The Story of Old Fort Loudon. Mary Noailles Murfree

mood of the Indian and the assumed character of French traders to reach the English fort. Hamish, however, with a dark-eyed, reproachful glance upbraided this apparently callous disregard, and then addressed himself to the task of making light of the matter to Odalie in lieu of other solace.

      "Tu ne ought pas l'avoir fait," he gravely admonished her in his queer French. "Tu ought known better, Odalie!"

      "Known what better?" demanded Odalie, resenting reprimand in a very un-squawlike fashion.

      "Marcher in shoes! Mong Dew! Ces souliers couldn't have been made pour marcher in!" he retorted, with a funny grimace.

      The facial contortion seemed suddenly to anger Willinawaugh, who had chanced to observe them; to suggest recollections that he resented, and the reminder shared in his disfavor. He abruptly wreathed his fierce countenance into a simulacrum of Hamish's facetious mug; he shrugged his shoulders with a genuine French twist; and anything more incongruously and grotesquely frightful and less amusing could hardly be imagined.

      "Fonny! vely fonny! Flanzy!" he exclaimed harshly. "Balon Des Johnnes!"[5]

      His unwilling companions gazed at him with as genuine a terror as if the devil himself had entered into him and thus expressed his presence among them. Willinawaugh abruptly discontinued his "fonny" grimace, that had a very ferocity of rebuke, and leaning from his horse with an expression of repudiation, spat upon the ground. Then he began to talk about Baron Des Johnnes and his sudden disappearance from the Cherokee Nation.

      At Choté, it seemed, was this gay and facetious Frenchman, this all-accomplished Baron Des Johnnes, who could speak seven different Indian languages with equal facility, to say nothing of a trifle or two such as English, Spanish, German, and French, of course!—at Choté, City of Refuge, where, if he had shed the blood of the native Cherokee on his own threshold, his life would have been sacred even from the vengeance of the Indian's brother! And suddenly came the Carolina Colonel Sumter, returning with an Indian delegation that had been to Charlestown, and found the Frenchman here. And with Colonel Sumter was Oconostota, king of the Cherokees, and other head-men, who had just signed a treaty at Charlestown, promising to kill or arrest any Frenchman discovered within the Cherokee Nation. And who so appalled as Oconostota, to see his friend, the gay Baron Des Johnnes, lying on a buffalo skin before the fire, smoking his pipe in the chief's own wigwam. And when Colonel Sumter demanded his arrest Oconostota refused and pleaded the sanctity of the place—the City of Refuge. And Baron Des Johnnes arose very smiling and bland, and bowed very low, and reminded Colonel Sumter that he was in Choté—Old Town!

      And what said Colonel Sumter? He spoke in the English, like a wolf might talk—"Old Town—or New Town—I'll take you to Charles Town!"

      And what did the Baron Des Johnnes? Not a Cherokee; not bound by the ever-sacred laws of the City of Refuge! Although surrounded by his friends he struck not one blow for his freedom, as man to man. He suffered himself to be arrested, single-handed, by this wolf of a Colonel—Colonel Sumter—saying in gentle protest, "Mais, M'sieur!"

      "Mais, M'sieur!" grimaced Willinawaugh, in mimicry. Then "Mais M'sieur!" he threw up both hands. "Mais, M'sieur!" he shrieked in harsh derision to the unresponsive skies.

      Alexander knew that the Baron Des Johnnes had been taken to Charlestown and examined, and although nothing could be proved against him, it had been deemed expedient to ship him off to England. Perhaps the authorities were of opinion that a man with such conversational facilities as eight or ten languages had best be kept where "least said, soonest mended."

      But for the repeated harsh treatment that the Cherokees sustained from the English settlers, the ingratiating arts of the French might have failed to find so ready a response. Sedate of manner and of a grave cast of mind themselves, the Indians could ill tolerate the levity, the gaieté de cœur, of the French, whom they pronounced "light as a feather, fickle as the wind, and deceitful as serpents."

