tremble to listen. Nevertheless, she had the nerve to walk with
Choo-qualee-qualoo almost to the water-side, near the shadowy covert of
the dense woods. Nothing lurked there now,--no flickering feather, no
fiercely gay painted face. Her confidence seemed the ally of the
Indians. The French captive of the Carolina Scotchman would be to them
like a spy in the enemy's camp!

Perhaps the ordeal made the greater draughts on the courage of the men
who stood in the shelter of the works and sighted the guns. The tension
grew so great as she lingered there in the shadows that cold drops stood
on Demeré's face, and the hand with which Stuart held the firelock
trembled.

"It's a woman that can't get enough of anything," O'Flynn muttered to
himself. "I'll have the lockjaw in me lungs, for I'm gittin' so as I
can't move me chist to catch me breath."

But Odalie turned at last, and still signaling anxiously to the sentry,
as if to implore silence and forbearance, she crossed the open space
with her swift, swinging step, climbed the red clay slope among the
spiked staves of the fraises, knelt down, slipped through the embrasure,
and was lifted to her feet by Demeré, while the gunners stood by looking
on, and smiling and ready to cry over her.

Twice afterward, the same detail, all enjoined to secrecy, loaded their
cannon, and stood with burning matches ready to fire at the word, while
the maneuver was repeated; an interval of a day or so was allowed to
elapse on each occasion, and the hour was variously chosen--when it was
possible for the French woman to escape, as Choo-qualee-qualoo was given
to understand. Both times Demeré protested, although he had accorded the
plan his countenance, urging the capricious temper of the Indians, who
might permit Mrs. MacLeod's exit from the fort one day, and the next,
for a whim, or for revenge toward her husband, who had incurred their
special enmity for outwitting them on his journey hither, shoot her
through the heart as she stood on the crest of the counterscarp. And of
what avail then the shotted cannon, the firelocks in the loop-holes!

"You know they are for our own protection," he argued. "Otherwise we
could not endure to see the risk. The utmost we can do for her is to
prevent capture, or if she is shot to take quick vengeance. Loading the
cannon only saves _our_ nerves."

"I admit it," declared Stuart,--"a species of military sal-volatile. I
never pretended to her that she was protected at all, or safe in any
way,--she volunteered for a duty of great hazard."

Demeré, although appreciating the inestimable value to the garrison of
the opportunity, was relieved after the third occasion, when Alexander
MacLeod, by an accident, discovered the fact of these dangerous sorties
in the face of a savage enemy, no less capriciously wicked and
mischievous than furious and blood-thirsty. His astonished rage
precluded speech for a moment, and the two officers found an opportunity
to get him inside the great hall, and turning the key Stuart put it in
his pocket.

"Now, before you expend your wrath in words that we may all regret," he
said, sternly, "you had best understand the situation. Your wife is not
a woman to play the fool under any circumstances, and for ourselves we
are not in heart for practical jokes. Mr. MacLeod, we have here more
than three hundred mouths to feed daily, nearly three hundred the mouths
of hearty, hungry men, and we have exhausted our supply of corn and have
in the smoke-house barely enough salted meat to sustain us for another
fortnight. Then we shall begin to eat the few horses. We are so closely
beleaguered that it has proved impossible to get an express through that
cordon of savages to the country beyond. To communicate with Colonel
Montgomery as early as practicable is the only hope of saving our lives.
Mrs. MacLeod's sorties from the fort are a part of our scheme--the
essential part. You may yet come to think the dearest boon that fate
could have given her would have been a ball through her brain as she
stood on the escarp--so little her chances are worth!"

This plain disclosure staggered MacLeod. He had thought the place amply
victualed. A rising doubt of the officers' capacity to manage the
situation showed in his face.

Stuart interpreted the expression. "You see,--the instant disaster is
suggested you can't rely on us,--even you! And if that spirit were
abroad in the garrison and among the settlers, we should have a thousand
schemes in progress, manipulated by people not so experienced as we, to
save themselves first and--_perhaps_ the others. The ammunition might
be traded to the Cherokees for a promise of individual security. The
gates might be opened and the garrison delivered into the enemy's hands
by two or three as the price of their own lives. Such a panic or mutiny
might arise as would render a defense of the place impracticable, and
the fort be taken by storm and all put to the sword, or death by
torture. We are keeping our secret as well as we can, hoping for relief
from Montgomery, and scheming to receive assurance of it. We asked Mrs.
MacLeod's help, and she gave it!"

The logic of this appeal left MacLeod no reply. "How could you!" he only
exclaimed, glancing reproachfully at his wife.

"That is what I have always said," cried Stuart, gayly, perceiving that
the crisis was overpast. "How _could_ she!"

There was no more that Odalie could do, and that fact partially
reconciled the shuddering MacLeod to the past, although he felt he could
hardly face the ghastly front of the future. And he drew back wincingly
from the unfolding plans. As for Odalie, the next day she spent in her
room, the door barred, her hair tossed out of its wonted perfection of
array, her dress disordered, her face and eyes swollen with weeping, and
when she heard the great guns of the fort begin to send forth their
thunder, and the heavy shot crashing among the boughs of the forest
beyond, she fell upon her knees, then rose, wild and agitated, springing
to the door, yet no sooner letting down the bar than again replacing it,
to fall anew upon her knees and rise once more, too distraught for the
framing of a prayer.

Yet at this same moment Mrs. MacLeod, in her familiar gray serge gown
and red calash, was seen, calm and decorous, walking slowly across the
parade in the direction of the great hall of the northwest bastion. The
soldiers who met her doffed their hats with looks of deep respect. Now
and again she bowed to a settler with her pretty, stately
grace,--somewhat too pronounced an elegance for the wife of so poor a
man as MacLeod, it was thought, he being of less ornamental clay. She
hesitated at the door of the block-house, with a little air of
diffidence, as might befit a lady breaking in upon the time of men
presumed to be officially busy. The door opened, and with a bow of
mingled dignity and deprecation she entered, and as the door closed,
Hamish dropped the imitation of her manner, and bounded into the middle
of the room with a great gush of boyish laughter, holding out both arms
and crying, "Don't I look enticing! To see the fellows salaaming to the
very ground as I came across the parade!--what are you doing to my
frock, Captain Demeré?" he broke off, suddenly. "It's just right.
Odalie fixed it herself."

"Don't scuffle up these frills so," Captain Demeré objected. "Mrs.
MacLeod is wont to wear her frock precisely."

"Did O'Flynn mistake you for Mrs. MacLeod?" asked Stuart, relishing the
situation despite his anxiety.

"I wish you could have seen the way he drew down that red Irish mouth of
his," said Hamish, with a guffaw, "looking so genteel and pious!"

"I think it passes," said Demeré, who was not optimistic; but now he too
was smiling a little.

"It passes!" cried Stuart, triumphantly.

For the height of Odalie and Hamish was exactly the same--five feet
eight inches. Hamish, destined to attain upward of six feet, had not yet
all his growth. The full pleated skirt with the upper portion drawn up
at the hips, and the cape about the shoulders, obviated the difference
between Odalie's delicately rounded slenderness and Hamish's lank
angularity. The cape of the calash, too, was thrown around the throat
and about the chin and mouth, and as she was wont to hold her head down
and look up at you from out the dusky red tunnel of its depths the
difference in the complexion and the expression of the hazel eyes of
each was hardly to be noticed in passing. To speak would have been
fatal, but Hamish had been charged not to speak. His chestnut curls,
brushed into a glossy similarity, crept out and lay on the folds of the
red cape of the calash with a verisimilitude that seemed almost profane.

Admonished by Stuart to have heed of long steps, and the dashing swing
of his habitual gait, he was leaning on Sandy's arm, as they went out,
in an imitation of Odalie's graceful manner. The young sentry, Daniel
Eske,--no one else was permitted at these times to stand guard in this
block-house tower,--noted this, with the usual maneuver of Mrs.
MacLeod's escape through the embrasure, and he was filled with ire. He
had fancied that her husband did not know of this recklessness, as he
was half inclined to think it, although evidently some fine-spun scheme
of Captain Stuart's; it seemed especially futile this evening, so near
sunset, and the odd circumstance of the cannonade having sufficed to
clear every Indian out of the forest and the range of the guns. Mrs.
MacLeod could not speak to Choo-qualee-qualoo now, he argued within
himself; the girl would not be there in the face of this hot fire! How
rapidly Mrs. MacLeod walked; only once she paused and glanced about her
as if looking for the Cherokee girl,--what folly!--for with a flash of
fire and a puff of white smoke, and a great sweeping curve too swift to
follow with the eye, each successive ball flew from the cannon's mouth
over her head and into the woods beyond.

From the opposite bank of the river an Indian, crouched in the cleft of
a rock, yet consciously out of the range, watched her progress for one
moment, then suddenly set off at a swift pace, doubtless to fetch the
young squaw, so that when the firing should cease she could ascertain
from the French woman what the unusual demonstration of the cannonade
might signify.

It was only for a moment that the sentry's attention was thus diverted,
but when he looked again the gray gown, the red calash, the swiftly
moving figure had disappeared. The gunners had been ordered to cease
firing, and the usual commotion of sponging out the bore, and reloading
the guns, and replacing all the appliances of their service, was
interrupted now and again by the men looking anxiously through the
embrasure for Mrs. MacLeod's return. They presently called up an inquiry
to the sentinel in the tower, presuming upon the utility of the secret
service to excuse this breach of discipline. "Why," said the soldier, "I
took my eye off her for one minute and she disappeared."

"You mean you shut your eyes for five minutes," said Corporal O'Flynn,
gruffly, having just entered. "Captain Stuart told me that he himself
opened the little gate and let her in by the sally-port. And there she
is now, all dressed out fresh again, walking with her husband on the
parade under the trees. An' yonder is the Injun colleen,--got here too
late! Answer her, man, according to your orders."

Against his will the young sentinel leaned out of the window with a
made-to-order smile, and as Choo-qualee-qualoo waved her hand and
pointed to the empty path along which Odalie was wont to come, he
intimated by signs that she had waited but was obliged to return to the
fort and was now within, and he pointed down to the gorge of the
bastion. To-morrow when there should be an eastern sky she would come
out, and Choo-qualee-qualoo signed that she would meet her. Then she
lingered, waving her hand now and again on her own account, and he
dutifully flourished his hat.

"Gosh," he exclaimed, "if treachery sticks in the gizzard like this
pretense there is no use in cord or shot,--the fellow does for himself!"

He was glad when the lingering twilight slipped down at last and put an
end to the long-range flirtation, for however alert an interest he might
have developed, were it voluntary, its utility as a military maneuver
blunted its zest. Choo-qualee-qualoo had sped away to her home up the
river; the stars were in the sky, and in broken glimmers reflected in
the ripples of the current. The head-men among the cordon, drawn around
Fort Loudon, sat in circles and discussed the possible reasons of the
sudden furious cannonade, and the others of minor tribal importance
listened and adjusted their own theories to the views advanced; the only
stragglers were the spies whom the cannonade had driven from the woods
that afternoon, now venturing back into the neighborhood, looking at the
lights of the fort, hearing often hilarious voices full of the triumph
of Montgomery's foray, and sometimes finding on the ground the spent
balls of the cannonade.

It had so cleared the nearer spaces that it had enabled Hamish, in a
guise become familiar to them, to gain the little thicket where
Choo-qualee-qualoo and Odalie were wont to conclude their talks. Close
by was the mouth of the cavernous passage that led to MacLeod's Station,
which no Indians knew the white people had discovered. With a sudden
plunge the boy was lost to sight in its labyrinthine darkness, and when
Hamish MacLeod emerged at the further end five miles away, in his own
garb, which he had worn beneath the prim feminine attire,--this he had
carefully rolled into a bundle and stowed in a cleft in the rocks of the
underground passage,--he issued into a night as sweet, as lonely, and as
still, in that vast woodland, as if there were no wars or rumors of wars
in all the earth. But, alas! for the sight of Odalie's home that she had
loved and made so happy, and where he had been as cherished as Fifine
herself,--all grim, charred ashes; and poor Dill's cabin!--he knew by
this time that Dill was dead, very dead, or he would have come back to
them. The fields, too, that they had sown, and that none would reap,
trampled and torn, and singed and burnt! Hamish gave but one sigh,
bursting from an overcharged heart; then he was away at full speed in
the darkness that was good to him, and the only friend he had in the
world with the power to help him and his.

Captain Demeré that night was more truly cheerful than he had been for a
long time, despite his usual port of serene, although somewhat austere,
dignity.

"The boy has all the homing qualities you desired in an express," he
said to Stuart. "He will come back to his brother's family as certainly
as a man with wife and children, and yet in quitting them he leaves no
duty to devolve on others."

"Moreover," said Stuart, "we have the satisfaction of knowing that he
safely reached the mouth of the underground passage without detection.
He could not have found the place in a dark night. In the moonlight he
would have been seen, and even if we had protected his entrance by a
cannonade, and cleared the woods, his exit at the other end of the
passage would have been intercepted. Disguised as Mrs. MacLeod, seeking
to meet Choo-qualee-qualoo in bold daylight, he passed without a
suspicion on the part of the Indians. And we know that the exit of the
passage at MacLeod Station is fully three miles in the rear of the
Indian line. I feel sure that the other two expresses never got beyond
the Indian line. This is the best chance we have had."

"And a very good chance," said Demeré.

