Part 23

“A Frenchman, Callum Bane?” Everard asked again, vaguely incredulous. “How did you know he was French?”

“By the lingo, man!” said Callum impatiently.

“Did he speak to you?” demanded Everard, looking keenly into the Highlander’s pale face, all wet and shining with the rain.

In the mists on one side were vaguely glimpsed the tall cornstalks of the far-stretching fields, all writhen and bent by the wind, and with the gleams of sleet on their sere, pallid blades, but despite their motion he was aware that among them there were other tall, befringed, betasseled figures not dissimilar, something too distant for recognition, where doubtless the ever wily Indians were watching the conference. At the edge of the woods on the other side of the clearing stood the mounted detail of English soldiers, the glimmer of the sad gray day flashing back with a live, alert glitter from the burnished steel of their arms and their scarlet coats, all quick to note the fraternal, familiar attitude of the officer and soldier, and internally to comment on this condescension, which had already resulted in a breach of discipline and threatened continued insubordination.

“Did the Frenchy speak to me? Na! I was that big Injun, I tell ye!” pointing at the prideful gourd face now staring up at them from among the straw. “Na! nane minted a word at me, except yon _ageya_,--the Injun lass ye know,--an’ she ca’ me ‘Gude-sire!’ _Gude-sire!_” Callum laughed dreamily, then suddenly put his hand up to his head, in the effort to recall the importance of the disclosure.

“A nip of brandy now, Callum,”--the officer pressed the flask, eager for the detail,--“and then you’ll remember.”

“I winna taste it,” Callum rejoined sternly, “for then ye’ll say I was drunk an’ telled ye but idle clavers. What’s your wull?” he added, as if bewildered.

“How do you know the man is French?” demanded Everard.

“He spoke in French,” replied Callum.

“To the Indians?”

“He spoke in Cherokee to the Injuns, and then to himsel’ in French,” responded Callum definitely.

Everard was silent for a moment. Important interests of the government, the peace of the colonies, the policy of the cession of land, the possible permanent repulse of the French, and on the other hand the triumphant enormous extension of the French empire in America hung upon this slight incident. Therefore to make sure, to prevent the possibility of deception or mistake, he asked, thinking the words that Callum had heard might have other signification, “What did he say, Callum? What did he say to himself?”

“_Tong pee per lee. A bong char bong rar_,” Callum solemnly repeated.

Everard burst out laughing hysterically. He was convinced. He was all tremulous at the momentous discovery that it had chanced to one of his command to make, eager, nay frenzied, to take instant advantage of it; yet the accent of the solemn Highlander, to which the French of the Stratford-atte-Bowe variety would have had an eminently Gallic tang, outmastered his risibles, and he laughed with that curious duality of entity when he was never so serious before in his life.

The first duty, however, in putting into execution the plan which had instantly shaped itself in his mind, with a dozen variant details, was to take such order with the Highland soldier as should restore him to his normal mental and physical fitness. He shouted for aid to the soldiers, and presently Callum, mounted on a horse behind one of them,--for he was in no condition to guide the animal or even to retain his posture, save for a horse girth passed around his waist and the body of the man in the saddle,--was escorted back to camp, and still under arrest, bestowed in the snug winter-house devoted to the uses of a military prison. There was no lack of hot lotions applied externally and internally, and good food and warm clothing; but the surgeon in attendance upon the party reported a fever, with a touch of delirium and a “sair hoast,” as the patient himself described the measure of cold that he had caught.

To the surprise of all the force and the suspicious dismay of the Indians, the return to Charlestown was unaccountably delayed. The soldiers, wearying of their long inaction, the monotony of life in the Indian country, hampered as they were by the many unusual restrictions imposed upon conduct and camp to avoid all possible cause for clashes with the young Indian braves, had been in high spirits at the prospect of a speedy change, and their hopes were suddenly dashed by the countermanding of the orders to march. The commissariat fell into gloom, and as far as they dared remonstrated with the commander, predicting a famine ere Charlestown could be reached; and the quartermaster sergeant and his subordinates of the baggage contingent, foreseeing all the undoing of the more permanent arrangements of the baggage train, felt that never again could such triumphs of transportation be achieved--the stowage of large and unwieldy commodities in small compass, _multum in parvo_--as a lucky inspiration in packing had permitted in this instance.

Moreover, the fine days seemed gone. The weather offered an incalculable menace. Already the air was full of the misting autumnal rains, and the many turbulent rivers of the country would soon be out of their channels beyond even the deep crag-girt banks, rendering fording impossible and ferriage dangerous. Even snows might fall, early though it was in the season. In fact, one or two domes of the Great Smoky Range already showed glittering white against an ominous slate-tinted sky, as the soft, gauzy tissues of the mists parted before them, and again impenetrably veiled those frigid altitudes.

