Chapter 10

He had instantly bethought himself of his comrades and an appeal for rescue, and sent forth a wild, hoarse yell, which, had it been heard, must have apprised them of his plight. But as he had not at once given the signal of danger agreed upon, they had naturally supposed the coast clear, and while he rested presumably at the top of the precipice they gave their attention to other details of their mission, firing several houses at a little distance down the river. Therefore they would have heard naught, even if Attusah had not precluded further efforts of his captive to communicate with his comrades by swiftly fashioning a gag out of the Highlander's bonnet and gloves.

Perhaps never was a brave man more dismayed and daunted. Not death alone, but fire and torture menaced him. The shining liquid delight in the eyes of the women reminded him of the strange fact that they were ever the most forward in these cruel pleasures, for the ingenuity of which the Cherokees were famous among all the tribes. Yet the realization of his peril did not so diminish his scope of feeling as to prevent him from inwardly upbraiding his ill-starred generosity as the folly of a hopeless fool, more especially as the elder woman--she of the many tears--held up the substantial gift of provisions, jeering at him with a look in her face that did not need to be supplemented by the scoffing of language.

"The auld randy besom!" the soldier commented within himself. "But eh, I didna gie it to be thankit,--nae sic a fule as that comes to, neither!"

Hoping against hope, he thought that the length of his absence would inevitably alarm the ensign for his scout's safety, when it should attract attention, and induce the officer to send a party for his relief and for further investigation of the precipice, whence the smoke intimated an ambush of the enemy. This expectation had no sooner suggested its solace and the exercise of patience in the certainty of ultimate rescue, than the Highlander began to mark the preparations among the Indians for a swift departure. But how? The precipice was a sheer descent for eighty feet, the ruggedness of its face barely affording foothold for a bird or a mountaineer; and at its base hovered the ensign's party within striking distance. A resisting captive could not be withdrawn by this perilous path. The soldier looked in doubt and suspense about the restricted limits of the cavity in the great crag. The mystery was soon solved.

The position of all had changed in the struggle, and from where Kenneth MacVintie now stood he noted a scant suggestion of light flickering down from a black fissure in the roof of the cavity, and instantly realized that it must give an exit upon the mountain slope beyond. The agility with which Attusah of Kanootare sprang up and leaped into it was admirable to behold, but MacVintie did not believe that, although knotted up as he was in his own plaid passed under his arms and around his waist for the purpose, he could be lifted by the ends of the fabric through that aperture by the strength of any one man. Naturally he himself would make no effort to facilitate the enterprise. On the contrary, such inertness as the sheer exercise of will could compass was added to his dead weight. Nevertheless he rose slowly, slowly through the air. As he was finally dragged through the rift in the rocks, his first feeling was one of gratification to perceive that no one man could so handle him. The feat had required the utmost exertions of two athletic Indians pulling strenuously at the ends of the plaid passed over a projection of rock, thus acting pulley-wise, and the good Glasgow weave was shedding its frayed fragments through all the place by reason of the strain it had sustained.

The next moment more serious considerations claimed his thoughts. He saw that two men, fully armed, for Digatiski had secured ammunition for his own gun from the cartouch-box of the soldier, could force his withdrawal, bound as he was, farther and farther from the ensign and his party, whose attention had been temporarily diverted from the scout's delay in returning by signs of the enemy ambushed in another direction.

MacVintie still struggled, albeit he knew that it was vain to resist, more especially when another Cherokee joined the party and dedicated himself solely to the enterprise of pushing and haling the captive over the rugged way,--often at as fair a speed as if his good will had been enlisted in the endeavor. Now and again, however, the Highlander contrived to throw himself prone upon the ground, thus effectually hampering their progress and requiring the utmost exertions of all three to lift his great frame. The patience of the Indians seemed illimitable; again and again they performed this feat, only to renew it at the distance of a few hundred yards.

