Part 18

“And if they had lost _all_ their number I should not hesitate to sleep in one of their winter-houses twenty-four years later. Ha, ha, ha!” The rum was evidently getting in its work. “Hey, Benson,” the lieutenant called to his servant in the one illumined tent hard by, “make up my bed in that vacant winter-house, and hark ye, build a fire in the middle of the floor, Injun-wise! Gad! I’ll not be diddled out of the comforts of life for fear of a Cherokee distemper twenty-four years gone!”

The nightcap wished itself where it belonged, on its pillow. To retire with dignity became the most definite motive in the brain that it surmounted, and in this emprise it conceived that some aid might be secured by a few words of casual conversation with the officer’s companion, who was therefore civilly addressed.

Now the worshipful Herbert Taviston would have been excited to a frenzy by a false classification of the meanest herb of the earth, and would have repudiated it as an unrighteous pretension and a mischievous effort to subvert the accepted grades and relations of a careful and accurate system. But if aware that such elements and considerations existed in matters military, they were in his estimation of no practical moment, and he turned toward the Highland soldier with as pliant a grace of his tasseled crest as erstwhile it had borne in bending before the commander of the force. And in fact he might well be oblivious of distinctions of rank. The young Highlander had a handsome, kindly, intelligent face and a manner of refinement and dignity, and bating his coarse garb and rustic dialect he might have easily seemed a man of degree. Moreover, he was here hobnobbing familiarly with his officer.

“Do you find your pipe a solace, my dear sir?” Mr. Taviston blandly demanded, for smoking was not then the universal habit that it was sometime earlier and has been since.

“Aye, sir,” the Highlander replied politely, a trifle embarrassed by the obvious mistake as to his rank rather than his quality. “But it isna sae cantie a crony as a queigh o’ gude browst, neither,” he added blithely, with an effort to reëstablish the _entente cordiale_.

The young officer, with sullen, attentive eyes, that held a spark of red fire in their brown depths, glowered at them.

“Ah, so indeed!” suavely commented the elderly nightcap. “But have you observed, sir, that the Indians have another kind of tobacco than that which is commonly smoked,--which is of course the _Nicotiana Tabacum_? Now this other tobacco plant is a small-leaved, green, bitter species which they use exclusively in their religious ceremonies, their incantations, their necromancy, known as”--

“As _Nicotiana diabolica_,” suggested the officer.

Now had the nightcap housed but a modicum of tact and permitted a laugh at this fling, all might yet have gone well. But trust a man of scientific hobbies for serious denseness.

“Not at all, sir,” he said with asperity. “That name is unknown to the herbalist. The plant is _Nicotiana rustica_ with us. With the Cherokees it is _Tsalagayuli_, and the Muskogees call it _It-chau-chee-le-pue-puggee_, ‘the tobacco of the ancients,’ and the Delawares, _Lenkschatey_, ‘original tobacco,’--showing an interest parity of signification; with the coast Indians it is _Uppowoc_; the Tuscaroras call it _Charho_; the Pamlico Indians, _Hoohpau_; and the Woccon Indians, _Vucoone_. Now,” turning back to the Highlander with an air of excluding the ill-starred jester on subjects of such grave moment, “there is a so-called tobacco, not even related to the genus _Nicotiana_--it is the _Lobelia inflata_--which furnishes the Indians with a powerful medicinal infusion. Have you noticed in your march hither, and perhaps in your previous campaigns in the Cherokee country, the amazing expertness of the Cherokees in the matter of simples?”

“He is too simple himself,” put in the officer, with an airy laugh.

The Highlander’s face was flushing painfully. He was carrying a goodly quantity of mixed liquor of the fiercest description, and it had not as yet shaken a nerve; but the consciousness of his false position between his two companions was aiding its potency, and his equilibrium was beginning to tremble.

The botanist, touched in his sensitive pride, calmly ignored Lieutenant Everard at his own camp-fire; and the officer, who had borne much from his idiosyncrasies and had assiduously sought to promote his comfort and security on the weary march hither, gazed at him with a deepening glow of that fiery spark in his eyes.

