Part 6

So overwhelmed had been the wary Moy Toy’s brain by the surprise, the fury, the grief attending the catastrophe of the massacre of his young tribesmen, that these considerations were not even dimly presented to his alert perceptions till the moment that Laroche dashed down the stairs of the mound and impetuously flung himself into his host’s arms with his delirious babble of military works and munitions of war. It was at first but a vague impression, a doubtful suggestion. The crafty Indian mind dwelt upon it in the days that came and went. Time seemed to embellish, to perfect it. And now it had become the dearest boon of fate, and the Indian could not, would not forego it. For this man could design and build a fort that could withstand a British assault! He could so dispose the Indian facilities as to enable them to defend it. He could by reason of his connection with the French government secure such munitions of war as would complete its armament. An impregnable stronghold in the wilderness, with scientifically handled artillery, could set at naught British aggression and hold the country.

Turned in whatever light, the idea presented a perfect symmetry. It was like a many faceted gem. And thus the two magicians, men of herbs and simples, found their equanimity shaken and their capacities seriously hampered by the continual presentation of Moy Toy’s imperious countenance at the door of the stranger-house, and the sight of his agitation and anger that the cheerataghe had failed to exorcise the demon of fever and work a cure. Therefore they besought him to leave the sufferer to their ministrations; for his angry countenance caused their hearts to weigh very heavy within them, and his sharp speeches gave great offense to the demon of fever, who had never within all their experience conducted himself in the wayward, troublous manner of his present manifestations.

“But the man will die!” said Moy Toy, looking down in angry despair at the wasted face and form, as the restless head of the patient turned from side to side, always weary, vainly seeking rest.

“Is he the first?” asked one of the cheerataghe. For like a physician of civilization, he by no means guaranteed the continuance of life by virtue of his science.

It was very honestly and earnestly exerted, and both he and his colleague felt all the virtuous rage of sustaining a grievous injustice when Moy Toy said, with a rancor that surprised them (for quarrels and unkindness to one another were almost unknown in the tribe, the utmost placidity of temper and mutual forbearance being _de rigueur_), “You promised rain,--and behold at this season of the year a drought lasting six weeks, and the planting of corn delayed till a famine threatens, and not a drop till to-day.”

“A visitation! a visitation! because of the sins of the people and their hardness of heart!” cried the two magi in a breath.

Wherein they improved an advantage over the faculty of to-day.

Moy Toy silently gazed down at the rolling head and the fixed, absorbed eyes bent steadily on some phantasmagoria of the fever. He noted the weakness of the once clear, strong voice,--the definite, trained enunciation had sunk to a husky mutter. Still Laroche babbled of military operations, for now and again Moy Toy caught the phrases “quatre mortiers--Coehorn--champ de bataille--barils de poudre,” although the rest was unintelligible, for now he spoke continuously in French.

“He must live! He must live for the Cherokee nation!” exclaimed the chief, with the insistence of hoping against hope.

One of the cheerataghe had a fine, steady, acute eye, a hideously painted face, with the aspect of a bedlamite, arrayed as he was with buffalo horns and tail, and with his body stuck over with wings of owls, the calves of his legs hung with a dozen garters of rattling bell buttons, and a long-handled gourd filled with pebbles in his hands, which were covered with bear’s paws. Perhaps the patient’s delirium could present nothing more grotesquely, absurdly frightful.

“You, Moy Toy,” he said, in his grave, sonorous, sane voice, “you have given offense to the demon of fever. For when the sun is rising the man revives; he will take drink, although he cannot eat; he will speak Cherokee, softly, softly; he will close his eyes and sleep. And then come you!--with a troubled face, and a harsh voice, and an eager step, and a fierce hurry! And the demon of fever is angered, and the fever grows quicker, and more eager, and harsh, and angrier than you! And it rises and rises till the man will not drink and cannot see, and has no speech but a shred of French and screams for dreams that are without sleep!”

He looked to his colleague, who gravely nodded his fantastic head in corroboration.

