Part 2

Presently there entered two “beloved men,” each bearing a conch shell high in the right hand. They first crossed the apartment, one going to the right, the other to the left, singing mystic words in a low tone as they came; then once more taking a transverse course, they met in front of Moy Toy and the two guests of distinction, to whom they presented, with both hands, the two shells full of the so-called consecrated beverage. As these were lifted, with both hands, to the lips of the guests, the two “beloved men” broke forth with a sonorous bass note, “_Yo!_” then with a tenor effect they sang the syllable, “_He!_” prolonged to the utmost possibility of holding the breath, during which sound the visitor must continue to drink the cacina. It required, perhaps, all the strength of mind and stomach which the French officer could muster, but he did not desist nor lower the shell till the gasping “_Wah!_” placed a period to his torments.

Others then partook of the black drink in turn, and presently amidst the wreaths of blue smoke and the white flare of the burning cane, while the earthen drums began to beat sonorously, sinuous, leaping shadows were flung across the hard, clay floor and on the red walls of the circular building; for the eagle-tail dance was in progress in the presence of the honored guests, the great fans of feathers waving high in the uplifted hands of the agile warriors, as they sprang elastically into the air, exhibiting many intricate steps and difficult attitudes.

These solemn politico-religious ceremonies of welcome concluded, the Cherokees gave themselves over to various devices to amuse and entertain their guests, for this was a characteristic trait of their hospitality. There would be horse-races on the morrow and dances again, but without significance either political or religious, and long and elaborate feastings, for they could set forth a table with “fifty different viands.” The Cherokees had not at this period begun the downward course,--the relinquishment of their national customs, primitive manufactures, religion, method of government, habits of extreme cleanliness,--the wholesale degeneration which seems inevitable before new standards, new customs, new religion, a new nationality, can be adjusted to a people in a state of transition. The night being as yet but little spent, one of their ancient pantomimes[4] was essayed for the entertainment of the guests; and during its performance the frequency of the ringing laugh of the French officer, and the grunt of approval of the Choctaw chief, brought the same expression of gratified complacency and chastened thankfulness to the anxious faces of Moy Toy and the other headmen of Tellico Great that sophisticated hosts now wear upon the success of an entertainment upon which important interests depend. It began with a surprise. Suddenly a bulky shadow fell within the doorway,--the women clustering about the entrance shrieked in a sort of delighted affright and scuttled aside. The heavy, guttural laugh of the Indian--a merry soul at his sports--fell iteratively on the air. A bear had entered, clumsy, heavily shuffling, snuffing tentatively about, evidently to be imagined as ranging the woods, and with now and then a glance over his shoulder to see another bear ponderously lumbering in. So close was the imitation of the ursine gait and ungainliness, so crafty the disguise in the beast’s paws and hide, distended to full proportions by concealed wooden hoops, that one might have believed the manifestation genuine but for a lamenting “stage-whisper,” as it were, delivered in plaintive Cherokee, touching a bit of the burning cane which had lodged upon the slant of a too inquisitive snout nosing about the fire. It was hastily brushed off by one of the young tribesmen of the audience, all of whom laughed gleefully at the mischance and the helpless plight of the singed Bruin.

And now entered two hunters in full sylvan array. The bears skulked, chiefly among the audience; the nimrods stalked them; the bears fled; the hunters pursued; the beasts turned at bay,--when the hunters themselves fled frantically, amidst howls of derision from the younger people. This mockery seemed to restore the nerve of the hunters, who presently returned to the effort and with such ardor that they finally “treed” the bears, who nimbly climbed the sleek, round columns that supported the roof of the edifice. Thence they were pulled down forcibly, first by one foot, then the others; at last all fell, hunters and bears together, in an undiscriminated heap on the floor, where after a terrific mock struggle, the bears were dispatched by the expedient of cutting their throats, with a vast effusion of blood and howls of remonstrance from the beasts, expressed in excellent Cherokee.

