Part 9

“The lassie might hae gane back at once,” Jock Lesly said, “but”--taking his pipe out of his mouth and glancing cautiously over his shoulder at the dusky room, still in the brown shadow, although the light of the moon lay in a broad silver square on the floor, so high had it climbed into the sky--“but”--evidently he hardly dared to put his prudence into words; only fragmentarily he explained that Callum and he had agreed that it would be injudicious to suggest the idea of fear or flight by leaving Ioco earlier than was the custom every spring. The Indians--“thae dour deevils”--so delighted in the terror they inspired that they could scarcely refrain from the exercise of its power. The little guard could be easily taken, overcome; and mischievous malice, originating perhaps with the mere intention of giving them a fright, might with the realization culminate in a massacre. The journey was fraught with much peril at best. The Indians always requited every grudge with the utmost rigor, and certainly to pass by those blackened charred skeletons of towns in the ashes of Grant’s fires, still tenantless for the lack of hands to rebuild them, would be a pertinent reminder. The bones of cattle and horses were bleaching along the watercourses. Other and human bones were even yet being slowly gathered from the débris of the battlefields, or on the site of remote hand-to-hand conflicts, and identified and conveyed to the town of their nativity, till one was forever in danger of stumbling on communities in all the gloom of funeral ceremonies when no death was recent--oh, there were grudges on every hand to claim requital, and the Cherokees never considered the identity of the individual who had wrought disaster.

Whereas, Jock Lesly reasoned, if Lilias remained here until the usual time of his semiannual pilgrimage to Charlestown, with all his force of packmen and pack-horses, laden with buckskins for the exchange of British goods, any demonstration on the pack-train would be associated with injury to the trade, the interests of which the Cherokees were always solicitous to conserve; hence it was hardly to be anticipated. The murder of an unofficial party, so to speak, would create scant stir; but an assault upon the pack-train of a licensed trader in his semiannual passage through the country would paralyze the trade for years to come, and necessitate investigation and retribution at the hands of the government.

And this result, the paralysis of the trade and the disaffection of the Cherokees, was precisely what that scheming Laroche had come to the town of Great Tellico on the Tennessee River in the earnest hope of compassing for the French interest. Had he been as true to it as he was accounted, he said to himself, he might have found means to promote this emprise of pursuit and capture and massacre. But it was with the sentiments that properly appertained to Tam Wilson that he perceived the wisdom and applauded the prudence of the proposed course. He resented that Callum MacIlvesty should have aught of weight in these councils, and began to grudge him, with all a lover’s niggardliness, the poor boon of having been her escort hither, and the torment of anxiety Callum must have experienced in his prayerful care in planning for her safety, and his generous courage, prepared to spill the last drop of his blood in her defense.

“That’s why we no keep the door open after dark,” Callum briskly explained. “The Injuns are used to seeing the door closed in winter, an’ they’ll no wonder we hae only the window open now, an’ dinna gae abroad.”

“An’ that’s why lassie Lilias hings here at the window sill, as wishfu’ as ony hempie ahint the bars at a tolbooth,” her father said, reaching out his hand and passing it over the sheen of her golden hair. “I’m thinking, Callum lad, its thae lint-white locks--the bairn’s tow head--that aye gars the Injuns stare. Mind how auld Moy Toy stretched his big black een?”

“Moy Toy?” said Laroche, with a sudden wrench at his heart. He felt as one might, long ago sold to the devil, at the abrupt reappearance of the fiend. “When was he here?”

“When ye were ailin’, lad. And now I come to think of it, the devil’s no sae black as he’s painted, an’ forbye, no sae red.”

He chuckled as he placed the long stem of his pipe in his mouth and talked on languidly as he drew at it. “The creatur seemed kindly, an’ wearyin’ to see you.”

Tam Wilson could have fallen from the settle.

“An’ when we wad na let him at ye on no account to speak till ye, he begged he might hae ae look at ye, an’ when he drew the bed curtains and he had just a gliff, he was satisfied, an’ went awa cannily enough.”

So it was no vision that Laroche had remembered amidst the disjointed phantasmagoria of his delirium. In terrible reality this red savage, with whom he shared the hidden, subtle scheme of the French government against the Carolina colonies and trading interests, had come to his bedside and sought through the mists of his wandering perceptions to sign to him, to promise silence, to counsel secrecy. More distinct than aught else of the images of his fevered brain had been the presentment of that feathered head, that many-lined, keen-featured face, the white curtain in the firm grasp, the intent, warning eye, the finger, mysterious, menacing, laid upon the long, flat, compressed lips. More distinct--since it was real.

