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irregular musketry of the troops frenzied with sudden success, out of
line, out of hearing, out of reason as they pursued the unmounted
savages, dislodged at last from their masked position; with the
bugles blowing, the bag-pipes playing; with the unheard, disregarded
orders shouted by the officers; with that thrilling cry of the
Highlanders “Claymore! Claymore!” the sun flashing on their drawn
broadswords as they gained on the flying Indians, themselves as
fleet;—a confused, disordered panorama of shadows and sunlight, of
men in red coats and men in blue, and men in tartan, and savage
Chickasaws and Cherokees in their wild barbaric array.
It had been desired that the repulse should be fierce and decisive,
the pursuit bloody and relentless. The supply train represented the
life of the army, and it was essential to deter the Cherokees from
readily renewing the attack on so vital a point. But these ends
compassed, every effort of the officers was concentrated on the
necessity of recalling the scattered parties. Night was coming on; it
was a strange and an alien country; the skulking Cherokees were
doubtless in force somewhere in the dense coverts of the woods,
and the vicarious terrors of the capture that menaced the valorous
and venturesome soldiers began to press heavily upon the officers.
Again and again the bugles summoned the stragglers, the rich
golden notes drifting through the wilderness, rousing a thousand
insistent echoes from many a dumb rock thus endowed with a voice.
Certain of the more solicitous officers sent out, with much caution,
small details, gathering together the stragglers as they went.
How Ronald MacDonnell became separated from one of these
parties was never very clear afterward to his own mind. His attention
was attracted first by the sight of a canny Scotch face or two, which
he knew, lying very low and very still; he suffered a pang which he
could never evade. These were the men who had followed him to the
finish, and he took out his note-book and holding it against a tree,
made a memorandum of the locality for the burial parties, and then,
with great particularity, of the names, “For the auld folks at hame,”
and he quoted, mournfully a line of the old Gaelic lament much sung
by the Scotch emigrants “Ha til mi tulidh” (we return no more), which
was sadly true of the Highland soldiery in the British ranks,—an
instance is given of a regiment of twelve hundred men who served in
America of whom only seventy-six ever saw their native hills again.
Then, briskly putting up the book he went on a bit, glancing sharply
about for the living of his command, even now thrusting their
reckless heads into the den of the Cherokee lion. “Ill-fau’rd chields,
and serve them right,” he said, struggling with the dismay in his heart
for their sake.
Perhaps he did not realize how far those active strides were carrying
him from the command. In fact the march continued that night until
the sinking of the moon, the army pressing resolutely on through the
broken region of the mountain defiles. MacDonnell noted no
Cherokee in sight, that is to say, not a living one. Several of the dead
lay on the ground, their still faces already bearing that wan, listening,
attentive look of death; they were heedless indeed of the hands that
had rifled them of their possessions, for there were a few of the
Chickasaw allies intent on plunder.
Presently as he went down a sunset glade, MacDonnell saw
advancing a notable figure, a Chickasaw chief, tall, lithe, active,
muscular, with a gait of athletic grace. He was wearing the warrior’s
“crown,” a towering head-dress in the form of a circlet of white
swan’s feathers of graduated height, standing fifteen inches high in
front, and at the bottom woven into a band of swan’s down—all so
deftly constructed that the method of the manufacture of the whole
could not be discerned, it is said, without taking it into the hand. To
the fringed borders of a sort of sleeveless hunting shirt of otter-skin
and his buckskin leggings bits of shells were attached and glittered,
and this betokened his wealth, for these beads represented the
money of the Indians, with the unique advantage that when not in
active circulation, one’s currency could be worn as an ornament. It
has been generally known under the generic name “wampum,”
although several of the Southern tribes called it “roanoke” or “pe-
ack.” It was made in tiny, tubular beads, of about an inch in length, of
the conch and mussel-shells, requiring the illimitable leisure of the
Indian to polish the cylinder to the desired glister, and drill through it
the hollow no larger than a knitting-needle might fill. His chest and
arms were painted symbolically in red and blue arabesques, and his
face, of a proud, alert cast was smeared with vermilion and white. All
his flesh glistened and shone with the polishing of some unguent.
MacDonnell had heard a deal of preaching in his time of the Scotch
Presbyterian persuasion, and in the dearth of expression Biblical
phrases sometimes came to him. “Oil to give him a cheerful
countenance,” he quoted, still gazing at the grim face and figure. So
intently he gazed, indeed, that the Indian hesitated, doubting if the
Highland officer recognized him as a friend. Breaking off a branch of
a green locust hard by and holding it aloft at one side, after the
manner of a peaceful embassy, he continued his stately advance
until within a yard of the silent Scotchman, also advancing. Then
they both paused.