Stuart could but laugh a little, remembering that Demeré had thought the
plan impracticable, and, although there was no other opportunity
possible, had protested against it on the point of danger involved to
Mrs. MacLeod. Stuart, himself, had quaked on this score, and had seized
on this ingenious device only as a last resort.

"Mrs. MacLeod is fine timber for a forlorn hope," he said reflectively.

The matter had been so sedulously guarded from the knowledge of the
garrison, save such share as was of necessity divulged to the men who
fired the guns, the young sentinel, and Corporal O'Flynn,--and even they
were not aware that there had been a sortie of any other person than
Mrs. MacLeod,--that Hamish's absence passed unnoticed for several days,
and when it was announced that he had been smuggled out of the fort,
charged with dispatches to Colonel Montgomery, no one dreamed of
identifying him with the apparition in the gray gown whom the gunners
had seen to issue forth and return no more. Even Corporal O'Flynn
accepted the statement, without suspicion, that Captain Stuart had let
Mrs. MacLeod in at the sally-port. These excursions, he imagined, were
to secure information from Choo-qualee-qualoo.

The announcement that an express was now on the way was made to
encourage the men, for the daily ration had dwindled to a most meager
portion, and complaints were rife on every hand both among the soldiery
and the families of the settlers. A wild, startled look appeared in many
eyes, as if some ghastly possibility had come within the range of
vision, undreamed-of before. The facts, however, that the commandant was
able to still maintain a connection beyond the line of blockading
Cherokees, that Hamish had been gone for more than a week, that decisive
developments of some sort must shortly ensue, that the officers
themselves kept a cheerful countenance, served to stimulate an effort to
sustain the suspense and the gnawing privation. Continual exertions were
made in this direction.

"Try to keep up the spirits of the men," said Demeré to O'Flynn one day.

"I do, sor," returned O'Flynn, his cheek a trifle pale and sunken. "I
offer meself to 'm as an example. I says to the guard only to-day, sor,
says I,--'Now in affliction ye see the difference betune a person of
quality, and a common spalpeen.' An' they wants to know who is this
person of quality, sor. And I names meself, sor, being descended from
kings of Oirland. An', would ye belave me, sor, not one of them
bog-trotting teagues but what was kings of Oirland, too, sor."

Corporal O'Flynn might have thought his superior officer needed cheering
too, for the twinkle in his eye had lost none of its alluring Celtic
quality.

The distressing element of internecine strife and bickerings was
presently added to the difficulties of the officers, who evidently faced
a situation grievous enough in itself without these auxiliary troubles.
Certain turbulent spirits opined loudly that they, the humbler people,
had advantage taken of them,--that the officers' mess was served in a
profusion never abated, while the rest starved. Captain Stuart and
Captain Demeré would not notice this report, but the junior officers
were vehement in their protestations that they and their superiors had
had from the beginning of the scarcity the identical rations served out
to the others, and that their gluttony had not reduced the general
supply. The quartermaster-sergeant confirmed this, yet who believed him,
as Mrs. Halsing said, for he carried the keys and could favor whom he
would. That he did not favor himself was obvious from the fact that his
once red face had grown an ashen gray, and the cheeks hung in visible
cords and ligaments under the thrice-folded skin, the flesh between
having gradually vanished. The African cook felt his honor so touched by
this aspersion on his master's methods that he carried his kettles and
pans out into the center of the parade one day and there, in
insubordinate disregard of orders, cooked in public the scanty materials
of the officers' dinner. And having thus expressed his indignant rage he
sat down on the ground among his kettles and pans and wept aloud in a
long lugubrious howl, thus giving vent to his grief, and requiring the
kind offices of every friend he had in the fort to pacify him and induce
him to remove himself, his pans, and his kettles from this unseemly
conspicuousness.

At the height of the trouble, when Stuart and Demeré, themselves anxious
and nervous, and greatly reduced by the poor quality and scarcity of
food, sat together and speculated on the problem of Montgomery's
silence, and the continued absence of the express, and wondered how long
this state of things could be maintained, yearning for, yet fearing the
end,--talking as they dared not talk to any human being but each to the
other,--Ensign Whitson burst into the room with an excited face and the
news that there had been a fight over in the northeast bastion at the
further side of the terrepleine.

Captain Stuart rose, bracing his nerves for the endurance of still more.

"A food riot? I have expected it. Have they broken into the
smoke-house?"

Whitson looked wild for one moment. "Oh, no, sir,--not that!--not that!
Two Irishmen at fisticuffs,--about the Battle of the Boyne!--Corporal
O'Flynn and a settler."

For the first time in a week Stuart laughed with genuine hilarity.
"Mighty well!" he exclaimed. "Let us settle the important questions
between the Irish Catholics and the Irish Protestants before we go a
step further!"

But Demeré was writhing under the realization of a relaxed discipline,
although when O'Flynn presented himself in response to summons he was so
crest-fallen and woe-begone and reduced, that Demeré had not the heart
to take summary measures with the half-famished boxer.

"O'Flynn," he said, "do you deem this a fitting time to set the example
of broils between the settlers and soldiers? Truly, I think we need but
this to precipitate our ruin."

Stuart hastily checked the effect of this imprudent phrase by breaking
in upon a statement of Corporal O'Flynn's, which seemed to represent his
right arm as in some sort a free agent, mechanically impelled through
the air, the hand in a clinched posture, in disastrous juxtaposition
with the skulls of other people, and that he was not thinking, and would
not have had it happen for nothing, and--

"But _is_ the man an Irishman?" asked Stuart. "He has no brogue."

"Faith, sor," said the repentant O'Flynn, glad of the diversion, "he
hits loike an Oirishman,--I don't think he is an impostor. My nose feels
rather limber."

O'Flynn having been of great service in the crisis, they were both glad
to pass over his breach of discipline as lightly as they might; and he
doubtless reaped the benefit of their relief that the matter was less
serious than they had feared.

The next day, however, the expected happened. The unruly element, partly
of soldiers with a few of the settlers, broke into the smoke-house and
discovered there what the commandant was sedulously trying to
conceal,--_nothing_!

It stunned them for the moment. It tamed them. The more prudential souls
began now to fear the attitude of the officers, to turn to them, to rely
again upon their experience and capacity.

When the two captains came upon the scene, Demeré wearing the affronted,
averse, dangerous aspect which he always bore upon any breach of
discipline, and Stuart his usual cool, off-hand look as if the matter
did not greatly concern him, they listened in silence to the clamor of
explanations and expostulations, of criminations and recriminations
which greeted them. Only a single sentence was spoken by either of
them,--a terse low-toned order. Upon the word, Corporal O'Flynn with a
squad of soldiers rushed briskly into the crowd, and in less than two
minutes the rioters were in irons.

"Jedburgh justice!" said Stuart aside to Demeré, as they took their way
back across the parade. "Hang 'em first, and try 'em afterward."

The bystanders might argue little from Demeré's reticent soldierly
dignity, but Stuart's ringing laugh, as he spoke aside to his brother
officer, his cheerful, buoyant, composed mien, restored confidence as
naught less than the sound of Montgomery's bugles outside the works
might have done. Doubtless he was apprised of early relief. Surely he
did not look like a man who expected to live on horse-flesh in the midst
of a mutinous garrison, with the wild savages outside, and within that
terrible strain upon the courage,--the contemplation of the sufferings
of non-combatants, the women and children, who had entered into no
covenant and received no compensation to endure the varying chances of
war.

Yet this prospect seemed close upon him before that day was done. The
orderly routine had slipped again into its grooves. The hungry men,
brisk, spruce, were going about their various military duties with an
alacrity incongruous with their cadaverous aspect. The sentinels were
posted as usual, and Captain Stuart, repairing according to his wont to
a post of observation in the block-house tower of the northwest bastion,
turned his glass upon the country beyond, lowered it suddenly, looking
keenly at the lens, as if he could not believe his eyes, and again
lifted it. There was no mistake. On the opposite side of the river,
looking like some gigantic monkey capering along on a pair of thin bare
legs, was a stalwart Indian, arrayed for the upper part of his person in
a fine scarlet coat, richly laced, evidently the spoil from some British
officer of high rank. Perhaps no apparition so grotesque ever sent a
chill to so stout a heart. Stuart was no prophet, quotha. But he could
see the worst when it came and stared him in the eyes.

CHAPTER XI

Stuart and Demeré argued the matter in their secret conclaves. Both
admitted that although Montgomery had had only four or five men killed,
among them no officers, on his first expedition, he might have again
taken the field, and this was as they hoped. He was advancing; he must
be near. The trophy of the fine red coat meant probably that he had lost
an officer of value;--perhaps meant less--the personal disaster of the
capture of baggage or the necessity of throwing it away. Montgomery had
advanced,--that was indubitable. Nevertheless,--and perhaps it was the
lowering influence of the scanty fare on which they had so long
subsisted,--both officers dreaded the suspense less than the coming
disclosure.

Stuart felt all his nerves grow tense late one day in the red July
sunset, when there emerged from the copse of pawpaw bushes, close to the
river where Odalie had once been wont to repair to talk to
Choo-qualee-qualoo, a tall form, arrayed in a gray gown, a trifle
ill-adjusted, with a big red calash drawn forward on the head, that
walked at a somewhat slashing gait across the open space toward the
glacis. He thanked heaven that Mrs. MacLeod was ill in her bed, although
he had some twenty minutes ago been sending to her through her husband
expressions of polite and heartfelt regret and sympathy.

"Why, I hardly thought Mrs. MacLeod was well enough to take a walk," he
observed to the sentry. Daniel Eske naturally supposed that Mrs. MacLeod
had slipped out before he had gone on duty, having just been sent to the
relief of the previous sentinel. Stuart went down to the embrasure,
assisted the supposed lady to her feet as she slipped through, and
ceremoniously offered her his arm as she was about to plunge down the
steep interior slope in a very boyish fashion. They found Demeré in the
great hall, and both officers read the brief official dispatch with
countenances of dismay.

"This says that you can explain the details," said Demeré, with dry lips
and brightly gleaming eyes.

"Oh, yes," said Hamish. "All the time that I was at Fort Prince George
the commandant was writing letters to Governor Bull--for Lyttleton has
been appointed to Jamaica--and hustling off his expresses to South
Carolina. He sent three, and said if he heard from none by return he
would send more."

For this was the appalling fact that had fallen like a
thunderbolt,--Colonel Montgomery had with his command quitted the
country and sailed for New York. His orders were to strike a sudden blow
for the relief of Carolina and return to head-quarters at Albany at the
earliest possible moment. No word of the grievous straits of the
garrison of Fort Loudon had reached him. He had, indeed, advanced from
Fort Prince George, which he had made the base of his aggressive
operations against the Cherokees, but not for the relief of Fort Loudon,
for neither he nor the commandant of Fort Prince George knew that that
post was in danger. The overtures to the Cherokees for peace having
proved fruitless, Colonel Montgomery had sought to make peace by force.
In pursuance of this further effort he pushed forward with great energy
and spirit, but encountered throughout disasters so serious as to
cripple his enterprise, culminating finally in a result equivalent to a
repulse. The Indians, in the skulking methods peculiar to their warfare,
harassed his march, hanging upon the flanks of the main body, and firing
in detail from behind trees and rocks, from the depths of ravines and
the summits of hills of the broken, rugged wilderness. Never did they
present any front that it was possible to charge and turn. The
advance-guard, approaching through a narrow valley, the town of Etchoee,
which the Indians had abandoned, fell into an ambuscade of considerable
strength, and there he lost Captain Morrison of the Rangers, and ten or
twelve men who fell at the first fire. The vanguard, discouraged, began
to give way, when the light infantry and grenadiers were detached for
its support. They succeeded in locating the chief strength of the
Cherokees sufficiently to drive the savages back, despite the disastrous
results of their scattered fire. The main body, coming up, encamped near
Etchoee, on a level space which proved, however, to be commanded by
eminences in the vicinity. Thence the Indians poured destructive volleys
into the British ranks, and only after repeated charges the soldiers
succeeded in dislodging them. Impetuously attacked on the flank, the
Cherokees suffered severely at the hands of the Royal Scots before being
able to get out of their reach. The terrible aspect of the painted
savages, and their nerve-thrilling whoops with which the woods
resounded, failed also to affect the courage of the wild Highlanders,
and all the troops fought with great ardor. But Colonel Montgomery
deemed it impossible to penetrate further through the wilderness,
hampered as he was by seventy wounded men whom he could not leave to the
mercies of so savage an enemy, by the loss of many horses, by the
necessity--which was yet almost an impossibility--of carrying a train of
cattle and other provisions with him in so rugged, trackless, and
heavily wooded a region, and relinquished the attempt, thinking the
terrible losses which the Indians had sustained would prove sufficient
punishment and dispose them to peace. He was even compelled to sacrifice
a considerable portion of his stores, throwing away bags of flour in
large numbers in order to effect the release of the packhorses to
transport his wounded. His dead he sunk heavily weighted into the
rivers, that the bodies might not be dragged from their graves and
scalped by the Indians. His return march of sixty miles to Fort Prince
George, which was accomplished with great regularity, was marked by the
same incidents that had characterized his advance,--the nettling fire of
the masked enemy, the futile response, and the constant loss of men and
horses.

