Part 4

Mingo Push-koosh had been himself disappointed, both as a soldier and a statesman, but his mien had an element of pride as he said that the variegated merchandise--_al-poo-e-ack_--could not be forwarded. Perhaps he resented the fact that he had been forced to discuss the clipped-claw condition of the unarmed Choctaw tribe, whom Kerlerec had nevertheless the art so to propitiate that he was called preëminently the “Father of the Choctaws.” Mingo Push-koosh was evidently secretly triumphant in the realization that the French alliance which he possessed so easily, and the Cherokees coveted so strenuously, was not to be had by them; for without the privileges of trade and a base of supply, the Cherokees must adhere to the repugnant treaty with the British to be able to keep under arms at all, even in war with other tribes.

Moy Toy’s countenance fell.

“_To e u_?” (Is this true?) he asked sternly, as if he suspected dissimulation, for from time to time there had been traffic more or less by way of the Cherokee River.

“_To e u hah_!” (It is true indeed!) replied the French officer definitely.

The chiefs looked from one to another silently, their countenances expressing much that their pride would fain have hidden. If this were true, a species of vassalage was the best hope of the free and independent Cherokee people. Laroche begged to be permitted to explain his views in reference to the obstructions to navigation.

Canoes, he went on to say, could pass of course, a few light craft occasionally, perhaps even large pettiaugres at long intervals in some especially favorable stage of the water, but for the free, systematic transportation of the fleets of a great and continuous trade, the passage was forever impracticable. In the distant future the difficulties of navigation might be nullified by the construction of a parallel artificial channel (he could find no Cherokee equivalent for the word “canal”), the method of which he alertly explained with that relish of technical details characteristic of the very young in science,--all as carefully heeded by the Indian statesmen as if entirely comprehensible. But at present he desired to lay before the wise chiefs a plan of his own, which, should it meet their approval, he would elaborate and submit to the governor at New Orleans.

There was an interval of silence as he arranged his thoughts. The anxious, deliberative faces of the chiefs all turned toward him, their eyes keenly studying his expression of countenance, seemed oddly incongruous with the puerile decoration of beads and great earrings, and feathers poised upright on each polled head. The vague light of the smouldering council-fire flickered upon them; the sombre interior of the windowless building was but dimly glimpsed in the deep red glow; the glare from the brilliant day outside filled the narrow portal as with some transparency, some illuminated segment of a painted landscape unnaturally bright,--an emerald mountain aglow, a silver shimmering river, a bit of sapphire sky, intense. Voices, faint in the distance, of jovial intimations, came from where the young people were dancing in three circles after the races and the feastings. The sound was far alien to this atmosphere of thought and anxious care, this dim council-house, where were concocted the measures of statecraft that kept the people free and happy. Even Push-koosh, whom the envious shadows could not bereave of the brilliant effect of his white raiment, asserted albeit in the dimness, his glossy pearls, the glitter of his silver ornaments, did not heed the joyous clamor. As to Laroche, he did not hear it at all.

It was not to be contemplated, he said, that this perverse obstruction to navigation should withhold the Cherokee nation from firmly grasping the hand of the French father who loved them; but since it was absolutely impracticable to send valuable cargoes of arms and ammunition, as well as cloths, cutlery, tools, and paints, all those necessities of the Indian trade, so expensive and difficult to be obtained, through those twenty miles of roaring rapids, to say nothing of the whirlpools further up the current, the merchandise might be thence transferred, under strong guard, by land with pack-horses to the comparatively near point of the reopening of easy navigation, were there a barrier town settled at each extremity of the overland route to receive and distribute the goods by the various waterways throughout the Cherokee nation.

“_Seohsta-quo_!” (Good!) cried Moy Toy of Tellico.

The others in great excitement but in definite order, observing their usual courtesy in deliberation, with much rapid bestowal of sticks, bespeaking categorical answers on the various details, began the discussion of this bold project,--the extension of their settlements for more than a hundred miles rather than fail to secure the advantage of the French alliance. The details of the diplomatic scheme illustrated the Frenchman’s fertility in device, and Push-koosh was not slow to perceive that Laroche presently had both hands full of sticks, while he himself held but two, evidently tendered only as an afterthought and _pro forma_. The Indian statesmen wished to hear the French officer speak. The coherence and cogency of his plan commended it. Indeed, afterward they contemplated the removal of the town of Tellico Great itself, one of the “seven Mother Towns” of the Cherokee nation, far enough down the Cherokee River to be within easy access of the large French pettiaugres. Even as it was, the nation subsequently extended its frontier on this basis, and a series of new towns was settled below the “mountain obstructions,” the “whirl,” the “boiling pot,” and still beyond, near the upper end of the Muscle Shoals, serving as the “barrier towns” of the tribe. The Cherokees craftily explained to the English the necessity for this move by the statement that the site of some of their upper towns had become infested with witches!--it may safely be presumed that they were British witches!