“Ish la chu; Angona?” said the Indian, in a sonorous voice. (Are you
come, a friend?)
With the true Briton’s aversion to palaver, intensified by his own
incapacity for its practice, Ronald MacDonnell discovered little
affinity for barbaric ceremonial. Nevertheless he was constrained by
the punctilious sense that a gentleman must reply to a courteous
greeting in the manner expected of him. His experience with the
Chickasaws had acquainted him with the appropriate response.
“Arabre—O, Angona,” (I am come, a friend) he returned, a trifle
sheepishly, and without the ore rotunda effect of the elocution of the
Indian.
The young chief looked hard at him, evidently desirous of engaging
him in conversation, unaware that it was a game at which the
Scotchman was incapacitated for playing.
“Big battle,” he observed, after a doubtful interval.
“A bonny ploy,” assented the officer, who had seen much bigger
ones.
Then they both paused and gazed at each other.
“Cherokee—heap fight! Big damn—O!” remarked Choolah, the Fox,
applausively.
The use of this most vocative vowel as an intensitive suffix is one of
the peculiar methods of emphasis in the animated Chickasaw
language—for instance the word Yanas-O means the biggest kind of
buffalo (yanasa signifying buffalo in all the dialects). Choolah
conversing in the cold and phlegmatic English evidently felt the need
of these intensitives, and although a certain strong condemnatory
monosyllable has been usually found sufficiently satisfying to the
feelings of English speaking men seeking an expletive, the poor
Aboriginal, wishing to be more wicked than he was, discovered its
capacity for expansion with the prefix “Big” and devised an added
emphasis with the explosive final “O.”
“The Cherokee warriors? Pretty men!” said MacDonnell laconically,
according the enemy’s valor the meed of a soldier’s praise. “Very
pretty men.”
Choolah had never piqued himself on his command of the English
language, but he thought now his fluency was at least equal to that
of this Scotchman, who really seemed to speak no tongue at all. As
to the French—of that speech, ookproo-se (forever despised)
Choolah would not learn a syllable, so deadly a hatred did the
Chickasaw tribe bear the whole Gallic nation, dating back indeed
through many wars and feuds, to the massacre by Choctaws of
certain of the tribe in 1704, while under the protection of Boisbriant
with a French safeguard, the deed suspected to have been
committed if not at the instigation, at least by the permission of the
French commander who, however, himself wounded in the affray,
was beyond doubt, helpless in the matter.
“Heap tired?” ventured Choolah, at last, pining for conversation, his
searching eyes on the young Highlander’s face.
Ronald MacDonnell laughed a proud negation. He held out one of
his long, heavily muscled arms, with the fist clenched, that the Indian
might feel, through his sleeve, the swelling cords that betokened his
strength.
But it was Choolah’s trait to cherish vanity in physical endowment,
not to foster it in others. He only said, “Good! Swim river.”
“Why swim the river?” demanded the Lieutenant.
Then Choolah detailed that through a scout he had thrown out he
had learned that Colonel Grant’s force, still pushing on, had
succeeded in crossing the Tennessee river, the herd of cattle and the
pack animals giving incredible trouble in the fords, deeply swollen by
the unprecedented rains. It suddenly occurred to MacDonnell that, in
view of the passage of the troops beyond this barrier, much caution
would be requisite in endeavoring to rejoin the main body, lest they
fall into the clutch of the Cherokees on the hither side, who doubtless
would seek the capture of parties of stragglers by carefully patrolling
the banks. He suggested this to Choolah. The Indian listened for
only a moment with a look of deep conviction; then suddenly calling
to five Chickasaws who were still engaged in parceling out the booty
they had brought away from the dead bodies, he beckoned to
MacDonnell, and they set out on a line parallel with the river, in
Indian file, in a long, steady trot, the Scotchman among them, half
willing, half dismayed, repudiating with the distaste of a prosaic,
unimaginative mind every evidence of barbarism; every
unaccustomed thing seemed grotesque and uncouth, and lacking all
in lacking the cachet of civilization. Each man, as he ran lightly along
that marshy turf, almost without noting, as if by instinct placed his
feet upon the steps of the man in advance; thus, although seven
persons passed over the ground, the largest man coming last, the
footprints would show as if but one had gone that way. Ronald
MacDonnell, quick at all military or athletic exercises, readily
achieved conformity, although the barbarous procedure
compromised his sensitive dignity, and he growled between his teeth
something about a commissioned officer and a “demented goose-
step,” as if he found the practice of the one by the other a painful
derogation. The moon came into the sky while still they sped along in
this silent, crafty way, the wind in their faces, the pervasive scents of
the damp, flowery June night filling every breath they drew with the
impalpable essences of sylvan fragrance.
