Part 26

Adventurous, experimental himself, Jock Lesly, in common with many of the empiric temperament, was the most conservative of men in his views controlling others. He had scorned and contemned a title as “fitten neither to eat nor drink,” but he was exceedingly tenacious of the fact that he himself came of good honest folk, who could trace their ancestors, although of humble station,--farmers, fishers, and traders,--for many and many a generation without a reproach or blemish, and thus he had perceived no incongruity that Callum MacIlvesty with his gentle blood should become the husband of Lilias. He knew, of course, that the Highlander’s inherited right to lands and lineage was in these days of attainder and forfeiture absolutely valueless, disregarded, and forgotten, but it was a secret delight to him that these immaterial honors should elevate and embellish the young soldier’s attachment to Lilias and render him in her father’s eyes more worthy of her. Being a widower with an only child, Jock Lesly could afford to care little for Callum’s lack of fortune or prospects. As he was fond of saying to himself, “Auld Jock hinna warked for naething!--the little lassie isna sae tocherless!” and in this view he would redouble his haste to be rich in the increasing opportunities of the Indian trade. It was this belated realization of a change in the sentiments of Callum and Lilias that made Jock Lesly observe the young fellow somewhat keenly when Callum returned from the upper country with the commissioners’ force and found that she had been domiciled here with her father.

It was late on a gray and misty afternoon when the expeditionary force, pushing on with added speed in the fear of being belated in such close proximity to the intermediate station in their long march to Charlestown, came at last within sight and sound of Fort Prince George,--a grateful sight, the block-houses looking stanch and burly in the angles of the four bastions, the ramparts surmounted with tall palisades, all the works trig and stout, having been put in repair by Colonel Grant the previous year while he lay here with his army awaiting the overtures of the vanquished Cherokees for peace. The fife and drum resounded from the works; the light glanced on the steel bayonets and scarlet uniforms of the men drawn up to welcome the commissioners with fitting ceremony, for it was but seldom that the commandant had the opportunity to greet aught but wild Indians, and he made the most of the occasion; the little cannon, of which there were four on each bastion, thundered a salute, and the troops presented arms as the commissioners rode through the gate. The honors concluded, the escort and the soldiers of the garrison, breaking ranks, surged this way and that about the parade, interchanging the news from Charlestown for reports from the Tennessee River, and the gossip of the barracks for the details of the various chances of the march, while the officers of the fort, with evident convivial intent, took charge of the commissioners and Lieutenant Everard.

Although the barracks of Fort Prince George had accommodations for a hundred men, the garrison often fell short of the complement. Therefore it was no surprise to Everard to meet here orders, in view of the disquiet of the upper country, to leave to reinforce the garrison such men as he could spare from his command, since the commissioners were now on the border of the frontier, and the region through which they were yet to pass was more or less settled with a white population and with friendly Indian tribes, the Chickasaws and Catawbas. Everard was instructed to select for this purpose those of the soldiers who could not soon rejoin their regiments from which they had been detached for service in the Cherokee country. Into this category fell the Highland contingent, for the Forty-Second had just landed in New York,--a winter in garrison at Fort Prince George seemed a bitter contrast. Everard was reminded of Callum and his equivocal position as he was going over the roll, and he felt a qualm of regret. It was not merely because of that partisan Damon-and-Pythias-like friendship to which young men are prone, soldiers most of all, and that this change would necessitate their parting, but that upon the lieutenant’s restoration to the fitting companionship of his brother officers the man of the ranks had of course sunk back out of notice and into his proper place. Everard could not feel himself to blame, yet the incongruity pained him. Despite Callum’s intrinsic equality with the best of the officers, Everard knew that it would be futile to urge upon them his own example in the exceptional circumstances, and indeed this had been fraught with much discomfort not to say danger in his instance.

Nevertheless, recollecting the episode of the Ancient Warrior’s disguise and the tender solicitude which the soldier had shown for his friend’s safety at so great a jeopardy of his own, risking not only death but the torture, the lieutenant felt very kindly to Callum and was minded to bestow upon him some parting gift. As he was canvassing in generous thoughts the character of this testimonial, he was beset by a sudden monition of the concomitant pride and penury of the Highlander. Everard would not wound him on either account for the world. He congratulated himself as on an escape, and as he was strolling from his quarters to the mess-hall, suddenly meeting Callum, he abruptly turned about and passed his arm fraternally through the soldier’s.

“Come, Callum Bane,” he said gayly. “I’m off to-morrow. Let’s go to the trader’s and get a keepsake. I’ll give you an Indian pipe if you will give me one, and as long as the _Nicotiana Tabacum_ holds out to burn we will never forget the big Injun at Chilhowee.”

