Part 21

The increasing excitement of the moment showed in the attitude of the other Indians, motionless, yet with an electrical energy of pose, as if on the point of springing forward. They looked on, fiery eyed but silent, from among the cornstalks, save that now and again an inadvertent “Ku!” breathed out from surcharged lungs, and once Yachtino muttered “_Nigagi!_” (This ends it!)

As the magician paced along he carried in his hand, like a sceptre, a hollow reed of the poisonous wild parsnip, filled with a paste compounded of earthworms and the spittle-moistened clay, to be buried at the foot of a lightning-scathed tree in the forest.

“_Tsudantagi uskalutsiga. Sakani aduniga. Usuhita atanisseti, ayalatsisesti tsudantagi, tsunanugaisti nigesuna. Sge!_”[9] (Now your soul has faded away. It has become blue. When darkness comes your spirit shall grow less and dwindle away, never to reappear. Listen!)

The wizard had reached the gloomy shades of the dense woods, and the terrible words of the spell came floating back on the air, dwindling with the distance like the diminishing thread of the life which it affected to attenuate and reduce and finally cut short.

Listen! not even an echo now of that weird voice! Only the river’s song; the sound of the wind blaring about Chilhowee Mountain; the vague, far-off tones of the “second man” still at his quips and quirks in the field; and suddenly the shrill, callow laughter of happy children.

But for the icy drops starting on his brow Callum might have thought he had been dreaming. Yet he stood in the burning sun, and so shivered that had now the Cherokee Rose gazed upon the hero of her fancies, she must have deemed the Ancient Warrior stricken with the palsy. He was alone, however, none near to mark his lapse from the verisimilitude of deportment. A bee came buzzing by, and crawled up and down the quaint lines of the gourd vizard for a time, making the Highlander tremble for a possible entrance through ear or eye spaces, but at last it took droningly to wing. A lizard basked in the sun, as doubtless it had done for many a day, on a stone at the feet of the scarecrow. A blue jay, the sauciest of feathered rufflers, even alighted on the crown of the dingy old bedraggled war-bonnet, and there preened his brilliant blue and white plumage, and clanged his wild woodsy cry, and so off again to the splendors of Chilhowee Mountain, gold and red above the silver river and against the azure sky. And these wights were all the passers-by, while Callum shivered and trembled from head to foot and scarce could stand. He had no need of knowledge of the Indian character to be aware that the savages would not fail to assist the workings of the charm by non-magical powers. Everard, undoubtedly, by some crafty device would be lured to his destruction.

The tempter, ever present, did not fail to suggest thereby the solution of Callum’s own problem: with Everard gone, his accuser had vanished. Even the corporal supposed his incarceration was but the result of some slight insubordination, or perhaps Everard’s own hasty and arbitrary whim while in liquor. As to the bewildered Mr. Taviston, his incoherent impressions were hardly to be considered, so confused was he by the sudden altercation. Thus Callum might escape the shame of the lash that he dreaded more than death itself, and also save his own life. He put the thought from him. He would return now willingly, willingly; he would in this cause face aught that might menace him--and not for sheer conscience’ sake, for at heart he loved the fop like a brother.

Yet should he issue forth and return to camp, he well knew that Everard would laugh the threat to scorn, and fancy the whole adventure feigned to win his gratitude and save the culprit from the lash. Callum’s invention would respond to no goading. How could he forecast and thwart the strange, savage lure which the Indians would devise? That it would be apt, efficient, and bold withal, on the strength of their faith in their own necromancy, thus crediting the spell with the result of their own efforts, he was sure. And yet strive as he might, he could not rouse his jaded faculties to divine, to baffle, to counterplot.

Some time had passed thus, when a sudden movement close at hand caused him unthinkingly to turn his head. Fortunately the gourd vizard was so ample as to permit the motion without stirring the mask. There again was the Indian girl who had gazed so lovingly upon the effigy as almost to disconcert the fair-haired Callum that it masked,--not gazing upon him now, however. The same girl it was, he was sure, although she passed by her ancient hero with so fickle an unconcern. But for bewitchments! the Cherokee Rose was metamorphosed by a simple splendor into the rarest bloom. White beads were twined in her long black hair, where they glistered like pearls. A strand of the large, beautiful, genuine pearls, still found in the rivers of the region, only slightly discolored by the heated copper spindle which the Indians used to pierce them, encircled her round, roseate-tinted throat. Her dress of fawnskin dappled with white had a belt of many rows of white beads and a low collar or cape of swans’ feathers. Above her high white buskins two small skins of otter fur, worn like garters, were each trimmed with straight stiff swan’s quills that stood out horizontally, and gave the suggestion of wings to her feet, if one were open to poetical imagery, or a bantam-like decoration, if prosaically inclined. Her face was turned toward the road with a wistful, fascinated expression in her soft, liquid eyes that would have been charming to view if any but the supplanted Ancient Warrior had beheld her. Now and again, with an incomparably graceful, lissome gesture, she lifted one bare arm and silently beckoned the unseen.