The commissioners themselves had grown obviously disaffected and doubtful; they were disposed to remonstrate, and one of them reproachfully coughed from time to time, occasionally from genuine affection and again from patent affectation. Only the meteorologic and botanic Mr. Taviston welcomed the lengthened opportunity, and since the flowers had all fallen under the repeated frosts and an unseasonable nipping freeze, he found a solace in investigating the climate itself, going about, a comfort to himself, and eke to say a wellspring of joy to others, with an umbrella above his head, to the ribs of which was suspended a thermometer at the height of his nose, taking acute scientific notes of the extraordinary variability of the temperature and the swift fickleness of the atmospheric changes. He was even disposed to climb the mountains to the snow line, to press his inquiries among the white domes of the great range, accompanied only by an Indian guide; but the stern interdiction of this enterprise by the commander precluded his wandering so far afield, and he was compelled to content himself with such specimens of weather as he could collate nearer at hand.

To the prevalent dissatisfaction Lieutenant Everard accorded only the most casual attention, obviously preoccupied, intent on his own thoughts, sternly determined, but sharing his conclusions with no adviser.

The civilians of the party naturally distrusted these _indicia_ of changes of moment evidently impending, and felt some qualms as to his comparative youth and heady traits, some curiosity as to possible details of his instructions to which it might be they were not privy, some helpless anxiety lest for reasons satisfactory to himself, which they could not divine, he should venture to deviate from his orders. The commissioners were in the nature of things more or less men of consequence, accustomed to command, and to the habit of determining and shaping their own course in life as the eventuation of circumstance should seem to require. They had not had the military training to an unquestioning obedience, the suppression of natural curiosity, the relinquishment of all responsibility and individual identity, in the existence of a corporate body, subject to the volition of a superior. They chafed in the sense of helplessness, and from time to time eyed him greedily in hopes of catching from his manner some intimation as to his ultimate plans. In response to more open expressions of curiosity, he had flatly refused to gratify it, and the courtesy and apparent consideration in his phrase made him seem only the more inscrutable.

“You will pardon me, I am sure, but Gad, sir, my duty does not permit me to be explicit. The march is postponed, but you will not be required to move without information,” he replied suavely, but with a flash of the eye which intimated that he would tell them when he could no longer avoid it, and when all the rest of the world must know.

While the camp thus settled down to its former routine, grumbling and speculating variously as to the causes that had necessitated the countermanding of the orders to march, the Cherokees were alarmed for the interests of the projected cession of land. Their earlier fears had been quieted in great measure by the recovery of the French gold, the louis d’ors of the coinage of the current year, thus falling readily into the trap which Everard had warily set for them. They concluded that since he had given the gold pieces so casually to the Indian girl as a reward for her detection of his runagate soldier he had not noticed the date with its cogent significance, having them so short a time in his possession. Certainly it was great munificence, but this was the more easily accounted for as the louis d’ors really belonged to another man, and the officer seemed generous without loss, for the Cherokees did not understand that their value must needs be returned to Eachin MacEachin. As the Indians were not admitted familiarly within the camp, and the soldiers were not free to wander without, there could be only futile surmises as to the reasons for the postponement of the march. Secret observations of the camp taken from the river and the opposite bank intimated much activity among the farriers. Perhaps the horses were all to be reshod. But surely such a necessity could not be in the nature of a surprise to the Capteny Gigagei. Another day ensued a great overhauling of the baggage for clothing of heavier weight, in anticipation of severe weather. The commissioners bargained with the Indians for some furs fashioned into match-coats, and the lieutenant himself, being obliged to wear the hated British uniform, ordered blankets of the fine dressed otter and panther skins, for which he paid in English guineas: he had no more louis d’ors. The postponement gradually came to be accepted as the result of the sudden unseasonable spell of cold weather.

Therefore it fell like a thunderclap upon the headmen, when suddenly one day Lieutenant Everard took advantage of a personal visit which the great chief Tanaesto was making to him in his tent, to declare that he had certain knowledge that the Cherokees harbored amongst them a Frenchman who sought to spirit them up against the British government, despite the fact that they had so lately firmly shaken hands anew with it. He protested that unless they instantly surrendered to him this miscreant, chargeable with he knew not how many of the crimes laid at their door, he would report to the royal governor the fact that he had ascertained his presence here in the heart of the Cherokee country, and this would annul the privileges they expected to enjoy under the treaty thus rendered void, and destroy the possibility of the cession itself.