The two vanquished animals as early as practicable crept out of their skins, left weltering in the blood on the floor, and mingled with their admirers in the audience, laughing a great deal and discussing the play:--how the struggle might have been prolonged but for this and that; how one bear, according to his own account, need not have been killed at all, so expert a beast was he, except that he had yielded himself at last a sacrifice to the popular entertainment; and how one hunter could have easily slain this same boastful bear at the very outset by a single blow on the head, to which his more than bearish awkwardness exposed him, but was moved to spare him and thus extend his career, also from the disinterested motive of promoting and conserving the sport of the indulgent audience.

It was all indeed very cleverly done, as even Laroche thought, who had seen pantomimes in Paris, and Push-koosh manifested as much hilarious good will as the Choctaw “Prince Baby” ever permitted himself to experience. The French officer, however, despite his absorption in the histrionic display, had not been unmindful of the notables in the audience either in Paris or here. More than once to-night his gaze was caught by a pair of eyes large and gentle, luminous as a deer’s and as untamed in expression, appropriately set in the face of one of the Cherokee women. She was hardly in her first youth, although she seemed singularly fresh, alert, spirited, enjoying the pantomime with childish delight. She was evidently not less than twenty-two or three years of age, and he being rather elderly himself,--some twenty-eight years,--thought this well advanced in life and an age of wisdom. She was slender and, like all the Cherokees, of notable height, and when the crowd was out of the state-house he saw her again, glimmering with willowy grace in the moonlight. The distorted, gibbous sphere of pearl was high above the violet mountains and the gray and misty valleys, and he thought the woman beautiful and picturesquely placed in the solemn and splendid environment of the ranges, for he was accustomed to the bizarre details of savage raiment. The skirt of her tunic-like garb of white, dressed doeskin reached a trifle below the knee, and she wore the long, white, doeskin buskin, fitting closely, that came half as high; around each leg, below the knee, was tied a soft, dressed otter-skin, hung with glittering, metal “bell buttons,” that tinkled as she walked. Her hair, anointed and glossy in the moonlight, was tied and dressed high on the head, and was stuck full of the quills of the white pigeon. Her head was clearly defined against the dark blue of the instarred sky, as she threw it backward and gazed at the moon as if to verify some calculation of time, its light full in her lustrous eyes. Then she turned, and running swiftly past, disappeared in the violet shadows.

He did not soon think of her again. She was only a picturesque element in this state of quaint barbarity, a momentary incident in the scenes of an evening overcrowded with impressive grotesqueries. He had no idea to whom Mingo Push-koosh alluded when he said suddenly, “_Eho in-ta-na-ah!_” (The woman has mourned the appointed time!)

The two French emissaries were alone now; they had been conducted to a building called the stranger-house, designed for the accommodation of casual guests, and which was assigned to them to be their headquarters during their stay. It too was furnished with the row of cane divans around the walls, which served as benches during the day and as beds at night. The house was the usual cabin of the Indians, built without nails, or a hinge, or a bit of metal in any sort, yet “genteel and convenient and so very secure, as if it were to screen them from an approaching hurricane,” says an old British trader, who lived for many years in one of them. The posts were of the most durable wood and deeply set in the ground, the timbers were accurately fitted to one another, the wall plates, rafters, and eave boards had been all stanchly bound together with the elastic splints of white oak or hickory, and with strips of wet buffalo hide, which tighten and harden as they dry. A partition separated the room from another, wherein was disposed the Choctaw escort. Within and without, the building was whitewashed with the coarse, marly clay of the region, and the walls sent back with responsive, silver glimmers the moonlight, falling through the narrow door and into the face of the officer, who had stretched himself at length in full uniform on the divan, to rest a bit before divesting himself of his military finery and disposing himself to slumber. The ceremonies and excitements of the evening, following a day of exertion and hard marching, had resulted in making his eyelids heavy.