Even with the dangers that lurked at their heels, the Indians would
never leap over a log, for this was unlucky, but made long detours
around fallen trees, till Ronald MacDonnell could have belabored
them with hearty good-will, and but for the fear of capture by the
savage Cherokees, could not have restrained himself from crying
aloud for rage for the waste of precious time. He had even less
patience with their slow and respectful avoidance of stepping on a
snake sinuously skirting their way, since, according to their belief,
this would provoke the destruction of their own kindred by the
serpent’s brothers; Choolah’s warning to the other Chickasaws in the
half-suppressed hiss—“Seente! Seente!” (snake!) sounded far and
sibilant in the quiet twilight. The Cherokee tribe also were wont to
avoid with great heed any injury to snakes, and spoke of them
always in terms of crafty compliment as “the bright old inhabitants.”
The shadows grew darker, more definite; the moon, of a whiter
glister now, thoughtful, passive, very melancholy, illumined the long
vistas of the woods, and although verging toward the west, limited
the area of darkness that had become their protection. More than
once Choolah had glanced up doubtfully at its clear effulgence, for
the sky was unclouded and the constellations were only a vague
bespanglement of the blue deeps; coming at length to a dense
covert among the blooming laurel, he crept in among the boughs,
that overhung a shallow grotto by the river bank. MacDonnell
followed his example, and the group soon were in the cleft of the
rocks under the dense shade, the Scotchman alone among the
Indians, with such dubious sentiments as a good hound might
entertain were he thrust, muzzled, among his natural enemies, the
bears.
But the Chickasaws, as ever, were earnestly, ardently friendly to the
British. There was no surly reservation in Choolah’s mind as he
reached forth his hand and laid it upon the muscular arm of the
Scotchman.
“Good arm,” he said, reverting to the young Highlander’s boast. “But
—big damn—O!—good leg! Heap run!” he declared, with a
smothered laugh, like any other young man’s, much resembling
indeed the affectionate ridicule that was wont to go around the mess-
table at Ronald’s unimaginative solemnities. But even MacDonnell
could appreciate the jest at a brave man’s activities, and he laughed
in pleasant accord with the others.
A scout that they had thrown out came presently creeping back
under the boughs with the unwelcome intelligence that there was a
party of Cherokees a little higher up on the river, a small band of
about a dozen men, seeming intent on holding the ford. These were
stationary, apparently, but lower down, patrolling the banks, were
groups here and there beating the woods for stragglers, he fancied.
As yet, however, he thought they had no prisoners. Still, their
suspicions of hidden soldiers were unallayed, and they were keeping
very quiet.
The scout was named Oop-pa, the Owl. Although himself a warrior
of note he was of a far lower grade of Chickasaw than Choolah, in
personal quality as well as in actual rank. Instead of manifesting the
stanch courage with which the Indian Fox hearkened to this
untoward intelligence, the alert gathering of all his forces of mind and
body for defense and for victory, or to make his defeat and capture
an exceedingly costly and bloody triumph, Oop-pa set himself, still in
the guise of imparting news, to sullenly plaining. The Highland officer
listened heedfully for in these repeated campaigns in the valley of
the Tennessee River he had become somewhat familiar with the
dialect of the Chickasaw allies and in a degree they comprehended
the sound of the English, and thus the conversation of the little party
was chiefly held each speaking in his own tongue. The English were
all across the river, Oop-pa declared. The red-coats, and the green-
coats, and the tartan-men, and the provincial regiment—he did not
believe a man of the command was left—but them.
“Well, thank God for that much grace!” exclaimed Ronald
MacDonnell, strictly limiting his gratitude; he would render to
Providence due recognition for his own rescue when it should be
accomplished. His thankfulness, however, for the extent of the
blessing vouchsafed was very genuine. His military conscience had
been sharply pricked lest he might have lost some of his own men in
the confusion of the pursuit and the subsequent separation from the
little band.
Oop-pa looked at him surlily. For his own part, the Indian said, he
was tired. Let the English and French fight one another. They had
left him to be captured by the Cherokees. He needed no words.
White man hated red man. Big Colonel Grant would be glad. Proud
Colonel Grant—much prouder than an Indian,—would not care if the
terrible Cherokees tortured and burned his faithful Chickasaws. Let it
be one of his own honey plaidsmen, though, and you would see a
difference! For haughty Colonel Grant couldn’t abide for such little
accidents to befall any of his pampered tartan-men, whom he loved
as if they were his children.
With the word the world changed suddenly to Ronald MacDonnell.