But for that single phrase, but for the interests dependent upon the cession, but for the fact that this purchase money for the lands would enable the Cherokees to secure the munitions of war to wrench not only this limited territory but their whole country from the encroaching British grasp, as well as sustain them in a certain independence in their relations with their expected French allies,--but for these obvious dictates of policy, the commissioners’ train and military escort would have been set upon by unnumbered hundreds and destroyed in the instant.

Even as it was, however, their safety was in a great part assured by the fact that this episode took place only within the knowledge of the wily chiefs. The populace--those “mad young men,” so difficult to restrain, whose impetuosity so often cost the nation dear--could not have been held back had this demand been suddenly publicly urged. And indeed the chiefs themselves were between two fires; for if aught should befall the French officer through their pusillanimity or treachery, it was obvious they could hope for no further aid from the great French king, without which they could not save their national existence.

Admire the collected Tanaesto’s aplomb! Without one moment’s hesitation he denied the accusation,--utterly oblivious of the future,--so definitely, so instantly, that Everard himself, closeted in his tent with three or four Indians who had accompanied Tanaesto, felt a momentary doubt. Could Callum have been dreaming?--the vision of the Frenchman only a figment of the fever then laying hold upon him, the words an echo?--some reminiscence sounding anew in his delirium?

“But you have a white man, a Frenchman, here in the nation,” Everard sternly persisted.

“A white man in the nation? Several here and there in the lower towns. Oh, yes, the Capteny says the gracious truth. But these are English or Scotch, never French. Some there are who like the Cherokee methods and settle in the tribe. But here in the Overhill towns only one white man, an Englishman--that is to say, a Virginian.”

Everard, staring fixedly at Tanaesto, shook his head, and the Indian interpreter mechanically repeated the gesture, as if the parties for whom he served as a means of communication were blind as well as deaf to all but him.

Most unlikely did Everard consider it that an Englishman would dare to linger here alone in the present disorganized state of the Cherokee country and the inflamed public sentiment against the British.

“This man--who I fear is no Englishman--sojourned in Moy Toy’s town of Great Tellico,” Everard persisted. “This I know. The great chief will perceive there are no limits to my knowledge.”

With this corollary, confirmatory of his proposition, the Indians hardly dared to further deny. A sudden stillness ensued; and this desperate silence, long unbroken, was an invisible appeal one to the others, each waiting for some intrepid invention of some one else that might serve to rescue the situation.

Everard smiled grimly as his sarcastic eyes traveled the rounds from one confused, downcast face to the other. “Since he is a Virginian, as you say, an Englishman so far, I should be glad to see him,” persisted Everard, relishing their discomfort. “I should not like it to be said that I left an only countryman in this remote wilderness without an effort to exchange a word with him, a homelike greeting.”

“If he is now at Great Tellico, I know not; it has been long since I saw him,” Tanaesto qualified. Then realizing that this belated negation could not nullify all that had gone before, “Doubtless he will be glad to take you by the hand,” he concluded falteringly.

“Doubtless. I shall do myself the honor to wait upon him there, and shall also take this occasion to pay my respects to the great Moy Toy.”

Everard smiled sardonically, grimly triumphant, for the leave-taking of the graceful, ceremonious Indians was like the hasty scuttling away of a group of culprits evading the clutch of custody.

The camp had been hastily broken; all was now gleeful stir and activity. Everard had waited long, but he had reached the limit of his patience and the necessity to exercise it simultaneously. MacIlvesty was sufficiently recovered to have regained the full use of his faculties, and he depended upon the Highlander’s identification of the man, whom he had seen in familiar conversation with the Indians at one of their most secret ceremonies, speaking Cherokee to them and French in soliloquy. Everard would take no substitute for this man! Lest some dull under-trader, some runaway apprentice, finding it easier to turn Cherokee than work at a trade in the colonies, be palmed off on him in lieu of this forked-tongued schemer, he had awaited the Highlander’s recovery, despite his impatience. He realized that should he miss his grip at the opportune moment the chance would be gone and forever. He would confront Callum MacIlvesty with this sojourner at Tellico whom he doubted not to be the French emissary who had occasioned a world of trouble in readjusting the Cherokees on their former basis with the British government. Unless opportunity should prove amazingly elusive, he would arrest this man and carry him to Charlestown, where the consideration of the problems which he embodied could be shifted upon those more qualified to undertake it, the colonial diplomats.

