy
+silence, but the others of the group&mdash;her father, sometimes her mother
+and grandmother and the younger sisters and brothers&mdash;preserved no such
+semblance of gravity, and indulged in appreciative chuckles responsive
+to Amoyah's jests, idly watching him with twinkling eyes as long as he
+would talk.</p>
+
+<p>It would be difficult to say how long this might be, for there were no
+windows to the winter houses of the Cherokees; in point of architecture
+these structures resembled the great dome-shaped council-house,
+plastered within and without with red clay; the floor was some three
+feet lower than the surface of the ground outside, and the exit
+fashioned with a narrow winding passage before reaching the outlet of
+the door. The sun might rise or set; the night might come or go; no
+token how the hour waxed or waned could penetrate this seclusion. The
+replenishing of the fire on the chimneyless hearth in the centre of the
+floor afforded the only comment on the passage of time. Its glow gave to
+view the red walls; the curious designs of the painted interior of the
+buffalo hides stretched upon them, by way of decoration; the cane divans
+or couches that were contrived to run all around the circular apartment,
+and on which were spread skins of bear and panther and wolves, covering
+even the heads of the slumbering members of the household, for the
+Cherokees slept away much of the tedious winter weather.</p>
+
+<p>The fire would show, too, how gayly bedight and feather-crested was
+Amoyah, wearing a choice garb of furs;&mdash;often, so great was his vanity,
+his face was elaborately painted as if for some splendid festive
+occasion, a dance or the ball-play, instead of merely to impress with
+his magnificence this simple domestic circle. Tus-ka-sah dated the
+events that followed from one night when this facial decoration of his
+rival was even more fantastic than usual. Like a fish was one side of
+the young Cherokee's profile; the other in glaring daubs of white and
+black and red craftily represented the head of a woodpecker. The effect
+in front was the face of a nondescript monster, that only a gleeful
+laughing eye, and now and then a flash of narrow white teeth, identified
+as the jovial Amoyah, the Pigeon of Ioco.</p>
+
+<p>The snow lay on the ground without, he said as he shook a wreath of it
+from a fold of his fur and it fell hissing among the coals. The shadows
+were long, he told them, for the moon was up and the world was dimly
+white and duskily blue. The wind was abroad, and indeed they could hear
+the swirl of its invisible wings as it swooped past; the boughs of the
+trees clashed together and ice was in the Tennessee River. The winter
+had come, he declared.</p>
+
+<p>Not yet, Tus-ka-sah pragmatically averred. There would be fine weather
+yet.</p>
+
+<p>For the snowfall so early in the season was phenomenal and the red
+leaves were still clinging to the trees.</p>
+
+<p>Had they been together among men Amoyah would not have cared enough for
+the subject to justify contention, but in the presence of women he would
+suffer no contradiction. He must needs be paramount,&mdash;the infinitely
+admired! He shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>The winter had surely come, he insisted. Why, he argued, the bears
+knew,&mdash;they always knew! And already each had walked the round with his
+shadow.</p>
+
+<p>For in the approach of winter, in the light of the first mystic, icicled
+moon, the night when it reaches its full, a grotesque pageant is afoot
+in that remote town of the bears, immemorially fabled to be hidden in
+the dense coverts of the Great Smoky Mountains,&mdash;the procession of the
+bears, each walking with his shadow, seven times around the illuminated
+spaces of the &quot;beloved square.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The bears knew undoubtedly, the &quot;second man,&quot; the man of facts and
+method and management, soberly admitted. But how did Amoyah know that
+already they had trodden those significant circles, each with his
+shadow? He smiled triumphant in his incontrovertible logic.</p>
+
+<p>And now Amoyah's face was wonderful to view, whether as a fish on one
+side or a woodpecker on the other, with that most human expression of
+surprise and indignation and aversion as distinctly limned upon it as if
+in pigments, for he loved the &quot;second man's&quot; facts no more than the
+&quot;second man&quot; loved his fancies. How did he know, forsooth? Because,
+Amoyah hardily declared, he himself had witnessed the march,&mdash;he had
+been permitted to behold that weird and grotesque progress!</p>
+
+<p>He took note of the blank silence that ensued upon this startling
+asseveration. Then emboldened to add circumstance to sheer statement he
+protested, &quot;I attended the ceremony by invitation. I had a place in the
+line of march&mdash;I walked beside the Great Bear as his shadow!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For, according to tradition, each bear, burly, upright in the moonlight,
+follows the others in Indian file, but at the side of each walks his
+shadow, and that shadow is not the semblance of a bear, but of a
+Cherokee Indian!</p>
+
+<p>Now, as everybody has heard, the bears were once a band of Cherokee
+Indians, but wearying of the rigors and artificialities of tribal
+civilization they took to the woods, became bears, and have since dwelt
+in seclusion.</p>
+
+<p>The thoughts, however, persistently reach out for the significance of
+the fact that in the tradition of this immemorial progress each creature
+is accompanied by the shadow, not of the thing that he is, but of the
+higher entity that he was designed to be.</p>
+
+<p>Whether this inference is merely the mechanical deduction of a lesson,
+or a subtlety of moralizing, with a definite intention, on the part of
+the Cherokees, always past-masters in the intricacies of symbolism, it
+is difficult to determine, but the bears are certainly not alone in this
+illustration of retrogression, and memory may furnish many an image of a
+lost ideal to haunt the paths of beings of a higher plane.</p>
+
+<p>The picture was before the eyes of all the fireside group,&mdash;the looming
+domes of the Great Smoky Mountains, where the clouds, white and opaline,
+hung in the intervals beneath the ultimate heights; the silences of the
+night were felt in the dense dark lonely forest that encompassed the
+open spaces of that mysterious city, with the conical thatched roofs of
+its winter houses and the sandy stretch of the &quot;beloved square; &quot;&mdash;and
+there was the line of bears, clumsy, heavy-footed, lumbering, ungainly,
+and beside each the feather-crested similitude of what he had been,
+alert, powerful, gifted with human ingenuity, the craft of weapons,
+mental endowment, and an immortal soul,&mdash;so they went in the wintry
+moonlight!</p>
+
+<p>There was naught in this detail of the annual procession of the bears,
+always taking place before the period of their hibernation, that
+surprised or angered Tus-ka-sah; but that they should break from their
+ancient law, their established habit of exclusiveness, single out Amoyah
+(of all the people in the world), summon him to attend their tribal
+celebration, and participate in their parade, as the shadow of Eeon-a,
+the Great Bear,&mdash;this passed the bounds of the possibilities. This
+fantasy had not the shreds of verisimilitude!</p>
+
+<p>Yet even while he argued within himself Tus-ka-sah noted the old
+warrior's gaze fix spellbound upon Amoyah, the hands of Altsasti
+petrify, the bead in one, the motionless thread in the other. The eyes
+of the more remote of the group, who were seated on rugs around the
+fire, glistened wide and startled, in the shadow, as Amoyah proceeded to
+relate how it had chanced.</p>
+
+<p>A frosty morning he said it was, and he was out in the mountain
+a-hunting. He repeated the song which he had been singing, and the wind
+as it swirled about the house must have caught his voice and carried it
+far. It was a song chronicling the deeds of the Great Bear, and had a
+meaningless refrain, &quot;<i>Eeon-a, Ha-hoo-jah! Eeon-a, Ha-hoo-jah!&quot;</i> But
+when he reached the advent upon the scene of the secondary hero, the
+Great Bear himself, very polite, speaking excellent Cherokee (&quot;since we
+are alone,&quot; he said), very recognizant of the merits of Amoyah,&mdash;the
+fame of which indeed was represented to have resounded through the
+remotest seclusions of the ursine realm,&mdash;fiction though it all
+obviously was, the man of facts could no longer endure this
+magnification of his rival.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The great Eeon-a said all that to you?&quot; he sneered. &quot;The fire-water at
+the trading-house makes your heart very strong and your tongue crooked.
+This sounds to me like the language of a simple seequa, not the Great
+Bear&mdash;a mere bit of an opossum!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Amoyah paused with a sudden gasp. He was not without an aggressive
+temper, albeit, persuaded of his own perfection, he feared no rival, and
+least of all Tus-ka-sah.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You, Tus-ka-sah,&quot; he retorted angrily, &quot;have evidently strongly shaken
+hands with the discourse of the opossum, speaking its language like the
+animal itself, and also the wolfish English. You have too many tongues,
+and, more than all, the deceitful, forked tongue of the snake, which is
+not agreeable to the old beloved speech. For myself, the Great Bear made
+me welcome in the only language that does not make my heart weigh
+heavy,&mdash;the elegant Cherokee language.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The spellbound listeners had broken out with irritated protests against
+the interruption, and Tus-ka-sah said no more.</p>
+
+<p>As the blasts went sonorously over the house and the flames swirled anew
+into the murky atmosphere of the interior, a weird, half-smothered voice
+suddenly invaded the restored quiet of the hearthstone: &quot;<i>Eeon-a,
+Ha-hoo-jah! Eeon-a, Ha-hoo-jah!</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Like an echo the barbaric chant vibrated through the room. One of the
+sleepers, a half-grown youth, had semi-consciously caught the familiar
+refrain and sang it in that strange uncanny voice of slumber. The tones
+gave fitting effect to the grotesque details of the supernatural
+adventure, and as Tus-ka-sah rose and surlily took his way toward the
+door his departure did not attract even casual notice from the
+listeners, hanging enthralled upon the words of the Great Eeon-a, so
+veraciously repeated for their behoof. Their eyes showed intent even in
+the murky gloom and glistened lustrous in the alternate fitful flare;
+the red walls seemed to recede and advance as the flames rose and fell;
+the sleeping boy on the broad bed-place stirred uneasily, flinging now
+and again a restless arm from out the panther skins in which he was
+enveloped, and ever and anon his cry, &quot;<i>Eeon-a, Ha-hoo-jah! Eeon-a,
+Ha-hoo-jah!&quot;</i> punctuated the impressive dramatic tones of the raconteur.</p>
+
+<p>The next instant Tus-ka-sah was in the utter darkness of the narrow
+tortuous little passage, but after threading this he came out of the
+doorway into the keen chill air of a snowy world, the scintillations of
+frosty stars, the languid, glamourous radiance of the yellow moon, low
+in the sky, and his accustomed mental atmosphere of the plainest of
+plain prose. His thoughts were with the group he had just left, and he
+marveled if no influence could be brought to reduce the prestige with
+which the immaterial chief of the bears, the fabled Eeon-a, had
+contrived to invest the illusory Amoyah.</p>
+
+<p>Tus-ka-sah's expectations concerning the weather were promptly
+justified. A continual dripping from the roofs and trees pervaded the
+early hours of the morning, and soon the snow was all gone here in the
+valley; even the domes of the mountains so early whitened with drifts
+showed now a bare, dark, sketch-like outline against the horizon and
+above the garnet tint of the massed sere boughs of the forests of the
+slopes. A warm sun shone. Not a summer bird was yet lingering, but here
+and there a crisp red leaf winged the blue sky as gallantly as any
+crested cardinal of them all. The town of Ioco was now astir, and
+Tus-ka-sah noted how the softening of the air had brought out the
+inhabitants from their winter houses. Children played about the
+doorways; boys in canoes shot down the shimmering reaches of the river;
+warriors congregated in the council-house and the half-open buildings
+surrounding the &quot;beloved square,&quot; and in its sunny sandy spaces sundry
+old men were placidly engaged in the game of &quot;roll the bullet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was at this group that Tus-ka-sah looked with an intent gaze and a
+sort of indignant question in his manner, and presently an elderly
+Cherokee, one of the cheera-taghe of the town, detached himself from it
+and came toward him. Despite this show of alacrity Cheesto distinctly
+winced as he contemplated the sullen and averse mien of his client or
+parishioner, for the relation in which Tus-ka-sah stood toward him
+partook of the characteristics of both. The professional wiseacre,
+however, made shift to recover himself.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will tell you what you have come to tell me,&quot; the prophet said
+quickly. &quot;The spell on Amoyah does not work.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Tus-ka-sah assented surlily, gazing meanwhile at the face of the
+conjurer. It was a face in which the eyes were set so close together as
+to suggest a squint, although they were not crossed. He had an uncertain
+and dilatory tread, the trait of one who hesitates, and decides in
+doubt, and forthwith repents; being in his prophetic character an
+appraiser of the probable, and the sport of the possible. He wore many
+beads in strings around his neck, and big earrings of silver, heavy and
+costly. His fur garments reached long and robe-like almost to his feet,
+the shaggy side of the pelt outward, the weather being damp, for when it
+was dry and cold it was customary to wear the fur turned inward.</p>
+
+<p>The wise man had been recently unfortunate in his sorcery. The corn crop
+had been cut short by reason of a lack of rain which he had promised
+should fall in June. He had justified the drought, in the opinion of
+most of the Indians, by feigning illness and taking to his bed; for by
+these it was believed that if he had been able to be up and about his
+ordinary vocations the preposterous conduct of the weather must needs
+have been restrained. The fields about Ioco had suffered especially, and
+Tus-ka-sah, as the chief business man of that town, had manifested half
+veiled suspicions that the art of the conjurer was incompetent; this
+rendered Cheesto particularly solicitous to succeed when his magic had
+been invoked to reduce the attractions of Amoyah in the eyes of Altsasti
+and turn her heart toward Tus-ka-sah. For among the Indians the lives of
+the weather-prophets were not safe from the aggrieved agriculturists,
+and there are authentic cases in which the cheera-taghe suffered death
+by tribal law as false conjurers. Cheesto fixed an anxious gaze upon his
+interlocutor as Tus-ka-sah rehearsed, by way of illustrating how
+worthless were the charms wrought, the unsubstantial fiction that had so
+beguiled the fancy of Altsasti, and posed Amoyah in the splendid guise
+of the representative of the great Eeon-a in the shadow-march of the
+bears.</p>
+
+<p>The fate of the over-wise is ever the sorrowful dispensation. The fool
+may be merry and irresponsible. Cheesto was at his wit's end. With that
+unlucky drought in June to confront him, and dealing with the sharp
+business man of Ioco, who exacted his due in the exchange of the Fates
+as rigorously as if in a merely mundane market, the jeopardy of the
+magician was great and his discredit almost assured.</p>
+
+<p>Old Cheesto set his jaw firmly. Somehow, somewhere, something must be
+wrought that would place Amoyah at a disadvantage and bring ridicule
+upon him. No great matter, it might be said, to compass the change of a
+fickle woman's mind, to disconcert a giddy young man. But how? Cheesto
+was aweary of his own incantations and his ineffectual spells. He would
+fain lend Fate a muscular hand.</p>
+
+<p>This thought was uppermost in his mind for several days, even when he
+went with the other cheera-taghe of Ioco to share in the conjurations
+and incantations of the preliminary ceremonials of the Ball-Play,
+without which success would never be anticipated, for a great match
+between the towns of Ioco and Niowee was impending.</p>
+
+<p>This game was usually played in the mid-summer or fall, but it would
+seem that the unseasonable cold weather was well suited for such violent
+exercise and the severe physical training which preceded it, and
+although Amoyah noticed ice in the river as he dashed in for the
+ceremonial plunge which accompanies the incantations, he remembered the
+fact for a different reason than discomfort.</p>
+
+<p>The eighty ball-players of Ioco stood in a row near the bank, submerged
+to the knees. They had gone in with a tumultuous rush, and with their
+faces painted, their heads crested with feathers, clad fantastically and
+gorgeously but scantily, they were holding their ball-sticks high in the
+air with an eager grasp,&mdash;all except Amoyah. Although still in his place
+in the line, he was looking over his shoulder with an amazed and
+startled gaze.</p>
+
+<p>For there upon the bank, as if struck from his hand in the confusion and
+turmoil of first entering the water, lay his ball-sticks. He seemed
+about to return for them, as the implement of the game must be dipped
+also in the water at the appropriate moment of the incantation. But old
+Cheesto, the Rabbit, motioned him to forbear lest by this unprecedented
+quitting of the line during the ceremonial the efficacy of the spell be
+annulled; he himself stooped down and picked up the ball-sticks. Then,
+notwithstanding his age and his fierce rheumatism, notwithstanding his
+long and cumbrous robe of buffalo skin, the skirt of which he seemed to
+clutch with difficulty, he plunged into the icy water, waded out to the
+young man, handed him the ball-sticks, and regained the bank just as the
+other cheera-taghe standing at the margin of the river began the
+incantations supposed to influence the success of the competition.</p>
+
+<p>This Indian game, which has left its name on one of the watercourses of
+Tennessee, Ball-Play Creek, required a level space of some five or six
+hundred yards in length but no other preparation of the ground. At one
+end, in the direction of Niowee, two tall poles were fixed firmly in the
+earth about three yards apart, and slanting outward. At the end toward
+Ioco a similar goal was prepared. Every time the ball should be thrown
+over either goal the play would count one for the proximate town, and
+the game was of twelve or twenty points according to compact, the
+catcher of the twentieth ball being entitled to especial honor. It was
+of course the object of each side to throw the ball over the goal toward
+their own town, and to prevent it from going in the direction of the
+town of the opposing faction.</p>
+
+<p>All the morning crowds of Cherokees of all ages and both sexes had been
+gathering from the neighboring towns, and were congregated in the wide
+spaces about the course at Ioco. These fields had earlier been planted
+in corn, but the harvest had stripped the plain, and now the trampling
+of hundreds of feet erased all vestiges of the growth except for the
+yellow-gray tint of the stubble, spreading out on every side to the
+brown of the dense fallen leaves on the slopes where the forests began
+to climb the mountain sides. Here and there fires were kindled where
+some spectator felt the keen chill of the approaching winter, and more
+than one meal was in progress,&mdash;perhaps such groups had come from far.
+Pack-horses were in evidence laden with rich garments of fur, various
+peltry, blankets, valuable gear of every sort to be staked on the result
+of the game, and soon the men were betting heavily. All the various
+tones of the gamut were on the air,&mdash;the deep bass guttural laugh of the
+braves; the shrill callow yelping of boys; the absent-minded bawl of
+spoiled pappooses interested in the stir, but with an ever-recurrent
+recollection of the business of vocally disciplining their patient
+mothers; the keen treble chatter of women,&mdash;all were suddenly resolved
+into a strong dominant chord of sound as a tremendous shout arose upon
+the appearance of the ball-players of Ioco. Fresh from the river, they
+made a glittering show with the tossing feathers of their crested heads,
+their faces painted curiously and fantastically in white, the bright
+tints of their gaudy though scanty raiment, their bare arms and legs
+suppled with unguents and shining in the sun. This note of welcome had
+hardly died away and the echo of the encompassing mountains grown
+silent, when an agitated murmur of excitement went sibilantly through
+the throng.</p>
+
+<p>A cloud of dust was approaching in the distance, heralding a band of
+men. A new sound invoked the echoes. The breath was held to hear it. The
+throb of a drum&mdash;faint&mdash;far. And here thunderously beating, hard at
+hand, overpowering all lesser sounds, the drums of loco responded. To
+the vibrations of these sonorous earthen cylinders, the sticks plied
+with a will on the heads of wet deerskins tightly stretched, the
+ball-players of Niowee advanced. In a diagonal direction and at a sturdy
+trot they came for a space,&mdash;a sudden halt ensued, and eighty pairs of
+muscular feet smote tumultuously on the ground. Then once more forward
+diagonally, at that swinging jaunty pace, and the stamping pause as
+before. The sound seemed to shake the ground, the impact of the feet
+with the earth was heard despite the turmoil of the drums; the stamping
+vibrations were felt in the midst of the stir of the crowds, and now in
+the nearer approach the individual faces could be distinguished, wildly
+painted; the athletic figures, gaudily clad and barbarically decorated;
+the ball-sticks, held aloft in a sort of rhythmic vibration as if
+quivering for a chance at the ball; and fourscore wild young voices
+howled defiance at loco Town, whose youth in return howled its municipal
+pride, failing only with failing breath.</p>
+
+<p>They were all in the course at last. The judges, elderly warriors and
+absolutely impartial, chosen from towns which had no interest at stake
+in the match, were seated on a little knoll, commanding a view of the
+ground, but at a sufficient distance to be in no danger from a maladroit
+handling of the ball. This was made of deerskin, stuffed hard with hair,
+and sewn up with deer sinews. The ball-sticks, of which each player
+owned his pair, were also partly made of deerskin, the two scoops or
+ladles being fashioned of a network of thongs on a wooden hoop, each
+furnished with a handle of hickory three feet long, worked together with
+a thong of deerskin to catch the ball between the rackets,&mdash;it being of
+course prohibited to catch the ball in the hand.</p>
+
+<p>The drums beat furiously; the word was given; the ball was flung high in
+the air in the middle of the course, and the next instant one hundred
+and sixty young athletes rushed together with a mighty shock the force
+of which seemed to shake the ground. Some fell and were trampled in the
+crush; others madly clutched one another, friend or foe, with the
+ill-aimed ball-sticks, inflicting a snapping hurt like a bite,&mdash;a wound
+by no means to be despised. One, an expert, sent the ball with an artful
+twirl through the air toward the Ioco goal, and in the midst of a shout
+that rent the sky the whole rout of players went frantically flying
+after it, whirling with an incredible swiftness and agility when it was
+caught midway, and hurled back toward Niowee with a force as if it had
+been flung from a catapult. Here and there individual players in the
+frenzied chase made wonderful records of leaps in their efforts to catch
+the ball, springing into the air with a surprising strength and
+elasticity, and a lightness as of creatures absolutely without weight.</p>
+
+<p>A good match they were playing; for more than half an hour neither side
+was permitted by the other to score a single point. The ball seemed for
+a time as if it were awing forever, and would fall to the ground no
+more. The casualties were many; almost always after one of those sudden
+rushes together of both factions that had a tremendous momentum as of
+galloping squadrons, the ground would show as the moving masses receded
+half a dozen figures prone upon the course; one with a broken arm
+perhaps; another badly snapped by the inartistically plied ball-sticks
+of friend or foe and crawling off with a bloody pate; sometimes another
+lying quite still, evidently stunned and to be hastily dragged off the
+course by spectators, before another stampede of the ball-players crush
+the life out of the unconscious and prostrate wight. Nevertheless only
+the normal interest, which however was very great, appertained to the
+match until at a crisis a strange thing happened, inexplicable then, and
+perhaps never fully understood.</p>
+
+<p>The ball was flying toward the Niowee goal and the whole field was in
+full run after it. The blow that had impelled it had been something
+tremendous. A shout of triumph was already welling up from the throat of
+all Niowee, for to prevent the scoring of a point in its favor it would
+seem that there must be a thing afoot whose fleetness could exceed the
+speed of a thing awing.</p>
+
+<p>Amoyah, the deftest runner of all the Tennessee River country, was
+foremost in the crown of swift athletes; presently he was detached by
+degrees from it; now he was definitely in advance; and soon, spurting
+tremendously, he had so neared the Niowee goal that the ball just above
+must needs pass over it if a spring might not enable him to capture it
+at the last moment. As agile as a deer, and as light as a bird, he
+leaped into the air, both arms upstretched, holding the rackets aloft
+and ready. He was a far-famed player, and even now the Ioco spectators
+were shouting, Amoyah needs must win!</p>
+
+<p>A mysterious silence fell suddenly. They all saw what had happened.
+There could be no mistake. The rackets parted at the propitious moment
+to receive the ball. The netting closed about it. And then, as if it had
+met with no impediment whatever, the ball passed through the stanch web
+of thongs and over the poles, and falling to the ground counted one for
+Niowee.</p>
+
+<p>The spectators from that town in their astonishment forgot to shout. The
+onrushing crowd of players, bearing down upon Amoyah, having intended to
+force him to drop the ball, which he had seemed predestined to catch, or
+to throw it so ill as to deliver it into the power of Niowee still to
+secure the point, could not arrest their own momentum, and went over the
+startled and dumfounded player in a swift dash, leaving him prone upon
+the ground. He was on his feet in an instant, his physical faculties
+rallying promptly, but so bewildered and doubtful that he had but one
+definite mental process, the resolve to regain for Ioco the point he had
+so mysteriously lost. Twice afterward his fine playing focused the
+attention of the crowd. Twice their plaudits of his skill rang through
+the vibrating air. Then the ball, hardly checked by the web of his
+racket, passed through the ball-sticks, and all realized their
+bewitchment.</p>
+
+<p>Amoyah heard the gossip afloat concerning the matter before he had well
+quitted the course. The Great Bear had torn the net of the ball-sticks
+with his claw, one brave was telling another as he passed, because
+Amoyah had unveraciously boasted that he had walked by invitation in the
+procession of the bears during their annual march with their shadows at
+their hidden mysterious town in the Great Smoky Mountains.</p>
+
+<p>Amoyah paused, tired, excited, panting, and critically examined the web.
+Surely enough the interlacing thongs had parted in twain in two straight
+lines, invisible save on close inspection, as deftly and as evenly
+severed as if cut with a keen knife.</p>
+
+<p>It was late in the day. The sun was now on a westering slant. The
+parties of spectators were breaking up, some to journey homeward, others
+going into the town with friends. The place that the crowd had occupied
+had that peculiarly dreary aspect characteristic of a deserted pleasure
+ground. Trampled heavily it was, and the charred remnant of a fire
+showed black here and there; broken bits of food were scattered in
+places where feasting had been; a great gourd that had held some gallons
+of water lay shattered on the ground at his feet; a group at a distance
+were doubtfully retracing their steps, searching for something they had
+lost; at the farthest limits a wolf like a dog, or a dog like a wolf,
+was gnawing at a bone, and snarling as he gnawed. It was all frowzy,
+jaded, forlorn.</p>
+
+<p>Somehow suddenly he had a sense of freshness, an illumination, as it
+were a vision, of the early morning light striking through a network of
+bare trees upon the shimmering reaches of a river. And there on the bank
+lay his ball-sticks,&mdash;quite good and sound then, he would have staked
+his life. And now a picture was before him,&mdash;being a man of fancy, he
+thought in pictures,&mdash;a picture of old Cheesto the Rabbit holding the
+ball-sticks half hidden in the folds of his great fur robe and wading
+out into the ice-cold water to restore them. And old Cheesto, he
+reflected, was one of the cheera-taghe of Ioco, and could work a spell
+quite as well as the Great Bear, who had gone to bed for the winter two
+weeks ago, and had not heard of ball-sticks within the memory of
+man,&mdash;perhaps not since he was a Cherokee himself, and playing with the
+rest on the course at Tennessee Town.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, old Cheesto, in common with many men not Cherokees, cared
+little for the public weal when it interfered with private interest. But
+he had not realized how much he had jeopardized the success of Ioco Town
+in cutting the netting of the ball-sticks. He had imagined the
+incompleteness of the racket would merely show Amoyah as incompetent,
+render his play futile and ineffective, and discredit him with both
+friend and foe. Never, however, had the play of any one man been so
+important and conspicuous as his to-day when the bewitched ball-sticks
+became the salient feature and the living tradition of the match between
+Ioco and Niowee. For despite these points, thus lost by supernatural
+agency to Niowee, the bewitchment of the ball-sticks only served to
+illustrate the superior skill of the Ioco team, and to embellish their
+victory.</p>
+
+<p>Amoyah had nothing but his imagination to support his theory, but it
+seemed singularly credible to Altsasti, to whom he rehearsed it, finding
+her seated on the ground before the door of her winter house in great
+dreariness of spirit, that he should in playing so well have won nothing
+and merely jeopardized the game.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am afraid of that Great Bear,&quot; she declared, eying the ball-sticks
+askance as he came up.</p>
+
+<p>Then revealing his theory of the spell that old Cheesto had wrought upon
+him in Tus-ka-sah's interest, Amoyah proposed a counter-spell which
+would defeat Tus-ka-sah.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But Cheesto can still send you trouble if you have a wife,&quot; she argued.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, no,&quot; the specious Amoyah replied. &quot;Everybody knows that a man's
+wife makes him all the trouble that he needs.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>To save him from these woes devised by others Altsasti undertook to give
+him all the trouble he needed. But he seemed quite cheerful in the
+prospect, and as she cooked the supper within doors he sat at the
+entrance, much at home, singing, &quot;<i>Eeon-a, Ha-hoo-jah! Eeon-a,
+Ha-hoo-jah!</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Tus-ka-sah upbraided the magician with the result of this victory, by
+which he was defeated. And the wise man threw up eyes and hands at his
+ingratitude.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I set the Great Bear after Amoyah for you! I made the Eeon-a acquainted
+with his boastful lies, and he bewitched Amoyah's ball-sticks that his
+fine play might come to nothing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Very little to the purpose, the disaffected man of facts reflected,
+remembering the impression produced by his rival's display of skill.
+Somehow Amoyah seemed beyond the reach of logic. &quot;Why did you not
+instead bewitch the woman?&quot; Tus-ka-sah asked.</p>
+
+<p>But this wiliest of the cheera-taghe shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If she had been a <i>mere</i> woman,&quot; he said. &quot;But a widow is a witch
+herself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Eeon-a, Ha-hoo-jah! Eeon-a, Ha-hoo-jah!&quot;</i> sang Amoyah at the door of
+the winter house.</p>
+
+<p>Eeon-a, the Great Bear, made no sign and slept in peace at his town
+house in the mountains.</p>
+
+<p>And since then, as always before, under the first icy moon of the winter
+the company of bears with their feather-crested shadows take up their
+mysterious march seven times around the &quot;beloved square&quot; of their
+ancient secluded town in the Great Smoky Mountains, which it is said may
+be seen to this day&mdash;by all who can find it!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+<a name='THE_VISIT_OF_THE_TURBULENT_GRANDFATHER'></a><h2>THE VISIT OF THE TURBULENT GRANDFATHER</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>It was long remembered in the Cherokee nation. Their grandfather came to
+the Overhill towns on the banks of the Tennessee River in a most
+imperious frame of mind.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Give me a belt!&quot; he cried in irrelevant response to every gracious
+overture of hospitality. For although presents were heaped upon him, the
+official belt of the Cherokee nation was not among them, and he cast
+them all aside as mere baubles.</p>
+
+<p>Even the clever subterfuges of that master of statecraft, the half-king,
+Atta-Kulla-Kulla, might not avail. &quot;<i>N'tschutti!</i>&quot; (Dear friend) he said
+once in eager propitiation; &quot;<i>Gooch ili lehelecheu</i>?&quot; (Does your father
+yet live?) He spoke in a gentle voice and slowly, the Delaware language
+being unaccustomed to his lips. &quot;Tell the great sakimau I well remember
+him!&quot; And he laid a string of beads on the arm of the quivering Lenape,
+for their grandfather was of that nationality.</p>
+
+<p>But what flout of Fate was this? Not the coveted string of wampum, the
+official token, its significance not to be argued away, or overlooked,
+or mistaken&mdash;but instead a necklace of pearls, the fine freshwater gems
+of the region, so often mentioned by the elder writers and since held to
+be mythical or exaggeration of the polish of mere shell beads till the
+recent discoveries have placed once more the yield of the <i>Unio
+margaritiferus</i> of the rivers of Tennessee on metropolitan markets.</p>
+
+<p>A personal gift&mdash;of the rarest, it is true&mdash;but a mere trifle in the
+estimation of Tscholens, in comparison with that national recognition
+which he craved and which a tribe of warriors awaited.</p>
+
+<p>The irate grandfather flung the glossy trinket from him down among the
+ashes of the fire, which glowed in the centre of the floor of the great
+council-house of the town of Citico, one of the dome-shaped buildings,
+plastered as usual within and without with richly tinted red clay. The
+flicker from the coals revealed the rows of posts that like a colonnade
+upheld the roof; the cane-wrought divan encircling the apartment between
+these columns and the windowless walls; the astonished faces and
+feather-crested heads of the conclave of Cherokee chiefs from half a
+dozen towns as they clustered around the fire and stared at Tscholens.</p>
+
+<p>The grave emotion in his face dignified its expression despite its
+savagery. Paradoxically the grandfather was young, slender, and, rated
+by any other standard than that of the Cherokees, an unusually tall
+people, would have been considered of fine height. His muscular arms
+were bare except for his heavy silver bracelets; a tuft of feathers
+quivered high on his head; his leggings were of deerskin, embroidered
+with parti-colored quills of the porcupine, and his shirt was of fine
+sable fur. His voice was sonorously insistent.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>N'petalogalgun</i>!&quot; (I am sent as a messenger) he declared urgently.
+&quot;Give me a belt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He turned his flaming eyes directly upon Atta-Kulla-Kulla, himself in
+the prime of life now, in 1745, who it seemed must act definitely under
+this coercion. He must either refuse to testify to the truth, which he
+knew, or involve his people, the Cherokees, in a quarrel which did not
+concern them, of which a century was tired, between the Lenni Lenape and
+the Mengwe.</p>
+
+<p>So long ago it had begun! The Mengwe, hard pressed by other nations and
+long at war with the Lenape, besought peace of this foe, and that they
+would use their influence with the others. Usually women, prompted
+always by the losing side, protested against the further effusion of
+blood and went with intercessions from one faction to the other. This,
+in view of the number and devious interests of the warring forces, was
+then impracticable, and therefore the Mengwe besought the Lenape to act
+as mediator for the occasion. Only so noted a race of warriors could
+afford this magnanimity, the Mengwe argued. It might impair the prestige
+of a less high-couraged and powerful tribe. And with these specious
+wiles the cat was duly belled.</p>
+
+<p>But alas for the Lenape! Magnanimity is the most dangerous of all the
+virtues&mdash;to its possessor! Presently the Mengwe claimed to have
+conquered the Lenape in battle, and cited the well-known fact that they
+had inaugurated peace proposals. As the Mengwe confederation grew more
+powerful they assumed all the arrogance of a protectorate. They sold the
+lands of their dependents. They resented all action of the Lenape on
+their own account. If the Lenape went to war on some quarrel of their
+making, they had the Mengwe to reckon with as well as the enemy. As the
+years rolled by in scores, this fiction gradually assumed all the
+binding force of fact, till now it was felt that only by the avowal of
+the truth by some powerful tribe, both ancient and contemporary, such as
+the Cherokee,&mdash;who, although allied neither linguistically nor
+consanguineously, by some abstruse figment of Indian etiquette affected
+an affiliation to the Lenape and called them &quot;grandfather,&quot;&mdash;could their
+rightful independence be recognized, re&euml;stablished, and maintained.
+Therefore, &quot;Give me a belt!&quot; cried Tscholens pertinaciously, offering in
+exchange the official belt of the Delawares, or, as they were called,
+Lenni Lenape.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing less would content him. He hardened himself as flint against all
+suave beguilements tending to effect a diversion of interest. He would
+not see the horse-race. He would not &quot;roll the bullet.&quot; He would not
+witness the game of chungke, expressly played in honor of his visit. He
+even refused to join in the dance, although young and nimble. But it
+chanced that the three circles were awhirl on the sandy spaces
+contiguous to the &quot;beloved square&quot; when the first break in the cohesion
+of his pertinacity occurred. The red sunset was widely aflare; the dizzy
+rout of the shadows of the dancers, all gregarious and intricately
+involved in the three circles, kept the moving figures company. These
+successive circles, one within another, followed each a different
+direction in their revolutions to the music of the primitive flute,
+fashioned of the bone of a deer (the tibia), and the stertorous
+sonorities of the earthen drums; and as the fantastically attired
+figures whirled around and around, their dull gray shadows whisked to
+and fro on the golden brown sand, all in the red sunset glow.</p>
+
+<p>Tscholens, quitting the council-house, glanced but indifferently at them
+and then away at the lengthening perspective of the azure mountains of
+the Great Smoky range. The harbingers of the twilight were advancing in
+a soft blue haze over the purple and garnet tinted slopes near at hand,
+their forests all leafless now, although the autumn had lingered long,
+and the burnished golden days of the Indian summer were loath to go.
+Lights were springing up here and there in the town as the glow of the
+hearths of the dwellings, where supper was cooking, flickered out to
+meet on the threshold the rays of the departing sun, which seemed to
+pause there for a farewell glance in at the open door. In the centre of
+the &quot;beloved square&quot; the fire which always burned here was slowly
+smouldering. It flung a red reflection on the front of the building
+devoted to the conferences of the aged councilors, painted a peaceful
+white and facing the setting sun. At this moment was emerging from it a
+figure which Tscholens had not before seen.</p>
+
+<p>A man so old he was that even the Indian's back was bent. His face was
+of weird effect, for amid its many wrinkles were streaks of
+parti-colored paint such as he had worn more than three quarters of a
+century earlier, when his fleet foot and the old war-trace were
+familiar. In common with all the Cherokees, his head was polled and bare
+save for a tuft, always spared to afford a grasp for any hand bold
+enough and strong enough to take the scalp; but this lock, although
+still dense and full, was of a snowy whiteness, contrasting sharply with
+the red paint and belying the warlike aspect of the red-feathered crest
+that trembled and shivered with the infirmities of his step. A heavy
+robe of fur reached almost to his feet, and a mantle, curiously wrought
+of the iridescent feathers of the neck and breast of the wild turkey,
+bespoke his consequence and added to the singularity of his aspect; for
+Indians seldom attained such age in those wild days, the warriors being
+usually cut off in their prime. It is to be doubted if Tscholens had
+ever seen so old a man, for this was Tsiskwa of Citico, reputed then to
+be one hundred and ten years of age.</p>
+
+<p>The step of the young grandfather, sauntering along, came to an abrupt
+halt. He stood staring, exclaiming to the Cherokee warrior Savanukah,
+&quot;<i>Pennau wullih! Auween won gintsch pat</i>?&quot; (Look yonder! Who is that who
+has just come?)</p>
+
+<p>It was an eagle-like majesty which looked forth from the eyes of Tsiskwa
+of Citico, as he seated himself on the long cane-wrought divan, just
+within the entrance of the cabin on the eastern side of the &quot;beloved
+square.&quot; Time can work but little change in such a spirit. An eagle,
+however old, is always an eagle.</p>
+
+<p>The sage lifted one august claw and majestically waved it at the young
+Delaware <i>illau</i> (war-captain) standing before him, while Savanukah
+turned away to join the dancers. &quot;Lenni Lenape?&mdash;I remember&mdash;I remember
+very well when you came from the West!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Tscholens was not stricken with astonishment, although that migration is
+held by investigators of pre-Columbian myths<a name="anchor_11"></a>[<a href="#footnote_11">11</a>] to have occurred before
+the ninth century! It was formerly a general trait among the Indians to
+use the, first person singular in speaking of the tribe, and to avoid,
+even in its name, the plural termination. Tsiskwa went on with the tone
+of reminiscence rather than legendary lore, and with an air of bated
+rancor, as of one whose corroding grievance still works at the heart, to
+describe how the Lenni Lenape crossed the Mississippi and fell upon the
+widespread settlements of the Alligewi (or Tallegwi) Indians&mdash;considered
+identical with the Cherokee (Tsullakee)&mdash;and warred with them many years
+in folly, in futility, in hopeless defeat.</p>
+
+<p>He lifted his eyes and gazed at the sun. A curve of pride steadied his
+old lips. His face was as resolute, as victorious, in looking backward
+as ever it had been in vaunting forecast. His was the temperament that
+always saw in prophecy or retrospect what he would wish to see. And that
+sun, now going down, had lighted him all his life along a path of
+conscious triumph.</p>
+
+<p>And then, he continued, the Lenni Lenape, after years of futile war,
+combined with the Mengwe,<a name="anchor_12"></a>[<a href="#footnote_12">12</a>] and before their united force the Cherokee
+retired into the impregnable stronghold of their mountains, their
+beautiful country, the pride of the world!</p>
+
+<p>He waved his hand toward the landscape&mdash;lying out there in the lustre of
+its exquisite coloring, in the clarified air and the enhancing sunset;
+in the ideality of the contour of its majestic lofty mountains; in the
+splendor of its silver rivers, its phenomenally lush forests, its rich
+soil&mdash;pitying the rest of the world who must needs dwell elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And here,&quot; he went on, &quot;the European found me two centuries ago.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He proceeded to narrate the advent of De Soto and his followers into the
+country of the Cherokees, embellishing his account with unrecorded
+particulars of their stay, especially in their digging for gold and
+silver, in which enterprise he himself seemed to have actively
+participated&mdash;only some two centuries previous!</p>
+
+<p>Tscholens, listening, looked about absently at the &quot;beloved square,&quot;
+which was vacant, with its open piazza-like building on each of the four
+sides. Two or three men were talking in the &quot;war cabin,&quot; painted a vivid
+red. On the western side of the square the roof of the &quot;holy cabin&quot;
+showed dark against a lustrous reach of the shimmering river; despite
+the shadows within the broad entrance, the &quot;sacred white seat&quot; and the
+red clay transverse wall that partitioned off the <i>sanctum sanctorum</i>
+were plainly visible, but all was empty, deserted&mdash;the cheera-taghe had
+departed for the night.</p>
+
+<p>As Tsiskwa paused to cough, the Delaware, suddenly taking heart of
+grace, observed that it had always been the boast of the Lenni Lenape
+that they were the first tribe to welcome the European, the Dutch, to
+the land that they now called New York.</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon Tsiskwa retorted in a tempest of racking coughs that, whoever
+welcomed the Europeans here or there, it was no credit that the Lenape
+should be so forward to appropriate it! The white people were not the
+friends of the red man. They wanted the whole country. Finally they
+would have it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Mattapewiwak nik, schwannakwak</i>!&quot; (The white people are a deceiving
+lot!) said Tscholens, seeking some common ground on which they could
+meet with a mutual sentiment.</p>
+
+<p>And at once Tsiskwa was all animation and as aggressive as at twenty.
+Well, indeed, might the Lenape say that! They were forever an easy
+prey&mdash;not only of the astute Europeans, but of the simple Indian as
+well. For a hundred years they had been the dupe of the Mengwe! As the
+mind of Tsiskwa dwelt on the various subtleties of the diplomatic
+attitude of the Mengwe toward the Lenape, its craft so appealed to him
+that his lips curved with relish; a smile irradiated his blurred eyes
+and intensified his wrinkles; his cough, shaking the folds of his outer
+fur garments above his wasted chest, mingled with his gay chuckle of
+merriment, as young as a boy's, while he cried, &quot;Iroquois!
+Iroquois!&quot;&mdash;the characteristic exclamation of the Mengwe confederation,
+whence they take their modern and popular name, and signifying, &quot;I have
+spoken! I have spoken!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At the familiar and detested sound the Lenape suddenly smote his breast
+with his braceleted arms, and a strong cry involuntarily broke from
+him&mdash;so poignant, so bitter, so shrill, that it sounded high above the
+bleating flute, the guttural drone of the drum, the vibratory throb of
+the dancing feet, and brought the pastime to a sudden close. In another
+moment the &quot;beloved square&quot; was filled with crowds of the Cherokees and
+their huddling shadows, all a medley in the last red suffusions of the
+sinking sun. To the tumult of eager, anxious, polite questions,
+Tscholens faltered to Savanukah, who had hastily returned:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>N'schauwihilla! N'dagotschi! Lowanneunk undchen</i>!&quot; (I am fainting! I
+am cold! The wind comes from the north!)</p>
+
+<p>He looked ill enough, but Savanukah's sharp eyes scanned suspiciously
+the aged countenance of Tsiskwa of Citico. Tsiskwa was, however, the
+image of venerable and respected innocence. His aged lips mumbled one
+upon the other silently. He hardly seemed to take note of the tumult.
+When the afflicted &quot;grandfather&quot; was being led away from the scene,
+Savanukah loitered to ask, with well-couched phrase and the show of deep
+reverence, what had been the tenor of the discourse, and it was with a
+galvanic jerk that the old man appeared to gather his faculties
+together.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of what did he talk?&quot; Tsiskwa fixed august eyes upon Savanukah as he
+repeated the query. &quot;Am <i>I</i> to remember of what young men talk?&mdash;the mad
+young men?&mdash;mad, mad&mdash;all quite mad!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For not to Savanukah, surely, would he confess; and although because of
+this reticence that discerning party believed that Tsiskwa had wittingly
+wounded their emotional &quot;grandfather&quot; in his tenderest pride till he
+roared like a bull, Savanukah afterward had cause to repudiate this
+opinion in a conviction which was less to the credit of the acumen of
+Tsiskwa than a full confession of his breach of etiquette in tormenting
+his young &quot;grandfather&quot; might have been. At the time Savanukah felt a
+certain, malicious pride in the old man's keenness and poise and
+capacity, and he said apart to the inquisitive bystanders that, as might
+have been expected, the big bird, Tsiskwa-yah, had pounced upon the
+little bird, Tscholen-tit&mdash;for the name of each signifies a bird in
+their respective languages, and the suffixes imply great and small. And
+mightily pleased was Savanukah with his own wit.</p>
+
+<p>That night came a sudden change. A keen frost was falling soon after the
+sun went down, for the wind was laid, and such a chill glittering white
+moon came gliding out of the mists about the dark Great Smoky domes that
+it seemed the winter incarnate. All adown the desert aisles of the
+leafless woods the light lay with a flocculent glister like snow, so
+enhanced was its whiteness in the rare air and the blackness of the
+forest shadows&mdash;spare, clearly drawn, all filar and fine like the
+intricacies of a delicate line engraving. Something that the daylight
+might have shown, blue and blurred, was about the mountains; it followed
+the progress of that wintry moon westward. Presently, drawn up from
+across the ranges, it proved to be a purple cloud, and despite the broad
+section of the heavens still clear and the glittering whorls of the
+constellations, that cloud held snow.</p>
+
+<p>As the loitering southern winter had been long in abeyance, many of the
+Cherokees of Citico Town were still in their airy summer residences, but
+in one of the conical &quot;winter houses,&quot; stove-like, air-tight,
+windowless, plastered within and without with the impervious red clay of
+the region, after the fashion of the great rotunda, Tscholens, in view
+of his sudden seizure and complaint of the gentle breeze of the south as
+freighted with the chill of the north, was consigned to rest. Half a
+dozen Cherokee braves were detailed to accompany him, nominally as a
+guard; but, there being no menace, this was in recognition of his
+importance and distinction, his escort of Delaware Indians having been
+billeted about in the town. There was no chimney, and although the fire
+which burned in the centre of the clay floor exhaled but little smoke,
+it hung in the air for the lack of the means of escape, and seemed to
+add to the warmth which the fuel sent forth. Now and again the
+superfluity of ashes encroached on the live coals. Whereupon one or
+another of the occupants of the restricted apartment, silent and
+recumbent upon the cane divan, which served now as bed and extended all
+ground the room between the walls and the row of posts that upheld the
+roof, would reach out a long stick, furnished for the purpose to each
+sleeper, and touch off the incumbering ash from the glow of the embers.
+As the night wore deeper into the dark hours these intervals of waking
+were rarer.</p>
+
+<p>Tscholens, muffled in bed draperies of otter furs and feathered mantles,
+his cane-wrought couch softened with panther and wolf skins, heard the
+wind going its rounds, and he realized that the direction of the
+currents of the air had veered and it came straight from the north. With
+the mere suggestion his heart sank. How should he return whence it
+came?&mdash;baffled, denied, empty-handed!&mdash;from these specious Cherokees,
+who yet called the Lenape &quot;grandfather.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The young war-captain had divined since he had been among them that the
+Cherokees were making ready for war against the British government; they
+would attack the South Carolina colonists, and for this reason, if for
+no other, they would do nothing to anger the Mengwe, the Iroquois, whom,
+however, they had often fought: for they loved war&mdash;they loved war!</p>
+
+<p>Gradually the room grew less warm. A sudden stir sounded under the
+divan, and a dog presently crept out to the fire, stretching lengthily
+and yawning widely as he went. He bestowed himself in an upright posture
+by the coals and looked down with drowsy gravity at the glow. His
+pendant ears, his long, pointed muzzle, his upright, rotund body, and
+his pose of solemn pondering made a queer shadow on the wall. He was no
+Cherokee, so to speak, but was the property of a French officer, and,
+following his master here from Fort Toulouse, <i>aux Alibamons</i>, had been
+left in the care of a Cherokee friend to await his owner's return from a
+mission to Fort Chartres and other French settlements &quot;in the Illinois.&quot;
+The dog spoke any language, it might seem; for when one of the braves,
+half-awakened by his loud, unmannerly yawn, called out a reproof to him
+in Cherokee, he wagged his tail among the cold ashes till he stirred up
+a cloud of gritty particles; then he made his way across the room to the
+speaker, wheezing and sniffing, and bantering for a romp, till he was
+caught by the muzzle and, squeaking and shrilling, thrust under the
+divan anew.</p>
+
+<p>Once more silence, save for the patrol of the wind again on its rounds.
+Once more the flare of the fire, dying gradually down to a smouldering
+red glow, akin to the smothered red tone of the terra-cotta wall. Once
+more the hot, angry eyes of the young war-captain, staring hopelessly,
+sleeplessly into the red gloom and the dull mischance of the future,
+sequel of the past.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly a thought struck him. It seemed at first to take his breath
+away. He gasped at the mere suggestion of its temerity. Then it set his
+blood beating furiously in his veins. After a space, in which he sought
+to calm himself, to still his nerves, to tame his quivering muscles, he
+rose slowly to a sitting posture, then stepped deftly, lightly to the
+floor. Standing motionless, he glanced keenly about in the dull red
+gloom. All silence&mdash;no stir save the regular rise and fall of the
+breathing of the slumbering Indians. Nevertheless, with his keen
+perceptions all alert and tense, he felt an eye upon him. He looked back
+warily over his shoulder through the lucid red gloom, like a palpable
+medium, as one looks, through a veil or tinted glass.</p>
+
+<p>It was the eye of the dog! The animal lay under the couch, his muzzle
+flat on the clay floor. A serious yet doubtful vigilance was in his
+aspect. Tscholens was already at the exit, which was a narrow winding
+passage serving as a wind-break, and with a sudden turn leading to the
+outer world. He heard the abrupt patter of the dog's feet on the clay
+floor, and a drowsy voice calling to the animal in Cherokee, admonishing
+him to be still. Tscholens waited without, and, as the dog issued and
+with half-aroused suspicions sniffed dubiously around him, he stooped
+down and patted the creature's head. It was well, after all, that he
+should follow; the noise of the dog's exit and return would serve to
+cover his own absence.</p>
+
+<p>He sought craftily to make friends with the dog. &quot;<i>Mon chou! Mon
+cochon</i>!&quot; he said, aping the endearments addressed to dog or horse which
+he had heard from the French officers at Fort Chartres, where he had
+recently been. Then suddenly in agitation: &quot;<i>Tais toi! Sois sage</i>!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For the animal was indeed no Cherokee. At the sound of his native
+tongue, as it were, he demonstrated how little he cared to be in his
+skin, for his joyous bounces almost took him out of that integument.
+Luckily his gambols were noiseless,&mdash;for the ground was covered with
+snow.</p>
+
+<p>Tscholens stood for a moment motionless, his brain still afire with the
+imminent emprise, but his hot heart turning cold, and failing; for the
+snow&mdash;oh, treacherous cloud!&mdash;the snow would betray his steps and the
+trail disclose the mystery.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, <i>Lowannachen</i>!&quot; (Oh, north wind!) he moaned, holding up both hands
+outstretched to the north. &quot;Oh, <i>wischiksil! Witschemil</i>!&quot; (Oh, be thou
+vigilant! Help me!)</p>
+
+<p>Then suddenly lowering his head, he sped like the wind itself through
+the town, along the river bank and into the sacred precincts of the
+&quot;beloved square.&quot; Ah! here he had stood this evening with what different
+hope and heart. Here in front of the eastern cabin he had sat beside the
+wily Tsiskwa of Citico, who might hardly make feeble shift to sway a
+reed, and yet with sharp sarcasms had stabbed him again and again to the
+very heart.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Pihmtonheu</i>! Oh, <i>pihmtonheu</i>!&quot; (He has the crooked mouth! Oh, he has
+the crooked mouth!) Tscholens muttered between his set teeth as he
+crossed the open space and paused before the western &quot;holy cabin.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But for his rage, perhaps, but for his smarting wounds, Tscholens might
+have labored with some deterrent sense of sacrilege. But no! With one
+elastic bound he leaped upon the &quot;holy white seat,&quot; whence he surmounted
+the tier of places still behind and higher; then he lightly swung
+himself down into the intervening space in front of the inner partition
+formed by a red clay wall.</p>
+
+<p>A momentary pause&mdash;a monition of caution. He looked back over his
+shoulder at the pallid world without, visible across the barrier of
+seats through the broad entrance of the loggia-like place. With the
+reflection from the drifts on the ground and the tempered radiance of
+the moon behind the tissues of cloud, the scene seemed more wan, more
+illumined with ghastly light, because of the density of the gloom
+wherein he stood. The conical-shaped winter tenements had each a thatch
+of snow; the great circular council-house, with its whitened dome,
+glimmered as stately as some marble rotunda, on its high mound, distinct
+against the blurring blue shadow of the night and the gray clouds and
+the bare boughs of the encompassing forest. No living creature was to be
+seen, save the dog that had followed him, and that had paused to
+investigate some real or fancied find beneath the snow,&mdash;a bone,
+perhaps, flung out from the feastings of overnight; perhaps some little
+animal, young or hurt, whelmed in the drift. Now the dog thrust down a
+tense, inquiring muzzle, sniffing tentatively, cautiously, and again he
+plied alternately his forefeet and his hindfeet, digging out the snow
+from the quarry; then once more, with a motionless body and a straight,
+quivering tail, he applied his sensitive nostrils to the examination.</p>
+
+<p>Tscholens with gratification noted his absorption. This was indeed well.