For this—this fearful fate menaced him. His was not a pictorial mind,
but he had a sudden vision of a quiet house on a wild Scottish coast
at nightfall within view of the surging Atlantic, with all the decorous
habitudes about it of a kindly old home, with a window aglow,
through which he could see, as if he stood just outside, a familiar
room where there were old books and candlelight, and the flare of
fire, and the collie on the rug, and the soft young pink cheeks of
sisters, and a gray head with a pipe, intent upon the columns of a
newspaper and the last intelligence from far America,—and oh! in
the ingle-nook, a face sweeter for many a wrinkle, and eyes dearer
for the loss of blue beauty, and soft hands grown nerveless, whose
touch nevertheless he could feel across the ocean on his hard,
weather-beaten young cheek. It had been a long time since this
manly spirit had cried back to his mother, but it was only for a
moment. If his fate came as he feared, he hoped they might never
know how it had befallen. And the picture dissolved.
He did not fail to listen to the scornful reproaches with which
Choolah upbraided Oop-pa. He had been left because he had
lingered to rob the slain Cherokees. Look at the load there of
hunting-shirts and blankets, and yes, even a plaid or two from a
dead Highlander, that he had borne with him on his back from the
field of battle; it was his avarice that had belated him.
And what then, Oop-pa retorted, had belated Choolah and the
Highland officer? They had brought away nothing but their own
hides, which they were at liberty to offer to the Cherokees, as early
as they might.
The freedom of Oop-pa’s tongue was resented as evidently by
Choolah as by Ronald, but the Etissu occupied a semi-sacerdotal
position toward the chief, a war-captain, the decrees of whose
religion would not suffer him to touch a morsel of food or a drop of
drink while on the war-path unless administered by the Etissu. The
utmost abstemiousness was preserved among the Chickasaws
throughout, and it continued a marvel to the British troops how men
could march or fight so ill-nourished, practicing all the fasting
austerities of religious observances. There were many similar
customs implying consecration to war as holy duty, but they were
gradually becoming modified by the introduction of foreign
influences, for formerly the Indians would not have suffered among
them on the march the unsanctified presence of a stranger like
Ronald MacDonnell. He said naught in reply to the Etissu. His mind
was grimly preoccupied. He was busied with the realization of how
strong he was, how very strong. These lithe Indians, with all their
supple elasticity, their activity, had no such staying power as he, no
such muscular vitality. He was thinking what resources of anguish
his stalwart physique offered for the hideous sport of the torture; how
his stanch flesh would resist. How long, how long dying he would be!
The terrors of capture by the Cherokees had been by Grant’s orders
described again and again to the troops to keep the rank and file
constant to duty, close in camp, vigilant on outpost, and alert to
respond to the call to arms. Never, as Ronald righteously repeated
this grim detail, had he imagined he would ever be in case to
remember it with a personal application. He now protested inwardly
that he could die like a soldier. Even from the extremity of physical
anguish he had never shrunk. But the hideous prospect of the malice
of human fiends wreaked for hours and hours upon every quivering
nerve, upon every sensitive fiber, with the wonderful ingenuity for
which the Cherokees were famous, made him secretly wince as he
crouched there among the friendly Chickasaws, beneath the boughs
of the rhododendron splendidly a-bloom in the moonlight, while the
rich, pearly glamours of the broken disk sunk down and down the
sky, and the dew glimmered on the full-fleshed leaves, and through
them a silver glitter from the Tennessee River hard by struck his eye,
and a break in the woods, where the channel curved, showed the
contour of a dome of the Great Smoky Mountains limiting the
instarred heavens. As he looked out from the covert of the laurel—
his flaxen hair visible here and there in rings on his sunburned
forehead, from which his blue bonnet was pushed back; his strongly
marked high features, hardly so immobile as was their wont; his belt,
his plaid, his claymore, all the details of that ancient martial garb,
readjusted with military precision since the fight; his long, rawboned
figure, lean and muscular, but nevertheless with a suggestion of the
roundness of youth, half reclining, supported on one arm—the Indian
gazed at him with questioning intentness.
Suddenly Choolah spoke.
“Angona,” (friend) he said, with a poignant note of distrust, “you have
a thought in your mind.”
It was seldom indeed, that Ronald MacDonnell could have been thus
accused. He changed color a trifle, although he said, hastily, “Oh, no,
my good man, not at all—not at all!”
“Angona! Angona!” cried Choolah, in reproach.
Perhaps a definite recognition of this thought in his mind came to
MacDonnell with the fear that the Chickasaw, who so easily
discerned it, would presently read it. “The fearsome Fox that he is,”
thought Ronald with an almost superstitious thrill at his heart.
Naturally he could not know how open was that frank face of his, and
that the keen discernment of the savage, though perceiving the
presence of the withheld thought, was yet inadequate to translate its
meaning. This thought was one which he would in no wise share
with Choolah. MacDonnell’s most coherent mental process was
always of a military trend; without a definite effort of discrimination,
or even voluntarily reverting to the events of the day, it had suddenly
occurred to him that the Cherokee with the essential improvidence of
the Indian nature, could not have developed that plan of attack on
the provision train, so determined and definitely designed, so difficult
to repulse, so repeated, renewed again and again with a desperation
of the extremest sacrifice to the end. And small wonder! Its success
would have involved the practical destruction of Grant’s whole army.