Callum had no sense of supersedure or resentment upon his sudden dismissal from his friend’s society. He was too entirely the soldier to cavil at the obligations which the gradations of rank necessarily impose. He had himself some sharp experience that these restrictions cannot be ignored without involving a corresponding subversion of military subordination. Therefore he was not grudging nor envious, but accepted as the natural sequence of events the fact that Everard should be happily carousing with the young officers of the garrison while he, so lately the lieutenant’s chosen friend, stood guard on the ramparts in the chill midnight. Hence he cordially and smilingly assented, and the two, arm in arm, set forth together.

The weather still held lowering and gloomy. On the rampart at Fort Prince George one could scarce see through the chill mists, and beyond the bare space encircling the works, to the dense, leafless wilderness. At the verge of these woods, and looking backward, one could only make out the fort like a sketch in sepia, with its shadowy block-houses, its blurred barrack roofs sleek with sleet, its tall palisades surmounting the rampart with their pointed summits serrating the gray sky. The only note of color amidst all the dreary neutral tints was the red uniform of a squad of soldiers returning with several deer from the hunt that kept the post in fresh meat.

The trading-house was well within sight of the works and close on the river bank. The boughs of several leafless trees, white with the morning’s rime, although it was now past noon, swayed above its high peaked roof; within this seemed to hold great merchandise and store of shadows, for however the light might stream in at the broad barn-like door, or the fire flare on the hearth at the further extremity, only vague outlines of struts and rafters and interdependent timbers could be seen, while from the beams below swung various goods appropriate to the time and trade,--saddles, bridles, ropes, chains, blankets, cloths of various bright tints of red and yellow, all interwoven and rich of effect. Arms glittered on the shelves and racks below, and axes, hatchets, knives,--all sending out a metallic glitter here and there as the firelight flickered. Always about this fire stood or crouched at least half a dozen braves of various tribes, reveling in its luxury, albeit so well inured to the cold elsewhere, their presence necessitating cautious surveillance from the under-traders. For the Indians of the lower grades, it is said, considered it no derogation to steal, but infamy to be caught in stealing. A variety of articles calculated to attract the favorable regards of the officers and men at the fort were displayed,--buttons, hose, buckles, brushes, snuffboxes, ribbons, candlesticks and snuffers, mirrors, gambadoes,--even books, over the slow sale of which Jock Lesly often shook his head. “The carles at the fort are no readers.” Some exquisite feather-wrought mantles, Indian baskets, hemp-woven rugs, and quaint pottery were offered. There were a number of stone pipes showing an extraordinary skill in carving, for the material, soft when quarried, hardened on exposure to the air. The Cherokees excelled all other tribes in this branch of aboriginal art, and some of their work of this date may now be seen in museums or decorating the rooms of historical societies. Before the trader’s collection of pipes the two friends paused.

Jock Lesly had met Callum with no apparent diminution of their earlier cordiality when first he had returned to the fort. But it nettled the proud Highlander now to observe how obsequious was the trader’s manner to Everard, taking scant notice of his “far awa’ kinsman.” And why indeed should he not be attentive to the officer? Jock Lesly cared naught for him but to sell him an Indian pipe, and if the one found for him did not please him to diligently persuade him that it did. “Surely, surely, sir, a bonny bauble. Here, sir, is a fearsome cur’osity if you favor the heejus in Injun carving. That, sir,--why it stays in a corner, bein’ broken. An’ here, sir--look at this--a braw specimen, a real bit of sculpchur.” As far as Jock Lesly was concerned John Francis Everard was born and brought into this world expressly to buy that pipe, for Jock Lesly was essentially a trader--so superior a salesman, in fact, with an eye so keenly and accurately adjusted to the main chance, that without the least ceremony he abruptly deserted them for a matter of more moment, and Callum, angered but an instant since by the adroit pressure of these small wares by a man able to care naught whether the sale was made or lost, was inconsistently irritated, affronted, when Jock Lesly’s attention wavered. A couple of Indians bargaining their peltry for gear had become embroiled in rancorous words with the under-trader, who was about to lose his temper under great provocation and, what was worse in the estimation of Jock Lesly, the advantages of the trade. As he stepped swiftly to the rescue, suavely inquiring into the point at issue, the Cherokee words embellished with his Scotch accent, the two military men at the counter where the pipes were laid out, in the design of which they each sought something reminiscent of their experiences together, hesitated, at a loss, and a trifle out of countenance. Callum trembled lest by reason of this cavalier treatment aught disrespectful of auld Jock Lesly pass the lips of the officer, whom he supposed to be entirely ignorant of any concern or interest that he had in the trader’s household. But Jock Lesly was amply competent to maintain his own standing, and Everard, exacting as he might be, was no man to quarrel with a trader for postponing the sale of a trifle lest he lose the bargain for a hundredweight of choice peltry.