+The animal's persistent following further might have hampered his plans
+and revealed his intrusion. The next moment, as the <i>illau</i> turned to
+his purpose, densest night seemed to have encompassed him. The shadows
+cloaked all, save only the blank wall of clay and, down close to the
+ground, an arched opening into the <i>sanctum sanctorum</i>,&mdash;an opening so
+limited that it might barely suffice to admit a man's body, creeping
+prone upon the earth, and so whelmed in night that it seemed to give a
+new and adequate interpretation of the idea of darkness. Could he hope,
+all unaccustomed here, to turn in that restricted space to retrace the
+way? Could a ray of guiding light be caught from without across this
+high, guarding barrier of tiers of seats? And what perchance might lurk
+within instead of the object of this search?</p>
+
+<p>At the mere thought of this object of search all fear, all vestige of
+anxiety vanished. Tscholens felt his heart beat fast. His blood throbbed
+in his temples. He dropped upon his knees&mdash;a sinuous, supple motion, a
+vague rustle, and he had passed into the unimagined dark precincts
+beyond the aperture.</p>
+
+<p>Absolute quietude now reigned in the &quot;holy cabin.&quot; The darkness filled
+it with a solemnity and awe that made a compact with silence and
+accounted the slightest sound, the softest stir, as a sacrilege.</p>
+
+<p>When an owl&mdash;a tiny thing, the familiar little &quot;wahuhu&quot; of the
+Cherokees&mdash;flitted down with its noiseless wings from out the sky and
+sat, a mere tuft of feathers and big round eyes, on one of the eaves,
+its shrill cry and convulsive chatter smote the night with a sudden
+affright&mdash;all the breathless listening spaces of the &quot;beloved square&quot;
+seemed to shiver at the sound, and the keen sleety lines of snow were
+tremulously vibrant with it as the flakes came slanting down once more
+from the north.</p>
+
+<p>For as Tscholens plunged out from the sanctuary his first consciousness
+of the world without was the chill touch of the falling snow on his
+cheek, its moist, icy breath on his lips beating back his own quick,
+agitated respiration. The little &quot;wahuhu,&quot; all startled by his sudden
+exit, rose with a sharp, cat-like mew from the eaves above his head,
+dislodging a drift upon his hair, and fluttered away to a branch of a
+tree, still gazing after him as he sped swiftly, joyously, to the winter
+house where he lodged,&mdash;the descending snow would soon fill the trace of
+his light footsteps and none be the wiser.</p>
+
+<p>All danger of discovery, however, was not over-past. One of the braves
+in the winter house experienced a vague intimation of an entrance into
+the building, that peculiar chill which accompanies even to the warmest
+fireside an intruder from the outer air. It seemed explained when he
+roused himself and saw standing by the fire the French officer's dog,
+now gazing at the glow with meditative eyes, now diverted to
+industriously licking his sides. As the long cane of the waking Indian
+threw off the summit of the ashes and touched up the embers to a more
+cordial warmth, the dog, always relishing companionship, repaired to the
+side of the divan, and the young Cherokee, pushing him off, noticed the
+dripping sides of the animal where the snow had melted on the hair.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It must be raining,&quot; he said to himself, all unaware that aught had
+entered except the dog, coming and going after the manner of his
+restless kind. The incident recurred no more to his mind save for a
+vague recollection of his error when he perceived in the morning that it
+was snow that had fallen in the night and not rain.</p>
+
+<p>A new sensation pervaded the town upon its awakening. The &quot;grandfather&quot;
+announced the termination of his visit.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>N'matschi</i>!&quot; (I shall go home) he said. And in explanation of this
+sudden resolution, &quot;<i>N'matunguam</i>.&quot; (I have had a bad dream.)</p>
+
+<p>Now a dream among the Indians was of hardly less significance than among
+the Hebrews of old. It was sufficient justification for the undertaking
+of any enterprise or for any change of intention. Thus the departure of
+the Delaware delegation was shorn of all surprise or imputation of
+discourtesy. The head-men among the Cherokees felt it very definitely a
+relief to be freed from the importunities of their &quot;grandfather.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good speed to the journey of the <i>illau</i> Tscholens!&quot; Atta-Kulla-Kulla
+said that evening after the departure, as the head-men of several towns
+sat discussing the matter around the council-fire in the great
+state-house of Citico.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A turbulent 'grandfather' has a stormy voice and makes the heart of a
+young man like me very poor for fear!&quot; the aged Tsiskwa coughed out, and
+they all greeted the great man's jest with a laugh of appreciation, and
+felt it was well that one so old could at once be so sage and so merry.
+But there came a time when they were of a different mind.</p>
+
+<p>A most important crisis had supervened in the policy of the Cherokee
+Indians toward the British government when their attention was diverted
+from their projected demonstration against the South Carolina colonists
+by a sudden attack from their ancient enemy, the Mengwe (the Iroquois,
+as the colonists called them). It was an altogether unprovoked attack,
+it seemed. The martial Cherokees, however, always eager to fight,
+demanded no explanations, but at once took the war-path with a great
+array of their brisk young braves, and because of this interruption, it
+was said, the war of the Cherokees against the British was long delayed.</p>
+
+<p>When at last the <i>casus belli</i> of the Iroquois was disclosed it struck
+the Cherokees of Citico Town like a thunderbolt. The Cherokee nation,
+said the Mengwe, had presumed to recognize the independence of the Lenni
+Lenape, whom they knew to have been conquered by the Mengwe more than a
+century earlier.</p>
+
+<p>This, of course, elicited from the Cherokees a denial of any such
+recognition. Whereupon the Lenni Lenape themselves produced in
+counter-asseveration the official belt of the Cherokees, given in
+exchange for their own, and brought to the hand of their chief sachem by
+their young <i>illau</i> Tscholens, from Citico Town, the residence of the
+Chief Tsiskwa.</p>
+
+<p>A deep amazement fell upon the Cherokees of Citico&mdash;the sort of
+superstitious consternation that a somnambulist might feel in
+contemplating in broad daylight the deeds he had wrought in
+sleep-walking. As to the rest of the nation, it was in vain that Tsiskwa
+denied; for there were many confirmatory details in support of the
+incontestable fact of the official belt openly shown in the possession
+of the Lenni Lenape. The gossips recapitulated the long and solitary
+audience with Tsiskwa to which Tscholens had been admitted&mdash;that strange
+wild cry with which it had terminated seeming now a cry of joy, not
+pain; and this interpretation was borne out by the obvious affectation
+of illness by which he had sought to hide the true import of the
+interview. More than all, the matter was put beyond reasonable doubt by
+the discovery of the official belt of the Delawares in the <i>sanctum
+sanctorum</i> of the &quot;holy cabin&quot; in the &quot;beloved square&quot; among the
+treasures of the blended religion and statecraft which pertained to the
+government of the Cherokees. That Tscholens could have surreptitiously
+exchanged the belts, as Tsiskwa of Citico, dismayed, overwhelmed, yet
+blusteringly contended, was held to be preposterous; for there was not a
+moment, sleeping or waking, when the Delawares were not in the company
+and close charge of the Cherokees, who must needs have been cognizant of
+any such demonstration.</p>
+
+<p>Only one explanation was deemed plausible: the old man, doubtless in his
+dotage despite his seeming mental poise, had lost sight of the political
+significance of the bauble; he had bestowed it after the manner of the
+presents that all were unofficially heaping upon the &quot;grandfather,&quot; and
+had mechanically, unthinkingly, received in exchange the Delaware belt.</p>
+
+<p>After one reeling moment of doubt the town of Citico recovered its
+balance and loyally supported its prince, but the rest of the nation was
+unanimous in the acceptance of the popular interpretation.</p>
+
+<p>How far extended the influence of this recognition by the Cherokees of
+the independence of the Lenni Lenape it is impossible to say, but it is
+well known that they acted independently in the American phase of the
+Seven Years' War and fought on behalf of the French, and in the
+Revolution they took the part of the Americans against the British,
+contrary to the policy of the Mengwe. About the time of the treaty of
+the United States with the Indians in 1795, the Mengwe, who had been
+greatly cast down by the defeat of their allies, the British, came
+forward of their own accord and desired publicly to acknowledge the
+independence of the Lenni Lenape.</p>
+
+<p>The masterly political machinations of Tscholens and the mystery in
+which they were enveloped did not permanently impair the cordial
+relations existing between his tribe and the Cherokees, for so late as
+1779 a delegation of fourteen Cherokees is chronicled as appearing in
+the country of the Lenni Lenape at their council-fire, to condole with
+them on the death of their head-chief; but neither before nor since is
+there any record of another visit of the turbulent &quot;grandfather&quot; to the
+banks of the Tennessee River.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+<a name='NOTES'></a><h2>NOTES</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p><a name="footnote_1"></a>1. <i>Page</i> <a href="#anchor_1">6</a>. The annals of the southwestern settlements commemorate many
+instances of daring hearts in delicate frames, and the pioneer woman who
+perhaps under softer and safer circumstances would have screamed at a
+mouse often shouldered a rifle and bravely joined the frontiersmen in
+the defense of the stockade against the most cruel, most wily, most
+warlike savage foe that ever a civilized force encountered. Courage, of
+all the qualities of the moral panoply, is the least to be reckoned with
+by logic. Perhaps after all it is not inherent, even in the nobler
+organisms, but evolved by a conscientious sense of responsibility and
+the dynamic potencies of emergency. La Bruy&egrave;re says: &quot;<i>Jetez-moi dans
+les troupes comme un simple soldat, je suis Thersite: mettezmoi &agrave; la
+t&ecirc;te d'une arm&eacute;e don't j'aie &agrave; r&eacute;pondre &agrave; toute l'Europe, je suis
+Achille</i>!&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="footnote_2"></a>2. <i>Page</i> <a href="#anchor_2">114</a>. The chungke stone of this favorite game of the southern
+Indians bears a certain resemblance to the ancient discus of the Greek
+athlete. This, it will be remembered, fashioned of metal or stone,
+circular, almost flat, was clasped by the fingers of one hand and held
+in the bend of the forearm, extending almost to the elbow. The genuine
+chungke stone is solid and discoidal in shape, beautifully polished,
+wrought of quartz, or agate, the most distinctive being concave on both
+sides, beveled toward the flat outer edge, and having a depression in
+the centre of both surfaces for the convenience of holding it with the
+second finger and thumb, the first finger clasping the periphery. Its
+usual dimensions are about six or eight inches in diameter. There are
+several varieties of these archaic relics, some flat, others lenticular
+or of a wedge-shell shape, and others, still, concave on one side and
+convex on the other. An absolutely spherical stone, bearing the
+extraordinarily high polish that distinguishes these unique objects,
+found in an ancient mound and supposed to have relation to the same or a
+similar game, calls to mind the globular quoit of the classical athletes
+and that &quot;enormous round&quot; described by Homer, &quot;A&euml;tion's quoit&quot;&mdash;to hurl
+which bowl they vie, &quot;who teach the disk to sound along the sky.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The exquisite finish of the chungke stone was compassed without the aid
+of a single tool, merely by the attrition of one stone upon another,
+&quot;from time immemorial rubbed smooth upon the rocks, with prodigious
+labor,&quot; resulting in an object of such symmetrical beauty that even in
+the museums of the present day, out of which it is rarely seen, it
+challenges admiration. Antiquaries variously contend that it was hurled
+through the air and that it was bowled on the edge along the ground, its
+equilibrium being so perfect that on a level space it will roll a great
+distance, falling only when its impetus is expended.</p>
+
+<p>The chungke stone is often confounded with the Indian quoit, likewise
+circular and fashioned of smoothly wrought stone, but with an orifice in
+the centre, rendering it in effect a ring to be flung over a stake at a
+distance, or to be caught on the point of a lance.</p>
+
+<p>It has been inferred that Adair is mistaken in his assertion that by the
+Indian law the chungke stones were exempt from burial with the effects
+of the dead, since certain of the most perfect specimens known to modern
+archaeological collections were found in the exploration of mounds in
+the valley of the Tennessee River. By many these mounds are supposed to
+be prehistoric, and the game is doubtless of an unimaginable antiquity.
+As late as his day, among the Cherokees; 1736, the stones were kept with
+the &quot;strictest religious care,&quot; and were the property of the town where
+the game was played.</p>
+
+<p>Adair, despite his roving life, had evidently scant sympathy with
+athletics. He may have been growing old and indolent when he speaks of
+the game as a &quot;task of stupid drudgery&quot; and opines that instead of a
+sport it might &quot;with propriety of language&quot; be described as &quot;running
+hard labor.&quot; Other eye-witnesses, however, vaunt the great beauty and
+grace of the game. Captain Bernard Romany chronicles with relish the
+dexterity requisite, the great strength and skill displayed by the
+participants in the violent exercise, although demurely moralizing the
+while on its perilous fascination to both players and spectators, by
+reason of the inordinate temptation presented by its doubtful chances to
+the reckless gambler. Lieutenant Timberlake alone calls it
+&quot;<i>nettecawaw</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As there are moot points concerning the stones themselves and the
+conduct of the sport, so the chungke spears differ in the accounts of
+the early adventurers in this region. The length is variously given as
+eight, ten, twelve feet. The shape is sometimes represented as a lance
+or pole heavy in the centre and tapering at both ends to a blunt point,
+and others describe an implement resembling a magnified golf club of the
+present day.</p>
+
+<p><a name="footnote_3"></a>3. <i>Page</i> <a href="#anchor_3">114</a>.  This choice decoration, popular though it was, could not
+be attained without a penalty commensurate with its valuation. It is
+stated by early travelers among the Indian tribes that thirty days were
+required to properly heal an ear thus distended <i>&agrave; la mode</i>. The
+patient, if one so prideful might be so called, could only have one ear
+in the painful process at a time, in order that he might be able to lie
+in sleeping on the other side until such time as his embellished ear
+should be again serviceable for this prosaic purpose, and permit the
+like decoration of the opposite member.</p>
+
+<p><a name="footnote_4"></a>4. <i>Page</i> <a href="#anchor_4">142</a>. An illustration of how the Choctaws profited by these
+earnest labors may be given in the fate of a chapel erected for their
+benefit at Chickasaha by the French and placed in charge of a Jesuit
+missionary. The Choctaws so far accepted Christianity as to be able to
+travesty the services and mimic the priest with surprising humor and
+verisimilitude when the English came in, and were wont to go to the old
+chapel for this profane exhibition to the mingled delight and
+reprobation of the military new-comers. The chapel was soon afterward
+destroyed, but Captain Romans records that in 1771 he saw the cross
+still standing on the site, a melancholy memorial of futile missionary
+endeavor.</p>
+
+<p>All the Indians, however, were temperamentally averse to the services
+and tenets of the Christian religion, and Timberlake gives an instance
+among the Cherokees in 1760 in which a missionary was balked by a unique
+interruption. &quot;Mr. Martin, who having preached Scripture till both he
+and his audience were heartily tired, was told at last that they knew
+very well that if they were good they would go up; if bad, down; that he
+could tell no more; that he had long plagued them with what they no ways
+understood, and they desired that he would depart the country.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The epitome of theology thus deduced was so far a just conclusion. But
+doubtless the Indians labored greatly with imperfect comprehension.
+Humboldt describes a service among a South American tribe, in which a
+missionary preaching in Spanish was at his wits' end to make his
+audience differentiate between <i>infierno</i> and <i>invierno</i>. They persisted
+in shivering with horror at the picture of the hell of his warnings in
+which the wicked were supposed to be subjected to everlasting winter.
+One is tempted to think that the end might have justified the means if
+the good padre had fallen in with the prejudice against the rainy season
+and adopted, in lieu of the fire-and-brimstone of Scripture, as a future
+state of punishment, the icy Ninth Circle of Dante's Inferno, where</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;<i>Eran l' ombre dolenti nella ghiaccia,</i><br /></span>
+<span><i>Mettendo i denti in nota di cicogna</i>.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><a name="footnote_5"></a>5. <i>Page</i> <a href="#anchor_5">151</a>. The cultivation of personal pride was an essential
+element of training among the Indians. They held the lower ranks of
+white people in great contempt, and Timberlake records that in some
+athletic diversions at which he and other members of the Virginia
+regiment were present they refused to play or to hold conference with
+any of the troops except the officers.</p>
+
+<p><a name="footnote_6"></a>6. <i>Page</i> <a href="#anchor_6">179</a>. The primary and somewhat complex significance of the word
+<i>ada-wehi</i> is suggested by the idea of sorcery,&mdash;a man, or animal, or
+even element endowed with uncontrolled superlative and supernatural
+powers. It has been stated that since the introduction of Christianity
+and the printing of the New Testament in the Cherokee typographical
+character the word has been utilized with its subtleties of
+signification to express spirit or angel. In this story, however, the
+scene of which is laid in a period long previous to the conversion of
+the tribe, or even the accepted date of the invention of the Cherokee
+alphabet, the word is used in its early and original sense to denote a
+magician of special and expansive gifts of sorcery.</p>
+
+<p><a name="footnote_7"></a>7. <i>Page</i> <a href="#anchor_7">186</a>. Although this officer's name was regularly incorporated
+into the Cherokee vocabulary as a synonym of disaster, he seemed to
+revolt at the unhappy plight of the people whom in the discharge of his
+duty he had succeeded in reducing to so abject a condition of despair
+and woe, and has left on record expressions of compassion incongruous
+with his deeds and his position as a professed soldier of long
+experience. He had served in Flanders and Ireland in his youth as
+captain in the Royal Scots before he first came to America as major in
+Montgomerie's regiment of Highlanders.</p>
+
+<p>Some adequate idea of the desolation and destitution of the Indians may
+be gleaned from the reports to the British government: &quot;The Cherokees
+must certainly starve or come into terms, and even in that case Colonel
+Grant thinks it is hardly in the power of the provincials to save them.
+He proposed in a few days to send for The Great Warrior (Oconostota) and
+The Little Carpenter (Atta-Kulla-Kulla) to come and treat for peace, if
+they choose to save their nation from destruction. Till he receives
+their answer he will endeavor to save the small remains of the Lower
+Towns. In the mean time Colonel Grant intends to put Fort Prince George
+into repair, and to wait there or at Ninety-Six till he receives orders
+from Sir Jeffrey Amherst.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The idea of the pangs of hunger and the sight of starvation and
+deprivation may have been the more repugnant to Colonel Grant since he
+was himself famous as a <i>bon vivant</i> and gourmet. Indeed, even yet, in
+turning old pages we come upon records of his dinners. Bartram, the
+Philadelphia botanist, whom the Muscogee Indians quaintly called
+<i>Puc-Puggy</i> (the Flower Hunter) details the great size of a rattlesnake,
+&quot;six feet long and as thick as the leg of an ordinary man&quot; which he
+chanced to kill in his bosky researches near Fort Picolata in Florida,
+and not the least surprising feature of the incident was a message from
+the commandant inviting both combatants to dinner, &quot;Governor Grant being
+very fond of rattlesnake flesh.&quot; This officer, at that time Royal
+Governor of East Florida, was holding a congress with the Creek Indians
+hard by the fort, having come from St. Augustine with a detachment of
+its garrison for the purpose. Bartram, dining in company with Grant that
+day, saw his enemy served up in several different styles,&mdash;and he, too,
+must turn softhearted!&mdash;he could not partake of the dish,&mdash;and &quot;was
+sorry after killing the serpent, when coolly recollecting every
+circumstance of it.&quot; However, neither the rattlesnake nor the Cherokees
+were in condition to profit by these belated graces of magnanimity.</p>
+
+<p>Through Grant's scattered correspondence there is a flavor of &quot;vivers.&quot;
+Frederick George Mulcaster, still with the garrison of St. Augustine, in
+a letter addressed to Grant, then in Boston, laughingly alludes to his
+constant good cheer. &quot;Captain Urquhart writes to his brother officers
+here that '<i>General Grant lives like a General</i>!'&quot; And later, in piteous
+contrast, &quot;His Excellency (the new Royal Governor) gave a dinner
+yesterday to the officers of the Fourteenth and some others. It is the
+only dinner he has given since the one he gave to John Stuart (famous as
+the survivor of Fort Loudon) upon his arrival here,&quot;&mdash;a matter of two
+months. He further notes as a point of interest, &quot;Your black man,
+Alexander, was with me this instant to inquire after your health, and
+has loaded me with <i>beaucoup de complimens</i>. He wishes much to come to
+make your bread.&quot; Doubtless it was well made, for Grant, prospering,
+went on from dinner to dinner, from promotion to promotion, attaining
+the rank of General in the army and great corpulency, representing
+Sutherlandshire in the British Parliament many years, and dying at the
+age of eighty-six at his birthplace, Ballindalloch, in the north of
+Scotland.</p>
+
+<p><a name="footnote_8"></a>8. <i>Page</i> <a href="#anchor_8">212</a>. The &quot;Annual Register&quot; in giving among State Papers the
+text of a treaty between Governor Lyttleton of South Carolina,
+Captain-General, etc., and Atta-Kulla-Kulla, &quot;deputy for the whole
+Cherokee Nation,&quot; dated at Fort Prince George, Dec. 26, 1759, adds in a
+note: &quot;Atta-Kulla-Kulla, the Little Carpenter, who concluded this treaty
+in behalf of the Cherokee Indians, was in England and at court several
+times in the year 1730.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="footnote_9"></a>9. <i>Page</i> <a href="#anchor_9">215</a>. The oratorical gifts of this Indian (under the name
+Chollochcullah, supposed to be a phonetic variant of Atta-Kulla-Kulla)
+are thus described in <i>The Gentleman's Magazine</i> for October, 1755,
+chronicling the details of an earlier diplomatic occasion: &quot;The speaker
+rose up, and holding a bow in one hand and a sheaf of arrows in the
+other, he delivered himself in the following words, with all the
+distinctness imaginable, with the dignity and graceful action of a Roman
+or Grecian orator, and with all their ease and eloquence.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="footnote_10"></a>10. <i>Page</i> <a href="#anchor_10">231</a>. Their tribal name, &quot;men of fire,&quot; and their great
+veneration for that element have given rise to the conjecture that the
+Cherokees were originally fire-worshipers, as well as polytheistic. The
+interpolation of the intensative syllable &quot;ta&quot; is, according to Adair, a
+&quot;note of magnitude,&quot; and the title of their prophets, whose functions
+are blended as priests, conjurers, physicians, and councilors,&mdash;the
+cheera-taghe,&mdash;signifies &quot;men of divine fire.&quot; But Adair protests that
+the theistic ideals of the Indians were wholly spiritual, and that they
+had no plurality of gods. They paid their devotions merely to the &quot;great
+beneficent supreme holy spirit of fire, who resides as they think above
+the clouds,&quot; and he argues plausibly that if they worshiped fire itself
+they would not have willfully extinguished the sanctified element
+annually on the last day of the old year throughout the nation, the
+invariable custom, before the cheera-taghe of each town kindled the
+&quot;holy fire&quot; anew, this being one of their exclusive functions. It may be
+that in their ancient rhapsodies (many of which Mr. James Mooney has
+collected for the Smithsonian Institution) addressed to bird or flame or
+beast the Indians adopted a poetic license no more significant of
+polytheism than the flights of fancy of many Christian poets in odes to
+the moon, to Fate, &quot;to the red planet Mars,&quot; to the &quot;wild west wind.&quot;
+Mere impersonation and invocation in apostrophe and paeans are not
+necessarily worship. Doubtless these spells and charms often arose from
+a superstitious half-belief, an imaginative freak, such as possesses the
+civilized visionary who shows a coin to the new moon to propitiate its
+fancied waxing influence in behalf of a balance at the banker's, or the
+Christianized Scotch Highlander of even the early nineteenth century who
+threw a piece of hasty pudding over the left shoulder on the anniversary
+of <i>Bealdin</i> (the Gaelic for no other than Baal) to appease the spirits
+of the mists, the winds, the ravens, the eagles, and thus protect the
+crops and flocks. There is a thin boundary line as difficult to define
+as &quot;to distinguish and divide a hair 'twixt south and southwest side,&quot;
+between true belief and feigned credence.</p>
+
+<p>The veneration of the ancient Cherokees for the element of fire, in
+addition to their name, its careful conservation throughout the year,
+their addresses to its spirit, <i>Higayuli Tsunega, hatu ganiga</i> (O
+Ancient White, you have drawn near to listen), is farther manifested by
+its traces found in the exploration of burial mounds, intimating a
+ceremonial introduction of the element at the remote period of
+interment,&mdash;if, indeed, the construction of these mounds can he ascribed
+to the Cherokees. Those on which their town houses were erected at a
+later date, the clay-covered rotunda forming a superstructure looking
+like a small mountain at a little distance, according to Timberlake,
+wherein were held the assemblies, whether for amusement or council or
+religious observances, served also as a substitute for the modern
+bulletin-board. Two stands of colors were flying, one from the top of
+the town house, the other at the door. These ensigns were white for
+peace, and exchanged for red when war impended. &quot;The news hollow,&quot; as
+Timberlake phrases the cry, sounded from the summit of the mound, would
+occasion the assembling of all the community in the rotunda to hear the
+details from the lips of the chief. How much more the: &quot;death hollow,&quot;
+harbinger of woe!</p>
+
+<p><a name="footnote_11"></a>11. <i>Page</i> <a href="#anchor_11">323</a>. They are hardly to be regarded as myths perhaps, rather
+as dislocated relics of fact. In treating of the &quot;Origin of American
+Nations,&quot; Dr. Barton says: &quot;These traditions are entitled to much
+consideration, for, notwithstanding the rude condition of most of the
+tribes, they are often perpetuated in great purity, as I have discovered
+by much attention to their history.&quot; It is generally accepted that the
+first historical mention of the Cherokees occurs under the name of
+<i>Chelaque</i> in the chronicles of De Soto's expedition in 1540 when they
+already occupied the Great Smoky Mountains and the contiguous region,
+but the Indians themselves had a tradition, according to Haywood's
+<i>Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee</i>, which was recited
+annually at the Green Corn Dance, in which they claimed that they were
+the earlier mound builders on the upper Ohio, whence they had migrated
+at a remote date. They can be identified with the ancient Talega or
+Tallegwi if the records of the <i>Walam Olum</i> (painted sticks) may be
+believed, the wooden originals of which are said to have been preserved
+till 1822 and considered inexplicable, till their mnemonic signs and a
+manuscript song in the Lenni Lenape language, obtained from a remnant of
+the Delaware Indians, were translated by Professor C.S. Rafinesque &quot;with
+deep study of the Delaware and the aid of Zeisberger's manuscript
+Dictionary in the library of the Philosophical Society.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In this, a dynasty of Lenni Lenape chiefs and the events of their reigns
+are successively named, and from the first mention of their encounter
+with the warlike Tallegwi or Cherokee to the discovery of Columbus there
+is necessarily implied the passage of many centuries. Even the time that
+has elapsed since the Tallegwi were overthrown by them is estimated as
+somewhat more than a thousand years, thus placing this defeat in the
+ninth century. Professor Cyrus Thomas in &quot;The Cherokees of Pre-Columbian
+Times&quot; states that he thinks it would be more nearly correct to credit
+the event to the eleventh or twelfth century. He quotes in support of
+his theory from the <i>Walam-Olum</i> as translated by Dr. Brinton, who
+giving the original in parallel pages, with the mnemonic signs, does not
+use in the English version the Indian names of the chiefs.</p>
+
+<p>This record of the <i>Walam-Olum</i> is really very curious. After passing
+the account of the Creation, the Flood, the Migrations, and entering
+upon the Chronicles, the <i>Walam-Olum</i> reads much like a Biblical
+genealogy, save that in lieu of scions of a parent tree these are
+military successors, war-captains. The following quotations are from the
+version given by Squier:</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;47. <i>Opekasit</i> (East-looking) being next chief, was sad
+     because of so much warfare.</p>
+
+<p>     48. Said let us go to the Sun-rising (<i>Wapagishek</i>) and
+     many went east together.</p>
+
+<p>     49. The Great River <i>(Messussipu)</i> divided the land and
+     being tired they tarried there.</p>
+
+<p>     50. <i>Yagawanend</i> (Hut-Maker) was next sakimau, and then
+     the Tallegwi were found possessing the east.</p>
+
+<p>     51. Followed <i>Chitanitis</i> (Strong Friend), who longed for
+     the rich east land.</p>
+
+<p>     52. Some went to the east but the Tallegwi killed a
+     portion.</p>
+
+<p>     53. Then all of one mind exclaimed war, war!</p>
+
+<p>     54. The <i>Talamatan</i> (Not-of-themselves) and the Nitilowan
+     all united (to the war).</p>
+
+<p>     55. <i>Kinnehepend</i> (Sharp-looking) was their leader, and
+     they went over the river.</p>
+
+<p>     56. And they took all that was there and despoiled and
+     slew the Tallegwi.</p>
+
+<p>     57. <i>Pimokhasuwi</i> (Stirring About) was next chief, and
+     then the Tallegwi were much too strong.</p>
+
+<p>     58. <i>Tenchekensit</i> (Open Path) followed and many towns
+     were given up to him.</p>
+
+<p>     59. <i>Paganchihilla</i> was chief,&mdash;and the Tallegwi all went
+     southward.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>After the earliest mention of the Tallegwi in verse 50 of the First
+Chronicle there are about fifty chieftains enumerated, and characterized
+with their successive reigns before the entrance of the white
+discoverers of the continent at the end of the Second Chronicle. In this
+it is stated at verse&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;56. <i>Nenachipat</i> was chief toward the sea.
+
+<p>     57. Now from north and south came the <i>Wapagachik</i> (white
+     comers).</p>
+
+<p>     58. Professing to be friends, in big birds (ships). Who
+     are they?&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>And with this dramatic climax the ancient picture record closes.</p>
+
+<p>What is known as the Modern Chronicle, a fragment, begins with the
+answer, &quot;Alas! Alas! we know now who they are, these <i>Wapinsis</i> (East
+People) who came out of the sea to rob us of our lands.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And that the modern chronicle shall be certainly correct the successor
+of <i>Lekhibit</i> (the compiler of the ancient story) is assisted by
+critical philologists, and Rafinesque takes issue with Holm touching a
+Swedish suffix in an Indian name. &quot;Mattanikum was chief in 1645. He is
+called 'Mattahorn' by Holm, and 'horn' is not Lenapi!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult to adjust one's credulity to accept as history this
+singular Indian picture-record. Its authenticity is supported by the
+great scope of the system and the reputed subtlety and close accuracy by
+which abstract ideas, the origin of things, the powers of nature, the
+elements of religion, could be expressed and read by those conversant
+with the mnemonic signs,&mdash;as easily, Heckewelder says, as a piece of
+writing. The noted antiquary Squier, however, who in this connection has
+lauded Rafinesque's industry, scientific attainments, and eager
+researches, states that since writing in this vein he has seen fit to
+read this author's <i>American Nations</i> and finds it &quot;a singular jumble of
+facts and fancies,&quot; and adds that it is unfortunate that the manuscript
+in question should fall in this category. To praise, even with
+qualifications, the author without reading all his work on the subject,
+while certainly more amiable, is hardly more conducive to an impartial
+estimate than to disparage on hearsay, according to that travesty of
+critical judgment: &quot;'<i>Que dites-vous du livre d'Hermodore?' 'Qu'il est
+mauvais,' r&eacute;pond Anthime ... 'Mais l'aves-vous lu?' 'Non.' dit Anthime.
+Quen'ajoute-t-il que Fulvie et M&eacute;lanie l'ont condamn&eacute; sans l'avoir lu,
+et qu'il est ami de Fulvie et de M&eacute;lanie</i>?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In contrast with this method the caution and critical scrutiny with
+which Dr. Brinton, in his work on &quot;The Lenape,&quot; deliberates upon the
+question of the authenticity of the <i>Walam Olum</i> are indeed marked. He
+carefully examines all the details both favorable and adverse, and
+finally adduces the evidence of the text itself. The manuscript
+submitted by him to educated Indians of the Lenni Lenape is pronounced
+to be a genuine oral composition of a Delaware Indian in an ancient
+dialect, evidently dictated to one not wholly conversant with, all the
+terminal inflections of the words, which occasional omissions form the
+chief defect of the curious &quot;Red Score.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="footnote_12"></a>12. <i>Page</i> <a href="#anchor_12">324</a>. Some authorities hold that the <i>Talamatan</i>
+(Not-of-themselves) mentioned by the <i>Walam-Olum</i> were the Hurons who
+allied themselves with the Delawares against the Tallegwi, and that
+Heckewelder is mistaken in stating that these confederates were the
+Mengwe. This story, however, follows the account of the war and the
+subsequent subjection of the Delawares as given by Heckewelder.</p>
+
+<br>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Frontiersmen, by Charles Egbert Craddock
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Frontiersmen
+
+Author: Charles Egbert Craddock
+
+Release Date: October 12, 2004  [eBook #13724]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FRONTIERSMEN***
+
+
+E-text prepared by the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team from images provided by the Million Book Project
+
+
+
+THE FRONTIERSMEN
+
+by
+
+CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK
+
+Author of _A Spectre of Power_, _The Prophet of the Great Smoky
+Mountains_, _In the Tennessee Mountains_, etc.
+
+1904
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+THE LINGUISTER
+
+A VICTOR AT CHUNGKE
+
+THE CAPTIVE OF THE ADA-WEHI
+
+THE FATE OF THE CHEERA-TAGHE
+
+THE BEWITCHED BALL-STICKS
+
+THE VISIT OF THE TURBULENT GRANDFATHER
+
+NOTES
+
+
+
+
+THE LINGUISTER
+
+
+The mental image of the world is of individual and varying compass. It
+may be likened to one of those curious Chinese balls of quaintly carved
+ivory, containing other balls, one within another, the proportions ever
+dwindling with each successive inclosure, yet each a more minute
+duplicate of the external sphere. This might seem the least world of
+all,--the restricted limits of the quadrangle of this primitive
+stockade,--but Peninnah Penelope Anne Mivane had known no other than
+such as this. It was large enough for her, for a fairy-like face, very
+fair, with golden brown hair, that seemed to have entangled the
+sunshine, and lustrous brown eyes, looked out of an embrasure (locally
+called "port-hole") of the blockhouse, more formidable than the swivel
+gun once mounted there, commanding the entrance to the stockade gate.
+Her aspect might have suggested that Titania herself had resorted to
+military methods and was ensconced in primitive defenses. It was even
+large enough for her name, which must have been conferred upon her, as
+the wits of the Blue Lick Station jocularly averred, in the hope of
+adding some size to her. It was large enough also for the drama of
+battle and the tragedy of bloody death--both had befallen within its
+limits.
+
+There had been a night, glooming very dark in the past, an unwary night
+when the row of log houses, all connected by the palisades from one to
+the other, presenting a blank wall without, broken only by loopholes for
+musketry, had been scaled by the crafty Cherokees, swarming over the
+roofs, and attacking the English settlers through the easy access of the
+unglazed windows and flimsy batten doors that opened upon the
+quadrangle. Although finally beaten off, the Indians had inflicted great
+loss. Her father had been one of the slain settlers who thus paid
+penalty for the false sense of security, fostered by long immunity. Even
+more troublous times came later,--the tumult of open war was rife in all
+the land; the station was repeatedly attacked, and although it held out
+stanchly, fear and suspense and grief filled the stockade,--yet still
+there was space for Cupid to go swaggering hither and thither within the
+guarded gates, and aim his arrows with his old-time dainty skill, albeit
+his bow and quiver might seem somewhat archaic in these days of powder
+and lead. For Peninnah Penelope Anne Mivane spent much of her time in
+the moulding of bullets. Perhaps it was appropriate, since both she and
+her young pioneer lover dealt so largely in missiles, that it was thus
+the sentimental dart was sped. Lead was precious in those days, but
+sundry bullets, that she had moulded, Ralph Emsden never rammed down
+into the long barrel of his flintlock rifle. Some question as to whether
+the balls had cooled, or perhaps some mere meditative pause, had carried
+the bits of lead in her fingers to her lips, as they sat together on the
+hearth and talked and worked in the fire-lit dusk for their common
+defense. He was wont to watch, lynx-eyed, the spot where these
+consecrated bullets were placed, and afterward carried them in a
+separate buckskin bag over his heart, and mentally called them his
+"kisses;" for the youths of those days were even such fools as now,
+although in the lapse of time they have come to pose successfully in the
+dignified guise of the "wise patriots of the pioneer period." More than
+once when the station was attacked and the women loaded the guns of the
+men to expedite the shooting, she kept stanchly at his elbow throughout
+the thunderous conflict, and charged and primed the alternate rifles
+which he fired.[1] Over the trigger, in fact, the fateful word was
+spoken.
+
+"Oh, Nan," he exclaimed, looking down at her while taking the weapon
+from her hand in the vague dusk where she knelt beside him,--he stood on
+the shelf that served as banquette to bring him within reach of the
+loophole, placed so high in the hope that a chance shot entering might
+range only among the rafters,--"How quick you are! How you help me!"
+
+The thunderous crash of the double volley of the settlers firing twice,
+by the aid of their feminine auxiliaries, to every volley of the
+Indians, overwhelmed for the moment the tumult of the fiendish whoops in
+the wild darkness outside, and then the fusillade of the return fire,
+like leaden hail, rattled against the tough log walls of the station.
+
+"Are you afraid, Nan?" he asked, as he received again the loaded weapon
+from her hand.
+
+"_Afraid?_--No!" exclaimed Peninnah Penelope Anne Mivane--hardly taller
+than the ramrod with which she was once more driving the charge home.
+
+He saw her face, delicate and blonde, in the vivid white flare from the
+rifle as he thrust it through the loophole and fired. "You think I can
+take care of you?" he demanded, while the echo died away, and a lull
+ensued.
+
+"I know you can," she replied, adjusting with the steady hand of an
+expert the patching over the muzzle of the discharged weapon in the
+semi-obscurity.
+
+A blood-curdling shout came from the Cherokees in the woods with a
+deeper roar of musketry at closer quarters; and a hollow groan within
+the blockhouse, where there was a sudden commotion in the dim light,
+told that some bullet had found its billet.
+
+"They are coming to the attack again--Hand me the
+rifle--quick--quick--Oh, Nan, how you help me! How brave you are--I love
+you! I love you!"
+
+"Look out now for a flash in the pan!" Peninnah Penelope Anne merely
+admonished him.
+
+Being susceptible to superstition and a ponderer on omens, Ralph Emsden
+often thought fretfully afterward on the double meaning of these words,
+and sought to displace them in their possible evil influence on his
+future by some assurance more cheerful and confident. With this view he
+often earnestly beset her, but could secure nothing more pleasing than a
+reference to the will of her grandfather and a protestation to abide by
+his decision in the matter.
+
+Now Peninnah Penelope Anne's grandfather was deaf. His was that hopeless
+variety of the infirmity which heard no more than he desired. His
+memory, however, was unimpaired, and it may be that certain
+recollections of his own experiences in the past remained with him,
+making him a fine judge of the signs of the present. Emsden, appalled by
+the necessity of shrieking out his love within the acute and
+well-applied hearing facilities of the families of some ten
+"stationers," to use the phrase of the day, diligently sought to decoy,
+on successive occasions, Richard Mivane out to the comparative solitudes
+of the hunting, the fishing, the cropping. In vain. Richard Mivane
+displayed sudden extreme prudential care against surprise and capture by
+Indians, when this was possible, and when impossible he developed
+unexpected and unexampled resources of protective rheumatism. The young
+lover was equally precluded from setting forth the state of his
+affections and the prospects of his future in writing. Apart from the
+absurdity of thus approaching a man whom he saw twenty times a day, old
+Mivane would permit no such intimation of the extent of his
+affliction,--it being a point of pride with him that he was merely
+slightly hard of hearing, and suffered only from the indistinctness of
+the enunciation of people in general. And indeed, it was variously
+contended that he was so deaf that he could not hear a gun fired at his
+elbow; and yet that he heard all manner of secrets which chanced to be
+detailed in his presence, in inadvertent reliance on his incapacity, and
+had not the smallest hesitation afterward in their disclosure, being
+entitled to them by right of discovery, as it were.
+
+Emsden, in keen anxiety, doubtful if his suit were seriously
+disapproved, or if these demonstrations were only prompted by old
+Mivane's selfish aversion to give away his granddaughter, finally
+summoned all his courage, and in a stentorian roar proclaimed to the old
+gentleman his sentiments.
+
+Richard Mivane was a man of many punctilious habitudes, who wore cloth
+instead of buckskin, however hard it might be to come by, and silver
+knee-buckles and well-knit hose on his still shapely calves, and a
+peruke carefully powdered and tended. He had a keen, wrinkled, bloodless
+face, discerning, clever, gray eyes, heavy, overhanging, grizzled
+eyebrows, and a gentlemanly mouth of a diplomatic, well-bred,
+conservative expression.
+
+It was said at Blue Lick Station that he had fled from his own country,
+the north of England, on account of an affair of honor,--a duel in early
+life,--and that however distasteful the hardships and comparative
+poverty of this new home, it was far safer for him than the land of his
+birth. His worldly position there gave him sundry claims of superiority,
+for all of which his hardy pioneer son had had scant sympathy; and Ralph
+Emsden, in the difficult crisis of the disclosure of the state of his
+affections, heaved many a sigh for this simple manly soul's untimely
+fate.
+
+The elder Mivane, with his head bent forward, his hand behind his ear,
+sat in his arm-chair while he hearkened blandly to the sentimental
+statements which Emsden was obliged to shout forth twice. Then Richard
+Mivane cleared his throat with a sort of preliminary gentlemanly
+embarrassment, and went fluently on with that suave low voice so common
+to the very deaf. "Command me, sir, command me! It will give me much
+pleasure to use my influence on your behalf to obtain an ensigncy. I
+will myself write at the first opportunity, the first express, to
+Lieutenant-Governor Bull, who is acquainted with my family connections
+in England. It is very praiseworthy, very laudable indeed, that you
+should aspire to a commission in the military service,--the provincial
+forces. I honor you for your readiness to fight--although, to be sure,
+being Irish, you can't help it. Still, it is to your credit that you are
+Irish. I am very partial to the Irish traits of character--was once in
+Ireland myself--visited an uncle there"--and so forth and so forth.
+
+And thus poor Ralph Emsden, who was only Irish by descent, and could not
+have found Ireland on the map were he to hang for his ignorance, and had
+been born and bred in the Royal province of South Carolina,--which
+country he considered the crown and glory of the world,--was constrained
+to listen to all the doings and sayings of Richard Mivane in Ireland
+from the time that he embarked on the wild Irish Sea, which scrupled not
+to take unprecedented liberties with so untried a sailor, till the
+entrance of other pioneers cut short a beguiling account of his first
+meeting with potheen in its native haunts, and the bewildering pranks
+that he and that tricksy sprite played together in those the
+irresponsible days of his youth.
+
+Emsden told no one, not even Peninnah Penelope Anne, of his
+discomfiture; but alack, there were youngsters in the family of
+unaffected minds and unimpaired hearing. This was made amply manifest a
+day or so afterward, when he chanced to pause at the door of the log
+cabin and glance in, hoping that, perhaps, the queen of his dreams might
+materialize in this humble domicile.
+
+The old gentleman slept in his chair, with dreams of his own, perchance,
+for his early life might have furnished a myriad gay fancies for his
+later years. The glare of noonday lay on the unshaded spaces of the
+quadrangle without; for all trees had been felled, even far around the
+inclosure, lest thence they might afford vantage and ambush for musketry
+fire or a flight of arrows into the stockade. Through rifts in the
+foliage at considerable distance one could see the dark mountain looming
+high above, and catch glimpses of the further reaches of the Great Smoky
+Range, blue and shimmering far away, and even distinguish the crest of
+"Big Injun Mountain" on the skyline. The several cabins, all connected
+by that row of protective palisades from one to another like a visible
+expression of the chord of sympathy and mutual helpful neighborliness,
+were quiet, their denizens dining within. At the blockhouse a guard was
+mounted--doubtless a watchful and stanch lookout, but unconforming to
+military methods, for he sang, to speed the time, a metrical psalm of
+David's; the awkward collocation of the words of this version would
+forever distort the royal poet's meaning if he had no other vehicle of
+his inspiration. There were long waits between the drowsy lines, and in
+the intervals certain callow voices, with the penetrating timbre of
+youth, came to Emsden's ear. His eyes followed the sound quickly.
+
+The little sisters of Peninnah Penelope Anne were on the floor before a
+playhouse, outlined by stones and sticks, and with rapt faces and
+competent fancies, saw whatsoever they would. In these riches of
+imagination a little brother also partook. A stick, accoutred in such
+wise with scraps of buckskin as to imitate a gallant of the place and
+period, was bowing respectfully before another stick, vested in the
+affabilities of age and the simulacrum of a dressing-gown.
+
+"I love your granddaughter, sir, and wish to make her my wife," said the
+bowing stick.
+
+"Command me, sir; command me!" suavely replied the stick stricken in
+years.
+
+The scene had been an eye-opener to the tender youth of the little
+Mivanes; the pomp and circumstance of a sentimental disclosure they
+would never forget.
+
+Emsden, as hardy a pioneer as ever drew a bead on a panther or an
+Indian, passed on, quaking at the thought of the wits of the Station as
+he had never yet feared man, and his respected Irish blood ran cold. And
+when it waxed warm with wrath once more it came to pass that to utter
+the simple phrase "Command me" was as much as a man's life was worth at
+Blue Lick Station.
+
+Emsden thought ruefully of the girl's mother and wondered if her
+intercession would avail aught with the old autocrat. But he had not yet
+ventured upon this. There was nothing certain about Mrs. Mivane but her
+uncertainty. She never gave a positive opinion. Her attitude of mind was
+only to be divined by inference. She never gave a categorical answer.
+And indeed he would not have been encouraged to learn that Richard
+Mivane himself had already consulted his daughter-in-law, as in this
+highhanded evasion of any decision he felt the need of support. For once
+the old gentleman was not displeased with her reply, comprehensive,
+although glancing aside from the point. Since there were so many young
+men in the country, said Mrs. Mivane, she saw no reason for despair!
+With this approval of his temporizing policy Richard Mivane left the
+matter to the development of the future.
+
+Emsden's depression would have been more serious had he not fortunately
+sundry tokens of the old man's favor to cherish in his memory, which
+seemed to intimate that this elusiveness was only a shrewd scheme to
+delay and thwart him rather than a positive and reasonable disposition
+to deny his suit. In short, Emsden began to realize that instead of a
+damsel of eighteen he had to court a coquette rising sixty, of the
+sterner sex, and deafer than an adder when he chose. His artful quirks
+were destined to try the young lover's diplomacy to the utmost, and
+Emsden appreciated this, but he reassured himself with the reflection
+that it was better thus than if it were the girl who vacillated and
+delighted to torture him with all the arts of a first-class jilt. He was
+constantly in and out of the house almost as familiarly as if he were
+already betrothed, for in the troublous period that seemed now closing,
+with its sudden flights, its panics, its desperate conflicts with the
+Indians, he had been able to give an almost filial aid to Richard Mivane
+in the stead of the son whom the old man had lost.
+
+Richard Mivane had always felt himself an alien, a sojourner in this new
+land, and perchance he might not have been able even partially to
+reconcile himself to the ruder conditions of his later life if the
+bursting of a financial bubble had not swept away all hope of returning
+to the status of his earlier home in England when the tragedy of the
+duel had been sunk in oblivion. The frontier was a fine place to hide
+one's poverty and fading graces, he had once remarked, and thereafter
+had seemed to resign himself to its hardships,--indeed, sometimes he
+consigned his negro body-servant, Caesar, to other duties than his
+exclusive attendance. He had even been known to breakfast with his head
+tied up in a handkerchief when some domestic crisis had supervened, such
+as the escape of all the horses from the pinfold, to call away his
+barber. As this functionary was of an active temperament and not at all
+averse to the labor in the fields, he proved of more value thus utilized
+than in merely furnishing covert amusement to the stationers by his
+pompous duplication of his master's attitude of being too cultured,
+traveled, and polished for his surroundings. He was a trained valet,
+however, expert in all the details of dressing hair, powdering, curling,
+pomatuming, and other intricacies of the toilet of a man of fashion of
+that day. Caesar had many arts at command touching the burnishing of
+buckles and buttons, and even in clear-starching steinkirks and the
+cambric ruffles of shirts. As he ploughed he was wont to tell of his
+wonderful experiences while in his master's service in London (although
+he had never crossed the seas); and these being accepted with seeming
+seriousness, he carried his travels a step farther and described the
+life he remembered in the interior of Guinea (although he had never seen
+the shores of Africa). This life so closely resembled that of London
+that it was often difficult to distinguish the locality of the
+incidents, an incongruity that enchanted the wags of the settlement, who
+continually incited him to prodigies of narration. The hairbreadth
+escapes that he and his fellow-servants, as well as the white people,
+had had from the wrath of the Indians, whom the negroes feared beyond
+measure, and their swift flights from one stockade to another in those
+sudden panics during the troubled period preceding the Cherokee War,
+might have seemed more exciting material for romancing for a venturesome
+Munchausen, but perhaps these realities were too stern to afford any
+interest in the present or glamour in the past.
+
+It was somewhat as a prelude to the siege of Fort Loudon by the
+Cherokees in 1760 that they stormed and triumphantly carried several
+minor stations to the southeast. Although Blue Lick sustained the
+attack, still, in view of the loss of a number of its gallant defenders,
+the settlers retreated at the first opportunity to the more sheltered
+frontier beyond Fort Prince George, living from hand to mouth, some at
+Long Cane and some at Ninety-Six, through those years when first
+Montgomerie and then Grant made their furious forays through the
+Cherokee country. Emsden, having served in the provincial regiment,
+eagerly coveted a commission, of which Richard Mivane had feigned to
+speak. Now that the Cherokees were ostensibly pacified,--that is,
+exhausted, decimated, their towns burned, their best and bravest slain,
+their hearts broken,--the fugitives from this settlement on the
+Eupharsee River, as the Hiwassee was then called, gathered their
+household gods and journeyed back to Blue Lick, to cry out in the
+wilderness that they were "home" once more, and clasp each other's hands
+in joyful gratulation to witness the roofs and stockade rise again,
+rebuilt as of yore. Strangely enough, there were old Cherokee friends to
+greet them anew and to be welcomed into the stockade; for even the rigid
+rule of war and hate must needs be proved by its exceptions. And there
+were one or two pensive philosophers among the English settlers vaguely
+sad to see all the Cherokee traditions and prestige, and remnants of
+prehistoric pseudo-civilization, shattered in the dust, and the
+tremulous, foreign, unaccustomed effort--half-hearted, half-believing,
+half-understanding--to put on the habitude of a new civilization.
+
+"The white man's religion permits poverty, but the Indian divides his
+store with the needy, and there are none suffered to be poor," said
+Atta-Kulla-Kulla, the famous chief. "The white men wrangle and quarrel
+together, even brother with brother; with us the inner tribal peace is
+ever unbroken. The white men slay and rob and oppress the poor, and with
+many cunning treaties take now our lands and now our lives; then they
+offer us their religion;--why does it seem so like an empty bowl?"
+
+"Atta-Kulla-Kulla, you know that I am deaf," said Richard Mivane, "and
+you ask me such hard questions that I am not able to hear them."
+
+It is more than probable that these stationers in the vanguard of the
+irrepressible march of western emigration had been trespassers, and thus
+earned their misfortunes, in some sort, by their encroachment on Indian
+territory; although since the war the Cherokee boundaries had become
+more vague than heretofore, it being considered that Grant's operations
+had extended the frontier by some seventy miles. It may be, too, that
+the Blue Lick settlers held their own by right of private purchase; for
+the inhibition to the acquisition of land in this way from the Indians
+was not enacted till the following year, 1763, after the events to be
+herein detailed, and, indeed, such purchases even further west and of an
+earlier date are of record, albeit of doubtful legality.
+
+Now that peace in whatever maimed sort had come to this stricken land
+and these adventurous settlers, who held their lives, their all, by such
+precarious tenure, internecine strife must needs arise among them; not
+the hand of brother against brother,--they were spared that grief,--but
+one tender, struggling community against another.
+
+And it came about in this wise.
+
+One day Peninnah Penelope Anne Mivane, watching from the "port-hole" of
+the blockhouse, where the muzzle of that dog of war the little swivel
+gun had once been wont to look forth, beheld Ralph Emsden ride out from
+the stockade gate for a week's absence with a party of hunters; with
+bluff but tender assurance he waved his hat and hand to her in farewell.
+
+"Before all the men!" she said to herself, half in prudish dismay at his
+effrontery, and yet pleased that he did not sheepishly seek to conceal
+his preference. And although the men (there were but two or three and
+not half the province, as her horror of this publicity would seem to
+imply) said with a grin "Command me!" they said it _sotto voce_ and only
+to each other.