“The Cherokees’ expert knowledge of toxicology in plant forms is amazing,” continued the botanist. “They excel all savage nations in their discoveries of vegetable poisons and their application. And then their botanical nomenclature--how happy--how apt! Are you conversant, sir, with their generic plant names?”

“The title of the parent stem, do you mean?” said the unlearned Highlander hesitating, fumbling in his mind as to what Cherokee plant names were considered applicable as to a parent stem.

“He doesn’t lay much nowadays on the title of parent stems,” interpolated Everard flippantly. “His own branch has lost its head, through that head having been so heady as to lose his head.”

A keen steely glance, as significant as the drawing of a burnished blade, flashed from the Highlander’s eyes and was received full in the gaze of the facetiously fleering officer. The subject of the forfeiture of estates, the loss of titles, the attainder of treason, was not fit for jesting with one who had suffered so fiercely by them, and except in his cups no man would have been more definitely and respectfully aware of this than Everard. And yet the fiery liquor was not altogether to blame. He was as cruelly hampered by the false position as his lowly friend, who nevertheless in every essential that he reverenced was his equal if not his superior. To be ignored, to be talked down, and meekly submit to keep his mouth closed was more than his patience could admit. But he was practically helpless. He could not seize that egregious nightcap by the tassel and punch that learned head. He could only assert himself by interjecting scoffs and fleering laughter, and because of the fiery cup these were ill advised.

“It is singular how very fitting and descriptive is the Cherokee plant nomenclature!” chirped the botanist. As he sat on a block of wood beside the fire, his face seemed ludicrously small in its strait toggery, in comparison with its enlarged and bewigged aspect by day, and he looked like an elderly infant, if such an anachronism can be pictured. His gaudy gown was drawn close about his spare figure, but he had forgotten to be cold, and his smiling eyes were fixed absently on the face of the young Highlander, as fitting the fingers of his delicate hands daintily together he continued to speak of the accurate niceties of Cherokee plant names.

“_Atali kuli_, ‘the mountain climber,’” he translated, his lingering tones almost chanting, so great was his pleasure in the definition; “the mountain ginseng, my good sir.” Then, fairly intoning the Latin like a priest, he added, “_Panax quinquefolium_, of the order _Araliaceæ_, also a native of China, sir.”

“_He_ is not a native of China, sir. He was made out of a peat bog,” put in Everard flippantly.

Naturally the nightcap addressed the civil Highlander.

“Then there is _Ahowwe akata_, ‘deer-eye,’--yes, the word _ahowwe_ signifying deer,--with us the _Rudbeckia fulgida_. And again,” dropping his voice now in deprecation of the suggestion of indelicacy, as if a lowered tone made the allusion more seemly, “there is _Unistiluisti_, meaning ‘they stick on,’”--in a whisper, “beggar’s lice,”--then at full voice, as if the Latin would mend the matter, “_Myosotis Virginiana_.”

The lieutenant looked ostentatiously disgusted. He had indeed never heard of the plant, and the Latin did not impose upon him, but the mention of the insect from which it took its name was an insult to ears polite. “Oh fie, sir!” he said rebukingly, for he was indeed aweary of it all.

The nightcap turned hastily toward the Highlander, who was heavily harassed between the two, the double discord of their moods jarring upon his nerves and bringing them more under subjection to his previous potations. “Then, my dear sir, there is the Indian shot, the _Canna_,--as you are aware the Celtic word for ‘a cane,’--with us the ‘headache plant,’ and”--

“Come, come, sir, enough of this,” cried Everard, scarcely listening, and forced to rise. “We have nothing to do with headaches. It grows late, and your hearer cannot meet your phrase nor match your learning, although as to the question of heads he knows more about them than you can ever teach him. Nothing fixes them in the memory like having them grinning from a city gate.”

