Part 10 (2/2)
Odalie sat for aher equanimity after a fashi+on, ”that since I immediately placed the information of this ludicrous _contretemps_ at your disposal, for whatever you may make it worth, I should be promised exemption from the kind of raillery--and jokes--which Captain Stuart--frequent mention of chains, and bond-slave, andand looking at Stuart, wistfully rerin ht
”How _can you_, Mrs MacLeod!” he cried ”Captain 'Quaill have me clapped into irons at the first offence! And this is the vaunted tender-heartedness of woh at her, only becorave to insist that she should not, without notice to hie the fact that she was not French, but of Carolinian birth and parentage, and the further fact--and his serious face relaxed--that she, herself, was the commandant at MacLeod's Station, and that Sandy and Hamish, Fifine and ”Dill,” were the mere minions of her power
She found discretion the better part of valor, and thought it wise to laugh a little at herself and her own pride, although the dimples caht as they rested on the ht be said to flash She diverted with difficulty Hamish's attention from Captain Demere's half-finished map on the table at the other end of the roo the entire interview, and then they took their leave
Little did any of the party realize how important the mistaken impression of the Cherokee woradually away While the snoere still on the ground, and the eastern ainst a pale blue sky, all adown the nearer slopes the dense forests showed a clear garnet hue, that betokened the swelling of congregated hs Even the aspect of e, in the dull soft blue which replaced the hard lapis-lazuli tint that the chill, sharp weather had known For the cold had now a reviviscent tang--not the bleak, benu, icy deadness of the winter's thrall And while the fla of the batten and the creak of the treadle resounded most of the day from the little shed-room where Odalie worked at her loo-wheel enlivened all the fire-lit evenings as she sat in the chiht the reat rushi+ng turbulence, and it lifted a wild, i voice into the prian to pervade the air, and a sweet placidity, as if all nature were in a dream, not dead,--an expectant ain Odalie and Fifine would co sound, as of a terrible potency, and watch wincingly the pervasive flare of the great elastic yellow and ver into the air from the bonfires of the piles of cane as the cleared land was transforhs were running Oh, it was spring in this loveliest of regions, in this clihts! As the silvery syca reaches of the slate-blue river, put forth the first green leaves, of the daintiest vernal hue, Odalie loved to gaze through the its splendid flight above the long, rippling white flashes of the current; or a canoe, as swift, as light, cleave the denser medium of the water; or in the stillness of the noon a deer lead down a fawn to drink She ont to hear the , the wild bee drone, and in the distance thethunder of the herds of buffalo Who so quick to see the moon, this vernal moon,--surely not some old dead world of lost history, and burnt-out hopes, and destroyed utilities, but fair of face, virginal and fresh as the spring itself,--come down the river in the sweet dusk, slowly, softly, pace by pace, ethereally refulgent, throwing sparse shadows of the newly leaved sycahs far up the slope, across the threshold that she loved, with the delicate traceries of this similitude of the roof-tree
”Oh, this is ho her hands, and looking out in a sort of soleht
”Why don't you say that in French, Odalie?” Hamish would mischievously ask For his researches into the h not extensive, had sufficed to acquaint hiue has no equivalent for this word, and to furnish hi with spirit to the occasion, would immediately inquire if he had seen or heard of Savanukah lately, and affect to be ree him to put himself in preparation to be able to stand an exa the reflective verb _S'aht, Hamish, _amuse yourself_ with Savanukah”
”I am not disturbed, now,” Hamish would declare, ”since we have et your friend, Mrs Savanukah, to intercede for ood deal of merriment in the family circle because of her close acquaintance with the Indian women
Their visits annoyed her extremely If she went for an afternoon's talk with Belinda Rush,--the two had beco her scanty store of possessions lest their dainty order be disturbed by the Indian intruders in her absence She dared not quit Fifine, whoh the child's father was inside the stockade, lest she be kidnapped, so covert and sly was their slipping in and out, for somehow they were never discovered at the moment of entrance Nevertheless, she treated her Cherokee callers with such sweet patient courtesy that it is not to be wondered that they caave them trifles that she could spare, and a share of the seeds of vegetables which she had brought with her, and this they received with real and unfeigned gratitude, for the wo the Cherokees and the tillers of the soil
Odalie herself had that strong nerve of syrowths of the earth that ht to her It was not work--it partook of the nature of a pasti her husband's plough she dropped the Indian corn and covered it with her hoe She loved the soft, tender, sprouting blades, as they put strongly forth; she loved hardly less the quickly springing weeds even as she cut them mercilessly aith her hoe She loved the hot sun, and the clear, fresh wind that ca river, and the delicious delicate perfu shadows in the dark reatof a thrush in athered and ca rain, she loved the interval it afforded for the setting of things in order within, and once ated on the buffalo rug in front of the fire, which had dwindled to an eht with them in the small compass of a buffalo horn,--seeds now, the seeds of certain simple flowers, a bulb and a root or two,--the precious roots of an eglantine and a cle frosts was overpast, Odalie and Fifine were grubbing rubbed too The seeds were sown and grew apace; the bulbs and roots throve; the vines began to clas built above the door; and soon when Odalie sat here beside her spinning-wheel, in her white linen dress with its broad collar of her own hand-wrought lace, to enjoy the cool air from the mountains, and the color of the red sunset on the river, she had a canopy of vines above her head, and between her upward glance and the sky, a bloos
Captain Deate of the stockade one afternoon, exclaimed in surprise and pleasure at the prettiness and the completeness of this rude comfort There was but one room in the house with a floor; the seats were only puncheon benches with rough staves for legs thrust through auger-holes and one or two of her befrilled ”tabourets”; the table was of like manufacture; the beds and pilloere reat fir-trees, and supported on the rudest frarance the fir dispensed, the snohite linen the couches displayed, the flutter of the quaint bird-decorated curtains at the s, the array of the few bits of treasured old china, the shelf of precious old books, the cluster of purple and white violets arranged in a great opaline pearly mussel-shell from the river, in default of vase, in the center of the wabbly table, the dainty freshness and neatness of the whole--”This is _homa Man is only the fort-builder--woman is the home-maker!”