Hundreds of miles distant from any sufficient base of supplies, the
provision train was the life of the expedition. The beef-herds to be
subsequently driven out from the province to Fort Prince George for
the use of the army were to be timed with a view to the gradual
consumption of the provisions already furnished, and to
communicate by messenger to Charlestown, now distant nearly four
hundred miles, the disaster of the capture of stores would obviously
involve a delay fatal to the troops.
The Indians, however, were a hand-to-mouth nation. Subsisting on
the chances of game in their long hunts and marches, enduring in its
default incredible rigors of hunger as a matter of course, sustaining
life and even strength when in hard luck by roots and fruits and nuts,
they could not have realized the value of the provision train to
civilized troops who must needs have beef and bacon, flour and
tobacco, soap and medicine—or they cannot fight. There was but
one explanation—French officers were among the Cherokees and
directed these demonstrations. Their presence had been earlier
suspected, and this, Ronald thought, was indisputable proof. The
strange selection of the ground where in the previous year the
Cherokees had massed in force and given battle to Colonel
Montgomery’s troops had occasioned much surprise, and later the
same phenomenon occurred in their engagements with Colonel
Grant. It seemed to amount to an exhibition of an intuitive military
genius. No great captain of Europe, it was said, could have acted
with finer discernment of the opportunities and the dangers, could
with greater acumen have avoided and nullified the risks. But
Colonel Grant, who was always loath to accord credit to aught but
military science, believed the ground was chosen by men who had
studied the tactics of the great captains of Europe, and although he
had learned to beware of the wily devices of the savage, and to meet
his masked fire with skulking scouts and native allies, fighting in their
own way, he preserved all the precise tactical methods in which he
had been educated, and kept a sharp edge on his expectation for the
warlike feints and strategy of the equally trained French officer.
If he could only meet one now, Ronald MacDonnell was thinking. In
case it should prove impossible to cross the river and rejoin his
command, if he could only surrender to Johnny Crapaud!
To be sure the creature spoke French and ate frogs! More heinous
still he was always a Romanist, and diatribes on the wicked
sorceries and idolatries of papistry had been hurled through
MacDonnell’s consciousness from the Presbyterian pulpit since his
earliest recollection. But a soldier, a French officer—surely he would
be acquainted with higher methods than the barbarities of the
savage; he would be instructed in the humanities, subject to those
amenities which in all civilized countries protect a prisoner of war.
Surely he would not stand by and see a fellow-soldier—a white man,
a Christian, like himself—put to the torture and the stake. And if his
authority could not avail for protection—“I’d beg a bullet of him; in
charity he could not deny me that!” If the opportunity were but
vouchsafed, MacDonnell resolved to appeal to the Frenchman by
every sanction that can control a gentleman, by their fellow feeling
as soldiers, by the bond of their common religion. He hesitated a
moment, realizing a certain hiatus here, a gulf—and then he
reconciled all things with a triumphant stroke of potent logic. “They
may call it idolatry or Mariolatry, if they want to,—but I never heard
anybody deny that the Lord did have a mother. And it’s a mighty
good thing to have!”
This was the thought in his mind—the chance, the hope of
surrendering to a French officer.
The stir of the Indians recalled him. The moon was lower in the sky,
sinking further and further toward that great purple dome of the many
summits of the Great Smoky Mountains. All the glistening lines of
light upon the landscape—the glossy foliage, the shining river, the
shimmering mists—seemed drawn along as if some fine-spun seine,
some glittering enmeshment were being hauled into the boat-shaped
moon, still rocking and riding the waves off the headlands that the
serrated mountains thrust forth like a coast-line on the seas of the
sky. Now and again the voices of creatures of prey—wolves,
panthers, wildcats—came shrilly snarling through the summer night
from the deep interior of the woods, where they wrangled over the
gain that the battle had wrought for them in the slain of horses and
men,—of the Cherokee force doubtless; MacDonnell had scarcely a
fear that these were of Grant’s command, for that officer’s care for
such protection of his dead as was possible was always immediate
and peculiarly marked, and it was his habit to have the bodies sunk
with great weights into the rivers to prevent the scalping of them by
the Cherokees. Ronald wearied of the melancholy hours, the long,
long night, although light would have but added dangers of
discovery. It was the lagging time he would hasten, would fain stride
into the future and security, so did the suspense wear on his nerves.
