Part 30

The three barely waited till this incident of the sunset was past, seeming in its swiftness, its unreality, some shimmering illusion of the haze-freighted air; in its wild chromatic grotesquerie, some necromancy of the gorgeous zenith of amber and red, and the responsive dream of the mirroring water. Then without one word they rose, struck off by a short cut through the dank and darkening woods, and night had hardly fallen before the chief of Hurricane Town, individually averse to the French interest, was amazed by the trooping in of these incongruous and irrelevant figures announcing themselves as the accredited emissaries of Captain Richard Howard, and producing letters from that officer in support of their assertion, duly confirmed when read by the interpreter.

XIX

THE crash seemed afterward to Laroche like the fall of a castle of cards, like the wreck wrought by the wind in the gossamer symmetries of a cobweb, like a sudden awakening to the conditions of reality from the allurements of a dream, so potent seemed the force, so tenuous the fine-spun scheme when all its fibres were rent apart.

So unprescient had he been!

It was at _O-tel-you-yau-nau_ (Hurricane Town) that he met his fate.

Following the many windings of the river, pausing at sundry villages by the way to receive the protestations and rivet the adherence of the gladly harkening Muscogees, he came to his objective point late the next afternoon. A great black cloud seemed to have accompanied him; in its midst were vivid darting lightnings, frequent and menacing for a time, ever and anon showing convolutions of the vapor lighter in hue and texture, superimposed, as it were, upon the denser darker masses. Then all was dulled to a uniform consistency of tone and portent. The huts of the town, the public square, the _chooc-ofau-thluc-co_, or rotunda, the fields, whence the late harvests had been gathered, all were overshadowed thus, and the forest surrounding them seemed to support this canopy amongst its branches.

From out the town the mico and headmen had come to greet him when as their heralded guest he had approached. With white swans’ wings they had gently stroked his face on either side a hundred times or more as he entered the public square; they had placed him beside the mico on the great white seat of the chief’s council-room, _mic-ul-gee in-too-pau_; they had smoked with him the friend-pipe, and the cacina was brewed. Now and again sudden peals of thunder shook the earth, and the yellow lightnings illumined the dreary gray stretches of the forest and cloud and river and the humble little town, all crouching, as it were, amidst these harbingers of the wrath of the great elements.

So confident, so thoroughly at ease was Laroche that he could not afterward remember when those vague _indicia_ of mental disquietude first became perceptible in the manner of the mico Padgee (the Pigeon). The French officer had known that this chief entertained doubts as to the policy of an intertribal peace, as a constructive constraint upon the powers and independence of the Creek Confederacy. Laroche’s mission to Hurricane Town was partly to set at rest these doubts and to present in contrast the great advantages which the Muscogees would secure in the aid of all the tribal forces against the English. Only united strength and united action could avail aught against British encroachment. The national heads of the Muscogee Confederacy had formally acceded to this view, but Padgee was a man of influence, and his unreserved support was desired. A scrupulous heed the mico seemed to give to Laroche’s talk of the advantages of the great Indian coalition, which was to be the subject of official discussion on the morrow upon the arrival of two other chiefs of the vicinity, whose wavering allegiance he desired to confirm by personal influence. Padgee seemed to ponder in dubitation upon every head of the discourse when, the ceremonies of welcome concluded, the two talked the matter over as they sat apart in the great assembly rotunda. Once the Indian said that the plan of Iberville many years ago was not then new. The Muscogee was a union of many adoptive tribes, the great Creek Confederacy, long before Iberville’s idea of the force of a united people was ever promulgated. It was the Creek policy,--absorption and consolidation. It was also the policy of the Six Nations, the Long House.

“It is unique and new in its aims and power,” Laroche argued, “the union of all the tribes for common aggression and common defense, to maintain aboriginal independence against European intrusion; whereas the scheme of the Creek Confederacy was to protect Creek interests only.”