And so he was gone, and all the hopes that had clustered about his
advance had gone with him! To Fort Loudon remained only two remote
chances,--that Governor Bull of South Carolina might be able to act on
the belated information and send out an expedition of relief; yet this
was to the last degree improbable, since the province, after its first
expensive expedition against the Cherokees, had been compelled to appeal
for its own protection to the British commander-in-chief, the militia
being practically disabled by the ravages of smallpox. But even at the
best could such an expedition reach them in time? The other possibility
of succor lay in Virginia, and it was obvious wisdom to embrace both
chances. Stuart knew that Demeré's quill, scraping over the paper, was
fashioning the appeal to the royal governor of that province, even while
Hamish was still speaking, and he, himself, wrote supplemental letters
to other persons of note, that the news of their desolation, failing to
carry in one direction, might be spread in another.

"Now, Hamish," he said, smiling behind the candle as he held the wax in
it for the seal, "can you do as much again?"

"Where? When?" demanded Hamish, in surprise.

"To Virginia. To-night."

Hamish's eyes stretched very wide. "You won't wait for Governor Bull?
The officers at Fort Prince George said they would lay their lives that
Governor Bull would respond."

"We must try Virginia, too. My boy, we are starving. To-morrow we begin
to eat the horses,--then there may be a dog or two."

Hamish rose precipitately. "Where is Sandy? Where is Odalie?"

Stuart pushed him back into his chair, sternly giving him to understand
that the only possible hope of saving their lives was to get away as
quickly as might be with the dispatches for Virginia.

"Without seeing Sandy and Odalie?" said Hamish, his lip quivering.

"We have not the time to spare. Besides, would they let you risk it
again, even for them?"

And Hamish was suddenly diverted to telling of his risks, of all the
escapes, by flood and fell, that he had made;--how often he had been
shot at from ambush; how he had swum rivers; how he had repeatedly
hidden from the Indians by dropping himself down into the hollows of
trees, and once how nearly he had come to getting out no more, the place
being so strait that he could scarcely use his constricted muscles to
climb up to the cavity that had let him in. He had not so much trouble
on the return trip; Ensign Milne had procured for him a good horse, and
a rifle--he had had a brace of pistols--the horse was a free goer--as
fresh now as if he had not been a mile to-day.

"And where is he now?" asked Demeré, a look of anxiety on his face.

"At MacLeod Station, hitched there with a good saddle on him and
saddle-bags half full of corn."

"Come, Hamish," said Stuart, rising, "you must be off; some Indian might
find the horse."

Hamish's eyes filled with tears,--to leave Odalie and Sandy without a
word! He could not endure for the men to see these tears, although they
thought none the less well of him for them.

"Let me drop a tear in farewell for Odalie," he said, trying to be very
funny, brushing his right eye with his right hand. "And for Sandy," his
left eye with his left hand. "And Fifine," his right eye with his right
hand. "And the cat," his left eye with his left hand.

There could be nothing unmanly or girlish in this jovial demonstration!

"Come, you zany!" exclaimed Stuart, affecting to think these tremulous
farewells very jocose.

"Yes," said Demeré, seriously, "we do not know how soon the Indians may
discover our use of that passage,--up to this time it has been our only
hope."

Hamish gathered up his calash, and the precise Demeré assisted him to
adjust it and his disordered dress more after the manner in which Odalie
wore it. Hamish, as directed, took Stuart's arm as they went out, his
eyes still full of tears, and for his life he could not control the
tremor of emotion, not of fear, in the fibers of his hand, which he was
sure the officer must note. But Stuart's attention was fixed on the
skies. It was later than in those days when Odalie was wont to keep
tryst with Choo-qualee-qualoo, now nearly a month ago. Still he fancied
that in the afterglow of the sunset the Indians might discern the color
and the style of the costume. Now and then a ball flew from the cannon
to the woods, to clear the forest of too close observers,--whatever risk
there was must needs be dared. The cannoneers summoned to this queer
duty looked at "Mrs. MacLeod" curiously, as she slipped through the
embrasure and made her way with a swinging agility down the slope
amongst the fraises and then off through the gloaming at a fresh, firm
pace. Then they gazed at Stuart, who presently bade them cease firing,
and they had no excuse to wait to see her return. A queer move, they
thought it, a very queer move!

Hope had grown so inelastic because of the taut tension to which its
fine fibers had been subjected, that Stuart felt a thrill of merely
mechanical apprehension when the next day Daniel Eske, the young
soldier, came in, desiring to make a special report to him. While on
guard duty he had heard a deep subterranean explosion, which had been
reported to the officer of the day. Later, Choo-qualee-qualoo had come,
waving her flag of truce, and after waiting vainly for Mrs. MacLeod, she
had ventured up the slope of the scarp, knowing full well that she was
safe under that white flag. She had brought a bag of beans, which she
had given him,--he bit his lip and colored with vexation, consciously
ridiculous in speaking of his feminine admirer to his superior
officer,--and he had taken the opportunity to ask some questions about
affairs outside the fort, upon which she detailed that an Indian--it was
Savanukah--had seen Mrs. MacLeod, as he thought, enter the subterranean
passage that used to lead to MacLeod Station. At first he had considered
it a slight matter, since the Carolinian's French wife had come so often
to talk to Choo-qualee-qualoo. But it somehow flashed into his mind how
this woman had walked,--with what a long stride, with what strength, and
how fast! And suddenly he realized that it was a man, despite the full
skirts and flutterings of capes and calash. So Savanukah ran swiftly to
his boat and pulled down the river, and made MacLeod Station just in
time to see a youth, arrayed in buckskins, issue from the cave and mount
a tethered horse. Savanukah fired at him, but without effect, and the
young man wheeled in his saddle and returned the fire with such accuracy
that even at the distance and in the twilight the ball, although nearly
spent, struck Savanukah in the mouth with such force as to knock out a
tooth. Then the boy made off with a tremendous burst of speed. And the
gray gown and the calash which the youth had worn were found inside the
passage. And great was the wrath of Willinawaugh! He had blown up with
powder both ends of the passage,--like thunder, _een-ta-qua
ros-ke_,--use could no more be made of it. But some were sorry, wishing
the paleface to return by that way, so that he might be stabbed in
the dark windings of the passage. This was impossible now,
Choo-qualee-qualoo said, for the spring had burst forth, forced in a new
direction, and was flooding all that part of the slope, flowing outside
instead of within, and Willinawaugh could not now change its disposition
if he would.

Stuart breathed more freely. If Hamish should return alone, which God
forbid, and not with an armed force, the external changes wrought at
MacLeod Station would preclude his effort to enter into the cavern, and
force him to devise some other method of approach. He wondered at
Willinawaugh--to destroy so promising a trap! But rage may overpower at
times the most foxy craft.

The dull days, dragging on, seemed each interminable while the
beleaguered garrison watched the impassive horizon and awaited
developments, and hoped against hope. The wonted routine came to be
abridged of necessity; the men on their reduced fare were incapable of
drill duty; the best hope was that they might make shift to stand to
their arms should a sudden attack require the exertion of all their
reserve force in the imminent peril of their lives. The diet of
horse-flesh proved not only unpalatable but insanitary, perhaps because
the animals had thus far shared the physical distresses of the siege,
and were in miserable plight, and there were as many men on the sick
list as the hospital could accommodate; this misfortune was mitigated to
a degree when Choo-qualee-qualoo brought another bag of beans to the
hero of the long-range flirtation, and he generously offered to share
the food with his fellow-sufferers. Odalie suggested its devotion to
hospital uses; and a few days of a certain potage which she compounded
of the beans and her economic French skill, and administered with her
own hands to the invalids, with her own compassionate smiles, and with a
sauce of cheering words, put a number of the stouter fellows on their
feet again.

The efforts to amuse and entertain had given way under the stress of a
misery that could form no compact with mirth, but from time to time the
officers made short spirited addresses to the troops to animate and
encourage their hope, and continue to the utmost their power of
resistance. And the exhalation of every sigh was with a thought of South
Carolina, and the respiration of every breath was with a prayer toward
Virginia.

As the number of horses had greatly diminished, and the discovery was
made that certain lean dogs had gone to the kitchen on an errand far
different from the one that used to lure them to the pots, about which
they had been wont to greedily and piteously snuff and whine, the
quiescent waiting and reliance on the judgment and the capacity of the
commandant to extricate the garrison from this perilous plight gave way
anew. Criticisms of the management grew rife. The return of Hamish
MacLeod, at the moment when starvation seemed imminent, and his instant
departure at so great a peril, for the circumstances of his escape had
been learned by the soldiers from the confidences of Choo-qualee-qualoo
to young Eske, who was always free with his tongue, implied that
Hamish's earlier mission had failed, and that no troops were now on the
march to their succor. They, too, had seen the capering Indian in the
red coat of an officer of rank, the lace cravat of a man of quality
which Choo-qualee-qualoo flourished, and they deduced a shrewd surmise
of Montgomery's repulse. The men who had earliest revolted against the
hardships now entertained rebellious sentiments and sought to foster
them in others. Although, as ringleaders in the food riot, they had been
summarily placed in irons, their punishment had been too brief perhaps
for a salutary moral effect. Demeré's severity was always
theoretical,--a mental attitude one might say. The hardship of adding
shackles to the agonies of slow starvation so preyed upon his heart
that he had ordered the prisoners released before a sober reflection had
done its full work. The exemplary conduct, for a time, of the culprits
had no sufficient counterpart in chastened hearts, for they nourished
bitterness and secretly agitated mutiny.

The crisis came one morning when the meager supply of repulsive food had
shrunken to the scope of a few days' rations, the quantity always
dwindling in a regularly diminishing ratio; it had recently barely
enabled the men to sustain the usual guard duty, and they lay about the
parade at other times, or at full length on the porches of the barracks,
too feeble and dispirited to stir hand or foot without necessity.
Corporal O'Flynn, one of the few officers fit for duty, with a shade of
pallor on his face a trifle more ghastly than that of starvation,
reported that five men had failed to respond to roll-call, and upon
investigation it was found that they had burrowed out of the fort in the
darkness, seeking to desert to the enemy, but their intentions being
mistaken, or their overtures scorned, they had been stabbed and scalped
at the edge of the forest, and there their bodies were visible in the
early rays of the sun.

"May become unpleasant when the wind shifts," remarked Stuart easily,
and without emotion apparently, "but we are spared the duties of
punishing deserters according to their deserts."

Demeré's face had shown a sudden nervous contraction but resumed its
fixed reserved expression, and he said nothing.

Corporal O'Flynn's report, however, was not yet exhausted. He hesitated,
almost choked. The blood rushed so scarlet to his face that one might
have wondered, at the show it made, that he had so much of that
essential element in circulation in his whole thin body. He lifted his
voice as if to urge the concentration of Stuart's attention which seemed
so casual--he had it the next moment.

"I feel like a traitor in tellin' it, sor," said O'Flynn, "I'm just one
of the men meself, an' it breaks me heart intirely to go agin 'em with
the officers. But me duty as a soldier is to the commandant of the fort,
an' as a man to the poor women an' childer."

He choked again, so reluctant was he in unfolding the fact that this was
but the first step, providentially disastrous, of a plan by which the
fort and the officers were to be abandoned, the rank and file
determining to throw themselves on the mercy of the savages, since even
to die at their hands was better than this long and futile waiting for
succor. Through Choo-qualee-qualoo some negotiations with the enemy had
been set on foot, of which O'Flynn was unaware hitherto, being excluded
from their councils as a non-commissioned officer, but after the result
of the desertion in the early hours before dawn, Daniel Eske, thoroughly
dismayed, had once more reverted to his reliance on the superior wisdom
of the commandant, and had seen fit to disclose the state of affairs to
the corporal, whose loyalty to his superior officers was always marked.

O'Flynn was commended, cautioned to be silent, and the door closed.

The two captains looked blankly at one another.

"The catastrophe is upon us," said Stuart. "Fort Loudon must fall."

In this extremity a council of war was held. Yet there seemed no course
open even to deliberation. On the one hand rose mutiny, starvation, and
desertion; but to surrender to such an enemy as the Cherokees meant
massacre. Their terrible fate held them in a remorseless clutch! At
last, with some desperate hope, such as the unsubstantial illusion with
which drowning men catch at straws, that the Indians might make and keep
terms, it was agreed that Captain Stuart, at his earnest desire, should
be the officer to treat with the enemy and secure such terms of
capitulation as they could be induced to hold forth.

It might be imagined that the little band of officers, in their hard
stress, had become incapable of any further vivid emotion, but in
vicarious terror they watched Stuart step forth boldly and alone from
the sally-port, a white flag in his hand, and arrayed, in deference to
the Indians' love of ceremony and susceptibility to compliment, in full
uniform.

He stood on the parapet of the covered way, motionless and distinct, in
the clear light of the morning, against the background of the great red
clay embankments. He was evidently seen, for through a spy-glass Demeré
in the block-house tower noted the instant stillness that fell like a
spell upon the Indian line; the figures of the warriors, crouching or
erect, seemed petrified in the chance attitude of the moment. That he
was instantly recognized by skulking scouts in the woods was as evident.
His tall, sinewy figure; his long, dense, blond hair, with its heavy
queue hanging on the shoulders of his red coat; a certain daring,
martial insouciance of manner, sufficiently individualized him to the
far-sighted Cherokees, and the white flag in his hand--a token which
they understood, although they did not always respect it--intimated that
developments of moment in the conduct of the siege impended.