It told heavily even on the Indian, and Ronald felt a certain sympathy
when Choolah’s half-suppressed voice greeted the scout, creeping
into the grotto once more, with the wistful inquiry, “Onna He-tak?” (Is
it day?)
But the news that the Etissu brought was not indeed concerned with
the hour. In his opinion, they would all soon have little enough to do
with time. His intelligence was in truth alarming. While the
Cherokees patrolling the river had gradually withdrawn to the interior
of the forest and disappeared, those at the ford above were
suspiciously astir. They had received evidently some intimation of
the presence here of the lurking Chickasaws, and were on the
watch. To seek to flee would precipitate an instant attack; to escape
hence would be merely to fall into the hands of the marauders in the
forest beyond; to plunge into the Tennessee River would furnish a
floating target for the unerring marksmen. Yet the crisis was
immediate.
Choolah suddenly raised the hand of authority.
Ronald MacDonnell had seen much service, and had traveled far out
of the beaten paths of life. He was born a gentleman of good means
and of long descent—for if the MacDonnells were to be believed,
Adam was hardly a patch upon the antiquity of the great Clan-Colla.
He had already made an excellent record in his profession. It
seemed to him the veriest reversal of all the probabilities that he
should now be called upon to take his orders from Choolah the Fox,
the savage Chickasaw. Yet he felt no immediate vocation for the
command, had it been within his reach. With all his military talent
and training he could devise no other resource than to withstand the
attack of the larger party with half their number; to swim the river,
and drown there with a musket-ball in his brain; to flee into the
woods to certain capture. He watched, therefore, with intensest
curiosity the movements of the men under Choolah’s direction. The
moon was now very low, the light golden, dully burnished, far-
striking, with a long shadow. First one, then another of the
Chickasaws showed themselves openly upon the bank of the river in
a clear space high above the current of the water. Choolah beckoned
to the Scotchman, and MacDonnell alertly sprang to his feet and
joined the wily tactician without a question, aware that he was
assisting to baffle the terrible enemy. His bonnet, his fluttering plaid,
his swinging claymore, his great muscular height and long stride, all
defined in the moonlight against the soft sky and the mountains
beyond, were enough to acquaint the watching Cherokees with the
welcome fact that here was not only an enemy but a white man of
the Highland battalion, the friends of the Chickasaw. The artful
Chickasaws swiftly and confusedly came and went from the
densities of the laurel. Impossible it would have been for the
Cherokees to judge definitely of their numbers, so quickly did they
appear and disappear and succeed one another. Thus cleverly the
attack was postponed.
Ronald MacDonnell gave full credit to the strategy of Choolah. For it
would now seem—it needs must—that their little party no longer
feared the enemies in the quiet woods! They must have presumed
the Cherokees all gone! The Chickasaws were building a fire since
the moon was sinking. Probably they felt they could not lie down to
sleep without its protection and wolves very near in the woods.
Listen to that shrill, blood-curdling cry! They were surely disposing
themselves to rest! Already as the blaze began to leap up and show
in the water of the river below like a great red jewel, with the deep
crystalline lusters of a many-faceted ruby, figures might be seen by
the flare of the mounting flames, recumbent on the ground, wrapped
in blankets; here and there was tartan, an end of the plaid thrown
over the face as the Highlanders always slept; here and there a
hunting-shirt and leggings were plainly visible—all lying like the
spokes of a wheel around the central point of the fire.
“It is only the Muscogees who sleep in line,” Choolah explained to
MacDonnell, who had criticised the disposition.
The crafty Cherokees, stealthily approaching ever nearer and nearer,
had not seen in the first feeble glimmers of the flames the figures of
the seven men crawling gingerly back to the grotto in the covert of
the laurel, leaving around the fire merely billets of wood arrayed in
the blankets and stolen gear which the Owl had brought off from the
battle-field.
“But I am always in the wrong,” plained Oop-pa, sarcastically. “What
would you and the big tartan-man have to dress those warriors in if I
had not stayed for my goods?”
MacDonnell had urged his scruples. This was hardly according to the
rules of war. “But if the Cherokees fire on sleeping men,” he argued
—
“Angona,” the wily Chickasaw assured him, suavely, “they are
disarmed. We can rush out and overpower them before they can
load.”
“They ought to be able to fire three times to the minute,” thought
MacDonnell, who was a good drill.
But the Cherokees were not held to the rigorous manual of arms,
and did not attain to that degree of dexterity considered excellent
efficiency in that day although a breech-loading musket invented by
Colonel Patrick Ferguson, who met his death at King’s Mountain,
was capable of being fired seven times a minute, and was used not
many years after these events, with destructive effect, by his own
command at the battle of the Brandywine, in 1777.
