Part 20

The words were echoed with an intonation of perplexed despair. Then a despondent silence ensued until Yachtino, the warrior who had first spoken, reiterated: “The coins must be taken from the officer--if they were the breath of his life!”

“But how?” the question came again.

Callum wondered no longer at their agitation. The louis d’ors were of the coinage of 1762, and therefore revealed the fact of renewed machinations with the French, in direct contravention of the terms of the treaty of peace of 1761 between the Cherokees and the British government, which expressly forbade all trade on the part of the Indians with other nations, especially the French, who, being still at war with Great Britain, were to be denied admission to any of the Cherokee towns and intercourse with the tribe, the Cherokees pledging themselves to surrender or kill such intruders. The Indians, indeed, had much to fear from the discovery of this breach of the treaty. They gloomily foreboded therefrom the collapse of the favorable phases of the cession. This secret hope on their part was to effect from the purchase money the speedy supply of the tribe with powder, and thus perpetuate their national existence. The ammunition must needs be secured before any intimation of renewed hostilities, and thus the British government actually would furnish the money for another attack upon its own frontiers. The French would doubtless afford the Cherokees substantial aid, but despite the fairest promises, they were unable to fully supply the savages with ammunition in the last campaign of the furious Cherokee war against the British, failing the Indians at their utmost need. Thus at the critical juncture all their previous fierce and bloody successes were brought to naught. For as a nation the Cherokees were now practically disarmed and at the mercy of any demand made from a basis of powder and lead. It was a new point of view from which to contemplate the proposed cession of land, and Callum felt as if the gourd on his head had spun quite round, since from the English standpoint the cession was designed to bring the Cherokee tribe more definitely under the domination of the British government by strengthening its occupation among them, and thereby monopolizing their trade.

And here, in the British officer’s keeping, was the unfortunate French money of the coinage of 1762, that told so straight a tale amidst all these subtle and devious windings of savage statecraft. Callum recognized an imprudence on Everard’s part, against which, however, only superhuman wisdom could have guarded, in having overlooked, in the agitation of the moment, the presence of Wahuhu, who had lost the coins at the races,--the sad Screech-owl, who yet perceived with great keenness, and argued with an impeccable ratiocination, and witnessed the transference of the money to official keeping after the lieutenant had scrutinized the date of the coinage. The mere transference of the louis d’ors Callum regarded lightly. Their equivalent in “ta guinea” would undoubtedly be returned, when the force should reach Charlestown, to the man who had at so many risks won the money, and who would easily be reconciled to the English currency in the bliss of the exercise of its purchasing power. Everard intended to reserve the coins themselves to be shown to the royal governor, with the significance of date and freshness of mintage, and these facts would be made a part of the lieutenant’s report to his superior officer, offering in support of his account of the matter ocular demonstration of the louis d’ors. Anything that touched upon French machinations among the Cherokees, from whose atrocities the English had suffered so severely in the Cherokee War, and who had been subdued at so great a cost of blood and time and treasure, was of paramount importance in this year of grace 1762, and not to be lightly argued aside.

As Callum watched the fiercely reflective faces of the group, he realized that they contemplated more in the enterprise to serve their object than the mere recovery of the coins. An accident might adroitly account for the event. Some opportune misfortune often befell men charged with disaster to others.

“But how?” the question came again, as if it voiced a common train of thought. In fact they all seemed to think in unison, until one of the group, suddenly looking up, said,--

“But the tongues of the ugly commissioners are strong. They eat much food, they drink much wine, and the British government pays them money for their wisdom. The many black marks that they put on paper will report the French money, the coinage of this year, to the governor. And yet the wings of the eagles overshadow the commissioners, and for the sake of the cession they must not be touched.”

“_Usinuli! Usinuli!_” urged the voice of Time, as once more the self-constituted lookout scanned the reaches of the path.

“The commissioners have never shaken hands firmly with the speech of the lieutenant,” replied an authoritative voice, “and the lieutenant tells _nothing_ to the commissioners.”