There was no sudden shrill whistling of a rifle ball, and Demeré,
thinking of the fate of Coytmore on the river-bank at Fort Prince
George, began to breathe more freely. A vague sense of renewed
confidence thrilled through the watching group. Stuart had stipulated
that he should go alone--otherwise he would not make the essay. The
presence of two or three armed men, officers of the fort, intimated
suspicion and fear, incurred danger, and yet, helpless among such
numbers, afforded no protection. The others had yielded to this
argument, for he knew the Indian character by intuition, it would seem.
He was relying now, too, upon a certain personal popularity. He had
somehow engaged the admiration of the Indians, yet without disarming
their prejudice--a sort of inimical friendship. They all realized that
any other man would have now been lying dead on the glacis with a bullet
through his brain, if but for the sheer temptation to pick him off
neatly as a target of uncommon interest, whatever his mission might have
betokened.

How to accomplish this mission became a problem of an essential
solution, and on the instant. Not a figure stirred of the distant
Cherokee braves; not one man would openly advance within range of the
great guns that carried such terror to the Indian heart. Stuart stood in
momentary indecision, his head thrown back, his chin up, his keen,
far-seeing gray-blue eyes fixed on the motionless Indian line. Through
the heated August air the leaves of the trees seemed to quiver; the
ripples of the river scintillated in the sun; not a breath of wind
stirred; on the horizon the solidities of the Great Smoky Mountains
shimmered ethereal as a mirage.

Suddenly Stuart was running, lightly, yet at no great speed; he reached
the river-bank, thrust a boat out from the gravel, and with the flag of
truce waving from the prow he pushed off from the shore, and began to
row with long, steady strokes straight up the river. He was going to
Choté!

The observers at Fort Loudon, petrified, stared at one another in blank
amazement. The observers at the Cherokee camp were freed from their
spell. The whole line seemed in motion. All along the river-bank the
braves were speeding, keeping abreast of the swift little craft in the
middle of the stream. The clamors of the guttural voices with their
unintelligible exclamations came across the water.

It was like the passing of a flight of swallows. In less than five
minutes the boat, distinctly visible, with those salient points of
color, the red coat and the white flag against the silver-gray water,
had rounded the bend; every Indian runner was out of sight; and the line
of warriors had relapsed into their silent staring at the fort, where
the garrison dragged out three hours of such poignant suspense as seldom
falls to the lot of even unhappy men.

The sun's rays deepened their intensity; the exhausted, half-famished
sentries dripped with perspiration, the effects of extreme weakness as
well as of the heat, as they stood shouldering their firelocks and
anxiously watching from the loop-holes of the block-house towers, the
roofs of which, blistering in the sun, smelled of the wood in a close,
breathless, suffocating odor which their nerves, grown sensitive by
suffering, discriminated like a pain. The men off duty lay in the shadow
of the block-houses, for the rows of trees had vanished to furnish fuel
for the kitchen, or on the porches of the barracks, and panted like
lizards; the officers looked at one another with the significance of
silent despair, and believed Stuart distraught. Demeré could not forgive
himself that he had been persuaded to agree that Stuart should appear.
Beyond the out-works, however, they had had no dream of his adventuring.
To try the effect of a personal appearance and invitation to a
conference was the extent of the maneuver as it was planned. There was
scant expectation in Fort Loudon that he would be again seen alive.

When the tension of the sun began to slacken and the heat to abate; when
the wind vaguely flapped the folds of the flag with a drowsing murmur,
as if from out of sleep; when the chirr of the cicada from the woods
grew vibratory and strident, suggestive of the passing of the day's
meridian, and heralding the long, drowsy lengths of the afternoon to
come, the little boat, with that bright touch of scarlet, shot out from
behind the wooded bend of the river, and in a few minutes was beached on
the gravel and Stuart was within the gates of Fort Loudon.

He came with a face of angry, puzzled excitement that surprised his
brother officers, whose discrimination may have been blunted in the joy
of his safe and unexpected return and the fair promises of the terms of
capitulation he had secured. Never had a vanquished enemy been more
considerately and cordially entreated than he at Choté. Oconostota and
Cunigacatgoah had come down to the river-bank on the news of his
approach and had welcomed him like a brother. To the great council-hall
he was taken, and not one word would Oconostota hear of his mission till
food was placed before him,--fish and fowl, bread, and a flask of wine!

"And when Oconostota saw that I had been so nearly starved that I could
hardly eat--Lord!--how his eyes twinkled!" cried Stuart, angrily.

But Oconostota had permitted himself to comment on the fact. He said
that it had grieved him to know of the sufferings from famine of his
brother and the garrison--for were they not all the children of the same
Great Father! But Captain Stuart must have heard of the hideous
iniquities perpetrated by the British Colonel in burning the Cherokee
towns in the southern region, where many of the inhabitants perished in
the flames, and slaying their warriors who did naught but defend their
own land from the invaders--the land which the Great Spirit had given to
the Cherokees, and which was theirs. And, now that the terrible Colonel
Montgomery had been driven out with his hordes, still reeking with
Cherokee blood, it was but fit that the Cherokees should take possession
of Fort Loudon, which was always theirs, built for them at their
request, and paid for with their blood, shed in the English service,
against the enemies of the English colonists, the French, who had always
dealt fairly with the Cherokees.

Captain Stuart bluntly replied that it did not become him to listen to
reflections upon the methods in which British commanders had seen fit to
carry out the instructions of the British government. They had,
doubtless, acted according to their orders, as was their duty. For his
own mission, although Fort Loudon could be held some space longer, in
which time reënforcements, which he had reason to think were on the
march, might come to its relief, the officers had agreed that the
sufferings of the garrison were such that they were not justified in
prolonging their distress, provided such terms of capitulation could be
had as would warrant the surrender of the fort.

As the interpreter, with the wooden voice, standing behind the chief,
gabbled out this rebuke of the Cherokee king's aspersions on
Montgomery, Stuart's ever quick eye noted an expression on the man's
face, habitually so blank and wooden,--he remembered it afterward,--an
expression almost applausive. Then his attention was concentrated on the
circumlocutions of Oconostota, who, in winding phrase almost
affectionate, intimated the tender truth that, without waiting for these
reënforcements, the enfeebled garrison could be overpowered now and
destroyed to the last man by a brisk onslaught, the Cherokees taking the
place by storm.

Stuart shook his head, and his crafty candor strengthened the negation.

"Not so long as the great guns bark," he declared. "They are the dogs of
war that make the havoc."

Then Oconostota, with that greed of the warlike Cherokee for the details
concerning this great arm of the British service, the artillery, always
coveted by the Indians, yet hardly understood, listened to a description
of the process by which these guns could be rendered useless in a few
minutes by a despairing garrison.

Their cannoneers could spike them after firing the last round. And of
what value would the fort be to the Cherokees without them,--it would be
mere intrenchments with a few dead men,--the most useless things under
the sun. The English government would bring new guns, and level the
works in a single day. The great chief knew the power of England. In the
days when Moy Toy sent his delegation to London, of which he and
Atta-Kulla-Kulla were members, to visit King George, they had seen the
myriads of people and had heard many great guns fired in salute to the
princely guests, and had assisted at the review of thousands and
thousands of soldiers.

And with the reminder of all these overpowering military splendors of
his great enemy, Oconostota began to feel that he would be glad to
secure possession of these few of King George's great guns uninjured,
fit to bark, and, if occasion should offer, to bite.

From that point the negotiation took a stable footing. With many a
crafty recurrence on the part of Stuart to the coveted artillery at
every balking doubt or denial, it was agreed that the stronghold should
be evacuated;--"That the garrison of Fort Loudon march out with their
arms and drums, each soldier having as much powder and ball as their
officer shall think necessary for their march, and all the baggage they
may chuse to carry: That the garrison be permitted to march to Virginia
or Fort Prince George, as the commanding officer shall think proper,
unmolested; and that a number of Indians be appointed to escort them
and hunt for provisions during their march: That such soldiers as are
lame or by sickness disabled from marching, be received into the Indian
towns and kindly used until they recover, and then be allowed to return
to Fort Prince George: That the Indians do provide for the garrison as
many horses as they conveniently can for their march, agreeing with the
officers and soldiers for payment: That the fort, great guns, powder,
ball, and spare arms, be delivered to the Indians without fraud or
further delay on the day appointed for the march of the troops."

These terms of capitulation were signed by Paul Demeré, Oconostota, and
Cunigacatgoah, and great was the joy the news awoke among the garrison
of Fort Loudon. The sick arose from their beds; the lame walked, and
were ready to march; almost immediately, in the open space beneath the
terrible great guns, were men,--settlers, soldiers, and Indians,--trying
the paces of horses, and chaffering over the terms of sale. Provisions
were brought in; every chimney sent up a savory reek. Women were getting
together their little store of valuables in small compass for the
journey. Children, recently good from feeble incapacity to be otherwise,
were now healthily bad, fortified by a generous meal or two. And Fifine
was stroking the cat's humped back, as the animal munched upon the
ground bits of meat thrown prodigally away, and telling her that now
she would not be eaten,--so had that terror preyed upon the motherly
baby heart! Odalie had some smiling tears to shed for Hamish's sake, in
the earnest hope that he might be as well off, and those whom she had
consoled in affliction now in their prosperity sought to console her.
The officers were hilarious. They could hardly credit their own good
fortune--permitted to surrender Fort Loudon, after its gallant defense
to the last extremity, to the savage Cherokees, upon just such terms as
would have been dictated by a liberal and civilized enemy! Demeré, after
the first burst of reproach that Stuart should have so recklessly
endangered himself, and of joy that his mission had been so successfully
accomplished, was cheerfully absorbed in destroying such official papers
as, falling into the hands of the French, might be detrimental to the
British interest. Of them all, only Stuart was doubtful, angry,
disconsolate. Perhaps because some fiber of sensitive pride, buried
deep, had been touched to the quick by Oconostota's ill-disguised
triumph; or he realized that he had labored long here, and suffered much
uselessly, and but for the threatened desertion of the garrison felt
that the fort might still be held till relief could reach it; or he was
of the temperament that adorns success, or even stalwart effort, but is
blighted by failure; or he was only staggered by the completeness of
his prosperous negotiations with the Cherokees and doubtful of their
good faith,--at all events he had lost his poise. He was gloomy,
ruminative, and broke out now and again with futile manifestations of
his disaffection.

Demeré, burning letter-books and other papers on the hearth of the great
chimney-place of the hall, looked up from the table where he sorted them
to remind Stuart, as he strode moodily to and fro, not to leave things
of value to fall into the hands of the enemy. Stuart paused for a moment
with a gloomy face. Then, "They shall not have this," he said angrily.
The little red silk riding-mask, that was wont to look down from the
wall, null and inexpressive, with no suggestion in its vacant, sightless
orbs of the brightness of vanished eyes, with no faint trace of the fair
face that it had once sheltered, save as memory might fill the blank
contour, began to blaze humbly as he thrust it among the burning papers
on the hearth. An odd interpretation of things of value, certainly--a
flimsy memento of some bright day, long ago, and far away, when, not all
unwelcome, he had ridden at a lady's bridle-rein. Demeré looked at him
with sudden interest, seemed about to speak, checked himself and said
nothing. And thus with this souvenir the romance of Stuart's life
perished unstoried.

More characteristic thoughts possessed him later. He came to Demeré's
bedside that night as he lay sleeping in quiet peace, even his somnolent
nerves realizing the prospect of release. Stuart roused him with a new
anxiety. There was a very considerable quantity of powder in the fort,
far more than the Indians, unacquainted with the large charges required
for cannon, suspected that they possessed. By surrendering this great
supply of powder, Stuart argued, as well as the guns, they only
postponed not precluded their destruction. Brought down with the guns to
Fort Prince George in the hands of French cannoneers, this ample supply
of artillery would easily level those works with the ground. The French
officers, who they had reason to suspect were lurking in the Lower
Towns, would be unlikely to have otherwise so large a store of
ammunition in reach, capable of maintaining a siege, and before this
could be procured for the service of the surrendered cannon some
reënforcements to the commandant of Fort Prince George would arrive, or
an aggressive expedition be sent out from South Carolina.

"At all events this quantity of powder in the hands of the Cherokees
makes it certain that a siege of Fort Prince George will follow close on
the fall of Fort Loudon," Stuart declared.

Demeré raised himself on his elbow to gaze at Stuart by the light of
the flickering candle which the visitor held in his hand.

"I am afraid that you are right," Demeré said, after a grave pause. "But
how can we help it?"

"Hide the powder,--hide it," said Stuart excitedly. "Bury it!"

"Contrary to the stipulations and our agreement," returned Demeré.

Stuart evidently struggled with himself. "If these fiends," he
exclaimed,--the triumph of Oconostota had gone very hard with
him,--"were like any other enemy we could afford to run the chance. But
have we the right to submit the commandant of Fort Prince George and his
garrison--to say nothing of ourselves and our garrison, hampered as we
are with women and children, taking refuge with him,--to the risk of
siege and massacre, fire and torture, compassed by materials practically
furnished by us,--on a delicate question of military ethics?"

"If we do not keep our word, how can we expect Oconostota to keep his
word?" asked Demeré.

"But do we really expect it? Have we any guarantee?"

Once more Stuart hesitated, then suddenly decided. "But if you have
scruples"--he broke off with a shrug of the shoulders. "I should leave
Oconostota enough powder to amuse him with the guns for a while, but
not enough to undertake a siege. The government will surely occupy this
place again. I expect to find the powder here when I come back to Fort
Loudon."

His words were prophetic, although neither knew it. He cast a hasty
glance at Demeré, who again objected, and Stuart went out of the door
saying nothing further, the draught flickering, then extinguishing, the
flame of the candle in his hand.