+
+Spring was once more afoot in the land. They daily marked her advance as
+they went. Halfway up the mountains she had climbed: for the maples were
+blooming in rich dark reds that made the nearer slopes even more
+splendid of garb than the velvet azure of the distant ranges, the elms
+had put forth delicate sprays of emerald tint, and the pines all bore
+great wax-like tapers amidst their evergreen boughs, as if ready for
+kindling for some great festival. It is a wonderful thing to hear a wind
+singing in myriads of their branches at once. The surging tones of this
+oratorio of nature resounded for miles along the deep indented ravines
+and the rocky slopes of the Great Smoky Mountains. Now and again the
+flow of a torrent or the dash of a cataract added fugue-like effects.
+The men were constantly impressed by these paeans of the forests; the
+tuft of violets abloom beneath a horse's hoofs might be crushed
+unnoticed, but the acoustic conditions of the air and the high floating
+of the tenuous white clouds against a dense blue sky, promising rain in
+due season, evoked a throb of satisfaction in the farmer's heart not
+less sincere because unaesthetic. The farmer's toil had hardly yet
+begun, the winter's hunt being just concluded, and each of the
+stationers with a string of led horses was bound for his camps and
+caches to bring in the skins that made the profit of the season.
+
+One of this group of three was the psalm-singer of the blockhouse. His
+name was Xerxes Alexander Anxley, and he was unceremoniously called by
+the community "X," and by Mivane "the unknown quantity," for he was
+something of an enigma, and his predilections provoked much speculation.
+He was a religionist of ascetic, extreme views,--a type rare in this
+region,--coming originally from the colony of the Salzburgers
+established in Georgia.
+
+We are less disposed to be tolerant of individual persuasions which
+imply a personal and unpleasant reflection. Xerxes Alexander Anxley
+disapproved of dancing, and the community questioned his sanity; for
+these early pioneers in the region of the Great Smoky Range carried the
+rifle over one shoulder and the fiddle over the other. He disapproved of
+secular songs and idle stories, and the settlement questioned his taste;
+for it was the delight of the stationers, old and young, to gather
+around the hearth, and, while the chestnuts roasted in the fire for the
+juniors, and the jovial horn, as it was called, circulated among the
+elders, the oft-told story was rehearsed and the old song sung anew. He
+even disapproved of the jovial horn--and the settlement questioned his
+sincerity.
+
+This man Anxley looked his ascetic character. He had a hard pragmatic
+countenance, and one of those noses which though large and bony come
+suddenly short and blunted. His eyes, small, gray, and inscrutable,
+seemed unfriendly, so baffling, introspective, unnoting was their
+inattentiveness. His hair was of a sort of carrot tint, which color was
+reproduced in paler guise in his fringed buckskin shirt and leggings,
+worn on a sturdy and powerful frame. His mouth was shut hard and fast
+upon his convictions, as if to denote that he could not be argued out of
+them, and when the lips parted its lines were scarcely more mobile, and
+his words were usually framed to doubt one's state of grace and to
+contravene one's tenets as to final salvation. He rode much of the time
+with the reins loose on his horse's neck, and perhaps no man in the
+saddle had ever been so addicted to psalmody since the days of
+Cromwell's troopers. His theological disputations grated peculiarly upon
+Emsden's mood, and he always laid at his door the disaster that
+followed.
+
+"If I hadn't been so traveled that day,--dragged through hell and
+skirting of purgatory and knocking at the gates of heaven,--I wouldn't
+have lost my wits so suddenly when I came back to earth with a bounce,"
+Emsden afterward declared.
+
+For as the hunters were coming at a brisk trot in single file along the
+"old trading path," as it was called even then, the fleecy white clouds
+racing above in the dense blue of the sky, their violet shadows fleeting
+as swift along the slopes of the velvet-soft azure mountains, and the
+wind far outstripping them in the vernal budding woods, a sudden stir
+near at hand caused Emsden to turn his head. Just above him, on a rugged
+slope where no trees grew save a scraggy cedar here and there amidst the
+shelving ledges of rock outcropping through the soft verdant turf, he
+saw a stealthy, furtive shape; he was aware of a hasty cowed glance over
+the shoulder, and then a stretching of supple limbs in flight. Before he
+himself hardly knew it the sharp crack of his rifle rang out,--the aim
+was almost instinctive.
+
+And it was as true as instinct,--a large black wolf, his pelt glossy and
+fresh with the renewal of the season, lay stretched dead in an instant
+upon the slope. Emsden sprang from his horse, tossed the reins to "X,"
+and, drawing his knife, ran up the steep ascent to secure the animal's
+skin.
+
+Only vaguely, as in a dream, he heard a sudden deep roar, beheld a
+horned creature leaping heavily upon its fore quarters, tossing its hind
+legs and tail into the air. Then an infuriated bull, breaking from the
+bushes, charged fiercely down upon him. Emsden threw himself into a
+posture of defense as instantly as if he had been a trained bullfighter
+and the arena his wonted sphere, holding the knife close in front of
+him, presenting the blade with a quick keen calculation for the animal's
+jugular. The knife was Emsden's only weapon, for his pistols were in the
+holster on the saddle, and his discharged rifle lay where he had flung
+it on the ground after firing. He had only time to wonder that his
+comrades vouchsafed him no assistance in his extremity. Men of such
+accurate aim and constant practice could easily risk sending a
+rifle-ball past him to stop that furious career. He could see the pupil
+of the bull's wild dilated eyes, fiery as with a spark of actual flame.
+He could even feel the hot puffs of the creature's breath upon his
+cheeks, when all at once the horned head so close above his own swerved
+aside with a snort from the dead body of the wolf at his feet. The bull
+passed him like a thunderbolt, and he heard the infuriated stamping
+which fairly shook the ground in the thicket below, where this king of
+the herds paused to bellow and paw the earth, throwing clods high above
+the environing copse.
+
+The woods seemed full of maddened, frightened cattle, and Emsden's horse
+was frantically galloping after the cavalcade of hunters and their
+pack-train, all the animals more or less beyond the control of the men.
+He felt it an ill chance that left him thus alone and afoot in this
+dense wilderness, several days' travel from the station. He was hardly
+sure that he would be missed by his comrades, themselves scattered, the
+pack-horses having broken from the path which they had traveled in
+single file, and now with their burdens of value all foolishly careering
+wildly through the woods. The first prudential care of the hunters he
+knew would be to recover them and re-align the train, lest some
+miscreant, encountering the animals, plunder the estrays of their loads
+of hard-won deerskins and furs.
+
+The presence of cattle suggested to Emsden the proximity of human
+dwellings, and yet this was problematic, for beyond branding and
+occasional saltings the herds ranged within large bounds on lands
+selected for their suitability as pasturage. The dwellings of these
+pioneer herdsmen might be far away indeed, and in what direction he
+could not guess. Since the Cherokee War, and the obliteration of all
+previous marks of white settlements in this remote region, Emsden was
+unfamiliar with the more recent location of "cow-pens," as the ranches
+were called, and was only approximately acquainted with the new site of
+the settlers' stations. Nothing so alters the face of a country as the
+moral and physical convulsion of war. Even many of the Indian towns were
+deserted and half charred,--burned by the orders of the British
+commanders. One such stood in a valley through which he passed on his
+homeward way; the tender vernal aspect of this green cove, held in the
+solemn quiet of the encircling mountains, might typify peace itself. Yet
+here the blue sky could be seen through the black skeleton rafters of
+the once pleasant homes; and there were other significant skeletons in
+the absolute solitude,--the great ribs of dead chargers, together with
+broken bits and bridles, and remnants of exploded hand-grenades, and a
+burst gun-barrel, all lying on the bank of a lovely mountain stream at
+the point where he crossed it, as it flowed, crystal clear, through this
+sequestered bosky nook.
+
+Something of a job this transit was, for with the spring freshets the
+water was high and the current strong, and he was compelled to use only
+one hand for swimming, the other holding high out of the water's reach
+his powder horn. For, despite any treaties of peace, this was no country
+for a man to traverse unarmed, and an encounter with an inimical
+wandering Indian might serve to make for his comrades' curiosity
+concerning his fate, when they should chance to have leisure to feel it,
+a perpetual conundrum.
+
+He had never, however, made so lonely a journey. Not one human being did
+he meet--neither red man nor white--in all the long miles of the endless
+wilderness; naught astir save the sparse vernal shadows in the budding
+woods and the gentle spring zephyr swinging past and singing as it went.
+Now and again he noted how the sun slowly dropped down the skies that
+were so fine, so fair, so blue that it seemed loath to go and leave the
+majestic peace of the zenith. The stars scintillated in the dark night
+as if a thousand bivouac fires were kindled in those far spaces of the
+heavens responsive to the fire which he kept aglow to cook the supper
+that his rifle fetched him and to ward off the approach of wolf or
+panther while he slept. He was doubtless in jeopardy often enough, but
+chance befriended him and he encountered naught inimical till the fourth
+day when he came in at the gate of the station and met the partners of
+the hunt, themselves not long since arrived.
+
+They waited for no reproaches for their desertion. They were quick to
+upbraid. As they hailed him in chorus he was bewildered for a moment,
+and stood in the gateway leaning on his rifle, his coonskin cap thrust
+back on his brown hair, his bright, steady gray eyes concentrated as he
+listened. His tall, lithe figure in his buckskin hunting shirt and
+leggings, the habitual garb of the frontiersmen, grew tense and gave an
+intimation of gathering all its forces for the defensive as he noted how
+the aspect of the station differed from its wonted guise. Every house of
+the assemblage of little log cabins stood open; here and there in the
+misty air, for there had been a swift, short spring shower, fires could
+be seen aglow on the hearths within; the long slant of the red sunset
+rays fell athwart the gleaming wet roofs and barbed the pointed tops of
+the palisades with sharp glints of light, and a rainbow showed all the
+colors of the prism high against the azure mountain beyond, while a
+second arch below, a dim duplication, spanned the depths of a valley.
+The frontiersmen were all in the open spaces of the square excitedly
+wrangling--and suddenly he became conscious of a girlish face at the
+embrasure for the cannon at the blockhouse, a face with golden brown
+hair above it, and a red hood that had evidently been in the rain.
+"Looking out for me, I wonder?" he asked himself, and as this glow of
+agitated speculation swept over him the men who plied him with questions
+angrily admonished his silence.
+
+"He has seen a wolf! He has seen a wolf! 'Tis plain!" cried old Mivane,
+as he stood in his metropolitan costume among the buckskin-clad
+pioneers. "One would know that without being told!"
+
+"You shot the wolf and stampeded the cattle, and the herders at the
+cow-pens on the Keowee River can't round them up again!" cried one of
+the settlers.
+
+"The cattle have run to the Congarees by this time!" declared another
+pessimistically.
+
+"And it was _you_ that shot the wolf!" cried "X" rancorously.
+
+"The herders are holding _us_ responsible and have sent an ambassador,"
+explained John Ronackstone, anxiously knitting his brows, "to inform us
+that not a horse of the pack-train from Blue Lick Station shall pass
+down to Charlestown till we indemnify them for the loss of the cattle."
+
+"Gadso! they can't _all_ be lost!" exclaimed old Mivane floutingly.
+
+"No, no! the herders go too far for damages--too far! They are putting
+their coulter _too_ deep!" said a farmer fresh from the field. He had
+still a bag of seed-grain around his neck, and now and again he thrust
+in his hand and fingered the kernels.
+
+"They declare they'll seize our skins," cried another
+ambiguously,--then, conscious of this, he sought to amend the
+matter,--"Not the hides we wear,"--this was no better, for they were all
+arrayed in hides, save Richard Mivane. "Not the hides that we were born
+in, but our deerhides, our peltry,--they'll seize the pack-train from
+Blue Lick, and they declare they'll call on the commandant of Fort
+Prince George to oppose its passing with the king's troops."
+
+An appalled silence fell on the quadrangle,--save for the fresh notes of
+a mockingbird, perching in jaunty guise on the tower of the blockhouse,
+above which the rainbow glowed in the radiant splendors of a misty amber
+sky.
+
+"The king's troops? Would the commandant respond?" anxiously speculated
+one of the settlers.
+
+The little handful of pioneers, with their main possessions in the fate
+of the pack-train, looked at one another in dismay.
+
+"And tell me, friend Feather-pate, why did it seem good to you to shoot
+a wolf in the midst of a herd of cattle?" demanded Richard Mivane.
+
+Ralph Emsden, bewildered by the results of this untoward chance, and the
+further catastrophe shadowed forth in the threatened seizure of the
+train, rallied with all his faculties at the note of scorn from this
+quarter.
+
+"Sir, I did not shoot the wolf among the cattle. There was not a horn
+nor a hoof to be seen when I fired."
+
+Mivane turned to "X" with both hands outstretched as much as to say,
+"Take _that_ for your quietus!" and shouldering his stick, which had an
+ivory head and a sword within, strode off after his jaunty fashion as if
+there were no more to be said.
+
+It was now Alexander Anxley's turn to sustain the questioning clamor. "I
+will not deny"--"That is, I said"--"I meant to say,"--but these
+qualifications were lost in the stress of Emsden's voice, once more
+rising stridently.
+
+"Not a horn nor a hoof to be seen till after I had fired. I didn't know
+there were any cow-pens about--didn't use to be till after you had
+crossed the Keowee. But if there _had_ been, is a man to see a wolf pull
+down a yearling, say, and not fire a rifle because Madam Cow will take
+the high-strikes or Cap'n Bull will go on the rampage? Must I wait till
+I can make a leg,"--he paused to execute an exaggerated obeisance,
+graceful enough despite its mockery,--"'Under your favor, Cap'n Bull,'
+and 'With your ladyship's permission,' before I kill the ravening brute,
+big enough to pull down a yearling? Don't talk to me! Don't talk to me!"
+He held out the palms of his hands toward them in interdiction, and made
+as if to go--yet went not!
+
+For a reactionary sentiment toward him had set in, and there were those
+fair-minded enough, although with their little all at stake, to admit
+that he had acted with reasonable prudence, and that it was only an
+unlucky chance which had sent the panic through the herds with such
+disastrous effect.
+
+"The herders should not stop the pack-train, if I had my will," declared
+one of the settlers with a belligerent note.
+
+"No, no," proclaimed another; "not if it takes all the men at Blue Lick
+Station to escort it!"
+
+"Those blistered redcoats at Fort Prince George are a deal too handy to
+be called on by such make-bates as the herders on the Keowee River."
+
+"Fudge! The commandant would never let a bayonet stir."
+
+"Gad! I'd send an ambassador for an ambassador. Tit for tat," declared
+Emsden. "I'd ask 'em what's gone with all our horses,--last seen in
+those desolated cow-pens,--that the voice of mourning is now lifted
+about!"
+
+There was a chuckle of sheer joy, so abrupt and unexpected that it rose
+with a clatter and a cackle of delight, and culminated in a yell of
+pleasurable derision.
+
+Now everybody knew that the horses bought in that wild country would,
+unless restrained, return every spring to "their old grass," as it was
+called,--to the places where they had formerly lived. When this annual
+hegira took place in large numbers, some permanent losses were sure to
+ensue. The settlers at Blue Lick had experienced this disaster, and had
+accepted it as partly the result of their own lack of precaution during
+the homing fancy of the horses. But since the herders manifested so
+little of the suavity that graces commercial intercourse, and as some of
+the horses had been seen in their cow-pens, it was a happy thought to
+feather the arrow with this taunt.
+
+"And who do you suppose will promise to carry such a message to those
+desperate, misguided men, riding hither an' thither, searching this wild
+and woeful wilderness for hundreds o' head o' cattle lost like needles
+in a hayrick, and eat by wolves an' painters by this time?" demanded "X"
+derisively.
+
+"I promise, I promise!--and with hearty good will, too!" declared
+Emsden. "And I'll tell 'em that we are coming down soon armed to the
+teeth to guard our pack-train, and fight our way through any resistance
+to its passage through the country on the open trading-path. And I'll
+acquaint the commandant of Fort Prince George of the threats of the
+herders against the Blue Lick Stationers, and warn him how he attempts
+to interfere with the liberties of the king's loyal subjects in their
+peaceful vocations."
+
+Thus Emsden gayly volunteered for the mission.
+
+The next morning old Richard Mivane, thinking of it, shook his head over
+the fire,--and not only once, but shook it again, which was a great deal
+of trouble for him to take. Having thus exerted his altruistic interest
+to the utmost, Richard Mivane relapsed into his normal placidity. He
+leaned back in his arm-chair, the only one at the station, fingering his
+gold-lined silver snuffbox, with its chain and ladle, his eyes dwelling
+calmly on the fire, and his thoughts busy with far away and long ago.
+
+He was old enough now to enter into the past as a sort of heritage, a
+promised land which memory had glozed with a glamour that can never
+shine upon the uncertain aspects of the future. The burning sense of
+regret, the anguish of nostalgia, the relinquishment of an accustomed
+sphere, its prospects and ideals, the revolt against the uncouth and
+rude conditions of the new status, the gradual reluctant naturalization
+to a new world,--these were forgotten save as the picturesque elements
+of sorrow and despair that balanced the joys, the interest, the
+devil-may-care joviality, the adventure, the strange wild
+companionship,--all that made the tale worth rehearsing in the flare and
+the flicker of the fireside glow.
+
+The rains had come. The dark slate-tinted clouds hung low over the
+station, but every log house, freshly dight with whitewash of the marly
+clay, after the Indian method, still shone in the shadow as if the sun
+were upon it. The turf was green, despite the passing of many feet, and
+where a slight depression held water, a few ducks, Carolina bred, were
+quacking and paddling about; now and then these were counted with great
+interest, for they had a trick of taking to the woods with others of
+their kind, and relapsing to savagery,--truly distressing to the
+domestic poultry prospects of the station. The doors of the Mivane cabin
+were all ajar,--the one at the rear opening into a shed-room, unfloored,
+which gave a vista into more sheds, merely roofed spaces, inclosed at
+either end. A loom was in the shed-room, and at it was seated on the
+bench in front, as a lady sits at an organ, the mistress of the house,
+fair but faded, in a cap and a short gown and red quilted petticoat,
+giving some instruction, touching an intricate weave, to a negro woman,
+neatly arrayed in homespun, with a gayly turbaned head, evidently an
+expert herself, from the bland and smiling manner and many
+self-sufficient and capable nods with which she perceived and
+appropriated the knotty points of the discourse.
+
+In the outer shed, Caesar, clad like the Indians and the pioneers in
+buckskin, was mending the plough-gear, and talking with great loquacity
+to another negro, of the type known then and later as "the new nigger,"
+the target of the plantation jokes, because of his "greenness," being of
+a fresh importation. He possibly remembered much of Africa, but he
+accepted without demur and with admiring and submissive meekness stories
+of the great sights that Caesar protested he had seen there,--Vauxhall
+Gardens and Temple Bar (which last Caesar thought in his simplicity was
+a bar for the refreshment of the inner man) and a certain resort
+indisputably for that purpose called White's Chocolate House,--all
+represented as pleasantly and salubriously situated in the interior of
+Guinea. But after all, if a story is well told, why carp at slight
+anachorisms?
+
+Richard Mivane's attention had been diverted from the thread of his own
+reminiscences by the fact that the little flax-wheel of Peninnah
+Penelope Anne had ceased to whirl, and the low musical monody of its
+whir that was wont to bear a pleasant accompaniment to the burden of his
+thoughts was suddenly silent. He lifted his eyes and saw that she was
+gazing dreamily into the flare of the great fire, the spinning-wheel
+still, the end of the thread motionless in her hand. The burnished waves
+of her golden brown hair were pushed a bit awry, and her face was so wan
+and thoughtful that even her dress of crimson wool did not lessen its
+pallor. The voices of the three children on the floor grated on the old
+man's mood as they were busied in defending a settler's fort, insecurely
+constructed of stones and sticks, and altogether roofless, garrisoned by
+a number of pebbles, while a poke full of wily Indian kernels of corn
+swarmed to the attack.
+
+"Why is my pretty pet so idle?" he asked, for while the wheel should
+whirl he could dream.
+
+She made no answer, only turned her troubled, soft hazel eyes upon him.
+
+"And have you seen a wolf, too, that you have lost your tongue?"
+
+At the word "wolf" she burst into tears. And then, discarding all
+caution in the breaking down of her reserve, she sprang up, overturning
+the wheel and rushing to his chair.
+
+Now Richard Mivane had never encouraged his grandchildren to clamber
+over his chair. He protested great fear of the sticky fingers of the
+more youthful in contact with his preternaturally fine clothes; he
+declared they reminded him of squirrels, which he detested; he was not
+sure they did not look like rats. All this was of great effect; for his
+many contemptuous whimsical prejudices were earnestly respected.
+
+For instance, whenever 'possum was served at the pioneer board they who
+partook carried their plates for the purpose to a side table. "The look
+of the animal's tail is enough for me--it curls," he would say.
+
+"So does a pig's tail curl," his son used to remonstrate sensibly.
+
+"Not having kept a straight course so long,--then twirling up
+deceitfully like a second thought. This fellow is a monstrosity,--and
+his wife has a pocket for a cradle,--and I don't know who they are nor
+where they came from,--they were left over from before the Flood,
+perhaps,--they look somehow prehistoric to me. I am not acquainted with
+the family."
+
+And turning his head aside he would wave away the dainty, the delight of
+the pioneer epicure time out of mind.
+
+The diplomatic reason, however, that Richard Mivane was wont to shove
+off his grandchildren from the arm of that stately chair was that here
+they got on his blind side,--his simple, grandfatherly, affectionate
+predilection. The touch of them, their scrambling, floundering, little
+bodies, their soft pink cheeks laid against his, their golden hair in
+his clever eyes, their bright glances at close range,--he was then like
+other men and could deny them nothing! His selfishness, his vanity, his
+idleness, his frippery were annulled in the instant. He was resolved
+into the simple constituent elements of a grandfather, one part doting
+folly, one part loving pride, and the rest leniency, and he was as wax
+in their hands.
+
+None of them had so definitely realized this, accurately discriminating
+cause and effect, as Peninnah Penelope Anne. She felt safe the moment
+that she was perched on the arm of her grandfather's chair, her soft
+clasp about his stiff old neck, her tears flowing over her cheeks, all
+pink anew, escaping upon his wrinkled, bloodless, pale visage and taking
+all the starch out of his old-fashioned steinkirk. He struggled futilely
+once or twice, but she only hugged him the closer.
+
+"Oh, don't let him go! Oh, don't let him go!" she cried.
+
+"The wolf that we were talking about? By no means! Lovely creature that
+he is! We'll preserve, if you like, wolves instead of pheasants! I
+remember a gentleman's estate in Northumberland--a little beyond the
+river"--
+
+"Oh, grandfather, don't let him go!" she sobbingly interrupted. "It was
+he who shot the wolf and stampeded the herds, and the cow-drivers will
+quarrel with him when they would not have angry words with another
+ambassador. They will kill him! They will kill him!"
+
+"What for? Poaching?--shooting their wolf?"
+
+"Any one else would be safe, grandfather--except poor Ralph!"
+
+"Go yourself then. May-day!"
+
+"I would, grandfather! I would not be afraid!" She put her soft little
+hand on his cheek to turn his head to look into her confident eyes.
+
+"An able and worshipful ambassador!" he said banteringly.
+
+"Oh, grandfather, this is no time to risk quarrels among the settlers,
+and bloodshed. Oh, the herders would kill him! And the Injuns all so
+unfriendly--they might take the chance to get on the war-path again when
+the settlers are busy killing each other--and oh, the cow-drivers will
+kill Ralph Emsden!"
+
+All this persuasion was of necessity in a distinct loud voice;
+unnoticed, however, for a crisis had supervened in the play of the
+children by the chimney-place settle, and the sanguinary struggles and
+scalping in the storming of the fort were blood-curdling to behold to
+any one with enough imagination to discern a full-armed and fierce
+savage in a kernel of corn, and a stanch and patriotic Carolinian in a
+pebble. But when Peninnah Penelope Anne, all attuned to this high key,
+burst out weeping with commensurate resonance, all the vocations of the
+household came to a standstill, and her mother appeared, surprised and
+reproving, in the doorway.
+
+"Peninnah Penelope Anne," she said with her peculiar exact deliberation
+and gift of circumlocution, "it is better to go and sew your sampler
+than to tease your grandfather."
+
+"She does not tease me--I have not shed a tear! That was not the sound
+of my weeping!" he declared facetiously, one arm protectingly about the
+little sobbing figure.
+
+"He does not like his grandchildren to climb about him like squirrels
+and wild cattle," the lady continued. Then irrelevantly, "Long stitches
+were always avoided in our family. The work you last did in your sampler
+has been taken out, child, and you can sew it again and to better
+advantage."
+
+"And earn your name of Penelope," said Richard Mivane.
+
+But he was putting on his hat and evidently had some effort in prospect,
+for how could he resist,--she looked so childish and appealing as she
+sat before the fire, weeping those large tears, and absently preparing
+to sew her sampler anew.
+
+While Richard Mivane, by virtue of his early culture, the scanty remains
+of his property, his fine-gentleman habits and traditions, and the
+anomaly of his situation, was the figure of most mark at the station,
+its ruling spirit was of far alien character. This was John Ronackstone,
+a stanch Indian fighter; a far-seeing frontier politician; a man of
+excellent native faculties, all sharpened by active use and frequent
+emergencies; skilled and experienced in devious pioneer craft; and
+withal infinitely stubborn, glorying in the fact of the unchangeableness
+of his opinions and his immutable abiding by his first statements. After
+one glance at his square countenance, his steady noncommittal black
+eyes, the upward bulldog cant of a somewhat massive nose, the firm
+compression of his long thin lips, one would no more expect him to
+depart from the conditions of a conclusion than that a signpost would
+enter into argument and in view of the fatigue of a traveler mitigate
+and recant its announcement.
+
+Nevertheless Richard Mivane expected "some sense," as he phrased it,
+from this adamantine pioneer. Such a man naturally arrogated and
+obtained great weight among his fellows, and perhaps his lack of
+vacillation furthered this preeminence. He was a good man in the main as
+well as forceful, but an early and a very apt expression of the
+demagogue. And as he tolerated amongst his mental furniture no illusions
+and fostered no follies, his home life harbored no fripperies. His
+domicile was a contrast to the better ordered homes of the station, but
+here one might have meat and shelter, and what more should mortal ask of
+a house! He often boasted that not an atom of iron entered into its
+structure more than into an Indian's wigwam. Even the clapboards were
+fastened on to the rafters with wooden pegs in lieu of nails, although
+nails were not difficult to procure. He had that antagonism to the mere
+conventions of civilization often manifested by those who have been
+irked by such fetters before finally casting them off. It was a
+wholesome life and a free, and if the inmates of the house did not mind
+the scent of the drying deerskins hanging from the beams, which made the
+nose of Richard Mivane very coy, the visitor saw no reason why they
+should not please themselves. The stone-flagged hearth extended half
+across the room, and sprawling upon it in frowsy disorder was a bevy of
+children of all ages, as fat as pigs and as happy-go-lucky. He had
+hardly seated himself, having stepped about carefully among their chubby
+fingers and toes lest a crushing disaster supervene, than he regretted
+his choice of a confidant. He had his own, unsuspected sensitiveness,
+which was suddenly jarred when the wife in the corner, rocking the
+cradle with one foot while she turned a hoe-cake baking on the hearth
+with a dextrous flip of a knife, and feeling secure in his deafness,
+cast a witty fling at his fastidious apparel. With that frequent yet
+unexplained phenomenon of acoustics, her voice was so strung that its
+vibrations reached his numb perceptions as duly as if intended for his
+ears. He made no sign, in his pride and politeness, both indigenous. But
+he said to himself, "I don't laugh at her gown,--it is what she likes
+and what she is accustomed to wear. And why can't she let me dress in
+peace as I was early trained to do? God knows I feel myself better than
+nobody."
+
+And he was sensible of his age, his infirmity, his isolation, and his
+jauntiness was eclipsed.
+
+Thus he entered the race with a handicap, and John Ronackstone would
+hear none of his reasons with grace. He could not and he would not
+consent to the nomination of an ambassador in the stead of Emsden, who
+had volunteered for the service, which was the more appropriate since it
+was he who had shot the wolf and brought the stampede and its attendant
+difficulties upon the herders of the Keowee River, and this threat of
+retaliation upon the Blue Lick Stationers. If there were danger at hand,
+let a volunteer encounter it! In vain Mivane argued that there was
+danger to no one else. John Ronackstone, who found an added liberty of
+disputation in the emphasis imposed by the necessity of roaring out his
+immutable opinions in an exceeding loud voice, retorted that so far as
+he was informed the "cow-drivers" on the Keowee were not certain who it
+was that had committed this atrocity, unless perhaps their messenger
+during his sojourn at Blue Lick Station had learned the name from "X."
+But this uncertainty, Mivane argued, was the very point of difficulty.
+It was the maddest folly to dispatch to angry men, smarting under a
+grievous injury, messages of taunt and defiance by the one person who in
+their opinion, perhaps, had carelessly or willfully wrought this wrong.
+His life would pay the forfeit of the folly of his fellow-stationers.
+
+Mivane noted suddenly that the woman rocking the cradle was laughing
+with an ostentatious affectation of covert slyness, and a responsive
+twinkle gleamed in the eyes of John Ronackstone. As he caught the grave
+and surprised glance of his visitor he made a point of dropping the air
+of a comment aside, which he, as well as she, had insistently brought to
+notice, and Mivane was aware that here was something which sought an
+opportunity of being revealed as if by necessity.
+
+"Well, sir," Ronackstone began in a tone of a quasi-apology, "we were
+just saying--that is, I sez to X, who was in here a while ago,--I sez,
+'I'll tell you what is goin' to happen,'--I sez, 'old Gentleman
+Rick,'--excuse the freedom, sir,--'he'll be wantin' to send somebody
+else in Ralph Emsden's place.' X, he see the p'int, just as you see it.
+He sez, 'Somebody that won't be missed--somebody not genteel enough to
+play loo with him after supper,' sez X. 'Or too religious,' sez I. 'Or
+can't sing a good song or tell a rousing tale,' sez X. 'Or listen an'
+laugh in the right places at the gentleman's old cracks about the great
+world,' sez I. 'He'll never let Ralph Emsden go,' sez X. 'Jus' some poor
+body will do,' sez I. 'Jus' man enough to be scalped by the Injuns if
+the red sticks take after him,' sez X. 'Or have his throat cut if the
+cow-drivers feel rough yet,' sez I. 'Jus' such a one ez me,' sez X. 'Or
+me,' sez I."
+
+"Sir," said old Mivane, rising, and the impressive dignity of his port
+was such that the cradle stopped rocking as if a spell were upon it, and
+every child paused in its play, sprawling where it lay, "I am obliged to
+you for your polite expression of opinion of me, which I have never done
+aught to justify. I have nothing more to urge upon the question of the
+details which brought me hither, but of one thing be certain,--if Emsden
+does not go upon this mission _I_ shall be the ambassador. I apprehend
+no danger whatever to myself, and I wish you a very good day."
+
+And he stepped forth with his wonted jaunty alacrity, leaving the man
+and his wife staring at each other with as much surprise as if the roof
+had fallen in.
+
+A greater surprise awaited Mivane without. The rain was falling anew. In
+vast transparent tissues it swept with the gusty wind over the nearest
+mountains of the Great Smoky Range, whose farther reaches were lost in
+fog. The slanting lines, vaguely discerned in the downpour, almost
+obliterated the presence of the encompassing forests about the stockade.
+He noted how wildly the great trees were yet swaying, and he realized,
+for he could not have heard the blast, that a sudden severe wind-storm
+had passed over the settlement while he was within doors. The
+blockhouse, the tallest of the buildings, loomed up darkly amidst the
+gathering gray vapor, and through the great gates of the stockade, which
+opened on the blank cloud, were coming at the moment several men bearing
+a rude litter, evidently hastily constructed. On this was stretched the
+insensible form of Ralph Emsden, who had been stricken down in the woods
+with a dislocated shoulder and a broken arm by the falling of a branch
+of a great tree uprooted by the violence of the gusts. He had almost
+miraculously escaped being crushed, and was not fatally hurt, but
+examination disclosed that he was absolutely and hopelessly disabled for
+the time being, and Richard Mivane realized that he himself was the duly
+accredited ambassador to the herders on the Keowee River.
+
+He went home in a pettish fume. No sooner was he within and the door
+fast shut, that none might behold save only those of his own household,
+who were accustomed to the aberrations of his temper and who regarded
+them with blended awe and respect, than he reft his cocked hat from his
+head and flung it upon the floor. Peninnah Penelope Anne sprang up so
+precipitately at the dread sight that she overturned her stool and drew
+a stitch awry in her sampler, longer than the women of her family were
+accustomed to take. The children gazed spellbound. The weavers at the
+loom were petrified; even the creak of the treadle and the noisy
+thumping of the batten--those perennial sounds of a pioneer home--sunk
+into silence. The two negroes at the end of the vista beyond the
+shed-room, with the ox-yoke and plough-gear which they were mending
+between them, opened wide mouths and became immovable save for the
+whites of astonished rolling eyes. Then, and this exceeded all
+precedent, Richard Mivane clutched his valued peruke and, with an inward
+plaintive deprecation of the extremity of this act of desperation, he
+cast it upon the hat, and looked around, bald, despairing, furious, and
+piteous.
+
+It was, however, past the fortitude of woman to behold without protest
+this desecration of decoration. Peninnah Penelope Anne sprang forward,
+snatched the glossy locks from the puncheons, and with a tender hand
+righted the structure, while the powder flew about in light puffs at her
+touch, readjusting a curl here and a cleverly wrought wave there. The
+valet's pious aspiration from the doorway, "Bress de Lord!" betokened
+the acuteness of the danger over-past.
+
+"Why, grandfather!" the girl admonished Mivane; "your beautiful
+peruke!--sure, sir, the loveliest curls in the world! And sets you like
+your own hair,--only that nobody _could really_ have such very genteel
+curls to grow--Oh--oh--grandfather!"
+
+She did not offer to return it, but stood with it poised on one hand,
+well out of harm's way, while she surveyed Mivane reproachfully yet with
+expectant sympathy.
+
+Perhaps he himself was glad that he could wreak no further damage which
+he would later regret, and contented himself with furiously pounding his
+cane upon the puncheon floor, a sturdy structure and well calculated to
+bear the brunt of such expressions of pettish rage.
+
+"Dolt, ass, fool, that I am!" he cried. "That I should so far forget
+myself as to offer to go as an ambassador to the herders on the Keowee!"
+And once more he banged the floor after a fashion that discounted the
+thumping of the batten, and the room resounded with the thwacks.
+
+An old dog, a favorite of yore, lying asleep on the hearth, only opened
+his eyes and wrinkled his brows to make sure, it would seem, who had the
+stick; then closing his lids peacefully snoozed away again, presently
+snoring in the fullness of his sense of security. But a late
+acquisition, a gaunt deerhound, after an earnest observation of his
+comrade's attitude, as if referring the crisis to his longer experience,
+scrutinized severally the faces of the members of the family, and,
+wincing at each resounding whack, finally gathered himself together
+apprehensively, as doubtful whose turn might come next, and discreetly
+slunk out unobserved by the back door.
+
+Peninnah Penelope Anne rushed to the rescue.
+
+"And why should you not be an ambassador, sir?" she demanded.
+
+"Why--why--because, girl, I am deafer than the devil's dam! I cannot
+fetch and carry messages of import. I could only give occasion for
+ridicule and scorn in even offering to assume such an office."
+
+Peninnah Penelope Anne had flushed with the keen sensitiveness of her
+pride. She instantly appreciated the irking of the dilemma into which he
+had thrust himself forgetting his infirmity, and she could have smitten
+with hearty enmity and a heavy stick any lips which had dared to smile.
+She responded, however, with something of her mother's indirection.
+
+"Under your favor, sir, you don't know how deaf the devil's dam may
+be--and it is not your wont to speak in that strain. I'm sure it reminds
+me of that man they call 'X,'--a sort of churl person,--who talks of the
+devil and blue blazes and brimstone and hell as if--as if he were a
+native."
+
+This was a turning of the sword of the pious "X" upon himself with a
+vengeance, for he was prone in his spiritual disquisitions to detail
+much of the discomfort of the future state that awaited his careless
+friends.
+
+The allusion so far pleased old Mivane, who resented a suspected
+relegation of himself to a warm station in the schemes of "X," that,
+although his head was still bald and shining like a billiard ball, he
+suffered himself to drop into his chair, his stick resting motionless on
+the long-suffering puncheon floor.
+
+"If I could only hear for a day I'd forgive twenty soundless years!" he
+declared piteously, for he so deprecated the enforced withdrawal from
+the enterprise that he had heedlessly undertaken, and felt so keenly the
+reflections upon his sentiments and sincerity surreptitiously canvassed
+between Ronackstone and "X," and then cavalierly rehearsed in his
+presence.
+
+"You are only deaf to certain whanging voices in queer keys," his
+granddaughter declared.
+
+"And how do I know in what sort of key the herders on the Keowee talk?
+They may 'moo' like the cow, or 'mew' like the cat! I should be in
+danger of losing half that was said. And that is what these varlets here
+in the station know right well. It must seem but a mere bit of bombast
+on my part. It could never be seriously countenanced--unless I had an
+interpreter. Stop me! but if you were a grandson instead of a
+granddaughter, I would not mind taking you with me to interpret for me,
+though, Gadzooks, I'd be like a heathen red Injun with a linguister!"
+
+"And why am I not as good as any grandson?" demanded Peninnah Penelope
+Anne, with a spirited flash of her bright hazel eyes and great temerity
+of speculation; for be it remembered the days of the theories of woman's
+equality with man had not yet dawned. "Sure, sir, I can speak when I am
+spoken to. I understand the English language; and"--her voice rising
+into a liquid crescendo of delight--"I can wear my gray sergedusoy sack
+made over my carnation taffeta bodice and cashmere petticoat, all
+pranked out with bows of black velvet, most genteel, and my hat of
+quilled primrose sarcenet, grandfather. I'd take them in a bundle, for
+if we should have rain I would rather be in my old red hood and blue
+serge riding-coat on the way, grandfather."
+
+And thus it was settled before she had fairly readjusted the peruke on
+his head as he sat in his great chair and she clambered on its arm.
+
+She had not heard of the disaster that had befallen Ralph Emsden, and
+she turned rather pale and wistful when the news was communicated to
+her. Then realizing how opportune was the accident, how slight was its
+ultimate danger in comparison with the jeopardy of the mission from
+which he was rescued, she fairly gloated upon the chance which had
+conferred it upon her grandfather, and made her an instrument in its
+execution.
+
+It was a queerly assorted embassy that rode out of the gates of the
+stockade, the ambassador and his linguister. Richard Mivane was mounted
+upon a strong, sprightly horse, with Peninnah Penelope Anne behind him
+upon a pillion. Following them at a little distance came his
+body-servant, Caesar, more fitted by temperament than either to enjoy
+the change, the spirit of adventure, and reveling in a sense of
+importance which was scarcely diminished by the fact that it was
+vicarious. He rode a sturdy nag and had charge of a led horse, that bore
+a pack-saddle with a store of changes of raiment, of edible provisions,
+and tents to fend off the chances of inclement weather. They were to
+travel under the protection of a trader's pack-train, from a
+reestablished trading-house in the Overhill Towns of the Cherokees on
+the Tennessee River; and so accurately did they time their departure and
+the stages of their journey that they met this caravan just at the hour
+and place designated, and risked naught from the unsettled state of the
+country or an encounter with some ignorant or inimical savage, prone to
+wreak upon inoffensive units vengeance for wrongs, real or fancied,
+wrought by a nation.
+
+The trader, being a man habituated by frequent sojourns in Charlestown
+to metropolitan customs and a worldly trend of thought, instantly
+recognized the quality of Mivane and his granddaughter, despite the old
+red hood and blue serge riding-coat and their residence here so far from
+all the graces that appertain to civilization; though, to be sure,
+Richard Mivane, in his trim "Joseph," his head cowled in an appropriate
+"trotcozy," and his jaunty self-possession quite restored by the cutting
+of the Gordian knot of his dilemma, demonstrating his capacity to duly
+perform all his undertakings, bore himself in a manner calculated to
+enhance even the high estimation of his fellow-traveler. After the
+custom of a gentleman, however, he was most augustly free from
+unwarrantable self-assertion, but he could not have failed to be
+flattered by the phrase of the trader, could he have heard it, in
+delivering over his charge to the herders on the Keowee River.
+"Gadzooks, neighbors, but I shouldn't be a whit surprised if that old
+party is a duke in disguise!"
+
+But the cow-drivers heard him not! They hardly heeded the coming and the
+going of the pack-train and their gossips the packmen! They cared naught
+for the news the caravan brought of the country-side far above, nor the
+commissions they were wont to give for the various settlements and the
+metropolis far below! For so featly came riding in to the humble prosaic
+precincts of the cow-pens and into their hearts the vernal beauty of
+Spring herself, the living Bloom of charm and love, all arrayed in
+delicate gray sergedusoy opening upon carnation taffeta, and crowned
+with sheer quillings of primrose sarcenet, with a cheek that repeated
+these roseate tints and a glint of golden brown tresses curling softly
+against a nape of pearl, that the ranchmen were bewitched and dazed, and
+knew no more of good common-sense. Their equilibrium thus shaken, some
+busied themselves in what might be called "housewifely cares," that the
+dainty visitant might be acceptably lodged and fed, and afterward they
+cursed their industry and hospitality that thus left her conversation
+and charming aspect to the shirks and drones, who languished about her,
+and affected to seek her comfort and minister to her entertainment. For
+the cow-drivers, like the other pioneer settlers of that region and day,
+represented various states of society and degrees of refinement, and to
+those to whom she was not as a blissful reminiscence of long ago, she
+appeared as a revelation, new and straight from heaven, a fancy, a
+dream! It seemed meet to them that she arrived in the illusory sunset of
+a sweet spring day, like some lovely forecast of the visions of the
+night.
+
+With their artless bucolic ideals of entertainment they invited her out
+to show her the new calves. One of these little creatures, being
+exquisitely white and eminently pleasing to look upon, was straightway
+named, with her gracious permission, "Peninnah Penelope Anne," and she
+was assured that because of this name its owner, a slim, sentimental,
+red-haired youth, would never part from it. And it may be presumed that
+he was sincere, and that at the time of this fervent asseveration he had
+not realized the incongruity of living his life out in the constant heed
+of the well-being and companionship of a large white cow of the name of
+"Peninnah Penelope Anne." A more interesting denizen of the pen was a
+fawn, a waif found there one morning, having prudently adopted as a
+mother a large red cow, and a heavy brindled calf as a foster-brother.
+The instant Peninnah admired this incongruous estray, bleating its queer
+alien note in resonant duet with the calf in the plea for supper, a cord
+was slipped about its neck and it was presented in due form. In order
+that she might not be harassed by its tendance, a gigantic Scotch
+herder, six feet six inches high and twenty-five years of age, showed
+how far involuntary inanity can coexist with presumptive sanity as he
+led it about, the creature holding back heavily at every step and now
+and again tangling itself, its cord, and its disconcerted bleats about
+its conductor's long and stalwart legs. Another of the herders,--all of
+whom were hunters and explorers as well,--whose mind was of a
+topographical cast, introduced her to much fine and high company in the
+various mountain peaks, gathered in solemn symposium dark and purple in
+the faintly tinted and opaline twilight. He repeated their Cherokee
+names and gave an English translation, and called her attention to marks
+of difference in their configuration which rendered them distinguishable
+at a distance; and when she lent some heed to this and noted on the
+horizon contours of the mountains about her home, faint and far in an
+elusive amethystine apotheosis against the red and flaming west, and
+called out her glad recognition in a voice as sweet as a thrush, his
+comrades waxed jealous, and contravened his statements and argued and
+wrangled upon landmarks to which they had never before given a second
+thought in all their mountaineering experience, so keenly they competed
+for her favor. It was her little day of triumph, and right royally she
+reigned in it and was wont to tell of it for forty years thereafter!
+
+At last the dusk was slipping down; the mountains grew a shadowy gray
+far away and a looming black close at hand; a star palpitated in the
+colorless crystal-clear concave of the fading skies; the vernal stretch
+of the savannas, whose intense green was somehow asserted till the
+latest glimmer of light, ceased to resound with the voices of the herds;
+only here and there a keen metallic note of a bell clanked forth and was
+silent, and again the sound came from a farther pen like a belated echo;
+the fire flaring out from the open door of the nearest hut of the
+ranchmen's little hamlet gave a pleasant sense of hospitality and homely
+hearth-side cheer, for it requires only a few nights under a tent or the
+open canopy of heaven to make a woman, always the most artificially
+disposed of all creatures, exceedingly respectful to a roof.
+
+To be sure the interior of this roof was well garnished with cobwebs,
+and Peninnah Penelope Anne's mother was so notable a housekeeper and had
+inculcated such horror of these untoward drapings and festoons that the
+girl was compelled to look sedulously away from them to avoid staring in
+amazement at their morbid development and proportions. The
+superintendent of the ranch--being an establishment of magnitude it had
+several sub-agents also--was so occupied in putting the best foot of his
+menage foremost, not being prepared for such company that, like many a
+modern housekeeper, he let the opportunity for pleasure slip. When he
+proffered tea--he had sent a negro servant all the way to Fort Prince
+George for the luxury, where it could be found among the hospital
+stores, for tea was too mild a tipple for the pioneer cow-drivers--he
+suffered the egregious mortification of pouring out plain hot water,
+having forgotten to put in the tea leaves to steep. He looked very hot
+and ruefully distressed as he repaired his error, and would not, could
+not meet the laughing eyes of his comrades, nor yet the polite glances
+of his guests resolutely seeing naught amiss. He was oppressed with a
+sense of the number and prominence of his dogs about the wide hearth of
+his cabin; when the animals were therefore vigorously kicked out to make
+more space, instead of retiring with the usual plaintive yelp of protest
+appropriate to such occasions they took advantage of the presence of
+guests of distinction and made the rafters ring and resound with their
+ear-splitting shrieks, and it was even necessary to chase them about the
+room before they could be ejected. Indeed, several with super-canine
+strategy succeeded in countermarching their tormentors and remained in
+the group about the fire, wearing that curiously attentive look peculiar
+to an intelligent animal when animated conversation is in progress.
+
+The blazing fire in the great chimney-place, that stretched almost half
+across one end of the herder's cabin, illumined the walls and showed the
+medley of articles suspended upon them,--horns, whips, branding-irons,
+skins, cattle-bells, lariats, and such-like appurtenances of the ranch.
+The little lady was seated in the centre of the group of ranchmen ranged
+in a wide semicircle about the hearth of flagstones; the ethereal tints
+of her shimmering attire showed all their highlights; her face and
+golden brown hair seemed particularly soft and delicate in contrast with
+the rough tousled heads and bearded countenances about her; here and
+there the muzzle of a great animal, the flash of fangs and red glow of
+formidable jaws, were half discriminated amidst the alternate flare of
+the flames and flicker of the shadows,--all might have suggested the
+"mystick Crew of Comus" to Richard Mivane, being the only person present
+who had ever heard of that motley company, had not his thoughts been
+otherwise engrossed. He meditatively cleared his throat, took a sip of
+brandy and water, for he had long ago lost his genteel affiliations with
+tea, and hopefully opened the subject of his mission.
+
+A change fell upon the scene, instant, definite, complete. In the mere
+broaching of business it might seem that beauty and charm are but
+tenuous at best, and powerless to subdue the fiercer nature of man when
+his acquisitive and aggressive commercial instincts are aroused. One of
+the most devout admirers of Peninnah Penelope Anne tossed his head with
+a very bellicose and bovine obduracy when he intimated an incredulity of
+the statement that the herd had been stampeded without an ulterior
+motive of malice or nefarious profit. The gentle soul who had assumed
+the tendance and protection of the fawn held down as he listened a
+shaggy intent head, like that of a bull about to charge, at the mere
+mention of the shooting of the wolf. In fact, the suggestion of shadowy
+monsters which the dusky flicker and evanescent flare of the fire
+fostered and which was intensified by the proximity of open jaws, sharp
+fangs, heavy muzzles, and standing bristles amongst them, owed much of
+its effect to the unanimous expression of truculent challenge and averse
+disfavor. There were frequent confirmatory emphatic nods of great
+disheveled heads, the scarlet flushing of angry faces, already florid,
+and now and again a violent descriptive gesture of a long brawny arm
+with a clenched fist at its extremity. Richard Mivane's well-rounded
+periods and gentlemanly phrasings were like the educated thrusts and
+feints of an expert fencer who opposes his single rapier to the
+bludgeons and missiles of a furious mob. He saw in less than five
+minutes that the scheme of extenuation and conciliation was futile, that
+retort and retaliation would be returned in kind, that the stoppage of
+the pack-train from Blue Lick on the way to Charlestown was inevitable,
+and that the redcoats, invoked by both parties, would doubtless become
+embroiled with one or the other,--in short, bloodshed was a foregone
+conclusion.
+
+Much as this was to be deprecated in any event, it was suicidal amongst
+these infant settlements by reason of the vicinage and antagonism of the
+fierce and only half-subdued Cherokees, sullenly nourishing schemes of
+revenge for their recent defeat and many woes. But when he urged this
+upon the attention of the herders, the retort came quick and pointed:
+"We ain't talkin' 'bout no Injuns!--the Cherokees never meddled with our
+cattle! We'll settle about the stampede first, an' 'tend to the
+Cherokees in good time--all in good time!"
+
+Richard Mivane was not possessed of much affinity with the ruder
+primitive qualities, the stalwart candor and uncultured forces of the
+natural man; and never had these inherent elements appeared to less
+advantage in his mind than when he was brought into disastrous conflict
+with them. He only held his ground for form's sake, and often his voice
+was overborne by the clamors of many responsive tones, all blaring and
+arguing together. Much that was said he could not hear, and refrained
+from speaking when he perceived from the loud contending faces that he
+was denied for the nonce a rejoinder. But ever and anon the silver
+vibrations of the little linguister's voice rose into the big bass
+tumult as she rehearsed what had been said for her grandfather's
+benefit, and the angry rush of sound stopped with an abrupt recoil for a
+moment, then surged on as before.
+
+She looked very mild and petite among them, quite like a sedate child,
+her cheeks pinker than any of the rose tints of her apparel that were
+her pride, her lips red and breathlessly parted, her eyes bright and
+very watchful, her golden brown hair all red gold in the flicker of the
+fire. There was one wild taunting threat that she did not repeat, as if
+she thought it of no consequence,--the threat of personal violence
+against Ralph Emsden. They had found out his name patly enough from
+their own messenger to Blue Lick Station. They would take out their
+grudge against him on his hide, they averred,--if they had to go all the
+way to Blue Lick to get it!
+
+Now and again they sufficiently remembered that indeterminate quantum of
+courtesy which they called their "manners" to interpolate "No offense to
+_you_, sir," or "Begging the lady's pardon." Throughout she preserved a
+cool, almost uncomprehending, passive manner; and it was in one of the
+moments of a heady tumult of words, in which they sometimes involved
+themselves beyond all interpretation or distinguishment, that she
+observed with a sort of childish inconsequence that they could get Ralph
+Emsden easily enough if they would go to Blue Lick Station,--he was
+there now, and his arm and shoulder were so hurt that he would not be
+able to make off,--they could get him easily enough, that is, if the
+French did not raze Blue Lick Station before the herders could reach
+there.
+
+If a bomb had exploded in the midst of the hearthstone, the astonishment
+that ensued upon this simple statement could not have been greater. A
+sudden blank silence supervened. A dozen excited infuriated faces, the
+angry contortions of the previous moment still stark upon their
+features, were bent upon her while their eyes stared only limitless
+amazement.
+
+"The French!" the herders cried at last in chorus. "Blue Lick Station!"
+
+"It was razed once," she said statistically, "to the ground. The
+Cherokees did it that time!"
+
+Her grandfather, always averse to admit that he did not hear, noted the
+influx of excitement, and was fain to lean forward. He even placed his
+hand behind his ear.
+
+"The French!" bellowed out one of the cow-drivers in a voice that might
+have graced the king of the herds. "The French! Threatening Blue Lick
+Station!"
+
+The elderly gentleman drew back from, the painful surcharged vibrations
+of sound and the unseemly aspect of this interpreter, who was in good
+sooth like a bull in disguise. "To be sure--the French," Richard Mivane
+said in response, repeating the only words which he had heard. "Our
+nearest white neighbors--the dangerous Alabama garrison!"
+
+A tumult of questions assailed the little linguister.
+
+"Be they mightily troubled at Blue Lick Station?" asked one
+sympathetically.
+
+The little flower-like head was nodded with meaning, deep and serious.
+"Oh, sure!" she cried. "And having the Cow-pens against them too--'tis
+sad!"
+
+"Zooks!" cried the bull in disguise, with a snort. "The Cow-pens ain't
+against 'em--when the French are coming!"
+
+"Why haven't they sent word to the soldiers?" demanded another of the
+cow-drivers suspiciously.