Canting his eye askew, to look through the orifices of the ear of the image painted on the gourd, Callum saw--to his surprise and indignation, for his heart was still in the undertaking--the Cherokee guide of the commissioners’ expedition, whose utilities as a spy for his own people must have been very marked and duplicated his services. He went on with great animation to discuss the mutual relations of the personnel of the expedition.

“The commissioners have never tied fast the old beloved friend-knot with the lieutenant, and the lieutenant despises the commissioners. They are not soldiers, and they look very small in his eyes. And they talk till his ears are tired. When he is scornful he speaks of them as ‘lady-like old men,’ and when he is angry he calls them ‘gentlemanly old ladies’! He trusts them not at all--with nothing!”

“_Usinuli! Usinuli!_” The sound of doom!

“But though the lieutenant has taken the coins into his own keeping the soldiers have seen them,” said the Indian, who seemed to evolve all the objections for the others to combat, that the scheme might thus be battered, as it were, into solid shape.

“Only the bird that flies high sees far,” retorted Yachtino quickly. “The flock of pigeon soldiers see nothing--they would never notice the date of the coins--the man in command keeps his eyes open and his thoughts awake. Besides, what are rumors among mere soldiers,--the chatter of grasshoppers! The French gold that they have seen--what does French gold signify? It may have been here for years for all they know,--those years when the true emblem of the French was the white dressed doeskin, and the British the long scalping knife. Now those conflicts of the past are wiped out by the treaty, and its strong lying mouth has said that our tears are dried and our wounds closed. But the coinage of 1762--that is a far different matter! It proves a direct breach of the treaty, and that once more we have taken the great French Father fast by the arm and close to the shoulder. And the path is straight no more! If the French coins of 1762 were hidden in the heart of the officer they must be cut out!”

“_Usinuli! Usinuli!_” The sound was like the beating of a muffled drum in the ears of Callum MacIlvesty, for he realized that the life of the officer was forfeited to the knowledge, which he alone had acquired, of the date of the coins. Should he be permitted to reach Charlestown, whether with or without the fatal pieces, his disclosure of the facts would mean added punishment and renewed restrictions for the Cherokees, already so heavily chastised, the cautious hampering of the Indian trade, and the rupture of the terms of the land cession, through the purchase money of which they hoped for ultimate freedom. It was too plain: the officer with this knowledge in his possession would be prevented from ever again reaching Charlestown.

But how--that suspicion might impute naught to the agency of the Indians? they asked again of one another. How could he be found accessible and alone? How could he be secured without an attack upon the whole party, which was not to be contemplated, since this would of necessity involve the destruction of the proposed scheme of the cession of land and its financial value to the Cherokee nation--possibly resulting in the extermination of the whole people. Therefore still, “But how?”

“Already they have lost a man,”--once more the current of the common thought flowed in words,--“this is a wild country. Many paths lead far--far--with no return. All our little brothers--the panther, the wolf, the wildcat--are many, many--and they none of them are the little brothers of the white man. Should he offend the little brothers he would hardly know how to hide from them! Then there are many wandering Indians from the French settlements, and knowing that the great French Father is still at war with the English king, they would rejoice to slay a man in the British uniform. The British have already lost a man on this expedition--they may well lose another.”

Yet how to compass this that the force of the blow might have no recoil! And once more an interval of deep and silent meditation fell upon the group.

The Cherokee spy and guide, whose sensibilities had been evidently ruffled by the manner of the man who employed and paid him, suddenly threw himself into an attitude mimicking Everard’s stiff military carriage.

“_Agiyahusa asgaya! Agiyahusa asgaya!_” (I have lost a man!) he cried in Cherokee, but marred with a queer English accent. A slow smile pervaded the grim circle. “_Agiyahusa asgaya!_ the Capteny bleats this through every town. His redcoats search every house and field.”

The Ancient Warrior trembled.