“_Omeh!_” (Yes!) he assented, hardly hearing the remark, and answering at random.

Push-koosh sat upright on the opposite side of the room as if he could know no fatigue, and gazed loweringly across at the Frenchman.

“_Che-a-sa-ah!_” (I am displeased with you!) the Choctaw hissed out. “What makes your lying tongue so strong?”

The French lieutenant roused himself. “_Mon cher enfant_,” he declared, “I know you consider a lie no disgrace, it being your daily food, but I have told you once, and I tell you again, that if you throw it into my teeth I will beat that flat head of yours flatter than it is!”

“You don’t even know of whom I am speaking--you answer like a child!” said Push-koosh in a mollified tone.

Something had come to him out of the night, the moonlight, the soft lustre of dark eyes,--something as intangible as the flickering illusions of the heat lightning, as inexplicable as the fleeting wind, as tenuous as the wing of a moth,--a fancy!--and he must needs talk of it. Therefore he would concede. He would forego his resentment for this cavalier inattention. He smiled as if he had been in jest.

“_Unta?_” (Well?) said Laroche interrogatively.

“_Eho in-ta-na-ah!_” Push-koosh repeated.

The versatile Frenchman was sore smitten with sleep. “What woman?” he said drowsily. “What mourning?”

“Her husband is dead! The Muscogee killed him three years ago!” said Push-koosh, with stalwart satisfaction in the fact. “And she has mourned the appointed time. You could have seen, but that you are a blind French mole, that her hair is no longer flowing loose, but is anointed and tied and dressed full of white quills!”

Sleep suddenly quitted its hold on the French lieutenant. He lifted himself alertly on one elbow and looked animatedly at Push-koosh. “_Eho chookoma!_” (The beautiful woman!) he cried with enthusiasm. “Not so much of a mole as you think! _Pas si bête, mon bijou. Pas cette espèce de bête!!_”

He shook his wise head with emphasis and laid himself down again. Push-koosh glowered at him with a sudden, angry fear. This fervor of admiration on the part of the French lieutenant boded ill to that ethereal fancy which had fallen about the Choctaw chief as lightly as a gossamer web of the weaving spider, and now held him like a network of steel chains. He said abruptly, with seeming irrelevance and his infantile candor, “I wish you had killed yourself last week!”

For the mercurial Frenchman had often seizures of deep despondency, in which he sometimes announced with sincerity that he designed to place a period to his existence. Such a crisis had supervened on the journey hither, in which, however, Push-koosh was concerned as little as might be. True, there had been some peculiarly irritating incidents in their relations; they baited each other, and bickered on slight occasion, and argued violently on untenable grounds, for which neither cared an iota, and conducted themselves generally as young men do when constrained to work together with but scant personal sympathy. But Laroche’s discontent had a far more serious source. He was disappointed of the distinction which he had hoped to attain in this mission.

Apart from the diplomatic and secret details with which he was intrusted, and the check that he was expected to maintain upon the loyalty, or rather the suspected disloyalty of Push-koosh, whose personal presence was necessary to reconcile certain ancient enmities between the Choctaws and Cherokees, and thus facilitate and set forth the special values of the French alliance, Laroche was charged with an affair of professional importance which Push-koosh imagined was the only reason that he had been ordered to accompany the Choctaw embassy,--so crafty were the methods of the French with the crafty savages. Laroche’s open instructions contemplated the investigation of certain obstructions in the _Rivière des Chéraquis_ (since called the Great Tennessee), which had hitherto proved an insuperable bar to the continuous transportation of goods from New Orleans to the Cherokee Nation by means of that great waterway. Not trinkets, the Indians craved, not paints, nor beads, nor even cutlery, but those costly treasures of arms, powder, and lead which the Cherokees valued beyond all things, because without constant and adequate supplies of such munitions of war they could never hope to take the field again, eventually throw off the yoke of the British, and keep foothold on the land which was their own, and which they loved with all the fervent devotion of the mountaineer to his native heights. Therefore they had hitherto listened to the counsels of the French, who were now especially eager to meet all expectations, perhaps because they were still involved themselves in hostilities with the English elsewhere, perhaps because they still cherished that old scheme of so many visionaries--from the logical plans of Iberville, futilely projected so long ago, to the subtle intrigues of the German Jesuit, Christian Priber, only twenty-five years previous--to invade the Carolinas and Georgia at the head of twelve thousand warriors of confederated Indian tribes.