+
+"The soldiers?" she exclaimed incredulously. "Why--the Cow-pens sent
+word that the soldiers were against Blue Lick too, and were going to
+stop the station's pack-train. Maybe the stationers were afraid of the
+soldiers."
+
+To a torrent of questions as to how the news had first come, how the
+menace lowered, what disposition for defense the stationers could make,
+the little girl seemed bewildered. She only answered definitely and very
+indifferently that they could easily get Ralph Emsden if they would go
+now to Blue Lick, and take his hide,--that is, if the French and their
+Choctaw Indians had not already possessed themselves of that valuable
+integument,--as if this were their primal object.
+
+"Why, God-a-mercy, child," cried the superintendent of the ranch, "this
+news settles all scores; when it comes to a foreign foe the colonists
+are brothers."
+
+"And besides," admitted one of the most truculent of the cow-drivers,
+"the cattle are all pretty well rounded in again; I doubt if more are
+lost than the wolves would have pulled down anyhow."
+
+"And the Blue Lick Stationers' horses can be herded easy enough,--they
+are all on their old grass,--and be driven up to the settlement."
+
+A courier had been sent off full tilt to the commandant at Fort Prince
+George, and night though it was, a detail of mounted soldiers appeared
+presently with orders to escort the ambassador and his linguister into
+the presence of that officer.
+
+For this intelligence was esteemed serious indeed. Although hostilities
+had now practically ceased in America, the Seven Years' War being near
+its end, and peace negotiations actually in progress, still the treaty
+had not been concluded. So far on the frontier were such isolated
+garrisons as this of Fort Prince George, so imperfect and infrequent
+were their means of communicating with the outside world, that they were
+necessarily in ignorance of much that took place elsewhere, and a
+renewal of the conflict might have supervened long before their regular
+advices from headquarters could reach them. Even a chance rumor might
+bring them their first intimation of a matter of such great import to
+them. Therefore the commandant attached much significance to this
+account of an alarm at Blue Lick Station, because of a menace from the
+nearest French at Fort Toulouse, often called in that day, by reason of
+this propinquity, "the dangerous Alabama garrison."
+
+For this reason, also, the hospitable hosts made no protest against the
+removal of the guests to Fort Prince George, although it might seem that
+the age of the one and the tender youth of the other ill fitted them to
+encounter this sudden transition from the cosy fireside to the raw
+vernal air on a misty midnight jaunt of a dozen miles through a primeval
+wilderness. And in truth the little lady seemed loath to leave the
+hearth; she visibly hesitated as she stood beside her chair with her
+hand on its back, and looked out at the black night, and the vague vista
+which the ruddy flare, from the wide door, revealed amidst the dense
+darkness; at the vanishing point of this perspective stood a group of
+mounted soldiers, "in column of twos" with two led horses, the scarlet
+uniforms and burnished accoutrements appearing and disappearing
+elusively as the flames rose and fell. The sounds of the champing of
+bits and the pawing of hoofs and the jingle of spurs were keenly clear
+on the chill rare air and seemed somehow consonant with the frosty
+glitter of the stars, very high in the black concave of the moonless
+sky. The smell of the rich mould, permeated with its vernal growths; the
+cool, distinct, rarefied perfume of some early flower already abloom;
+the antiphonal chant of frogs roused in the marsh or stream hard by, so
+imbued her senses with the realization of the hour and season that she
+never afterward thought of the spring without a vivid renewal of these
+impressions.
+
+Her grandfather also seemed vaguely to hold back, even while he slowly
+mounted his horse; yet aware that naught is so imperative as military
+authority, it was only his inner consciousness that protested. Outwardly
+he professed alacrity, although in great surprise declaring that he
+could not imagine what the commandant could want with him. The little
+linguister, for her part, had no doubts. She was well aware indeed of
+the cause of the summons, and so dismayed by the prospect was even her
+doughty heart that the swift ride through the black forest was less
+terrible to her than the thought of the ordeal of the arrival. But the
+march was not without its peculiar trials. She shrank in instinctive
+affright from the unaccustomed escort of a dragoon on either side of
+her, looming up in the darkness like some phantom of the midnight. Even
+her volition seemed wrested from her by reason of the military training
+of the troop-horse which she rode;--he whirled about at the command
+"right-wheel!" ringing out in the darkness in the crisp peremptory tones
+of the non-commissioned officer, and plunged forward at the words "trot,
+march!" and adjusted his muscles instantaneously to the acceleration
+implied in "gallop!" and came to an abrupt and immovable pause at
+"halt!"--all with no more regard to her grasp on the reins than if she
+had been a fly on the saddle. As they went the wind beset her with cool,
+damp buffets on chin and cheek; the overhanging budding boughs, all
+unseen, drenched her with perfumed dew as she was whisked through their
+midst; the pace was adopted rather with reference to military custom and
+the expectation of the waiting commandant than her convenience; at every
+sudden whirl responsive to the word of command she was in momentary fear
+of being flung beneath the swiftly trampling hoofs of the horses on
+either side of her, and despite her recoil from the bigness and
+bluffness and presumable bloody-mindedness of the two troopers beside
+her she was sensible of their sympathy as they took heed of the
+instability with which she bounced about, perched up side-wise on a
+military saddle. Indeed, one was moved to ask her if she would not
+prefer to be strapped on with a girth, and to offer his belt for the
+purpose; and the other took the opportunity to gird at the forgetfulness
+of the cow-drivers to furnish her with her own pillion.
+
+Nevertheless she dreaded the journey's end; and as they came out of the
+forests on the banks of the Keowee River, and beheld the vague glimmers
+of the gray day slowly dawning, albeit night was yet in the woods, and
+the outline of the military works of Fort Prince George taking symmetry
+and wonted proportions against the dappled eastern sky, all of blended
+roseate tints and thin nebulous grays, her heart so sank, she felt so
+tremulously guilty that had all the sixteen guns from the four bastions
+opened fire upon her at once she would not have been surprised.
+
+No such welcome, however, did the party encounter. The officer
+commanding it stopped the ambassador and the linguister and let the
+soldiers go on at a round trot toward the great gate, which stood open,
+the bayonet on the musket of the sentry shining with an errant gleam of
+light like the sword of fire at the entrance of Paradise. For now the
+sun was up, the radiance suffusing the blue and misty mountains and the
+seas of fog in the valleys. Albeit its dazzling focus was hardly visible
+above the eastern heights, it sent a red glow all along the parapet of
+the covered way and the slope beyond to the river bank, where only two
+years before Captain Coytmore, then the commandant, had been murdered at
+a conference by the treacherous Cherokees. The senior officer, Captain
+Howard, being absent on leave, the present commandant, a jaunty
+lieutenant, smart enough although in an undress uniform, was standing at
+the sally-port now, all bland and smiling, to receive the ambassador and
+his linguister. He perceived at once that the old gentleman was deaf
+beyond any save adroit and accustomed communication. He looked puzzled
+for a moment, then spoke to the sergeant.
+
+"And who is this pretty little girl?" he asked.
+
+The sergeant, who had heard of her prowess in the havoc of hearts among
+the herders at the ranch, looked bewildered, then desperate, saluted
+mechanically, and was circumspectly silent.
+
+"I am not a little girl," said Peninnah Penelope Anne Mivane with adult
+dignity.
+
+"Ah, indeed," said the embarrassed and discomfited officer. Then,
+turning to lead the way, he added civilly, "Beg pardon, I'm sure!"
+
+If the sight of the sixteen guns on the four bastions of Fort Prince
+George had caused Peninnah Penelope Anne to shrink from her normal
+proportions, not too expansive at best, she dwindled visibly and
+continually when conducted within the palisaded parapets, across the
+parade, past the barracks, built for a hundred men but now somewhat
+lacking their complement, and into the officers' quarters, where in a
+large mess-hall there sat all the commissioned officers at a table, near
+the foot of which the two strangers were accommodated with chairs. It
+had so much the air of a court-martial, despite their bland and
+reassuring suavity, that Peninnah Penelope Anne, albeit a free lance and
+serving under no banner but her own whim, had much ado to keep up her
+courage to face them. Naturally she was disposed to lean upon her
+grandfather, but he utterly failed her. She had never known him so deaf!
+He could neither hear the officers nor her familiar voice. He would not
+even tell his name, although she had so often heard him voice it
+sonorously and in great pride, "Richard Mivane Huntley Mivane, youngest
+son of the late Sir Alexander Mivane Huntley Mivane, of Mivane Hall,
+Fenshire, Northumberland." Now he merely waved his hand to deputize her.
+In truth he shrank from rehearsing to these young men the reason of his
+flight from home, his duel and its fatal result, although his pride
+forbade him to suppress it. He had come to think the cause of quarrel a
+trifle, and the challenge a wicked folly. It was a bitter and remorseful
+recollection as his age came on, and its details were edifying in no
+sense. Hence, as Peninnah Penelope Anne knew naught of the story she
+could not tell it, and he escaped the distasteful pose of a merciless
+duelist.
+
+She gave his name with much pride, noting the respect with which the
+officers heard it. She accounted for the incongruities of his presence
+here as the result of a trip from England to the province, where, as she
+said, "he was detained by the snare of matrimony." It was his own
+phrase, for as a snare he regarded the holy estate; but the younger of
+the officers were pleased to find it funny, and ventured to laugh;
+whereat she grew red and silent, and they perforce became grave again
+that they might hear of the French. Here she was vague and discursive,
+and prone to detail at great length the feud between the Blue Lick
+Stationers and the "cow-drivers" on the Keowee, evidently hoping that it
+might lie within the latitude of the commandant's military authority to
+take some order with the herder gentry,--for which they would not have
+thanked her in the least! But the officers of the garrison of Fort
+Prince George had thought for naught but the French, and now and again
+conferred dubiously together on the unsatisfactory points of her
+evidence.
+
+"Do you suppose she really knows anything about it?" the commandant said
+aside to one of his advisers.
+
+Suddenly, however, her grandfather's hearing improved, and they were
+able to elicit from him the reports which he had had at second hand from
+the cow-drivers themselves, in retailing which he honestly conceived
+that he was repeating genuine news, never dreaming that the information
+had blossomed forth from his own mission.
+
+While less circumstantial and satisfactory than the commandant could
+have wished, the details were too significant and serious of import to
+be ignored, and therefore he acted upon his information as far as it was
+developed.
+
+He ordered out a scouting party of ten men, and, that he might utilize
+Blue Lick Station as an outpost in some sort where they might find
+refuge and aid, he dispatched to the settlement a present of gunpowder
+to serve in the defense of the station, in case of attack by the French,
+and two of the small coehorns of that day, each of which could be
+carried between two men, to assist the little piece already at the
+station. In return for the prospective courtesy and shelter to his
+troops, he wrote a very polite letter urging the settlers to hold out if
+practicable, relying on his succor with men, ammunition, and provisions;
+but if compelled to give way, assuring the stationers of a welcome at
+Fort Prince George.
+
+The herders at the cow-pens on the Keowee had also determined to
+reinforce Blue Lick Station, and with a number of the runaway horses of
+the settlers, rounded up and driven in strings, several of them set
+forth with the British soldiers from the fort. In this company Richard
+Mivane and his grand daughter also took their way to Blue Lick Station
+in lieu of waiting for a pack-train with provisions from Charlestown, as
+they had anticipated.
+
+It was a merry camping party as they fared along through the wilderness,
+and she had occasion to make many sage observations on the inconsistency
+and the unwisdom of man! That the prospect of killing some Frenchman, or
+being themselves cruelly killed, in a national quarrel which neither
+faction, the cow-drivers nor the Blue Lick Stationers, half understood,
+should so endear men to each other was a sentiment into which she could
+not enter. It was better, after all, to be a woman, she said to herself,
+and sit soberly at home and sew the rational sampler, and let the world
+wag on as it would and the cutthroats work their wild will on each
+other. The least suggestion that brought the thought of the French to
+their minds was received with eyes alight, and nerves aquiver, and blood
+all in a rush. The favorite of the whole camp was a young fellow who had
+achieved that enviable station by virtue of an inane yet inconceivably
+droll intonation of the phrase, "Bong chure" _(Bon jour_), delivered at
+all manner of unconformable times and in inappropriate connections, and
+invariably greeted with shouts of laughter. And when at last the party
+reached the vicinity of Blue Lick and the stationers swarmed out to meet
+them, taking the news of the French invasion at second hand, each
+repeating it to the other, and variously recounting it back again, never
+dreaming that it was supposed to have originally issued from the
+station, she meditated much upon this temperamental savagery in man, and
+the difficulty it occasioned in conforming him to those sagacious
+schemes for his benefit which she nourished in her inventive little
+pate. The antagonisms of the Blue Lick Stationers and the cow-drivers
+from the Keowee vanished like mist. On the one hand the stationers were
+assured that the stampede of the cattle was now regarded as inadvertent,
+and although it had occasioned an immense deal of vexatious trouble to
+the ranchmen, all were now well rounded up and restored to the cow-pens
+as of yore. And the ranchmen in turn received a thousand thanks for
+their neighborly kindness in the restoration of the horses of the Blue
+Lick Stationers, who knew that the animals had not been decoyed off by
+the herders, as a malicious report sought to represent, but had merely
+returned to their "old grass," according to their homing propensities.
+And both parties loved the British soldiers, who had reinforced them,
+and intended to go a-scouting with the military expedition; and the
+soldiers earnestly reciprocated by assisting in the preparations for the
+defense of the station. Especially active and efficient was the only
+artilleryman among them, and the paradisaic peace amidst all the
+preparations for war was so complete that his acrid scorn of that pride
+of the settlement, the little swivel gun, and of the stationers' methods
+of handling it, occasioned not even a murmur of resentment.
+
+Peninnah Penelope Anne, although restored to private life and the
+maternal domicile, having retired from statecraft and the functions of
+linguister to the embassy, did not altogether escape public utility in
+these bellicose preparations. The young gunner, who had had the
+opportunity of observing her during the march hither, shortly applied to
+her for assistance in his professional devoir. He wanted a deft-handed
+young person to construct the cartridge-bags for the ammunition which he
+was fixing for the little piece and the two coehorns. And thus it
+chanced that she found herself in the blockhouse, cheek by jowl with the
+little cannon, its grisly muzzle now looking out of the embrasure where
+she herself had once been fond of taking observations of the stockade
+entrance; the men came and went and speculated upon the chances of the
+scouting quest, now about to set forth, while spurs clanking, ramrods
+rattling down into gun-barrels, voices lifted in argument or joyous
+resonance, made the whitewashed walls ring anew. The gunner, seated at a
+table carefully and accurately measuring out the powder, now and again
+urged strict cautions against the lighting of pipes or striking of
+sparks from gun-flints. When he applied himself briskly to the cutting
+out of more bags from flannel for his cartridges, he looked very
+harmless and domestic in his solicitude to follow his wooden pattern, or
+"pathron" as he called it, for the creature was Irish. He gave minute
+and scrupulous directions to Peninnah Penelope Anne to sew the cylinder
+with no more than twelve stitches to the inch, and to baste down the
+seams, "now, moind ye that!--ivery wan!--that no powther might slip
+through beyant!"
+
+In the pride of the expert he was chary of commendation and eyed
+critically the circular bottom of every bag before he filled it with
+powder.
+
+"See that, now," he said, snipping briskly with the scissors; "that
+string of woolen yarn that yez left there, a-burnin' away outside, might
+burst the whole gun, an' ivery sowl in the blockhouse would be kilt
+intirely,--moind ye that, now!--an they would n't be the Frenchies,
+nayther!" He gave her a keen warning glance at rather close range, then
+once more renewed his labors.
+
+The mockingbirds were singing in the woods outside. The sun was in the
+trees. The leafage had progressed beyond the bourgeoning period and the
+branches flung broad green splendors of verdure to the breeze. The Great
+Smoky Mountains were hardly less blue than the sky as the distant
+summits deployed against the fair horizon; only the nearest, close at
+hand, were sombre, and showed dark luxuriant foliage and massive craggy
+steeps, and their austere, silent, magnificent domes looked over the
+scene with solemn uplifting meanings. Oh, life! life was so sweet, and
+love and friendship were so easy to come by and so hard to part withal,
+and glad, oh, glad was she that no men of the French nation or any other
+were on their march hitherward to be torn in cruel lacerations by those
+wicked cartridges, so cleverly and artfully and cheerfully
+constructed,--men with homes, wives, mothers, sisters, children, every
+soldier representing to some anxious, tender heart a whole world, a
+microcosm of affection, all illuminated with hope and joy or to be
+clouded with grief and terror and loss and despair,--oh, glad, glad was
+she that the French invasion was but a figment,--a tissue of
+misconceptions and vague innuendoes and groundless assumptions.
+
+And yet she was sad and sorry and ashamed, because of the futile bustle
+and bluster and cheerful courageous activity about her. Not a cheek had
+blenched; not a hand had trembled; not a voice had been lifted to
+protest or counsel surrender, despite their meagre capacities for
+defense and their number, but a handful. What would these men say to her
+if they knew that their patriotism and their valor were expended in
+vain,--above all, their mutual cause of quarrel wasted!--as pretty a bit
+of neighborhood spite as ever stopped a bullet--all foolishly and
+needlessly reconciled without a blow! She had saved them from a bloody
+feud, the chances of which were terrifying to her for their own sakes.
+But what would they say when discovery should come!
+
+Still, it might never come. And yet, should they patrol the woods in
+vain and at last disperse and return each to his own home, she had no
+placidity in prospect,--she was troubled and sad and her sorry heart was
+heavy. Her scheme had succeeded beyond her wildest hopes. Her beneficent
+artifice had fully worked its mission. And now, since there was no more
+to be done, she had time to repent her varied deceits. Was it right? she
+asked herself in conscientious alarm, not the less sincere because
+belated. Ought she to have interfered, with what forces it was possible
+for her limited capacity to wield? Had they an inalienable right to cut
+each other's throats? Should she have so presumed? And now--
+
+"Howly Moses!" a voice in shrill agitation broke in upon her
+preoccupation. "An' is it sheddin' tears ye are upon the blessed
+gunpowther? Sure the colleen's crazed! Millia Murther! the beautiful
+ca'tridges is ruint intoirely! Any man moight be proud an' plazed to be
+kilt by the loikes o' them! How many o' them big wathery tears have yez
+been after sheddin' into aich o' them lovely ca'tridges?"
+
+He had risen; one hand was laid protectingly upon the completed pile of
+fixed ammunition as if to ward off the damping influences of her woe,
+while he ruefully contemplated the suspected cartridge bags, all plump
+and tidy and workmanlike, save for their possible charge of tears. She
+made no answer, but sat quite motionless upon her low stool, a cartridge
+bag unfinished in her lap, her golden brown curls against the cannon,
+still weeping her large tears and looking very small.
+
+His clamors brought half the force to the scene of the disturbance. A
+keen question here, an inference heedfully taken there, and the
+situation was plain!
+
+In the abrupt pause in this headlong career it was difficult to sustain
+one's poise. Now and again, indeed, sheepish conscious glances were
+interchanged; for since the grievance of the cow-drivers had been
+publicly annulled and the horses of the Blue Lick Stationers had been
+restored in pure neighborly good-will, a resumption of the quarrel on
+the old invalid scores was impossible. Perhaps some token of their
+displeasure might have been visited upon her who had inaugurated so bold
+and extensive a wild goose chase, but she looked so small as she sat by
+the cannon weeping her large tears that she disarmed retaliation.
+
+So small she looked, indeed, that certain of the young blades, who filed
+in to gaze upon her and filed out again, would not believe that she
+could have invented so large a French invasion, and for several days
+they futilely scouted the woods in search of some errant "parlez-vous,"
+all of whom, however, were very discreetly tucked away within the strong
+defenses of Fort Toulouse.
+
+The young gunner alone was implacable. He was the first of the returning
+force to reach Fort Prince George, and he carried with him all the
+powder that had been sent under mistake to the Blue Lick Station,
+together with the tear-shotted cartridges, whose problematic interior
+damage he explained to the amazed, chagrined, and nonplussed commandant.
+
+"Oh, sor," the gunner said in conclusion, solemnly shaking his head,
+"that gurl, sor!--she is a wily one! An' I should n't be surprised, sor,
+if she is a dale taller than she looks!"
+
+The Blue Lick Station in time recovered its equilibrium, and was
+afterward prone to protest that of all frontier communities it bore the
+palm for the efficiency of its "linguister."
+
+
+
+
+A VICTOR AT CHUNGKE
+
+
+At Tennessee Town, on the Tennessee River, there used to be a great
+chungke-yard. It was laid off in a wide rectangular area nine hundred
+feet long, two feet lower than the surface of the ground, level as a
+floor, and covered with fine white sand. The ancient, curiously shaped
+chungke-stones, fashioned with much labor from the hardest rock, perfect
+despite immemorial use, kept with the strictest care, exempt by law from
+burial with the effects of the dead, were the property of this Cherokee
+town, and no more to be removed thence than the council-house,--the
+great rotunda at one side of the "beloved square," built upon a mound in
+the centre of the village.
+
+Surely no spot could seem more felicitously chosen for the favorite
+Indian game. The ground rose about the chungke-yard like the walls of an
+amphitheatre, on every side save the slope toward the "beloved square"
+and the river, furnishing an ideal position of vantage for spectators
+were they even more numerous than the hundreds of Cherokees of all ages
+that had gathered on the steep acclivities to overlook the game--some
+ranged on the terrace or turfy ridge around the chungke-yard, formed by
+the earth thrown out when the depressed area was delved down long ago,
+others disposed beneath the spreading trees, others still, precariously
+perched on clifty promontories beetling out from the sharp ascent. Above
+all, Chilhowee Mountain, aflare with the scarlet glow of its autumnal
+woods, touched the blue sky. The river, of a kindred blue, with a
+transient steely change under the shadow of a cloud, showed flashes of
+white foam, for the winds were rushing down from the Great Smoky
+Mountains, which were revealed for an instant in a clear hard azure
+against the pearl-tinted horizon--then again only a mirage, an illusion,
+a dream of stupendous ranges in the shimmering mist.
+
+In the idle, sylvan, tribal life of that date, one hundred and fifty
+years ago, it might seem that there was scant duty recognized, imposing
+serious occupation, to debar the population of Tennessee Town from
+witnessing the long-drawn game, which was continued sometimes half the
+day by the same hardy young warriors, indefatigable despite the hot sun
+and the tense exercise, straining every muscle. A few old women, their
+minds intent upon the preparation of dinner, a few of the very young
+children, relishing their own pottering devices as of a finer flavor of
+sport, a few old men, like other old men elsewhere, with thoughts of the
+past so vivid that the present could show but a pallid aspect--these
+were absent, and were not missed. For the most part, however, the little
+dwellings were vacant. The usual groups of loungers had deserted the
+public buildings, which consisted of a bark-and-log house of three
+rooms, or divisions, at each angle of the "beloved square," and in which
+were transacted the business affairs of the town;--one, painted red, was
+the "war-cabin," whence arms, ammunition, etc., were distributed, the
+divisions implying distinctions as to rank among the warriors; another,
+painted white, was devoted to the priestcraft of the "beloved men"--head
+men of note, conjurers, and prophets; the cabin of the aged councilors
+faced the setting sun, as an intimation that their wars were ended and
+their day done; and in the fourth cabin met the "second men," as the
+traders called the subordinate authorities who conducted municipal
+affairs, so to speak--the community labor of raising houses, and laying
+off and planting with maize and pompions the common fields to be tilled
+by the women, "who fret at the very shadow of a crow," writes an old
+trader. All these cabins were now still and silent in the sun. The
+dome-shaped town-house, of a different style of architecture, plastered
+within and without with red clay, placed high on the artificial mound,
+and reached by an ascent of stairs which were cut in regular gradations
+in the earth, lacked its strange religious ceremonies; its secret
+colloguing council of chiefs with the two princes of the town; its
+visitors of distinction, ambassadors from other towns or Indian nations;
+its wreaths of tobacco sent forth from diplomatically smoked pipes; its
+strategic "talks;" its exchange of symbolic belts and strings of wampum
+and of swans' wings--white, or painted red and black, as peace hovered
+or war impended--and other paraphernalia of the savage government. Even
+the trading-house showed a closed door, and the English trader, his pipe
+in his mouth, smoked with no latent significance, but merely to garner
+its nicotian solace, sat with a group of the elder braves and watched
+the barbaric sport with an interest as keen as if he had been born and
+bred an Indian instead of native to the far-away dales of Devonshire.
+Nay, he bet on the chances of the game with as reckless a nerve as a
+Cherokee,--always the perfect presentment of the gambler,--despite the
+thrift which characterized his transactions at the trading-house, where
+he was wont to drive a close bargain, and look with the discerning
+scrupulousness of an expert into the values of the dressing of a
+deerskin offered in barter. But the one pursuit was pleasure, and the
+other business. The deerskins which he was wearing were of phenomenal
+softness and beauty of finish, for the spare, dapper man was arrayed
+like the Indians, in fringed buckskin shirt and leggings; but he was
+experiencing a vague sentiment of contempt for his attire. He had been
+recently wearing a garb of good camlet-cloth and hose and a bravely
+cocked hat, for he was just returned from a journey to Charlestown, five
+hundred miles distant, where he had made a considerable stay, and his
+muscles and attitude were still adjusted to the pride of preferment and
+the consciousness of being unwontedly smart. Indeed, his pack-train,
+laden with powder and firearms, beads and cloth, cutlery and paints, for
+his traffic with the Indians under the license which he held from the
+British government, had but come in the previous day, and he had still
+the pulses of civilization beating in his veins.
+
+For this reason, perhaps, as he sat, one elbow on his knee, his chin in
+his hand, his sharp, commercially keen face softened by a thought not
+akin to trade, his eyes were darkened, while he gazed at one of the
+contestants, with a doubt that had little connection with the odds which
+he had offered. He was troubled by a vague regret, a speculation of
+restless futility, for it concerned a future so unusual that no detail
+could be predicted from the resources of the present. And yet this
+sentiment was without the poignancy of personal grief--it was only a
+vicarious interest that animated him. For himself, despite the
+flattering, smooth reminiscence of the camlet-cloth yet lingering in the
+nerves of his finger-tips, the recent relapse into English speech, the
+interval spent once more among the stir of streets and shops, splendid
+indeed to an unwonted gaze, the commercial validities, which he so
+heartily appreciated, of the warehouses, and crowded wharves, and laden
+merchantmen swinging at anchor in the great harbor, he was satisfied. He
+was possessed by that extraordinary renunciation of civilization which
+now and again was manifested by white men thrown among the Cherokee
+tribe--sometimes, as in his instance, a trader, advanced in years, "his
+pile made," to use the phrase of to-day, the world before him where to
+choose a home; sometimes a deserter from the British or French military
+forces, according to the faction which the shifting Cherokees affected
+at the time; more than once a captive, spared for some whim, set at
+liberty, free to go where he would--all deliberately and of choice cast
+their lot among the Cherokees; lived and died with the treacherous race.
+Whether the wild sylvan life had some peculiarly irresistible
+attraction; whether the world beyond held for them responsibilities and
+laborious vocations and irksome ties which they would fain evade;
+whether they fell under the bewitchment of "Herbert's Spring," named
+from an early commissioner of Indian affairs, after drinking whereof one
+could not quit the region of the Great Smoky Mountains, but remained in
+that enchanted country for seven years, fascinated, lapsed in perfect
+content--it is impossible to say. There is a tradition that when the
+attraction of the world would begin to reassert its subtle reminiscent
+forces, these renegades of civilization were wont to repair anew to this
+fountain to quaff again of the ancient delirium and to revive its potent
+spell. Abram Varney had no such necessity in his own case; he only
+doubted the values of his choice as fitted for another.
+
+Apart from this reflection, it was natural that his eyes should follow
+the contestant whom he had backed for a winner to the tune of more
+silver bangles, and "ear-bobs," and strings of "roanoke," and gunpowder,
+and red and white paint, than he was minded to lightly lose. He had laid
+his wagers with a keen calculation of the relative endowments of the
+players, their dexterity, their experience, their endurance. He was not
+influenced by any pride of race in the fact that his champion was also a
+white man, who, indeed, carried a good share of the favor of the
+spectators.
+
+A strange object was this champion, at once pathetic and splendid. No
+muscular development could have been finer, no athletic grace more
+pronounced than his physique displayed. The wild life and training of
+the woods and the savage wars had brought out all the constitutional
+endurance and strength inherited from his stanch English father and his
+hardy Scotch mother. Both had been murdered by the Cherokees in a
+frontier massacre, and as a boy of ten years of age, his life spared in
+some freak of the moment, he had been conveyed hither, exhorted to
+forget, adopted into the tribe, brought up with their peculiar kindness
+in the rearing of children, taught all the sylvan arts, and trained to
+the stern duties of war by the noted chief Colannah Gigagei, himself,
+the Great Red Raven of Tennessee Town (sometimes called Quorinnah, the
+name being a favorite war-title specially coveted). The youth had had
+his baptism of fire in the ceaseless wars which the Cherokees waged
+against the other Indian tribes. He had already won the "warrior's
+crown" and his "war-name," a title conferred only upon the bravest of
+the brave. He was now Otasite, the "Man-killer" of Tennessee Town. He
+was just twenty years of age, and Abram Varney, gazing at him, wondered
+what the people in Charlestown would think of him could they see him.
+For a few days, a week, perhaps, the trader would refer all his thoughts
+to this civilized standard.
+
+Tall, alert as an Indian, supple too, but heavier and more muscular,
+Otasite was instantly to be distinguished by his build from among the
+other young men, although, like the Indians, he wore a garb of dressed
+deerskin. His face, albeit no stranger to the use of their pigments and
+unguents, still showed fair and freckled. His hair bore no resemblance
+to their lank black locks; of an auburn hue and resolutely curling, it
+defied the tonsure to which it had been for years subjected, coming out
+crisp and ringleted close to his head where he was designed to be bald,
+and on the top, where the "war-lock" was permitted to grow, it floated
+backward in two long tangled red curls that gave the lie direct to the
+Indian similitude affected by the two surmounting tips of eagle
+feathers. He was arrayed in much splendor, according to aboriginal
+standards; the fringed seams of his hunting shirt and leggings,
+fashioned of fine white dressed doeskin, as pliable as "Canton silk
+crape," were hung with fawns' trotters; his moccasins were white and
+streaked with parti-colored paint; he had a curious prickly belt of
+wolves' teeth, which intimated his moral courage as well as sylvan
+prowess, for the slaying of these beasts was esteemed unlucky, and
+shooting at them calculated to spoil the aim of a gun; many glancing,
+glittering strings of "roanoke" swung around his neck.
+
+Nothing could have been finer, athletically considered, than his
+attitude at this moment of the trader's speculative observation. The
+discoidal quartz chungke-stone[2] had been hurled with a tremendous
+fling along the smooth sandy stretch of the yard, its flat edge, two
+inches wide, and the curiously exact equipoise of its fashioning causing
+it to bowl swiftly along a great distance, to fall only when the
+original impetus should fail; his competitor, Wyejah, a sinewy, powerful
+young brave, his buckskin garb steeped in some red dye that gave him the
+look when at full speed of the first flying leaf of the falling season,
+his ears split and barbarically distended on wire hoops[3] and hung with
+silver rings, his moccasins scarlet, his black hair decorated with
+cardinal wings, had just sent his heavy lance, twelve feet long,
+skimming through the air; then Otasite, running swiftly but lightly
+abreast with him, launched his own long lance with such force and nicety
+of aim that its point struck the end of Wyejah's spear, still in flight
+in mid-air, deflecting its direction, and sending it far afield from the
+chungke-stone which it was designed in falling to touch. This fine cast
+counted one point in the game, which is of eleven points, and the Indian
+braves among the spectators howled like civilized young men at a
+horse-race.
+
+The sport was very keen, the contest being exceedingly close, for Wyejah
+had long needed only one additional point to make him a winner, and when
+Otasite had failed to score he had also failed. The swift motion, the
+graceful agility, the smiling face of Otasite,--for it was a matter of
+the extremest exaction in the Indian games that however strenuous the
+exertion and tense the strain upon the nerves and grievous the
+mischances of the sport, the utmost placidity of manner and temper must
+be preserved throughout,--all appealed freshly to the trader, although
+it was a long-accustomed sight.
+
+"Many a man in Charlestown--a well-to-do man" (applying the commercial
+standard of value)--"would be proud to have such a son," he muttered, a
+trifle dismayed by the perverse incongruities of fate. "He would have
+sent the boy to school. If there was money enough he would have sent him
+to England to be educated--and none too good for him!"
+
+The shadows of the two players, all foreshortened by the approach of
+noontide, bobbed about in dwarfish caricature along the smooth sandy
+stretch. The great chungke-pole, an obelisk forty feet high planted on a
+low mound in the centre of the chungke-yard, and with a target at its
+summit used for trials of skill in marksmanship, cast a diminished
+simulacrum on the ground at its base scarcely larger than the
+chungke-lances. Now and again these heavy projectiles flew through the
+air, impelled with an incredible force and a skill so accurate that it
+seemed impossible that both contestants should not excel. There was a
+moment, however, when Otasite might have made the decisive point to
+score eleven had not the chungke-stone slipped from the hand of Wyejah
+as he cast it, falling only a few yards distant. Otasite's lance, flung
+instantly, shot far beyond that missile, for which, had the stone been
+properly thrown, he should have aimed. Wyejah, disconcerted and shaken
+by the mischance, launching his lance at haphazard, almost mechanically,
+struck by obvious accident the flying lance of his adversary, deflecting
+its course--the decisive cast, for which he had striven so long in vain,
+and which was now merely fortuitous.
+
+The crowds of Indian gamblers, with much money and goods at hazard upon
+the event, some, indeed, having staked the clothes upon their backs, the
+rifles and powder for their winter hunt that should furnish them with
+food, were at once in a clamor of discussion as to the fair adjustment
+of the throw in the score. The backers of Wyejah claimed the accidental
+hit as genuine and closing the game. The backers of Otasite protested
+that it could not be thus held, since Wyejah's defective cast of the
+chungke-stone debarred their champion from the possibility of first
+scoring the eleventh point, which chance was his by right, it being his
+turn to play; they met the argument caviling at Otasite's lack of aim by
+the counter-argument that one does not aim at a moving object where it
+is at the moment, but with an intuitive calculation of distance and
+speed where it will be when reached by the projectile hurled after it,
+illustrating cleverly by the example of shooting with bow and arrow at a
+bird on the wing.
+
+Otasite and Wyejah both, preserved an appearance of joyous indifference.
+With their lances poised high in the right hand they were together
+running swiftly up the long alley again to the starting-point, Otasite
+commenting on the evident lack of intention in Wyejah's lucky cast with
+a loud, jocosely satiric cry, "_Hala! Hala_!" (signifying, "You are too
+many for me!")
+
+"Lord! how the boy does yell!" Abram Varney exclaimed, a smile pervading
+the wrinkles wrought about his eyes by much pondering on the problems of
+the Indian trade, feeling incongruously a sort of elation in the youth's
+noisy shouts, which echoed blatantly from the rocky banks of the
+Tennessee River, and with reduced arrogance and in softer tones from the
+cliffs of towering Chilhowee.
+
+A sympathetic sentiment glowed in the dark eyes of an Indian chief on
+the slope hard by, the great Colannah Gigagei. He was fast aging now;
+the difficulties of diplomacy constantly increasing in view of
+individual aggressions and encroachments of the Carolina colonists on
+the east, and the ever specious wiles and suave allurements of the
+French on the west, to win the Cherokees from their British alliance;
+the impossibility, in the gentle patriarchal methods of the Cherokee
+government, to control the wild young men of the tribe, who, as the
+half-king, Atta-Kulla-Kulla said, "often acted like madmen rather than
+people of sense" (and it is respectfully submitted that this peculiarity
+has been observed in other young men elsewhere); the prophetic vision,
+doubtless, of the eventual crushing of his people in the collisions of
+the great international struggle of the Europeans for the possession of
+this country,--all fostered tokens of time in the face of Colannah, and
+bowed his straight back, and set an unwonted quiver in the nerves of his
+old hand that had been firm in his heyday, and strong and crafty and
+cruelly bloody. But his face now was softened with pleasure, and the
+pride it expressed was almost tender.
+
+"When a few years ago the Governor of South Carolina," he said
+majestically, speaking in the Cherokee tongue but for the English names
+(he pronounced the title "Goweno"), "offered to take some Cherokee
+youths to train in his schools and make _scholars_ of them, I thanked
+him with affection, for his thought was kind. But I told him that if he
+would send some South Carolina youths to the Cherokee nation to be
+trained, we would make _men_ of them!"
+
+His blanket, curiously woven of feathers and wild hemp, requiring years
+of labor in its intricate manufacture, fell away from one gaunt arm as
+he lifted it to point with a kingly gesture at the young white man as
+the illustration of his training. Every muscle of strength was on parade
+in the splendid pose of hurling the great chungke-spear through the air,
+as Otasite thus passed the interval while waiting the decision of the
+umpire of the game. Then, with a laugh, oddly blent of affection and
+pride, Colannah took his way down the slope and toward the
+council-house: the council sat there much in these days of 1753, clouded
+with smoke and perplexity.
+
+Judging by this specimen of his athletic training to feats of prowess,
+Colannah Gigagei might boast to the "Goweno" of South Carolina. It was
+not, however, merely in muscle that the young captive excelled. As Abram
+Varney thought of certain sterling manly traits of the highest type
+which this poor waif had developed here in this incongruous environment,
+one might suppose from the sheer force of heredity, he shook his head
+silently, and his eyes clouded, the pulses of Charlestown still beating
+in his veins. For he was wont to leave for months the treasures of his
+trading-house, not merely a matter of trinkets and beads, but powder,
+lead, and firearms, sufficient for accoutring an expedition for the
+"war-path," and great store of cloths, cutlery, paints, in the charge of
+this valiant gamester of chungke, stanch alike against friend and foe,
+as safely as if its wealth were beneath his own eye. So insecure had
+become the Cherokee allegiance to the government that it was impossible
+now under its uncertain protection to retain white men from the colonies
+here in his employ as agents and under-traders, or, indeed, those whose
+interest and profits amounted to an ownership in a share of the stock.
+The earlier traders in neighboring towns one by one had gone, affecting
+a base several hundred miles nearer the white settlements. Some had
+shifted altogether from the tribe, and secured a post among the
+Chickasaws, who were indubitably loyal to the British. While their
+withdrawal added to Varney's profits,--for each trader was allowed to
+hold at this time a license only for two Indian towns, it being before
+the date of the issuance of general licenses, and the custom which they
+had relinquished, the barter with the Cherokees for deerskins, now came
+from long distances, drawn as by a magnet to his trading-house at
+Tennessee Town,--it had resulted in his isolation, and for years he had
+been almost the only British subject west of the Great Smoky Mountains.
+He had no fear of the Cherokees, however--not even should the political
+sky, always somewhat overcast, become yet more lowering. He had long
+been accustomed to these Indians, and he felt that he had fast friends
+among them. His sane mercantile judgment appraised and appreciated the
+added opportunities of his peculiar position, which he would not lightly
+throw away, and the development of Otasite's incongruous commercial
+values not only removed the possibility of loss during his absence, but
+added to his facilities in enabling him to secure the fidelity of
+Indians as packmen, hitherto impracticable, but now rendered to Otasite
+as one of the tribe. He had recognized with satisfaction, mingled with
+amusement, national traits in the boy, who, despite his Indian training,
+would not, like them, barter strings of wampum measuring "from elbow to
+wrist" without regard to the relative length of arm. Yet he had none of
+the Indian deceit and treachery. He was blunt, sincere, and bold. His
+alertness in computation gave Varney genuine pleasure, although they
+wrangled much as to his method, for he used the Cherokee numeration, and
+it set the trader's mercantile teeth on edge to hear twenty called
+"_tahre skoeh_"--two tens.
+
+"And why not?" Otasite would demand, full of faith in his own education.
+"The Chickasaw will say '_pokoole toogalo_'--ten twos"--and he would
+smile superior. This was his world, and these his standards--the
+Cherokees and the Chickasaws!
+
+He was not to be easily influenced or turned save by some spontaneous
+acquiescence of his own mind, and Varney found himself counting "_skoeh
+chooke kaiere_" (the old one's hundred) before he ever induced Otasite
+to say instead "one thousand."
+
+The boy even ventured on censorship in his turn. "You say 'Cherokee_s_'
+and 'Chickasaw_s_' when you speak of the Tsullakee and the Chickasaw;
+why don't you then say the English-_es_ and the French-_es_?" For the
+plural designation of these tribes was a colonial invention.
+
+His bulldog tenacity, his orderly instincts, his providence, so contrary
+to the methods of the wasteful Indian, his cheerful industry, his
+indomitable energy and perseverance,--all were so national that in days
+gone past Varney used now and again to clap him on the shoulder with a
+loud, careless vaunt, "British to the marrow!"
+
+A fact, doubtless--and all of a sudden it had begun to seem a very
+serious fact. So very serious, indeed, that the old trader did not
+notice the crisis in the chungke-yard, the increasing excitement in the
+crowds of spectators, the clamors presently when the game was declared a
+draw and the bets off, the stir of the departing groups. It was silence
+at last that smote upon his senses with the effect of interruption which
+the continuance of sound had not been able to compass. He drew himself
+up with a perplexed sigh, and looked drearily over the expanse of the
+river. Its long glittering reaches were vacant, a rare circumstance, for
+the Cherokees of that date were almost amphibious in habit, reveling in
+the many lovely streams of their mountain country; on the banks their
+towns were situated, and this fact doubtless contributed to the neatness
+of their habitations and personal cleanliness, to which the travelers of
+those times bear a surprised testimony. The light upon the water was
+aslant now from a westering sun, and glittering on the snowy breasts of
+a cluster of swans drifting, dreaming perhaps, on the current. The
+scarlet boughs on the summit of Chilhowee were motionless against the
+azure zenith. Not even the vaguest tissue of mist now lingered about the
+majestic domes of the Great Smoky Mountains, painted clearly and
+accurately in fine and minute detail in soft dense velvet blues against
+the hard polished mineral blue of the horizon. The atmosphere was so
+exquisitely luminous and pellucid that it might have seemed a fit medium
+to dispel uncertainty in other than merely material subjects of
+contemplation. Nevertheless he did not see his way clearly, and when he
+came within view of his trading-house he paused as abruptly as if he had
+found his path blocked by an obstacle.
+
+There, seated on the step of the closed door which boasted the only lock
+and key in Tennessee Town, or for the matter of that in all the stretch
+of the Cherokee country west of the Great Smoky Range, was Otasite, the
+incongruity of his auburn curls and his Indian headdress seeming a
+trifle more pronounced than usual, since it had been for a time an
+unfamiliar sight. He was awaiting the coming of the trader, and was
+singing meanwhile in a loud and cheerful voice, "Drink with me a cup of
+wine," a ditty which he had heard in his half-forgotten childhood. The
+robust full tones gave no token of the draught made upon his endurance
+by the heavy exercise of the day, but he seemed a bit languid from the
+heat, and his doeskin shirt was thrown open at the throat, showing his
+broad white chest, and in its centre the barbarous blue discolorations
+of the "warrior's marks." These disfigurements, made by the puncturing
+of the flesh with gars' teeth and inserting in the wound paint and
+pitch, indelible testimonials to his deeds of courage and prowess,
+Otasite valued as he did naught else on earth, and he would have parted
+with his right hand as readily. The first had been bestowed upon him
+after he had gone, a mighty gun-man, against the Muscogees. The others
+he had won in the course of a long, furious, and stubborn contest of the
+tribe with the Chickasaws, who, always impolitic, headlong, and brave,
+were now reduced by their own valor in their many wars from ten thousand
+fighting men to a few hundred. He had attained the "warrior's crown"
+when he had shown their kindred Choctaws a mettle as fierce and a craft
+as keen as their own. And now he was looking at Abram Varney with kindly
+English eyes and an expression about the brow, heavily freckled, that
+almost smote the tears from the elder man. The trader knew from long
+experience what was coming, but suddenly he had begun to regard it
+differently. Always upon the end of each journey from Charlestown he had
+been met here within a day or two by Otasite on the same mission. The
+long years as they passed had wrought only external changes since, as a
+slender wistful boy of eleven years, heart-sick, homeless, forlorn,
+friendless, save for his Indian captors, likely, indeed, to forget all
+language but theirs, he had first come with his question, always in
+English, always with a faltering eyelash and a deprecatory lowered
+voice, "Did you hear anything in Charlestown of any people named
+'Queetlee'?"
+
+This was the distorted version of his father's name that Colannah had
+preserved. As to the child himself, his memory had perhaps been shaken
+by the events of that terrible night of massacre, which he only realized
+as a frightful awakening from sleep to smoke, flames, screams, the
+ear-splitting crack of rifle-shots at close quarters, the shock of a
+sudden hurt--and then, after an interval of unconsciousness, a
+transition to a new world of strange habitudes that grew speedily
+familiar, and of unexpected kindness that became dear to a frank,
+affectionate heart. Perhaps in the isolations of the frontier life he
+had never heard his father addressed by his surname by a stranger; he
+was called "Jan" by his wife, and her name was "Eelin," and this Otasite
+knew, and this was all he knew, save that he himself also had been
+called "Jan."
+
+"They don't want you, my buck, or they would have been after you," the
+trader used to reply, being harder, perhaps when he was younger.
+Besides, he honestly thought the cadaverous brat, all legs, like a
+growing colt, and skinny arms, was better off here in the free woodland
+life which he himself considered no hardship, and affected long after
+necessity or interest had dictated his environment. The little lad was
+safe in the care of the powerful chief Colannah Gigagei of Tennessee
+Town, who had adopted him, and who was a man of great force and
+influence. Why should the child seek a home among his own people,
+unwelcome doubtless, to eat the meagre crust of charity, or serve as an
+overworked drudge somewhere on the precarious frontier? The trader did
+not greatly deplore the lack of religious training, for in the remote
+settlements this was often still an unaccustomed luxury, albeit some
+thirty years had now gone by since Sir Francis Nicholson, then the
+Governor, declared that no colony could flourish without a wider
+diffusion of the gospel and education, and forthwith ordered spiritual
+drill, so to speak, in the way of preaching and schooling. Although
+himself described as "a profane, passionate, headstrong man, bred a
+soldier," as if the last fact were an excuse for the former, he
+contributed largely to the furtherance of these pious objects, "spending
+liberally all his salary and perquisites of office," for which generous
+trait of character an early and strait-laced historian is obviously of
+the opinion that General Nicholson should have been suffered to swear in
+peace and, as it were, in the odor of sanctity.
+
+More than once, when in Charlestown, Varney, notwithstanding his
+persuasions on the subject, had been minded to inquire concerning the
+"Queetlees," who he understood from Colannah had come originally from
+Cumberland in England. With his mercantile cronies he had canvassed the
+question whether the queer, evidently distorted name could have been
+"Peatley" or "Patey" or "Petrie,"--for the Cherokees always substituted
+"Q" for "P," as the latter letter they could not pronounce,--and after
+this transient consideration the matter would drop.
+
+As the child, running about the Indian town with his new-found
+playmates, grew robust and merry-hearted, and happiness, confidence, and
+strength brought their embellishing influence to the expression of his
+large dark gray eyes and straightened the nervous droop from his thin
+little shoulders, the trader noticed casually once or twice how comely
+the brat had become, and he experienced a fleeting, half-ridiculing pity
+for his mother--how the woman would have resented and resisted the
+persistent shearing and shaving of those silken, loosely twining red
+curls! Then he thought of her no more. But when the child had come to
+man's estate, when he was encased in a network of muscle like elastic
+steel wires, when stature and strength had made him alike formidable and
+splendid, when the development of his temperament illustrated virtues so
+stanch that they seemed the complement of his physical endowment and a
+part of his resolute personality, the old trader thought of the boy's
+father, and thought of him daily--how the sturdy Cumbrian yeoman would
+have rejoiced in so stalwart a son! Thus, with this vague bond of
+sympathy with a man whom he had never seen, never known, so long ago, so
+cruelly dead, this intuitive divination of his paternal sentiment,
+Varney's fatherly attitude grew more definite daily and became
+accustomed, and he was jealous of the influence of Colannah, who in turn
+was jealous of his influence.
+
+Now as Varney stood in the dusky trading-house among the kegs and bags
+and bales of goods, the high peak of the interior of the roof lost in
+the lofty shadows, he felt that he had been much in default in long-past
+years, and he experienced a very definite pang of conscience as Otasite
+swung abruptly around a stack of arms, a new rifle in his hand, the
+flint and pan of which he had been keenly examining.
+
+He lifted his eyes suddenly with that long-lashed dreary look of his
+childhood.
+
+"Did you hear of any Queetlees in Charlestown?" he asked.
+
+"It is _you_ who should seek your kindred, Jan Queetlee!" Varney said
+impulsively, calling him by his unaccustomed English name. "It is _you_
+who should go to Charlestown to find the Queetlees!"
+
+Otasite's face showed suddenly the unwonted expression of fear. He
+recoiled abruptly, and Abram Varney was sensible of a deep depression.
+It was as he had thought. The wish for restoration to those of his name
+and his kindred which had animated the boy's earlier years had now
+dwindled to a mere abstract sentiment of loyalty as of clanship, but was
+devoid of expectation, of intention. All the members of his immediate
+family had perished in the massacre, and he had been trained to regard
+this as the fortunes of war, cherishing no personal antagonism, as
+elsewhere among civilized people reconciliations are frequent between
+the victors and the friends of the slain in battle. Moreover, he was not
+brought close to it. The participators in the affray were of the distant
+Ayrate settlements of the tribe, southeast of the mountains, and not
+individualized. The Indians of Tennessee Town, which was then one of the
+most remote of the Cherokee villages of the Ottare division, and this
+perhaps was the reason it was selected as his home, were not concerned
+in the foray, nor were any others of the Overhill towns. Thus he had
+grown up without the thirst for vengeance, which showed how little the
+methods of his Cherokee environment had influenced his heart. And truly
+the far-away Queetlees, if any such were cognizant of his existence, had
+troubled themselves nothing about it, and had infinitely less claim on
+his gratitude and filial affection than Colannah. They had left him to
+be as a waif, a slave. He had been reared as a son, nursed and tended,
+fed and fostered, bedecked in splendor, armed in costly and formidable
+wise, given command and station, carefully trained in all that the
+Indian knew.
+
+"Colannah would never consent!" he said at last.
+
+Abram Varney afterward wondered why he should then have had a
+vision--oh, so futile, so fleeting, so fantastic!--of the twenty, the
+forty, nay, the sixty years that this man, so munificently endowed by
+nature, might pass here among the grotesque, uncouth barbarities of the
+savage Cherokee, while his heritage--his religion, the religion into
+which he was born of Christian parents, his name and nation, his tongue
+and station, his opportunity--doubtless some fair, valid, valuable
+future--all lay there to the eastward but scant five hundred miles away
+on the Carolina coast. He said as much, and the retort came succinctly,
+"You live here!"
+
+Otasite's English speech was as simple as a child's, but he thought as
+diplomatically as Colannah himself, whom he esteemed the greatest man in
+all the world, and he could argue in the strategic Cherokee method.
+Nevertheless, to give him full sway, that everything possible might be
+said in contravention of the proposition, the old trader lapsed into the
+Indian speech, that was indeed from long usage like a mother tongue to
+them both. He stayed here, he said, from choice, it was true, but for
+the sake of the trade that gave him wealth, and with wealth he could
+return to the colonies at any time, and go whither he would in all the
+world. But Otasite was restricted; he had no goods for trade, no
+adequate capital to invest; he could only return to the colonies while
+young, to work, to make a way, to secure betimes a place appropriate to
+his riper years. Even this could not be done without great
+difficulty,--witness how many settlers came empty-handed to barely exist
+on the frontier and wrest a reluctant living from the wilderness,--and
+it could not be done at all without friends. Now he, Abram Varney, was
+prepared to stand his friend; Otasite could take a place in the service
+of the company, in the main depot of the trade at Charlestown. His
+knowledge of the details of the business of which Abram Varney's long
+absences had given him experience; of the needs of the Cherokee nation;
+of the ever-continued efforts of the French traders, by means of the
+access to the Overhill towns afforded by the Cherokee and Tennessee
+rivers, despite the great distance from their settlements on the
+Mississippi, to insinuate their supplies at lower prices, in the teeth
+of the Cherokee treaty with the British monopolizing such traffic, and
+bring down profits--all would have a special and recognized value and be
+appreciated by his mercantile associates, who would further the young
+man's advancement. Thence he could at his leisure make inquiries
+concerning his father's family, and doubtless in the course of time be
+restored to his kindred.
+
+Otasite listened throughout with the courteous air of deliberation which
+his Indian training required him to accord to any discourse, without
+interruption, however unwelcome or trivial it might be esteemed. Then,
+smiling slowly, he shook his head.
+
+"You cannot be serious," he said. "It would break old Colannah's heart,
+who has been like a father to me."
+
+Abram Varney too had the British bulldog tenacity. "What will you do,
+then," he asked slowly and significantly, "when Colannah takes up arms
+against the British government? Will you fight men of your own blood?"
