Part 2 (2/2)
Willinawaugh's mutter of dissatisfaction showed that he esteeh store on Josephine
Now and again he eyed the cat, too, malevolently, as if he could ill brook her mannerisms and pampered mien Hamish had an uncomfortable idea that the Cherokee was not familiar with animals of this kind, and that he harbored a wonder if Kitty would not serve her best and noblest possibilities in a savory stew But for himself Hamish avoided the Indian's eyes with their curious painted circles of black and white, as h's facial contortion to deride the ”fonny” disposition he deemed a part of Hamish's supposed French nature so daunted the boy that he bent his head as well as his muscles to the work
That day was like a drearuity of heror waking
One moment it seemed to her that she was in Carolina, in the new fra on the arainst the white locks and the snowy cap, while she babbled, in the sweet household patois of French children that has no lexicon, and no rules, and is handed down froirlish hopes, and plans, and anxieties, to find the grandmother's fine, old, deft hand smooth all the difficulties away and make life easy, and hope possible, and trouble aperspective of the colonial garden, where the jas to the tall trellises, and the clove gillyflower, and the lilies and roses grew in the borders in the broad suffusions of the sunshi+ne, was metamorphosed to the wide spread of the Tennessee River, with the noon-day blaze on its burnished expanse of ripples; and grand' and consolation, and found her own corave And ere Odalie could suffer rave, her head drooped once more--she was asleep
No; she ake, awake and splendid in a white dress, her beautiful bridal dress in which she had looked a very queen, with her grand'maman's pearl necklace, itself an heirloo at the altar of the little church with Alexander, and ht about her, and a white dress, oh, very white--and suddenly! all the church is stricken to darkness No; there is light again!
It was a flash from a thunder cloud, reflected in sinister, forked lines in the Tennessee River, so that they see, until it vanished into the darkness of a lowering black sky, that overhung the water and h here and there still a red tree blazed The world was drearier for these grim portents of storm, for all the way hitherto fair weather had sress Still she could not heed--she did not care even when the rain came down and pitilessly beat upon her white face; she did not knohen Fifine crept under the shahich Hairl held to her tight with both arms around her waist, while the pioneer cat very discreetly nestled down in the basket on Josephine's back She was not roused even by loud voices when later a pettiaugre, a ht or ten warriors and reh for several miles
Poor Hamish could hardly sustain hiht, on the verge of death fros His brother had been left in these oods with a party of savages, ere as likely to murder him for a whim or for the treasures of the bales which the packhorses carried, as to respect the safe conduct of Willinawaugh and the supposed character of French traders This, Hamish are, hardly sufficed now, so unrestrained was the ferocity of the glances cast upon thelare of a savage catamount, ready to leap upon its prey and yet with a joyance in its ferocity, as if this rage were not the pain of anger but the pleasure of it
What subtle influence roused Odalie at last she could hardly have said; perhaps the irresistible torpor of exhaustion had in soone, unseasonable and transient, and only a broken re about the western mountains Toward the east the sky was clear and a dull fluctuation of sunset, alternating with shadoas on the landscape As a sudden suffusion of this broad, low, dusky glare lay upon the scene for a ainst the dark blue Chilhowee Mountain in the , and as she strained her eyes it suddenly floated broadly forth to the breeze,--the blended cross of St George and St Andrew blazoned on the British flag
In one ain; alert, watchful, brave, despite that boat close alongside and the alternate questions and remonstrances of the fierce and cruel Indians One of thee features, was contending that Willinawaugh was deceived; that these were no French people; that the cast of the face of the ”young dog” was English; he looked like the Virginia settlers and hunters; even like themuch to consider the plea that the other Indians preferred He only argued astutely that they all spoke French aratitude when he had prolish fort and risk the chance of detection He intended to slip them up the Tellico River where it flows into the Tennessee a mile on the hither side of the fort and thence make their way to a remoter Indian town than Chote
The skeptical Cherokee, Savanukah, immediately asserted boastfully that he spoke ”Flinch” himself and would test the nationality of the boy
Haes and had sturdily resisted those that Odalie would have given hi lines of French verbs in the little dog's-eared green book that all her prettiest sisterly arts could never induce hi appliance than he already possessed, he used to argue He could tell all he knew, and lish vocabulary at his command
”Parlez vous? Parlez, fou!” he ont to exclai very clever
How should he have dreamed that Odalie's little _Vocabulaire Francais_ would be more efficacious to save his life than his rifle and his deadly aim?
[Illustration: ”The canoe rocked in the swirls”]
He looked toward her oncea series of obstructions for debris of a recent storm,--many branches of trees, here and there a bole itself, uprooted and flung into the river by the violence of the te and watching the current to take theh safely It threw the two boats apart for a space, prolonging Ha as a reprieve to the ordeal of his exae by the erudite Cherokee The canoe rocked in the swirls, and although Willinawaugh sat still in stately iunwale Haht, as if fired with sohtful anticipation, and yet weary and feverishly eager Oh, this was deliriuence was gone! His poor young heart swelled nearly to bursting as he turned back with aching ar, feverish pulses to the careful balancing of the paddle, for Willinawaugh was an exacting coxswain Hamish could not knohat vision had been vouchsafed to Odalie in the looled and he had hung absorbed upon their words as on the decrees of fate Even she at first had deement of some fever of the brain--this had been a day of dreams! Yet there it had stood on the river bank with the prist the clouds above it, with the sunset below it, reflected in the current of the river, full of sheen and full of shadow,--a figure, a hunter, looking out at the boats; a white man,--a man she had never before seen
How he stared! She dared nal of distress She only turned her head that she
The next moment she saw hiallop off at a breakneck speed
But was she sure--had she seen aught, she asked herself, tremulously
For it had been a day of dreams--it had been a day of dreams! And the confluence of the Tellico River with the Tennessee ress of both boats was very slo, upstreaainst the current and the debris of the storor to ain When this was reached they rested re and the feather headdress of the Cherokees as clearly pictured in the bright, still reaches of the river as above in the medium of the air between sunset and dusk
They were all looking back, all coress He had the current and his exhaustion both against him, and the most earnest and well-equipped postulant of culture would hardly be eager to go to an exae when his life was to be the forfeit of failure The sound of the river was loud on the evening air; a as astir on either bank,--a pillaging force, rifling the forest of the few leaves itcloud of therown chill; the boy felt its dank depression in every nerve despite the drops of perspiration that stood upon his brow as he too paddled into the clear water He held the boat stationary by a great effort
He had come to the end He could strive notoward hie turned his head There was an alien sound upon the air, so close at hand that despite the fret and turmoil of the water, the blare of the ind, the tuhs in the black forest, it arrested the attention Once ainst the tuht that the canoe had broken loose froular rhythmical dash of oars
CHAPTER III
In the next instant from beyond a curve in the river a boat shot into the current,--a large row-boat,to the oars, whose steady strokes sent the craft down the stream with the speed, it seemed, of a meteor