Padgee made haste to nod his feathered head with a mutter of acquiescence; then he fixed his eyes attentively upon the circling figures of the tadpole dance, _Toc-co-yula-gau_, performed by four Indian braves and four squaws on the hard-trodden floor of the great assembly rotunda. The shadows duplicated their feathered heads upon the red painted earthen walls, and beyond the mad whirl of substance and semblance Laroche could look forth through the great portal opposite and see the night lowering, purple and black, and note how the storm gathered and bided its time, while the yellow lightnings now and again keenly flashed. He began to fancy that some deft hand had sown seeds of dissatisfaction more formidable in their upspringing than dragon’s teeth. He was sure some English suggestion had drawn the parallel between the limited policy of the Creek Confederacy and the universal brotherhood promised by the union of all tribes. Still more definite was the echo of an intrusive voice in the councils when Padgee opined, with many an involution, that he loved old times and old ideas best. Said they of earlier years,--wiser than the men of to-day,--that it was well that the British and French should fight each other. Thus the Muscogees between, courted by both, had much peace--except when it pleased them to conquer and absorb smaller tribes.

This was impossible now, Laroche argued, since the Cherokees had joined fortunes once and for all with the French, who also commanded the Choctaw allegiance. The Muscogees could not alone maintain neutrality.

He spoke sharply, and then checked himself that he should be so definitely nettled. Hurricane Town was at best inconsiderable. Padgee was not a representative man. To-morrow would bring the important chiefs whose suspected dissatisfaction could be obviated by conceding their reasonable desires. This was no official occasion, and Padgee doubtless was taking advantage of the _tête-à-tête_ to bring forward his discontents that he might be remembered when lubricating presents were in order, to make the project run the more smoothly. He was obviously talking to hear himself talk! Nevertheless, Laroche was conscious of an increase of impatience when the voice of Padgee, more like a hawk than a dove, was once more rising on the air with a queer blending of plaint and discontent and apology.

He meant no harm, said Padgee. He loved the officer of the great French king like a brother. But the British goods were well named, being good! And he sighed, as being loath to relinquish the values of a trade so long enjoyed.

Floutingly, as if he hardly cared to reply at all, Laroche averred that French merchandise was famous for its quality all the world over, and more than that, it was cheap.

Once more Padgee caught himself and protested that it was not for him to say; the Creek national headmen would decide the question.

“They _have_ decided it long ago,” Laroche interrupted him.

Certainly, Padgee was aware of that, but he felt the loss. _O-tel-you-yau-nau_ (Hurricane Town) had been a favorite stand of the British traders in times past, and the people loved them.

The long serpentine lines of the lighted cane burning upon the floor were growing dim, flickering, dying out gradually. The dreary night without in the quick keen flashes of the lightning was brighter, more distinct, than the dome-shaped rotunda sinking into shadow. The dance was over, the place nearly empty of people. Laroche rose suddenly with a more indubitable monition of treachery. He looked about him for his Cherokee bodyguard. Secure among friends, he had dismissed them to enjoy the hospitalities and return the courtesies of their coadjutors of the new alliance. Padgee, noting the movement, rose too, speaking very rapidly, as if there were scant time to be lost, while the great spaces of the _chooc-ofau-thluc-co_ darkened yet more duskily and the vague lights of the cane trembled to extinction. Outside, the lightning unsheathed its vivid blades, flashing athwart the sky, and the thunder pealed and burst explosively and rolled away, muttering, to the further hills.

It was a long time, said Padgee plaintively, since a British trader had been able to ply his kind and beneficent vocation in Hurricane Town for fear of the martial French at Fort Toulouse; and since the French sent no traders to the villages, save now and then a mere peddler, slipping back and forth from his fort, afraid of his shadow, the Indians of Hurricane Town were often utterly destitute of all those artificial supplies which they needed, so civilized had they come to be. They were fit to die of shame should any one observe how far behind the fashion of the day had they trailed. Only very recently a Chickasaw chief had come to Hurricane Town in a splendid embroidered suit from a British trader, and he, the great mico, Padgee, had naught in which to meet him that was of European manufacture but a cocked hat and a pair of silver shoe buckles.