+
+He was reinforced in this argument by the habit of thought of the
+Indians--the absolute absence of tribal dissensions, of internecine
+strife, so marked among the Cherokees: here no man's hand was lifted
+against his brother.
+
+Jan Queetlee palpably winced. Come what might, he could never fight for
+the Cherokees against the British--his father's people, his mother's
+people--no more than he could fight for the British against his adopted
+tribe--the Cherokee--and he the "Man-killer!"
+
+"They will fight each other," said Varney weightily, "and the day is not
+far--the day is not far!"
+
+For in 1753 the cumulative discontents of the tribe were near the
+crisis, earnestly fostered by the French on the western boundaries, that
+vast domain then known as Louisiana, toward whose siren voice the
+Cherokees had ever lent a willing ear. The building by the British
+government, two or three years later, of those great defensive works,
+Fort Prince George and Fort Loudon, situated respectively at the eastern
+and western extremities of the Cherokee territory, mounted with cannon
+and garrisoned by British forces, served to hold them in check and
+quieted them for a time, but only for a time. Jan Queetlee, by reason of
+his close association with the chiefs, knew far more than Varney dreamed
+of the bitterness roused in the hearts of the Indians by friction with
+the government, the aggressions of the individual colonist, the
+infringements of their privileges in the treaty, and in opposition the
+influence of the ever seductive suavity of the French.
+
+As with a sudden hurt, Jan Queetlee cried out with a poignant voice
+against the government and its patent unfaith, striking his clinched
+fist so heavily on the head of a keg of powder that the stout fibres of
+the wood burst beneath the passionate blow, and in a moment he was
+covered with the flying particles of the black dust. Realizing the
+possibility of an explosion should a candle or a pipe be lighted here,
+Varney did not wait for the return of one of the brawny packmen to
+remove the keg to a cave beneath the trading-house, which he utilized
+for storage as a cellar, but addressed himself to the job. Jan Queetlee
+silently assisted, his face darker, more lowering with the thought in
+his mind than with the smears of the powder.
+
+Varney remembered this afterward, and that he himself, diverted by the
+accident from the trend of his argument, had launched out in a tirade
+against the government as they worked together, the young Briton's
+energy, industry, and persistence so at variance with the aspect of his
+tufted topknot of feathers on his auburn curls, and the big blue
+warrior's marks on his broad white chest. For Varney too had his
+grievances against the powers that were; but his woes were personal. He
+vehemently condemned the reconciliation which the government had
+effected between the Muscogees and the Cherokees, for although there
+were more deerskins to be had for export when the Indian hunters were at
+pacific leisure, Varney had considered the recent war between these
+tribes an admirable vent for gunpowder and its profitable sale; and
+since the savages must always be killing, it was manifestly best for all
+concerned that they should kill each other. He could not sufficiently
+deride the happy illustration which Governor Glen had given them (in his
+fatuity, Varney thought) of the values of peace and concord. In the
+presence of the two delegations the mediating Governor had taken an
+arrow and shown them with what ease it could be broken; then how
+impossible he found it to break a quiverful of arrows, thus
+demonstrating the strength in union. Varney argued that the Indians
+would readily perceive a further application of the principle and turn
+it to account, combining against the colonists. In the same spirit he
+animadverted upon a monopoly from which he was excluded in common with
+the traders in general, and which had been granted to a mercantile
+company seeking to establish posts among the Choctaws. The enterprise,
+although favored by the government, obviously because, undertaken on a
+scale of phenomenal magnitude, it promised to dislodge the French and
+their long-established trade among the Choctaws, and bring that powerful
+tribe to a British allegiance, had finally proved a failure; and with a
+bitter joy in this fact he alternately contemned and pitied the
+government, because it could not wrest this valuable opportunity from
+the iron grasp of the "Mississippi Louisianians." He had, too, a
+censorious word for the French commercially--called them "peddlers,"
+celebrated their deceitful wiles, underrated the quality of their
+cloths, and inconsistently berated them for their low prices, finding a
+logical parity in all these matters in the tenets of their religion,
+which they had so vainly and so zealously sought to instill into the
+unreceptive hearts of the unimpressionable Choctaw.[4]
+
+With the plethora of interest involved in these subjects, Varney grew
+oblivious of the theme that had earlier occupied his mind. It recurred
+no more to his thoughts until several days had passed. He then chanced
+to be occupied with his new goods in his cavern. It was illumined only
+from above; there was a trap-door in the floor of the trading-house, and
+thence a pale tempered light drifted down, scarcely convenient, but
+sufficient for his purposes. Once he noticed that a shadow flickered
+across it. He experienced a momentary surprise, for he had left no one
+in the building, and the outer door being locked, he imagined it could
+not be forced without noise enough to rouse him. Again the shadow
+flickered across the trap-door; then ensued a complete eclipse of the
+scant glimmer of light. There was a step upon the ladder which served as
+stairway--a man was descending.
+
+Varney felt a sudden constriction about his throat. He realized an
+impending crisis; the door above had been closed; by the sound he knew
+that the ladder was now removed and laid upon the ground. He had an
+idea--he could see naught--that the unknown invisible man had seated
+himself on the ladder on the ground, where he remained motionless,
+silent, in anger, in grief, or some strange savage whim hardly possible
+for a civilized creature to divine.
+
+The time that passed in this black nullity--he never could compute
+it--moments, doubtless, but it seemed hours, tried to the utmost the
+nerve of the entrapped trader, albeit inured by twenty years' experience
+to the capricious temper of the Cherokee Indians. He felt he could
+better endure the suspense could he only see his antagonist, identify
+him, and thus guess his purpose, and shape his own course from his
+knowledge of character. But with some acquired savage instinct he, too,
+remained silent, null, passive; one might have thought him absent.
+Perhaps his quiescence, indeed, fostered some doubt of his presence
+here, for suddenly there sounded the rasping of flint on steel, the
+spunk was aglow, and then in the timorous flame of the kindling candle,
+taken from his own stores above, Varney recognized the face and figure
+of the stately and imperious old chief Colannah. The next moment he
+remembered something far more pertinent. He called out in an agitated
+voice to the Indian to beware of the powder with which the place was
+largely stocked.
+
+"I came for that," said Colannah in Cherokee, with unaccustomed fingers
+snuffing the wick as he had seen Varney perform the process, for the
+Indians used torches and fires of split cane for purposes of
+illumination.
+
+"For God's sake, what have I done?" cried the trader in an agony of
+terror, desirous to bring his accusation to the point as early as might
+be and compass his release, thus forestalling the violent end of an
+explosion.
+
+"What do the English always?--you have robbed me!" said Colannah, the
+light strong on his fierce indignant features, his garb of fringed
+buckskin, his many rich strings of the ivory-like roanoke about his
+neck, his gayly bedecked and feathered head, and in shadowy wise
+revealing the rough walls of the cave, the boxes and bales of goods, the
+reserve stock, as it were, the stands of arms, and the kegs and bags of
+powder.
+
+As Varney, half crouching on the ground, noted the latter in the dusk,
+he cried out precipitately, "Robbed you of what? My God! let us go
+upstairs. I'll give it back, whatever it is, twice over, fourfold! Don't
+swing the candle around that way, Colannah! the powder will blow us and
+the whole trading-house into the Tennessee River."
+
+Colannah nodded acquiescence, the stately feathers on his head gleaming
+fitfully in the clare-obscure of the cavern. "That is why I came! Then
+the British government could demand no satisfaction for the life of the
+British subject--an accident--the old chief of Tennessee Town killed
+with him. And I should be avenged."
+
+"For what? My God!" Varney had not before called upon the Lord for
+twenty years. To hold a diplomatic conversation with an enraged wild
+Indian, flourishing a lighted candle in a powder magazine, is calculated
+to bring even the most self-sufficient and forgetful sinner to a sense
+of his dependence and helplessness. The lighted candle was a more
+subjugating weapon than a drawn sword. He had contemplated springing
+upon the stanch old warrior, although, despite the difference in age, he
+was no match for the Indian, in order to seek to extinguish it. He
+reflected, however, that in the struggle a flaring spark might cause the
+ignition of scattered particles of the powder about the floor, and thus
+precipitate the explosion which he shuddered to imagine. "For what,
+Colannah?" he asked again, in a soothing smooth cadence, "for what, my
+comrade, my benefactor for years, my best-beloved friend--avenged on me
+for what? Let's go upstairs!"
+
+The flicker of the wavering candle showed a smile of contempt on the
+face of the angry Indian for a moment, and admonished Varney that in
+view of the Cherokees' relish of the torture his manifestations of
+anxiety but prolonged his jeopardy. It brought, too, a fuller
+realization of the gravity of the situation in that the Indian should so
+valiantly risk himself. He evidently intended to take the trader's life,
+but in such wise that no vengeance for his death should fall upon the
+Cherokee nation. Abram Varney summoned all his courage, which was not
+inconsiderable, and had been cultivated by the wild and uncertain
+conditions of his life. Assured that he could do naught to hasten his
+release, he awaited the event in a sort of stoical patience, dreading,
+however, every motion, every sound, the least stir setting his expectant
+nerves aquiver. Silence, quiescence, brought the disclosure earlier than
+he had feared.
+
+"When I took the boy Jan Queetlee--why do I call him thus, instead of by
+the name he has earned for himself, the noble Otasite of Tennessee
+Town?"--the old chief began as deliberately, as disregardfully of the
+surroundings as if seated under the boughs of one of the giant oaks on
+the safe slopes of Chilhowee yonder--"when I took him away from the
+braves who had overcome the South Carolina stationers, I owed him no
+duty. He was puny and ill and white and despised! You British say the
+Indian has no pity. A man's son or brother or father or mother has
+claims upon him. Otasite was naught to me, a mere _eeankke_!" (a
+captive). "I owed the child no duty. My love was voluntary. I gave it a
+free gift; no duty! And he was little, and drooping, and meagre, and ill
+all the time! But he grew; soon no such boy in the Cherokee nation, soon
+hardly such a warrior in all the land--not even Otasite of Watauga, nor
+yet Otasite of Eupharsee; perhaps at his age Oconostota excelled"
+(Oconostota always was preeminently known as the "Great Warrior"). He
+paused to shake his head and meditate on difficult comparisons and
+instances of prowess. After an interval which, long enough, seemed to
+the trembling trader illimitable, he recommenced abruptly: "Says the
+Goweno long time ago to me, 'Is not there a white youth among you?' I
+say, 'He is content; he has no white friends, it seems.' Says the Goweno
+to me, 'Ah, ah, we must look into this!' and says no more."
+
+Colannah flung back his head and laughed so long and so loud that every
+echo of the sarcastic guttural tones, striking back from the stone walls
+of the cavern, smote Varney with as definite a shock as a blow.
+
+"And now," the Cherokee resumed, with a changed aspect and a pathetic
+cadence, "I am an old man, and I lean upon Otasite. My sons are all
+dead--one in the wars with the Muscogee and two slain by the Chickasaw.
+And the last he said to me, with his lingering latest breath, loath to
+go and leave me desolate, 'But you have an adopted son, you have the
+noble Otasite.' And now," his voice was firm again, "if I have him not,
+I go too, and you go. We go together."
+
+"I will not advise him to quit the nation--never again!" cried Varney,
+suddenly enlightened, fervently repudiating his interference. "Since you
+disapprove, he shall not return to Carolina. He _cannot_ go without
+me--my help; he could not find a place--a home. Bold and fine as he is
+here, he would be strange there; he knows naught of the ways of the
+colonists. He would be poor, despised, while here he has been like the
+first, the best. His pride could never stoop to a life like a slave's;
+his pride would break his heart. Let me undo the mischief I have
+wrought; let me unsay the unthinking, foolish words I have spoken."
+
+It was perhaps with the faith that the artful trader could best turn the
+young fellow's mind back to its wonted content, as his crafty arguments
+had already so potently aroused this wild, new dissatisfaction, that
+Colannah at last consented to liberate Varney for this essay, not
+without a cogent reminder that he would be held responsible for its
+failure. And indeed in recanting his former urgency, when he sought out
+Otasite, Varney exerted himself to the utmost.
+
+"You are satisfied here. You know the life. Like me, you love it. If I,
+who can choose, prefer it, why not you?"
+
+But Otasite shook his head.
+
+"When I talk to you of the colonies I speak as a man does of a dream,"
+Varney continued. "It is something true and something false. I add here
+and I let slip there to make out the connection, and give the symmetry
+of truth to the picture. But did I ever tell you how they love money in
+the colonies, how they cheat and strive and slave their lives away to
+add to their store; how they reverence and worship the wealth of others
+till it seems that a rich man can do no wrong--if he is rich enough? Did
+I ever tell you this? The poor, they are despised for being poor, and
+they are let to suffer. Here poverty is not permitted. If a man lose his
+dwelling by fire, the town builds him another house. You know this. If a
+man fail in his winter hunt, the others give of their abundance. Here
+one is rated by his personal worth. Here the deed is held to be fine,
+not the mere thing. Here you are valued as the great Otasite, and all
+men give you honor for your courage. There you are Jan Queetlee, a
+penniless clod, and all men despise you and pass you by."[5]
+
+But again Otasite shook his head.
+
+It was no spurious flare of ambition, ineffectual, illusory; no
+discontented yearning for a different, a wider life that the trader's
+ill-advised words had roused. That sentiment of loyalty to the British
+government, which had never sought to claim Jan Queetlee as a subject,
+seemed bred in his bone and born in his blood. Perhaps it was the stuff
+of which long afterward the Tories of the Revolution were made. He could
+not lift his hand against this aloof, indifferent fetich. And yet take
+part against the Cherokees, whom he loved as they loved him! For with
+his facilities for understanding the trend of the politics of the day he
+could no longer blind himself to the approach of the war of the tribe
+with the British government, which, indeed, came within the decade. The
+sons of Colannah, slain in the cruel wars with other Indians, had been
+to him like brothers, and in their loss he had felt his full and bitter
+share of the grief of a common household. Even yet he and Colannah were
+wont to sadly talk of them with that painful elimination of their names,
+a mark of Indian reverence to the dead, substituting the euphemism "the
+one who is gone," and linger for hours over the fire at night or on the
+shady river-bank in sunlit afternoons, rehearsing their deeds and
+recalling their traits, and repeating their sayings with that blending
+of affectionate pride and sorrow that is the consolation of bereavement
+when time has somewhat softened its pangs and made memory so dear. And
+Colannah had been like a father--it seemed to Jan Queetlee as if he had
+had no other father. He could not leave Colannah, old, desolate, and
+alone. Yet the war was surely coming apace, as they both knew, a war
+which already tore his heart in sunder, in which he could evade taking
+part against his own--his own of both factions--only by going at once
+and going far. He could decide no such weighty matter.
+
+At last he determined he would leave it to fate, to chance, showing how
+truly a gambler his Indian training had made him. He would stake the
+crisis on a game at chungke; if he won, as he told Varney, he would go
+to Carolina, and take sides with neither faction; if he lost, he would
+cast his future with the Cherokee nation.
+
+Varney, thoroughly uneasy, had come to feel a personal interest
+involved. If Otasite quitted the country, he felt his life would hardly
+be safe here, since the craft of Colannah had drawn from the
+unsuspecting young fellow the details of the plan of removal to
+Charlestown which he had proposed. And yet Varney himself was averse to
+any change, unless it was indeed necessary. When put to the test he felt
+he would rather live in the Cherokee nation than anywhere else in all
+the world, and he valued his commerce with the tribe and his license
+from the government, under duly approved bond and security, to conduct
+that traffic in Tennessee Town and Tellico as naught else on earth. He
+manifested so earnest and genuine a desire to repair the damage of his
+ill-starred suggestion that Colannah, showing his age in his haste and
+his tremulousness and excitement, disclosed to him in a flutter of
+triumphant glee that he had a spell to work which naught could
+withstand--a draught from Herbert's Spring to offer to Otasite. Thither
+some fifty miles he had dispatched a runner for a jar of the magic
+water, and after drinking of it Otasite could not quit for seven years
+the Cherokee nation even if he would.
+
+It was in the council-house that the mystic beverage was quaffed. There
+had been guests--head men from Great Tellico and Citico--during the
+afternoon, received in secret conclave, and now that their deliberations
+were concluded and they were gone, Otasite, not admitted to the council,
+being one of those warriors who did the fighting of the battles devised
+by the "beloved men," strolled into the deserted, dome-like place. Its
+walls, plastered with red clay, were yet more ruddy for a cast of the
+westering sun. The building was large enough to accommodate several
+hundred people, and around the walls were cane seats, deftly constructed
+and artificially whitened, making, according to an old writer, "very
+genteel settees or couches." Tired with the stress of mental depression
+and anxiety as physical effort could not tame him, and vaguely prescient
+of evil, Otasite had flung himself down on one of these, which was
+spread with dressed panther-skins, his hands clasped under his head, his
+scalp-lock of two auburn curls dangling over them.
+
+Through the tall narrow doorway the autumnal landscape was visible,
+blazing with all the fervors of summer; the mountains, however, were
+more softly blue, the sunlight of a richer glister; the river, now
+steel, now silver, now amber, reflected the atmosphere as a sensitive
+soul reflects the moods of those most dear; the forests, splendid with
+color, showed the lavish predominance of the rich reds characteristic of
+the Chilhowee woods; a dreamlike haze over all added a vague ideality
+that made the scene like some fondest memory or a glamourous forecast.
+
+"_Akoo-e-a!_" (summer yet!) said Colannah, his eyes too on the scene, as
+he sat on a buffalo-rug in the centre of the floor drawing in the last
+sweet fragrant breaths from his long-stemmed pipe, curiously wrought of
+stone, for in the manufacture of these pipes the Cherokees of that day
+were said to excel all other Indians. The young Briton experienced no
+mawkish pang to note that it was ornamented at one end by a dangling
+scalp, greatly treasured, the interior of the skin painted red for its
+preservation. He had, in fact, a pipe of his own with a scalp much like
+it. Indeed, his trophy was a fine specimen, and it had been a feat to
+take it, for it had once covered a hot Chickasaw head.
+
+"_Akoo-e-a!_ the day is warm!" remarked Colannah. He lifted his storied
+pipe, and with its long stem silently motioned to a young Indian woman,
+indicating a great jar of water. She quickly filled one of those quaint
+bowls, or cups, of the Cherokee manufacture, and advanced with it to
+Otasite; but the proffer was in the nature of an interruption of his
+troubled thoughts, and he irritably waved her away.
+
+"I am displeased with you," said Colannah sternly, lifting his dark,
+deeply sunken eyes to where the "Man-killer" lay at full length on the
+cane settee. "You set me aside. You have no thoughts for me--no words.
+Yet you can talk when you go to the trading-house. You have words and to
+spare for the trader. You can drink with him. You can sing, 'Drink with
+me a cup of wine.'" He lifted his raucous old voice in ludicrous
+travesty of the favorite catch, for sometimes the two Britons, so
+incongruous in point of age, education, sentiment, and occupation,
+cemented their bond as compatriots by carousing together in a mild way.
+
+But this ebullition of temper had naught of the ludicrous in Jan
+Queetlee's estimation. He was pierced to the heart.
+
+"_Aketohta!"_ (Father!) he cried reproachfully. He had sprung to his
+feet, and stood looking down at the old chief, who would not look at
+him, but kept his eyes on the landscape without, now and then drawing a
+long, lingering whiff from his pipe.
+
+"_Aketohta_! I have no thought for _you_!--who alone have taken thought
+for me! I have words for the trader and silence for _you_! You say keen
+things, and you know they are not true! You know that I had rather drink
+water with you than wine with him. I am not thirsty; but since it is you
+who offer it"--His expression changed; he broke into sudden pleasant
+laughter, and with a rollicking stave of the song, "Drink with me a cup
+of wine," he caught the bowl from the girl's hand and drained it at a
+draught.
+
+"_Seohsta-quo_!" (Good!) cried Colannah, visibly refreshed, as if his
+own thirst were vicariously slaked. But Otasite stood blankly staring,
+the bowl motionless in his hand. "It is well for wine to be old," he
+said wonderingly, "but not water."
+
+For his palate was accustomed to the exquisite sparkle and freshness of
+the mountain fountains, and this had come from far.
+
+The crafty Colannah stolidly repressed his delight, save for the glitter
+in his eyes fixed on the azure and crimson and silver landscape
+glimmering beyond the dusky portals of the terra-cotta walls. "_Nawohti!
+nawohti_!" (Rum!) he said, with an affectation of severity. "You drink
+too much of the trader's strong physic! You have no love now for the
+sweet, clear water." And he shook his head with the uncompromising
+reproof of a mentor of present times as he growled disjointedly,
+"_Nawohti! nawohti_!"
+
+Otasite nothing questioned the genuineness of this demonstration, for
+the Cherokee rulers, in common with those of other tribes, had long
+waged a vigorous opposition to the importation of strong drink into
+their country; indeed, as far back as 1704, when holding a solemn
+conference with Governor Daniel of North Carolina to form a general
+treaty of friendship, the chiefs of several tribes petitioned the
+government of the Lords Proprietors for a law, which was afterward
+enacted (and disregarded), forbidding any white man to sell or give rum
+to an Indian, and prescribing penalties for its infringement. It was not
+the first time that Otasite had heard unfavorably of the influences of
+"_nawohti_," which, by the way, with the Cherokees signified physic, as
+well as spirituous liquor, a synonymous definition which more civilized
+people have sought to apply. He was content that he and the old chief
+were once more in affectionate accord, and he did not seek to interpret
+the flash of triumph in Colannah's face.
+
+For seven years! for seven years! the white "Man-killer" could not, if
+he would, quit the Cherokee country. Well might the old chief's eyes
+glisten! The youth was like a son to his lonely age, and Otasite's
+prowess the pride of his life. And like others elsewhere he had softened
+as age came on, and loved the domestic fireside and the companionship
+about the hearth, hearing without participating in the hilarious talk of
+the young, and looking out at the world through the eyes of the new
+generation, undaunted, expectant, aglow with a spirit that had long ago
+smouldered in his own; for the fierce Indian at the last was but an old
+man.
+
+Abram Varney, too, experienced a recurrence of ease. He had unwittingly
+imbibed much outlandish superstition in his residence among the
+Cherokees, and indeed other traders and settlers long believed in the
+enchaining fascination of Herbert's Spring, and drank or refrained as
+they would stay or go.
+
+Otasite, however, was all unaware of the spell cast upon him when he
+came into the chungke-yard the next day, arrayed in his finest garb, the
+white dressed doeskin glittering in the sun, his necklaces of beads, his
+belt of wolf fangs, his flying feet in their white moccasins--all
+catching the light with a differing effect of brilliancy.
+
+Varney watched him;--with the two eagle feathers stiff and erect on his
+proud head, his two incongruous long auburn curls, that did duty as a
+"war-lock," floating backward in the breeze, he ran so deftly, so
+swiftly, with so assured and so graceful a gait that the mere
+observation of such symmetrical motion was a pleasure. The trader had
+scarcely a pulse of anxiety. Indeed, disingenuously profiting by the tip
+afforded by Herbert's Spring, he was heavily backing Wyejah as a winner!
+
+A windy day it was; the clouds raced through the sky, and their shadows
+skimming over the valleys and slopes challenged their speed. The
+Tennessee River was singing, singing! The mountains were as clearly and
+definitely blue as the heavens. That revelation of ranges on the far
+horizon unaccustomed to the view, only vouchsafed by some necromancy of
+the clarified autumnal air, never before seemed so distinct, so
+alluring--new lands, new hopes, new life they suggested. Wyejah's
+scarlet attire, its fringes tasseled with the spurs of the wild turkey,
+rendered his lithe figure strongly marked against these illusory
+ethereal tints as he sped abreast with Otasite along the level sandy
+stretch of the chungke-yard. And how well he played! Varney realized
+this with a satisfaction as of having already won his wagers, many and
+large, for Otasite would leave the nation should he be victorious, and
+having drunk unwittingly of Herbert's Spring, he could not quit the
+Cherokee country, although he himself was still unaware of having
+quaffed of those mystic waters. Therefore defeat was obviously his
+portion. Whenever the trader thought anew of his secret knowledge of
+this fact he offered odds on Wyejah, and glanced at him with
+approbation--at the young Indian warrior's face fiercely, eagerly
+smiling, his great flattened ears distended on their wire hoops, his
+dark eyes full of sombre brilliance. How well he played! and how hard
+the skill of his opponent pressed him! How accurate was the aim of the
+long lance of Otasite as he poised his weight on the supple tips of his
+white moccasins and hurled the missile through the air; how strong and
+firm his grasp that sent the circular, quartz chungke-stone, whirling
+along the sand; how tirelessly his long sinewy steps sped back and forth
+in the swift dashes up and down the smooth spaces of the chungke-yard;
+how faithfully he was doing his best, regardless of his own preference
+in the interests that he had adventured on the result! How like a Briton
+born it was, Abram Varney thought, for he alone knew of Otasite's
+resolution, and the significance of the game to him, that the boy could
+thus see fair play between the factions that warred within him for his
+future. He had staked the future on the event,--and suddenly it was the
+present!
+
+A wild clamor of excitement, of applause, rose up from the throats of
+the crowd in the natural amphitheatre, clanging and clattering in long
+guttural cries,--all intensified by a relish of the unexpected, a joy in
+a new sensation, for Wyejah had never before been beaten, and Otasite
+was the victor at chungke.
+
+Abram Varney felt his heart leap into his throat, then sink like lead;
+Colannah, triumphant, knowing naught of the subtler significance of the
+contest, joyful, aglow with pride, rose up in his splendid feathered
+mantle, standing high on the slope, to sign to the boy his pleasure in
+the victory. The sunlight fell, glittering very white, on the young
+fellow's doeskin garb, his prickly belt of fangs, his bare chest with
+the blue warrior's marks, the curls of his auburn scalp-lock tossing in
+the wind. He had seemed hitherto stoical, unmoved by victory as he would
+have appeared in defeat; but Varney, eager to get at him, to combat his
+resolution, knew that he was stunned by the complications presented by
+this falling out of the event. He visibly faltered as his eye met the
+triumph and affection expressed in Colannah's quivering old face. He
+could not respond to its congratulation. He dropped on one knee
+suddenly, bending low, affecting to find something amiss with one of his
+moccasins.
+
+Wyejah, too, could seem unmoved by victory, but indifference to defeat
+was more difficult to simulate. He had in the first moment of its
+realization felt the blood rush to his head; despite his strong nerve
+his hand trembled; the smile of placidity which it was a point of honor
+to preserve became a fixed grin. Several other young braves had come
+into the yard, and were idly tossing the lance at the great
+chungke-pole--as a billiardist of the civilized life of that day might
+pocket the balls with a purposeless cue after a match. Wyejah, too, had
+cast his lance aslant; then he idly hurled the chungke-stone with a
+muscular fling along the spaces of the white sand. His nerve was shaken,
+his aim amiss, his great strength deflected. The heavy discoidal quartz
+stone skimmed through the air above the stretch of sand, and striking
+with its beveled edge the kneeling figure on the temple, the future of
+the victor at chungke became in one moment the past.
+
+The trader could only have likened the scene that ensued to the moment
+of an earthquake or some other stupendous convulsion of nature. In the
+midst of the confusion, the wild cries, the swift running figures, the
+surging of the crowds into the chungke-yard that obliterated the wide
+glare of the sun on the white sand, he made good his escape. He knew
+enough of the trend of Cherokee thought to be prescient of the fate of
+the scapegoat. Colannah in the first burst of grief he knew would blame
+himself that he should have tempted fate by the mystic draught from
+Herbert's Spring to hold here that bright young form for seven years
+longer. How sadly true!--for seven years Otasite would remain, and seven
+to that, and, alack, seven more, and forever! Soon, however, the natural
+impulses of the Indian's temper, intensified by long cultivation, would
+be reasserted. He would cast about for revenge, remembering the first
+suggestion of the departure of Otasite, and from whom it had emanated.
+But for the English trader and his specious wiles, the old chief would
+argue, would Otasite have thought of forsaking his foster nation, his
+adopted father, for the selfish, indifferent British, the "Goweno" at
+Charlestown, who cared for him nothing? The trader it was who had
+brought this calamity upon them, who had in effect, by the hand of
+another, administered the fatal draught. Seek for him!--hale him forth!
+--wreak upon him the just, unappeasable vengeance of the forever
+bereaved!
+
+The old trader had evinced an instinct in flight and concealment that an
+animal might envy. No probable hiding-place he selected, such as might
+be known or divined--a cave, the attic of his trading-house, the cellar
+beneath--all obvious, all instantly explored. Instead, he slipped into a
+rift in the rocks along the river-bank. Myriads of such crevices there
+were in the tilted strata--unheeded, unremarked, too strait and
+restricted to suggest the idea of refuge, too infinitely numerous for
+search. There, unable in the narrow compass to turn, even to shift a
+numbing muscle of his lean old body, in all the constraint of a standing
+posture, he was held in the flexure of the rock like some of its
+fossils,--as unsuspected as a ganoid of the days of eld that had once
+been imprisoned thus in the sediment of seas that had long ebbed
+hence,--or the fern vestiges in a later formation finding a witness in
+the imprint in the stone of the symmetry of its fronds. He listened to
+the hue and cry for him; then to the sudden tramp of hoofs as a pursuing
+party went out to overtake him, presumably on his way to Charlestown,
+maintaining a very high rate of speed, for the Cherokees of that period
+had some famously fine horses.
+
+Straining his senses--all unnaturally alert--he distinguished, as the
+afternoon wore on, the details of the preparations for the barbarous
+sepulture of the young Briton. Now and then the cracking of rifle-shots
+betokened the shooting of his horses and cattle and all the living
+things among his possessions--a practice already in its decadence among
+the Cherokees, and later, influenced by the utilitarian methods of
+civilization, altogether abandoned. Swift steps here and there
+throughout the town intimated errands to gather all his choicest effects
+to be buried with him, for his future use. To this custom, it is said,
+and the great security of the fashioning of the sepulchres of the
+Cherokees, may be attributed the fact that little of their pottery,
+arms, beads, medals, the more indestructible of their personal
+possessions, can be found in this region where so lately they were a
+numerous people; for the effects of the dead, however valued, were never
+removed or the graves robbed, even by an Indian enemy. The Cherokees
+rarely permitted the presence of an alien at the ceremonies of the
+interment of one of the tribe; but Varney in times past had seen and
+heard enough to realize, without any definite effort of the imagination,
+how Otasite, arrayed in his most gorgeous apparel, his beautiful English
+face painted vermilion, would be placed in a sitting posture in front of
+his house, and there in the sunlit afternoon remain for a space, looking
+in, as it were, at the open door. Presently sounded the wild
+lamentations and melancholy cadences of the funeral song; the tones rose
+successively from a deep bass to a tenor, then to a shrill treble,
+falling again to a full bass chorus, with the progression of the mystic
+syllables, "_Yah! Yo-he-wah! Yah! Yo-he-wah!"_ (said to signify
+"Jehovah"). This announced that the funeral procession, bearing the
+body, was going thrice around the house of the dead, where he had lived
+in familiar happiness these many years, and beneath which he would rest
+in solemn silence in his deep, deep grave, covered with heavy timbers
+and many layers of bark, and the stanch red clay, maintaining a sitting
+posture, and facing the east, while the domestic life of homely cheer
+would go on over his unheeding head as he awaited the distant and
+universal resurrection of the body, in which the Cherokee religion
+inculcated a full and firm faith.
+
+The sun went down, and through all the night sounded the plaints of
+grief. Late the moon rose, striking aslant on the melancholy Tennessee
+River, full of deep shadows and vaguely pathetic pallid glimmers. A wind
+sprang up for a time, then suddenly sank to silence and stillness. A
+frost fell with a keen icy chill. Mists gathered, and the day did not
+break,--it seemed as if it might never dawn again; only a pallid
+visibility came gradually upon clouds that had enshrouded all the world.
+The earth and the sky were alike indistinguishable; the mountains were
+as valleys, the valleys as plains. One might scarcely make shift to see
+a hand before the face. Through this white pall, this cloud of nullity,
+came ever the dolorous chant, "_Yo-he-ta-wah! Yo-he-ta-weh!
+Yo-he-ta-hah! Yo-he-ta-heh!_" as in their grief and poignant bereavement
+the ignorant and barbarous Indians called upon the God who made them,
+and He who made them savages doubtless heard them.
+
+Creeping out into the invisibility of the clouded day, Abram Varney had
+not great fear of detection. The mists that shielded him from view
+furthered still his flight, for his footsteps were hardly to be
+distinguished amidst the continual dripping of the moisture from the
+leaves of the dank autumnal woods. At night he knew the savages would be
+most on the alert. They would scarcely suspect his flight in the broad
+day. Moreover, their suspicions of his presence here were lulled;
+craftily enough he followed after the horsemen who fancied they were
+pursuing him--they would scarcely look for their quarry hard on their
+own heels. He experienced no sentiment but one of intense satisfaction
+when, as invisible as a spirit, he passed his own trading-house, and
+divined from the sounds within that the Indians were busy in sacking it,
+albeit a greater financial loss than seems probable at the present day;
+for the Indian trade was a very considerable commerce, as the accounts
+of those times will show. The English and French governments did not
+disdain to compete for its monopoly with various nations of Indians, for
+the sake of gaining control of the savages thereby, in view of supplies
+furnished by the white traders vending these commodities and resident in
+the tribes.
+
+Recollections of the items and values of his invoices, afflicting to
+Varney's commercial spirit, threaded his consciousness only when again
+safe in Charlestown. He reached that haven at last by the exercise of
+great good judgment. He realized that another party would presently be
+sent out when no news of capture came from the earlier pursuers; he
+divined that the second expedition would take the Chickasaw path, for
+being friendly to the British, that tribe would naturally be thought of
+as a refuge to an Englishman in trouble with the Cherokees; therefore
+Varney, lest he be overtaken on the way, avoided with a great struggle
+the temptation, mustered all his courage, and adopting an unprecedented
+expedient, turned off to the country of the Muscogees. These Indians,
+always more or less inimical to the colonists, bloodthirsty, cruel,
+crafty, and but recently involved in a furious war against the
+Cherokees, were glad to thwart Colannah in any cherished scheme of
+revenge, and received the fugitive kindly. Although but for this fact
+his temerity in venturing among them would have cost him his life, they
+ministered to his needs with great hospitality, and forwarded him on his
+way to Charlestown, sending a strong guard with him as far as Long Cane
+settlement, a little above Ninety-Six.
+
+Wyejah also made his escape. Appalled by the calamity of the accidental
+blow, he "took sanctuary." In the supreme moment of excitement he flung
+himself into the Tennessee River, and while eagerly sought by the
+emissaries of Colannah in the woods, he swam to Chote, "beloved town,"
+the city of refuge of the whole Cherokee nation, where the shedder of
+blood was exempt from vengeance. As years went by, however, either
+because of the death of Colannah, or because time had so far softened
+the bereavement of the friends of Otasite that they were prevailed upon
+to accept the "satisfaction," the presents required even from an in
+voluntary homicide, he was evidently freed from the restricted limits of
+the "ever-sacred soil," for his name is recorded in the list of warriors
+who went to Charlestown in 1759 to confer with Governor Lyttleton on the
+distracted state of the frontier, and being held as one of the hostages
+of that unlucky embassy, he perished in the massacre of the Cherokees by
+the garrison of Fort Prince George, after the treacherous murder of the
+commandant, Captain Coytmore, by a ruse of the Indian king, Oconostota.
+
+Abram Varney never ventured back among "the Nation," as he called the
+Cherokees, as if they were the only nation on the earth. Now and again
+in their frequent conferences with the Governor at Charlestown, rendered
+necessary by their ever-recurrent friction with the British government,
+he sought out members of the delegation for some news of his old
+friends, his old haunts. Not one of them would take his hand; not one
+would hear his voice; they looked beyond him, through him, as if he were
+the impalpable atmosphere, as if he did not exist.
+
+It was a little thing,--the displeasure of such men--mere savages,--but
+it cut him to the heart. So long they had been his friends, his
+associates, as the chief furniture of the world!
+
+He busied himself with the affairs of his firm at Charlestown, but for a
+time he was much changed, much cast down, for he had a sense of
+responsibility, and his conscience was involved, and although he had
+sought to do good he had only wrought harm, and irreparable harm. He
+grew old very fast, racked as he was by rheumatism, a continual reminder
+of the stern experiences of his flight. He had other reminders in his
+unquiet thoughts, but he grew garrulous at a much later date. Years
+intervened before he was wont to sit in front of the warehouse, with his
+stick between his knees, his hands clasped on the round knob at its top,
+his chin on his hands, and cheerily chirp of his days in "the Nation."
+The softening touch of time brought inevitably its glamours and its
+peace; his bleared old eyes, fixed on the glittering expanse of the
+harbor, beheld with pleasure, instead of the sea, the billowy reaches of
+that mighty main of mist-crested mountains known as the Great Smoky
+Range, and through all his talk, and continually through his mind,
+flitted the bright animated presence of the victor at chungke.
+
+
+
+
+THE CAPTIVE OF THE ADA-WEHI
+
+
+Attusah was obviously an impostor. Many, however, had full faith in his
+supernatural power, and often he seemed to believe in his own spectral
+account of himself.
+
+"_Tsida-wei-yu_!" (I am a great ada-wehi![6]) the young warrior would
+cry with his joyous grandiloquent gesture, waving his many braceleted
+right arm at full length as he held himself proudly erect.
+"_Akee-o-hoosa! Akee-o-hoosa!"_ (I am dead). Then triumphantly, "And
+behold I am still here."
+
+Attusah had gone unscathed through that bloody campaign of 1761 in which
+the Cherokees suffered such incredible rigors. After their total defeat
+at Etchoee the Indians could offer no further resistance to the troops
+of Colonel Grant, who triumphantly bore the authority of the British
+king from one end of the Cherokee country to the other, for there was no
+more powder to be had in the tribe. The French, from whom they had hoped
+a supply, failed them at their utmost need, and now those massive crags
+of the Great Smoky Mountains, overhanging the Tennessee River, no longer
+echoed the "whoo-whoop!" of the braves, the wild cry of the Highlanders,
+"Claymore! Claymore!" the nerve-thrilling report of the volleys of
+musketry from the Royal Scots, the hissing of the hand grenades flung
+bursting into the jungles of the laurel. Instead, all the clifty defiles
+of the ranges were filled with the roar of flames and the crackling of
+burning timbers as town after town was given to the firebrand, and the
+homeless, helpless Cherokees frantically fleeing to the densest coverts
+of the wilderness,--that powerful truculent tribe!--sought for shelter
+like those "feeble folk the conies" in the hollows of the rocks.
+
+Thus it was that Digatiski, the Hawk, of Eupharsee Town, long the terror
+of the southern provinces, must needs sit idle, forlorn, frenzied with
+rage and grief, in a remote and lofty cavity of a great cliff, and
+looking out over range and valley and river of this wild and beautiful
+country, see fire and sword work their mission of destruction upon it.
+By day a cloud of smoke afar off bespoke the presence of the soldiery.
+At night a tremulous red light would spring up amidst the darkness of
+the valley, and expanding into a great yellow flare summon mountains and
+sky into an infinitely sad and weird revelation of the landscape, as the
+great storehouses of corn were burned to the ground, leaving the hapless
+owners to starvation.
+
+His pride grudged his very eyes the sight of this humiliation, for
+despite the oft-repeated assertion of the improvidence of the Indian
+character, these public granaries, whence by the primitive Cherokee
+government food was dispensed gratis to all the needy, were always full,
+and their destruction meant national annihilation or subjugation. After
+one furtive glance at the purple obscurities of the benighted world he
+would bow his head, and with a smothered groan ask of the ada-wehi,
+"Where is it now, Attusah?"
+
+The young warrior, half reclining at the portal of the niche, would lift
+himself on one elbow,--the glow of the little camp-fire within the
+recess on his feather-crested head, his wildly painted face, the twenty
+strings of roanoke passed tight like a high collar around his neck,
+thence hanging a cascade of beads over his chest, the devious arabesques
+of tattooing on his bare, muscular arms, the embroideries of his
+buckskin raiment and gaudy quiver,--and searching with his gay young
+eyes through the stricken country reply, "Cowetchee," "Sinica,"
+"Tamotlee," whichever town might chance to be in flames.
+
+Doubtless Attusah realized equally the significance of the crisis. But a
+certain joyous irresponsibility characterized him, and indeed he had
+never seemed quite the same since he died. He had been much too
+reckless, however, even previous to that event. Impetuous, hasty,
+tumultuously hating the British colonists, he had participated several
+years earlier in a massacre of an outlying station, when the Cherokees
+were at peace, without warrant of tribal authority, and with so little
+caution as to be recognized. For this breach of the treaty his execution
+was demanded by the Royal Governor of South Carolina, and reluctantly
+conceded by the Cherokees to avert a war for the chastisement of the
+tribe. Powder must have been exceedingly scarce!
+
+Attusah was allowed to choose his method of departure to the happy
+hunting-grounds, and thus was duly stabbed to death. He was left
+weltering in his blood to be buried by his kindred. The half king,
+Atta-Kulla-Kulla, satisfied of his death, himself reported the execution
+to the Carolina authorities, and as in his long and complicated
+diplomatic relations with the colonial government this Cherokee chief
+had never broken faith, he was implicitly believed.
+
+Whether the extraordinary vitality and vigor of the young warrior were
+reasserted after life had been pronounced wholly extinct, and thus his
+relations were induced to defer the obsequies, or that he was enabled to
+exert supernatural powers and in the spirit reappear in his former
+semblance of flesh,--both theories being freely advanced,--certain it is
+that after a time he returned to his old haunts as gay, as reckless, as
+impetuous as ever. He bore no token of his strange experience save
+sundry healed-over scars of deep gashes in his breast, which he seemed
+at times to seek to shield from observation; and this he might have
+accomplished but for his solicitude that a very smart shirt, much
+embroidered and bedizened with roanoke, should not suffer by exposure to
+water; wherefore he took it off when it rained, and in swimming, and on
+the war-path. He manifested, too, a less puerile anxiety to escape the
+notice of Atta-Kulla-Kulla and other head men, who were supposed to be
+well affected at that time to the British government. This he was the
+better enabled to do as his habitat, Kanootare, was the most remote of
+the Cherokee towns, his name, Attusah, signifying the "Northward
+Warrior."
+
+After the capitulation of Fort Loudon and the massacre of the garrison
+the previous year, and the organized resistance the Cherokees had made
+in the field of battle against Colonel Montgomerie, then commanding the
+expeditionary forces, he had felt that the tribe's openly inimical
+relations with the British government warranted him in coming boldly
+forth from his retirement and competing for the honors of the present
+campaign of 1761. His friends sought to dissuade him. The government had
+had, as assurance of his death, the word of Atta-Kulla-Kulla, who might
+yet insist that the pledge be made good. That chief, they urged, had a
+delicate conscience, which is often an engine of disastrous efficiency
+when exerted on the affairs of other people. Attusah was advised that he
+had best stay dead. Although he finally agreed with this, he could not
+stay still, and thus as he appeared in various skirmishes it became
+gradually bruited abroad among the Cherokees that Attusah, the Northward
+Warrior, was a great ada-wehi, a being of magical power, or a ghost as
+it might be said, of special spectral distinctions. Thus he lived as
+gayly yet as before the dismal day of his execution, always carefully,
+however, avoiding the notice of Atta-Kulla-Kulla, whose word had been
+solemnly accepted by the British government as the pledge of his death.
+
+It is impossible to understand how a man like Digatiski of Eupharsee
+could believe this,--so sage, despite his ignorance, so crafty, so
+diplomatic and acute in subterfuge, yet he was sodden in superstition.
+
+"Can you see Colonel Grant, the Barbarous?"[7] he asked suddenly,
+lifting his head and gazing steadily at the young Indian's face, which
+was outlined against the pallid neutral tint of the sky. The dark
+topmost boughs of a balsam fir were just on a level with the clear
+high-featured profile; a single star glittering beyond and above his
+feathered crest looked as if it were an ornament of the headdress; the
+red glow of the smouldering fire within, which had been carefully masked
+in ashes as the darkness came on, that its sparkle might not betray
+their presence here to any wandering band of troopers, still sufficed to
+show the impostor's painted red cheek. He was armed with a tomahawk and
+a pistol, without powder as useless as a toy, and a bow borne in default
+of aught better lay on the floor beside him, while a gayly ornamented
+quiver full of poisoned arrows swung over his shoulder.
+
+"_Ha-tsida-wei-yu!_" he proclaimed. "I am a great ada-wehi! I see him!
+Of a surety I see him!"
+
+Attusah gazed at the sombre night with an expression as definitely
+perceptive as if the figure in his thoughts were actually before his
+eyes.
+
+"And he is not dead?" cried Digatiski, in despair.
+
+Some such wild rumor, as of hope gone mad, had pervaded the groups of
+Cherokee fugitives.
+
+"He would be if I could get close enough with a bare pinch of powder
+that might charge my gun!" declared Attusah disconsolately. Then himself
+again, "But I will tell you this! He is waiting for my poisoned arrow!
+And when he dies he will come back no more. He is not like me."
+
+He paused to throw out his hand with his splendid pompous gesture.
+"_Akee-o-hoo-sa! Tsida-wei-yu!_" (I am dead! I am a great ada-wehi!)
+
+Digatiski groaned. It mattered not to him whether Colonel Grant came
+back or abode in his proper place when dead. The grievous dispensation
+lay in the fact that he was here now, in the midst of the wreck he was
+so zealously wreaking.
+
+There were three women in the niche. One with her head muffled in her
+mantle of fringed deerskin sat against the wall, silently weeping,
+bemoaning her dead slain in the recent battle, or the national
+calamities, or perhaps the mere personal afflictions of fatigue and fear
+and hunger and suspense. Another crouched by the fire and gazed
+dolorously upon it with dreary tear-filled eyes, and swollen, reddened
+eyelids. The sorrowful aspect of a third was oddly incongruous with her
+gay attire, a garb of scarlet cloth trimmed with silver tinsel tassels,
+a fabric introduced among the Cherokees by an English trader of the name
+of Jeffreys, and which met with great favor. Her anklets, garters, and
+bracelets of silver "bell-buttons" tinkled merrily as she moved, for she
+had postponed her tears in the effort to concoct some supper from the
+various scraps left from the day's scanty food. The prefatory scraping
+of the coals together caused a sudden babbling of pleasure to issue from
+the wall, where, suspended on a projection of rock, was one of the
+curious upright cradles of the people, from which a pappoose, stiff and
+perpendicular, gazed down at the culinary preparations, evidently in the
+habit of participating to a limited extent in the result, having
+attained some ten months of age.
+
+The mother glanced up, and despite the tear stains about her eyes,
+dimpled and laughed in response. Griefs may come and pleasures go,
+nations rise and fall, the world wag on as it will, but this old joy of
+mother and child, each in the other, is ever new and yet ever the same.
+
+Resuming her occupation, the woman hesitated for a moment as she was
+about to lay the meat on the coals, the half of a wood duck, fortunately
+killed by an arrow, for larger game was not attainable, the wild beasts
+of the country being in flight as never heretofore. The conflagration of
+the towns of a whole district, the turmoils of the heady victorious
+troops, hitherto held together, but now sent through the region in
+separate detachments, each within reach of support, however, had
+stripped the tribe of this last means of subsistence. Years and years
+afterward the grim dismantled fragments of these buildings were still to
+be seen, the charred walls and rafters mere skeletons against the sky,
+standing, melancholy memorials of war, on the hillsides and in the
+valleys, along the watercourses "transparent as glass," of that lovely
+country where these pleasant homes had been.
+
+The Indian woman doubted if the bit of fat could be spared; then poising
+it in her hand under the watchful eyes of all, she flung it into the
+fire, the essential burnt-offering according to their old religious
+custom.
+
+Digatiski, bowing his head still lower, once more groaned aloud. He
+would not have stayed her hand,--but to hunger even for the offering to
+the fire! The woman whose head was muffled had only to repeat her sobs
+anew; she could not sorrow more! But the pappoose in its primitive
+cradle on the wall babbled out its simple pleasure, and now and again
+the tearful little mother must needs lift smiling eyes.
+
+The great ada-wehi looked out at the night. On the whole he was glad he
+was dead!
+
+He took no bite, nor did Digatiski. The Indian men were accustomed to
+long fasts in war and in hunting, and they left the trivial bits to the
+women. The muffled figure of grief held out her hand blindly and munched
+the share given her in the folds of her veil. Then, for tears are of no
+nutritive value, she held out her hand again. Feeling it still empty,
+she lifted the veil from a swollen tear-stained face to gaze aghast at
+the others. They silently returned the gaze, aghast themselves, and then
+all three women fell to sobbing once more. But the pappoose was crowing
+convivially over a bone.
+
+Hunger does not dispose to slumber, nor does war with the sight of a
+dozen towns aflame. They slept, but in fitful starts, and the first gray
+siftings of light through the desolate darkness found them all gazing
+drearily at it, for what might a new day signify to them but new
+dangers, fresh sorrows, and quickened fears.
+
+A flush was presently in the east, albeit dusk lingered westward. The
+wonderful crystalline white lustre of the morning star palpitated in the
+amber sky, seeming the very essence of light, then gradually vanished in
+a roseate haze. The black mountains grew purple, changing to a dark rich
+green. The deep, cool valleys were dewy in the midst of a shadowy gray
+vapor. The farthest ranges showed blue under a silver film, and suddenly
+here were the rays of the sun shooting over all the world, aiming high
+and far for the western hills.
+
+And abruptly said the ada-wehi, as he still lay at length on the floor
+of the niche,--
+
+"_Skee_!" (Listen!)
+
+Naught but the breeze of morning, delicately freighted with the breath
+of balsams, the dew, the fragrance of the awakening of the wild flowers,
+the indescribable matutinal freshness, the incense of a new day in June.
+
+"_Skee_!"
+
+Only the sound of the rippling Tennessee, so silver clear, beating and
+beating against the vibrant rocks as its currents swirl round the bend
+at the base of the cliff.
+
+"_Skee_!"
+
+The sudden fall of a fragment of rock from the face of the crag to the
+ground far below!--the interval of time between the scraping dislodgment
+and the impact with the clay beneath implies a proportional interval of
+distance.
+
+The conviction is the same in the mind of each. A living creature is
+climbing the ascent! A bear, it may be. A great bird, an eagle, or one
+of the hideous mountain vultures, very busy of late, alighting in quest
+of food--which it might find in plenty elsewhere, in the track of the
+invaders.
+
+Attusah does not rely, however, on a facile hypothesis with a triumphant
+enemy at hand, and a dozen towns charring to ashes in sight.
+
+As noiseless as a shadow, as swift, Attusah is on his feet. At the back
+of the great niche, so high that none could conceive that it might
+afford an exit, a fissure lets in a vague dreary blur of light from
+spaces beyond. Leaping high into the air, the lithe young warrior fixes
+his fingers on the ledge, crumbling at first, but holding firm under a
+closer grasp. The elder man, understanding the ruse as if by instinct,
+lays hold of the knees of the other, held out stiff and straight below.
+Then by a mighty effort Attusah lifts the double weight into the
+fissure, the elder Indian aiding the manoeuvre by walking up the wall,
+as it were, with his feet successively braced against it.
+
+Outside, now and again bits of rock continued to fall, seeming to herald
+a cautious approach, for after each sound a considerable interval of
+silence would ensue. So long continued was this silence at last that the
+three women, now alone, began to deem the alarm of an intrusion vain and
+fantastic. The elder of them motioned to one of the others to look out
+and terminate the painful suspense.
+
+The young squaw, brilliant in her scarlet dress and silver tassels, the
+pappoose piously quiet in his perpendicular cradle on her back, slipped
+with gingerly caution to the verge of the precipice and looked down.
+
+Nothing she saw, and in turn she was invisible from without. She wheeled
+around briskly to reassure the others, and at that moment a young
+soldier of the battalion of Scotch Highlanders stepped from the
+horizontal ledge alongside, which he had then gained, and into the
+niche, bringing up short against the pappoose, stiff and erect in its
+cradle.
+
+"Hegh, sirs!" he cried in jocular surprise, happy to find naught more
+formidable, perhaps, although a brave man, for he had volunteered to
+examine the source of the smoke from this precarious perch,--which had
+attracted the attention of the ensign commanding a little
+detachment,--despite the fact that a Cherokee in his den and brought to
+bay was likely to prove a dangerous beast.
+
+The Highlander had a piece of bread in his hand, from which he had been
+recklessly munching as he had stood for a moment's breathing spell on
+the horizontal ledge beside the niche before venturing to enter, for the
+command had broken camp with scant allowance of time for breakfast. With
+a genial laugh he thrust a morsel into the pappoose's open mouth and put
+the rest in its little fingers.
+
+Perhaps it was because of his relief to find no bigger Cherokee man
+stowed away here in ambush; perhaps because he was himself hearty and
+well-fed and disposed to be gracious; perhaps because he had a
+whole-souled gentle nature hardly consonant with the cruel arts of war
+which he practiced,--at all events he was thoughtful enough of others to
+mark the ravenous look which the women cast upon the food in the child's
+hand.