But the transportation of supplies to the Cherokees by pack-train overland was impracticable, since the intervening country was held by the hostile Chickasaws, ever devoted to the British, and the French had still a lively recollection of their defeats by this intrepid tribe at the towns of Ash-wick-boo-ma, where D’Artaguette met his cruel fate, and Ackia, the scene of the discomfiture of Bienville. Therefore in the Cherokee War, a large pettiaugre laden with warlike stores was sent up the Mississippi from New Orleans, armed with swivel guns to repress the Chickasaws, who in flying squads nevertheless harassed the progress of the boat by a sharp musketry delivered from the river bluffs. This danger passed, the expedition failed for a different reason. It returned bootless, having abandoned the attempt on account of the insurmountable obstructions to navigation in the Cherokee River.

The French authorities at New Orleans had good reason to doubt the report of the extent of these difficulties, for hitherto their boats had ascended occasionally to Great Tellico,--perhaps in a different stage of the water. They ordered a survey of the locality with a view of such removal of the reefs as might afford a practicable channel at all seasons,--a second earnest effort to meet the needs of the Cherokees, with a systematic and continuous supply of stores, being in contemplation.

Laroche, who had served as a lieutenant of engineers as well as of artillery, had been charged with the duty of removing the obstruction if practicable, and a pettiaugre laden with such means as were deemed fitted to further this design had been dispatched up the Mississippi and Ohio in advance of the expedition overland from Fort Tombecbé to meet him at the point where the navigation of the Cherokee River became difficult. The young officer had expected to encounter some reefs, a goodish stretch of rapids perhaps, a few dangerous, troublesome rocks. He found vast whirlpools, and endless vistas of maddened waters, and shoals, shoals, shoals,--twenty miles of muscle shoals, three miles wide. Even Push-koosh had cried out in amaze at the phenomenon of the turbulent rapids, declaring that the devils, the _hottuk ookproose_, were dancing under the waters, for he had heard for ten miles the devil’s own song that they sung, _tarooa ookpro’sto_ (the tune of the accursed one).

As Laroche realized the total impossibility of the undertaking, and saw vanishing all his hopes of distinction in this valid and valuable service, he forthwith sat down on a rock beside the rioting waters, bowed his head on his hands, and cried out to a “_juste ciel_” that this was really too strong, that there was no use in trying to live any longer, and that he was minded to kill himself.

Suicide is always more or less fashionable among Frenchmen. Perhaps the passionate grief of his utterance was not wholly devoid of intention. But as he lifted his dreary eyes, the animated interest and curiosity to see him take his life which the face of Push-koosh expressed effectually deterred him. The spectacle would be too delightfully gratifying to the Choctaw! The humor of the situation appealed to the mercurial French lieutenant, and the pendulum swung back again.

The thought of self-destruction had not recurred to his mind until to-night, when Push-koosh mentioned his bootless threat.

“But why, _mon pauvre Bébé, mon petit chou_,--why should you wish that I had killed myself?” Laroche demanded.

Push-koosh hesitated. He felt that his jealousy was a derogation, and was glad that his hasty words had not betrayed it to the officer, whom he esteemed a dull, inattentive fellow at best, continually occupied with his little idols, which he carried in a box and would let no one else touch,--his spy-glass, his spirit-level, his quadrant, and his compass, which last he declared knew the north, and without which he could not draw a map, as Push-koosh could on a gourd or a bit of bark or a stretch of clear sand,--he knew little, very little, that French officer, Laroche!