He paused impressively. Doubtless he felt, as one might say in the artistic jargon of this day, that these articles did not “compose well” with the rest of his attire, a shirt of bead-wrought buckskin and leggings decorated with turkey-cock spurs and fawn’s trotters. Laroche made no reply. Somehow the crisis tingled in his nerves like some electrical current before the event was precipitated.

Therefore, Padgee resumed very swiftly, some folk of a town far off--he could not just say where--had come up to-night to meet the great French officer and--confer with him concerning the condition of the British trade.

Laroche turned upon him.

“Padgee!” he exclaimed, “is this well? I have eaten your bread, I have eaten your salt!”

The mico hesitated at the last moment, but half hearted in his deceit. Perhaps the appeal to the sanctions of his rude hospitality might have availed even now, but its force was abrogated by the possibilities. The British soldiers awaited no longer the preconcerted signal. Military figures, barely distinguishable in the gloom from other shadows of the darksome place, were climbing down from behind the tiers of seats of the primitive amphitheatre; and although one, “the Sinner,” lost his footing and fell rolling down the descent with great thumps, the Highlander was upon Laroche so quickly, so powerfully, that his strong hand stifled the cry for help.

It was managed with infinite address and secrecy, for the two British soldiers would have fallen victims to their own temerity had they dared to show themselves openly and alone, among the Indians, if unprotected and at their mercy. As to the Choctaw, the mere revelation of his personality, with a price upon his head, would have meant his death. Therefore Padgee, armed with his authority as mico, headed the guard of Muscogee braves, his own attendants, whom he designed to send with the captors to Fort Prince George, and accompanied them several miles on the return march. As he had long been inimical to the coalition so earnestly advocated by the French, this fact was the reason that Laroche had appointed Hurricane Town as the rendezvous of the lukewarm, that he might be sure of gaining the ear of Padgee and confirming his allegiance by argument and the example of others. It had needed but a word from Push-koosh to acquaint Captain Howard with this important circumstance, and the British officer in treating with the chief of Hurricane Town had held out prospects of high advancement. Thereafter Padgee had no need to complain of the lack of gold and European gewgaws when visited by strangers; in fact, he was in case to disport himself with a pride in apparel that might better befit a peacock than the humble pigeon whose name he bore.

When the populace outside of the rotunda learned that the great French “beloved man” had been arrested mysteriously in the British interest, they received the news with a wild outcry of despair and muttered threats and even efforts at rescue. More than one, especially in the neighboring towns, suspected that the indifference of Padgee to the success of the French schemes might have contributed to the catastrophe, but none dreamed that the hospitality of Hurricane Town had been violated, that Padgee had renounced the guest within the gates and delivered him up to his enemies, to be dragged away by force to a cruel doom. Hours had passed--indeed it was near day--before the news transpired, and although the Cherokee bodyguard set out at once upon the trail of the captors, they soon found that time itself could not overtake the party. For themselves they were few, unprepared, in a country bristling with hostile conditions, for the commandant at Fort Toulouse, as soon as apprised of the catastrophe, sent out a detachment to attempt a rescue, and the Cherokees feared to be held accountable for the capture of the French officer as for a lapse of vigilance. They therefore relinquished the effort, took moodily to their boat, refusing the tearful condolences of Hurricane Town, and pulled up the Flint River again, lamenting loudly all the way, to the Cherokee country.

What thoughts came to Laroche that stormy night as he half toiled and was half dragged among his captors through the tangled ways of the wilderness! A thousand vain regrets tortured him. The recapitulation of events that might have been ordered otherwise trailed in long sequences through his mind. A vision constantly recurred of a result so different, seeming so real, that only a slight wrench of will would be requisite to tear him from this oppressive dream which surely must needs presently dissolve in obvious fact.