+
+"Gude guide us!" he exclaimed. "This is fearfu' wark! The hellicat
+hempies are half starved!"
+
+For if Colonel Grant compassionated the plight of the savages, as he has
+recorded, and shrank from the ruin wrought in the discharge of his duty
+of destroying their capacities for resistance and the maintenance of
+existence other than as peaceful dependents of the British colonies, the
+rank and file of his command, weighted with no such responsibilities,
+may well have indulged now and then a qualm of pity.
+
+The British soldier had been ordered to halloo for help should he
+encounter armed resistance, but otherwise to rest a bit at the top of
+the precipice before making the effort to descend, lest he become dizzy
+from fatigue and the long strain upon his faculties, and fall; the
+ensign added a pointed reminder that he had no means of transportation
+for "fules with brucken craigs." The opportunity was propitious. The
+Highlander utilized the interval to open his haversack and dispense such
+portion of its contents as he could spare. While thus engaged he was
+guilty of an oversight inexcusable in a soldier: the better to handle
+and divide the food, he leaned his loaded gun against the wall.
+
+A vague shadow flickered across the niche.
+
+The young Highlander was a fine man physically, although there was no
+great beauty in his long, thin, frank, freckled face, with its
+dare-devil expression and bantering blue eyes. But he was tall, heavily
+muscled, clean-limbed, of an admirable symmetry, and the smartest of
+smart soldiers. His kilt and plaid swung and fluttered with martial
+grace in his free, alert, military gait as he stepped about the
+restricted space of the cavity, bestowing his bounty on all three women.
+His "bonnet cocked fu' sprash" revealed certain intimations in his
+countenance of gentle nurture, no great pretensions truly, but
+betokening a higher grade of man than is usually found in the rank and
+file of an army. This fact resulted from the peculiar situation of the
+Scotch insurgents toward government after the "Forty-Five," and the
+consequent breaking up of the resources of many well-to-do middle-class
+families as well as the leaders of great clans.
+
+The Highlander hesitated after the first round of distribution, for
+there would be no means of revictualing that haversack until the next
+issuance of rations, and he was himself a "very valiant trencher-man."
+Nevertheless their dire distress and necessity so urged his generosity
+that he began his rounds anew.
+
+Once more a shadow. Whence should a shadow fall? It flickered through
+the niche.
+
+The three women stood as mute as statues. The pappoose in its cradle on
+its mother's back, its face turned ignominiously toward the wall, and
+perhaps aware that something of interest in the commissariat department
+was going forward, had begun to whimper in a very civilized manner, and
+doubtless it was this trivial noise that deterred the young Scotchman
+from hearing sounds of more moment, calculated to rouse his suspicions.
+He had already added to the portions of the elder women and was
+bestowing his donations upon the young mother, when suddenly the shadow
+materialized and whisked past him.
+
+It fell like a thunderbolt from above.
+
+Bewildered, agitated, before he could turn, his gun was seized and
+presented at his breast by a warrior who seemed to have fallen from the
+sky. The soldier, nevertheless, instantly laid his hand on the great
+basket-hilt of his claymore. Before he could draw the blade, the warrior
+and the three women flung themselves upon him, their arms so closely
+wound about him that his own arms were effectually pinioned to his
+sides. With a violent effort he shook himself free from their grasp for
+one moment; yet as the blade came glittering forth from the scabbard, a
+sharp blow scientifically administered upon the wrist by the ada-wehi
+almost broke the bone and sent the weapon flying from his hand and
+clattering to the floor of the niche. The women had taken advantage of
+the opportunity afforded by the struggle between the two men to
+substitute the coils of a heavy hempen rope for the clasp of their arms,
+and Attusah had only to give a final twist to the knots of their skilled
+contriving, when the captive was disarmed and bound.
+
+He had instantly bethought himself of his comrades and an appeal for
+rescue, and sent forth a wild, hoarse yell, which, had it been heard,
+must have apprised them of his plight. But as he had not at once given
+the signal of danger agreed upon, they had naturally supposed the coast
+clear, and while he rested presumably at the top of the precipice they
+gave their attention to other details of their mission, firing several
+houses at a little distance down the river. Therefore they would have
+heard naught, even if Attusah had not precluded further efforts of his
+captive to communicate with his comrades by swiftly fashioning a gag out
+of the Highlander's bonnet and gloves.
+
+Perhaps never was a brave man more dismayed and daunted. Not death
+alone, but fire and torture menaced him. The shining liquid delight in
+the eyes of the women reminded him of the strange fact that they were
+ever the most forward in these cruel pleasures, for the ingenuity of
+which the Cherokees were famous among all the tribes. Yet the
+realization of his peril did not so diminish his scope of feeling as to
+prevent him from inwardly upbraiding his ill-starred generosity as the
+folly of a hopeless fool, more especially as the elder woman--she of the
+many tears--held up the substantial gift of provisions, jeering at him
+with a look in her face that did not need to be supplemented by the
+scoffing of language.
+
+"The auld randy besom!" the soldier commented within himself. "But eh, I
+didna gie it to be thankit,--nae sic a fule as that comes to, neither!"
+
+Hoping against hope, he thought that the length of his absence would
+inevitably alarm the ensign for his scout's safety, when it should
+attract attention, and induce the officer to send a party for his relief
+and for further investigation of the precipice, whence the smoke
+intimated an ambush of the enemy. This expectation had no sooner
+suggested its solace and the exercise of patience in the certainty of
+ultimate rescue, than the Highlander began to mark the preparations
+among the Indians for a swift departure. But how? The precipice was a
+sheer descent for eighty feet, the ruggedness of its face barely
+affording foothold for a bird or a mountaineer; and at its base hovered
+the ensign's party within striking distance. A resisting captive could
+not be withdrawn by this perilous path. The soldier looked in doubt and
+suspense about the restricted limits of the cavity in the great crag.
+The mystery was soon solved.
+
+The position of all had changed in the struggle, and from where Kenneth
+MacVintie now stood he noted a scant suggestion of light flickering down
+from a black fissure in the roof of the cavity, and instantly realized
+that it must give an exit upon the mountain slope beyond. The agility
+with which Attusah of Kanootare sprang up and leaped into it was
+admirable to behold, but MacVintie did not believe that, although
+knotted up as he was in his own plaid passed under his arms and around
+his waist for the purpose, he could be lifted by the ends of the fabric
+through that aperture by the strength of any one man. Naturally he
+himself would make no effort to facilitate the enterprise. On the
+contrary, such inertness as the sheer exercise of will could compass was
+added to his dead weight. Nevertheless he rose slowly, slowly through
+the air. As he was finally dragged through the rift in the rocks, his
+first feeling was one of gratification to perceive that no one man could
+so handle him. The feat had required the utmost exertions of two
+athletic Indians pulling strenuously at the ends of the plaid passed
+over a projection of rock, thus acting pulley-wise, and the good Glasgow
+weave was shedding its frayed fragments through all the place by reason
+of the strain it had sustained.
+
+The next moment more serious considerations claimed his thoughts. He saw
+that two men, fully armed, for Digatiski had secured ammunition for his
+own gun from the cartouch-box of the soldier, could force his
+withdrawal, bound as he was, farther and farther from the ensign and his
+party, whose attention had been temporarily diverted from the scout's
+delay in returning by signs of the enemy ambushed in another direction.
+
+MacVintie still struggled, albeit he knew that it was vain to resist,
+more especially when another Cherokee joined the party and dedicated
+himself solely to the enterprise of pushing and haling the captive over
+the rugged way,--often at as fair a speed as if his good will had been
+enlisted in the endeavor. Now and again, however, the Highlander
+contrived to throw himself prone upon the ground, thus effectually
+hampering their progress and requiring the utmost exertions of all three
+to lift his great frame. The patience of the Indians seemed illimitable;
+again and again they performed this feat, only to renew it at the
+distance of a few hundred yards.
+
+At length the fact was divined by MacVintie. More than the ordinary fear
+of capture animated Attusah of Kanootare. Colonel Grant's treatment of
+his prisoners was humane as the laws of war require. Moreover, his
+authority, heavily reinforced by threats of pains and penalties, had
+sufficed, except in a few instances, to restrain the Chickasaw allies of
+the British from wreaking their vengeance on the captive Cherokees in
+the usual tribal method of fire and torture. The inference was obvious.
+Attusah of Kanootare was particularly obnoxious to the British
+government, the civil as well as the military authorities, and fleeing
+from death himself, he intended at all hazards to prevent the escape of
+his prisoner, who would give the alarm, and inaugurate pursuit from the
+party of the ensign.
+
+In this connection a new development attracted the attention of
+MacVintie. As they advanced deeper and deeper into the Cherokee country
+and the signs and sights of war grew remote,--no sounds of volleys nor
+even distant dropping shots clanging from the echoes, no wreaths of
+smoke floating among the hills, no flare of flames flinging crude red
+and yellow streaks across the luminous velvet azure of distant mountains
+with their silver haze, viewed through vistas of craggy chasms near at
+hand,--he observed a lessening of cordiality in the manner of the other
+two Indians toward the Northward Warrior, and a frequency on his part to
+protest that he was a great ada-wehi, and was dead although he appeared
+alive. The truth soon dawned upon the shrewd Scotchman, albeit he
+understood only so much Cherokee as he had chanced to catch up in his
+previous campaign in this region with Montgomerie and the present
+expedition. Attusah was for some reason obnoxious to his own people as
+well as to the British, and was in effect a fugitive from both factions.
+Indeed, the other two Indians presently manifested a disposition to
+avoid him. After much wrangling and obvious discontent and smouldering
+suspicion, one lagged systematically, and, the pace being speedy,
+contrived to fairly quit the party. Digatiski accompanied them two more
+days, then, openly avowing his intent, fell away from the line of march.
+It was instantly diverted toward the Little Tennessee River, on the
+western side of the Great Smoky Mountains; and as Attusah realized that
+without his connivance his captive's escape had become impossible,
+MacVintie found himself unbound, ungagged, and the society of the
+ada-wehi as pleasant as that of a savage ghost can well be.
+
+There was now no effort to escape. MacVintie's obvious policy was to
+await with what patience he might the appearance of the British
+vanguard, who in the sheer vaunt of victory would march from one end of
+the unresisting territory to the other, that all might witness and bow
+before the triumph of the royal authority. As yet remote from the
+advance of the troops, he dared not quit his captor in these sequestered
+regions lest he fall into the power of more inimical Cherokees, maddened
+by disaster, overwhelmed in ruin, furious, and thirsting for revenge for
+the slaughter of their nearest and dearest, and the ashes of their
+homes.
+
+Attusah made known his reason for his own uncharacteristic leniency to a
+soldier of this ruthless army, as they sat together by the shady
+river-side. He went through the dumb show of repeatedly offering to his
+captive guest the fish they had caught, pressing additional portions
+upon him, laughing significantly and joyously throughout his mimicry.
+Then suddenly grave, he seized the Highlander's left arm, giving it an
+earnest grasp about the wrist, the elbow, then close to the shoulder to
+intimate that he spared him for his gift to the needy and helpless.
+
+But Kenneth MacVintie, remembering his ill-starred generosity, flushed
+to the eyebrows, so little it became his record as a soldier, he
+thought, that he should be captured and stand in danger of his life by
+reason of the unmilitary performance of feeding a babbling pappoose.
+
+Attusah, however, could but love him for it; he loved the soldier for
+his kind heart, he said. For great as he himself was, the Northward
+Warrior, he had known how bitter it was to lack kindness.
+
+"It is not happy to be an ada-wehi!" he confessed, "for those who
+believe fear those who do not!"
+
+And tearing open the throat of his bead-embroidered shirt to reveal the
+frightful gashes of the wounds in his breast, he told the story of his
+legal death, with tears in his gay eyes, and a tremor of grief in the
+proud intonations of his voice, that thus had been requited a feat, the
+just guerdon of which should have been the warrior's crown,--in the
+bestowal of which, but for a cowardly fear of the English, all the tribe
+would have concurred.
+
+"_Akee-o-hoosa!_" (I am dead!) he said, pointing at the scars. And the
+Highlander felt that death had obviously been in every stroke, and
+hardly wondered that they who had seen the blows dealt should now
+account the appearance of the man a spectral manifestation, his unquiet
+ghost.
+
+Then, Attusah's mood changing suddenly, "_Tsida-wei-yu!_" (I am a great
+ada-wehi!) he boasted airily.
+
+That he was truly possessed of magical powers seemed to MacVintie least
+to be questioned when he angled, catching the great catfish, after the
+manner of the Indians, with the open palm of his hand. In these fresh
+June mornings he would dive down in some deep shady pool under the dark
+ledges of rock where the catfish are wont to lurk, his right arm wrapped
+to the fingers with a scarlet cloth. Tempted by the seeming bait, the
+catfish would take the finger-tips deep in its gullet, the strong hand
+would instantly clinch on its head, and Attusah would rise with his
+struggling gleaming prey, to be broiled on the coals for breakfast.
+
+But for these finny trophies they too might have suffered for food, in
+the scarcity of game and the lack of powder; but thus well fed, the two
+enemies, like comrades, would loiter beside their camp-fire on the
+banks, awaiting as it were the course of events. The dark green
+crystalline lustre of the shady reaches of the river, where the gigantic
+trees hung over the current, contrasted with the silver glister of the
+ripples far out, shimmering in the full glare of the sun. The breeze,
+exquisitely fragrant, would blow fresh and free from the dense forests.
+The mockingbird, a feathered miracle to the Highlander, would sway on a
+twig above them and sing jubilantly the whole day through and deep into
+the night. The distant mountains would show-softly blue on the horizon
+till the sun was going down, when they would assume a translucent
+jewel-like lustre, amethystine and splendid. And at night all the stars
+were in the dark sky, for the moon was new.
+
+So idle they were they must needs talk and talk. But this was an
+exercise requiring some skill and patience on the part of each, for the
+Scotchman could only by the closest attention gather the meaning of the
+Cherokee language as it was spoken, and the magic of the ada-wehi
+compassed but scanty English. Attusah was further hampered by the
+necessity of pausing now and then to spit out the words of the tongue he
+abhorred as if of an evil taste. Nevertheless it was by means of this
+imperfect linguistic communication that Kenneth MacVintie, keenly alive
+to aught of significance in this strange new world, surrounded with
+unknown unmeasured dangers, was enabled to note how the thoughts of his
+companion ran upon the half king Atta-Kulla-Kulla. Yet whenever a
+question was asked or curiosity suggested, the wary Attusah diverted the
+topic. This fact focused the observation of the shrewd, pertinacious
+Scotchman. At first he deemed the special interest lay in a jealousy of
+artistic handicraft.
+
+Atta-Kulla-Kulla's name implied the superlative of a skillful carver in
+wood, Attusah told him one day.
+
+"An' isna he a skilly man?" MacVintie asked.
+
+"Look at that!" cried the braggart, holding aloft his own work. He was
+carving a pipe from the soft stone of the region, which so lends itself
+to the purpose, hardening when heated. "_Tsida-wei-yu!_"
+
+There was a long pause while the mockingbird sang with an exuberant
+magic which might baffle the emulation of any ada-wehi of them all.
+MacVintie had almost forgotten the episode when Attusah said suddenly
+that the colonists translated the name of Atta-Kulla-Kulla as the
+"Little Carpenter."
+
+"Hegh! they hae a ship named for his honor!" exclaimed the Highlander.
+"I hae seen the Little Carpenter in the harbor in Charlestoun, swingin'
+an' bobbin' at her cables, just out frae the mither country! Her
+captain's name wull be Maitland."
+
+This evidence of the importance of the Cherokee magnate in the opinion
+of the British colonists did not please the ada-wehi. He spat upon the
+ship with ostentatious contempt as it were, and then went on silently
+with his carving.
+
+The mockingbird paused to listen to a note from the hermit thrush in the
+dense rhododendron, still splendidly abloom on the mountain slope. The
+Scotchman's eyes narrowed to distinguish if the white flake of light in
+the deep green water across a little bay were the reflection of the
+flower known as the Chilhowee lily, or the ethereal blossom itself.
+
+Attusah's mind seemed yet with the seagoing craft. He himself knew the
+name of another ship, he said presently; and the Highlander fancied that
+he ill liked to be outdone in knowledge of the outer world.
+
+But it was immediately developed that in this ship Atta-Kulla-Kulla had
+sailed to England many years before to visit King George II. in
+London.[8] Attusah could not at once anglicize the name "Chochoola," but
+after so long a time MacVintie was enabled to identify the Fox, then a
+noted British man-of-war.
+
+In these leisurely beguilements the days passed, until one morning
+Attusah's fears and presentiments were realized in their seizure by a
+party of Cherokees, who swooped down upon their hermitage and bore them
+off by force to the council-house of the town of Citico, where
+Atta-Kulla-Kulla and a number of other head men had assembled to discuss
+the critical affairs of the tribe, and decide on its future policy.
+
+So critical indeed was the situation that it seemed to MacVintie that
+they might well dispense with notice of two factors so inconsiderable in
+the scale of national importance as the ada-wehi and his captive. But
+one was a British prisoner, calculated to expiate in a degree with his
+life the woe and ruin his comrades had wrought. The more essential was
+this course since the triumph of putting him to the torture and death
+would gratify and reanimate many whose zeal was flagging under an
+accumulation of anguish and helpless defeat, and stimulate them to
+renewed exertions. For before the Cherokees would sue for peace they
+waited long in the hope that the French would yet be enabled to convey
+to them a sufficient supply of powder to renew and prosecute the war.
+
+As to the arrest of the other, Attusah of Kanootare, this was necessary
+in the event that submission to the British government became
+inevitable. For since he claimed to be a ghost, surely never was spectre
+so reckless. He had indeed appeared to so many favored individuals that
+the English might fairly have cause to doubt his execution in
+satisfaction of his crimes against the government; and the breach of
+faith on the part of the Cherokee rulers in this conspicuous instance
+might well preclude the granting of any reasonable terms of peace now,
+and subject the whole nation to added hardship.
+
+This was the argument advanced by Atta-Kulla-Kulla as he stood and
+addressed his colleagues, who sat on buffalo-skins in a circle on the
+floor of the council-house of Citico,--the usual dome-shaped edifice,
+daubed within and without with the rich red clay of the country, and
+situated on a high artificial mound in the centre of the town.
+
+The council-fire alone gave light, flashing upon the slender figure and
+animated face of this chief, who, although of slighter physique and
+lower stature than his compeers, wielded by reason of his more
+intellectual qualities so potent an influence among them.
+
+The oratorical gifts of Atta-Kulla-Kulla had signally impressed
+Europeans of culture and experience.[9] Imagine, then, the effect on the
+raw young Highland soldier, hearing the flow of language, watching the
+appropriate and forceful gestures, noting the responsive sentiment in
+the fire-lit countenances of the circle of feather-crested Indians, yet
+comprehending little save that it was a masterpiece of cogent reasoning,
+richly eloquent, and that every word was as a fagot to the flames and a
+pang to the torture.
+
+Attusah of Kanootare, the Northward Warrior, rose to reply in defense of
+himself and his captive, and Atta-Kulla-Kulla listened as courteously as
+the rest, although the speech of the ada-wehi depended, like the oratory
+of many young men, chiefly on a magical assurance. He had an ally,
+however, in the dominant superstition of the Cherokees. Numbers of the
+warriors now ascribed their recent disasters to the neglect of various
+omens, or the omission of certain propitiatory observances of their
+ancient religion, or the perpetration of deeds known to be adversely
+regarded by the ruling spirits of war.
+
+Moreover, they were all aware that this man had been killed, left for
+dead, reported as dead to the British government, which accepted the
+satisfaction thus offered for his crimes,--the deeds themselves,
+however, accounted by him and the rest of the tribe praiseworthy and the
+achievements of war.
+
+And here he was protesting that he was dead and a ghost. "_Akee-o-hoosa!
+Akee-o-hoosa! Tsida-wei-yu!_" he cried continually.
+
+Indeed, this seemed to be the only reasonable method of accounting for
+the renewed presence in the world of a man known to be dead. This was
+his status, he argued. He was a dead man, and this was his captive. The
+Cherokee nation could not pretend to follow with its control the actions
+of a dead man. They themselves had pronounced him dead. He had no place
+in the war. He had been forbidden, on account of his official death, to
+compete for the honors of the campaign. Apart from his former status as
+a Cherokee, merely as a supernatural being, a spirit, an ada-wehi, he
+had captured this British soldier, who was therefore the property of a
+dead man. And the Cherokee law of all things and before all things
+forbade interference with the effects of the dead.
+
+Despite the curling contempt on the lip of Atta-Kulla-Kulla the council
+did not immediately acquiesce in his view, and thus for a time flattered
+the hope of the ada-wehi that they were resting in suspension on the
+details of this choice argument. There was an illogical inversion of
+values in the experience of the tribe, and while they could not now
+accept the worthless figments of long ago, it was not vouchsafed to them
+to enjoy the substantial merits of the new order of things. Reason,
+powder, diplomacy, had brought the Cherokee nation to a point of
+humiliation to which superstition, savagery, and the simplicities of the
+tomahawk had never descended in "the good old times." Reason was never
+so befuddled of aspect, civilization never so undesired as now. In their
+own expanded outlook at life, however, they could not afford to ignore
+the views of Atta-Kulla-Kulla, the advocate of all the newer methods, in
+so important a matter as the release of a British prisoner of war on the
+strange pretext that his captor was a ghost of a peculiar spectral
+power, an ada-wehi, although this course would have been more agreeable
+to the "old beloved" theories of their halcyon days of eld, when the
+Cherokee name was a terror and a threat.
+
+Therefore, averse as they were to subscribe to the modern methods which
+had wrought them such woe and humiliation and defeat, the dominant
+superstition of the race now fell far short of the fantasy of liberating
+a British prisoner at this crisis under the influence of any spectral
+manifestation whatsoever. The council was obviously steeled against this
+proposition, as MacVintie shortly perceived, and equally determined that
+the ada-wehi must needs exert phenomenal and magical powers indeed to
+avoid yet making good the nation's pledge of his death to the British
+government, and becoming a ghost in serious earnest. MacVintie's heart
+sank within him as he noted the hardening of the lines of their grave
+harsh faces and the affirmative nodding of the feather-crested heads,
+conferring together, as the decision was reached.
+
+It accorded, however, with their ancient custom to postpone over a night
+the execution of any sentence of special weight, and therefore the
+council adjourned to the next day, the two prisoners being left in the
+deserted building, each securely bound with a rope to a pillar of the
+series which upheld the roof of the strange circular edifice. This
+colonnade stood about four feet from the wall, and the interval between
+was occupied by a divan, fashioned of dexterously woven cane, extending
+around the room; and as the prisoners could seat themselves here, or lie
+at full length, they were subjected to no greater hardship than was
+consistent with their safe custody.
+
+A sentinel with his musket on his shoulder stood at the door, and the
+sun was going down. Kenneth MacVintie could see through the open portal
+the red glow in the waters of the Tennessee River. Now and then a flake
+of a glittering white density glided through it, which his eyes,
+accustomed to long distances, discriminated as a swan. Thunder-heads,
+however, were gathering above the eastern slopes and the mountains were
+a lowering slate-toned purple, save when a sudden flash of lightning
+roused them to a vivid show of green.
+
+The dull red hue of the interior of the council-house darkened
+gradually; the embers of the council-fire faded into the gray ash, and
+the night came sullen and threatening before its time.
+
+The young Highlander sought to bend his mind to the realization that his
+days on earth were well-nigh ended, and that it behooved him to think on
+the morrow elsewhere. He had an old-fashioned religious faith presumed
+to be fitted for any emergency, but in seeking to recall its dogmas and
+find such consolation in its theories as might sustain a martyr at the
+stake, he was continually distracted with the momentous present.
+
+The two prisoners could no longer see each other, and the little
+gestures and significant glances which had supplemented their few words,
+and made up for the lack of better conversational facilities were
+impracticable in the darkness.
+
+The silent obscurity was strangely lonely. MacVintie began to doubt if
+the other still lived.
+
+"Attusah!" he said at length.
+
+"_Tsida-wei-yu!_" (I am a great ada-wehi) murmured the ghost
+mechanically.
+
+He was quite spent, exhausted by the effort to logically exist as a
+ghost in a world which had repudiated him as a live man.
+
+MacVintie, who found it hard enough to reconcile himself to die once,
+felt a poignant sympathy for him, who must needs die again. But the
+Highlander could not think. He could not even pray. He desisted from the
+fitful effort after a time. He had a depressing realization that a good
+soldier relies upon the proficiency acquired by the daily drill to serve
+in an emergency, not a special effort at smartness for an occasion. The
+battle or the review would show the quality of the stuff that was in
+him.
+
+Despite the stunned despair which possessed his mental faculties, his
+physical senses were keenly acute. He marked unconsciously the details
+of the rising of the wind bringing the storm hitherward. A searching
+flash of lightning showed the figure of the sentinel, half crouching
+before the blast, at his post in the open portal. The rain was presently
+falling heavily, and ever and anon a great suffusion of yellow glare in
+its midst revealed the myriads of slanting lines as it came. He inhaled
+the freshened fragrance it brought from the forests. He noted the
+repeated crash of the thunder, the far-away rote of the echoes, the
+rhythmic beat of the torrents on the ground, and their tumultuous swift
+dash down the slope of the dome-shaped roof, and suddenly among these
+turmoils,--he could hardly believe his ears,--a mild little whimper of
+protest.
+
+The sentinel heard it too. MacVintie saw his dark figure in the doorway
+as he turned his head to listen. A woman's voice sounded immediately,
+bidding a child beware how he cried, lest she call the great white owl,
+the Oo-koo-ne-kah, to catch him!
+
+The flare of the lightning revealed a pappoose the next moment, upright
+in his perpendicular cradle, as it swung on his mother's back, in the
+drenching downpour of the rain, for the woman had advanced to the
+sentinel and was talking loudly and eagerly.
+
+Kenneth silently recognized the small creature who had moved him to a
+trivial charity which had resulted in so strangely disproportionate a
+disaster. Doubtless, however, the squaws would never have been able to
+return to their accustomed place but for the food which he had given
+them, sustaining them on the journey home.
+
+It would imply some mission of importance surely, he thought, to induce
+the woman to expose the child to a tempest like this; and indeed the
+pappoose, buffeted by the wind, the rain full in his face, lifted up his
+voice again in a protest so loud and vehement that his mother was
+enabled to see the great white owl, whose business it is to remove
+troublesome little Cherokees from the sphere of worry of their elders,
+already winging his way hither. One might wonder if the Oo-koo-ne-kah
+would do worse for him than his maternal guardian, but pelted by the
+pitiless rain he promptly sank his bleatings to a mere babble of a
+whimper. Thereby Kenneth was better enabled to hear what the woman was
+saying to the sentinel.
+
+An important mission indeed, as MacVintie presently gathered, for she
+must needs lift her voice stridently to be heard above the din of the
+elements. Some powder, only a little it was true, had been sent by the
+French to the town, and a share had been left at the house of the
+sentinel that night in the general distribution. But there was no one at
+home. All his family were across the mountains, whither, according to
+the custom of the Cherokees, they had gone to find and bring back the
+body of his brother, who had been killed in the fight at Etchoee. And
+the leak in the roof! She, his nearest neighbor, had just bethought
+herself of the leak in the roof! Would not the powder, the precious
+powder, be ruined? Had he not best go to see at once about it?
+
+He hesitated, letting the butt of his gun sink to the ground. She seized
+the weapon promptly. She would stand guard here till he returned, she
+promised. The prisoners were bound. They could not move. It would
+require but an instant's absence,--and the powder was so scarce, so
+precious!
+
+The next moment the sentinel was gone! The darkness descended, doubly
+intense, after a succession of electric flashes; the rain fell with
+renewed force. MacVintie suddenly heard the babbling whimper quite close
+beside him, somewhat subdued by a fierce maternal admonition to listen
+to the terrible voice of the Oo-koo-ne-kah, coming to catch a Cherokee
+cry-baby!
+
+A stroke of a knife here and there, and the two prisoners were freed
+from their bonds. The Highland soldier did not know whether Attusah
+looked back while in flight, but his last glimpse of the Cherokee town
+of Citico showed the broad glare of lightning upon the groups of conical
+roofs in the slanting lines of rain; the woman on the high mound at the
+portal of the council-house, with the pappoose on her back and the gun
+in her hand; the sentinel once more climbing the ascent to his post. And
+the last words he heard were chronicling the adverse sentiments
+entertained toward bad children by the Oo-koo-ne-kah, the mysterious
+great white owl.
+
+The escape was not discovered till the next day, and was universally
+attributed to the magic of the ada-wehi. Even the sentinel himself
+doubted naught, having left a trusty deputy in his stead, for the
+devotion of the Cherokee women to the tribal cause was proverbial, and
+gratitude, even for a rescue from starvation, is not usually an urgent
+motive power.
+
+Kenneth MacVintie was seen again in the Cherokee country only in his
+place as a marker in the march of his regiment, and as he was evidently
+exceedingly desirous to permit no one to incur penalties for his
+liberation, his officers spared him questions concerning his escape,
+save in a general way.
+
+When the ada-wehi next reappeared in a remote town of the district and
+was sedulously interrogated as to how his freedom had been achieved, he
+threw out his right hand at arm's length in his old, boastful, airy
+gesture.
+
+"_Cheesto kaiere!_" (An old rabbit!) he exclaimed. "A little old rabbit
+ran down the slope. I turned the soldier into a rabbit, and he ran away.
+And I turned myself into a fish, and I swam away. Ha! _Tsida-wei-yu!_"
+(I am a great ada-wehi!)
+
+
+
+
+THE FATE OF THE CHEERA-TAGHE
+
+
+Along the old "trading-path" that was wont to wind from the Cherokee
+country among the innumerable spurs and gorges of the Great Smoky
+Mountains, and through the dense primeval forests full five hundred
+miles to the city of Charlestown, was visible for many years, on the
+banks of the Little Tennessee, an "old waste town," as the abandoned
+place was called in the idiom of the Indians. An early date it might
+seem, in 1744, in this new land, for the spectacle of the ruins of a
+race still in possession, still unsubdued. Nearly twenty years later,
+after the repeated aggressive expeditions which the British government
+sent against the Cherokees, such vestiges became more numerous. This
+"waste town," however, neither fire nor sword had desolated, and the
+grim deeds of British powder and lead were still of the future. The
+enemy came in more subtle sort.
+
+Only one of the white pack-men employed to drive a score of well-laden
+horses semi-annually from Charlestown to a trading-station farther along
+on the Great Tennessee--then called the Cherokee River--and back again
+used to glower fearfully at the "waste town" as he passed. He had ample
+leisure for speculation, for the experienced animals of the pack-train
+required scant heed, so regularly they swung along in single file, and
+the wild whoops of their drivers were for the sake of personal
+encouragement and the simple joy which very young men find in their own
+clamor. It grew specially boisterous always when they neared the site of
+Nilaque Great, the deserted place, as if to give warning to any vague
+spiritual essences, unmeet for mortal vision, that might be lurking
+about the "waste town," and bid them avaunt, for the place was reputed
+haunted.
+
+The rest of the Carolina pack-men, trooping noisily past, averted their
+eyes from the darkened doors of the empty houses; the weed-grown spaces
+of the "beloved square," where once the ceremonies of state, the
+religious rites, the public games and dances were held; the
+council-house on its high mound, whence had been wont to issue the bland
+vapors of the pipe of peace or the far more significant smoke emitted
+from the cheera, the "sacred fire," which only the cheera-taghe, the
+fire-prophets,[10] were permitted to kindle, and which was done with
+pomp and ceremony in the new year, when every spark of the last year's
+fire had been suffered to die out.
+
+Cuthbert Barnett, however, always looked to see what he might,--perhaps
+because he was a trifle bolder than the other stalwart pack-men, all
+riding armed to the teeth to guard the goods of the train from robbery
+as well as their own lives from treachery, for although the Cherokees
+professed friendship it was but half-hearted, as they loved the French
+always better than the English; perhaps because he had a touch of
+imagination that coerced his furtive glance; perhaps because he doubted
+more, or believed less, of the traditions of the day. And he
+saw--silence! the sunset in vacant spaces, with long, slanting,
+melancholy rays among the scattered houses of the hamlet; an empty
+doorway, here and there; a falling rotting roof; futile traces of
+vanished homes. Once a deer and fawn were grazing in the weed-grown
+fields that used to stand so thick with corn that they laughed and sung;
+once--it was close upon winter--he heard a bear humming and humming his
+content (the hunters called the sound "singing") from the den where the
+animal had bestowed himself among the fallen logs of a dwelling-house,
+half covered with great drifts of dead leaves; often an owl would cry
+out in alarm from some dark nook as the pack-train clattered past; and
+once a wolf with a stealthy and sinister tread was patrolling the
+"beloved square." These were but the natural incidents of the time and
+the ruins of the old Cherokee town.
+
+Little did Cuddy Barnett imagine, as he gazed on the deserted and
+desolate place, that he was yet to behold the smoke of the "sacred fire"
+flaring up into the blue sky from the portal of the temple, as the
+cheera-taghe would issue bearing the flame aloft, newly kindled in the
+opening year, and calling upon many assembled people to light therefrom
+their hearths, rekindling good resolutions and religious fervor for the
+future, and letting the faults of the unavailing past die out with the
+old year's fire; that he was to mark the clash of arms in the "beloved
+square," once more populous with the alert figures of warriors in
+martial array, making ready for the war-path; that he was to hear the
+joyful religious songs of greeting to the dawn, and the sonorous
+trumpeting of the conch-shells, as the vanished Indians of the "old
+waste town" would troop down at daybreak into the water of that bright
+stream where long ago they had been wont to plunge in their mystic
+religious ablutions. All this, however, the pack-men might see and hear,
+to believe the tradition of the day, in camping but a single night near
+the old "waste town."
+
+And so anxious were these gay itinerant companies to see and hear
+nothing of such ghostly sort that whatever the stress of the weather,
+the mischances of the journey, the condition of the pack-animals, this
+vicinity was always distinguished by the longest day's travel of the
+whole route, and the camp was pitched at the extreme limit of the
+endurance of man and horse to compass distance from Nilaque Great. For
+believe what one might, the fact remained indisputable, that a decade
+earlier, when the place was inhabited, strange sounds were rife about
+the locality, the "sacred fire" was unkindled on the great "Sanctified
+Day," the two cheera-taghe of the town mysteriously disappeared, and
+their fate had remained a dark riddle.
+
+One of these men, Oo-koo-koo, was well known in Charlestown. Both were
+of influence in the tribe, but often he had been specially chosen as one
+of the delegations of warriors and "beloved men" sent to wait in
+diplomatic conference on the Governor of South Carolina, to complain of
+injustice in the dealings of the licensed traders or the encroachments
+of the frontier settlers, or to crave the extension of some privilege of
+the treaty which the Cherokee tribe had lately made with the British
+government.
+
+Two white men, who had become conspicuous in a short stay in the town of
+Nilaque Great, disappeared simultaneously, and the suspicion of foul
+dealing on their part against the cheera-taghe, which the Cherokee
+nation seemed disposed to entertain, threatened at one time the peace
+that was so precious to the "infant settlements," as the small, remote,
+stockaded stations of the Carolina frontiersmen were tenderly called.
+
+Therefore the Governor of South Carolina, now a royal province,--the
+event occurred during the incumbency of Robert Johnson, who having acted
+in that capacity for the Lords Proprietors, well understood the menace
+of the situation,--busied himself with extreme diligence to discover the
+subsequent movements of the two white men, whose names were Terence
+O'Kimmon and Adrien L'Epine, in order to ascertain the fate of the
+cheera-taghe, and if evilly entreated, to bring the perpetrators of the
+deed to justice.
+
+With a long, unguarded, open frontier such as his province presented to
+the incursions of the warlike and fierce Cherokees, who, despite their
+depopulating wars with other tribes, could still bring to the field six
+thousand braves from their sixty-four towns, the inhabitants of which
+were estimated at twenty thousand souls, he was by no means disposed to
+delay or to indulge doubts or to foster compatriot commiseration in
+meting out the penalty of the malefactors. The united militia of South
+Carolina and Georgia at this time numbered but thirty-five hundred rank
+and file, these colonies being so destitute of white men for the common
+defense that a memorial addressed to his majesty King George II. a
+little earlier than this event, bearing date April 9, 1734, pathetically
+states that "money itself cannot here raise a sufficient body of them."
+The search for the suspects, however, although long, exhaustive, and of
+such diligence as to convince the Indians of its sincerity of purpose,
+resulted fruitlessly. The government presently took occasion to made
+some valuable presents to the tribe, not as indemnity, for it could
+recognize no responsibility in the strange disaster, but for the sake of
+seeming to comply with the form of offering satisfaction for the loss,
+which otherwise the Indians would retaliate with massacre.
+
+Nilaque Great with this cloud upon it grew dreary. The strange
+disappearance of its cheera-taghe was canvassed again and again,
+reaching no surmise of the truth. Speculations, futile as they were
+continuous, began to be reinforced with reminiscences of the date of the
+event, and certain episodes became strangely significant now, although
+hardly remarked at the time; people remembered unexplained and curious
+noises that had sounded like muffled thunder in the deep midnight, and
+again, scarcely noted, in the broad daylight. The "sacred fire" remained
+unkindled, and sundry misfortunes were attributed to this unprecedented
+neglect; an expert warrior, young and notably deft-handed, awkwardly
+shot himself with his own gun; the crops, cut short by a late and
+long-continued drought, were so meagre as to be hardly worth the
+harvesting; the days appointed for the annual feasts and thanksgiving
+were like days of mourning; discontents waxed and grew strong.
+Superstitious terrors became rife, and at length it was known at
+Charlestown that the Cherokees of Nilaque Great had settled a new place
+farther down upon the river, for at the old town the vanished
+cheera-taghe were abroad in the spirit, pervading the "beloved square"
+at night with cries of "_A-kee-o-hoo-sa! A-kee-o-hoo-sa!_" (I am dead! I
+am dead!) clamoring for their graves and the honors of sepulture due to
+them and denied. And this was a grief to the head men of the town, for
+of all tribes the Cherokees loved and revered their dead. Thus when
+other cheera-taghe kindled for the municipality the "sacred fire" for a
+new year it was distributed to hearths far away, and Nilaque Great,
+deserted and depopulated, had become a "waste town."
+
+A fair place it had been in its prime, and so it had seemed one
+afternoon in June, 1734, when for the first time the two white strangers
+had entered it. Mountains more splendid than those which rose about it
+on every hand it would be difficult to imagine. The dense, rich woods
+reach in undiminished vigor along the slopes covering them at a height
+of six thousand feet, till the "tree line" interposes; thence the great
+bare domes lift their stately proportions among the clouds. Along these
+lofty perspectives the varying distance affords the vision a vast array
+of gradations of color,--green in a thousand shades, and bronze, and
+purple, and blue,--blue growing ever fainter and more remote till it is
+but an illusion of azure, and one may believe that the summits seen
+through a gap to the northeast are sheer necromancy of the facile
+horizon.
+
+In the deep verdant cove below, groups of the giant trees common to the
+region towered above the stanchly constructed cabins that formed the
+homes of the Indians, for the Cherokees, detesting labor and experts in
+procrastination, builded well and wisely that they might not be forced
+to rebuild, and many of the distinctive features of the stout frontier
+architecture were borrowed by the pioneers from aboriginal example. Out
+beyond the shadows were broad stretches of fields with the lush June in
+the wide and shining blade and the flaunting tassel. The voices of women
+and young girls came cheerily from the breezy midst as they tilled the
+ground, where flourished in their proper divisions the three varieties
+of maize known to Indian culture, "the six weeks' corn, the hominy corn,
+and the bread corn." A shoal of canoes skimmed down the river, each with
+its darting shadow upon that lucent current and seeming as native, as
+indigenous to the place as the minnows in a crystal brown pool there by
+the waterside--each too with its swift javelin-like motion and a darting
+shadow. Sundry open doors here and there showed glimpses of passing
+figures within, but the arrival of the strangers was unnoticed till some
+children playing beside the river caught sight of the unaccustomed
+faces. With a shrill cry of discovery, they sped across the square,
+agitated half by fright and half by the gusto of novelty. In another
+moment there were two score armed men in the square.
+
+"Now hould yer tongue still, an' I'll do the talkin'," said one of the
+white adventurers to the other, speaking peremptorily, but with a suave
+and delusive smile. "If yez weren't Frinch ye'd be a beautiful
+Englishman; but I hev got the advantage of ye in that, an' faix I'll
+kape it."
+
+He was evidently of a breeding inferior to that of his companion, but he
+had so sturdy and swinging a gait, so stalwart and goodly a build, so
+engaging a manner, and so florid a smile, that the very sight of him was
+disarming, despite the patent crafty deceit in his face. It seemed as if
+it could not be very deep or guileful, it was so frankly expressed. It
+was suggestive of the roguish machinations of a child. He had twinkling
+brown eyes, and reddish hair, plaited in a club and tied with a thong of
+leather. His features were blunt, but his red, well-shaped lips parted
+in a ready, reassuring smile, and showed teeth as even and white as the
+early corn. Both men were arrayed in the buckskin shirt and leggings
+generally worn by the frontiersmen, but the face of the other had a
+certain incongruity with his friend's, and was more difficult to
+decipher. It looked good,--not kind, but true. It had severe pragmatic
+lines about the mouth, and the lips were thin and somewhat fixedly set.
+His eyes were dark, serious, and very intent, as if he could argue and
+protest very earnestly on matters of no weight. He would in a question
+of theory go very far if set on the wrong line, and just as far on the
+right. The direction was the matter of great moment, and this seemed now
+in the hands of the haphazard but scheming Irishman.
+
+"If it plaze yer honor," said O'Kimmon in English, taking off his
+coonskin cap with a lavish flourish as a tall and stately Indian hastily
+garbed in fine raiment of the aboriginal type, a conspicuous article of
+which was a long feather-wrought mantle, both brilliant and delicate of
+effect, detached himself from the group and came forward, "I can't spake
+yer illigant language,--me eddication bein' that backward,--but I kin
+spake me own so eloquent that it would make a gate-post prick up the
+ears of understanding. We've come to visit yez, sor."
+
+The smile which the Hibernian bent upon the savage was of a honeyed
+sweetness, but the heart of his companion sank as he suddenly noted the
+keen, intuitive power of comprehension expressed in the face of the old
+Indian. Here was craft too, but of a different quality, masked, potent,
+impossible to divine, to measure, to thwart. The sage Oo-koo-koo stood
+motionless, his eyes narrowing, his long, flat, cruel mouth compressed
+as with a keen scrutiny he marked all the characteristics of the
+strangers,--first of one, then deliberately of the other. A war captain
+(his flighty name was Watatuga, the Dragon-fly, although he looked with
+his high nose and eagle glance more like a bird of prey), assuming
+precedence of the others, pressed up beside the prophet, and the
+challenge of his eyes and the contempt that dilated his nostrils might
+have seemed more formidable of intent than the lacerating gaze of the
+cheera-taghe, except that to an Irishman there is always a subtle joy
+even in the abstract idea of fight. The rest of the braves, with their
+alert, high-featured cast of countenance, inimical, threatening,
+clustered about, intent, doubtful, listening.
+
+Adrien L'Epine had his secret doubts as to the efficacy of the bold,
+blunt, humorous impudence which Terence O'Kimmon fancied such masterful
+policy,--taking now special joy in the fact that its meaning was
+partially veiled because of the presumable limitations of the Indian's
+comprehension of the English language. The more delicate nurture that
+L'Epine obviously had known revolted at times from this unkempt
+brusquerie, although he had a strong pulse of sympathy with the wild,
+lawless disregard of conventional standards which characterized much of
+the frontier life. He feared, too, that O'Kimmon underrated the extent
+of the Cherokee's comprehension of the language of which, however, the
+Indians generally spoke only a few disconnected phrases. So practiced
+were the savages in all the arts of pantomime, in the interpretation of
+facial expression and the intonation of the voice, that L'Epine had
+known in his varied wanderings of instances of tribes in conference,
+each ignorant of the other's language, who nevertheless reached a
+definite and intricate mutual understanding without the services of an
+interpreter. L'Epine felt entrapped, regretful, and wished to recede. He
+winced palpably as O'Kimmon's rich Irish voice, full of words, struck
+once more upon the air.
+
+"Me godson, the Governor o' South Carolina," Terence O'Kimmon resumed,
+lying quite recklessly, "sint his humble respects,--an' he's that swate
+upon yez that he licks his fingers ter even sphake yer name! (Pity I
+furgits ut, bein' I never knew ut!)"
+
+Although possessing an assurance that he could get the better of the
+devil, "could he but identify him," as O'Kimmon frequently said, he felt
+for one moment as if he were now in the presence. Despite his nerve the
+silence terrified him. He was beginning to cringe before the steady
+glare of those searching eyes. It was even as a refreshment of spirit to
+note a sudden bovine snort of rage from the lightsome Dragon-fly, as if
+he could ill bridle his inimical excitement.
+
+The adventurers had not anticipated a reception of this sort, for the
+hospitality of the Indians was proverbial. Credentials surely were not
+necessary in the social circles of the Cherokees, and two men to six
+thousand offered no foundation for fear. O'Kimmon had such confidence in
+his own propitiating wiles and crafty policy that he did not realize how
+his genial deceit was emblazoned upon his face, how blatant it was in
+his voice. But for its challenging duplicity there would hardly have
+arisen a suggestion of suspicion. Many men on various errands easily
+found their way into the Indian tribes when at peace with the British,
+and suffered no injury. Nevertheless as the wise Oo-koo-koo looked at
+O'Kimmon thus steadily, with so discerning a gaze, the Irishman felt
+each red hair of his scalp rise obtrusively into notice, as if to
+suggest the instant taking of it. He instinctively put on his coonskin
+cap again to hold his scalp down, as he said afterward.
+
+"Why come?" Oo-koo-koo demanded sternly.
+
+"Tell the truth, for God's sake!" L'Epine adjured O'Kimmon in a low
+voice.
+
+"I'm not used to it! 'T would give me me death o' cold!" quavered the
+Irishman, in sad sincerity, at a grievous loss.
+
+"_Asgaya uneka_ (White man), but no Ingliss," said the astute Indian,
+touching the breast of each with the bowl of his pipe, still in his hand
+and still alight as it was when the interruption of their advent had
+occurred.
+
+"No, by the powers,--not English!" exclaimed the Irishman impulsively,
+seeing he was already discovered. "I'm me own glorious nation!--the
+pride o' the worruld,--I was born in the Emerald Isle, the gem o' the
+say! I'm an Oirishman from the tip o' me scalp--in the name o' pity
+_why_ should I mintion the contrivance" (dropping his voice to an
+appalled muffled tone)--"may the saints purtect ut! But surely, Mister
+Injun, I've no part nor lot with the bloody bastes o' Englishers either
+over the say or in the provinces. If I were the brother-in-law o' the
+Governor o' South Carolina I'd hev a divorce from the murtherin'
+Englisher before he could cry, 'Quarter!'"
+
+Oo-koo-koo, the wise Owl, made no direct answer.
+
+"_Asgaya uneka_ (White man), but no Ingliss," he only said, now
+indicating L'Epine.
+
+"Frinch in the mornin', plaze yer worship, an' only a bit o' English
+late in the afternoon o' the day," cried O'Kimmon, officiously, himself
+once more.
+
+"French father, English mother," explained L'Epine, feeling that the
+Indian was hardly a safe subject for the pleasantries of conundrums.
+
+"But his mother was but a wee bit of a woman," urged O'Kimmon; "the most
+of him is Frinch,--look at the size of him!"
+
+For O'Kimmon was now bidding as high against the English aegis as
+earlier he had been disposed to claim its protection, when he had
+protested his familiarity with the Royal Governor of South Carolina. In
+an instant he was once more gay, impudent, confident of carrying
+everything before him. He divined that some recent friction had
+supervened in the ever-clashing interests subsisting between the
+Cherokee nation and the British government, and was relying on the
+recurrent inclination of this tribe to fraternize with the French. Their
+influence from their increasing western settlements was exerted
+antagonistically to the British colonists, by whom it was dreaded in
+anticipation of the war against a French and Cherokee alliance which
+came later. Oo-koo-koo, complacent in his own sagacity in having
+detected a difference in the speech of the new-comers from the English
+which he had been accustomed to hear in Charlestown, and animated by a
+wish to believe, hearkened with the more credulity to an expansive
+fiction detailed by the specious Irishman as to their mission here.
+
+They were awaiting the coming of certain pettiaugres from New
+Orleans,--a long journey by way of the Mississippi, the Ohio, the
+Cherokee, and the Tennessee rivers,--with a cargo of French goods
+cheaper than the English. They designed to establish a trading-post at
+some convenient point, out of reach of the grasping British, and thus to
+compete with the monopoly of the Cherokee commerce which the English
+government sought to foster. And then, to furnish a leaven of truth to
+this mass of lies, he detailed, with such a relish as only an Irishman
+can feel in a happy incongruity, that the French, having no market in
+old France for deerskins, the chief commodity of barter that the Indians
+possessed, disposed of them to ships of the British colonies, from New
+York and elsewhere, lured thus to New Orleans, in exchange for English
+cloths and other British manufactures, which the French then
+surreptitiously furnished to the Indians of the British alliance,
+underselling them on every hand.
+
+"The intellects of the Frinch are so handsome!" cried O'Kimmon, the
+tears of delighted laughter in his eyes. "Faix, that is what makes 'em
+so close kin to the Oirish!"
+
+Albeit the Cherokee treaty with the British forbade the Indians to trade
+with white men of any other nationality than the English, these
+professed aliens were promised protection and concealment from the
+British government, and the pretext of their mission served to
+countenance their lingering stay.
+
+Soon their presence seemed a matter of course. The Indians had recurred
+to their methods of suave hospitality. The two strangers encountered
+only friendly looks and words, while affecting to gratify curiosity by
+peering into all the unaccustomed habitudes,--the preparation of food,
+the manufacture of deerskin garments, the care of the sick, the modeling
+of bowls and jars of clay, in which the Cherokees were notably expert as
+well as in the weaving of feather-wrought fabrics and baskets, the
+athletic games, the horse-races, the continual dances and pantomimic
+plays,--and were presently domiciled as it were in the tribe. Of so
+little note did they soon become that when they gradually ceased these
+manifestations of interest, as if familiarity had sated their curiosity,
+it seemed to occasion no comment. They were obviously free to rove, to
+stay, to live their lives as they would without interference or
+surveillance.
+
+Nevertheless, they still maintained the utmost caution. Sometimes,
+idleness being no phenomenon, they would lie half the day in the shade
+on the river-bank. The Tennessee was shrunken now in the heated season,
+and great gravelly slopes were exposed. The two loiterers were
+apparently motionless at first, but as their confidence increased and
+the chances of being observed lessened, L'Epine, always dreading
+discovery, began to casually pass the gravel and sand through his
+fingers as he lay; sometimes he idly trifled with the blade of a hoe in
+a shallow pool left by the receding waters, while the jolly Irishman,
+now grave and solicitous, watched him breathlessly. Then L'Epine would
+shake his head, and the mercurial O'Kimmon groaned his deep despondency.
+
+Once the Frenchman's head was not shaken. A flush sprang up among the
+pragmatic lines of L'Epine's face; his dark eyes glittered; his hand
+shook; for as he held out the hoe, on its blade were vaguely glimmering
+particles among the sand.
+
+Later the two adventurers cherished a small nugget of red, red gold!
+
+This find chanced below a bluff in a sort of grotto of rock, which the
+water filled when the river was high, and left quite dry and exposed as
+it receded in the droughts of summer.
+
+Whether the two strangers were too much and too long out of sight;
+whether attention was attracted by certain perforated dippers or pans
+which they now brought into assiduous use, but which they sought to
+conceal; whether they had been all the time furtively watched, with a
+suspicion never abated, one can hardly say. They had observed every
+precaution of secrecy that the most zealous heed could suggest. Only one
+worked with the pan while the other lay motionless and idle, and
+vigilantly watched and listened for any stealthy sign of approach. They
+fully realized the jealousy of the Indians concerning the mineral wealth
+of their territory, lest its discovery bring hordes of the craving white
+people to dispossess them. This prophetic terror was later fulfilled in
+the Ayrate division of the tribe, but to the northward, along the
+Tennessee River, they sedulously guarded this knowledge. Traditions
+there are to the present day in the Great Smoky Mountains concerning
+mines of silver and lead, and of localities rich in auriferous gravel
+which are approximately ascertained, but which the Cherokees knew
+accurately and worked as far as they listed;--they carried their secret
+with them to the grave or the far west.
+
+The exploration of L'Epine and O'Kimmon of necessity was conducted
+chiefly by day, but one night the prospectors could not be still, the
+moon on the sand was so bright!
+
+The time which they had fixed for a silent, secret departure was drawing
+near. Their bags were almost filled, but they lingered for a little
+more, and covetously a little more still. And this night, this memorable
+night, the moon on the sand was as bright as day!