At length the fact was divined by MacVintie. More than the ordinary fear of capture animated Attusah of Kanootare. Colonel Grant's treatment of his prisoners was humane as the laws of war require. Moreover, his authority, heavily reinforced by threats of pains and penalties, had sufficed, except in a few instances, to restrain the Chickasaw allies of the British from wreaking their vengeance on the captive Cherokees in the usual tribal method of fire and torture. The inference was obvious. Attusah of Kanootare was particularly obnoxious to the British government, the civil as well as the military authorities, and fleeing from death himself, he intended at all hazards to prevent the escape of his prisoner, who would give the alarm, and inaugurate pursuit from the party of the ensign.

In this connection a new development attracted the attention of MacVintie. As they advanced deeper and deeper into the Cherokee country and the signs and sights of war grew remote,--no sounds of volleys nor even distant dropping shots clanging from the echoes, no wreaths of smoke floating among the hills, no flare of flames flinging crude red and yellow streaks across the luminous velvet azure of distant mountains with their silver haze, viewed through vistas of craggy chasms near at hand,--he observed a lessening of cordiality in the manner of the other two Indians toward the Northward Warrior, and a frequency on his part to protest that he was a great ada-wehi, and was dead although he appeared alive. The truth soon dawned upon the shrewd Scotchman, albeit he understood only so much Cherokee as he had chanced to catch up in his previous campaign in this region with Montgomerie and the present expedition. Attusah was for some reason obnoxious to his own people as well as to the British, and was in effect a fugitive from both factions. Indeed, the other two Indians presently manifested a disposition to avoid him. After much wrangling and obvious discontent and smouldering suspicion, one lagged systematically, and, the pace being speedy, contrived to fairly quit the party. Digatiski accompanied them two more days, then, openly avowing his intent, fell away from the line of march. It was instantly diverted toward the Little Tennessee River, on the western side of the Great Smoky Mountains; and as Attusah realized that without his connivance his captive's escape had become impossible, MacVintie found himself unbound, ungagged, and the society of the ada-wehi as pleasant as that of a savage ghost can well be.

There was now no effort to escape. MacVintie's obvious policy was to await with what patience he might the appearance of the British vanguard, who in the sheer vaunt of victory would march from one end of the unresisting territory to the other, that all might witness and bow before the triumph of the royal authority. As yet remote from the advance of the troops, he dared not quit his captor in these sequestered regions lest he fall into the power of more inimical Cherokees, maddened by disaster, overwhelmed in ruin, furious, and thirsting for revenge for the slaughter of their nearest and dearest, and the ashes of their homes.

Attusah made known his reason for his own uncharacteristic leniency to a soldier of this ruthless army, as they sat together by the shady river-side. He went through the dumb show of repeatedly offering to his captive guest the fish they had caught, pressing additional portions upon him, laughing significantly and joyously throughout his mimicry. Then suddenly grave, he seized the Highlander's left arm, giving it an earnest grasp about the wrist, the elbow, then close to the shoulder to intimate that he spared him for his gift to the needy and helpless.

But Kenneth MacVintie, remembering his ill-starred generosity, flushed to the eyebrows, so little it became his record as a soldier, he thought, that he should be captured and stand in danger of his life by reason of the unmilitary performance of feeding a babbling pappoose.

Attusah, however, could but love him for it; he loved the soldier for his kind heart, he said. For great as he himself was, the Northward Warrior, he had known how bitter it was to lack kindness.

"It is not happy to be an ada-wehi!" he confessed, "for those who believe fear those who do not!"

And tearing open the throat of his bead-embroidered shirt to reveal the frightful gashes of the wounds in his breast, he told the story of his legal death, with tears in his gay eyes, and a tremor of grief in the proud intonations of his voice, that thus had been requited a feat, the just guerdon of which should have been the warrior's crown,--in the bestowal of which, but for a cowardly fear of the English, all the tribe would have concurred.

"_Akee-o-hoosa!_" (I am dead!) he said, pointing at the scars. And the Highlander felt that death had obviously been in every stroke, and hardly wondered that they who had seen the blows dealt should now account the appearance of the man a spectral manifestation, his unquiet ghost.