”Yes,” said Odalie in content and pride, surveying her treasures, as she conducted him about the place, for he had not been here since the completion of the improvements; ”I often say that this is _home_!”
”But never in French,” put in Hamish at her elbow
Nevertheless, this did not contribute to alter Captain Deh that would imply, with his later conclusions, no place for ho of sweetbrier, which he declared again reht to find it here, and e The moon was up when he stepped into his boat, and the orderly, bending to the oars, shot straight out into the river Long, burnished white lines lay upon its glea back De bank the cleared space, where the moonbeah its open gate the log-cabin with its pri and beautiful, she sat in her white dress in the bright light beside the silent little flax-wheel
Home undoubtedly! As the boat headed up the river he lookedin the rance of the eglantine, re and frail as the transitory flower
For the news that came in these days from over the mountains was always heavy news,--rule individual in soain of settlers surprised and overcome by numbers within the defenses of their own stanch stockade
All along the frontier the spirit seemed to extend, first toward the north and then southward, and it was apparently only a question of time when the quiet and peace that encircled Fort Loudon should be summarily broken Many of the pioneers, could they now have returned to Virginia or the Carolinas without danger, would have forever relinquished their new ho journey without delay But the Cherokees about them, personally known to thehterbands, glutted with blood yet thirsting still for vengeance In one of Demere's reports about this tireat harain he and Captain Stuart, accompanied only by an orderly to mark their sense of confidence, went to Chote to confer in a friendly ith the king and half-king, and seek to induce them to take some order with these depredators, and restore the peace of the border
The great council-house at Chote was a curious circular structure, forether in a doht of twenty feet, with a diameter of thirty feet at the base; the whole was covered over with a thick coating within and without of the deeply and richly tinted red clay of that region, and pierced by noor chimney or other outlet than the tall and narrow doorway The last tis in the _Ottare_ district, as the nated as the _Ayrate_ settlenified the lower country,--they were received here, and Stuart, from the moment of their entrance, knew that their mission was hopeless
They had recently been ordered to demand the surrender to the been concerned in the distant border murders, and who lived in the towns of Citico and Tellico hard by, close at hand to both Chote and Fort Loudon They realized that this s, whose authority could not compass the surrender of their tribesibbet, after the expiatory lish, and who foresaw that such compliance would but provoke reprisal on the paleface and further outbreaks
Sitting s, a number of which were spread over the floor of the room, on which the two officers were also invited to be seated, the Indians advanced none of the equivocal statements and doubtful promises and fallacious expectations of peace as heretofore, but kept their eyes fixed upon the ground, while the officers once more expressed their earnest re their orders, although this extreme and impolitic measure was secretly deprecated by both
The ”talk” was conducted by means of the services of an interpreter, an Indian, who stood behind the great chiefs and recited, now in Cherokee and now in English, and alith a wooden, expressionless accent, as if he were a talking machine and understood not a word for which he furnished the equivalent, in deference to the great conificance of the ideas they interchanged He kept his eyes fixed upon the blank wall opposite, and effaced his individuality as far as possible But after the first sentences of , the wooden clapper of the interpreter's tongue vibrated back and forth with Cherokee only, for the Indian chiefs said nothing to be rendered into English Silent and stony they sat, looking neither to the right nor left, unency, stolid to reested that Governor Lyttleton of South Carolina, or General Amherst the new ”head-man,” as now commander-in-chief of the army, would soon take fierce measures to retaliate these enormities, there was a momentary twinkle in the crafty eyes of Oconostota, and he spoke briefly The interpreter woodenly repeated:--
”I can well believe you, for after an English treaty we have fraud and then force and at last bloodshed”