MacDonnell, lying prone on the ground in the laurel, his face barely
lifted, saw the last segment of the moon slip down behind the great
mountain, the following mists glister in the after-glow and fade, a
soft, dull shadow drop upon the landscape then sink to darkness,
and in the blaze of the fire a quivering feather-crested head protrude
above the river-bank. There were other crafty approaches—here,
there, the woods seemed alive! Suddenly an alien flare of light, a
series of funnel-shaped evanescent darts, the simultaneous crack of
a volley, and a dozen swift figures dashed to the scalping of their
victims by the fire—to lay hold on the logs in the likeness of sleeping
men, to break a knife in the hard fibers of one that seemed to stir, to
cry aloud, inarticulate, wild, frenzied in rage, in amaze, in grief, to
find themselves at the mercy of the Chickasaws darting out from the
laurel!
There was a tumultuous rush, then a frantic, futile attempt to reload;
two or three of the prisoners wielding knives with undue effect were
shot down, and Choolah, triumphant, majestic in victory, stately,
erect, his crown of tall white swan’s feathers, his glittering fringes of
roanoke, the red and blue of his glossy war-paint, all revealed by the
flaring fire, waved his hand to his “Angona” to call upon him to
admire his prowess in battle.
The next moment his attention was caught by a sudden swift alarm
in the face of one of the Cherokees, a faraway glance that the wily
Choolah followed with his quick eye. Something had happened at
the camp the Cherokees had abandoned—was there still movement
there?
It was some one who had been away, returning, startled to see the
bivouac fire sunken to an ember,—for the Cherokees had let it die
out to further the advantages of the attack,—then evidently
reassured to note the flare a little further down the stream, as if the
camp had been shifted for some reason.
Choolah drew his primed and loaded pistol. No Cherokee, however,
would have dared to venture a warning sign. And Ronald
MacDonnell, with what feelings he could hardly analyze, could never
describe, saw leaping along the jagged bank of the river toward them
a white man, young, active, wearing a gayly-fringed hunting-shirt and
leggings of buckskin, but a military hat and the gorget of a French
officer. He was among them before he saw his mistake—his fatal
mistake! The delighted shrieks of the Chickasaws overpowered
every sense, filling the woods with their fierce shrill joy and seeming
to strike against the very sky, “French! hottuk ook-proo-se!” (The
accursed people!)
All thought of caution, all fears of wandering Cherokees were lost in
the supreme ecstasy of their triumph—the capture of one of the
detested French, that the tribe had hated with an inconceivable and
savage rancor for generations.
“Shukapa! Shukapa!” (Swine-eater!) they exclaimed in disgust and
derision, for the aversion of the Indians to pork was equaled only by
that of the Jews, and this was an extreme expression of contempt.
The captive was handled rudely enough in the process of disarming
him, which the Owl and Choolah accomplished, while his Cherokees
stood at the muzzles of the firelocks of the others. There was blood
on his face and hands as he turned a glance on the Scotchman. He
uttered a few eager words in French, unintelligible to MacDonnell
save the civil preface, “Pardon, Monsieur, mais puis-je vous
demander—”
The rest of the sentence was lost in the fierce derisive shrieks of the
Chickasaws recognizing the inflections of the detested language,
“Seente soolish! Seente soolish!” (snake’s tongue!) they vociferated.
But had the conclusion of the request been audible it would have
been incomprehensible to Ronald MacDonnell.
The impassive Highlander silently shook his head, and a certain fixity
of despair settled on the face of the French officer. It was a young
face—he seemed not more than twenty-five, MacDonnell thought. It
was narrow, delicately molded, with very bright eyes, that had a sort
of youthful daring in them—adventurous looking eyes. They were
gray, with long black lashes and strongly defined eyebrows. His
complexion was of a clear healthy pallor, his hair dark but a trifle
rough, and braided in the usual queue. So often did Ronald
MacDonnell have to describe this man, both on paper and off, that
every detail of his appearance grew very familiar to him. The
stranger’s lips were red and full, and the upper one was short and
curving; he did not laugh or smile, of course, but he showed narrow
white teeth, for now and again he gasped as if for breath, and more
than once that sensitive upper lip quivered. Not that Ronald
MacDonnell ever gave the portraiture in this simple wise, for his
descriptions were long and involved, minute and yet vague, and
proved the despair of all interested in fixing the identity of the man;
but gleaning from his accounts this is the way the stranger must
have appeared to the young Scotchman. His figure was tall and
lightly built, promising more activity than muscular force, and while
one hand was held on the buckle of his belt, the left went continually
to the hilt of a sword, which he did not wear, but the habit was
betrayed by this gesture. There was nothing about him to intimate
his rank, beyond the gorget, and on this point Ronald MacDonnell
could never give any satisfaction.