“‘Capteny, _asgaya gigagei_?’” (Captain, a red man?--meaning a British redcoat.) The spy rehearsed this with an affectation of the bated breath of extreme solicitude and a crouching mockery of his own manner of respect. Then with a perfect reproduction of Everard’s petulant arrogance, despite the broken English, “No, no, my good man! I have lost no red soldier, but my plaid soldier, my tartan man, my MacIlvesty! Five guineas reward to the man who brings him to the guard-house before nightfall!”

The officer evidently would pay roundly for the privilege of the lash. His vengeance was indeed afire, and Callum’s cheek burned with a flame to match. They should never take him alive he swore beneath his breath.

“_Usinuli! Usinuli!_” The words swung back and forth like a pendulum chronicling the passing of the moments; and suddenly Callum recognized, blended with the iterative chant, the regular throb of the hoof-beat of horses approaching along the trading-path at a fair pace.

In another moment there issued from the forest a dozen of the English soldiers all mounted, and with Lieutenant Everard riding at their head. Beside him was Mr. Herbert Taviston, bland, smiling, perceiving in the stir and the difficulty that beset the officer only a fine opportunity to browse about a bit in the woods safe from Indians and panthers--the unique advantage of botanizing with a military escort. The lieutenant’s keen eyes, falling upon the group around the Ancient Warrior, discerned at once in them men of station and authority, judging merely from the expression of their countenances, for the occasion being unofficial, they wore no insignia of rank. He at once halted his party, and called out in his crisp, peremptory tones a request to be allowed to search the town. His guide interpreted, and as the chief, Yachtino, gravely and ceremoniously assented, Everard thanked him curtly and turned to admonish the corporal.

“See to it that the varlets give no offense, Baker,” he said. “If the man is taken bring him before me at once.”

“Oh, the poor young man, to be sure!” exclaimed the botanist, his eyes gloating the while upon Chilhowee Mountain; every leaf of the myriads it flaunted, red and amber and purple and brown, he could call out of its name with Latin equivalents as flamboyant as the foliage. “Not found yet!”

He had utterly forgotten the provocation that occasioned the arrest and the object of the search, that it held aught more serious than the acquisition which he had made of a certain parasitic plant, the Indian pipe--or let us imitate Mr. Taviston and say _Monotropa uniflora_--delicate, wax-like stems of which he now held tenderly in his spare white fingers, not altogether devoid of similarity to that unique growth.

“I wish to God I could lay my hands on him! I can give my mind to nothing else till I take him,” declared the officer fervently, all unaware that as he looked casually at the effigy he was gazing straight into the eyes of the man whom he sought, and who returned a look of fire.

It was a somewhat fluctuating scrutiny that Everard gave the scarecrow, as he sat upon his fine bay horse, for the animal, in spirited impatience of the detention, shifted his position continually, pawing the ground and tossing his head, despite the rein and spur and curb. Thus splendidly mounted, Everard presented a gallant aspect, his showy scarlet coat, white breeches, cocked hat, and polished boots as perfect and precise in this wilderness as if worn on parade. His fine dark eyes and expressive features only needed in general a cast of gravity and dignity to render them imposing, and this his anger and sense of responsibility had compassed.

The Indians of the group gazed fixedly at him. They had their own reasons, intimately associated with the louis d’ors in his pocket, to regard him with a deep morbid curiosity--very shocking to a civilized mind--as a living man who must soon in their interest be dead. And once more the question stirred every brain, “But how?” The Highlander saw his enemy resplendent in all the regalia and rank equally appropriate to his own condition by right of descent, and remembered and repeated in his sore consciousness every word of the foolish, half drunken, brutal fleer of the night before. And the Indian girl, the Cherokee Rose, still at her work hard by, unobserved in the midst of the standing maize, hearing yet unheeding all that had been said, gazed upon the officer with a dazzled reverence, as one might behold the glittering martial vision of the archangel Michael.