Alack! of what avail the gay snatches of a soldier’s song; the tales of the tented field; the kind, sweet, homely present of this simple cotter life; the uplifting awe of nature that must needs follow that fine sweeping of the horizon line of mountain crest against the blue; the breath of the aromatic woodland; the mystery, the magic of the moon; the sheen of the girl’s golden hair--Laroche could not escape his doom. The past laid imperative hands upon the future. The reminder of Moy Toy left him the realization that there was no choice. Moy Toy had come--he would come again, bringing cogent influences of the Franco-Cherokee scheme, the political promises, the actuality of identity, and all a subordinate’s thraldom to the will of an official superior.

V

MOY TOY came indeed the next day and laden thus. In fact it was he who had first thought of the design of falling on the trader’s pack-train on their return trip to Charlestown and cutting them all off. Thus, he argued, the country would be rid at one blow of the trade,--for the others, here, there, everywhere, would never return,--and it was the trade, the paltry bauble, that had bought the Cherokees, scot and lot, alienated them from their own best interest, threatened them with vassalage to the British, and with national annihilation. The vengeance of the Carolina authorities would scarcely discriminate, scarcely even seek out so elusive a prey as the immediate offenders; frantic and furious it would alight like a bolt from heaven on whatever lay within its orbit. Thus it would serve to unite the upper Cherokees, the Ottare district, and the Ayrate towns in their own defense--the doubting must needs be steadfast, the weak-hearted confident and strong, the politic might scheme only from ambush, and Atta-Kulla-Kulla postpone his strategic talks of statecraft till the council once more should have time to heed his plotting and counterplotting. Then the way of the French would be open. Then might its skilled officer bring the great guns and build the forts and drive forever from the Cherokee borders this perfidious foe who sought to enslave a free people by goods and rum, at ruinous great prices and tolls of trade.

Despite Laroche’s experience of the inconsistencies and contradictory traits of the Indian character, this precipitancy surprised him. He began to see that the patience with which the savages were credited, their long waiting and scheming for revenge, the illimitable distances they traversed in war, the innumerable shifts and devices they practiced, of almost inconceivable ingenuity, to attain their object--all were exerted only when it lay beyond their immediate reach. Once within the possibilities, and the leap to seize upon it was like a panther’s, as swift, as bloodthirsty, and as unreckoning. For the Indians’ policy of doubting and debating was only when impotence held their revenge in bounds. Thus it was that their hasty, unguarded, impulsive seizing upon an opportunity of massacre and robbery so often recoiled upon the body politic, which suffered as a whole in the vengeance of the colony, the withdrawal of the trade, and the cutting off of supplies and ammunition, for the murderous enterprise of some small band. More than once Moy Toy himself, both earlier and later, headed a party of these independent warriors, for whose deeds the Cherokee nation at large paid the reckoning.

It was well that Laroche had the futility of such raids in mind to point the moral of the value of delay, of preparation, of acting with due caution for the attaining of permanent effect. Press the British back for a moment--that full-armed, embittered, more powerful still, they might again overrun the Cherokee country! And thus bring to naught the plans of the great French father to aid and abet the throwing off of this heavy yoke--all these plans as yet in abeyance,--not a cargo of ammunition _en route_.

“I care naught for the desertion of the base Mingo Push-koosh; it is to me but the freak of a peevish child, as his very name implies,” Laroche declared. “The Choctaws are ever loyal to the French; the Muscogees, and their subordinate tribes, all are in amity, all preparing for the great decisive blow, the simultaneous attack that shall some day drive the English colonists east and south into the Atlantic ocean and the Mexico gulf. But the moment must be propitious--the occasion ripe. Time, Moy Toy, time is the great warrior. Time always wins the long fight.”

He had walked out with the Indian, who had declined Jock Lesly’s invitation to light his pipe at the hearth in the spence, this being unsanctified fire, kindled by no cheerataghe, and had repaired to the fire always alight in the centre of the “beloved square,” annually kindled by the men of the divine fire, distributed amongst the dwellings, and never suffered to die out till the last day of the old year. The necessity had occurred to neither of the two men as a subterfuge, but both eagerly embraced the opportunity that they might speak apart--Moy Toy to communicate his scheme, and Laroche to contend with it.