“_Unta--Illet minte!_” (Well--Death is coming!) the Choctaw said casually, as if he spoke generally and at random.

“Not yet! not yet!” cried the officer, remembering the diabolic tumult of the waters. “Let the devils dance! I can be merry too! I have a scheme to outwit them. A great thing, my Baby, to outwit the devils!”

Twice he paused to think of it in laying aside his sword and drawing off his coat. Push-koosh made no move toward preparing for slumber. Long after the lieutenant was still, quite still, beneath the delicately dressed and softened panther skins that sufficed for bedding on the elastic cane-wrought mattresses, Push-koosh sat upright on the couch on the opposite side of the room gazing steadfastly at him,--the long, thin figure suggested beneath the folds of the drapery of the primitive bed; the white powdered hair that had lost much of its frosty touches streaming backward, long, loose, the ends slightly curling; the eyes meekly closed; the moonlight in the white, tired, sleeping face, youthful, but grave, pensive, saddened vaguely. That was the way, perhaps, he would have looked had he taken his life as he had threatened. And Push-koosh, still intently eyeing him, wished again that he had.

II

TOWARD dawn the frogs, antiphonally chanting down by the water-side, ceased their chorusing clamors. Now and again a croaking voice sounded raucously alone,--then came silence. The moon was all solitary in the “beloved square,”--not even an errant gust of wind to bear her company. In broad, still, white effulgence the radiance rested unbroken on the sandy stretch and the dark, narrow row of cabins, devoted to public and official business, on each side of the quadrangular space. The more remote dwellings cast shadows wherever the boughs of the overhanging trees left the ground clear. Here too was silence, save in one hut whence issued the voice of a wakeful infant, as boldly bawling as if it were some cherished scion of civilization. Gradually, insensibly, the world took on an aspect of gray dimness. The mountains looming around began to definitely darken. The stars had all grown faint; for the sun would not await the moon’s descent, and presently, driving hard, his chariot was on the steep eastern summits; the song of birds, the trumpet-blast of the wind, the whispering voice of rustling pines, the dash of glancing waters, and human cries of joy and cheer were elicited as if these matutinal sounds partook of the quality of light.

The French officer, dead beat, still slumbered, but Push-koosh rose, stretched himself, and still arrayed in his splendid ambassadorial attire went out into the freshness of the dawning day and the renewing possibilities of the world. A man who hoped to make naught of dancing devils should have been earlier astir.

There was a scene of activity down at the river bank. The pettiaugre of their expedition, which had been brought to the Muscle Shoals of the Cherokee River laden with powder to aid in the removal of the barriers to free navigation, had been steered with great difficulty and at considerable risk through the rapids, repeatedly grazing the bottom, although it was a much smaller craft of the kind than was usual for the conveyance of freight. Proceeding thence up the stream, it had succeeded in passing safely the “whirl,” the “boiling pot,”--known now to modern engineers as the “mountain obstructions,”--and albeit somewhat the worse for the hard wear of its experiment, it had finally reached the smoother waters of the Little Tennessee, and continuing a placid progress along its curves, was coming in to land at the town of Great Tellico.

It was the intention to present the cargo as a token of amity from the French governor to the town of Tellico, such being Laroche’s instructions from Kerlerec in case the powder could not be used in the removal of the reefs.

Only a few of the Cherokees were on the bank, and in obedience to their signaled advice, the Choctaws on the pettiaugre had sheered off from the shallows, where a landing had been at first contemplated, and where the craft would have gotten aground at an inconvenient distance from the shore, to seek a deeper haven indicated by the Cherokees, who, as they ran up and down, gesticulated violently in the sign language, and, in lieu of comprehensible, articulate phrases, uttered wild cries, curiously unmusical, like the voice of the dumb.