As they idly waited the firelight flickered in their faces; the steel of the weapons in the racks flashed in long, slender lines about the building; the wind, wet, fragrant with the odor of bark and dead leaves, came in from the wilderness without at the open door, and set all the gloomy dusk awavering; and suddenly, as if evolved from the necromancy of these immaterial elements, a slight shape compounded of light and shadow, of the sheen of golden hair and a dull brown dress, a pink and white face, with dark blue eyes and eyelashes still darker, stood on the other side of the counter with a submissive “What’s your wull?”

Everard stared speechless. Doubtless the girl was uncommonly pretty, but it had been full three months since he had seen a fair white brow in a woman, a blue eye, and a wealth of curling blond hair. She looked in the shadow an angel for beauty, a princess for dignity, and a nun for ascetic gravity. Yet she was only the trader’s daughter, ably seconding her father, whose heart she knew must be fairly rent for failure of the opportunity to sell the pipes. “John, Duncan, Malcom,” he had roared, and they came not; therefore gliding out from some hidden recess appeared Lilias.

Once more Callum trembled for the false position, for instantly the handsome Everard must needs seek to commend himself personally, and essay the language of gallantry.

“This represents, you say, an Indian queen with black locks,” he said, turning over in his hand one of the pipes curiously tinted that she had offered. “I should not care for that. It seems to me that the only hair for beauty is yellow, gilded as if with refined gold.”

He boldly lifted his handsome eyes to her fair tresses devoid of the concealing cap of the fashion and rolled, richly waving, high up from her forehead and held with a blue ribbon.

She did not even change color. It seemed that the image carved on the stone pipe might have smiled as readily. She only laid it aside with supreme gravity as a rejected commodity, and he was at once ill at ease, for he would have liked well to own it.

“May I ask you to choose one for me and one for my friend,” he persisted in the personal note, partly to cover his confusion. Then he added, “You understand the degree of aboriginal art they represent and what is most worth while.”

If he had expected to prolong the interview by reason of her vacillations in the discharge of this commission, he was mistaken. In two minutes he was furnished with an effigy of the head of a warrior crowned with a war-bonnet. Through its rudely simulated circle of feathers the smoke would curl as if merely an extension of their flamboyant glories. Callum had assigned to him a similitude of a bird, curiously wrought and with an elaborately decorated stem. Then she suddenly vanished, as if a vision of such delicate consistency could hardly withstand the freshening of the breeze. As it came in, flaring the fire and fluttering the fine show of fabrics swinging from the beams and circling about the building, it seemed as if it had extinguished the fair and dainty fancy that she must have been.

“The trader’s beautiful daughter, Miss Lilias, no doubt,” said Everard to Callum in a low voice, as they turned to settle for the pipes with Jock Lesly.

Although so low a voice, her father heard it.

“And I should be glad to know, sir, from whom you had her name so pat upon your tongue?” he demanded surlily.

He could not have said why, but he was angered by the phrase, “the trader’s beautiful daughter,” although he was not expected to overhear it. With his mind averse to Callum as it had lately grown, he speculated upon the possibility that it was he who had descanted upon her beauty to this young lordling, and that Everard, perhaps, had caused himself to be brought here that he might judge for himself.

For once Callum subjected himself to no misapprehension. “I hae never mentioned her name,” he said stiffly.

“No, no, indeed!” protested Everard hastily; for although he revolted at the pother over so slight a matter as he esteemed it, he wished to occasion no awkwardness to Callum, whose position seemed to bristle with unexpected difficulties. “I never heard of her from Callum--nor from any one at the fort. She--your daughter, Miss Lilias--was mentioned to me by a Virginian whom we saw in the Overhill towns--who claimed to be well acquainted with you. His name was--Tam Wilson--was it not, Callum?”

“I dinna ken his name,” said the dour Callum shortly.

“Ou, ay--Tam Wilson--I mind Tam Wilson weel enow,” said the trader curtly, his red face now blotched with white.

He took his money for the pipes, and as the two young men trudged away in the closing mist he took himself to task. He did not know what he would be at, he said to himself. He could not expect the trader’s beautiful daughter Lilias never to be mentioned among young men--why, the girl was celebrated for her beauty wherever she went. But somehow he knew that if Callum had been seriously in love he was of that earnest, reserved nature that would have guarded her name from other lips as if it had been a sacred thing; that her beauty would have been to him only an incident of her personality, dear because it characterized her, and never to be vaunted abroad by him.