The spot was solitary at the moment. Rain was threatening; a great slate-tinted cloud hung above the darkly green mountains in tantalizing suspension, seeming weighted and surcharged with water above the drought-smitten cornfields. Day after day they waved with the delicate, newly sprouting blades, rustling and lisping in the capricious breaths of the wind, but showing a far-spread yellow tint beneath murky, purple glooms. Day after day the impending storm passed; the lightning that had rent the heavens with a stroke like a flashing blade, and a thunderous crash as of the rivings of a world asunder, subsided to an aimless flicker with a vague and distant rumble. The purple-black clouds of weighted portent would grow of lilac hue, and presently one might see the tint of the blue sky through the fleecy dispersal of their folds. The wind rushed down from the mountains; the sun shone out; the cornfields lay parched and sere; and the heart of a farmer of that day and generation differed in nowise from one of the present, albeit more than a century apart in time and of an alien race. Fortunately the laws now are kinder, and the weather prophets are fended from the wrath of him who plants and does not gather, who sows and does not reap, because of the rain that is vainly promised and the thunderhead that deludes and deceives. The cheerataghe of Ioco Town were playing in very hard luck. The luring of that particular storm down upon these fertile fields along the Tennessee River devolved immediately upon them, and although the tribesmen were assured that the failure was to be attributed to the wickedness of their own hearts and their frequent misdoings, a farmer at odds with the weather is the least amiable of the brute creation, and there was an unmistakable tendency to retort the fault upon the lack of skill of the cheerataghe.

Moy Toy cast a glance of indifferent interest at the group at the further side of the square (recent rains had fallen at Tellico, long, soft, satisfying--what is now known as a “season”), where the cheerataghe of Ioco were plying their invocations and spells, surrounded by a number of the agricultural sufferers and several of the second men; their plumed heads and scantily covered, copper-tinted bodies were all distinct in the weird, dun light under the purple cloud, and against the white and gray fleckings of the tortuous river, and the pallid expanse of the wilting corn. No one was alert to listen to what might pass between Moy Toy and the foreign white man. What would a drought-harassed farmer of that region to-day care for issues of diplomacy if he fancied he had a chance of working a charm on the weather!

“Will there be enough of the powder?” Moy Toy asked tentatively. His experience was limited, but he knew enough of the world to be aware of the folly of exchanging a small certainty for a large possibility--a small massacre for a large war of doubtful outcome.

“Powder!” exclaimed the soldier with a scornful laugh. “I can teach you to make powder! The country is full of the materials for its manufacture.”

With the keen observation of the scientist and the alertness of a schemer to turn every incident to account, he had taken note in his short stay of the nitrous caves of the country, of its resources for sulphur, of the infinite growths of dogwood and of willows along the streams to furnish the requisite grade of charcoal. In later wars these yielded their benefits to discerning labor, but even so early Laroche fully appreciated these opportunities and projected thus using them.

Moy Toy, standing on the opposite side of the sacred fire, gazed at him for one moment in blank wonderment, the curiously wrought stone pipe in his hand, slipping through his nerveless fingers, shattered unheeded on one of the steatite rocks that supported the fire. And he--Moy Toy, the fool, the madman, but for an accident, a mere trifle--would have laid in ashes this fine brain with its curious workings, its many shifts, its convolutions of knowledge that exceeded the wisdom of all the men he had ever known from far or near,--all would now be a mere cinder, the sport of the wind, all lost to the Cherokee nation and the aggrandizement of the great chief, Moy Toy! With the recollection he became anxiously apprehensive. That night--that night of woe, while the slaughtered braves were laid in their hasty graves, and the prisoner awaited their fair passage to a world beyond in a bitter suspense that was to inaugurate and augment his destined tortures--would the memory of those anguished hours, guarded on the summit of the high mound, move this Frenchman to withhold aught of this vital, this all-important, this intensely coveted knowledge from the Indian warriors? Moy Toy’s mental attitude, wistful, repentant, propitiatory, was distinctly meek, as intently listening he stared at Laroche, who was a trifle surprised at his agitation.

“Being a warrior, a soldier, I have learned many things, Moy Toy, that you would like to know, during my service as an officer of engineers and artillery,--and that would be of help to you against the English.”

One could hardly say how many months of work had gone into the fashioning and polishing of that pipe, a fine bit of carved stone, a unique specimen of aboriginal art, shattered on the ground, but Moy Toy’s fingers were unconscious that it had escaped them.

He essayed some anxious phrases of apology.

They hardly knew what they did that night--surely they were sorely tried--an embassy received in peace and honor, and ending in a murder of unsuspecting and generous hosts--he feared Laroche had been inconsiderately treated, but prayed he would forgive the ignorance of the poor Cherokees, and help them against their foe.

The subtle Frenchman now stared hard at the subtle Indian.

“Oh,” Laroche said at last, airily, yet still at a loss, “you did the best you could, no doubt, in turning me over to the care of these white people who treated my ills in a way to which I and they are accustomed. No, no; although they are British the quarrel would have been had you persisted in keeping me at Tellico.”