+
+The light slanted across the Tennessee River and shimmered in the
+ripples. One could see, if one would, the stately lines of dark summits
+along a far horizon. A mockingbird was singing from out the boscage of
+the laurel near at hand, and the night wind was astir. And suddenly the
+two gold-washers in the depths of the grotto became conscious that they
+were not alone.
+
+There, sitting like stone figures one on each side of the narrow portal,
+were the two cheera-taghe of the town, silent, motionless, watching with
+eyes how long alert, listening with ears how discerningly attentive, it
+is impossible to divine.
+
+The gold-washers sprang to their feet, each instinctively grasping for
+his weapon, but alack, neither was armed! The pan had come to seem the
+most potent of accoutrements, with which, in good sooth, one might take
+the world by storm, and the rifle and knife were forgotten, in their
+absorption. Doubtless the Cherokees interpreted aright the gesture, so
+significant, so obvious to their methods of life. Both the cheera-taghe
+were armed with pistol as well as tomahawk and scalping-knife.
+
+Perhaps because of this they felt secure, at leisure, acquiescently
+allowing the event to develop as it needs must,--or perhaps realizing
+the significance of the discovery to the young strangers, their
+palpitant eagerness to gauge its result, their dread of reprisal, of
+forced renunciation of their booty, the Indians permitted themselves a
+relish of the torture of an enemy on a more aesthetic scheme than their
+wont.
+
+The two cheera-taghe, the shadow of their feather-crested heads in the
+moonlight on the sand of the grotto almost as distinct as the reality,
+spoke suddenly to each other, and the discomfited gold-seekers, who had
+learned to comprehend to a certain extent the language, perceived with
+dismay the sarcasm that lengthened their suspense. For it was thus that
+the rulers among the Cherokees rebuked their own young people, not
+upbraiding them with their misdeeds, but with gentle satire
+complimenting them for that in which they had notably failed.
+
+"A reward for hospitality we find in these young men," said one, whose
+voice was hoarse and croaking and guttural and who was called Kanoona
+(the Bull-frog).
+
+"Strangers to us, yet they requite us, for we treated them as our own,"
+said Oo-koo-koo.
+
+"They treat us as _their own!_" the croaking, satiric, half-smothered
+laughter of this response intimated an aside. Then Kanoona in full voice
+went on, "Open and frank as the day, they keep no secrets from us!"
+
+"They are honest! They rob us not of the yellow stone which the Carolina
+people think so precious!" rejoined Oo-koo-koo, while O'Kimmon and
+L'Epine looked from one to the other as the cheera-taghe sustained this
+fugue of satiric accusation.
+
+"Not they," croaked the responsive voice, "for behold, we have long time
+fed and lodged them and given them of our best. We have believed them
+and trusted them. We have befriended them and loved them."
+
+"And they have befriended and loved us!" said Oo-koo-koo.
+
+Then silence. The river sang, but only a murmurous rune; the mute
+moonlight lay still on the mountains; the wind had sunk, and the
+motionless leaves glistened as the dew fell; a nighthawk swept past the
+portal of the grotto with the noiseless wing of its kind.
+
+"Had they desired to explore our land they would have asked our
+consent," the croaking voice of Kanoona resumed the antiphonal reproach.
+"They would not have brought upon us the hordes of British colonists,
+who would fain drive us from our habitations for their greed of the
+yellow stone."
+
+"Oh, no! never would they make so base a recompense!--to bring upon us
+the destruction of our men and women and children, the wresting from us
+of our land, the casting of us forth from our homes,--because the poor,
+unsuspecting Indians gave them food and shelter and a haven of rest
+while waiting for the pettiaugres that are coming up from New Orleans."
+
+"_The pettiaugres from New Orleans_!" Kanoona repeated with a burst of
+raucous laughter. "Hala! Hala!"
+
+But Oo-koo-koo preserved his gravity. "They would not lie! Surely the
+white men would not lie!"
+
+Then turning to O'Kimmon he asked point-blank, "Chee-a-koh-ga?" (Do you
+lie?)
+
+The direct address was a relief to O'Kimmon. He had often wondered to
+see the young braves reduced almost to tears by this seemingly gentle
+discipline; he felt its poignancy when the keen blade of satire was
+turned against himself.
+
+"I did lie!" he admitted, as unreservedly as it he were at confession.
+"But Oo-koo-koo, we will pay for what we've got. This is all of ut! An'
+faix, yez have thrated us well,--an' begorra, we would have axed yer
+consint, if we had dramed we could have got ut!" he concluded
+ingenuously.
+
+The two Indians gazed at him with a surprise so evident that a chill ran
+through his every nerve.
+
+"We will never reveal the secret,--the place of the gold," declared
+L'Epine. Then perceiving in his turn something uncomprehended in their
+expression he reinforced his promise with argument. "We will want to
+come back--alone--to get more of it--all for ourselves. We will not be
+willing to share our discovery with others."
+
+The cheera-taghe still silently gazed at the two young men; then turned
+toward each other with that patent astonishment yet on their faces. At
+last they burst forth into sarcastic laughter.
+
+L'Epine and O'Kimmon, albeit half bewildered, exchanged appalled
+glances. There was no need of speech. Each understood at last.
+
+Return! There was no chance of departure. They were to pay the penalty
+of the dangerous knowledge they had acquired. Already some vague report,
+some suspicion of the hidden gold of the locality had been bruited
+abroad,--thus the Indians must reason,--or these white men would not
+have come so far to seek it. Should they be permitted to depart, their
+sudden wealth would proclaim its source, even though as they had
+promised they should keep silence.
+
+This was equally true should they eventually escape. Therefore--hideous
+realization!--the actual possession by the Indians of their own country
+depended upon the keeping of the secret inviolate. Dead men tell no
+tales!
+
+O'Kimmon, with a swelling heart, bethought himself of his status as a
+British subject and the possible vengeance of the province. It would
+come, if at all, too late. For the Cherokees believed the two to be
+without the pale of the English protection. One had repudiated the
+government, declaring himself an Irishman, a nationality then unknown to
+the Cherokees. The other was French,--no reprisal for his sake was
+possible to a tribe under British allegiance. Death it must
+be!--doubtless with all the pomp and circumstance of the torture, for
+from the standpoint of the Indians they had requited hospitality with
+robbery. Death was inevitable,--unless they could now escape. Had they
+but one weapon between them they might yet make good their flight.
+
+An Irishman rarely stops to count the odds. With the thought O'Kimmon,
+heavy, muscular, yet alert, threw himself upon Oo-koo-koo, and in an
+instant he had almost wrenched the knife from the Indian's belt.
+
+The other Cherokee cried warningly, "_Akee-rooka! Akee-rooka_!" (I will
+shoot!) Then drew his pistol and fired.
+
+The next moment, perhaps for many moments thereafter, none of them knew
+very definitely what had happened. There was a cloud of dust, a terrific
+detonation, a sudden absolute darkness, as in some revulsion of nature,
+a stifling sensation. They were penned within the grotto by a great
+fragment of the beetling cliff. Doubtless it had been previously
+fractured by the action of continuous freezes, and the concussion of the
+pistol shot in the restricted space of the cave below had brought it
+down.
+
+The days went on. The men were missed after a time, but a considerable
+interval had elapsed. The two strangers had of late kept themselves much
+apart, owing to their absorption and their covert methods of seeking for
+gold. It was an ill-ordered, roaming, sylvan life they led at best. The
+cheera-taghe, although "beloved men" and priests of their strange and
+savage religion, were but wild Indians, and their temporary absence
+created no surprise. In fact, until sought with anxiety when the drought
+had become excessive and threatened the later crops, and the services of
+the cheera-taghe were necessary to invoke and with wild barbaric
+ceremonials bring down the lightning and thunder to clear the atmosphere
+and the rain to refresh the soil, it was not ascertained that the
+prophets had definitely disappeared.
+
+Then it was that excitement supervened, search, anxiety, grief, fear.
+There began to be vague rumors of untoward sounds, remembered rather
+than noticed at the time. Faint explosions had been heard in the night
+as if under the ground, and again in broad daylight as if in the air.
+None could imagine that the doomed men had sought to attract the
+attention of the town by firing off their pistols, thus utilizing their
+scanty ammunition. The strain grew intense; superstitious fancies
+supplemented the real mystery; the place was finally abandoned, and thus
+Nilaque Great became a "waste town."
+
+It was ten years, perhaps, after this blight had fallen upon it, that
+one day as the pack-train came down the valley of the Little Tennessee,
+on its autumnal return trip to Charlestown, the snow began to sift down.
+An unseasonable storm it was, for the winter had hardly set in. A north
+wind sprang up; the snow was soon heavily driving; within an hour the
+woods, still in the red leafage of autumn, were covered with snow and
+encased in ice. Only by a strenuous effort would the train be able to
+pass the old "waste town" before the early dusk,--a mile or two at most;
+but it was hoped that this might suffice to keep the ghosts out of the
+bounds of visibility. The roaring bacchanalian glees with which the
+pack-men set the melancholy sheeted woods aquiver might well send the
+ghosts out of earshot, presuming them endowed with volition.
+
+Suddenly Cuddy Barnett discovered that one of the pack-horses of his own
+especial charge was missing,--a good bay with a load of fine dressed
+deerskins to take to Charlestown, then the great mart of all this far
+region. A recollection of a sharp curve in the trading-path, running
+dangerously near a bluff bank, came abruptly into his mind. Drifts had
+lodged in its jagged crevices, and it might well have chanced that here
+the animal had lost his footing and slipped out of the steadily trotting
+file along the river bank unnoticed in the blinding snow.
+
+This theory seemed eminently plausible to his comrades, but when they
+learned that he was of the opinion that the disaster had happened at the
+old "waste town," as he had there first missed the animal in the file,
+not one would go back with him to search the locality,--not for the
+horse, not for the peltry, not even to avert the displeasure of their
+employer in Charlestown. Barnett besought their aid for a time, urging
+the project of rescue as they all sat around the roaring camp-fire under
+the sheltering branches of a cluster of fir trees that, acting as
+wind-break, served to fend off in some degree the fury of the storm. The
+ruddy flare illumined far shadowy aisles of the snowy wilderness, all
+agloom with the early dusk. Despite the falling flakes, they could still
+see the picketed pack-horses, now freed from their burdens, huddling
+together and holding down their heads to the icy blast as they munched
+their forage. The supper of the young pack-men was broiling on the
+coals; their faces were florid with the keen wind, their coonskin caps
+all crested with snow; and the fringes of their buckskin raiment had
+tinkling pendants of icicles; but although they had found good cheer in
+a chortling jug, uncorked as the first preliminary of encamping, they
+had not yet imbibed sufficient fictitious courage to set at naught their
+fears of the old "waste town."
+
+Barnett at last acquiesced in the relinquishment of his desire of
+rescue. Some losses must needs occur in a great trade, and considering
+the stress of the weather, the long distances traversed, the dangers of
+the lonely wildernesses in the territory of savages, the incident would
+doubtless be leniently overlooked. And then he bethought himself of the
+horse,--a good horse, stout, swift, kindly disposed; a hard fate the
+animal had encountered,--abandoned here to starve in these bleak winter
+woods. Perhaps he might be lying there at the foot of the cliffs with a
+broken leg, suffering the immeasurable agonies of a dumb beast, for the
+lack of a merciful pistol-ball to put him at peace. Barnett could not
+resist the mute appeal of his fancy.
+
+Presently he was trudging alone along the icy path. The flare of the red
+fire grew dim behind him; the last flicker faded. The woods were all
+unillumined, ghastly white, with a hovering gray shadow. The song of the
+bivouac fainted in the distance and failed; the echo grew doubtful and
+dull; and now in absolute silence that somehow set his nerves aquiver he
+was coming in with the dreary dusk and the driving snow to the old
+"waste town," Nilaque Great.
+
+More silent even than the wilderness it seemed with the muffling drifts
+heavy on the roofs, blocking the dark open doors of the tenantless
+dwellings, lying in fluffy masses on the boughs of the trees that had
+once made the desert spaces so pleasantly umbrageous in those sweet
+summers so long ago. The great circular council-house, shaped like a
+dome, was whitely aglimmer against the gray twilight and the wintry
+background of the woods and mountains,--only the vaguest suggestions of
+heights seen through the ceaseless whirl of the crystalline flakes. No
+wolf now, although remembering the casual glimpse he had had he was
+prepared with rifle and pistol, and held his knife in his hand; no bear;
+no sign of living creature until, as he skirted the jagged bluff of the
+river where he fancied the horse might have lost his footing, he heard a
+sudden whinny of welcome, the sound keen and eerie and intrusive in the
+strange breathless solemnity of the silent place.
+
+Gazing cautiously over the verge of the precipice, he saw the animal
+despite the gathering shadows. The horse was quite safe, having
+doubtless slipped down in the soft densities of a great drift dislodged
+from the crevice by his own weight. His pack was still on his back, now
+piled twice as high with snow. He lifted his arched neck as he sprang
+about with undiminished activity, vainly seeking to ascend the almost
+sheer precipice.
+
+Daylight, however, was essential for his rescue. The effort now on these
+icy steeps might cost either man or beast a broken limb, if no more.
+With an instinct of self-protection the animal had chosen the lee of a
+great buttress of the cliff, and could stand there safely all night
+though the temperature should fall still lower. The young pack-man
+called out a word or two of encouragement, listening fearfully as the
+sound struck back in the silence from the icy bank of the river, the
+craggy hillsides, and the resonant walls of the deserted houses in the
+old "waste town." Himself suddenly stricken to silence, he realized as
+he turned that the night had at last closed in. It lay dark and desolate
+in the limitless woods, where a vague sense of motion gave token that
+the snow was still viewlessly falling in the dense obscurities.
+
+But in the "waste town" itself a pallid visibility lingered in the open
+spaces where the trees were few, and gloomily showed the empty cabins,
+the deserted council-house, the vacant "beloved square." Somehow, turn
+as he would, this dim scene in the midst of the dense darkness of the
+stormy night was before his eyes. Again and again he plunged into the
+woods seeking to follow the well-known trail of the trading-path to the
+camp and rejoin his companions, but invariably he would emerge from the
+wilderness after a toilsome tramp, entering the old "waste town" at a
+different angle.
+
+He perceived at length that he could not keep the direction, that he was
+wandering in a circle after the manner of those lost in forests. His
+clothing, freezing upon his body, was calculated for warmer weather; the
+buckskin shirt and leggings, the garb of the frontiersmen, copied from
+the attire of the Indians, were of a thin and pliable texture, owing to
+the peculiar skill of the savages in dressing peltry. An early historian
+describes such costume in a curiously sophisticated phrase as the
+"summer visiting dress of the Indians." The southern tribes were
+intensely averse to cold, for in winter they wore furs and garments made
+of buffalo hides, the shaggy side inward; this raiment was sewed with
+the sinews of deer and a kind of wild hemp for thread, and with needles
+dexterously fashioned of fishbone.
+
+Barnett had now no thought of the ghosts of the old "waste town." His
+first care was to save his life this cruel night; without fire, without
+food, without shelter, it might be that he had indeed come to the end.
+He was induced by this reflection to climb the mound to the old
+council-house. For here the walls, plastered both within and without
+with the strong adhesive red clay of the region, admitted no wind, while
+in the cabins which had been dwellings the drifts lay deep beneath the
+rifts in the dilapidated roofs and the crevices in the wall, and the
+flying flakes sifted in as the keen gusts surged through. He had had the
+forethought to gather as he went bits of wood, now a loose clapboard or
+piece of bark from low-hanging eaves, now a fragment of half-rotten
+puncheon from a doorstep, and as he groped into the dense darkness of
+the council-house with his steel and flint he set them alight on the
+hearth in the centre of the floor.
+
+When he was once more warm and free of the fear of death, other fears
+took hold upon him. In the first glimmers of the fire he could see
+through the tall narrow doorless portal only the dark night outside and
+a flickering glimpse against its blackness of the quivering crystals of
+the snow,--these but vaguely, for the blue smoke eddying through the
+great room veiled the opposite side, there being no chimney or window,
+and he sat in the interior behind the fire.
+
+He gazed furtively over his shoulder ever and anon, as the flames flared
+up, revealing the deeply red walls of the dome-like place with here and
+there a buffalo skin suspended against them, the inside of the hide
+showing, painted in curious hieroglyphics, brilliant with color, and
+instinct with an untranslated meaning; a number of conch shells lay
+about, with jars and vases of clay, and those quaintly fashioned earthen
+drums, the heads of tightly stretched deerskin,--all paraphernalia of
+the savage worship which the cheera-taghe had conducted, now abandoned
+as bewitched.
+
+Sitting here comfortably in the place of those men of the "divine fire,"
+Cuthbert Barnett, his rifle by his side, his knife in his belt, his
+coonskin cap pushed back from his face, once more florid, warm, tingling
+from the keen wind of the day and the change to this heated air, and
+with perchance a drowsy eyelid, began to marvel anew as to the fate of
+the cheera-taghe. Hardly a drowsy eyelid, he consciously had, however,
+for he had resolved that he would not sleep. His situation here alone
+was too dangerous; he feared wolves,--the fire that would otherwise
+affright them might untended sink too low. He feared also some wandering
+Indian. Should he be discovered here by means of the unaccustomed light
+he might be wantonly murdered as he slept, or in revenge for the
+sacrilege of his intrusion among these things that the savages had
+esteemed sacred.
+
+Therefore, when he suddenly saw the cheera-taghe he saw them quite
+plainly. Tall, stately, splendidly arrayed in their barbaric garb,
+draped with their iridescent feather-wrought mantles, their heads
+dressed with white plumes, a staff of cane adorned with white feathers
+in the right hand, a green bough in the left, preceded by those
+curiously sonorous earthen drums, of which the drone blended with the
+notes of the religious song, _Yo-he-wah-yah! Yo-he-wah-yah!_ they thrice
+led the glittering procession of the "holy dance" around and around the
+"beloved square."
+
+A blank interval ensued. And then again he saw them, nearer now, more
+distinct; they were entering the temple; they were close at hand;
+triumphant of mien, assured, so full of life!--he could laugh to think
+that he had had a dream, or had heard somehow, that they were dead or
+lost or vaguely gone. For here, without seeming in the least to notice
+his presence, they kindled anew with friction of bits of poplar or white
+oak the fire for the new year, the _cheera_, the "sacred flame," to bear
+it outside to distribute it to the assembled people of Nilaque Great.
+Without was summer; the trees were full of green leaves; canoes were
+glancing along the shimmering river; the "beloved square" was crowded
+with braves,--he saw their feathered crests wave and glisten; the wind
+was blowing fresh and cool; the sun shone.
+
+And suddenly it was shining in his face, as it came up over the Great
+Smoky Mountains, sending its first long slanting wintry beams through
+the narrow portal to the hearth where he had lain asleep before the
+ashes of the once "sacred fire," covered with the fresh ashes of last
+night's vigil, for they too were dead. He staggered to his feet and went
+out into the glistening dawn of this snowy sunlit day, hardly able to
+reconcile its aspect with the summer-tide scene he had just quitted. Now
+and again he paused, half-bewildered, as if unfamiliar with the pathetic
+miseries of the old "waste town"--the scene in his mind savored far more
+of reality.
+
+The necessity of caring for the pack-horse, perhaps better than aught
+else, served to restore his faculties. He found it easy now to climb
+down the jagged face of the bluffs of the river bank, whence the snow
+had vanished, for in the changeable southern climate a sudden thaw had
+begun in the earlier hours and now the warm sun was setting all the
+trees and eaves adrip. As he stood below the cliff on the sandy slope
+whence the snow had slipped down into the river, the volume of which the
+storm of last night would much increase after the long drought of the
+summer, he carefully examined the horse to ascertain what injuries he
+might have sustained; a few abrasions on the right flank seemed to be
+all, until the animal moved, a bit stiffly with the near fore leg. This
+attracted Barnett's attention to a gash on the knee received doubtless
+when the horse first fell on the ground,--a queer gash, long, jagged,
+unaccountable, as if it had been made by a dull blade. Glancing down to
+search the gravel, the pack-man discerned, half-imbedded in the sand,
+the edge of a fragment of a knife, a scalping-knife, broken half in two;
+and there, lying not three yards away, was a handle attached to a belt
+heavily wrought with roanoke,--only a bit of the belt,--and the other
+half of the knife.
+
+The pack-man's hand trembled and his florid cheek went pale, for these
+lay just under the sharp edge of a huge fragment of rock that had
+evidently fallen from the cliff above, breaking the blade and holding
+the belt fast.
+
+How long he stood and stared he did not know. For a time he heard
+without realizing the significance of the sounds the whoops and shouts
+of his comrades, wildly racing back through the old "waste town" in
+search of him; but although in the strenuous duty of his rescue they
+would venture to pass it in broad daylight, no ardor of persuasion could
+induce them to linger there to investigate the locality of his find, or
+to aid in moving the rock and exploring the grotto that had evidently
+proved a sepulchre.
+
+On the contrary, they deemed the discovery might be resented by the
+Indians as intrusive, and, keeping the secret, they made haste to get
+out of the country with even more speed than their wont. Cuthbert
+Barnett, however, carried his information to the authorities in
+Charlestown, who, promptly acting upon it, solved the mystery of the
+fate of the cheera-taghe.
+
+Since peace with the Cherokees was becoming more and more precarious,
+some satisfaction was experienced by the Royal Governor of South
+Carolina, James Glen, at that time, in being able to urge upon the
+attention of the head-men of the tribe the fact that, although the two
+white strangers had obviously been captured in the act of robbing
+Cherokee soil of its gold, they had as evidently been unarmed, and the
+Irishman, a British subject, had been shot down by one of the
+cheera-taghe, for there was the bullet still imbedded firmly in the
+sternum of his broad chest. Thus a political crisis, which the event had
+threatened, was averted.
+
+Despite the evil chance that had befallen the gold-seekers, now widely
+bruited abroad, stealthy efforts were ever and anon made by the hardy
+frontier prospectors of those days, already busy in the richer deposits
+of the Ayrate division of the Cherokee country, to pan also the sands of
+the banks of the Tennessee; but the yield here was never again worth the
+work, and the interest in the possibility of securing "pay gravel" in
+this region died out, until the later excitements of the discovery of
+the precious metal in a neighboring locality, Coca Creek, during the
+last century.
+
+The old "waste town" long remained a ruin, and at last fell away to a
+mere memory.
+
+
+
+
+THE BEWITCHED BALL-STICKS
+
+
+At no time in the history of mankind, except during that brief
+Paradisiac courtship in the Garden of Eden, has the heart of a lover
+been altogether unvexed by the presence, or even the sheer suspicion, of
+that baleful being commonly denominated "another." Here, however, it
+would seem that the field must needs be almost as clear. The aspect of
+the world was as if yet young; the swan, long ago driven from the
+rivers, still snowily drifted down the silver Tennessee; the deer, the
+bear, the buffalo, the wolf in countless hordes roamed at will
+throughout the dense primeval wildernesses; the line of Cherokee towns
+along the banks represented almost the only human habitations for many
+hundred miles, but to Tus-ka-sah the country seemed to groan under a
+surplus of population, for there yet dwelt right merrily at Ioco Town
+the youthful Amoyah, the gayest of all gay birds, and a painful sense of
+the superfluous pressed upon the brain at the very sight of him.
+
+This trait of frivolity was to Tus-ka-sah the more revolting, since he
+himself was of a serious cast of mind and possessed of faculties, rare
+in an Indian, which are called "fine business capacity." He was esteemed
+at an English trading-house down on the Eupharsee River as the best
+"second man" in any of the towns; this phrase "second man" expressing
+the united functions of alderman, chief of police, chairman of boards of
+public improvements, and the various executive committees of
+civilization. His were municipal duties,--the apportionment of community
+labor, the supervision of the building of houses and the planting of
+crops, the distribution of public bounty, the transaction of any
+business of Ioco Town with visitors whom individual interest might bring
+thither. So well did he acquit himself when these errands involved
+questions of commercial policy that the English traders were wont to
+declare that Tus-ka-sah, the Terrapin, had "horse sense"--which
+certainly was remarkable in a terrapin!
+
+His clear-headed qualities, however, valued commercially, seemed hardly
+calculated to adorn the fireside. In sensible cumbrous silence and
+disastrous eclipse he could only contemplate with dismayed aversion the
+palpable effect of Amoyah's gay sallies of wit, his fantastic lies, his
+vainglorious boastings, and his wonderful stories, which seemed always
+to enchant his audience, the household of the damsel to whom in
+civilized parlance they were both paying their addresses. These
+audiences were usually large, and far too lenient in the estimation of
+Tus-ka-sah. First there was present, of course, Amoyah himself, seeming
+a whole flock instead of one Pigeon. Then must be counted Altsasti, who
+although a widow was very young, and as slight, as lissome, as graceful
+as the "wreath" which her name signified. She was clad now in her winter
+dress of otter skins, all deftly sewn together so that the fur might lie
+one way, the better to enable the fabric to shed the rain; the petticoat
+was longer than the summer attire of doeskin, for although the tinkle of
+the metal "bell buttons" of her many garters might be heard as she
+moved, only the anklets were visible above her richly beaded moccasins.
+She seldom moved, however; sitting beside the fire on a buffalo rug, she
+monotonously strung rainbow-hued beads for hours at a time. Her glossy,
+straight black hair was threaded with a strand of opaque white beads
+passing through the coils, dressed high, and copiously anointed with
+bear's oil, and on her forehead she wore a single pendant wrought of the
+conch-shell, ivory-white and highly polished. She maintained a busy
+silence, but the others of the group--her father, sometimes her mother
+and grandmother and the younger sisters and brothers--preserved no such
+semblance of gravity, and indulged in appreciative chuckles responsive
+to Amoyah's jests, idly watching him with twinkling eyes as long as he
+would talk.
+
+It would be difficult to say how long this might be, for there were no
+windows to the winter houses of the Cherokees; in point of architecture
+these structures resembled the great dome-shaped council-house,
+plastered within and without with red clay; the floor was some three
+feet lower than the surface of the ground outside, and the exit
+fashioned with a narrow winding passage before reaching the outlet of
+the door. The sun might rise or set; the night might come or go; no
+token how the hour waxed or waned could penetrate this seclusion. The
+replenishing of the fire on the chimneyless hearth in the centre of the
+floor afforded the only comment on the passage of time. Its glow gave to
+view the red walls; the curious designs of the painted interior of the
+buffalo hides stretched upon them, by way of decoration; the cane divans
+or couches that were contrived to run all around the circular apartment,
+and on which were spread skins of bear and panther and wolves, covering
+even the heads of the slumbering members of the household, for the
+Cherokees slept away much of the tedious winter weather.
+
+The fire would show, too, how gayly bedight and feather-crested was
+Amoyah, wearing a choice garb of furs;--often, so great was his vanity,
+his face was elaborately painted as if for some splendid festive
+occasion, a dance or the ball-play, instead of merely to impress with
+his magnificence this simple domestic circle. Tus-ka-sah dated the
+events that followed from one night when this facial decoration of his
+rival was even more fantastic than usual. Like a fish was one side of
+the young Cherokee's profile; the other in glaring daubs of white and
+black and red craftily represented the head of a woodpecker. The effect
+in front was the face of a nondescript monster, that only a gleeful
+laughing eye, and now and then a flash of narrow white teeth, identified
+as the jovial Amoyah, the Pigeon of Ioco.
+
+The snow lay on the ground without, he said as he shook a wreath of it
+from a fold of his fur and it fell hissing among the coals. The shadows
+were long, he told them, for the moon was up and the world was dimly
+white and duskily blue. The wind was abroad, and indeed they could hear
+the swirl of its invisible wings as it swooped past; the boughs of the
+trees clashed together and ice was in the Tennessee River. The winter
+had come, he declared.
+
+Not yet, Tus-ka-sah pragmatically averred. There would be fine weather
+yet.
+
+For the snowfall so early in the season was phenomenal and the red
+leaves were still clinging to the trees.
+
+Had they been together among men Amoyah would not have cared enough for
+the subject to justify contention, but in the presence of women he would
+suffer no contradiction. He must needs be paramount,--the infinitely
+admired! He shook his head.
+
+The winter had surely come, he insisted. Why, he argued, the bears
+knew,--they always knew! And already each had walked the round with his
+shadow.
+
+For in the approach of winter, in the light of the first mystic, icicled
+moon, the night when it reaches its full, a grotesque pageant is afoot
+in that remote town of the bears, immemorially fabled to be hidden in
+the dense coverts of the Great Smoky Mountains,--the procession of the
+bears, each walking with his shadow, seven times around the illuminated
+spaces of the "beloved square."
+
+The bears knew undoubtedly, the "second man," the man of facts and
+method and management, soberly admitted. But how did Amoyah know that
+already they had trodden those significant circles, each with his
+shadow? He smiled triumphant in his incontrovertible logic.
+
+And now Amoyah's face was wonderful to view, whether as a fish on one
+side or a woodpecker on the other, with that most human expression of
+surprise and indignation and aversion as distinctly limned upon it as if
+in pigments, for he loved the "second man's" facts no more than the
+"second man" loved his fancies. How did he know, forsooth? Because,
+Amoyah hardily declared, he himself had witnessed the march,--he had
+been permitted to behold that weird and grotesque progress!
+
+He took note of the blank silence that ensued upon this startling
+asseveration. Then emboldened to add circumstance to sheer statement he
+protested, "I attended the ceremony by invitation. I had a place in the
+line of march--I walked beside the Great Bear as his shadow!"
+
+For, according to tradition, each bear, burly, upright in the moonlight,
+follows the others in Indian file, but at the side of each walks his
+shadow, and that shadow is not the semblance of a bear, but of a
+Cherokee Indian!
+
+Now, as everybody has heard, the bears were once a band of Cherokee
+Indians, but wearying of the rigors and artificialities of tribal
+civilization they took to the woods, became bears, and have since dwelt
+in seclusion.
+
+The thoughts, however, persistently reach out for the significance of
+the fact that in the tradition of this immemorial progress each creature
+is accompanied by the shadow, not of the thing that he is, but of the
+higher entity that he was designed to be.
+
+Whether this inference is merely the mechanical deduction of a lesson,
+or a subtlety of moralizing, with a definite intention, on the part of
+the Cherokees, always past-masters in the intricacies of symbolism, it
+is difficult to determine, but the bears are certainly not alone in this
+illustration of retrogression, and memory may furnish many an image of a
+lost ideal to haunt the paths of beings of a higher plane.
+
+The picture was before the eyes of all the fireside group,--the looming
+domes of the Great Smoky Mountains, where the clouds, white and opaline,
+hung in the intervals beneath the ultimate heights; the silences of the
+night were felt in the dense dark lonely forest that encompassed the
+open spaces of that mysterious city, with the conical thatched roofs of
+its winter houses and the sandy stretch of the "beloved square; "--and
+there was the line of bears, clumsy, heavy-footed, lumbering, ungainly,
+and beside each the feather-crested similitude of what he had been,
+alert, powerful, gifted with human ingenuity, the craft of weapons,
+mental endowment, and an immortal soul,--so they went in the wintry
+moonlight!
+
+There was naught in this detail of the annual procession of the bears,
+always taking place before the period of their hibernation, that
+surprised or angered Tus-ka-sah; but that they should break from their
+ancient law, their established habit of exclusiveness, single out Amoyah
+(of all the people in the world), summon him to attend their tribal
+celebration, and participate in their parade, as the shadow of Eeon-a,
+the Great Bear,--this passed the bounds of the possibilities. This
+fantasy had not the shreds of verisimilitude!
+
+Yet even while he argued within himself Tus-ka-sah noted the old
+warrior's gaze fix spellbound upon Amoyah, the hands of Altsasti
+petrify, the bead in one, the motionless thread in the other. The eyes
+of the more remote of the group, who were seated on rugs around the
+fire, glistened wide and startled, in the shadow, as Amoyah proceeded to
+relate how it had chanced.
+
+A frosty morning he said it was, and he was out in the mountain
+a-hunting. He repeated the song which he had been singing, and the wind
+as it swirled about the house must have caught his voice and carried it
+far. It was a song chronicling the deeds of the Great Bear, and had a
+meaningless refrain, "_Eeon-a, Ha-hoo-jah! Eeon-a, Ha-hoo-jah!"_ But
+when he reached the advent upon the scene of the secondary hero, the
+Great Bear himself, very polite, speaking excellent Cherokee ("since we
+are alone," he said), very recognizant of the merits of Amoyah,--the
+fame of which indeed was represented to have resounded through the
+remotest seclusions of the ursine realm,--fiction though it all
+obviously was, the man of facts could no longer endure this
+magnification of his rival.
+
+"The great Eeon-a said all that to you?" he sneered. "The fire-water at
+the trading-house makes your heart very strong and your tongue crooked.
+This sounds to me like the language of a simple seequa, not the Great
+Bear--a mere bit of an opossum!"
+
+Amoyah paused with a sudden gasp. He was not without an aggressive
+temper, albeit, persuaded of his own perfection, he feared no rival, and
+least of all Tus-ka-sah.
+
+"You, Tus-ka-sah," he retorted angrily, "have evidently strongly shaken
+hands with the discourse of the opossum, speaking its language like the
+animal itself, and also the wolfish English. You have too many tongues,
+and, more than all, the deceitful, forked tongue of the snake, which is
+not agreeable to the old beloved speech. For myself, the Great Bear made
+me welcome in the only language that does not make my heart weigh
+heavy,--the elegant Cherokee language."
+
+The spellbound listeners had broken out with irritated protests against
+the interruption, and Tus-ka-sah said no more.
+
+As the blasts went sonorously over the house and the flames swirled anew
+into the murky atmosphere of the interior, a weird, half-smothered voice
+suddenly invaded the restored quiet of the hearthstone: "_Eeon-a,
+Ha-hoo-jah! Eeon-a, Ha-hoo-jah!_"
+
+Like an echo the barbaric chant vibrated through the room. One of the
+sleepers, a half-grown youth, had semi-consciously caught the familiar
+refrain and sang it in that strange uncanny voice of slumber. The tones
+gave fitting effect to the grotesque details of the supernatural
+adventure, and as Tus-ka-sah rose and surlily took his way toward the
+door his departure did not attract even casual notice from the
+listeners, hanging enthralled upon the words of the Great Eeon-a, so
+veraciously repeated for their behoof. Their eyes showed intent even in
+the murky gloom and glistened lustrous in the alternate fitful flare;
+the red walls seemed to recede and advance as the flames rose and fell;
+the sleeping boy on the broad bed-place stirred uneasily, flinging now
+and again a restless arm from out the panther skins in which he was
+enveloped, and ever and anon his cry, "_Eeon-a, Ha-hoo-jah! Eeon-a,
+Ha-hoo-jah!"_ punctuated the impressive dramatic tones of the raconteur.
+
+The next instant Tus-ka-sah was in the utter darkness of the narrow
+tortuous little passage, but after threading this he came out of the
+doorway into the keen chill air of a snowy world, the scintillations of
+frosty stars, the languid, glamourous radiance of the yellow moon, low
+in the sky, and his accustomed mental atmosphere of the plainest of
+plain prose. His thoughts were with the group he had just left, and he
+marveled if no influence could be brought to reduce the prestige with
+which the immaterial chief of the bears, the fabled Eeon-a, had
+contrived to invest the illusory Amoyah.
+
+Tus-ka-sah's expectations concerning the weather were promptly
+justified. A continual dripping from the roofs and trees pervaded the
+early hours of the morning, and soon the snow was all gone here in the
+valley; even the domes of the mountains so early whitened with drifts
+showed now a bare, dark, sketch-like outline against the horizon and
+above the garnet tint of the massed sere boughs of the forests of the
+slopes. A warm sun shone. Not a summer bird was yet lingering, but here
+and there a crisp red leaf winged the blue sky as gallantly as any
+crested cardinal of them all. The town of Ioco was now astir, and
+Tus-ka-sah noted how the softening of the air had brought out the
+inhabitants from their winter houses. Children played about the
+doorways; boys in canoes shot down the shimmering reaches of the river;
+warriors congregated in the council-house and the half-open buildings
+surrounding the "beloved square," and in its sunny sandy spaces sundry
+old men were placidly engaged in the game of "roll the bullet."
+
+It was at this group that Tus-ka-sah looked with an intent gaze and a
+sort of indignant question in his manner, and presently an elderly
+Cherokee, one of the cheera-taghe of the town, detached himself from it
+and came toward him. Despite this show of alacrity Cheesto distinctly
+winced as he contemplated the sullen and averse mien of his client or
+parishioner, for the relation in which Tus-ka-sah stood toward him
+partook of the characteristics of both. The professional wiseacre,
+however, made shift to recover himself.
+
+"I will tell you what you have come to tell me," the prophet said
+quickly. "The spell on Amoyah does not work."
+
+Tus-ka-sah assented surlily, gazing meanwhile at the face of the
+conjurer. It was a face in which the eyes were set so close together as
+to suggest a squint, although they were not crossed. He had an uncertain
+and dilatory tread, the trait of one who hesitates, and decides in
+doubt, and forthwith repents; being in his prophetic character an
+appraiser of the probable, and the sport of the possible. He wore many
+beads in strings around his neck, and big earrings of silver, heavy and
+costly. His fur garments reached long and robe-like almost to his feet,
+the shaggy side of the pelt outward, the weather being damp, for when it
+was dry and cold it was customary to wear the fur turned inward.
+
+The wise man had been recently unfortunate in his sorcery. The corn crop
+had been cut short by reason of a lack of rain which he had promised
+should fall in June. He had justified the drought, in the opinion of
+most of the Indians, by feigning illness and taking to his bed; for by
+these it was believed that if he had been able to be up and about his
+ordinary vocations the preposterous conduct of the weather must needs
+have been restrained. The fields about Ioco had suffered especially, and
+Tus-ka-sah, as the chief business man of that town, had manifested half
+veiled suspicions that the art of the conjurer was incompetent; this
+rendered Cheesto particularly solicitous to succeed when his magic had
+been invoked to reduce the attractions of Amoyah in the eyes of Altsasti
+and turn her heart toward Tus-ka-sah. For among the Indians the lives of
+the weather-prophets were not safe from the aggrieved agriculturists,
+and there are authentic cases in which the cheera-taghe suffered death
+by tribal law as false conjurers. Cheesto fixed an anxious gaze upon his
+interlocutor as Tus-ka-sah rehearsed, by way of illustrating how
+worthless were the charms wrought, the unsubstantial fiction that had so
+beguiled the fancy of Altsasti, and posed Amoyah in the splendid guise
+of the representative of the great Eeon-a in the shadow-march of the
+bears.
+
+The fate of the over-wise is ever the sorrowful dispensation. The fool
+may be merry and irresponsible. Cheesto was at his wit's end. With that
+unlucky drought in June to confront him, and dealing with the sharp
+business man of Ioco, who exacted his due in the exchange of the Fates
+as rigorously as if in a merely mundane market, the jeopardy of the
+magician was great and his discredit almost assured.
+
+Old Cheesto set his jaw firmly. Somehow, somewhere, something must be
+wrought that would place Amoyah at a disadvantage and bring ridicule
+upon him. No great matter, it might be said, to compass the change of a
+fickle woman's mind, to disconcert a giddy young man. But how? Cheesto
+was aweary of his own incantations and his ineffectual spells. He would
+fain lend Fate a muscular hand.
+
+This thought was uppermost in his mind for several days, even when he
+went with the other cheera-taghe of Ioco to share in the conjurations
+and incantations of the preliminary ceremonials of the Ball-Play,
+without which success would never be anticipated, for a great match
+between the towns of Ioco and Niowee was impending.
+
+This game was usually played in the mid-summer or fall, but it would
+seem that the unseasonable cold weather was well suited for such violent
+exercise and the severe physical training which preceded it, and
+although Amoyah noticed ice in the river as he dashed in for the
+ceremonial plunge which accompanies the incantations, he remembered the
+fact for a different reason than discomfort.
+
+The eighty ball-players of Ioco stood in a row near the bank, submerged
+to the knees. They had gone in with a tumultuous rush, and with their
+faces painted, their heads crested with feathers, clad fantastically and
+gorgeously but scantily, they were holding their ball-sticks high in the
+air with an eager grasp,--all except Amoyah. Although still in his place
+in the line, he was looking over his shoulder with an amazed and
+startled gaze.
+
+For there upon the bank, as if struck from his hand in the confusion and
+turmoil of first entering the water, lay his ball-sticks. He seemed
+about to return for them, as the implement of the game must be dipped
+also in the water at the appropriate moment of the incantation. But old
+Cheesto, the Rabbit, motioned him to forbear lest by this unprecedented
+quitting of the line during the ceremonial the efficacy of the spell be
+annulled; he himself stooped down and picked up the ball-sticks. Then,
+notwithstanding his age and his fierce rheumatism, notwithstanding his
+long and cumbrous robe of buffalo skin, the skirt of which he seemed to
+clutch with difficulty, he plunged into the icy water, waded out to the
+young man, handed him the ball-sticks, and regained the bank just as the
+other cheera-taghe standing at the margin of the river began the
+incantations supposed to influence the success of the competition.
+
+This Indian game, which has left its name on one of the watercourses of
+Tennessee, Ball-Play Creek, required a level space of some five or six
+hundred yards in length but no other preparation of the ground. At one
+end, in the direction of Niowee, two tall poles were fixed firmly in the
+earth about three yards apart, and slanting outward. At the end toward
+Ioco a similar goal was prepared. Every time the ball should be thrown
+over either goal the play would count one for the proximate town, and
+the game was of twelve or twenty points according to compact, the
+catcher of the twentieth ball being entitled to especial honor. It was
+of course the object of each side to throw the ball over the goal toward
+their own town, and to prevent it from going in the direction of the
+town of the opposing faction.
+
+All the morning crowds of Cherokees of all ages and both sexes had been
+gathering from the neighboring towns, and were congregated in the wide
+spaces about the course at Ioco. These fields had earlier been planted
+in corn, but the harvest had stripped the plain, and now the trampling
+of hundreds of feet erased all vestiges of the growth except for the
+yellow-gray tint of the stubble, spreading out on every side to the
+brown of the dense fallen leaves on the slopes where the forests began
+to climb the mountain sides. Here and there fires were kindled where
+some spectator felt the keen chill of the approaching winter, and more
+than one meal was in progress,--perhaps such groups had come from far.
+Pack-horses were in evidence laden with rich garments of fur, various
+peltry, blankets, valuable gear of every sort to be staked on the result
+of the game, and soon the men were betting heavily. All the various
+tones of the gamut were on the air,--the deep bass guttural laugh of the
+braves; the shrill callow yelping of boys; the absent-minded bawl of
+spoiled pappooses interested in the stir, but with an ever-recurrent
+recollection of the business of vocally disciplining their patient
+mothers; the keen treble chatter of women,--all were suddenly resolved
+into a strong dominant chord of sound as a tremendous shout arose upon
+the appearance of the ball-players of Ioco. Fresh from the river, they
+made a glittering show with the tossing feathers of their crested heads,
+their faces painted curiously and fantastically in white, the bright
+tints of their gaudy though scanty raiment, their bare arms and legs
+suppled with unguents and shining in the sun. This note of welcome had
+hardly died away and the echo of the encompassing mountains grown
+silent, when an agitated murmur of excitement went sibilantly through
+the throng.
+
+A cloud of dust was approaching in the distance, heralding a band of
+men. A new sound invoked the echoes. The breath was held to hear it. The
+throb of a drum--faint--far. And here thunderously beating, hard at
+hand, overpowering all lesser sounds, the drums of loco responded. To
+the vibrations of these sonorous earthen cylinders, the sticks plied
+with a will on the heads of wet deerskins tightly stretched, the
+ball-players of Niowee advanced. In a diagonal direction and at a sturdy
+trot they came for a space,--a sudden halt ensued, and eighty pairs of
+muscular feet smote tumultuously on the ground. Then once more forward
+diagonally, at that swinging jaunty pace, and the stamping pause as
+before. The sound seemed to shake the ground, the impact of the feet
+with the earth was heard despite the turmoil of the drums; the stamping
+vibrations were felt in the midst of the stir of the crowds, and now in
+the nearer approach the individual faces could be distinguished, wildly
+painted; the athletic figures, gaudily clad and barbarically decorated;
+the ball-sticks, held aloft in a sort of rhythmic vibration as if
+quivering for a chance at the ball; and fourscore wild young voices
+howled defiance at loco Town, whose youth in return howled its municipal
+pride, failing only with failing breath.
+
+They were all in the course at last. The judges, elderly warriors and
+absolutely impartial, chosen from towns which had no interest at stake
+in the match, were seated on a little knoll, commanding a view of the
+ground, but at a sufficient distance to be in no danger from a maladroit
+handling of the ball. This was made of deerskin, stuffed hard with hair,
+and sewn up with deer sinews. The ball-sticks, of which each player
+owned his pair, were also partly made of deerskin, the two scoops or
+ladles being fashioned of a network of thongs on a wooden hoop, each
+furnished with a handle of hickory three feet long, worked together with
+a thong of deerskin to catch the ball between the rackets,--it being of
+course prohibited to catch the ball in the hand.
+
+The drums beat furiously; the word was given; the ball was flung high in
+the air in the middle of the course, and the next instant one hundred
+and sixty young athletes rushed together with a mighty shock the force
+of which seemed to shake the ground. Some fell and were trampled in the
+crush; others madly clutched one another, friend or foe, with the
+ill-aimed ball-sticks, inflicting a snapping hurt like a bite,--a wound
+by no means to be despised. One, an expert, sent the ball with an artful
+twirl through the air toward the Ioco goal, and in the midst of a shout
+that rent the sky the whole rout of players went frantically flying
+after it, whirling with an incredible swiftness and agility when it was
+caught midway, and hurled back toward Niowee with a force as if it had
+been flung from a catapult. Here and there individual players in the
+frenzied chase made wonderful records of leaps in their efforts to catch
+the ball, springing into the air with a surprising strength and
+elasticity, and a lightness as of creatures absolutely without weight.
+
+A good match they were playing; for more than half an hour neither side
+was permitted by the other to score a single point. The ball seemed for
+a time as if it were awing forever, and would fall to the ground no
+more. The casualties were many; almost always after one of those sudden
+rushes together of both factions that had a tremendous momentum as of
+galloping squadrons, the ground would show as the moving masses receded
+half a dozen figures prone upon the course; one with a broken arm
+perhaps; another badly snapped by the inartistically plied ball-sticks
+of friend or foe and crawling off with a bloody pate; sometimes another
+lying quite still, evidently stunned and to be hastily dragged off the
+course by spectators, before another stampede of the ball-players crush
+the life out of the unconscious and prostrate wight. Nevertheless only
+the normal interest, which however was very great, appertained to the
+match until at a crisis a strange thing happened, inexplicable then, and
+perhaps never fully understood.
+
+The ball was flying toward the Niowee goal and the whole field was in
+full run after it. The blow that had impelled it had been something
+tremendous. A shout of triumph was already welling up from the throat of
+all Niowee, for to prevent the scoring of a point in its favor it would
+seem that there must be a thing afoot whose fleetness could exceed the
+speed of a thing awing.
+
+Amoyah, the deftest runner of all the Tennessee River country, was
+foremost in the crown of swift athletes; presently he was detached by
+degrees from it; now he was definitely in advance; and soon, spurting
+tremendously, he had so neared the Niowee goal that the ball just above
+must needs pass over it if a spring might not enable him to capture it
+at the last moment. As agile as a deer, and as light as a bird, he
+leaped into the air, both arms upstretched, holding the rackets aloft
+and ready. He was a far-famed player, and even now the Ioco spectators
+were shouting, Amoyah needs must win!
+
+A mysterious silence fell suddenly. They all saw what had happened.
+There could be no mistake. The rackets parted at the propitious moment
+to receive the ball. The netting closed about it. And then, as if it had
+met with no impediment whatever, the ball passed through the stanch web
+of thongs and over the poles, and falling to the ground counted one for
+Niowee.
+
+The spectators from that town in their astonishment forgot to shout. The
+onrushing crowd of players, bearing down upon Amoyah, having intended to
+force him to drop the ball, which he had seemed predestined to catch, or
+to throw it so ill as to deliver it into the power of Niowee still to
+secure the point, could not arrest their own momentum, and went over the
+startled and dumfounded player in a swift dash, leaving him prone upon
+the ground. He was on his feet in an instant, his physical faculties
+rallying promptly, but so bewildered and doubtful that he had but one
+definite mental process, the resolve to regain for Ioco the point he had
+so mysteriously lost. Twice afterward his fine playing focused the
+attention of the crowd. Twice their plaudits of his skill rang through
+the vibrating air. Then the ball, hardly checked by the web of his
+racket, passed through the ball-sticks, and all realized their
+bewitchment.
+
+Amoyah heard the gossip afloat concerning the matter before he had well
+quitted the course. The Great Bear had torn the net of the ball-sticks
+with his claw, one brave was telling another as he passed, because
+Amoyah had unveraciously boasted that he had walked by invitation in the
+procession of the bears during their annual march with their shadows at
+their hidden mysterious town in the Great Smoky Mountains.
+
+Amoyah paused, tired, excited, panting, and critically examined the web.
+Surely enough the interlacing thongs had parted in twain in two straight
+lines, invisible save on close inspection, as deftly and as evenly
+severed as if cut with a keen knife.
+
+It was late in the day. The sun was now on a westering slant. The
+parties of spectators were breaking up, some to journey homeward, others
+going into the town with friends. The place that the crowd had occupied
+had that peculiarly dreary aspect characteristic of a deserted pleasure
+ground. Trampled heavily it was, and the charred remnant of a fire
+showed black here and there; broken bits of food were scattered in
+places where feasting had been; a great gourd that had held some gallons
+of water lay shattered on the ground at his feet; a group at a distance
+were doubtfully retracing their steps, searching for something they had
+lost; at the farthest limits a wolf like a dog, or a dog like a wolf,
+was gnawing at a bone, and snarling as he gnawed. It was all frowzy,
+jaded, forlorn.
+
+Somehow suddenly he had a sense of freshness, an illumination, as it
+were a vision, of the early morning light striking through a network of
+bare trees upon the shimmering reaches of a river. And there on the bank
+lay his ball-sticks,--quite good and sound then, he would have staked
+his life. And now a picture was before him,--being a man of fancy, he
+thought in pictures,--a picture of old Cheesto the Rabbit holding the
+ball-sticks half hidden in the folds of his great fur robe and wading
+out into the ice-cold water to restore them. And old Cheesto, he
+reflected, was one of the cheera-taghe of Ioco, and could work a spell
+quite as well as the Great Bear, who had gone to bed for the winter two
+weeks ago, and had not heard of ball-sticks within the memory of
+man,--perhaps not since he was a Cherokee himself, and playing with the
+rest on the course at Tennessee Town.
+
+In fact, old Cheesto, in common with many men not Cherokees, cared
+little for the public weal when it interfered with private interest. But
+he had not realized how much he had jeopardized the success of Ioco Town
+in cutting the netting of the ball-sticks. He had imagined the
+incompleteness of the racket would merely show Amoyah as incompetent,
+render his play futile and ineffective, and discredit him with both
+friend and foe. Never, however, had the play of any one man been so
+important and conspicuous as his to-day when the bewitched ball-sticks
+became the salient feature and the living tradition of the match between
+Ioco and Niowee. For despite these points, thus lost by supernatural
+agency to Niowee, the bewitchment of the ball-sticks only served to
+illustrate the superior skill of the Ioco team, and to embellish their
+victory.
+
+Amoyah had nothing but his imagination to support his theory, but it
+seemed singularly credible to Altsasti, to whom he rehearsed it, finding
+her seated on the ground before the door of her winter house in great
+dreariness of spirit, that he should in playing so well have won nothing
+and merely jeopardized the game.
+
+"I am afraid of that Great Bear," she declared, eying the ball-sticks
+askance as he came up.
+
+Then revealing his theory of the spell that old Cheesto had wrought upon
+him in Tus-ka-sah's interest, Amoyah proposed a counter-spell which
+would defeat Tus-ka-sah.
+
+"But Cheesto can still send you trouble if you have a wife," she argued.
+
+"Ah, no," the specious Amoyah replied. "Everybody knows that a man's
+wife makes him all the trouble that he needs."
+
+To save him from these woes devised by others Altsasti undertook to give
+him all the trouble he needed. But he seemed quite cheerful in the
+prospect, and as she cooked the supper within doors he sat at the
+entrance, much at home, singing, "_Eeon-a, Ha-hoo-jah! Eeon-a,
+Ha-hoo-jah!_"
+
+Tus-ka-sah upbraided the magician with the result of this victory, by
+which he was defeated. And the wise man threw up eyes and hands at his
+ingratitude.
+
+"I set the Great Bear after Amoyah for you! I made the Eeon-a acquainted
+with his boastful lies, and he bewitched Amoyah's ball-sticks that his
+fine play might come to nothing."
+
+Very little to the purpose, the disaffected man of facts reflected,
+remembering the impression produced by his rival's display of skill.
+Somehow Amoyah seemed beyond the reach of logic. "Why did you not
+instead bewitch the woman?" Tus-ka-sah asked.