The Highlander had risen too. He had a pictorial imagination, and there still lingered upon its sensitive retina, so to speak, images of the night’s talk, before the botanist had come to the fireside: the aspect of London, the castellated Rhine, the glitter of Paris, and many a suave and southern scene beneath a blue and tropic sky. Suddenly these were all obliterated. That woeful land upon which the cruel hand of Doom had rested so heavily, the sequestered estates, the beggared gentry, the starving peasants, the scattered clans, the hunted fugitives, the proscribed national garb, the hopeless exiles, the prison, the scaffold, the gibbet--all rose up before him as elements in a stricken gray landscape, in ghastly wintry guise. For one moment he hesitated. Then stepping aside from the fire, he reached out and struck the flippant mocker full in the face.

The officer, taken all unaware, reeled as if he would lose his balance. Then, for he was of a fine, alert physique, he recovered the perpendicular, and it seemed as if he would spring like a panther upon the Highlander, who had thrown himself into a posture of defense. The next moment Everard’s military identity was fully reasserted, and the proud Highlander writhed under the realization that the officer would not return the blow. He would not demean himself by striking so low a thing,--a man of the ranks. His voice rang out crisp and steady as he called the corporal of the guard, placed Callum under arrest, and named the manner and locality of his detention and the details when he should be brought up “at orders” the following morning. Then wholly sobered, Everard turned with dignified courtesy upon the botanist, who was now protesting and squawking like some fluttered fowl instead of a refined and elegant gentleman in the discharge of a public trust.

“I must beg your favor, sir,” the lieutenant said, by way of denial of a wild plea for clemency for the culprit. “I understand my duty and I shall do it. And may I beg that you will now retire to your tent, as all this stir may rouse the camp to the prejudice of discipline and good order? I wish you a very good-night, sir!”

And the nightcap with a depressed and lankly pendent tassel and the floriated gown disappeared under the flap of the tent and enlivened the spaces around the fire no more.

XI

POOR Callum Bane! Sober in good truth and sad as well! As soon as his guard had quitted his side, he flung himself down on the earth floor of the Indian winter-house, to which he had been conducted, with his cheek pressed to the clay. He wished that the day had come when it might cover him. Then he recoiled with the thought that this might not be far distant. Striking an officer was a most serious military offense. Even apart from its military aspect it was an insult for which only blood could atone. He knew that Lieutenant Everard could never face his world, the officers of his regiment, his mess, if they were aware that as man to man he had tamely submitted to receive a blow in the face. And since he could not challenge one of so low a station as a common soldier, he had let the matter revert to its normal aspect of insubordination, and the military law would take its course.

Yet Callum could have shed the tears that stood hot and smarting in his eyes for this sad finale to their gay young friendship. He had felt that it augured a certain magnanimity in Everard to ignore what he was in station in the knowledge of what he was by descent. Callum would never have admitted, not even in his most secret thoughts, that he found aught lacking in Jock Lesly, whose instincts rendered him a man of intrinsic worth; but this association on equal terms with Everard, a man of refined manners and gentlemanly phrasings and careful nurture, was to Callum like a return to the companionship of his earlier life, and a relief after the ruder comradeship of the boisterous common soldier and the dull routine of mechanical duty. He had taken a certain pleasure, too, in the realization that his society was the young officer’s only solace in the long and dreary march with its peculiar personal isolation. But it was a pleasure fraught with much pain,--the contemplation of this man in a position which but for an untoward fling of fate might have been his own also. The thought often lent a sharp edge to the close and intimate observation of Everard’s opportunities and their development, but Callum was not of a jealous temperament, and did not visit upon the individual, even in secret meditation, the disasters which national circumstances and conditions had wrought. Despite the difference in station and habits, wealth and education, the two had grown fraternally fond of each other, and now there was that between them which could be washed out only with blood, and the officer in the direct discharge of his duty had chosen that it should be with the blood of the soldier.