Moy Toy silently studied the face first of one of the magicians, then of the other. Although immeasurably superstitious and credulous, he was yet grounded in craft and suspicion. And, in truth, perhaps he was not without justification; the cheerataghe, like more modern disciples of Æsculapius, doubtless often attributed to other causes disasters consequent upon a lack of skill or its misdirection. In this instance, however, the value of the stake at hazard, the imputation of the malign personal influence of his presence, a vague indignation that he should be esteemed obnoxious to any being--even a demon of fever--rendered Moy Toy peculiarly alert, watchful, disposed to exact to the extremity of the possibilities.

The two cheerataghe, as his glance once more sought the pallid face, the ever-turning head on the pillow, looked anxiously at each other. For the face seemed death-stricken. The next moment they took sudden hope. A change, a vague, indefinable change, quivered over it. The jumble of French words faltered on Laroche’s feeble tongue. With unexampled resolution, he pressed firmly his silent lips together. And in that silence the wary Indians heard what had come first to his ears. Even in the dullness of fever and the frenzy of delirium, he had interpreted its significance, so momentous it was to him. A voice it was in the broad spaces of the “beloved square” without, a bold, hearty, roaring voice, speaking the English language with a blatant Scotch accent.

The three Cherokees gazed at one another in tumultuous and contending emotions. They experienced much gratitude that the spark of perception intimated they might still hope. They could hardly repress their admiration of the finesse, the courage, the mental balance, that enabled Laroche to perceive the crisis, interpret its meaning, and meet it with a sane judgment,--his self-control, which even in the thrall of fever could curb the infirmities of that weakly, babbling tongue, and silence the self-betrayal of the French speech upon it. All their excitement, however, was subordinated to the triumph in his craft that stimulated their own emulous resources. He was indeed in great danger. Emissaries of the French among the Indians, having done so much to instigate and maintain the late Cherokee War, were peculiarly obnoxious to the British authorities. In fact, rewards had been offered for their scalps, and by the late treaty the Cherokees themselves were pledged to arrest and surrender these enemies of the English. Moy Toy, making a gesture imposing secrecy, stepped out of the door to meet the visitor, who was clamoring as loudly and boldly in the “beloved square” as if he were in his own byre.

“Hegh, Moy Toy!” he cried bluffly, breaking away from the “second men,” as the subordinate authorities of the town were called, “how’s a’ wi’ ye, man?”

He was a tall, heavy, awkward fellow, with a boisterous, assured address, a broad, red face, light almost flaxen hair, plaited and tied with a leather thong in a queue, arrayed in buckskins but with long cowhide boots, and enveloped in a great match-coat, for it had been raining heavily, and the drops still clung upon the tufts and fibres of the cloth. His cap of coonskin, with the tail as a pendant, was pushed back from his brow, revealing remarkably straight, regular, and well-formed features and shrewd, blue eyes. He held under his arm a stout horsewhip as a companion rather than a weapon, for his pistols were in the holsters on the saddle of his nag, which, drenched to the skin, hung down its head where it stood unceremoniously hitched to a stake whereto was sometimes bound a victim for the torture. The guest made no pretense of adapting to the Indian ceremonials the manners in which he had been bred, as was the custom of strangers and traders generally, or of recognizing any princely arrogations on the part of Moy Toy. He advanced with great, muscular strides toward his averse host,--who visibly winced from the overpowering redundancy, as it were, of his presence,--seized upon the limp hand of the Indian, and crushed it in his cordial grasp as if Moy Toy had been also a bold Briton.

“How’s a’ wi’ ye?--an’ what d’ ye hear frae Charlestoun?”

There was scarce similarity between this hearty, warm-blooded entity and a snake, but Moy Toy, of his own volition, would have touched neither except upon necessity or in the way of business. The fibres of his hand tingled with the consciousness of the detested impact long after the trader’s unwelcome grasp had relaxed and his manual energy was expending itself in aimlessly cracking his whip at the sand of the smooth spaces of the “beloved square.” There was a spark of smouldering fire in the eyes of the Indian, a tense restraint in the muscles of his shoulders and his straight back, as if he would fain hold himself under strong control. Albeit his interlocutor spoke English he understood Cherokee, and Moy Toy replied in his native tongue; thus each talked without solicitude, for each was comprehensible to the other. The Indian said that he had no news from Carolina and inquired in turn, but with scant show of interest, “as to the Muscogee?”