It was very dark about midnight when the whole place lay locked in
slumber. The sentries, watchful as ever in the block-house towers and at
the chained and barred gates, noted now and again shadowy figures about
the region of the southeast bastion,--the old exhausted smoke-house had
been in that locality,--and thence suppressed voices sounded
occasionally in low-toned, earnest talk. No light showed save in
glimpses for a while through the crevices in the walls of the building
itself, and once or twice when the door opened and was suddenly shut.
There Corporal O'Flynn and three soldiers and Captain Stuart himself,
armed with mattocks, dug a deep trench in the tough red clay, carefully
drawing to one side the dead ashes and cinders left by the fires of his
earnest preparations against the siege. Then the lights were
extinguished, and from the great traverse, in which was the powder
magazine, they brought ten heavy bags of powder, and laid them in the
trench, covering them over with the utmost caution, lest a mattock
strike a spark from a stone here and there in the earth. At last, still
observing great care, they tramped the clay hard and level as a floor,
and spread again the ashes and cinders over the upturned ground, laying
the chunks of wood together, as they had burnt half out after the last
fire many weeks ago.

When Captain Stuart inveigled Captain Demeré thither the next morning,
on some pretext concerning the removal of the troops, he was relieved to
see that although Demeré was most familiar with the place he had not
even the vaguest suspicion of what lay under his feet, for this was the
best test as to whether the work had been well done. It was only at the
moment of departure, of rendering up the spare arms, and serving out
ammunition to the soldiers for the journey, that he was made aware how
mysteriously the warlike stores had shrunken, but Oconostota's beadlike
eyes glistened with rapture upon attaining the key of the magazine with
its hoard of explosives, unwitting that it had ever contained more.

The soldiers went out of the gates in column, in heavy marching order,
their flags and uniforms making a very pretty show for the last time on
the broad open spaces about Fort Loudon. For the last time the craggy
banks and heavily wooded hills of the Tennessee River echoed to the
beat of the British drums. Behind, like a train of gypsies, were the
horses purchased from the Indians, on which were mounted the women and
little girls, with here and there a sick soldier, unable to keep his
place in the ranks and guyed by his comrades with reviving jollity, in
the face of hope and freedom, as "a squaw-man." The more active of the
children, boys chiefly, ran alongside, and next in order came the
settlers, now in column as "fencibles," and again one or two quitting
the ranks to cuff into his proper place some irrepressible youngster
disposed to wander. In the rear were the Indian safe-guards through the
Cherokee nation, with their firelocks and feathers and scanty attire
that suggested comfort this hot day. For the August sun shone from a sky
of cloudless blue; a wind warm but fresh met them going the other way;
the dew was soon dried and the temperature rose; the mountains glimmered
ethereally azure toward the east with a silver haze amongst the domes
and peaks, and toward the west they showed deeply and densely purple, as
the summit lines stretched endlessly in long parallel levels.

And so these pioneers and the soldiers set forth on their way out of the
land that is now Tennessee, to return no more; wending down among the
sun-flooded cane-brakes, and anon following the trail through the
dense, dark, grateful shades of the primeval woods. So they went to
return no more,--not even in the flickering guise of spectral visitants
to the scenes that knew them once,--scarcely as a vague and vagrant
memory in the country where they first planted the home that cost them
so dearly and that gave them but little.

Nevertheless, a hearty farewell it bestowed this morning,--for they sang
presently as they went, so light and blithe of heart they were, and the
crags and the hills, and the rocky banks of that lovely river, all cried
out to them in varying tones of sweet echoes, and ever and again the
boom of the drums beat the time.

CHAPTER XII

The definite ranks were soon broken; the soldiers marched at ease in and
out amongst the Indians and the settlers, all in high good humor; jest
and raillery were on every side. They ate their dinner, still on the
march, the provisions for the purpose having been cooked with the
morning meal. Thus they were enabled, despite the retarding presence of
the women and children, and the enfeebling effects of the long siege, to
make the progress of between fifteen and twenty miles that day. They
encamped on a little plain near the Indian town of Taliquo. There, the
supper having been cooked and eaten--a substantial meal of game shot
during the day's march--and the shades of night descending thick in the
surrounding woods, Captain Stuart observed the inexplicable phenomenon
that every one of their Indian guards had suddenly deserted them.

The fact, however contemplated, boded no good. The officers, doubtless
keenly sensitive to the renewal of anxiety after so slight a surcease of
the sufferings of suspense, braced themselves to meet the emergency. A
picket line was thrown out; sentinels were posted in the expectation of
some imminent and startling development; the soldiers were ordered to
sleep on their arms, to be in readiness for defense as well as to gain
strength for the morrow's march and rest from the fatigues of the day.
The little gypsy-looking groups of women and children, too, were soon
hushed, and naught was left the anxious senior officers but to sleep if
they might, or in default, as they lay upon the ground, to watch the
great constellations come over the verge of the gigantic trees at the
east of the open space, and deploy with infinite brilliance across the
parade of the sky, and in glittering alignment pass over the verge of
the western woods and out of sight. So came the great Archer, letting
fly myriads of arrows of flakes of light in the stream near the camp. So
came in slow, gliding majesty the Swan, with all the splendor of the
Galaxy, like infinite unfoldings of white wings, in her wake. So came
the Scorpio, with coil on coil of sidereal scintillations, and here and
again the out-thrust dartings of a malign red star. And at last so came
the morn.

Demeré, who had placed himself, wrapped in his military cloak, on the
ground near Stuart, that they might quietly speak together in the night
without alarming the little camp with the idea of precautions and danger
and plotting and planning, noted first a roseate lace-like scroll
unrolled upon the zenith amidst the vague, pervasive, gray suggestions
of dawn. He turned his head and looked at his friend with a smile of
banter as if to upbraid their fears;--for here was the day, and the
night was past!

A sudden wild clamor smote upon the morning quiet. The outposts were
rushing in with the cry that the woods on every side were full of
Cherokees, with their faces painted, and swinging their tomahawks; the
next moment the air resounded with the hideous din of the war-whoop.
Demeré's voice rose above the tumult, calling to the men to fall in and
stand to their arms. A volley of musketry poured in upon the little camp
from every side.

Demeré fell at the first fire with three other officers and twenty-seven
soldiers. Again and again, from the unseen enemy masked by the forest,
the women and children, the humble beasts of burden,--fleeing wildly
from side to side of the space,--the soldiers and the backwoodsmen, all
received this fusillade. The men had been hastily formed into a square
and from each front fired volleys as best they might, unable to judge of
the effect and conscious of the futility of their effort, surrounded as
they were on every side. Now and again a few, impelled by despair, made
a wild break for liberty, unrestrained by the officers who gave them
what chance they might secure, and with five or six exceptions these
were shot down by the Indians after reaching the woods. The devoted
remnant, fighting until the last round of ammunition was exhausted, were
taken prisoners by the triumphant savages. Stuart, his face covered with
blood and his sword dripping, was pinioned before he could be disarmed,
and then helpless, hopeless, with what feelings one may hardly imagine,
he was constrained to set forth with his captor on the return march to
Fort Loudon.

[Illustration: "The men had been hastily formed into a square."]

The Cherokees could hardly restrain their joy in thus taking him alive.
So far-famed had he become among them, so high did they esteem his
military rank, so autocratic seemed his power in the great stronghold of
Fort Loudon, with his red-coated soldiers about him, obeying his words,
even saluting his casual presence, that it afforded the most æsthetic
zest of revenge, the most acute realization of triumph, to contemplate
him as he stood bound, bloody, bareheaded in the sun, while the very
meanest of the lowest grade of the tribesmen were free to gather round
him with gibes and menacing taunts and buffets of derision. His hat had
been snatched off in order to smite him with it in the face; his hair,
always of special interest to the Indians because of its light brown
color and dense growth, was again and again caught by its thick, fair
plait with howls of delight, and if the grasp of the hand unaided could
have rent the scalp from the head, those fierce derisive jerks would
have compassed the feat; more than one whose rage against him was not to
be gratified by these malevolently jocose manifestations of contempt,
gave him such heavy and repeated blows over the head with the butt of
their firelocks that they were near clubbing the prisoner to death, when
this circumstance attracted the attention of his captor, Willinawaugh,
who was fain to interfere. Stuart, regretting the intervention, realized
that he was reserved to make sport for their betters in the fiercer and
more dramatic agonies of the torture and the stake.

His fortitude might well have tempted them. In a sort of stoical pride
he would not wince. Never did he cry out. He hardly staggered beneath
the crushing blows of the muskets, delivered short hand and at close
quarters, that one might have thought would have fractured his skull.
That the interposition of Willinawaugh was not of the dictates of
clemency might be inferred from the manner in which the return journey
was accomplished. Forced to keep pace with his captor on horseback
Stuart traveled the distance from Taliquo Town to Old Fort Loudon in
double-quick time, bareheaded, pinioned, in the blazing meridian heat of
a sultry August day. He hoped he would die of exhaustion. In the
long-continued siege of Fort Loudon, necessitating much indoor life, to
which he was little used, the texture of his skin had become delicate
and tender, and now blistered and burned as if under the touch of actual
cautery. With the previous inaction and the unaccustomed exposure the
heat suggested the possibility of sunstroke to offer a prospect of
release.

But he came at last to the great gates of Fort Loudon with no more
immediate hurt than a biting grief deep in his heart, the stinging pain
of cuts and bruises about his head and face, and a splitting, throbbing,
blinding headache. Not so blinding that he did not see every detail of
the profane occupancy of the place on which so long he had expended all
his thought and every care, in the defense of which he had cheerfully
starved, and would with hearty good-will have died. All the precise
military decorum that characterized it had vanished in one short day.
Garbage, filth, bones, broken bits of food lay about the parade, that
was wont to be so carefully swept, with various litter from the plunder
of the officers' quarters, for owing to the limited opportunity of
transportation much baggage had been left. This was still in progress,
as might be judged from the figures of women and men seen through the
open doors and now again on the galleries, chaffering and bargaining
over some trifle in process of sale or exchange. Indian children raced
in and out of the white-washed interiors of the barracks which had been
glaringly clean; already the spring branch was choked by various débris
and, thus dammed, was overflowing its rocky precincts to convert the
undulating ground about it into a slimy marsh. Myriads of flies had
descended upon the place. Here and there horses were tethered and cows
roamed aimlessly. Idle savages lay sprawling about over the ground,
sleeping in the shade. In the block-houses and towers and along the
parade, where other braves shouldered the firelocks, the surrendered
spare arms, mimicking the drill of the soldiers with derisive cries of
"Plesent _Ahms_!" "Shouldie _Fa'lock_!" "Ground _Fa'lock_!" only such
injury as bootless folly might compass was to be deplored, but upon the
terrepleine in the northeast bastion several Cherokees were working at
one of the great cannons, among whom was no less a personage than
Oconostota himself, striving to master the secrets of its service. The
box of gunner's implements was open, and Stuart with a touch of
returning professional consciousness wondered with that contempt for
ignorance characteristic of the expert what wise project they had in
progress now. For the gun had just been charged, but with that economy
of powder, the most precious commodity in these far-away wilds, for
which the Indians were always noted. The ball, skipping languidly out,
had dropped down the embankment outside and rolled along the ground
with hardly more force than if impelled down an alley by a passable
player at bowls, barely reaching the glacis before coming to a full
halt. Realizing the difficulty, the gun under the king's directions was
shotted anew; erring now in the opposite extreme, it was charged so
heavily that, perhaps from some weakness in the casting, or the failure
to duly sponge and clean the bore, or simply from the expansive force of
the inordinate quantity of powder, the piece exploded, killing two of
the savages, serving as gunners, and wounding a third. The ball, for the
cannon had been improperly pointed by some mischance, struck the side of
the nearest block-house, and as its projectile force was partly spent by
the explosion, the tough wood turned it; it ricochetted across the whole
expanse of the enclosure, striking and killing an Indian lying asleep on
the opposite rampart. A vast uproar ensued, and Stuart could have
laughed aloud in bitter mirth to see Oconostota almost stunned alike by
the surprise and the force of the concussion, timorously and dubiously
eying the wreck. Then, with a subdued air of renunciation and finality,
"Old Hop," as the soldiers called him, came limping carefully down the
steep ramp from the terrepleine, evidently just enlightened as to the
dangers lurking about the breech of the cannon, well as he had long been
acquainted with the menace of its muzzle. The fury of the savages bore
some similarity to the ricochet forces of the misdirected cannon-ball.
Stuart plainly perceived himself destined to bear the brunt of the
infuriating mishap in which, although he had no agency, he might be
suspected of taking secret and extreme delight. It was for a moment a
reversal of the red man's supremacy in the arts of war, that had been
demonstrated by the results of the siege, the acquisition of the
ordnance, the surprise and the massacre of the capitulated garrison. In
the stress of the noisy moment, when the corpses had been carried off
and the howling women and their friends had followed them to their
assigned homes in the barracks, several braves, including Oconostota
himself, had become aware of Stuart's return and gathered around him.

Nothing could have been more acutely malevolent than Oconostota's
twinkling eyes; no words could have shown a keener edge of sarcasm than
his greeting of the officer once more by the title of his dear brother.
Stuart, impolitic for once, disdained to respond, and, grimly silent,
eyed him with a sort of stoical defiance that struck the Indian's
mummery dumb. There was a moment of inaction as they all contemplated
him. His vigor, his fortitude, his rank, the consciousness how his proud
spirit raged in his defeat and despair, all combined to render him a
notable victim and promised a long and a keen extension of the
pleasures of witnessing his torture.