The sentinel still stood at the doorway, for there was no door, but gradually his glances within, prompted by curiosity, had grown infrequent. There was no guard tent. The men were of the best class, picked for the expedition, and so far not even a trifling misdemeanor had sullied the record of their good conduct. Punctual, alert, efficient, cheerful, invaluable each had seemed in every emergency, and thus the only unoccupied shelter that might conveniently hold a culprit was the clay-constructed winter-house, which stood aloof and vacant on the edge of Ioco Town. The preparations which Everard had ordered, with the intention of occupying it himself, had gone no farther than the kindling of a fire on the clay hearth in the centre of the floor, before it was diverted to the uses of a prison. The smoke, in thin, shifting, scroll-like forms, circled gray and blue about the red clay walls without an exit save such crevices as the wind and rain and neglect had wrought. As Callum had dropped down on the inner side, the vapors served to screen him somewhat from the observation of the sentinel, who, he now began to notice, had become absolutely oblivious of him. This matter riveted his attention presently. There was evidently some strange stir in the encampment, an odd circumstance, and Callum reflected in sudden affright that he had been bound, needlessly and cruelly he considered. The handcuffs, always carried _pro forma_, were among the baggage, and, it being deemed unmeet to rouse its custodians to overhaul it at that hour, a stout rope had been substituted. A vague clamor of voices came to his ears. He observed that the sentinel at the doorway had become rigid with suppressed excitement. Could it be that an attack by the Indians was threatened? Remembering his bonds, Callum’s blood ran cold. The force, while strong enough for protection against unauthorized vagabonds or possible bands of robbers, could not resist successfully an organized assault by the braves of this great tribe. He might well be forgotten in such a crisis--left here bound and helpless, to be captured and tortured and burned. The next moment, listening with every pulse tense, he realized that the voices were those of the soldiers in altercation or extenuation. One shrilly clamoring in Gaelic, as if the strength of his lungs and the pitch of the tone could render his gibberish intelligible to Lieutenant Everard, revealed to Callum’s practised ear the cause of the disturbance.

An Indian horse-race had been held in a neighboring town, and albeit this amusement was one which appealed especially to the tastes of the pleasure-loving lieutenant, so grievously debarred and deplorably dull on this uncongenial expedition, he would not attend it himself and issued positive orders that no man of the force should be present. Nay, he went so far as to see to it that none had leave of absence from the camp on any pretext on the day when this diversion took place. He very definitely appreciated the perils which menaced his little command in case of any antagonism or open quarrel with the tribesmen of the towns. Had his mission been strictly military, to make a stanch defense or a brisk onslaught, it would have been far simpler, in his estimation, whatever dangers or disasters hostility might involve. But the success of his mission depended upon the preservation of a strict peace. Apart from the safe-conduct and guardianship of the commissioners and their attendants, fully one third of the party being non-combatants,--and no man believes so implicitly as does the British regular in the absolute incapacity of the non-professional to do battle in any behalf, or to be of any belligerent value even in his own defense,--the interests of the government were at stake. Nothing could so quickly sow the seeds of dissension, the acute officer argued within himself, as the winning of the Indians’ money and valuable furs and other choice gear at the projected horse-race. He did not doubt that charges of fraud would arise, a fracas ensue, the security of the commissioners’ camp be placed in jeopardy, and the cession itself imperiled. Hence his self-denial, for he was a good judge of horseflesh himself, and dearly loved a show of speed, and the Cherokees of that day owned some extraordinary animals.