“I begin to think a’ thae carles are dead!” exclaimed Jock Lesly, with a vigorous snap of the whip. “They were looked for to join the Chickasaw and the English agen the French away yon to the south. But deil ane o’ them hae minted a word yet!”

The Cherokee’s stately dignity, his cautious, reserved speech, contrasted strongly with the Scotchman’s unsuspicious plainness, as he waited with an air of expectation. If the Indian had had news, he would not have bartered it with the trader, nor indeed had the trader repaired hither for what he could hear. This mutual realization embarrassed the pause, yet Jock Lesly still sharply cracked his whip at the sand and hesitated as to what he should say.

With all the thrifty instincts of the canny Scotch pioneer of that day, with all the bold, bluff courage of his vigorous personality, Jock Lesly had been the first, and as yet the only trader to venture back within the remote mountain region, whence the fury of the terrible Cherokee War had driven all mercantile enterprise. Indeed, the treaty was hardly signed before he was again in the place that had known him of yore, his trading-house rebuilt, depending for his safety partly on the treaty and partly on his utility to the savages, his popularity among them, and his conscience void of offense against them.

“I hae had as muckle o’ the rack an’ rief o’ the war as ye,” he was wont to say, “an’ the Lard kens I wad wuss to be canty and quiet enow.”

As he stood looking aimlessly about, he noted that the ranges were all full of mist between the domes, and from the soft densities of its white, fluffy masses those eminences rose in sombre, purple hues and massive effects against a pale gray sky, along which lay horizontal clouds, of a darker, denser gray. The river, with lace-like films of mist hanging in the budding green willows and pawpaws of its banks, had the tint of burnished copper. The great trees of the limitless forests, and those gigantic growths around the town, dripped with moisture as they hung down their sodden branches about the newly washed boles, the bark so dense of color as to suggest the effect of being freshly painted. A dull day it was, and the atmosphere, devoid of all elasticity, seemed almost too lifeless to breathe. He broke at last from his dubitation and began in his neighborly wise:--

“A-weel, a-weel, Moy Toy, there hae been a wheen idle, feckless loons frae your toun o’ Tellico down to Ioco Town aboot my trading-house. An’ there they lifted a few trifles frae the stock,--but I’se no grudge that,--a few bit duds. But then they slartered a couple o’ sheep,--an auld yowe and a yearlin’.”

Moy Toy’s face grew dark with anger, and yet almost kind with concern.

The good-natured Scotchman hastened to qualify. “They never carried aff the meat nor yet the pelts,--they scalpit the twa puir beastises first, an’ then cut their throats. I’m no the waur for the lack o’ mutton, but”--

Moy Toy’s countenance of amazed disfavor, astounded at the account of this curious emprise, coerced sudden intelligibility.

“Jus’ a wheen feckless laddies aping their elders,” explained Jock Lesly, doubtfully. Then with an uneasy laugh he added, “An’ the bairns cam hame wearin’ the scalps at their belts. I chased them a’ the way with the powney.”

Moy Toy did not laugh. Indian children play as do children of other nations, reducing to the circuit of their narrow round--a juvenile microcosm--all the methods and events of the elder world. But this exploit transcended the limit of verisimilitude and entered on the realms of the verities. The small banditti unchecked would soon venture further and bring upon their elders anger, retaliation, embroilment, with the trader, and premature fracture of the treaty.

“They shall be dry-scratched,” said Moy Toy promptly.