And at that instant of crisis, as if to seal his doom, a great guttural
clamor arose about the southeast bastion, and here was Willinawaugh,
with wild turbulent gesticulations, and starting gleaming eyes, and a
glancing upheaving tomahawk, for in the perspective a dozen hale fellows
were dragging out of the pit beneath the old smoke-house the ten bags of
powder that Stuart had concealed there--only two nights ago, was it?--it
seemed a century! How had they the craft to find them, so securely, so
impenetrably were they hidden! Stuart's store of Cherokee enabled him to
gather the drift of the excited talk. One of the Indians, with the keen
natural senses of the savage, had smelled the freshly turned
clay--_smelled it_ in that assortment of evil odors congregated in the
parade!--and had sought to discover what this might be so recently
buried. Fraud! Fraud! the cry went up on every side. Unmasked fraud, and
Stuart should die the death! He had violated the solemn agreement by
which the garrison was liberated; he had surrendered the spare arms and
the cannon indeed, but only a fraction of the powder of the warlike
stores--and he should die the death and at once. Stuart wondered that he
was not torn to pieces by the infuriated savages, protesting their
indignation because of his violation of the treaty,--while his
garrison, under the Cherokees' solemn agreement of safe-conduct, lay in
all their massacred horrors unburied on the plains of Taliquo. The cant
of the Cherokees, their hypocrisy, and their vaunting clamor of
conscience made them seem, if one were disposed to be cynical, almost
civilized! Doubtless, but for Oconostota's statesmanlike determination
to sift the matter first, Stuart could not have been torn from among the
tribesmen and dragged to the seclusion of his own great mess-hall, where
the door was closed and barred in their distorted faces as they followed
with their howls. He was required to stand at one end of the grievously
dismantled room and detail his reason for this reserve of the powder.
Had he grounds to suspect any renewal of the English occupancy? Had he
knowledge of forces now on the march in the expectation of raising the
siege of Fort Loudon? Oconostota pointed out the desirability of telling
the truth, with a feeling allusion to the Great Spirit, the folly of
seeking to deceive the omniscient Indian, as the discovery of the powder
sufficiently illustrated, and the discomforts that would ensue to
Captain Stuart, should it be found necessary to punish him for lying, by
burning him alive in his own chimney-place, admirably adapted for the
purpose. Oconostota sat now with his back to it, with all his council of
chiefs in a semicircle about him, on the buffalo rug on the broad
hearth. The Indian interpreter Quoo-ran-be-qua, the great Oak, stood
behind him and looked across the length of the room at Captain Stuart,
the only other person standing, and clattered out his wooden sentences.

Stuart could make no further effort. His capacity to scheme seemed
exhausted. He replied in his bluff, off-hand manner, his bloody head
held erect, that they now had more powder than was good for
them,--witness the bursting of that costly great gun! He had buried the
powder in the hope of further English occupancy of the fort, which he
had, however, no reason to expect; it was only his hope,--his earnest
hope! He had left them spare arms, great guns, ball, powder,--much
powder,--and if he had seen fit to reserve some store he could say, with
a clear conscience, that it was done only in the interests of peace and
humanity, and because of doubts of their good faith,--how well grounded
the blood shed this day upon the plains of Taliquo might testify! His
friends, his comrades, were treacherously murdered under the
safe-conduct of the Cherokee nation. And if he were to die too, he was
fully prepared to show with what courage he could do it.

His eyes flashed as he spoke; they seemed to transmit a spark across the
room to the dull orbs of the interpreter. And what was this? Stuart's
knowledge of the Cherokee language enabled him to discern the fact that
after a moment's hesitation Quoo-ran-be-qua was clacking out a coherent
statement to the effect that the concealment of the powder was Captain
Demeré's work, and wrought unknown to Stuart during his absence on his
mission to Choté, where, as the great chiefs well knew, he was detained
several hours. Stuart stared in astonishment at the interpreter, who,
blandly secure in the conviction that the prisoner did not comprehend
the Cherokee language, maintained his usual stolid aspect. Whether
Stuart's courage so enforced admiration, or whatever quality had secured
for him the regard of the higher grade of Indians, the interpreter had
sought, by an unrecognized, unrewarded effort, to save the officer's
life by a sudden stroke of presence of mind,--a subterfuge which he
supposed, in his simplicity, undiscoverable.

There were milder countenances now in the circle, and Stuart's attention
was presently concentrated upon an eager controversy between
Atta-Kulla-Kulla and Willinawaugh that was curiously enough, at this
moment of gravest council, sitting in judgment on the disposal of a
human life, a matter of chaffer, of bargain and sale. Willinawaugh had
already refused a new rifle and a horse--and then two horses besides,
and, still untempted, shook his head. And suddenly the interest in the
concealment of the powder collapsed, and they were all looking at
Willinawaugh, who gazed much perplexed down at the ground, all his
wrinkles congregated around his eyes, eager to acquire yet loath to
trade, while Atta-Kulla-Kulla, keen, astute, subtle, plied him with
offers, and tempting modifications of offers, for the Cherokees of that
date were discriminating jockeys and had some fine horses.

The wind came in at the loop-holes and stirred the blood-clotted hair on
the prisoner's brow, and the suspension of the mental effort that the
examination cost him was for a moment a relief; the shadowy dusk of the
ill-lighted room was grateful to his eyes, the heavy, regular throbbing
of his head grew less violent. He could even note the incongruity of the
situation when he saw that Willinawaugh resisted upon the point that the
matter was with him a question of character! The chief said he had lost
his standing in public estimation because he had allowed the Englishman,
MacLeod, and his brother, to deceive him on the pretense of being
French,--for although he (Willinawaugh) spoke French himself, and that
better than some people who had lost their front tooth, he could not
understand such French as the two Scotchmen spoke, nor, indeed, as some
Cherokees spoke, with their front tooth out.

Savanukah, seated on the rug an expression of poignant mortification on
his face, his lips fast closed over the missing tooth, only muttered
disconsolately, in his mingled French and Cherokee jargon, "_C'est
dommage! Sac-llé bleu! Noot-te![J] Ugh! en vérité--O-se-u!_"[K]

Willinawaugh, pausing merely for effect, continued. He himself was not
an interpreter, to be sure; he was a Cherokee war-captain, with a great
reputation to sustain. He had captured the prisoner, and it ill accorded
with his honor to yield him to another.

"_Cho-eh!_"[L] said Atta-Kulla-Kulla, softly.

And Stuart became aware, with a start that almost dislocated his
pinioned arms, that it was the transfer of his custody, the purchase of
himself, over which they were bargaining.

"_Nankke--soutare_,"[M] urged Atta-Kulla-Kulla.

Again Willinawaugh shook his head. Was he some slight thing,--_seequa,
cheefto_, an opossum, a rabbit? "_Sinnawah na wora!_"[N] he cried
sonorously. For months, he said, he had besieged that man in his great
stronghold of Fort Loudon. Like a panther he had watched it; like a
spider he had woven his webs about it; like a wolf by night he had
assaulted it; like a hawk he had swooped down upon it and had taken it
for the Cherokee nation; and it was a small matter if he, who spoke
French so well, had not comprehended an Englishman who spoke French
like an unknown tongue, and had let him pass, being deceived!

Would the great chief, whose words in whatever language were of
paramount importance, accept a money price?

As several gold pieces rolled out on the buffalo rug, the wrinkles so
gathered around Willinawaugh's eyes that those crafty orbs seemed
totally eclipsed. He wagged his head to and fro till "him top-feathers"
temporarily obliterated the squad of henchmen behind him, in woe that he
could not take the money, yet not in indecision.

For lo, he said, who had done so much as he, whose prestige had been
touched for a trifle, whose best-beloved brother, Savanukah, had
maligned him--for the sake of an Englishman who could not speak French
so that it could be understood. He had let that Englishman pass--it was
a small matter, and if any had sustained harm it was he himself--for the
English brother in the French squaw's dress had escaped through his
lines, and came near raising the siege, perhaps--because of the French
squaw's dress. But he was not there, and he gave the English boy no
front tooth!

At this reiterated allusion, Savanukah's guttural grunt, _O-se-u!_ was
almost a groan.

"Rifle, six horses, seven pieces of gold in ransom," said
Atta-Kulla-Kulla, slowly massing his wealth.

Once more Willinawaugh shook his head. His prestige had suffered because
of aspersions. Yet he had besieged the fort and reduced the two captains
and their splendid cannon--this for the Cherokee nation! He had followed
hard on the march of the garrison, and with Oconostota and his force had
surrounded them and killed many, and captured the great Captain Stuart
alive!--this for the revenge of the Cherokee nation! But the scalp of
the great Captain Stuart, with its long fair hair, like none others, was
a trophy for himself--this he should wear at his belt as long as he
should live, that when he told how he had wrought for the Cherokee
nation none should say him nay!

Oconostota suddenly showed a freshened interest. He turned to
Atta-Kulla-Kulla, who sat on his right hand, and in an eager, low voice
spoke for a moment; the half-king seeming anxious, doubtful, then nodded
in slow and deliberative acquiescence. Meantime Willinawaugh's words
flowed on.

And--he lifted his fierce eyes in triumph to the captive's face--for all
those weary days of beleaguerment, for every puff of smoke from the
shotted guns, for every blaze they belched, for every ball, death
freighted, they vomited, for every firelock that spoke from the
loop-holes in the midnight attack, would be meted out Captain Stuart's
penalty--in pangs, with knives, with cords, with hot coals, with flames
of fire! The time had come to reward his patience!

"You have done well," said Atta-Kulla-Kulla, "you should think well on
your reward!"

And he laid before Willinawaugh a fine gold watch--an English hunting
watch, with a double case, and the works were running; doubtless, it was
another trophy from the slaughtered officers of Colonel Montgomery's
harassed march. Willinawaugh was stricken dumb.

Stuart, in whose heart poor Hope, all bruised and bleeding, with wings
broken but about to spread anew, astonished, overcome, with some
poignant pang of gratitude that the semblance of kindness should be
again extended to him by aught on earth, felt a stifling suffocation
when Oconostota's voice broke in on his behalf, for naught from the
crafty Cherokee king boded good. The "Great Warrior" declared that
Willinawaugh's deeds spoke for themselves--not in French, not in
English, but in the Cherokee tongue--in flame and in blood, in courage
and in victory. The prisoner's scalp was no great matter in the face of
the fact of Fort Loudon. The long fair hair of the English Captain to
hang at his belt if he liked, but here was Fort Loudon to swing forever
at the silver belt of the Tennessee River! He thought the great
Willinawaugh had a right to choose his reward--the goods or the scalp.
The scalp Atta-Kulla-Kulla could not wear, not having taken it. And the
great Willinawaugh could be present and rejoice when Atta-Kulla-Kulla
should choose to burn the captive; for whom he, himself, and
Atta-Kulla-Kulla had devised a certain opportunity of usefulness to the
Cherokee nation before Stuart should be called upon to expiate his
crimes at the stake to satisfy the vengeance of his conqueror.

And who so glad as Willinawaugh to lose naught of his
satisfaction--neither his material nor immaterial reward? who now so
glad to protest that he would waive any personal gratification that
stood in the way of utility to the Cherokee nation? He had the watch in
his hand, dangling by the gold chain and seals; the ticking caught his
ear. He held it up close, with an expression of childish delight that
metamorphosed his fierce face and seemed actually to freshen the
expression of "him top-feathers."

In obedience to a motion of Atta-Kulla-Kulla's hand, Stuart followed him
out to the parade in the red rays of the sinking sun,--how often thence
had he watched it go down behind the level ramparts of the Cumberland
Mountains! They passed through the staring motley throng to Captain
Demeré's house which the half-king had chosen for his own quarters. It
was a log-cabin, floored, and of two rooms with a roofed but open
passage between, not unlike the cabins of the region of the present
day. Here the Cherokee paused, and with a pass or two of the
scalping-knife cut the ropes that pinioned Stuart, opened the door of
Demeré's bedroom and with an impassive face sternly motioned him to
enter.

The door was closed and Stuart was alone in the quarters reserved for
the chief. It had not yet been invaded by the filthy plundering gangs
without, and its order and military neatness and decorum affected his
quivering nerves as a sort of solace--as of a recurrence of the sane
atmosphere of right reason after a period of turbulent mania. And
suddenly his heart was all pierced by grief and a sense of bereavement.
He had realized his friend was dead, and he felt that this might fairly
be considered the better fate. But somehow the trivial personal
belongings so bespoke the vanished presence that he yearned for Demeré
in his happy release; the shaken nerves could respond to the echo of a
voice forever silenced; he could look into vacancy upon a face he was
destined to see never again. His jaded faculties, instead of reaching
forward to the terrible future, began to turn back vaguely to the
details of their long service together; as a reflex of the agitation he
had endured he could not, in the surcease of turmoil, compass a quiet
mind; he began to experience that poignant anguish of bereavement,
self-reproach. He remembered trifling differences they had had in the
life they lived here like brothers, and his own part in them gnawed in
his consciousness like a grief; he repented him of words long ago
forgiven; he thought of personal vexations that he might have sought to
smooth away but carelessly left in disregard; and when he lay down in
the darkness on the narrow camp-bed with his friend's pillow under his
head, Demeré's look this morning, of affectionate banter, with which he
had turned on the ground as they lay in the bivouac was so present to
his mind that the tears which all his pains and griefs were powerless to
summon, sprang to his eyes.