Nothing so glorious had ever blazed in her wildest dreams. All her imaginings of the graces and glamours of the Ancient Warrior in the charm of his youth and the heyday of his achievement paled and grew dim and faded out of comparison with this magnificent palpitant reality. Her hands rested petrified upon the ear of corn which she was about to wrest from its stalk. Her eyes, dilated, fascinated, glowed upon him. She scarcely dared to breathe, and for one moment silence encompassed the group. The breeze only vaguely rustled through the crisp, sere blades and stalks; the usual sounds of the town were annulled now, with its “beloved square” vacant, its council-house still, and its women and girls all away at their labors in the further fields. It sent up a mere murmur that came drowsily to the ear on the perfumed suave air of this sunlit autumnal day, for the search, orderly in its conduct, was not resisted, and made scant stir. The officer’s horse broke an interval of almost absolute stillness when it once more lowered its head and fretfully beat the earth with its high-stepping, impatient forefoot. Suddenly the elderly commissioner started from his saddle with an exclamation of bland delight.

“Found, sir, found at last!”

The officer’s horse executed an abrupt demivolt as its bewildered rider looked hastily around, expectant of seeing the fugitive. The Ancient Warrior himself crouched appalled in his flimsy disguise.

The amiable Mr. Taviston went on in his address to the lieutenant. “Do you remember last night?” he sweetly queried, while Everard mentally asked himself would he ever forget it. “I had then the pleasure to direct your attention to it--the _Nicotiana rustica_.”

The learned man was afoot now and in the path, and it may be doubted if a person of his quality, so dapper, so sprucely clad in his fine brown cloth and silver buckles, ever sustained a glance so surcharged with contempt as the look which the officer bent upon him, albeit Everard had just had a sharp lesson touching undue intolerance, and Mr. Herbert Taviston was of far more worshipful presence in his worldly minded wig and cocked hat than in his intimate, reclusive, betasseled nightcap. His trim legs were carrying him briskly into the field, and a beatific smile of scientific satisfaction was upon his serene, smoothly shaven cheeks and his slightly doubled chin. He paused where a row of plants of the “old religious tobacco” had once flourished and one or two had chanced to escape the garnering knife. Before plucking a leaf he said with punctilious courtesy to the nearest astounded Cherokee, “May I?”

The stolid Indians were obviously thrown into confusion by this unexpected demonstration. It seemed to them that the white people, even those of the same nationality, were infinitely various, and that there was no reasoning on the basis of the common customs and traits of a gens. Here were two Englishmen as unlike, as far apart in every pulse and every phase of character, as if no national tie bound them together. The inherent courtesy of the savage aided the botanist, however, and the nearest Indian vouchsafed a bewildered mutter of assent. With “A thousand thanks, my dear sir--monstrous obleeged, I’m sure,” Mr. Taviston plucked some leaves of the old religious tobacco and still happily ambling, retraced his way to the side of the horse of the officer, who had hardly yet recovered from the impression that the sudden cry of discovery heralded the finding of the fugitive and the appropriate finale of his dilemma.

“Now, my dear sir,” said the botanist, holding up to the lieutenant a few of the leaves, “let me beg that you will do me the favor to taste these. My own tongue is still tingling with the pungency of mint, and the discernment of my palate thereby blunted.”

And once more he offered the leaves.

It is possible that the officer had no fear of a probable tobacco worm in the unwashed foliage, still lush and green, and he was also strongly conscious of the inscrutable, attentive faces of the Indians. He had always given orders that his men should observe caution in the presence of the savages to show no divisions, no discourtesies, no quarrels among themselves, thereby bringing each other into contempt or ridicule which might be shared among the Indians, and the opportunity improved by their machinations. Therefore, mindful of the observation of sundry of the soldiers, he practiced his own admonition. Albeit infinitely against his will, he thrust the leaves, possible tobacco bug and all, between his strong white teeth, which he brought crunching down upon them.