Analyzing thus his anger, Jock Lesly discovered that he was not excited because her name was mentioned, but because he thought that it had come from Callum. This marked the measure of disappointment and discontent he experienced, to suspect that Callum’s attachment to Lilias was not of the serious nature hitherto supposed.

“But hegh, sirs,” he said to himself, “it’s no for the puir callant’s betterment that the lassie’s father hae aye a kind heart till him when Lilias hersel’ looks so glum an’ dour at him. I marked the glance o’ her eye whilst I was dealin’ with thae carles o’ Injuns. Lord--Lord!” he exclaimed in dismay, “man is but mortal an’ fitted for mortal wark! I canna trade wi’ the Injuns an’ yet hae the wisdom an’ leadin’ to guide the luve affairs o’ that freakish Lilias, that I’se warrant dinna ken her own mind! I’se e’en commit it a’ to Providence, that dootless hae mair experience than this puir tradin’ body, that disna even ken what will become o’ the station if they still hand otters at the price they are askin’ the noo!”

Having thus discharged his mind of the responsibility, although now and again he sighed heavily because of the soreness that the stress of his anxiety had left in his consciousness, he busied himself in the multitude of his duties, ever and anon returning to the haranguing of Duncan and Malcom and John, that they should have all been out of the way and left him with no one to wait on a wheen o’ callants frae the fort, it requiring both himself and Dougal to drive a bargain with the discerning chief of Nequassee.

This line of thought bringing up again the recollection of Callum’s offended face and wounded mien because of his ungracious and groundless suspicions, Jock Lesly grew pricked in conscience and desirous to be reconciled formally.

“Zounds!” he muttered, “I maun hae my friends, Lilias or no Lilias, an’ the man is my far awa’ cousin--sae far awa’ it canna be counted--but that’s neither here nor there. Hegh, Duncan,” he called out, “ye can gae ower to the fort an’ ask Callum MacIlvesty if he’ll no sup wi’ me the night if he isna on duty.”

It had been Callum’s impression during the few days that he had now been at the fort that the trader’s domicile must be one of the unoccupied cabins within the works, for he knew that during the earlier alarms of the Cherokee War certain houses had been placed at the disposal of the settlers’ families flocking there for safety. In his opinion this would have been much the safest method of sheltering the trader’s family, but his invitation to the domestic board at the trading-house itself was a definite negation to this supposition.

“Surely auld Jock is clean wud,” he said to himself as, furnished duly with leave, he went out from the fort and crossing the bridge of the fosse took his way over the glacis beyond the fields and those broad spaces filled with the stumps of the trees which Grant’s troops had felled while the army lay in camp outside the works.

He stumbled over one of these, so dim was the light of the chilly, misty dusk. As he regained his footing he turned to look back at the fort. It was but dimly outlined against the dreary evening sky; a steady gleam of light came from the window of the guard-house near the gate, while hovering above the works was a vague suffusion of rays that doubtless issued from various undiscriminated sources,--doors ajar, unseen windows, a lantern perchance swinging here and there,--all combining in this faint, dimly discerned aureola beneath the dense, overpowering weight of the blackness of the night. He heard the sentinel challenge the officer of the day on his rounds and then the measured tramp as the guard turned out. The lonely wind was sighing among the sad, rifled woods; the river’s dash over the rocks that fretted its currents came distinct to his ears; and just as he was thinking that without more guidance in the darkening gloom he might walk off its steep bluffs he perceived suddenly a light in front of him and heard the opening of a door. He was already at the trading-house, and here was Jock Lesly coming out to speculate on his delay, but seeing him at hand, he pretermitted this to reprove his tardiness.

“Hout, man! ye’ll get no sic vivers at the fort as I sail set before ye! My certie, when I was your age the board ne’er waited for my teeth to be sharpened.”

There was, however, no convivial board spread in the trading-house, where Callum now expected to see it. While he waited for Jock Lesly to rearrange a barricade at the door which could not be removed from without except with great clamor, he noted instead that the fire had died down almost to embers. Only now and again a feeble white flare, starting up from a mass of red coals, showed the proportions and usage of the trading-house, and set up such a flicker among the glancing arms and swaying fabrics as gave an uncomfortable suggestion of half seen figures lurking and ready to spring.

“Hegh, callant,” cried Jock Lesly’s voice with a tremor of relish and triumph in the disclosure he meditated. “Come along, and we’se see what we’se see!”