But the weary physical being sunk to rest, and then in the midst of his
somnolent mental impressions was wrought a change. Demeré was with him
still,--not in the guise of that white, stark face, upturned now to the
stars on the plains of Taliquo,--but in his serene, staid presence as he
lived; together they were at Fort Loudon, consulting, planning, as in
its happier days; now it was the capacity of the spring which they
wished to enlarge, and this they had done with blasting-powder; now it
was the device to add to the comfort of the garrison by framing the
little porches that stood before the doors of the barracks; now it was
the erection of an out-work on the side exposed to assault by the river,
and they were marking off the ravelin,--Corporal O'Flynn and a squad,
with the tapes,--and directing the fashioning of the gabions, the
Indians peacefully sitting by the while like some big, unintelligent,
woodland animals, while the great, basket-like frames were woven of
white oak splints and then filled with the solid earth. He was trying to
tell Demeré that he was afraid something would happen to that second gun
in the barbette battery on the northeast bastion, for the metal always
rang with a queer vibration, and he had had a dream that Oconostota had
overcharged and fired it, and it had exploded; and as Demeré was
laughing at this folly Stuart realized suddenly the fact that the day
was coming in to him again there in his friend's place, as it would come
no more to Demeré, though dawning even now at Taliquo Plains where he
lay. Instead of that essential presence, on which Stuart had leaned and
relied, and which in turn had leaned and relied on him, there was in his
mind but a memory, every day to grow dimmer.

Nevertheless, he rose, refreshed and strengthened with the stimulus of
that unreal association, which was yet so like reality, with the comrade
of his dreams. The orderly instincts of a soldier, as mechanical as the
functions of respiration, enabled him, with the use of fresh linen from
his friend's relinquished effects, to obliterate the traces of the
experiences of the previous day, and fresh and trim, with that precise
military neatness that was so imposing to the poor Indian, who could not
compass its effect, he went out to meet the half-king with a gait
assured and steady, a manner capable and confident, and an air of
executive ability, that bade fair for the success of any scheme to which
he might lend his aid.

Now and again he marked a glance of deep appreciation from the subtle
Atta-Kulla-Kulla,[13] the result of much cogitation and effort at mental
appraisement. He feared that important developments were to ensue, and
after breakfast, at which meal he was treated like a guest and an equal,
and not in the capacity of slave, as were most captives, his host
notified him that his presence would be necessary at a council to be
held at Choté.

Too acute, far too acute was Atta-Kulla-Kulla not to recognize and
comment upon the different aspect of life at Fort Loudon. "The red man
cannot, without use, become capable of handling the advantages of the
white man," he said in excuse of the anarchy everywhere, with all the
riot and grotesqueness and discomfort incident to being out of one's
sphere. At Choté the Cherokees would have seemed as easy, as
appropriate, as graceful, as native as the deer.

And at Choté Oconostota seemed as native as the fox. There he sat on
the great buffalo rugs, even his faculties much more at command in his
wonted place, under the dusky red walls of the clay-daubed dome of the
council-chamber. And there Captain Stuart learned the reason of the
Cherokee king's interference yesterday to postpone his fate.

For Oconostota had evolved the bold project of the reduction of Fort
Prince George. This would consummate the triumph of the fall of Fort
Loudon, rid the greater portion of the Cherokee country of the presence
of the English, and, with their strongholds in the hands of the Indians,
reinforced by a few French gunners, prevent them from ever renewing
foothold. The powder left by Stuart he had found, in experimenting with
the guns, was not enough for a siege, but with the discovery of the ten
extra bags, the supply would prove most ample. The ammunition, together
with the guns, was to be at once removed and transported thither,
laborious though it might prove.

Stuart attempted to set forth the great difficulties of the undertaking,
but was met at every point by the foresight and ingenuity of Oconostota,
who had considered evidently each detail. It was plain that the project
was feasible, for the Indian, too lazy in peace to hoe a row of beans,
is capable in war of prodigies of valorous industry. Stuart began to
feel singularly placed, since he did not perceive in this his personal
concern, to be thus admitted to a council of war with the enemy. The
affability of Oconostota he knew was insincere, but being in the
Cherokee king's power the fraud of his amiability was more acceptable
than the ferocity of his candor.

"You will accompany the expedition," said the king of the Cherokees,
suavely.

"In what capacity?" Stuart asked, also politic, seeking to disguise his
anxiety, for any hesitation or refusal would renew his straits of
yesterday, Atta-Kulla-Kulla being as eager, as capable, and even more
subtle in planning the campaign than Oconostota.

"You will write the letters to the commandant of Fort Prince George,
summoning him in our names to surrender, and"--with a twinkle of the
eye--"advising him in your own name to comply."

Stuart bowed in bland acquiescence. "And the commandant will find it
very easy reading between the lines of any letters I shall write him,"
he said to himself.

Nevertheless, he still sought to dissuade them. In ignorance of the
state of the defenses at Fort Prince George, the strength of the works,
the supply of ammunition and provisions, the difficulties that might
have arisen in communicating with Charlestown, he sought to avert the
dangers of a siege and a possible ultimate disaster such as had
befallen Fort Loudon. But although he spoke with force and readiness it
was very guardedly.

"If the great Cherokee kings would please to consider the experience
which I have had in the management of cannon, I should like to represent
that such an attack on Fort Prince George can but be a duel with
artillery. I am not well acquainted with the armament of Fort Prince
George," he declared, "but it may well chance that the cannon, captured
by the Cherokees at so great a cost, may be disabled under a heavy fire
and lost to Fort Loudon, which would then become mere intrenchments, to
be leveled by a single brisk cannonade."

Atta-Kulla-Kulla, his quick, keen, fiery face aglow, informed him that
they would leave a reserve of cannon at Fort Loudon, his advice having
been to take with them only six of the great guns and two coehorns.

Stuart was baffled for a moment by the definiteness and the military
coherence of these plans. He rallied, however, to say that the gunners
of Fort Prince George were trained men, doubtless, and drilled with
frequent target practice. And a commander of skill, such as theirs, was
essential to the effectiveness of an aggressive demonstration.

A flicker of triumph illuminated Atta-Kulla-Kulla's spirited face. They
were provided in this emergency also. He, the great Captain Stuart,
would command the artillery of the expedition, the guns to be served by
Indians as cannoneers under his direction; nicety of aim was not
essential; a few days' practice would suffice, and at short range Fort
Prince George was a large target.

For his life Stuart could not control his countenance; the color flared
to the roots of his hair; his eyes flashed; his hand trembled; he could
not find his voice; and yet angry as he was, he was both amazed and
daunted.

Oconostota broke in upon his speechless agitation in a smooth, soothing
voice to remind him of the clemency he enjoyed in that his life had been
spared, and only yesterday, even at the supreme moment of the discovery
of the treachery of his garrison in the concealment of the powder. They
had not acquainted Willinawaugh with their designs, for Oconostota
himself would lead the expedition. (Stuart as a military man realized a
necessity, that sometimes supervenes in more sophisticated
organizations, which they felt of curbing the power of a possibly too
successful and a too aspiring subordinate.) How generous,
declared Oconostota, had been the intercession of the noble
Atta-Kulla-Kulla,--half-king of the Cherokees,--who had given in effect
all his wealth to ransom him, a mere _eeankke_, a prisoner, from his
warlike captor, the great Willinawaugh, that this military service
might be rendered in exchange for his life.

Stuart's eyes turned away; he sought to veil their expression; he looked
through the tall narrow door of the red clay walls at the waters of the
Tennessee River, silver-shotted and blue as ever, still flowing down and
down beyond the site of Fort Loudon--unmindful of its tragic fate,
unmindful! The august domes of the Great Smoky Mountains showed now a
dull velvet blue against the hard blue of the turquoise sky, and anon
drew a silver shimmer of mists about them. Chilhowee Mountain, richly
bronze and green, rose in the middle distance, and he was vaguely
reminiscent of the day when he watched the young soldier rocking in his
boat on the shallows close to the shore, the red coat giving a bright
spot of color to the harmonious duller tones of the landscape, and
wondered were it possible among these friendly people that the lad could
be in danger of a stealthy rifle shot. Now there were no red
coats,--nevermore were they to be seen here! Between himself and the
water he watched only the white swaying of a tall cluster of the great
ethereally delicate snowy blossoms, since known as the Chilhowee lily.

He kept his eyes still averted, his voice deepening with the seriousness
of his sentiment as he replied that this was impossible--he could not
undertake the command of the Cherokee artillery against Fort Prince
George; he was bound by his oath of fidelity which he had sworn to the
English government; he could not bear arms against it.

A choking chuckle recalled his gaze to the dusky red interior of the
council-chamber. Oconostota's countenance was distorted with derision,
and his twinkling eyes were swimming in the tears of the infrequent
laughter of the grave Indian--even Atta-Kulla-Kulla's face wore a
protesting smile of scorn as of a folly.

Twice Oconostota sought to speak, and he sputtered, and choked, and
could not, for his relish of the thought in his mind. Then with a deep
mock-seriousness he demanded slowly if it were fireproof. And relapsed
into his shaking chuckle.

"What?" demanded Stuart, uncomprehending.

"This oath of yours--to the English government. Does this fidelity so
clothe your body that it will not burn and crisp and crinkle in the
anguish as of your hell? Does your oath harden your flesh as a rock,
that arrows and knives shall not pierce it and sting and ache as they
stick there waiting for the slow fires to do their work? Will your oath
restore sight to your eyes when a red-hot iron has seared them?" He
could say no more for the chuckling delight that shook and shook his
lean old body.

Atta-Kulla-Kulla spoke in reproach. The Cherokee kings had offered
Captain Stuart life and practically liberty in exchange for this
service. If he denied it and talked of his oath, it was but just that
vengeance should take its way. Many a Cherokee had fallen dead from the
fire of his garrison of Loudon, both of great guns and small, and their
blood called still from the ground. A wise man was Captain Stuart, and
he would choose wisely.

He was a hearty man, still young, and in full vigor, and, although his
life had been but little worth of late, he was loath to throw it away.

He began to temporize, to try to gain time. He sought to talk
discontentedly of the project, as if he found it infeasible. The
commandant, he said, as if he contemplated him only as the leader of an
opposing force, would fight at an infinite advantage within the strong
defenses of Fort Prince George, while he outside, without intrenchments
except such hasty works as could be thrown up in a night, and beaten
down by the enemy's cannonade in the morning, could but expect to have
his guns soon silenced. A regular approach would be impracticable. The
Indians were not used to fight unscreened. They would never open a
parallel under fire, and a vigilant defense would make havoc among the
working parties.

He noted the effect of the unfamiliar military theories upon the
Indians, as they both seemed to anxiously canvass them.

"You cannot skulk behind a tree with cannon," he continued. "The
artillery, to be able to command the fort with its fire, would be within
range of the enemy's batteries, and without efficient cover it would be
necessary, in serving each piece, for the gunners to be exposed to fire
all the time."

An interval of deep, pondering silence ensued. At length
Atta-Kulla-Kulla said he believed there would be little or no fight on
account of the prisoners.

"What prisoners?" demanded Stuart, shortly.

Then Oconostota explained, with his blandest circumlocutions, that,
partly as a check upon his dear brother's good faith, bound as he was by
his oath of fidelity to the English government,--and he almost choked
with the relish of his derision every time he mentioned it,--and to make
sure that he should handle the guns properly, and fire them with due
effect,--not aiming them wildly, so that the balls might fly over the
fort, or fall short, not spiking the guns, or otherwise demolishing
them, all of which his great knowledge of the arm rendered possible, and
the ignorance of the poor red man unpreventable, they had determined to
take with them the remnant of the garrison, their lives to be pledges of
his good conduct and effective marksmanship; and if at last his earnest
and sincere efforts should prove unavailing, and the commandant should
continue to hold out and refuse to surrender when finally summoned,
these, the countrymen and fellow-soldiers of that officer, should be
singly tortured and burned before his eyes, within full sight and
hearing of Fort Prince George.

As the fiendish ingenuity of this scheme was gradually unfolded, Stuart
sat stunned. All the anguish he had suffered seemed naught to this
prospect. He staggered under the weight of responsibility. The lives of
the poor remnant of his garrison,--more, their death by fire and
torture,--hung upon such discretion as he could summon to aid his
exhausted powers in these repeated and tormented ordeals. He said
nothing; he could not see and he did not care for the succession of
chuckles in which Oconostota was resolved at the delightful spectacle of
his dismay. The Cherokee had beaten this man of resource at his little
game of war, and now had outmaneuvered him at his mastercraft of
scheming!

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote J: Tooth!]

[Footnote K: Very excellent.]

[Footnote L: Three.]

[Footnote M: Four--six.]

[Footnote N: The great hawk is at home!]

CHAPTER XIII

Stuart seemed utterly vanquished--his spirit gone. In silence he was
conducted back to his quarters in Demeré's house at Fort Loudon. And as
there he sat in the spare, clean room, in the single chair it contained,
with one elbow on the queer, rough little table, constructed according
to a primitive scheme by the post carpenter, he stared forward blankly
at the inevitable prospect so close before him. He had not now the
solace of solitude in which he might have rallied his faculties. On the
buffalo rug on the floor Atta-Kulla-Kulla reclined and smoked his
long-stemmed pipe and watched him with impenetrable eyes. Once he spoke
to him of the preparations making without, selecting the men for the
gunners of the expedition. Stuart lifted his head abruptly.

"I will not go!" he cried in sudden passion. "So help me, God! I will
die first!--a thousand deaths. So help me, God!" He lifted his clinched
right hand in attestation and shook it wildly in the air.

