Part 19 (1/2)
The Cherokees could hardly restrain their joy in thus taking hih did they esteereat stronghold of Fort Loudon, with his red-coated soldiers about hi his casual presence, that it afforded the e, the most acute realization of triumph, to contemplate him as he stood bound, bloody, bareheaded in the sun, while the very ather round hi 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 groas 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 coainst hiratified by these ave 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 circuh, as fain to interfere Stuart, regretting the intervention, realized that he was reserved to make sport for their betters in the fiercer and onies of the torture and the stake
His fortitude ht well have tempted them In a sort of stoical pride he would not wince Never did he cry out He hardly staggered beneath the crushi+ng blows of the muskets, delivered short hand and at close quarters, that one ht would have fractured his skull
That the interposition of Willinawaugh was not of the dictates of cleht 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 ti ust 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 unaccustoested the possibility of sunstroke to offer a prospect of release
But he caates of Fort Loudon with no rief 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 ont to be so carefully swept, with various litter fro to the lie had been left This was still in progress, as h the open doors and now again on the galleries, chaffering and bargaining over soe 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 debris and, thus da 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 roaround, sleeping in the shade In the block-houses and towers and along the parade, where other braves shouldered the firelocks, the surrendered spare ar the drill of the soldiers with derisive cries of ”Plesent _Ahms_!” ”Shouldie _Fa'lock_!” ”Ground _Fa'lock_!” only such injury as bootless folly ht compass was to be deplored, but upon the terrepleine in the northeast bastion several Cherokees orking at one of the great cannons, ae than Oconostota hi to unner's i professional consciousness wondered with that contenorance characteristic of the expert ise 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-ailds, for which the Indians were always noted The ball, skipping languidly out, had dropped down the eround with hardly more force than if impelled down an alley by a passable player at bowls, barely reaching the glacis before coun under the king's directions was shotted anew; erring now in the opposite extreed so heavily that, perhaps froe 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 rahed aloud in bitter mirth to see Oconostota almost stunned alike by the surprise and the force of the concussion, ti the wreck Then, with a subdued air of renunciation and finality, ”Old Hop,” as the soldiers called hi carefully down the steep rahtened as to the dangers lurking about the breech of the cannon, well as he had long been acquainted with the es bore some similarity to the ricochet forces of the misdirected cannon-ball
Stuart plainly perceived hi ht be suspected of taking secret and extreht It was for a moment a reversal of the red man's supremacy in the arts of war, that had been dee, the acquisition of the ordnance, the surprise and the arrison In the stress of the noisywoned ho Oconostota hiathered around hi could have beeneyes; no words could have shown a keener edge of sarcas of the officer once more by the title of his dear brother
Stuart, irimly silent, eyed him with a sort of stoical defiance that struck the Indian's mummery dumb There was a or, his fortitude, his rank, the consciousness how his proud spirit raged in his defeat and despair, all co and a keen extension of the pleasures of witnessing his torture
And at that instant of crisis, as if to seal his doouttural clamor arose about the southeast bastion, and here was Willinawaugh, ild turbulent gesticulations, and starting glea toing out of the pit beneath the old ss 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 hiather the drift of the excited talk One of the Indians, with the keen natural senses of the savage, had smelled the freshly turned clay--_sated in the parade!--and had sought to discover what this ht 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 solearrison 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' solereement 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 thethe tribesreat mess-hall, where the door was closed and barred in their distorted faces as they folloith 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 e 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 hi him alive in his own chimney-place, admirably adapted for the purpose Oconostota sat noith his back to it, with all his council of chiefs in a se on the broad hearth The Indian interpreter Quoo-ran-be-qua, the great Oak, stood behind hith of the roo, 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 hadof 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 theuns, 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 hurounded the blood shed this day upon the plains of Taliquo ht 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 shohat 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 as this? Stuart's knowledge of the Cherokee language enabled him to discern the fact that after aout a coherent statement to the effect that the concealht unknown to Stuart during his absence on his reat 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 coe, e so enforced adard 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 e 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 ment on the disposal of a huain 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 conceal at Willinawaugh, who gazed ated around his eyes, eager to acquire yet loath to trade, while Atta-Kulla-Kulla, keen, astute, subtle, plied hi modifications of offers, for the Cherokees of that date were discri 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 hihted roo 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 ith him a question of character! The chief said he had lost his standing in public estilishman, MacLeod, and his brother, to deceive hih 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 led French and Cherokee jargon, ”_C'est doh! en verite--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 hi
”_Nankke--soutare_,”[M] urged Atta-Kulla-Kulla
Again Willinawaugh shook his head Was he so,--_seequa, cheefto_, an opossum, a rabbit? ”_Sinnawah na wora!_”[N] he cried sonorously For hold 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 coue, and had let hireat chief, whose words in whatever language were of paraold pieces rolled out on the buffalo rug, the wrinkles so gathered around Willinawaugh's eyes that those crafty orbs seeed 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 e had been touched for a trifle, whose best-beloved brother, Savanukah, had lishman 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 harlish brother in the French squaw's dress had escaped through his lines, and cae, 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 alold in ranso his wealth
Once e 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 arrison, and with Oconostota and his force had surrounded thereat 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 hi as he should live, that when he told how he had wrought for the Cherokee nation none should say him nay!