Nevertheless his intellectual faculties, heedful of cause and effect, perceived that the flight was ordered with a craft that bade fair to eliminate all chance of rescue or escape. That they should take their way to the north or diagonally across Georgia was so obviously their proper policy that Padgee turned their steps directly to the south, whence none would dream of following. To increase the distance more effectually and obliterate the traces of their passage through the country, he availed himself of his own boat, hidden among the saw-grass of the marshy borders of a neighboring watercourse, down which they rowed and drifted out of all calculations of pursuit. Indeed this deviation took them so far to the south that they could discern the tang of salt water on the breeze, and hear the voice of the surf singing the iterative song of the sea. Only then did they disembark and take up the line of march toward the Savannah River once more.

Their progress was infinitely laborious; the weather had clouded, and rain filled the marshes and overflowed the streams. Often a fire was impracticable, and without shelter, short of food, in terror of capture, and now and again endangered by faction, the sufferings of the captors were hardly discounted by the anguish of the prisoner. Only once did a chance of escape present itself.

Laroche had observed that the Highlander, now taking command of the party, according to his orders, studiously prevented any opportunity for the prisoner to speak apart with any single individual. MacIlvesty had of course disarmed Laroche and taken from him all such valuables as might tempt the integrity of the others.

“Is this a’ your gowd?” he asked.

“Untie my hands and receive my parole, or else run your own risks,” retorted the French officer.

“An’ fine wad I like to do that, but it is contrary to my orders,” said Callum kindly, “sae I maun e’en look to you mysel’.”

This he did with a vigilance that showed no possibility of relaxation till one stormy night when they gained once more the banks of the Savannah River and found their further progress barred; for their boat, left there, to serve their return, had vanished.

It was near dawn when they made this discovery. The rain had ceased at last, though the clouds were still scudding through the gusty sky. A late waning moon showed in the east, infinitely melancholy in the cloud-rack of the tempest. The simple voices of the denizens of the swamp, overawed to silence by the violence of the storm, resumed their vague indiscriminate nocturne, the shrilling of a screech-owl, at intervals the noisy clangor of cranes, and once the bloodcurdling scream, of a catamount. The party had halted on the crest of a ridge overlooking the swollen watercourse, lashed to a swifter current by the turbulence of the wind. The boat, which they had left with every security in this solitary place, had been yet more definitely concealed. A tricksy gust had upset it, and in the glimmering light, as it floated bottom upward, it was not recognized.

As the two British soldiers patroled the banks, and now consulted together, and again hastily resumed the search, Push-koosh, standing near the prisoner, looking backward over his shoulder again and again, murmured against this loss of time. Then once more he scanned the woodsy track by which they had come, all glistening with moisture, and illumined by the drear light of the waning moon. He so obviously feared a rescue, that Laroche’s heart could but plunge at the prospect. A heron cried out dismally from the dense cane and marshy tangles beside the river, attesting the solitude. If but the rope that bound his hands were cut! The two men on the margin below passed the boat and repassed it, as held by its sheet-chain tangled about the submerged roots of a tree, its capsized bottom seemed but a boulder washed by the ripples as it lay in the shadow. As once more Push-koosh glanced warily, impatiently, over his shoulder, Laroche suddenly bethought himself of the peculiarities of his character and the details of their long service together. There was no mistaking his identity,--it was sufficiently attested by the contour of his head, with the silver band on his flat forehead, the red flamingo feathers all tipped with silver by the moon, and the beautiful tones of his velvet voice as he muttered his Choctaw imprecations.

“Ah, Push-koosh,” cried Laroche softly, a vibration of hope and joy in his tone, “_mon Bébé, mon petit chou! Je reconnais bien ton bon cœur._”

Push-koosh turned instantly and looked straight at the French officer. The moonlight was full in the Indian’s dark inscrutable eyes.