The expectation of an approach along the path reminded Callum of the sinister consultation of the headmen here to-day, and suddenly the Ancient Warrior spoke.

“_Higeya tsusdiga! Higeya tsusdiga!_” (Oh little woman! Oh little woman!)

Instantly she was palsied, stricken dumb. Faithfully as she had believed in the Ancient Warrior, she had never thought to hear him speak. Human credence has ever its reservations. She gazed wide-eyed at the image, her lips parted, her hand on her plunging heart.

Sunset was on the face of the effigy; the soft red light freshened the effect of his tattered old war-bonnet and gilded the stalks of the high Indian corn amidst which he stood. Whether or not Callum was conscious of his enhanced comeliness, the awe and respect in her face and the obvious simplicity of her mental endowment nerved the young daredevil to venture further speech. And indeed something must needs be risked in view of the unwelcome knowledge that had come to him and the restrictions that hampered its use. He mustered his best Cherokee.

“Who are you waiting for, little woman?”

“No Chickasaw, oh good grandfather,” she cried hastily; for one of the best stories of the “second man” chronicled the hatred which the Ancient Warrior had cherished against that tribe, and his valor, which had nearly exterminated them from the face of the earth. His sentiments were pointed by the fate of a Cherokee maiden who married a Chickasaw and went to his tribe to dwell, and daily the Ancient Warrior dispatched the magic messenger bird that lived among the Tuckaleechee towns in the Cherokee country, on the banks of the Canot River, to remind her of her home; and as the memories she could not shake off clung about her, she finally became imprisoned in their convolutions; and to this day she can be seen in the Chickasaw country, where they think she is nothing but what she seems,--a tangle of grapevines!

The Ancient Warrior said nothing in reply. He was making a strenuous mental endeavor to adjust another Cherokee sentence. His silence terrified her. His anger was full of spells, as the “second man” well knew; an _ageya_ lost her garters, for instance, and none would ever again stay on, and thereafter she presented an appearance painfully undecorated. The Cherokee Rose abruptly cut short the silent linguistic toil of the Ancient Warrior by hurriedly explaining of her own accord.

“A strange British warrior, oh good grandfather,--a splendid red captain, most beautiful and brave, who will come up the path and pass the mountain to-night on the way to Talassee Town. The same, oh good grandfather, that made the road bright and shining to-day. And even if he should come after the sun has gone down, one could never miss the light of the day, but could see him yet ride his horse along the river bank. For he is like the sun in splendid red, and his hair shines with a white glister, and the look in his eyes warms the heart.”

The Ancient Warrior marked how the mental image she had summoned up diverted her attention from him, for the fascination of the supernatural had waned as she spoke, and she turned half away from the effigy, which she had once so reverenced, to gaze along the curving westward path for the vision of her anticipation. The Ancient Warrior, all sullen and serious, gazed calculatingly and doubtfully at her.

The ranges were purpling along the perspectives of the background; the forests of Chilhowee Mountain flamed gorgeously gold and red in the middle distance; the sky above was all radiant with a uniform amber tint. As she stood amidst the sun-suffused Indian corn, the sere hues of which so harmonized with the deeper shade of her garb of white-dappled fawnskin, and the dense white of the swan’s feathers about her shoulders, she looked as might some primeval ideal of the mystic harvest moon. Half mechanically she still beckoned, as if thus she might bring the sun of her fancy to meet her upon the horizon line.

“_Ha, Capteny Gigagei!_” she cried. “_Usinuliyu! Usinuliyu!_” (Oh great red captain! Haste! Haste!)

The Ancient Warrior suddenly spoke sternly. “_Higeya, hatu ganiga!_” (You, woman, come and listen to me!)

Once more with that unquestioning subjection to the superstitions of the cult in which she had been reared,--oh wily second man!--she turned submissively toward the Ancient Warrior, albeit her docile obedience might cost her eyes the first resplendent glimpse of the Capteny Gigagei, riding his gallant war-horse straight out of the red west and the illumined amethystine mountains, whither that humbler scarlet splendor, the god of day, was now slowly disappearing. She lifted her appealing child-like eyes to the gourd vizard of the young Highlander, and well it was that he wore this impassive mask, for his own face was pallid with exhaustion from a sleepless night and the exertion of standing all day without food, drawn with the stress of much anxiety, and lined with the many perplexities of his thoughts. The gourd face, however, acquiring naught by propinquity, looked as it always did, as its Indian draughtsman intended that it should,--arrogant, surly, threatening, and very majestic.