“Oh, wow, man!” exclaimed Jock Lesly sharply, as if he had been suddenly pinched. “Na,--na,--not dry-scratched! Odd! I could na sleep in my bed if the hempies were dry-scratched for me!--they ran sae supple--the knaves! It is an unchancy, ugly thing, that dry-scratching! Cuff the bairns weel--or gie them a flogging they’ll remember. Man alive! flogging is healthy for boy or beast! I’ve had it a thousand times frae my auld daddy, God bless him! Flogging is what’s made the British nation what it is,--but dry-scratching,--I’d die of it mysel’, now. Oh, man,--oh, man,--flog ’em a little,--but dry-scratched--oh, wow, wow!”

He caught at the arm of the august Moy Toy, who was more accustomed to order the torture and burning of Christian captives than the punishment of a few children who had offended against the municipal law. He made no sign and stood as adamant, but other Cherokees, who had joined them, were smiling and looking at each other with the softened countenances that express a gentle ridicule. Despite their friendly scorn, the kindly trader’s deprecation of the punishment of the children and his wild and earnest plea in their behalf could not fail to commend him to their tolerance, and went far to explain a sort of popularity that he had enjoyed among them. They knew that the little drama of the storming of the sheep-fold and massacre of its inmates was too significant to pass without notice, and for this very significance the punishment decreed was to be immediate and sharp, to teach the youngsters where fun ends and serious fact begins. Indeed Moy Toy himself saw to the preparations for the capture and condign penance of the miscreants, who, having returned from the war-path scathless, were now in full swing of a mimic celebration of victory, the triumphant scalps in evidence, and all the wide-eyed children of the town in joyful participation.

“Deil hae ye, then, for a fause-hearted, unceevilized tyke as ever lived!” exclaimed Lesly, as the chief drew off from his grasp. “Egad! I can ne’er abide to hear ’em skreigh like that,--wow,--wow!” And clapping his hands to his ears, the Scotch trader fairly ran off as the first shrill plaint of protest rose upon the air.

Now it was a point of juvenile honor to bear this kind of punishment as stoically as might be, and a severe dry-scratching, always carefully adapted in ferocity to the age of the delinquent and his capacity to support pain, usually drew forth a tear or two and sometimes only murmuring sighs. The habitual gentleness of the savages with their children doubtless convinced the rising generation that the punishment was only intended for their benefit and no whit administered in anger or tyranny. Therefore in submitting with a good grace they were contributing so far as in them lay to their own moral culture, and were ambitious of the stoical poise, perhaps to make the penalty as salutary as possible and go as far in reform as it would.

The two little Indians were easily stripped of such semblance of garments as they wore, and as they were being bound to the stake they craftily set up a wild and poignant shriek upon seeing the Scotchman in full flight across the “beloved square,” being apprised by the comments of the laughing bystanders of his intercession in their behalf and his aversion to the sight and sound of their woe. This had considerable justification, for thus bound and helpless they were sharply scratched from head to foot repeatedly with an instrument formed of snake’s teeth fastened in the end of a stick.

Because of the unusual commotion with which the affair had been invested, no one noticed that the refuge to which the Scotchman, familiar enough with the place, bent his steps was the stranger-house. He burst in, and started back astounded at the figures of the cheerataghe arrayed to frighten the fever in such manner as might have frightened the devil. Then the trader’s eyes fell upon the white man lying helpless on the brink of the grave, as it were, the victim of the fever.

“Lord save us!” exclaimed Lesly, with a sudden change of countenance, “wha hae we here?”

The two cheerataghe, unaware of the very disconcerting effect of their own professional appearance, themselves showed every sign of fear, incongruous enough with their terrifying aspect. In fact they could scarcely have been more alarmed had Satan himself appeared, for they were unacquainted with him and his reputation, while quite well aware who and what was Jock Lesly. The presence of the French emissary here was a breach of the treaty lately renewed, under which the Cherokee tribe traded with the British, and a menace to the privileges promised to the Indians under its stipulations. They hardly knew how to reply, and the abrupt entrance of Moy Toy was like a rescue from mortal peril. The chief had bethought himself suddenly of the possible suspicion of the stranger’s presence here that might be casually conveyed to Jock Lesly’s perceptions, while free in the town unguarded and unwatched. Anything so complete, so inexplicable, so irrefutable as his intrusion and the evidence of his own eyes the chief had not anticipated for a moment, and his ready resources of subterfuge failed him for the nonce.