The questions relative to the proposed new location,--the number of warriors requisite for the barrier towns; the possibility that, if supported by a sufficient force of braves in the neighborhood, the French government would settle a garrison at the Muscle Shoals; the number of horses and men necessary for the pack-trains and the guard for the overland transportation; the most desirable point for the resumption of the water carriage of the merchandise up the Cherokee River, and thence by way of the Eupharsee (Hiwassee), the Tennessee, the Agiqué (French Broad), throughout the Cherokee country; the measures to be taken for the protection of French traders and their mercantile assistants against the British,--all these points Laroche intelligently discussed, continually receiving and returning sticks, while the transparent landscape in the doorway shimmered to a change: the blue sky grew red, the green mountain turned purple, the silver river dulled to steel, and a star began to flicker in the west.

Moy Toy would have talked on through the descending darkness, regardless of the night and the dying of the last ember of the council-fire, save for the admonition of one of the minor chiefs, on whom the duty of caring for the creature comforts of the guests had devolved, and who contrived to intimate presently that it was long since the strangers had eaten and drunk. On this account the council was adjourned, Moy Toy still wearing a thoughtful aspect and meditatively saying, “We will talk of this again to-morrow.” And as they left him in the gloom of the state-house, and began the descent of the steps of earth that led down from the high mound, they heard him still mechanically repeating in the solitary darkness, “We will talk of this again to-morrow.”

Now Push-koosh, like some other infants, even when not Choctaw chiefs nor warriors, was of a proud, implacable, and pompous self-opinion. It required little to wound his vanity and nettle his temper, but indeed he had ample cause for affront in that this officer had talked unceasingly in his presence to the Cherokee chiefs without pausing to translate what was said, although in their excitement no one had noticed the fact. At first Push-koosh had essayed to speak in Cherokee, but his knowledge of the tongue would not sustain the subtleties of his meaning. He had even humbled himself once to seek recourse in the sign language, comprehensive enough for all needs, but every eye was fixed upon Laroche, every ear intent. He felt his pride touched that this absorbing interest, which the chiefs had manifested in diplomatic matters, sprang from naught that he had disclosed in his ambassadorial capacity,--in fact he did not even know the subject of their excitement or its importance. He thought it derogatory to his position to inquire of Laroche, or to seem to realize that he had been overlooked--he, the head of the embassy! But the incident roused him to the assertion of his own importance.

He saw, with pleasure in the contrast, that Laroche was exhausted by the mental stress of the discussion, while he had been refreshed by the long hours of rest in the quiet seclusion of the state-house. When they were seated in one of the piazza-like cabins at one side of the “beloved square,” where the banquet had been spread after the races, Laroche was still absorbed and silent, ate little, and drank only of the decoction from the “flint corn” made by boiling the grain and straining the result, the beverage when cooled said to have been refreshing and nutritive and “much liked even by genteel strangers.” A fire was alight in the centre of the “beloved square,” but the other public buildings were all vacant, and their open piazza-like fronts showed dark and deserted in the deepening dusk. The festivities were over for the nonce; the Indian guests from the neighboring villages had departed; the strangers’ share of the evening banquet, with which the merrymaking in their honor had ended, having been reserved for them till the close of the protracted session of the council. The town seemed drowsy, already half asleep; only a few occasional passers set the echo of a footfall astir; an owl was hooting in the woods; a vague sense of dreariness had descended with the twilight, and suddenly Laroche became cognizant, with a start as if he had seen a ghost, that there was a presence at the meal of which he had been hitherto unaware,--Akaluka herself, meekly seated by the Choctaw chief while he silently ate and drank.

There was a bold, open triumph in the face of Push-koosh, as he noted the manifestation of surprise. He looked at the French officer as arrogantly as if he had already that luxuriant Gallic scalp hanging to his favorite pipe. Perhaps he himself had never seemed so assertive, so lordly, as in the blended light of the bland moonrise and a flickering pine torch with which the table was lighted by the old woman who served it,--his strings of pearls, his glittering pistols, his white and scarlet garb, the red flamingo feathers in his hair, the broad silver band across his forehead, his perfect physical condition; while Laroche, pale from mental exertion, the mathematical calculation, the evolution of plans of public polity, the arrangement of intricate and antagonistic details in the problems of the Indian trade, wiped his forehead, felt his eyes ache, and was too tired to eat.