[Illustration: "He stared forward blankly at the inevitable prospect."]

He had a momentary shame in thus giving way to his surcharged
feelings, but as he rose mechanically from his chair his restless eyes,
glancing excitedly about the room, surprised an expression of sympathy
in the face of the Cherokee as he lay coiled up on the rug.

"Atta-Kulla-Kulla!" Stuart exclaimed impulsively, holding out both arms,
"feel for me! Think of me! The poor remnant of the garrison! My 'young
men'! My own command! I will die first, myself, a thousand deaths!"

Atta-Kulla-Kulla began to argue, speaking partly in Cherokee and now and
again in fragmentary English. Neither the one nor the other might be the
victim. The commandant at Fort Prince George would yield under this
strong coercion.

"Never! Never!" cried Stuart. "His duty is to hold the fort. He will
defend it to the last man and the last round of ammunition and the last
issuance of rations. For his countrymen to be tortured and burned in his
sight and hearing would doubtless give him great pain. But his duty is
to his own command, and he will do it."

Atta-Kulla-Kulla seemed doubtful. "And then," argued Stuart, "would such
torturing and burning of the surrendered garrison of Fort Loudon before
the eyes of the garrison of Fort Prince George be an inducement to them
to surrender too, and perhaps meet the same fate? Be sure they will
sell their lives more dearly! Be sure they will have heard of the
massacre of the soldiers under the Cherokees' pledge of safe-conduct on
the plains of Taliquo."

"_To-e-u-hah!_" Atta-Kulla-Kulla broke out furiously. "_To-e-u-hah!_ It
is most true!"

His countenance had changed to extreme anger. He launched out into a
bitter protest that he had always contemned, and deprecated, and sought
to prevent this continual violation of their plighted word and the
obligations of their treaties on the part of the Cherokee nation. It
invariably hampered their efforts afterward, as it was hampering them
now. It took from their hand the tool of negotiation, the weapon of the
head-men, and left only the tomahawk, the brute force of the tribe.
_Wahkane, wahkane!_ Was it not so when the treaty of Lyttleton was
broken and Montgomery, the Terrible, came in his stead? And when the
Cherokees had driven him out, and had taken their revenge on him for the
blood which had been shed in his first foray, of what avail to massacre
the garrison evacuating Fort Loudon, the possession of which had been
for so long a coveted boon, and thus preclude a peaceful rendering of
Fort Prince George and the expulsion of all English soldiery from
Cherokee soil!

Stuart, cautiously reticent, let him dilate upon all the wrongs wrought
in council by the disregard of his advice, only now and again dropping a
word as fuel to the flame. Cautiously, too, he led to the topic of the
regard and the admiration which the acute mind and the more enlightened
moral sentiment of this chief had excited in the English authorities,
and the service this official esteem would have been to the headstrong
nation if they had availed themselves of it. For was not Montgomery
instructed to offer them terms on _his_ account only? Their cruelty
Atta-Kulla-Kulla was brought to perceive had despoiled them of the
fruits of their victory; they might have, for all their patience and all
their valor, and all their statecraft, only a few more scalps here and
there; for presently the great English nation would be pressing again
from the south, with Fort Prince George as a base, and the war would be
to begin anew.

Deep into the night Atta-Kulla-Kulla dwelt on the treachery toward
him,--for he had known naught of the enterprise of the massacre--that
had so metamorphosed victory into disaster. The moonlight was coming in
at the window, reminding Stuart of that night when he lay at length on
the rug and consulted with Demeré and anxiously foreboded events, the
news of Montgomery's departure from the country having fallen upon them
like a crushing blow. How prescient of disaster they had felt--but how
little they had appraised its force! Paler now was the moon, more
melancholy, desolate to the last degree as it glimmered on the
white-washed walls of the bare, sparely furnished room. His attention
had relaxed with fatigue as he still sat with his elbow on the table,
his head on his hand, vaguely hearing the Indian councillor droning out
his griefs of disregarded statesmanship and of the preferable attitude
of affairs, so rudely, so disastrously altered. Suddenly his tone
changed to a personal note.

"But it was ill with you, starving with your young men, in this
place--long days, heap hungry."

"They seem happy days, now," said Stuart drearily, rousing himself.

"And to-morrow--and yet next day?" asked Atta-Kulla-Kulla.

Stuart stirred uneasily. "I can only die with what grace and courage I
can muster," he said reluctantly. He glanced about him with restless
eyes, like a hunted creature. "I cannot escape."

He looked up in sudden surprise. The Indian was standing now, gazing
down at him with a benignity of expression which warranted the character
of bold and forceful mind, and broad and even humane disposition, which
this Cherokee had won of his enemies in the midst of the bloodshed and
the treachery and the hideous cruelty of the warfare in which he was so
much concerned.

"John Stuart," he said, "have I not called you my friend? Have I not
given all I possess of wealth to save your life? Do I not value it, and
yet it is yours!"

Stuart had forgotten the chief's words that Christmas night at the great
gates, but they came back to him as Atta-Kulla-Kulla repeated them,
anew.

"I know your heart, and I do not always forget! I do not _always_
forget!"

In Stuart's amazement, in the abrupt reaction, he could hardly master
the details of the unfolded plan. The Cherokee declared he had made up
his mind to a stratagem, such as might baffle even the designs of
Oconostota. He doubted his own power to protect his prisoner, should the
king learn that Stuart still refused his services in the expedition to
Fort Prince George. Oconostota's heart was set upon the reduction of
this stronghold, and so was that of all the Cherokee nation. And yet
Atta-Kulla-Kulla could but perceive the flagrant futility of the
expectation of the surrender of the garrison on the coercion that
Oconostota had devised, especially as Fort Prince George was so much
nearer than Fort Loudon to communication with the white settlements. "I
contemplate the fact before it happens, they only afterward," he said.

On the pretext of diverting Stuart's mind after his glut of horrors, and
in affording him this recreation to secure an influence over him,
eminently in character with the wiles of the Cherokee statesman, he gave
out that he intended to take his prisoner with him for a few days on a
hunting expedition. The deer were now in prime condition, and Captain
Stuart was known by the Indians to be specially fond of venison. In the
old days at Fort Loudon they had often taken note of this preference,
and stopped there to leave as a gift a choice haunch, or saddle, or to
crave the privilege of nailing a gigantic pair of antlers to vie with
the others on the walls of the great hall. Stuart himself was a famous
shot, and was often called by them in compliment _A-wah-ta-how-we_, the
"great deer-killer." The project created no surprise, and Stuart saw
with amazement the door of his prison ajar. One might have thought in
such a crisis of deliverance no other consideration could appeal to him.
But his attachment to the British interest seems to have been like the
marrow in his bones. He demanded of Atta-Kulla-Kulla the privilege of
being accompanied by two men of the garrison of his own choice.

The chief cast upon him a look of deep reproach. Did he fear treachery?
Had his friend, his brother, deserved this?

"I ask much of a friend--nothing of an enemy," declared Stuart, bluffly.
"You know my heart--trust me."

Atta-Kulla-Kulla yielded. If he experienced curiosity, the names of the
two men which Stuart gave him afforded no clue as to the reason for
their selection; one was a gun-smith, an armorer of uncommon skill, and
Stuart knew that he was capable of dismounting and removing the cannon,
without injury, through the tangled wilderness to Fort Prince George,
should coercion overcome his resistance to the demands of the savages;
the other, an artillery-man of long experience and much intelligence,
himself adequately fitted to take command of the guns of the expedition,
with a good chance of a successful issue. The massacre had swept away
most of the cannoneers, and Stuart was aware that the infantrymen left
of the garrison would be hardly more capable of dealing with the
problems of gun service than was Oconostota, their careless and casual
observation being worth little more than his earnest, but dense
ignorance. Nevertheless, with his exacting insistence on the extreme
limit of demand, he begged Atta-Kulla-Kulla, whose patience was wearing
dangerously thin, to let him see them, speak to them for one moment.

"You can hear all I say--you who understand the English so well."

As he stepped into the old exhausted store-room, where the soldiers were
herded together, squalid, heart-broken, ill, forlorn, Atta-Kulla-Kulla
outside closing the door fast, a quavering cheer went up to greet
Stuart. For one moment he stood silent while their eyes met--a moment
fraught with feeling too deep for words. Then his voice rang out and he
spoke to the point. He wanted to remind them, he said, how the action of
the garrison had forced the surrender and left the officers no choice,
no discretion; however the event would have fallen out, it would not
have happened thus. "But I did not come here to mock your distress," he
protested. "I wish to urge you to rely upon me now. I have hopes of
securing the ransom of the garrison by the government,"--again a pitiful
cheer,--"and as I may never be allowed to see you again this is my only
chance. _Be sure of this_,--no man need hope for ransom who affords the
Cherokees the slightest assistance in any enterprise against Fort Prince
George, or takes up arms at their command."

He smiled, and waved his hat in courteous farewell, and stepped backward
out of the door, apparently guarded by Atta-Kulla-Kulla, while that
quavering huzza went up anew, the very sound almost breaking down his
self-control.

The next day Stuart, accompanied by Atta-Kulla-Kulla, the warrior's
wife, his brother, the armorer, and the artillery-man,--the
supposititious hunting party,--set gayly and leisurely forth. But once
out of reach of espionage they traveled in a northeastern direction
with the utmost expedition night and day through the trackless
wilderness, guided only by the sun and moon. What terrors of capture,
what hardships of fatigue, what anxious doubt and anguish of hope they
endured, but added wings to the flight of the unhappy fugitives. Nine
days and nights they journeyed thus, hardly relaxing a muscle.

On the tenth day, having gained the frontiers of Virginia, they
fortunately fell in with a party of three hundred men, a part of Bird's
Virginia regiment, thrown out for the relief of any soldiers who might
be escaping in the direction of that province from Fort Loudon, for
through Hamish's dispatches its state of blockade and straits of
starvation had become widely bruited abroad. With the succor thus
afforded and the terror of capture overpast, the four days' further
travel were accomplished in comparative ease, and brought the fugitives
to Colonel Bird's camp, within the boundaries of Virginia.

Here Stuart parted from Atta-Kulla-Kulla, with many a protestation and
many a regret, and many an urgent prayer that the chief would protect
such of the unhappy garrison as were still imprisoned at Fort Loudon
until they could be ransomed, measures for which Stuart intended to set
on foot immediately. So the half-king of the Cherokees went his way back
to his native wilds, loaded by Stuart with presents and commendations,
and in no wise regretting the radical course he had taken.[14] Stuart
had instantly sent off messengers to apprise the commandant of Fort
Prince George of the threatened attack, and to acquaint the governor of
South Carolina with the imminence of its danger and the fall of Fort
Loudon, for Governor Bull had expected Virginia to raise the siege of
Loudon, unaware that that province had dropped all thought of the
attempt, finding its means utterly inadequate to march an army thither
through those vast and tangled wildernesses carrying the necessary
supplies for its own subsistence. Provisions for ten weeks were at once
thrown into Fort Prince George, and a report was industriously
circulated among the Indians that the ground about it on every side had
been craftily mined to prevent approach.[15]

Stuart found that Hamish MacLeod, after performing his mission and
setting out for his return to the beleaguered fort with the responsive
dispatches, had succumbed to the extreme hardship of those continuous
journeys throughout the wild fastnesses, many hundred miles of which
were traversed on foot and at full speed under a blazing summer sun, and
lay ill of brain-fever at one of the frontier settlements. There Stuart
saw him--still so delirious that, although recognizing the officer in
some sort, he talked wildly of pressing dispatches, of the inattention
and callous hearts of officials in high station, of delays and long
waitings for audience in official anterooms, of the prospect of any
expedition of relief for the fort, of Odalie, and red calashes, and
Savanukah, and rifle-shots, and Fifine, and "top-feathers," and
Sandy--Sandy--Sandy; always Sandy!

Later, Stuart was apprised that the boy was on the way to recovery when
he received a coherent letter from Hamish, who had learned that Stuart
was using every endeavor--moving heaven and earth as the phrase went--to
compass the ransom of the survivors of the garrison still at Fort Loudon
or the Indian villages in its neighborhood. Hamish had heard of the fall
of the fort and the massacre of the evacuating force, and still
staggering under the weight of the blow, he reminded Stuart peremptorily
enough of the services which Odalie had rendered in venturing forth from
the walls under the officer's orders, when he dared not seek to induce a
man to volunteer nor constrain one to the duty, and to urge upon his
consideration the fact that she might be justly esteemed to have earned
her ransom and that of her husband and child. Hamish had an immediate
reply by a sure hand.

If it could avail aught to Mrs. MacLeod or any of her household, Stuart
wrote with an uncharacteristic vehemence of protest, every influence he
could exert, every half-penny he possessed, every drop of his blood
would be cheerfully devoted to the service, so highly did he rate the
lofty courage which had given to Fort Loudon its only chance of relief,
and which under happier auspices would undoubtedly have resulted in
raising the siege. Whatever might be forgotten, assuredly it would not
be the intrepid devotion of the "forlorn hope" of Fort Loudon.

Hamish, left to his own not overwise devices, decided to return to the
country where he had quitted all that was dear to him, dangerous though
that return might be. And, indeed, those wild western woods included the
boundaries of all the world to him--elsewhere he felt alone and an
alien. It seemed strange to realize that there were other people, other
interests, other happenings of moment. He long remembered the sensation,
and was wont to tell of it afterward, with which he discovered, camping