“There is gold in the bottom of my tobacco bag, Prince Baby,--much gold. Cut this rope and it is yours!”

An instant of doubt, and then the Choctaw approached with that sly supple motion so like the step of a catamount. One stroke of his knife and Laroche would be free to flee through the marshy forests, while the two British soldiers and the Muscogee tribesmen hunted for the boat that was before their eyes, and wrangled till the echoes were loud and discordant.

The Choctaw’s touch was laid, not upon the pouch with its treasure amidst the tobacco that had escaped the search of the Highlander, but upon the bound hands held out to him with a piteous eagerness of entreaty. Then looking the captive directly in the eye, Push-koosh said with an indescribable fullness of significant reminder, “_Eho chookoma!_” (the beautiful woman!)

XX

THE snow lay deep at Fort Prince George when they returned.[12] The air was now clear of flakes, invested with that strange absolute funereal stillness characteristic of the muffled world, but the sky was still darkly gray and with a menace in its motionless solemnity. The roofs of the block-houses and barracks showed densely white against the slate-colored clouds; not even about the great smoking chimneys was a trace of thaw. The palisades that surmounted the unbroken white walls of the rampart upheld fluffy drifts lodged among the sharp-pointed stakes. The glacis was only such a faint outline as might remain in vague traces of a prehistoric work. The prickly branches of a strong abatis on two sides of the fort thrust out darkly from the overwhelming banks like the protest of a buried forest. The thousand stumps, relics of the encampment of Colonel Grant’s army here the preceding year, were utterly submerged, and gave more than one of the approaching party a headlong fall as the two British soldiers, the Choctaw Mingo, and the Muscogee guard, with their prisoner, all half frozen, dead beat, and nearly starved, came within view from the gates. The ditch was half full of ice, solid as a rock, but the heart of the sentry was all aglow to behold them at a distance, and his jubilant call, “Corporal of the guard!” reached them as they struggled across the intervening spaces with the grateful realization that they were not to be kept waiting for identification, while the last resources of endurance gave way at the moment of rescue and the portal of refuge.

A clangor of weapons, keen and clear on the icy air, the tramp of marching feet, the glitter of steel and scarlet cloth, came to them through the great gate, following hard on the cry to turn out the guard. In less than five minutes the red glow of great fires, ardent spirits unsparingly administered, hot food, and the comforts of beds and blankets invested the recollection of the struggle through the snow, the tramp of more than two hundred miles, the dangers and vicissitudes of the journey with a certain unreality, seeming rather something they had wildly dreamed, were it not for the testimony of each to reinforce the memory of the others.

Exhaustion limited their capacity for expression, but the whole fort rejoiced in their stead. The news flew abroad like the flocks of snowbirds all undaunted by the temperature. The tale of the notable capture was told over and again in the guardroom, in the officers’ mess-room, in the barracks, and the farrier’s smithy; over the making of the clumsy cartridges of that day for the little cannon on the bastions, and around the mending of guns in the armorer’s forge; in the wigwams of the Indian hunters and camp followers of whatever sort whose temporary habitations were on the outside of the works; in the Cherokee town of Keowee, hard by, and at Jock Lesly’s trading-house. Even down into the depths of the earth to the Scotchman’s subterranean ingle-neuk it penetrated, and there it found Lilias sitting on a buffalo rug before the red fire, her hands clasped tightly, her eyes wildly dilated, pale to the lips, and with her heart fluttering frantically, painfully, hopelessly, like one of the many birds perishing without, whose wings, swift though they were, had beat futilely against the infinite forces of destiny embodied in the storm; for she--and she only--saw aught beyond cause of gratulation in the capture of the turbulent French emissary, the destroyer of the peace of the frontier, the arch-plotter, the organizer of Indian armies, the reconciler of Indian feuds, the confederator of all Indian tribes into one great united, potent structure of government financed and armed through Spanish and French aid, before which British colonial occupation could hardly stand for a day.