These plans were the more precious since they were suddenly beset with a new danger; he realized the menace, although he did not appreciate that he himself was an element in it; he did not know how admiringly the girl had gazed at him the previous evening at the pantomime, while Push-koosh, who could have killed him for it, gazed at her. Even Push-koosh had noted his unconsciousness of this fact,--but Laroche had not been equally oblivious of her attractions. “_Eho chookoma_!” quotha. She might now gaze at her peril,--and so might he! Laroche had not noticed this evening the Choctaw as he beckoned the girl to sit beside him as he ate, but he knew enough of Indian etiquette to be aware that this is the method by which the suitor formally recognizes and emphasizes the fact that his addresses are accepted.

Laroche had learned that this woman was the sister of Moy Toy, and while a Choctaw match for her might be approved by him as a means of strengthening the alliance between the tribes, still there was of necessity great doubt as to the completion of this national compact, the Choctaws and Cherokees having many ancient enmities to reconcile, and the offer of intermarriage must needs be approached with precaution. And above all things at some future day! To hamper at this crisis so important and promising a negotiation between the French government and the Cherokee nation, so difficult of arrangement, with a nettling trifle like this,--a personal matter of so alien and doubtful a character,--Laroche trembled with impatience at the very thought.

He was once more all alert. When Push-koosh rose at last from the meal and flung casually away, taking his path along the river bank where a cool breeze was stirring, the lieutenant followed. For although the woman must sit beside her suitor when he eats if he beckons to her, still the match is not yet irretrievably made. He must needs give her the foot of a deer as an admonition how brisk she must be on his errands, whereupon she must bake and offer him a cake of rockahominy meal, as token of willing subservience. He must also break an ear of corn in half, and in the presence of witnesses give her one portion, retaining the other himself, which completes the symbolic Indian marriage ceremonies.

“Push-koosh,” said Laroche gravely, as he approached,--the Indian slackened his pace, welcoming from his position of vantage as an accepted suitor the prospect of a quarrel with a jealous lover,--“the commandant did not send us here to make love to women!”

Push-koosh turned to glance aside at him. “Take care that you don’t do it, then,” he admonished the officer.

“Our mission is a matter far too important to jeopardize with such considerations,” declared Laroche. He slipped his arm through the Choctaw’s in a friendly way and detailed at length his scheme, his clever scheme, apologizing that he had not interpreted it at the council. “But it was not a part of our instructions,--only a plan of my own.”

“You did not want my suggestions,--I do not want yours,” retorted Push-koosh, deeply angered to perceive the importance of the discussion, through which he had sat silent, carried on over his head.

“But you can see surely that there must be no talk of women and marriage till all this is settled,--wait till you come again,” urged Laroche, holding his temper well in hand.

“_Eho chookoma_!” quoted Push-koosh significantly. “Meantime there might be another man!”

That fatal “other man”--was ever a lover’s dream which he did not haunt?

“But, _Bébé_, Push-koosh,” argued the Frenchman suavely, “what would you do hampered with a Cherokee wife if, after all, this tribe continues to adhere to the British, and should take part in their war with the French and their Choctaw allies?”

Push-koosh, animated with the jealous conviction, yet full of triumph in the fact, that the French officer was himself in love with this charming swan and therefore sought to interpose obstacles, retorted as if to strike him to the heart, “Do?--comply with the tribal custom! _Kill her!_ In the last war with the Muscogee, did not the Choctaw braves who had married Muscogee wives kill the women and their children, they being also Muscogee, for the children inherit the nationality of the mother? I should, of course, kill her!”

He had turned to face the officer, who stood for one moment speechless, realizing the strange world in which he was living, the curious medley of devil and man, of savagery and civilization.

The moon was well up over the river, and where the light struck with full effulgence the water was all a shining violet hue; the banks were of an invisible green, too dark for color, but somehow still sensibly verdant. All along the shore the frogs were piping, hardly noticed; for in the budding rhododendron close at hand a mocking-bird sang with wonderful _élan_ and elasticity, the multitude of exquisitely sweet notes springing one from another with a definite effect of rebound.

“Push-koosh,” the lieutenant said at length, “_mon Bébé bien-aimé_, you always betray your tender infant heart!”

He seemed to laugh, but his hand trembled on the hilt of his sword, as he stood as if irresolute and gazed at Push-koosh with a threat in his intent eyes hardly less fierce than the look with which only last night Push-koosh had menacingly, nay murderously gazed at him while he slept. Suddenly the officer turned aside, and alone took his way back to the Indian town.