Then, Attusah's mood changing suddenly, "_Tsida-wei-yu!_" (I am a great ada-wehi!) he boasted airily.

That he was truly possessed of magical powers seemed to MacVintie least to be questioned when he angled, catching the great catfish, after the manner of the Indians, with the open palm of his hand. In these fresh June mornings he would dive down in some deep shady pool under the dark ledges of rock where the catfish are wont to lurk, his right arm wrapped to the fingers with a scarlet cloth. Tempted by the seeming bait, the catfish would take the finger-tips deep in its gullet, the strong hand would instantly clinch on its head, and Attusah would rise with his struggling gleaming prey, to be broiled on the coals for breakfast.

But for these finny trophies they too might have suffered for food, in the scarcity of game and the lack of powder; but thus well fed, the two enemies, like comrades, would loiter beside their camp-fire on the banks, awaiting as it were the course of events. The dark green crystalline lustre of the shady reaches of the river, where the gigantic trees hung over the current, contrasted with the silver glister of the ripples far out, shimmering in the full glare of the sun. The breeze, exquisitely fragrant, would blow fresh and free from the dense forests. The mockingbird, a feathered miracle to the Highlander, would sway on a twig above them and sing jubilantly the whole day through and deep into the night. The distant mountains would show-softly blue on the horizon till the sun was going down, when they would assume a translucent jewel-like lustre, amethystine and splendid. And at night all the stars were in the dark sky, for the moon was new.

So idle they were they must needs talk and talk. But this was an exercise requiring some skill and patience on the part of each, for the Scotchman could only by the closest attention gather the meaning of the Cherokee language as it was spoken, and the magic of the ada-wehi compassed but scanty English. Attusah was further hampered by the necessity of pausing now and then to spit out the words of the tongue he abhorred as if of an evil taste. Nevertheless it was by means of this imperfect linguistic communication that Kenneth MacVintie, keenly alive to aught of significance in this strange new world, surrounded with unknown unmeasured dangers, was enabled to note how the thoughts of his companion ran upon the half king Atta-Kulla-Kulla. Yet whenever a question was asked or curiosity suggested, the wary Attusah diverted the topic. This fact focused the observation of the shrewd, pertinacious Scotchman. At first he deemed the special interest lay in a jealousy of artistic handicraft.

Atta-Kulla-Kulla's name implied the superlative of a skillful carver in wood, Attusah told him one day.

"An' isna he a skilly man?" MacVintie asked.

"Look at that!" cried the braggart, holding aloft his own work. He was carving a pipe from the soft stone of the region, which so lends itself to the purpose, hardening when heated. "_Tsida-wei-yu!_"

There was a long pause while the mockingbird sang with an exuberant magic which might baffle the emulation of any ada-wehi of them all. MacVintie had almost forgotten the episode when Attusah said suddenly that the colonists translated the name of Atta-Kulla-Kulla as the "Little Carpenter."

"Hegh! they hae a ship named for his honor!" exclaimed the Highlander. "I hae seen the Little Carpenter in the harbor in Charlestoun, swingin' an' bobbin' at her cables, just out frae the mither country! Her captain's name wull be Maitland."

This evidence of the importance of the Cherokee magnate in the opinion of the British colonists did not please the ada-wehi. He spat upon the ship with ostentatious contempt as it were, and then went on silently with his carving.

The mockingbird paused to listen to a note from the hermit thrush in the dense rhododendron, still splendidly abloom on the mountain slope. The Scotchman's eyes narrowed to distinguish if the white flake of light in the deep green water across a little bay were the reflection of the flower known as the Chilhowee lily, or the ethereal blossom itself.

Attusah's mind seemed yet with the seagoing craft. He himself knew the name of another ship, he said presently; and the Highlander fancied that he ill liked to be outdone in knowledge of the outer world.