      With this intimation of Willinawaugh's reserves of irritability the pioneers journeyed on, a trifle more ill at ease in mind, which was an added hardship, since their physical sufferings were intensifying with every long mile of continued effort. They began to wonder how they, supposed to be French, would fare when they should meet other Cherokees, perhaps more disposed than Willinawaugh to adhere to the terms of their treaty to kill or make prisoner every Frenchman who should venture into the Cherokee Nation, yet on the other hand perhaps more competent by virtue of a familiarity with the language to detect and resent the fact that they were not of the French nationality. Already Willinawaugh had counseled that they should go further than Choté, to ply their trade in furs, for Choté was dangerously near the English fort for a Frenchman; one of the Tuckaleechee towns on the Canot River was a preferable location, and he promised to contrive to slip them past Fort Loudon without the commandant's knowledge.

      They restrained all expression of objection or discomfort and bore their growing distresses with a fortitude that might rival the stoicism of a savage. Only when an aside was possible, MacLeod besought his wife to loose the burden of one of the packhorses and mount the animal herself. She shook her head resolutely. She had already suffered grief enough for the household stores she had left behind. To these precious remaining possessions she clung desperately. "When I can no longer walk," she said, with a flash in her eye which admonished him to desist.

      They offered no comment on their route, although it seemed that they had climbed the mountain two days ago for the express purpose of descending it again, but on the eastern side. MacLeod, however, at length realized that the Indian was following some faint trace, well distinguishable to his skilled eye, and the difficulties of the steep descent were rendered more tolerable by his faith in the competence of his guide. The packhorses found it hard work filing down the sharp declivities and sustaining the equilibrium of their burden. The chief, with his lordly impatience and superiority to domestic concerns, evidently fumed because of the delay they occasioned, and had he not supposed that the contents of the bales of goods were merchandise and trinkets to be bartered with the Indians for peltry, instead of Odalie's slim resources of housekeeping wares—sheets, and table-linen and garments, and frugal supplies of flax and seeds—he would not have suffered the slow progress.

      Through the new country below, that they had watched from the heights, they went now, the mountains standing sentinel all around the horizon—east and west, and north and south, sometimes nearer, sometimes more distant; always mountains in sight, like some everlastingly uplifting thought, luring a life to a higher plane of being. Now and again the way wended along the bank of a river, with the steeps showing in the waters below as well as against the sky above, and one day when they had but recently broken their camp on its shores there shot out from beneath an overhanging boscage of papaw trees a swift, arrowy thing akin to a fish, akin to a bird—an Indian canoe, in which were three braves.

      The poor pioneers were exhausted with their long and swift journey; their hearts, which had been stanch within them, could but fail with the failure of physical strength. Their courage only sufficed to hold them to a mute endurance of a dreadful expectation, and a suspense that set every nerve a-quiver. The boatmen had cried out with a wild, fierce note of surprise on perceiving the party, and the canoe was coming straight across to the bank as fast as the winglike paddles could propel it. Willinawaugh rode slowly down to meet them, and in contrast to the usual impassive manners of the Indians he replied to the agitated hail in a tone of tense and eager excitement. There ensued evidently an exchange of news, of a nature which boded little good to the settlers. Dark anger gathered on the brow of the chieftain as he listened when the braves had bounded upon the bank, and more than once he cried out inarticulately like a wild beast in pain and rage. Perhaps it is rare that a man has such a moment in his life as Alexander experienced when one of the savages, a ferocious brute, turned with a wild, untamed, indigenous fury kindling in his eyes, and drawing his tomahawk from his belt smiled fiercely upon the silent, motionless little band, his deadly racial hatred reinforced by a thousand bitter grudges and wrongs.

      Hamish's fingers trembled on his gun, but ostensibly no one moved. Willinawaugh hastily interposed, speaking but the magic words—"Flanzy—Flinch!" Then still in English, as if to reassure the pioneers—"Go