Everard’s determination to proceed further into the Cherokee country necessitated the detail of some portion of his plan to the commissioners whom he must needs drag with him, since his force was too slight to divide, and he could not leave them without a guard at Ioco. Though firm as adamant and steeled against any remonstrance, he had dreaded their efforts to deter him, their insistence that he was transcending his instructions, that he was merely the commander of their bodyguard, and required to act only in the interests of the cession. The fluttered squawking of the botanist, the deep basso-profundo rumble of the commissioner whose fad was geology, the appeal to his official conscience and his oath by the diplomat proper, the politician, the piercing fife-like note of the surveyor’s voice in protest,--all sounded coherently in his imagination long before he made the disclosure, and sooth to say, sounded nowhere else. For the “gentlemanly old ladies” showed unexpected mettle; they applauded his determination, belittled the possible danger they might incur, commended his discretion, and urged the instant setting forward of the force before the man could be spirited away and the Indians make head in their schemes to conceal all evidences of his identity and machinations.

XIV

LAROCHE, however, as far as his safety was concerned, was more secure at Tellico Great than he could have been elsewhere, and he appreciated this, for both Moy Toy and he had been speedily advised of the untoward discovery of the secret of his presence here and the lame and futile effort of Tanaesto to account for it innocuously. Where the Cherokees were in force, as in one of the greater “mother towns,” he could more effectually claim the national protection than if, seeking refuge in flight, he should be apprehended in some secluded outlying region where only a few scattered tribesmen would be receptive to his appeal. Therefore at Tellico he determined to stand his ground, albeit he doubted both the will and the capacity of the Indians to hold out against the demand of the English officer. He argued that with so small a force as the escort of the commissioners, coercion was manifestly not contemplated, and the British commander was risking the dangers of the Indian country, disaffected though it was, with no protection save the ostensible comity of the already jeopardized treaty. Unassisted reason and logic were hardly to be relied upon in Indian negotiation. Reproaches for a broken faith needs an unimpeachable counter-record to render them practicable. Laroche feared, as the last resource, bribes, large, tempting, irresistible.

At that moment his stanch scheme of empire, rebuilt on the ruins of a score of fantastic projections of old, braced and held to interdependent cohesion in a thousand details, seemed to him also a mere phantasm, the immaterial outline of the functions of a state, a spectre of power, to dissolve into nullity at the first cockcrow of the lordly realities of established rule. He had but expended himself, his time, his efforts, his liberty, it might even be his life itself, that the crafty Moy Toy should have the opportunity of driving a more thrifty bargain with the British interest because of the formidable character of the threatened defection; or mayhap, indeed, only for the sake of a personal gift,--a finer rifle, or a trifle of embroidered and gold-laced suits of apparel,--he would consent to bring anew the nation under British domination until such time as the yoke grew cumbersome to his fitful ambition and he was minded to throw it off again.

Naturally Moy Toy could not read these thoughts in the face of his friend, but he marked his changing color and partly interpreted his agitation. Because of the stress of his religion,--a very queer and inconvenient restriction the savage deemed it,--never would Laroche lift a weapon against his fellow man, except in legitimate warfare. And yet he was eminently a proper man, to use the language of the day, light, active, with muscles like steel wire and strong with a latent staying power. When personally threatened he would offer no aggression, save in self-defense, and even now, in this stress of realized jeopardy, he insisted with all his arts of persuasion that Moy Toy should give over the idea of a massacre of the advancing party, with several delectable items of the horrors of a surprise and friendly lure to merge at last into fierce and wholesale murder, which the chief planned with many a sly and furtive smile, and which met with open and applausive assent from his councilors assembled.

“They come in peace, relying on your honor; let them go in peace,” urged Laroche, as in duty bound, from the standpoint of soldier, Christian, and patriot.

“They have not my honor in their keeping,” Moy Toy lowered. “I do not love your ugly religion!”

Nevertheless, he suffered himself to be gainsaid in the paramount interests of the land cession, and Laroche felt at the end of all things.

If Moy Toy were to have no fun out of the rash adventure of the embassy, the embassy would certainly profit at the expense of the interloper. He it was who must suffer between the two. He knew that this sudden unforeseen demonstration against him personally was obviously fraught with too great danger to the government’s commissioners for the military commander of the escort to lightly undertake it or to relinquish it without advantage. Nothing less could it portend than the arrest of the French emissary and his removal in the British interest from the Cherokee country. Laroche’s experimental resourceful mind became suddenly blank in the contemplation of the vista of long days, nay years, in prison, at the will of a British colonial magnate or on a quibble of British law. And then this suggestion opened a new speculation. What if, being without his uniform, without command, in the discharge of no specific military duty, he should be held as a spy or as a civil prisoner, and responsible for certain murders which the Cherokees had committed on British subjects either with the sanction of Moy Toy or on that system of personal individual warfare which in modern civilized times is called feud, and which the Cherokee autonomy countenanced. Brave though his spirit was, Laroche quailed at the imputed instigation of these horrors which he had sought to avert and had openly condemned at much personal risk.