“Oh good grandfather!” she faltered.

“_Higeya tsusdiga_ (Oh little woman), how do you know he comes?”

“Oh, he comes, he comes without doubt!--the headmen said late, but I hoped early, so that I might see him as he rides his splendid horse along the river bank. The headmen know he comes; they are ready for him; he will be received at the house of the chief of Talassee. He comes because a wicked man--one of his own soldiers--has fled, has deserted the great red Capteny, and is in hiding at Talassee Town, and the headmen have sent him the message that he may come and take him with his own hand, lest the plaid soldiers, the comrades of the runagate, wreak vengeance on Talassee, should the town deliver him up to penance. The headmen have only _secretly_ sent messages where the fugitive can be found. Oh good grandfather, the Capteny comes, he comes! To-night he will abide at the house of the chief of Talassee, where a great feast is made in his honor, and the braves will dance the eagle-tail dance, and then the young girls will dance in three circles with the braves, and I, too, I am to dance. And there will be good store of wine at the feast (lowering her voice mysteriously)--_French_ wine, oh good grandfather, but surely the Capteny Gigagei cannot taste its _French-ness_! And to-morrow the army of the commissioners will start back to the Carolina country and overtake the great red Capteny at Talassee, and he will march at the head like the king of his tribe.”

The heart of the Ancient Warrior turned cold and seemed to cease to beat. The ingenious scheme was thus unwittingly outlined before him. He knew that the thought of personal danger would never occur to Everard as the result of the French coins in his keeping and his knowledge of their significance, since any personal violence offered to a man of his note would result in instant discovery and speedy vengeance. From the beginning of the negotiations there had been more or less interchange of friendly courtesies and mutual hospitalities between the Cherokee headmen, the commissioners, and the commander of the military force. Although Everard kept the rank and file close in camp, in view of the disastrous possibility of clashing between the boisterous young soldiers and the “mad young men” of the tribe, he himself went about the country freely enough. He would not hesitate, Callum was sure, to leave his orders with the first sergeant for the march of the troops on the following day, and accompanied by a single orderly, or perhaps by only the Cherokee guide, proceed to the tryst of the headmen, where he would expect to capture the runaway Highlander, and rejoin the escort when its vanguard should come in sight from beyond Chilhowee Mountain.

No prophet need one be to foretell how the lines would straggle past; how the sergeant in command would hourly expect his superior for a while; then being without orders to halt would proceed for a day or so, Everard’s lingering stay being of course within his own discretion. And at last anxiety would develop, increase to troublous forecast, to panic fear; a halt would be called, a detachment sent back, to find--nothing! A mysterious disappearance,--some crafty, subtle, convincing story to account for it innocuously. Callum did not dream what this could be; only afterward its details were made clear to him by another, more discerning.

What fate? he speculated--the river? No. The first sergeant, quailing under his awful responsibility, would drag it for miles and miles in search of the body. The stake?--a handful of ashes could tell no tale. Surely the magic compound of earthworms and spittle-moistened clay, mysteriously potent, buried at the foot of the lightning-scathed tree, might spare room for the sepulture of so trifling a residuum of all that gay spirit exhaled in smoke. Perhaps a more stealthy method still--Everard might be drugged into quick insensibility by some mysterious poison mixed with the French wine, and buried forever out of sight somewhere in the infinities of the illimitable wilderness.

The Ancient Warrior trembled till the pole which aided to support him shook in the ground.

One by one the schemes of possible rescue of his erstwhile friend and his present enemy, and above all and before all his commanding officer, fell to shreds as he sought to hold up the fabric in contemplation of its feasibility. He said again that he would surrender himself now most willingly; he would resign himself to any punishment rather than this disaster, this treachery, this cowardly massacre, should ensue. But how would surrender now avail? He could not regain the camp without the danger of passing Everard, coming hither on another path. He resolved that as soon as the first beat of the horse’s hoofs should herald an approach he would rush out from his hiding-place, seize the officer’s bridle, and compel him to listen.

Alack, the sun was already down; the dun shadows were on the land; far away the dim stretch of the sere cornfields held all the fading light between the slate-hued clouds, coming up from the south over the Great Smoky Mountains, and the deep purple ranges that loomed close about and limited the horizon. A dark night was at hand, without a star. How should he distinguish the hoof-beat of one horse from another? Everard might well pass without a word.

As thus the difficulties of the situation baffled his flagging invention, the Ancient Warrior unwittingly lifted his hands and wrung them together in the hard stress of his contending emotions. His grotesque vizard was upturned appealingly to the darkening sky, and he uttered a deep sigh.