+
+But this wiliest of the cheera-taghe shook his head.
+
+"If she had been a _mere_ woman," he said. "But a widow is a witch
+herself."
+
+"_Eeon-a, Ha-hoo-jah! Eeon-a, Ha-hoo-jah!"_ sang Amoyah at the door of
+the winter house.
+
+Eeon-a, the Great Bear, made no sign and slept in peace at his town
+house in the mountains.
+
+And since then, as always before, under the first icy moon of the winter
+the company of bears with their feather-crested shadows take up their
+mysterious march seven times around the "beloved square" of their
+ancient secluded town in the Great Smoky Mountains, which it is said may
+be seen to this day--by all who can find it!
+
+
+
+
+THE VISIT OF THE TURBULENT GRANDFATHER
+
+
+It was long remembered in the Cherokee nation. Their grandfather came to
+the Overhill towns on the banks of the Tennessee River in a most
+imperious frame of mind.
+
+"Give me a belt!" he cried in irrelevant response to every gracious
+overture of hospitality. For although presents were heaped upon him, the
+official belt of the Cherokee nation was not among them, and he cast
+them all aside as mere baubles.
+
+Even the clever subterfuges of that master of statecraft, the half-king,
+Atta-Kulla-Kulla, might not avail. "_N'tschutti!_" (Dear friend) he said
+once in eager propitiation; "_Gooch ili lehelecheu_?" (Does your father
+yet live?) He spoke in a gentle voice and slowly, the Delaware language
+being unaccustomed to his lips. "Tell the great sakimau I well remember
+him!" And he laid a string of beads on the arm of the quivering Lenape,
+for their grandfather was of that nationality.
+
+But what flout of Fate was this? Not the coveted string of wampum, the
+official token, its significance not to be argued away, or overlooked,
+or mistaken--but instead a necklace of pearls, the fine freshwater gems
+of the region, so often mentioned by the elder writers and since held to
+be mythical or exaggeration of the polish of mere shell beads till the
+recent discoveries have placed once more the yield of the _Unio
+margaritiferus_ of the rivers of Tennessee on metropolitan markets.
+
+A personal gift--of the rarest, it is true--but a mere trifle in the
+estimation of Tscholens, in comparison with that national recognition
+which he craved and which a tribe of warriors awaited.
+
+The irate grandfather flung the glossy trinket from him down among the
+ashes of the fire, which glowed in the centre of the floor of the great
+council-house of the town of Citico, one of the dome-shaped buildings,
+plastered as usual within and without with richly tinted red clay. The
+flicker from the coals revealed the rows of posts that like a colonnade
+upheld the roof; the cane-wrought divan encircling the apartment between
+these columns and the windowless walls; the astonished faces and
+feather-crested heads of the conclave of Cherokee chiefs from half a
+dozen towns as they clustered around the fire and stared at Tscholens.
+
+The grave emotion in his face dignified its expression despite its
+savagery. Paradoxically the grandfather was young, slender, and, rated
+by any other standard than that of the Cherokees, an unusually tall
+people, would have been considered of fine height. His muscular arms
+were bare except for his heavy silver bracelets; a tuft of feathers
+quivered high on his head; his leggings were of deerskin, embroidered
+with parti-colored quills of the porcupine, and his shirt was of fine
+sable fur. His voice was sonorously insistent.
+
+"_N'petalogalgun_!" (I am sent as a messenger) he declared urgently.
+"Give me a belt."
+
+He turned his flaming eyes directly upon Atta-Kulla-Kulla, himself in
+the prime of life now, in 1745, who it seemed must act definitely under
+this coercion. He must either refuse to testify to the truth, which he
+knew, or involve his people, the Cherokees, in a quarrel which did not
+concern them, of which a century was tired, between the Lenni Lenape and
+the Mengwe.
+
+So long ago it had begun! The Mengwe, hard pressed by other nations and
+long at war with the Lenape, besought peace of this foe, and that they
+would use their influence with the others. Usually women, prompted
+always by the losing side, protested against the further effusion of
+blood and went with intercessions from one faction to the other. This,
+in view of the number and devious interests of the warring forces, was
+then impracticable, and therefore the Mengwe besought the Lenape to act
+as mediator for the occasion. Only so noted a race of warriors could
+afford this magnanimity, the Mengwe argued. It might impair the prestige
+of a less high-couraged and powerful tribe. And with these specious
+wiles the cat was duly belled.
+
+But alas for the Lenape! Magnanimity is the most dangerous of all the
+virtues--to its possessor! Presently the Mengwe claimed to have
+conquered the Lenape in battle, and cited the well-known fact that they
+had inaugurated peace proposals. As the Mengwe confederation grew more
+powerful they assumed all the arrogance of a protectorate. They sold the
+lands of their dependents. They resented all action of the Lenape on
+their own account. If the Lenape went to war on some quarrel of their
+making, they had the Mengwe to reckon with as well as the enemy. As the
+years rolled by in scores, this fiction gradually assumed all the
+binding force of fact, till now it was felt that only by the avowal of
+the truth by some powerful tribe, both ancient and contemporary, such as
+the Cherokee,--who, although allied neither linguistically nor
+consanguineously, by some abstruse figment of Indian etiquette affected
+an affiliation to the Lenape and called them "grandfather,"--could their
+rightful independence be recognized, reestablished, and maintained.
+Therefore, "Give me a belt!" cried Tscholens pertinaciously, offering in
+exchange the official belt of the Delawares, or, as they were called,
+Lenni Lenape.
+
+Nothing less would content him. He hardened himself as flint against all
+suave beguilements tending to effect a diversion of interest. He would
+not see the horse-race. He would not "roll the bullet." He would not
+witness the game of chungke, expressly played in honor of his visit. He
+even refused to join in the dance, although young and nimble. But it
+chanced that the three circles were awhirl on the sandy spaces
+contiguous to the "beloved square" when the first break in the cohesion
+of his pertinacity occurred. The red sunset was widely aflare; the dizzy
+rout of the shadows of the dancers, all gregarious and intricately
+involved in the three circles, kept the moving figures company. These
+successive circles, one within another, followed each a different
+direction in their revolutions to the music of the primitive flute,
+fashioned of the bone of a deer (the tibia), and the stertorous
+sonorities of the earthen drums; and as the fantastically attired
+figures whirled around and around, their dull gray shadows whisked to
+and fro on the golden brown sand, all in the red sunset glow.
+
+Tscholens, quitting the council-house, glanced but indifferently at them
+and then away at the lengthening perspective of the azure mountains of
+the Great Smoky range. The harbingers of the twilight were advancing in
+a soft blue haze over the purple and garnet tinted slopes near at hand,
+their forests all leafless now, although the autumn had lingered long,
+and the burnished golden days of the Indian summer were loath to go.
+Lights were springing up here and there in the town as the glow of the
+hearths of the dwellings, where supper was cooking, flickered out to
+meet on the threshold the rays of the departing sun, which seemed to
+pause there for a farewell glance in at the open door. In the centre of
+the "beloved square" the fire which always burned here was slowly
+smouldering. It flung a red reflection on the front of the building
+devoted to the conferences of the aged councilors, painted a peaceful
+white and facing the setting sun. At this moment was emerging from it a
+figure which Tscholens had not before seen.
+
+A man so old he was that even the Indian's back was bent. His face was
+of weird effect, for amid its many wrinkles were streaks of
+parti-colored paint such as he had worn more than three quarters of a
+century earlier, when his fleet foot and the old war-trace were
+familiar. In common with all the Cherokees, his head was polled and bare
+save for a tuft, always spared to afford a grasp for any hand bold
+enough and strong enough to take the scalp; but this lock, although
+still dense and full, was of a snowy whiteness, contrasting sharply with
+the red paint and belying the warlike aspect of the red-feathered crest
+that trembled and shivered with the infirmities of his step. A heavy
+robe of fur reached almost to his feet, and a mantle, curiously wrought
+of the iridescent feathers of the neck and breast of the wild turkey,
+bespoke his consequence and added to the singularity of his aspect; for
+Indians seldom attained such age in those wild days, the warriors being
+usually cut off in their prime. It is to be doubted if Tscholens had
+ever seen so old a man, for this was Tsiskwa of Citico, reputed then to
+be one hundred and ten years of age.
+
+The step of the young grandfather, sauntering along, came to an abrupt
+halt. He stood staring, exclaiming to the Cherokee warrior Savanukah,
+"_Pennau wullih! Auween won gintsch pat_?" (Look yonder! Who is that who
+has just come?)
+
+It was an eagle-like majesty which looked forth from the eyes of Tsiskwa
+of Citico, as he seated himself on the long cane-wrought divan, just
+within the entrance of the cabin on the eastern side of the "beloved
+square." Time can work but little change in such a spirit. An eagle,
+however old, is always an eagle.
+
+The sage lifted one august claw and majestically waved it at the young
+Delaware _illau_ (war-captain) standing before him, while Savanukah
+turned away to join the dancers. "Lenni Lenape?--I remember--I remember
+very well when you came from the West!"
+
+Tscholens was not stricken with astonishment, although that migration is
+held by investigators of pre-Columbian myths[11] to have occurred before
+the ninth century! It was formerly a general trait among the Indians to
+use the, first person singular in speaking of the tribe, and to avoid,
+even in its name, the plural termination. Tsiskwa went on with the tone
+of reminiscence rather than legendary lore, and with an air of bated
+rancor, as of one whose corroding grievance still works at the heart, to
+describe how the Lenni Lenape crossed the Mississippi and fell upon the
+widespread settlements of the Alligewi (or Tallegwi) Indians--considered
+identical with the Cherokee (Tsullakee)--and warred with them many years
+in folly, in futility, in hopeless defeat.
+
+He lifted his eyes and gazed at the sun. A curve of pride steadied his
+old lips. His face was as resolute, as victorious, in looking backward
+as ever it had been in vaunting forecast. His was the temperament that
+always saw in prophecy or retrospect what he would wish to see. And that
+sun, now going down, had lighted him all his life along a path of
+conscious triumph.
+
+And then, he continued, the Lenni Lenape, after years of futile war,
+combined with the Mengwe,[12] and before their united force the Cherokee
+retired into the impregnable stronghold of their mountains, their
+beautiful country, the pride of the world!
+
+He waved his hand toward the landscape--lying out there in the lustre of
+its exquisite coloring, in the clarified air and the enhancing sunset;
+in the ideality of the contour of its majestic lofty mountains; in the
+splendor of its silver rivers, its phenomenally lush forests, its rich
+soil--pitying the rest of the world who must needs dwell elsewhere.
+
+"And here," he went on, "the European found me two centuries ago."
+
+He proceeded to narrate the advent of De Soto and his followers into the
+country of the Cherokees, embellishing his account with unrecorded
+particulars of their stay, especially in their digging for gold and
+silver, in which enterprise he himself seemed to have actively
+participated--only some two centuries previous!
+
+Tscholens, listening, looked about absently at the "beloved square,"
+which was vacant, with its open piazza-like building on each of the four
+sides. Two or three men were talking in the "war cabin," painted a vivid
+red. On the western side of the square the roof of the "holy cabin"
+showed dark against a lustrous reach of the shimmering river; despite
+the shadows within the broad entrance, the "sacred white seat" and the
+red clay transverse wall that partitioned off the _sanctum sanctorum_
+were plainly visible, but all was empty, deserted--the cheera-taghe had
+departed for the night.
+
+As Tsiskwa paused to cough, the Delaware, suddenly taking heart of
+grace, observed that it had always been the boast of the Lenni Lenape
+that they were the first tribe to welcome the European, the Dutch, to
+the land that they now called New York.
+
+Whereupon Tsiskwa retorted in a tempest of racking coughs that, whoever
+welcomed the Europeans here or there, it was no credit that the Lenape
+should be so forward to appropriate it! The white people were not the
+friends of the red man. They wanted the whole country. Finally they
+would have it.
+
+"_Mattapewiwak nik, schwannakwak_!" (The white people are a deceiving
+lot!) said Tscholens, seeking some common ground on which they could
+meet with a mutual sentiment.
+
+And at once Tsiskwa was all animation and as aggressive as at twenty.
+Well, indeed, might the Lenape say that! They were forever an easy
+prey--not only of the astute Europeans, but of the simple Indian as
+well. For a hundred years they had been the dupe of the Mengwe! As the
+mind of Tsiskwa dwelt on the various subtleties of the diplomatic
+attitude of the Mengwe toward the Lenape, its craft so appealed to him
+that his lips curved with relish; a smile irradiated his blurred eyes
+and intensified his wrinkles; his cough, shaking the folds of his outer
+fur garments above his wasted chest, mingled with his gay chuckle of
+merriment, as young as a boy's, while he cried, "Iroquois!
+Iroquois!"--the characteristic exclamation of the Mengwe confederation,
+whence they take their modern and popular name, and signifying, "I have
+spoken! I have spoken!"
+
+At the familiar and detested sound the Lenape suddenly smote his breast
+with his braceleted arms, and a strong cry involuntarily broke from
+him--so poignant, so bitter, so shrill, that it sounded high above the
+bleating flute, the guttural drone of the drum, the vibratory throb of
+the dancing feet, and brought the pastime to a sudden close. In another
+moment the "beloved square" was filled with crowds of the Cherokees and
+their huddling shadows, all a medley in the last red suffusions of the
+sinking sun. To the tumult of eager, anxious, polite questions,
+Tscholens faltered to Savanukah, who had hastily returned:--
+
+"_N'schauwihilla! N'dagotschi! Lowanneunk undchen_!" (I am fainting! I
+am cold! The wind comes from the north!)
+
+He looked ill enough, but Savanukah's sharp eyes scanned suspiciously
+the aged countenance of Tsiskwa of Citico. Tsiskwa was, however, the
+image of venerable and respected innocence. His aged lips mumbled one
+upon the other silently. He hardly seemed to take note of the tumult.
+When the afflicted "grandfather" was being led away from the scene,
+Savanukah loitered to ask, with well-couched phrase and the show of deep
+reverence, what had been the tenor of the discourse, and it was with a
+galvanic jerk that the old man appeared to gather his faculties
+together.
+
+"Of what did he talk?" Tsiskwa fixed august eyes upon Savanukah as he
+repeated the query. "Am _I_ to remember of what young men talk?--the mad
+young men?--mad, mad--all quite mad!"
+
+For not to Savanukah, surely, would he confess; and although because of
+this reticence that discerning party believed that Tsiskwa had wittingly
+wounded their emotional "grandfather" in his tenderest pride till he
+roared like a bull, Savanukah afterward had cause to repudiate this
+opinion in a conviction which was less to the credit of the acumen of
+Tsiskwa than a full confession of his breach of etiquette in tormenting
+his young "grandfather" might have been. At the time Savanukah felt a
+certain, malicious pride in the old man's keenness and poise and
+capacity, and he said apart to the inquisitive bystanders that, as might
+have been expected, the big bird, Tsiskwa-yah, had pounced upon the
+little bird, Tscholen-tit--for the name of each signifies a bird in
+their respective languages, and the suffixes imply great and small. And
+mightily pleased was Savanukah with his own wit.
+
+That night came a sudden change. A keen frost was falling soon after the
+sun went down, for the wind was laid, and such a chill glittering white
+moon came gliding out of the mists about the dark Great Smoky domes that
+it seemed the winter incarnate. All adown the desert aisles of the
+leafless woods the light lay with a flocculent glister like snow, so
+enhanced was its whiteness in the rare air and the blackness of the
+forest shadows--spare, clearly drawn, all filar and fine like the
+intricacies of a delicate line engraving. Something that the daylight
+might have shown, blue and blurred, was about the mountains; it followed
+the progress of that wintry moon westward. Presently, drawn up from
+across the ranges, it proved to be a purple cloud, and despite the broad
+section of the heavens still clear and the glittering whorls of the
+constellations, that cloud held snow.
+
+As the loitering southern winter had been long in abeyance, many of the
+Cherokees of Citico Town were still in their airy summer residences, but
+in one of the conical "winter houses," stove-like, air-tight,
+windowless, plastered within and without with the impervious red clay of
+the region, after the fashion of the great rotunda, Tscholens, in view
+of his sudden seizure and complaint of the gentle breeze of the south as
+freighted with the chill of the north, was consigned to rest. Half a
+dozen Cherokee braves were detailed to accompany him, nominally as a
+guard; but, there being no menace, this was in recognition of his
+importance and distinction, his escort of Delaware Indians having been
+billeted about in the town. There was no chimney, and although the fire
+which burned in the centre of the clay floor exhaled but little smoke,
+it hung in the air for the lack of the means of escape, and seemed to
+add to the warmth which the fuel sent forth. Now and again the
+superfluity of ashes encroached on the live coals. Whereupon one or
+another of the occupants of the restricted apartment, silent and
+recumbent upon the cane divan, which served now as bed and extended all
+ground the room between the walls and the row of posts that upheld the
+roof, would reach out a long stick, furnished for the purpose to each
+sleeper, and touch off the incumbering ash from the glow of the embers.
+As the night wore deeper into the dark hours these intervals of waking
+were rarer.
+
+Tscholens, muffled in bed draperies of otter furs and feathered mantles,
+his cane-wrought couch softened with panther and wolf skins, heard the
+wind going its rounds, and he realized that the direction of the
+currents of the air had veered and it came straight from the north. With
+the mere suggestion his heart sank. How should he return whence it
+came?--baffled, denied, empty-handed!--from these specious Cherokees,
+who yet called the Lenape "grandfather."
+
+The young war-captain had divined since he had been among them that the
+Cherokees were making ready for war against the British government; they
+would attack the South Carolina colonists, and for this reason, if for
+no other, they would do nothing to anger the Mengwe, the Iroquois, whom,
+however, they had often fought: for they loved war--they loved war!
+
+Gradually the room grew less warm. A sudden stir sounded under the
+divan, and a dog presently crept out to the fire, stretching lengthily
+and yawning widely as he went. He bestowed himself in an upright posture
+by the coals and looked down with drowsy gravity at the glow. His
+pendant ears, his long, pointed muzzle, his upright, rotund body, and
+his pose of solemn pondering made a queer shadow on the wall. He was no
+Cherokee, so to speak, but was the property of a French officer, and,
+following his master here from Fort Toulouse, _aux Alibamons_, had been
+left in the care of a Cherokee friend to await his owner's return from a
+mission to Fort Chartres and other French settlements "in the Illinois."
+The dog spoke any language, it might seem; for when one of the braves,
+half-awakened by his loud, unmannerly yawn, called out a reproof to him
+in Cherokee, he wagged his tail among the cold ashes till he stirred up
+a cloud of gritty particles; then he made his way across the room to the
+speaker, wheezing and sniffing, and bantering for a romp, till he was
+caught by the muzzle and, squeaking and shrilling, thrust under the
+divan anew.
+
+Once more silence, save for the patrol of the wind again on its rounds.
+Once more the flare of the fire, dying gradually down to a smouldering
+red glow, akin to the smothered red tone of the terra-cotta wall. Once
+more the hot, angry eyes of the young war-captain, staring hopelessly,
+sleeplessly into the red gloom and the dull mischance of the future,
+sequel of the past.
+
+Suddenly a thought struck him. It seemed at first to take his breath
+away. He gasped at the mere suggestion of its temerity. Then it set his
+blood beating furiously in his veins. After a space, in which he sought
+to calm himself, to still his nerves, to tame his quivering muscles, he
+rose slowly to a sitting posture, then stepped deftly, lightly to the
+floor. Standing motionless, he glanced keenly about in the dull red
+gloom. All silence--no stir save the regular rise and fall of the
+breathing of the slumbering Indians. Nevertheless, with his keen
+perceptions all alert and tense, he felt an eye upon him. He looked back
+warily over his shoulder through the lucid red gloom, like a palpable
+medium, as one looks, through a veil or tinted glass.
+
+It was the eye of the dog! The animal lay under the couch, his muzzle
+flat on the clay floor. A serious yet doubtful vigilance was in his
+aspect. Tscholens was already at the exit, which was a narrow winding
+passage serving as a wind-break, and with a sudden turn leading to the
+outer world. He heard the abrupt patter of the dog's feet on the clay
+floor, and a drowsy voice calling to the animal in Cherokee, admonishing
+him to be still. Tscholens waited without, and, as the dog issued and
+with half-aroused suspicions sniffed dubiously around him, he stooped
+down and patted the creature's head. It was well, after all, that he
+should follow; the noise of the dog's exit and return would serve to
+cover his own absence.
+
+He sought craftily to make friends with the dog. "_Mon chou! Mon
+cochon_!" he said, aping the endearments addressed to dog or horse which
+he had heard from the French officers at Fort Chartres, where he had
+recently been. Then suddenly in agitation: "_Tais toi! Sois sage_!"
+
+For the animal was indeed no Cherokee. At the sound of his native
+tongue, as it were, he demonstrated how little he cared to be in his
+skin, for his joyous bounces almost took him out of that integument.
+Luckily his gambols were noiseless,--for the ground was covered with
+snow.
+
+Tscholens stood for a moment motionless, his brain still afire with the
+imminent emprise, but his hot heart turning cold, and failing; for the
+snow--oh, treacherous cloud!--the snow would betray his steps and the
+trail disclose the mystery.
+
+"Oh, _Lowannachen_!" (Oh, north wind!) he moaned, holding up both hands
+outstretched to the north. "Oh, _wischiksil! Witschemil_!" (Oh, be thou
+vigilant! Help me!)
+
+Then suddenly lowering his head, he sped like the wind itself through
+the town, along the river bank and into the sacred precincts of the
+"beloved square." Ah! here he had stood this evening with what different
+hope and heart. Here in front of the eastern cabin he had sat beside the
+wily Tsiskwa of Citico, who might hardly make feeble shift to sway a
+reed, and yet with sharp sarcasms had stabbed him again and again to the
+very heart.
+
+"_Pihmtonheu_! Oh, _pihmtonheu_!" (He has the crooked mouth! Oh, he has
+the crooked mouth!) Tscholens muttered between his set teeth as he
+crossed the open space and paused before the western "holy cabin."
+
+But for his rage, perhaps, but for his smarting wounds, Tscholens might
+have labored with some deterrent sense of sacrilege. But no! With one
+elastic bound he leaped upon the "holy white seat," whence he surmounted
+the tier of places still behind and higher; then he lightly swung
+himself down into the intervening space in front of the inner partition
+formed by a red clay wall.
+
+A momentary pause--a monition of caution. He looked back over his
+shoulder at the pallid world without, visible across the barrier of
+seats through the broad entrance of the loggia-like place. With the
+reflection from the drifts on the ground and the tempered radiance of
+the moon behind the tissues of cloud, the scene seemed more wan, more
+illumined with ghastly light, because of the density of the gloom
+wherein he stood. The conical-shaped winter tenements had each a thatch
+of snow; the great circular council-house, with its whitened dome,
+glimmered as stately as some marble rotunda, on its high mound, distinct
+against the blurring blue shadow of the night and the gray clouds and
+the bare boughs of the encompassing forest. No living creature was to be
+seen, save the dog that had followed him, and that had paused to
+investigate some real or fancied find beneath the snow,--a bone,
+perhaps, flung out from the feastings of overnight; perhaps some little
+animal, young or hurt, whelmed in the drift. Now the dog thrust down a
+tense, inquiring muzzle, sniffing tentatively, cautiously, and again he
+plied alternately his forefeet and his hindfeet, digging out the snow
+from the quarry; then once more, with a motionless body and a straight,
+quivering tail, he applied his sensitive nostrils to the examination.
+
+Tscholens with gratification noted his absorption. This was indeed well.
+The animal's persistent following further might have hampered his plans
+and revealed his intrusion. The next moment, as the _illau_ turned to
+his purpose, densest night seemed to have encompassed him. The shadows
+cloaked all, save only the blank wall of clay and, down close to the
+ground, an arched opening into the _sanctum sanctorum_,--an opening so
+limited that it might barely suffice to admit a man's body, creeping
+prone upon the earth, and so whelmed in night that it seemed to give a
+new and adequate interpretation of the idea of darkness. Could he hope,
+all unaccustomed here, to turn in that restricted space to retrace the
+way? Could a ray of guiding light be caught from without across this
+high, guarding barrier of tiers of seats? And what perchance might lurk
+within instead of the object of this search?
+
+At the mere thought of this object of search all fear, all vestige of
+anxiety vanished. Tscholens felt his heart beat fast. His blood throbbed
+in his temples. He dropped upon his knees--a sinuous, supple motion, a
+vague rustle, and he had passed into the unimagined dark precincts
+beyond the aperture.
+
+Absolute quietude now reigned in the "holy cabin." The darkness filled
+it with a solemnity and awe that made a compact with silence and
+accounted the slightest sound, the softest stir, as a sacrilege.
+
+When an owl--a tiny thing, the familiar little "wahuhu" of the
+Cherokees--flitted down with its noiseless wings from out the sky and
+sat, a mere tuft of feathers and big round eyes, on one of the eaves,
+its shrill cry and convulsive chatter smote the night with a sudden
+affright--all the breathless listening spaces of the "beloved square"
+seemed to shiver at the sound, and the keen sleety lines of snow were
+tremulously vibrant with it as the flakes came slanting down once more
+from the north.
+
+For as Tscholens plunged out from the sanctuary his first consciousness
+of the world without was the chill touch of the falling snow on his
+cheek, its moist, icy breath on his lips beating back his own quick,
+agitated respiration. The little "wahuhu," all startled by his sudden
+exit, rose with a sharp, cat-like mew from the eaves above his head,
+dislodging a drift upon his hair, and fluttered away to a branch of a
+tree, still gazing after him as he sped swiftly, joyously, to the winter
+house where he lodged,--the descending snow would soon fill the trace of
+his light footsteps and none be the wiser.
+
+All danger of discovery, however, was not over-past. One of the braves
+in the winter house experienced a vague intimation of an entrance into
+the building, that peculiar chill which accompanies even to the warmest
+fireside an intruder from the outer air. It seemed explained when he
+roused himself and saw standing by the fire the French officer's dog,
+now gazing at the glow with meditative eyes, now diverted to
+industriously licking his sides. As the long cane of the waking Indian
+threw off the summit of the ashes and touched up the embers to a more
+cordial warmth, the dog, always relishing companionship, repaired to the
+side of the divan, and the young Cherokee, pushing him off, noticed the
+dripping sides of the animal where the snow had melted on the hair.
+
+"It must be raining," he said to himself, all unaware that aught had
+entered except the dog, coming and going after the manner of his
+restless kind. The incident recurred no more to his mind save for a
+vague recollection of his error when he perceived in the morning that it
+was snow that had fallen in the night and not rain.
+
+A new sensation pervaded the town upon its awakening. The "grandfather"
+announced the termination of his visit.
+
+"_N'matschi_!" (I shall go home) he said. And in explanation of this
+sudden resolution, "_N'matunguam_." (I have had a bad dream.)
+
+Now a dream among the Indians was of hardly less significance than among
+the Hebrews of old. It was sufficient justification for the undertaking
+of any enterprise or for any change of intention. Thus the departure of
+the Delaware delegation was shorn of all surprise or imputation of
+discourtesy. The head-men among the Cherokees felt it very definitely a
+relief to be freed from the importunities of their "grandfather."
+
+"Good speed to the journey of the _illau_ Tscholens!" Atta-Kulla-Kulla
+said that evening after the departure, as the head-men of several towns
+sat discussing the matter around the council-fire in the great
+state-house of Citico.
+
+"A turbulent 'grandfather' has a stormy voice and makes the heart of a
+young man like me very poor for fear!" the aged Tsiskwa coughed out, and
+they all greeted the great man's jest with a laugh of appreciation, and
+felt it was well that one so old could at once be so sage and so merry.
+But there came a time when they were of a different mind.
+
+A most important crisis had supervened in the policy of the Cherokee
+Indians toward the British government when their attention was diverted
+from their projected demonstration against the South Carolina colonists
+by a sudden attack from their ancient enemy, the Mengwe (the Iroquois,
+as the colonists called them). It was an altogether unprovoked attack,
+it seemed. The martial Cherokees, however, always eager to fight,
+demanded no explanations, but at once took the war-path with a great
+array of their brisk young braves, and because of this interruption, it
+was said, the war of the Cherokees against the British was long delayed.
+
+When at last the _casus belli_ of the Iroquois was disclosed it struck
+the Cherokees of Citico Town like a thunderbolt. The Cherokee nation,
+said the Mengwe, had presumed to recognize the independence of the Lenni
+Lenape, whom they knew to have been conquered by the Mengwe more than a
+century earlier.
+
+This, of course, elicited from the Cherokees a denial of any such
+recognition. Whereupon the Lenni Lenape themselves produced in
+counter-asseveration the official belt of the Cherokees, given in
+exchange for their own, and brought to the hand of their chief sachem by
+their young _illau_ Tscholens, from Citico Town, the residence of the
+Chief Tsiskwa.
+
+A deep amazement fell upon the Cherokees of Citico--the sort of
+superstitious consternation that a somnambulist might feel in
+contemplating in broad daylight the deeds he had wrought in
+sleep-walking. As to the rest of the nation, it was in vain that Tsiskwa
+denied; for there were many confirmatory details in support of the
+incontestable fact of the official belt openly shown in the possession
+of the Lenni Lenape. The gossips recapitulated the long and solitary
+audience with Tsiskwa to which Tscholens had been admitted--that strange
+wild cry with which it had terminated seeming now a cry of joy, not
+pain; and this interpretation was borne out by the obvious affectation
+of illness by which he had sought to hide the true import of the
+interview. More than all, the matter was put beyond reasonable doubt by
+the discovery of the official belt of the Delawares in the _sanctum
+sanctorum_ of the "holy cabin" in the "beloved square" among the
+treasures of the blended religion and statecraft which pertained to the
+government of the Cherokees. That Tscholens could have surreptitiously
+exchanged the belts, as Tsiskwa of Citico, dismayed, overwhelmed, yet
+blusteringly contended, was held to be preposterous; for there was not a
+moment, sleeping or waking, when the Delawares were not in the company
+and close charge of the Cherokees, who must needs have been cognizant of
+any such demonstration.
+
+Only one explanation was deemed plausible: the old man, doubtless in his
+dotage despite his seeming mental poise, had lost sight of the political
+significance of the bauble; he had bestowed it after the manner of the
+presents that all were unofficially heaping upon the "grandfather," and
+had mechanically, unthinkingly, received in exchange the Delaware belt.
+
+After one reeling moment of doubt the town of Citico recovered its
+balance and loyally supported its prince, but the rest of the nation was
+unanimous in the acceptance of the popular interpretation.
+
+How far extended the influence of this recognition by the Cherokees of
+the independence of the Lenni Lenape it is impossible to say, but it is
+well known that they acted independently in the American phase of the
+Seven Years' War and fought on behalf of the French, and in the
+Revolution they took the part of the Americans against the British,
+contrary to the policy of the Mengwe. About the time of the treaty of
+the United States with the Indians in 1795, the Mengwe, who had been
+greatly cast down by the defeat of their allies, the British, came
+forward of their own accord and desired publicly to acknowledge the
+independence of the Lenni Lenape.
+
+The masterly political machinations of Tscholens and the mystery in
+which they were enveloped did not permanently impair the cordial
+relations existing between his tribe and the Cherokees, for so late as
+1779 a delegation of fourteen Cherokees is chronicled as appearing in
+the country of the Lenni Lenape at their council-fire, to condole with
+them on the death of their head-chief; but neither before nor since is
+there any record of another visit of the turbulent "grandfather" to the
+banks of the Tennessee River.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES
+
+
+1. _Page_ 6. The annals of the southwestern settlements commemorate many
+instances of daring hearts in delicate frames, and the pioneer woman who
+perhaps under softer and safer circumstances would have screamed at a
+mouse often shouldered a rifle and bravely joined the frontiersmen in
+the defense of the stockade against the most cruel, most wily, most
+warlike savage foe that ever a civilized force encountered. Courage, of
+all the qualities of the moral panoply, is the least to be reckoned with
+by logic. Perhaps after all it is not inherent, even in the nobler
+organisms, but evolved by a conscientious sense of responsibility and
+the dynamic potencies of emergency. La Bruyere says: "_Jetez-moi dans
+les troupes comme un simple soldat, je suis Thersite: mettezmoi a la
+tete d'une armee don't j'aie a repondre a toute l'Europe, je suis
+Achille_!"
+
+2. _Page_ 114. The chungke stone of this favorite game of the southern
+Indians bears a certain resemblance to the ancient discus of the Greek
+athlete. This, it will be remembered, fashioned of metal or stone,
+circular, almost flat, was clasped by the fingers of one hand and held
+in the bend of the forearm, extending almost to the elbow. The genuine
+chungke stone is solid and discoidal in shape, beautifully polished,
+wrought of quartz, or agate, the most distinctive being concave on both
+sides, beveled toward the flat outer edge, and having a depression in
+the centre of both surfaces for the convenience of holding it with the
+second finger and thumb, the first finger clasping the periphery. Its
+usual dimensions are about six or eight inches in diameter. There are
+several varieties of these archaic relics, some flat, others lenticular
+or of a wedge-shell shape, and others, still, concave on one side and
+convex on the other. An absolutely spherical stone, bearing the
+extraordinarily high polish that distinguishes these unique objects,
+found in an ancient mound and supposed to have relation to the same or a
+similar game, calls to mind the globular quoit of the classical athletes
+and that "enormous round" described by Homer, "Aetion's quoit"--to hurl
+which bowl they vie, "who teach the disk to sound along the sky."
+
+The exquisite finish of the chungke stone was compassed without the aid
+of a single tool, merely by the attrition of one stone upon another,
+"from time immemorial rubbed smooth upon the rocks, with prodigious
+labor," resulting in an object of such symmetrical beauty that even in
+the museums of the present day, out of which it is rarely seen, it
+challenges admiration. Antiquaries variously contend that it was hurled
+through the air and that it was bowled on the edge along the ground, its
+equilibrium being so perfect that on a level space it will roll a great
+distance, falling only when its impetus is expended.
+
+The chungke stone is often confounded with the Indian quoit, likewise
+circular and fashioned of smoothly wrought stone, but with an orifice in
+the centre, rendering it in effect a ring to be flung over a stake at a
+distance, or to be caught on the point of a lance.
+
+It has been inferred that Adair is mistaken in his assertion that by the
+Indian law the chungke stones were exempt from burial with the effects
+of the dead, since certain of the most perfect specimens known to modern
+archaeological collections were found in the exploration of mounds in
+the valley of the Tennessee River. By many these mounds are supposed to
+be prehistoric, and the game is doubtless of an unimaginable antiquity.
+As late as his day, among the Cherokees; 1736, the stones were kept with
+the "strictest religious care," and were the property of the town where
+the game was played.
+
+Adair, despite his roving life, had evidently scant sympathy with
+athletics. He may have been growing old and indolent when he speaks of
+the game as a "task of stupid drudgery" and opines that instead of a
+sport it might "with propriety of language" be described as "running
+hard labor." Other eye-witnesses, however, vaunt the great beauty and
+grace of the game. Captain Bernard Romany chronicles with relish the
+dexterity requisite, the great strength and skill displayed by the
+participants in the violent exercise, although demurely moralizing the
+while on its perilous fascination to both players and spectators, by
+reason of the inordinate temptation presented by its doubtful chances to
+the reckless gambler. Lieutenant Timberlake alone calls it
+"_nettecawaw_."
+
+As there are moot points concerning the stones themselves and the
+conduct of the sport, so the chungke spears differ in the accounts of
+the early adventurers in this region. The length is variously given as
+eight, ten, twelve feet. The shape is sometimes represented as a lance
+or pole heavy in the centre and tapering at both ends to a blunt point,
+and others describe an implement resembling a magnified golf club of the
+present day.
+
+3. _Page_ 114. This choice decoration, popular though it was, could not
+be attained without a penalty commensurate with its valuation. It is
+stated by early travelers among the Indian tribes that thirty days were
+required to properly heal an ear thus distended _a la mode_. The
+patient, if one so prideful might be so called, could only have one ear
+in the painful process at a time, in order that he might be able to lie
+in sleeping on the other side until such time as his embellished ear
+should be again serviceable for this prosaic purpose, and permit the
+like decoration of the opposite member.
+
+4. _Page_ 142. An illustration of how the Choctaws profited by these
+earnest labors may be given in the fate of a chapel erected for their
+benefit at Chickasaha by the French and placed in charge of a Jesuit
+missionary. The Choctaws so far accepted Christianity as to be able to
+travesty the services and mimic the priest with surprising humor and
+verisimilitude when the English came in, and were wont to go to the old
+chapel for this profane exhibition to the mingled delight and
+reprobation of the military new-comers. The chapel was soon afterward
+destroyed, but Captain Romans records that in 1771 he saw the cross
+still standing on the site, a melancholy memorial of futile missionary
+endeavor.
+
+All the Indians, however, were temperamentally averse to the services
+and tenets of the Christian religion, and Timberlake gives an instance
+among the Cherokees in 1760 in which a missionary was balked by a unique
+interruption. "Mr. Martin, who having preached Scripture till both he
+and his audience were heartily tired, was told at last that they knew
+very well that if they were good they would go up; if bad, down; that he
+could tell no more; that he had long plagued them with what they no ways
+understood, and they desired that he would depart the country."
+
+The epitome of theology thus deduced was so far a just conclusion. But
+doubtless the Indians labored greatly with imperfect comprehension.
+Humboldt describes a service among a South American tribe, in which a
+missionary preaching in Spanish was at his wits' end to make his
+audience differentiate between _infierno_ and _invierno_. They persisted
+in shivering with horror at the picture of the hell of his warnings in
+which the wicked were supposed to be subjected to everlasting winter.
+One is tempted to think that the end might have justified the means if
+the good padre had fallen in with the prejudice against the rainy season
+and adopted, in lieu of the fire-and-brimstone of Scripture, as a future
+state of punishment, the icy Ninth Circle of Dante's Inferno, where
+
+    "_Eran l' ombre dolenti nella ghiaccia,
+    Mettendo i denti in nota di cicogna_."
+
+5. _Page_ 151. The cultivation of personal pride was an essential
+element of training among the Indians. They held the lower ranks of
+white people in great contempt, and Timberlake records that in some
+athletic diversions at which he and other members of the Virginia
+regiment were present they refused to play or to hold conference with
+any of the troops except the officers.
+
+6. _Page_ 179. The primary and somewhat complex significance of the word
+_ada-wehi_ is suggested by the idea of sorcery,--a man, or animal, or
+even element endowed with uncontrolled superlative and supernatural
+powers. It has been stated that since the introduction of Christianity
+and the printing of the New Testament in the Cherokee typographical
+character the word has been utilized with its subtleties of
+signification to express spirit or angel. In this story, however, the
+scene of which is laid in a period long previous to the conversion of
+the tribe, or even the accepted date of the invention of the Cherokee
+alphabet, the word is used in its early and original sense to denote a
+magician of special and expansive gifts of sorcery.
+
+7. _Page_ 186. Although this officer's name was regularly incorporated
+into the Cherokee vocabulary as a synonym of disaster, he seemed to
+revolt at the unhappy plight of the people whom in the discharge of his
+duty he had succeeded in reducing to so abject a condition of despair
+and woe, and has left on record expressions of compassion incongruous
+with his deeds and his position as a professed soldier of long
+experience. He had served in Flanders and Ireland in his youth as
+captain in the Royal Scots before he first came to America as major in
+Montgomerie's regiment of Highlanders.
+
+Some adequate idea of the desolation and destitution of the Indians may
+be gleaned from the reports to the British government: "The Cherokees
+must certainly starve or come into terms, and even in that case Colonel
+Grant thinks it is hardly in the power of the provincials to save them.
+He proposed in a few days to send for The Great Warrior (Oconostota) and
+The Little Carpenter (Atta-Kulla-Kulla) to come and treat for peace, if
+they choose to save their nation from destruction. Till he receives
+their answer he will endeavor to save the small remains of the Lower
+Towns. In the mean time Colonel Grant intends to put Fort Prince George
+into repair, and to wait there or at Ninety-Six till he receives orders
+from Sir Jeffrey Amherst."
+
+The idea of the pangs of hunger and the sight of starvation and
+deprivation may have been the more repugnant to Colonel Grant since he
+was himself famous as a _bon vivant_ and gourmet. Indeed, even yet, in
+turning old pages we come upon records of his dinners. Bartram, the
+Philadelphia botanist, whom the Muscogee Indians quaintly called
+_Puc-Puggy_ (the Flower Hunter) details the great size of a rattlesnake,
+"six feet long and as thick as the leg of an ordinary man" which he
+chanced to kill in his bosky researches near Fort Picolata in Florida,
+and not the least surprising feature of the incident was a message from
+the commandant inviting both combatants to dinner, "Governor Grant being
+very fond of rattlesnake flesh." This officer, at that time Royal
+Governor of East Florida, was holding a congress with the Creek Indians
+hard by the fort, having come from St. Augustine with a detachment of
+its garrison for the purpose. Bartram, dining in company with Grant that
+day, saw his enemy served up in several different styles,--and he, too,
+must turn softhearted!--he could not partake of the dish,--and "was
+sorry after killing the serpent, when coolly recollecting every
+circumstance of it." However, neither the rattlesnake nor the Cherokees
+were in condition to profit by these belated graces of magnanimity.
+
+Through Grant's scattered correspondence there is a flavor of "vivers."
+Frederick George Mulcaster, still with the garrison of St. Augustine, in
+a letter addressed to Grant, then in Boston, laughingly alludes to his
+constant good cheer. "Captain Urquhart writes to his brother officers
+here that '_General Grant lives like a General_!'" And later, in piteous
+contrast, "His Excellency (the new Royal Governor) gave a dinner
+yesterday to the officers of the Fourteenth and some others. It is the
+only dinner he has given since the one he gave to John Stuart (famous as
+the survivor of Fort Loudon) upon his arrival here,"--a matter of two
+months. He further notes as a point of interest, "Your black man,
+Alexander, was with me this instant to inquire after your health, and
+has loaded me with _beaucoup de complimens_. He wishes much to come to
+make your bread." Doubtless it was well made, for Grant, prospering,
+went on from dinner to dinner, from promotion to promotion, attaining
+the rank of General in the army and great corpulency, representing
+Sutherlandshire in the British Parliament many years, and dying at the
+age of eighty-six at his birthplace, Ballindalloch, in the north of
+Scotland.
+
+8. _Page_ 212. The "Annual Register" in giving among State Papers the
+text of a treaty between Governor Lyttleton of South Carolina,
+Captain-General, etc., and Atta-Kulla-Kulla, "deputy for the whole
+Cherokee Nation," dated at Fort Prince George, Dec. 26, 1759, adds in a
+note: "Atta-Kulla-Kulla, the Little Carpenter, who concluded this treaty
+in behalf of the Cherokee Indians, was in England and at court several
+times in the year 1730."
+
+9. _Page_ 215. The oratorical gifts of this Indian (under the name
+Chollochcullah, supposed to be a phonetic variant of Atta-Kulla-Kulla)
+are thus described in _The Gentleman's Magazine_ for October, 1755,
+chronicling the details of an earlier diplomatic occasion: "The speaker
+rose up, and holding a bow in one hand and a sheaf of arrows in the
+other, he delivered himself in the following words, with all the
+distinctness imaginable, with the dignity and graceful action of a Roman
+or Grecian orator, and with all their ease and eloquence."
+
+10. _Page_ 231. Their tribal name, "men of fire," and their great
+veneration for that element have given rise to the conjecture that the
+Cherokees were originally fire-worshipers, as well as polytheistic. The
+interpolation of the intensative syllable "ta" is, according to Adair, a
+"note of magnitude," and the title of their prophets, whose functions
+are blended as priests, conjurers, physicians, and councilors,--the
+cheera-taghe,--signifies "men of divine fire." But Adair protests that
+the theistic ideals of the Indians were wholly spiritual, and that they
+had no plurality of gods. They paid their devotions merely to the "great
+beneficent supreme holy spirit of fire, who resides as they think above
+the clouds," and he argues plausibly that if they worshiped fire itself
+they would not have willfully extinguished the sanctified element
+annually on the last day of the old year throughout the nation, the
+invariable custom, before the cheera-taghe of each town kindled the
+"holy fire" anew, this being one of their exclusive functions. It may be
+that in their ancient rhapsodies (many of which Mr. James Mooney has
+collected for the Smithsonian Institution) addressed to bird or flame or
+beast the Indians adopted a poetic license no more significant of
+polytheism than the flights of fancy of many Christian poets in odes to
+the moon, to Fate, "to the red planet Mars," to the "wild west wind."
+Mere impersonation and invocation in apostrophe and paeans are not
+necessarily worship. Doubtless these spells and charms often arose from
+a superstitious half-belief, an imaginative freak, such as possesses the
+civilized visionary who shows a coin to the new moon to propitiate its
+fancied waxing influence in behalf of a balance at the banker's, or the
+Christianized Scotch Highlander of even the early nineteenth century who
+threw a piece of hasty pudding over the left shoulder on the anniversary
+of _Bealdin_ (the Gaelic for no other than Baal) to appease the spirits
+of the mists, the winds, the ravens, the eagles, and thus protect the
+crops and flocks. There is a thin boundary line as difficult to define
+as "to distinguish and divide a hair 'twixt south and southwest side,"
+between true belief and feigned credence.
+
+The veneration of the ancient Cherokees for the element of fire, in
+addition to their name, its careful conservation throughout the year,
+their addresses to its spirit, _Higayuli Tsunega, hatu ganiga_ (O
+Ancient White, you have drawn near to listen), is farther manifested by
+its traces found in the exploration of burial mounds, intimating a
+ceremonial introduction of the element at the remote period of
+interment,--if, indeed, the construction of these mounds can he ascribed
+to the Cherokees. Those on which their town houses were erected at a
+later date, the clay-covered rotunda forming a superstructure looking
+like a small mountain at a little distance, according to Timberlake,
+wherein were held the assemblies, whether for amusement or council or
+religious observances, served also as a substitute for the modern
+bulletin-board. Two stands of colors were flying, one from the top of
+the town house, the other at the door. These ensigns were white for
+peace, and exchanged for red when war impended. "The news hollow," as
+Timberlake phrases the cry, sounded from the summit of the mound, would
+occasion the assembling of all the community in the rotunda to hear the
+details from the lips of the chief. How much more the: "death hollow,"
+harbinger of woe!
+
+11. _Page_ 323. They are hardly to be regarded as myths perhaps, rather
+as dislocated relics of fact. In treating of the "Origin of American
+Nations," Dr. Barton says: "These traditions are entitled to much
+consideration, for, notwithstanding the rude condition of most of the
+tribes, they are often perpetuated in great purity, as I have discovered
+by much attention to their history." It is generally accepted that the
+first historical mention of the Cherokees occurs under the name of
+_Chelaque_ in the chronicles of De Soto's expedition in 1540 when they
+already occupied the Great Smoky Mountains and the contiguous region,
+but the Indians themselves had a tradition, according to Haywood's
+_Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee_, which was recited
+annually at the Green Corn Dance, in which they claimed that they were
+the earlier mound builders on the upper Ohio, whence they had migrated
+at a remote date. They can be identified with the ancient Talega or
+Tallegwi if the records of the _Walam Olum_ (painted sticks) may be
+believed, the wooden originals of which are said to have been preserved
+till 1822 and considered inexplicable, till their mnemonic signs and a
+manuscript song in the Lenni Lenape language, obtained from a remnant of
+the Delaware Indians, were translated by Professor C.S. Rafinesque "with
+deep study of the Delaware and the aid of Zeisberger's manuscript
+Dictionary in the library of the Philosophical Society."
+
+In this, a dynasty of Lenni Lenape chiefs and the events of their reigns
+are successively named, and from the first mention of their encounter
+with the warlike Tallegwi or Cherokee to the discovery of Columbus there
+is necessarily implied the passage of many centuries. Even the time that
+has elapsed since the Tallegwi were overthrown by them is estimated as
+somewhat more than a thousand years, thus placing this defeat in the
+ninth century. Professor Cyrus Thomas in "The Cherokees of Pre-Columbian
+Times" states that he thinks it would be more nearly correct to credit
+the event to the eleventh or twelfth century. He quotes in support of
+his theory from the _Walam-Olum_ as translated by Dr. Brinton, who
+giving the original in parallel pages, with the mnemonic signs, does not
+use in the English version the Indian names of the chiefs.
+
+This record of the _Walam-Olum_ is really very curious. After passing
+the account of the Creation, the Flood, the Migrations, and entering
+upon the Chronicles, the _Walam-Olum_ reads much like a Biblical
+genealogy, save that in lieu of scions of a parent tree these are
+military successors, war-captains. The following quotations are from the
+version given by Squier:
+
+     47. _Opekasit_ (East-looking) being next chief, was sad
+     because of so much warfare.
+
+     48. Said let us go to the Sun-rising (_Wapagishek_) and
+     many went east together.
+
+     49. The Great River _(Messussipu)_ divided the land and
+     being tired they tarried there.
+
+     50. _Yagawanend_ (Hut-Maker) was next sakimau, and then
+     the Tallegwi were found possessing the east.
+
+     51. Followed _Chitanitis_ (Strong Friend), who longed for
+     the rich east land.
+
+     52. Some went to the east but the Tallegwi killed a
+     portion.
+
+     53. Then all of one mind exclaimed war, war!
+
+     54. The _Talamatan_ (Not-of-themselves) and the Nitilowan
+     all united (to the war).
+
+     55. _Kinnehepend_ (Sharp-looking) was their leader, and
+     they went over the river.
+
+     56. And they took all that was there and despoiled and
+     slew the Tallegwi.
+
+     57. _Pimokhasuwi_ (Stirring About) was next chief, and
+     then the Tallegwi were much too strong.
+
+     58. _Tenchekensit_ (Open Path) followed and many towns
+     were given up to him.
+
+     59. _Paganchihilla_ was chief,--and the Tallegwi all went
+     southward.
+
+After the earliest mention of the Tallegwi in verse 50 of the First
+Chronicle there are about fifty chieftains enumerated, and characterized
+with their successive reigns before the entrance of the white
+discoverers of the continent at the end of the Second Chronicle. In this
+it is stated at verse--
+
+     56. _Nenachipat_ was chief toward the sea.
+
+     57. Now from north and south came the _Wapagachik_ (white
+     comers).
+
+     58. Professing to be friends, in big birds (ships). Who
+     are they?
+
+And with this dramatic climax the ancient picture record closes.
+
+What is known as the Modern Chronicle, a fragment, begins with the
+answer, "Alas! Alas! we know now who they are, these _Wapinsis_ (East
+People) who came out of the sea to rob us of our lands."
+
+And that the modern chronicle shall be certainly correct the successor
+of _Lekhibit_ (the compiler of the ancient story) is assisted by
+critical philologists, and Rafinesque takes issue with Holm touching a
+Swedish suffix in an Indian name. "Mattanikum was chief in 1645. He is
+called 'Mattahorn' by Holm, and 'horn' is not Lenapi!"
+
+It is difficult to adjust one's credulity to accept as history this
+singular Indian picture-record. Its authenticity is supported by the
+great scope of the system and the reputed subtlety and close accuracy by
+which abstract ideas, the origin of things, the powers of nature, the
+elements of religion, could be expressed and read by those conversant
+with the mnemonic signs,--as easily, Heckewelder says, as a piece of
+writing. The noted antiquary Squier, however, who in this connection has
+lauded Rafinesque's industry, scientific attainments, and eager
+researches, states that since writing in this vein he has seen fit to
+read this author's _American Nations_ and finds it "a singular jumble of
+facts and fancies," and adds that it is unfortunate that the manuscript
+in question should fall in this category. To praise, even with
+qualifications, the author without reading all his work on the subject,
+while certainly more amiable, is hardly more conducive to an impartial
+estimate than to disparage on hearsay, according to that travesty of
+critical judgment: "'_Que dites-vous du livre d'Hermodore?' 'Qu'il est
+mauvais,' repond Anthime ... 'Mais l'aves-vous lu?' 'Non.' dit Anthime.
+Quen'ajoute-t-il que Fulvie et Melanie l'ont condamne sans l'avoir lu,
+et qu'il est ami de Fulvie et de Melanie_?"
+
+In contrast with this method the caution and critical scrutiny with
+which Dr. Brinton, in his work on "The Lenape," deliberates upon the
+question of the authenticity of the _Walam Olum_ are indeed marked. He
+carefully examines all the details both favorable and adverse, and
+finally adduces the evidence of the text itself. The manuscript
+submitted by him to educated Indians of the Lenni Lenape is pronounced
+to be a genuine oral composition of a Delaware Indian in an ancient
+dialect, evidently dictated to one not wholly conversant with, all the
+terminal inflections of the words, which occasional omissions form the
+chief defect of the curious "Red Score."
+
+12. _Page_ 324. Some authorities hold that the _Talamatan_
+(Not-of-themselves) mentioned by the _Walam-Olum_ were the Hurons who
+allied themselves with the Delawares against the Tallegwi, and that
+Heckewelder is mistaken in stating that these confederates were the
+Mengwe. This story, however, follows the account of the war and the
+subsequent subjection of the Delawares as given by Heckewelder.
+
+
+
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