Everard had felt himself extremely ill used by fate, as he was turning away from the camp-fire, after his dismissal of the astonished corporal with the prisoner, and his low bow to salute the disappearance of Mr. Herbert Taviston. His face was smarting with pain from the blow, his heart burned hot within him, his pride upbraided his condescension to this man of low estate, who had so ungratefully requited recognition of his real quality as a born gentleman. While Everard was beginning to revolve troublous doubts as to how the course of action upon which he had resolved in these unprecedented circumstances would be regarded by his mess and superior officers, a new and unprovoked disaster was presented. One of the corporals in the functions of officer of the day appeared, and with a mechanical salute and a look of abject despair reported that several of the men, three English soldiers and one Highlander, had run the guard that afternoon and had attended the horse-race, in which they had found their account. They had smuggled into camp after dark a quantity of valuable furs, some strings of the fresh-water pearls of the region, and the Highlander had jingling in his sporran some French money, several louis d’ors. So successfully indeed had they managed their enterprise that its discovery was made only through the anxiety of the Cherokees to repossess themselves of these pieces of French gold. By no means adepts in banking principles, they had, nevertheless, with an unassisted natural intelligence evolved the idea of a premium. As soon as the headmen learned the fact of the loss of this money, they secretly offered to redeem the louis d’ors with English currency and pay a guinea extra for the exchange. The “mad young man,” Wahuhu by name, who had been grievously deprived by fate of his money, browbeaten by his elders upon discovery of the circumstances, and sent upon this secret errand to retrieve the disaster, was greatly perturbed by the unaccustomed restrictions of the camp. He had himself sought to run the sentry, and being taken in charge by the officer of the guard, naïvely demanded to see and confer with a certain Highland soldier. By adroit cross-questioning the facts had been elicited by the corporal--little by little because of the Indian’s reluctance to disclose aught and the linguistic deficiencies of the Highlander.

“Lord, sir, he is a poor creature!” said the corporal, laying the matter before his superior officer. “He cannot talk at all.”

“An enlisted man cannot be dumb,” said the officer with asperity.

“No, sir, but he can’t be understood, sir. He can talk no English, nor even the gibberish they call ‘braid Scotch,’ nor yet Cherokee. He has nothin’ but the Gaelic, sir.”

“And yet he can run the guard and bet at a horse-race?”

“Yes, sir; an’ win his sporran full o’ louis d’ors!”

And with true Scotch thrift the accomplished personage in question would not be parted from them. Thus it was that his voice was presently lifted in the midnight. He spoke on his own behalf. He mistrusted the interpretation of his Scotch comrades, for his ear discerned the difference in their accent from the speech of the English soldiers and the lieutenant, and he cherished the conviction that were the Gaelic but addressed directly and distinctly to the commanding officer, he being a sensible man could not steel his comprehension against it. Wherefore the Highlander yelped and shrilly piped into the night air until the very hem of his kilt quivered with his vocalizations, and the lieutenant stood as if bewitched before him, gazing at the spectacle he presented.

The whole camp was astir. Lights gleamed in sundry tents, all white and translucent in the darkness. Military figures had ventured out and stood in the shadows, some bearing weapons on the pretext of having fancied the tumult a summons to arms. The officer of the guard had attended with the Indian negotiator, who was instantly set at liberty by the order of the lieutenant, but who still lingered with wild eyes and a constant keen turning of the head to and fro to see and to hear; that he was not altogether unsupported might be inferred from vague vistas that the camp lights flung down the aisles of the forest, where shadowy faces and feathered crests showed, flitting like a fancy. And of all, the central figure was Eachin MacEachin, his red hair rough from his pillow and his well-earned dreams of wealth; his dress in disarray, one stocking well-braced and gartered, the other hanging over his shoe and showing his shapely sturdy leg and his great bare rough red knee; his kilt fluttering in the wind; his freckled face eager and distorted with his vociferations to his discerning commander. And in truth, aided by adroit gesticulations, his words were not so far from intelligible. He spurned the proposition of an exchange. As he opened his sporran of badger skin and took therefrom a glittering gold piece and exhibited it to the lieutenant, then with an ecstatic leer put it between his strong white teeth and bit hard on it to prove it genuine, there was no need for a mortified compatriot, who had volunteered to interpret to the officer, to say,--

“She aye threepit she ha’ gotten ta gowd, sir. She mistrust ta English guinea.” Then with a look of blank distress, “She’ll aye mainteen she saw muckle French gowd in ta Forty-foive. She’ll no be so well acquent wi’ ta guinea.”