The Indian is seldom immoderate in laughter, but Choolah could not
restrain his wicked mirth to discover that the two officers could not
speak to each other. And yet the pale-faces were so often amazed
that the Cherokees and the Chickasaws and the Creeks had not the
same language, as if a variety of tongues were thrown away on the
poor Indian, who might well be expected to put up with one speech!
For only the Chickasaw and Choctaw dialects were inter-
comprehensible, both tribes being descended, it is said, from the
ancient Chickemicaws, and in fact much of the variation in their
speech was but a matter of intonation. The tears of mirth stood in
Choolah’s eyes. He held his hand to his side—he could scarcely
calm himself, even when he discerned a special utility in this lack of
a medium of communication, for the enterprising scout came back
once more to say that there were some Chickasaws lower down on
the river, where the ford was better. Choolah received this assurance
with most uncommon demonstrations of pleasure, evidently desiring
their assistance in guarding the prisoners to Grant’s camp, being
ambitious of securing the commander’s commendation and
intending to afford ocular proof of his exploit by exhibiting the
number of his captives. But MacDonnell detected a high note of
elation in Choolah’s voice which no mere pride could evoke, and he
recognized a danger signal. He instantly bethought himself of the
fate at the hands of the Chickasaws, more than a score of years
before, of the gallant D’Artaguette, the younger, and his brave
lieutenant Vincennes, burned at the stake by slow fires, after their
unhappy defeat at the fortified town, Ash-wick-boo-ma (Red Grass),
the noble Jesuit, Sénat, sharing their death, although he might have
escaped, remaining to comfort their last moments with his ghostly
counsels.
MacDonnell listened as warily to the talk as he might, and although
Choolah said no more than was eminently natural in planning to turn
over his prisoners to these Chickasaws by reason of their superior
numbers, MacDonnell’s alert sense detected the same vibration
when he expressed his decision to leave the Etissu and the Highland
officer to guard the Frenchman till his return.
“Then we will together cross the Tennessee river here,” he said.
MacDonnell yawned widely as he nodded his head, his hand over
his stretched mouth and shielding his face. He would not trust its
expression to the discerning Choolah, for he had again that
infrequent guest, “a thought in his mind.”
In truth, Choolah had no intention to take the Frenchman to Grant’s
camp. The praise he would receive as a reward was a petty
consideration indeed as compared with the delights of torturing and
burning so rare, so choice a victim as a French officer. To be sure his
excuse must be good and devised betimes, for Colonel Grant was
squeamish and queer, objecting to the scalping and burning of
prisoners, and seemed indeed at times of a weak stomach in regard
to such details. And that came about naturally enough. He did not
fast, as behooves a war-captain. He ate too much on the war-path.
He had two cooks! He had also a man to dress his hair, and another
to groom his horse. Naturally his heart had softened, and he was
averse to the stern pleasures of recompensing an enemy with the
anguish of the stake. This Choolah intended to enjoy, summoning
the Chickasaws at the ford below to the scene of his triumph.
Besides it requires a number of able-bodied assistants to properly
roast in wet weather a vigorous and protesting captive. The
Scotchman should suspect naught until his return. True, he might not
object, for were not the French as ever the inveterate enemies of the
English? But if he should it could avail naught against the will of a
round dozen or more of Chickasaws. Besides, was not the prisoner
of the detested nation of the French—Nana-Ubat? (Nothings and
brothers to nothing.) Nevertheless, it was well they could not speak
to each other and possibly canvass fears and offer persuasions. He
could spare only one man, the scout, to aid in the watch, but he felt
quite assured. Ronald MacDonnell was always notoriously vigilant
and exacting, and was held in great fear by guards and outposts and
sentinels, for often his rounds were attended by casualties in the way
of reprimand, and arrests, and guard-tent sojourns and discipline.
Choolah felt quite safe as he set off at a brisk pace with his squad of
four Chickasaws, driving the disarmed Cherokees, silent and sullen,
before him.
They were hardly out of sight when MacDonnell, kicking the
enveloping blanket out of the way, sat down on one of the logs by
the fire and spread his big bony hands out to the blaze. It was
growing chill; the June night was wearing on toward the dawn; it was
that hour of reduced vitality when hope seems of least value, and the
blood runs low, and conscience grows keen, and the future and the
past bear heavily alike on the present. The prisoner was shivering
slightly. He glanced expectantly at the Scotchman’s impassive
countenance. No man knew better than Ronald MacDonnell the
churlishness of a lack of consideration of the comfort of others in
small matters. No man could offer little attentions more genially. They
comported essentially with his evident breeding, and his rank in the
army; once more the prisoner looked expectantly at him, and then,
wounded, like a Frenchman, as for a host’s lack of consideration, he
sat down on a log uninvited, casting but one absent glance, from
which curiosity seemed expunged, at the effigies which explained