“Puir chield! I doubt na he is in the dead thraw!” the trader muttered, his compassionate instincts uppermost. Then impressed by something unfamiliar in the cast of the features, he asked doubtfully, “Is he frae the colonies,--or overseas?”

Laroche had been divested of his fine French uniform when he had been brought here ill; it had been carefully put away in view of its future use by his captors, being an official garb, for the crafty Moy Toy fancied some occasion might arise when it would serve a diplomatic turn. Moreover the gold lace and fine cloth were much too dazzling, considered merely as booty, to be spared to the prisoner as habiliments in which to be ill or tortured or buried. In the varied experiments of the cheerataghe, contending with the rigors of the chill following the fever, Laroche had been clad in buckskins, supplemented now and then in the convulsions of the shudders and shivers by one of those feather-wrought mantles that attracted so much attention from the early travelers in this region, the effect of which was pronounced “extraordinary charming.” There was naught to indicate his nationality or his estate as captive. Every evidence of care and solicitude environed the patient, and Moy Toy’s explanation seemed obviously genuine.

The sick man had come to Great Tellico, the chief said, with some of the Cherokee tribesmen who had been up to Virginia, and being taken ill they had left him to recover while they went their various ways homeward. He did not ask the man’s name of them, thinking to learn it from himself. He had been only a little ailing at first, but now one hardly knew what to make of him.

Jock Lesly seated on one side of the cabin on the divan, with his hands on his ponderous knees, his head bent a trifle forward, gazed thoughtfully across the room at the fevered patient, as not so long ago the Choctaw Mingo had sat and glowered at the recumbent frame then sunken in sleep.

“He is gaun to dee!” the trader remarked dolorously, at length, and the words, bespeaking his own fear, fell with a crushing force on the hopes of Moy Toy.

Jock Lesly drew a long and labored sigh. If the sorrows of the little dry-scratched Indians--wicked varlets--could take such hold upon the sympathies of that frank, compassionate heart of his, how the sight of this tragedy racked him,--this valuable life going out in exile, among savages, with not one intelligent, civilized effort made to save it.

“Gin I had him ance at hame!” he cried, in futile aspiration, “I doubt but what Jeemes’s powder might wark a cure!”

“Carry him there! The demon of the fever may not dare to cross a stranger’s threshold!” cried Moy Toy, with a sudden inspiration. He was thinking very rapidly. If some untoward chance should reveal the secret of the nationality of the man, which even in delirium he instinctively guarded, why Jock Lesly and his household were practically alone here, hundreds of miles from any English settlements, and accidents were lamentably common in the distracted Cherokee country at present,--so frequent, indeed, that the discovery might go no farther! “The Cherokees will aid their guest. The brothers of the tribe will rejoice to bear the burden of a litter,” he continued. “The demon of the fever maybe does not know the way to Ioco Town and cannot follow!”

Jock Lesly, heeding little of these hopeful schemes for confounding the demon of the fever, sat doubtful nevertheless and dumfounded. A vague sentiment of suspicion had been lurking in his mind,--first, that the Indians had not expected him to discover so unusual an inmate of their stranger-house as this white man, and that he and his status were not as represented. Then as Moy Toy so freely and instantly relinquished his custody, the trader experienced as vague a doubt if the patient had had fair play among them, since they were eager to get rid of him and of such responsibility as his care imposed.

“The puir Injun!” Jock Lesly said to himself reproachfully, “if I’ll suspicion him o’ ane thing I’ll e’en doubt him o’ the contrary.”

The man lay as in a “dwam,” to use Lesly’s expression. The trader crossed the room, felt the temperature of the forehead, noted the dull, opaque eyes, and laid his hand almost paternally upon the light brown hair of a fine, silky quality, dense and curling.