Moy Toy shut his mouth so suddenly that his tongue was in some sharp danger from his teeth. Evidently by reason of his delirium Laroche had forgotten the aggressions upon his liberty, the length and torment of his captivity, the preparations for his torture and death in satisfaction of the crimes of his Choctaw colleague. The happy fantasy! The blessed fever!

“There is one boon I shall exact for the service I have already rendered you,” Laroche continued, seriously, weightily. “It is my pleasure to ask it, yet it is also your interest to grant it, and as a pledge of the future. I jeopardized my interest and promotion, I braved the wrath of Mingo Push-koosh, that a woman’s life--your sister’s life--should not be placed in peril. Much evil came of this,--but _I_ risked most.”

Moy Toy, gazing fixedly at him, thought he little knew how much he had risked.

“And now,” continued Laroche, “I ask in return a safe conduct for another woman--the daughter of the Scotch trader.”

He paused with some sudden impediment of speech, his eyes seeming lighter, clearer than their wont, cast upward at the lowering storm cloud.

“This British family have saved my life by their care, and I owe them their lives in recompense. They must go in safety, but--I promise you”--once more that sudden hiatus in his fluency--“they shall not return.”

He was not as observant as usual, or he must have discerned some extreme and secret joy beneath Moy Toy’s calm exterior. That unique and quaint phenomenon of knowledge so delighted the crafty Indian!--that he should hold the key of incidents of great import in the experience of this man who was himself unconscious of them! And in the excess of his relief that Laroche remembered naught of his cruel perils, averted by a mere accident, the chief could have cried out in sheer, inarticulate joy. But he said, quite simply, that Laroche was his best beloved friend, whose injunctions should be obeyed, that he loved every hair on his head, that he should never forget the rescue of his sister, which, indeed, he felt he should have remembered earlier, for it was his nephew who should be his heir and hold the sway of Great Tellico.

“The life of the trader’s daughter, her safety, and the safety of all the trader’s household I demand for that service,” Laroche repeated solemnly. “And as it is assured to them so will I requite you. I will promise you then all the aid that mind and heart and hand can give you hereafter. I swear it.”

Moy Toy renewed his protestations of friendship and reiterated his apologies. The tone and tenor of his remarks implied acquiescence, and Laroche felt no lack. But Moy Toy looked after him cynically as he took his way back toward the dwelling of the trader, for the first large drops of the impending storm were falling slowly through the air. A breathless cry, like a gasp, went up from the rain enchanters at the other side of the square; then ensued silence, tense, expectant, painful. The farmer, poor sport of the skies, was aware that this limited manifestation of the obedience of the powers of the air rescued the reputation of the cheerataghe, since rain had fallen at their bidding, yet did not save the crop, and, reduced to the position of the only sufferer in the event, hung in desperate suspense upon the developments of the next few moments.

The trading-house, with its door broadly aflare, giving a glimpse of an orderly assortment of merchandise within, had on the roofless porch or platform a group of the young packmen who had accompanied Callum MacIlvesty from Charlestown. They were wearying for their return thither, since so many restrictions had been laid on their conduct and language, lest they give offense to the Indians and bring down reprisal while they had in their keeping the precious charge of the young lady, “little lassie Lilias,” as auld Jock loved to call her. This restraint greatly irked them, for they were accustomed to giving and receiving hard knocks, speaking their minds without fear or favor and with a very rough edge to their tongues. One, fallen a trifle ill, declared that he would be well in a trice if he were not “just dying of all these manners!” Sodden themselves in a thousand superstitions, they had taken a keen interest in the weather bewitchments, in which, from these motives, they had been forbidden to mingle. They had neither the time nor the inclination to notice the invalid hastening away out of the rain to shelter, but his disordered step, his pallid countenance, his agitated mien did not fail altogether of observation. The door of the dwelling opened as he approached it, and there stood Lilias holding it against the wind. So incongruous seemed her fair face and golden hair and whitely glimmering attire with the sullen aspect of the approaching storm, the gloom-darkened woods on every hand, that she suggested an affinity with a sunlit scene that glimmered along the far perspective of the ranges where a rift in the cloud admitted a suffusion of ethereal golden light, in which the mountains were azure, the woods of a fine, intense jade hue, the flash of a cataract like molten silver,--the very apotheosis of scenery, some transient glimpse of the fair land of Canaan.

Laroche’s lip trembled as he looked at her--so beautiful, so good, so cruelly endangered.

She noticed his pained expression, but misunderstood its meaning. With the constant household anxiety as to his health--“Ye hae been lang awa wi’ that dour carle, Moy Toy, an’ ye look pale. Set ye down by the fire, an’ I’ll gie ye a posset, before the others get here to beg for tae half o’ it.”