“And how does it compare? how does it taste?” demanded the botanist, smiling his soft, white shaven benevolence.

“Nasty, sir, very extremely nasty,” said the disgusted lieutenant. “And as I am not a browsing animal generally, sir, I have no other experience of green forage with which to compare it.”

As, despite his intention, some of the juice went down his throat, he was suddenly reminded of the botanist’s laudation of the skill and extraordinary knowledge of the Cherokees in the matter of vegetable poisons, and felt that he was relying too implicitly upon the scientific learning and plant identification of this gentleman, of the justice of whose pretensions he had no means of judging. For aught he knew the stuff might be poison. It was certainly unlike any tobacco that he had ever seen. He at once thrust the leaves from his mouth, and then several times spat copiously upon the ground, the action of the saliva being stimulated by the tobacco.

At that moment the corporal came up with the report that the search had resulted fruitlessly. Everard took leave of the Indians merely with a ceremonious bow, and the party rode hastily off, straight down the river and once more toward Choté.

For one instant the Cherokees stood silent and motionless, watching the flying horsemen, the sun glittering on their red coats and burnished arms. Then to Callum’s amazement an elderly Indian, with a sudden sharp cry such as an animal might utter in seizing upon its prey, sprang forward, dropped upon his knees in the path, and caught up the dampened tobacco leaves and the clod of clay upon which the saliva had fallen. Half articulate exclamations of guttural triumph rang upon the air from the group, and Callum, glancing from one fiercely joyous illuminated face to another, felt as if his senses were in the thrall of some fantastically horrible nightmare. For the possession of the man’s saliva gave them, according to their savage creed, power over the man’s life. It would end when the spell should be worked.

Perhaps because of the superstitions of his native land, in which his childhood had been deeply imbued and which his nerves still accredited, while his mind resolutely repudiated them, Callum watched with a sort of sickened fright the preparations for the necromancy. Far away the laborers in the fields were working now, even the girl who had lingered so long, and the sere stalks of the tall corn concealed the secret ceremony of the schemers from the other denizens of the town. Only the Ancient Warrior, who had seen so much of yore, was to behold the calling down of the curse.

Suddenly--Callum could not believe his eyes--there issued from among the tall cornstalks the figure of a man, a familiar figure, a face that he knew well, or was he bereft of his senses? For here was Tam Wilson, arrayed in buckskin, fantastically beaded and fringed after the Indian fashion, his head bare and polled like a Cherokee’s and decorated with feathers. Yachtino, stepping hastily toward him, greeted him in the Cherokee language, and pointed out the preparations for the necromancy. Tam Wilson, also speaking in Cherokee, questioned minutely, and stood for a moment gazing after the cheerataghe. Then as he turned away--miracle of miracles!--he spoke to himself in French.

“_Tant pis pour lui!_” he commented upon the working of the spell. “_À bon chat, bon rat!_”

He was gone in another moment among the corn, and Callum understood at last the mystery of his continued presence here,--that this was the arch-plotter whose machinations threatened the peace of the Cherokee country.

Callum was dizzy with the significance of the discovery, the thoughts of import, that crowded upon him. Only as in a dream he beheld the group of the scheming headmen of Chilhowee, eager, breathless, expectant, standing close at hand while one of the cheerataghe, a man with the frenzy of a fanatic in his eyes and the fury of a savage, came slowly down the space between two rows of the corn. He was clad in the usual buckskin garb, but draped above it was a large dressed hide decorated with painted symbols and strange hieroglyphics. Upon his head he wore the horns and head of a buffalo, and as Callum listened to the incantation, delivered in a weird, chanting undertone, with frequent interpolations of a sonorous, exclamatory “Ha!” and anon pauses of impressive silence, he felt his blood go cold.

“_Usuhiyi nunahi wite tsatanu usi gunesa gunage asahalagi. Tsutu neliga._” (Toward the black grave of the upland in the Darkening Land your paths shall tend. So shall it be for you.)