Part 16 (1/2)
This plain disclosure staggered MacLeod He had thought the place a doubt of the officers' capacity to e 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 aress, manipulated by people not so experienced as we, to save theht be traded to the Cherokees for a proht 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 ht 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 fro 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 exclai 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 fro 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 eeping, and when she heard the great guns of the fort begin to send forth their thunder, and the heavy shot crashi+ng ahs 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 onceof a prayer
Yet at this saown and red calash, was seen, cal 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,--soance for the wife of so poor aof less ornamental clay She hesitated at the door of the block-house, with a little air of diffidence, asin upon the time of men presumed to be officially busy The door opened, and with a bow of nity and deprecation she entered, and as the door closed, Hamish dropped the imitation of her ush of boyish laughter, holding out both ar! To see the fellows salaaround as I ca to my frock, Captain Deht
Odalie fixed it herself”
”Don't scuffle up these frills so,” Captain Demere objected ”Mrs
MacLeod is wont to wear her frock precisely”
”Did O'Flynnthe situation despite his anxiety
”I wish you could have seen the way he dren that red Irish enteel and pious!”
”I think it passes,” said De a little
”It passes!” cried Stuart, triuht of Odalie and Haht 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 Haularity The cape of the calash, too, was thrown around the throat and about the chin and mouth, and as she ont 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 Haed 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 al steps, and the dashi+ng swing of his habitual gait, he was leaning on Sandy's arracefulsentry, Daniel Eske,--no one else was peruard in this block-house tower,--noted this, with the usual h 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 see, so near sunset, and the odd circu 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 hiirl 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 s curve too swift to folloith 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 wonify
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 unners had been ordered to cease firing, and the usual couns, and replacing all the appliances of their service, was interrupted now and again by the h the embrasure for Mrs MacLeod's return They presently called up an inquiry to the sentinel in the tower, presu 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 fivejust entered ”Captain Stuart told ate 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, ainst his will the young sentinel leaned out of the ith a made-to-order smile, and as Choo-qualee-qualoo waved her hand and pointed to the e which Odalie ont to coed to return to the fort and was noithin, and he pointed down to the gorge of the bastion To-morrohen there should be an eastern sky she would coned that she would ain on her own account, and he dutifully flourished his hat
”Gosh,” he exclaiizzard like this pretense there is no use in cord or shot,--the fellow does for hiht slipped down at last and put an end to the long-range flirtation, for however alert an interest he ht have developed, were it voluntary, its utility as a military maneuver blunted its zest Choo-qualee-qualoo had sped away to her holimmers reflected in the ripples of the current The head- 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 frohborhood, looking at the lights of the fort, hearing often hilarious voices full of the triuround the spent balls of the cannonade
It had so cleared the nearer spaces that it had enabled Haain the little thicket where Choo-qualee-qualoo and Odalie ont to conclude their talks Close by was the e 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 Haed at the further end five arb, 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 ruht 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, trah, bursting froed heart; then he ay 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 hiht wastih so qualities you desired in an express,” he said to Stuart ”He will come back to his brother's family as certainly as athem he leaves no duty to devolve on others”
”Moreover,” said Stuart, ”we have the satisfaction of knowing that he safely reached the e without detection
He could not have found the place in a dark night In the ht 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 ht, 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”