The Cherokee girl, with a sudden look of appalled discernment on her face, stepped back abruptly in affright, then stood in the shadows of the denser stalks of corn, all writhen and twisted about her, and gazed through the deepening dusk at the effigy.

In this crisis, this emotional revulsion of loyalty to his officer and affection to his friend, Callum would not have grudged the sacrifice had he rushed out blindly in the night and by mischance revealed himself to Indian horsemen and certain capture, if it would not also entail the success of their treachery in decoying Everard to his death.

“Eh, gude God--he maunna come--he maunna ride at a’ the nicht,” he said aloud in a strained, poignant voice, all oblivious of the Indian girl, who still stood hidden in the dusk and the tall stalks of the maize, and silently, breathlessly, stared.

Much accomplished as she had known the Ancient Warrior to be, not even his vaunting biographer, the “second man,” had ever claimed that he spoke English.

The poor Ancient Warrior! His head drooped quite low, despite the arrogance of the expression of his vizard. There was something in his eyes that scalded them, for the Highlander was still very young, and had been gently reared in a household of sisters; and his great proficiency in the use of the broadsword, which made him so valued a soldier, was superimposed upon simple, tender-hearted, ingleside habitudes. In fact he must needs slip a hand up under his roomy vizard to wipe off the very genuine tears which were burning his cheek--not that he acknowledged these tears, no, not even to himself.

“Hegh, sirs,” he exclaimed, “this singeing reek is fair blindin’ me!”

As he spoke a new thought struck him. He lifted his head once more and snuffed the odor of the distant burning woods.

It was dark now, quite dark. The color of the cloud and the mountain had blended indissolubly in densest invisibility. Not a star was alight in the sky. Only to one standing in the cornfield, hardly a yard away, and with a discernment keenly whetted by previous sight and accurate knowledge of the surrounding objects, could aught have been perceptible as Callum straightened himself, and turning, looked carefully around him.

“The bit lassock ha’ flitted awa’,” he said, quite satisfied.

But close at hand, still screened by the darkness and the tangled growth, she watched the Ancient Warrior fling his vizard into the peas, strip off his buckskin shirt and leggings, and emerge in the kilt and plaid of one of the Highlanders of the escort. With the quick, keen wits of her race she made no doubt that here was the wicked renegade who had incurred the displeasure of the splendid red sun-god of a captain, and who was falsely reputed to be lurking in hiding at Talassee.

Callum, without a moment’s hesitation, struck off in a long, rapid stride through the corn. Silently, stealthily, she followed him--not like a shadow, for not even a shadow could follow thus through the densities of that dark night.

XIII

AT camp an unusual activity had characterized the closing hours of the afternoon. It was the eve of the day fixed for the departure of the commissioners and their escort. The official business had been concluded. The survey of the land to be ceded was completed. The last feigning objections on the part of the Cherokee headmen and the final devious doubtings of the commissioners had been merged in mutual concession and compliant acquiescence. The gifts brought to propitiate the Indians had been presented and graciously accepted, and the official farewell taken with much smoking of the friend-pipe and saltatory agilities of the eagle-tail dance.

That no unforeseen mischance might hamper the early start, Everard, with military prevision, had caused every preparation to be so completed as to leave as little as possible to be done on the morrow. The pack-horses had been ranged in due order and tethered, and had but to be loaded, the fardels of the pack saddles being already made up and strapped on; the travel rations for several days had been issued to the men; the personal luggage of the commissioners was also ready, owing to the repeated insistence of Everard; the final orders had been given the first sergeant, left in command in his stead till he should join the line of march at Talassee. He himself in his tent, with hardly a hand’s turn left to be done, was on the point of setting out to ride to Talassee Town with his Cherokee guide to capture Callum MacIlvesty.

The Indians had made a mystery of their information. They had first sworn Everard to secrecy and then held back as if to disappoint him finally. They affected fear of the Highland contingent. Oh, the plaid-men were very terrible warriors! Were the horrors of Montgomerie’s campaign and the slaughter and the fire-raising of Grant ever to be forgotten? And since the Cherokees did all in love for the great red Capteny, it would not be wise or kind of him to allow the wrath of the plaid-men, for the surrender of their brother, to fall on Talassee Town, which the Highlanders might sack or burn--well remembered were their sackings and burnings!--as they marched through on the morrow upon the peaceful trading-path, which was now so white and bright from end to end. If the great red Capteny did not wish this path to be stained with the blood of the Indians, and perhaps of the plaid-men also, it would be well if he came to Talassee Town himself. There he might meet his tartan renegade as if by chance, and take him with his own hand.