Part 13

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VIII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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