Yet Laroche did not love the woman. Perhaps he was merely civilized by virtue of his nationality and his religion; for although as a soldier he would have coolly taken the life of a man and an enemy, he felt all a coward in the secret danger that menaced the Cherokee girl, unaware, doubtless, of her peril. He himself was not unaware of it, and therein he perceived an irksome responsibility. The Cherokees were so far in advance of the other Indian tribes in point of character, sentiment, civilization, that Laroche doubted if this mode of ridding one’s self of a wife, who, through no fault of her own, but for political reasons, had incurred disfavor, would suggest itself to them more readily than it had to him. With their evident intention to accept the proffer of the French alliance, it was more than likely that the Cherokee authorities, with their characteristic lack of foresight, would treat the match with the Choctaw chief as if the compact with the French were already made fast. Yet should it fail,--and from Laroche’s post on the seamy side he saw many a rent in the web of the probabilities,--Push-koosh had said it,--he had decreed her fate.

Laroche had so longed for the success of his scheme! It was so great, so clever, so promissory of personal and professional advancement! He felt that he would hardly hazard an item of its development for his own life,--much less then for the life of a creature like this--hardly more human than a deer! Besides, why should he interfere?--all might yet go well with the alliance. When he began to argue thus, he suddenly stopped short. Would he weigh a human life in the balance of his personal interest--become, albeit indirectly, accessory to a murder of the innocent? He grew a trifle pale at the thought and devoutly crossed himself. He would assume no such responsibility. He would keep no such secret. And then he began to see the matter in the light of an official duty. He represented the French interest, and should the Cherokees ever learn that he had been cognizant of this threat and had withheld it from them, it would alienate them, as naught else could, from the power that so earnestly sought their conciliation. In every point of view he determined that he would not hesitate. He would lay the matter before Moy Toy, as in civilization he would instantly report a threatened murder to the police.

Now Moy Toy was a man of family affection. Years earlier, in 1730, he had given indications of this fact when a Cherokee delegation, favored by royal invitation, were on the point of setting forth to visit King George II. in London; Moy Toy, although he was to be the chief delegate, at the last moment relinquished the distinguished opportunity because his wife had fallen dangerously ill and he could not leave her. Therefore he remained at the little Indian village, while several other chiefs made the wonderful journey to England, and had audience of the sovereign at his palace, and were the recipients of innumerable presents and attentions, being the lions of the day.

He now took instant alarm at this menace to his sister, and to Laroche’s surprise presently summoned to his aid and counsel the other chiefs of Tellico Great. The Indian scheme of succession follows the collateral female line, and therefore Moy Toy’s possible future nephew would inherit his office as chief of Tellico Great, to the exclusion of his own son. Hence his sister was a personage of as much consequence in Tellico Great as a mere woman could be, and the council agreed that in view of this circumstance they would not trust the Franco-Choctaw-Cherokee alliance until it was an accomplished fact. Yet even now it was in jeopardy, for Mingo Push-koosh, the French ambassador, bearing also the assurances of the Choctaw nation, angered with so good a reason might work mischief. And then began the accusation of the woman!

Why had she kept his present, and involved them in all this difficulty? the sage councilors assembled in the state-house demanded of her when summoned before them. For this very reason, she declared, had she kept his present, although not loving it, for the young men had said that she must not on any account anger the Choctaw ambassador of the great French father. Then poor Moy Toy, roused from cogitation on such deep and intricate problems as had occupied the day, to fill the dark hours of the night with vacillations and agitations touching the political effects of so ill-starred a flirtation, asked her bitterly had she no more sense than to listen to the “mad young men!” Whereupon she protested with tears that the “mad young men” had but spoken the words that even now were on his own sage lips,--the ambassador must not be angered!

With daylight came new resolutions. Moy Toy, arguing that the ambassador was not empowered to treat for a Cherokee wife, and to exact compliance with his demand as a condition of his mission, concluded that he sustained no official affront in the ceremonious return of the scarf with an intimation that so great and flattering an intermarriage could only be made after the compact with the two tribes.

Now it is possible that Push-koosh might have acquiesced with appropriate docility in this obviously just reasoning of his elders, requiring, however, promises of Moy Toy on his sister’s behalf, conditioned on the completion of the tribal compact, had it not been for his jealousy of the French lieutenant. Akaluka, again summoned, was also at the state-house, wild-eyed, tremulous, visibly terrified, eager to return the present, which, having been made acquainted with her possible fate, she was far indeed from loving.

As the Choctaw ambassador received the scarf which she tendered him, the cogent reasons for delay that had been urged, the political interests involved, so prominent in the apologies of the Cherokee chiefs,--all were merged in a sense of sustaining the curious disgrace of a personal and public rejection in the presence of a rival,--for Mingo Push-koosh caught the eyes of the French lieutenant fixed hopefully upon him.

Why then, the Choctaw asked quite calmly, had she received the present if she did not love it? Why had she sat beside him as he ate? For himself,--neither did he love the present!