But it was immediately developed that in this ship Atta-Kulla-Kulla had sailed to England many years before to visit King George II. in London.[8] Attusah could not at once anglicize the name "Chochoola," but after so long a time MacVintie was enabled to identify the Fox, then a noted British man-of-war.

In these leisurely beguilements the days passed, until one morning Attusah's fears and presentiments were realized in their seizure by a party of Cherokees, who swooped down upon their hermitage and bore them off by force to the council-house of the town of Citico, where Atta-Kulla-Kulla and a number of other head men had assembled to discuss the critical affairs of the tribe, and decide on its future policy.

So critical indeed was the situation that it seemed to MacVintie that they might well dispense with notice of two factors so inconsiderable in the scale of national importance as the ada-wehi and his captive. But one was a British prisoner, calculated to expiate in a degree with his life the woe and ruin his comrades had wrought. The more essential was this course since the triumph of putting him to the torture and death would gratify and reanimate many whose zeal was flagging under an accumulation of anguish and helpless defeat, and stimulate them to renewed exertions. For before the Cherokees would sue for peace they waited long in the hope that the French would yet be enabled to convey to them a sufficient supply of powder to renew and prosecute the war.

As to the arrest of the other, Attusah of Kanootare, this was necessary in the event that submission to the British government became inevitable. For since he claimed to be a ghost, surely never was spectre so reckless. He had indeed appeared to so many favored individuals that the English might fairly have cause to doubt his execution in satisfaction of his crimes against the government; and the breach of faith on the part of the Cherokee rulers in this conspicuous instance might well preclude the granting of any reasonable terms of peace now, and subject the whole nation to added hardship.

This was the argument advanced by Atta-Kulla-Kulla as he stood and addressed his colleagues, who sat on buffalo-skins in a circle on the floor of the council-house of Citico,--the usual dome-shaped edifice, daubed within and without with the rich red clay of the country, and situated on a high artificial mound in the centre of the town.

The council-fire alone gave light, flashing upon the slender figure and animated face of this chief, who, although of slighter physique and lower stature than his compeers, wielded by reason of his more intellectual qualities so potent an influence among them.

The oratorical gifts of Atta-Kulla-Kulla had signally impressed Europeans of culture and experience.[9] Imagine, then, the effect on the raw young Highland soldier, hearing the flow of language, watching the appropriate and forceful gestures, noting the responsive sentiment in the fire-lit countenances of the circle of feather-crested Indians, yet comprehending little save that it was a masterpiece of cogent reasoning, richly eloquent, and that every word was as a fagot to the flames and a pang to the torture.

Attusah of Kanootare, the Northward Warrior, rose to reply in defense of himself and his captive, and Atta-Kulla-Kulla listened as courteously as the rest, although the speech of the ada-wehi depended, like the oratory of many young men, chiefly on a magical assurance. He had an ally, however, in the dominant superstition of the Cherokees. Numbers of the warriors now ascribed their recent disasters to the neglect of various omens, or the omission of certain propitiatory observances of their ancient religion, or the perpetration of deeds known to be adversely regarded by the ruling spirits of war.

Moreover, they were all aware that this man had been killed, left for dead, reported as dead to the British government, which accepted the satisfaction thus offered for his crimes,--the deeds themselves, however, accounted by him and the rest of the tribe praiseworthy and the achievements of war.

And here he was protesting that he was dead and a ghost. "_Akee-o-hoosa! Akee-o-hoosa! Tsida-wei-yu!_" he cried continually.

Indeed, this seemed to be the only reasonable method of accounting for the renewed presence in the world of a man known to be dead. This was his status, he argued. He was a dead man, and this was his captive. The Cherokee nation could not pretend to follow with its control the actions of a dead man. They themselves had pronounced him dead. He had no place in the war. He had been forbidden, on account of his official death, to compete for the honors of the campaign. Apart from his former status as a Cherokee, merely as a supernatural being, a spirit, an ada-wehi, he had captured this British soldier, who was therefore the property of a dead man. And the Cherokee law of all things and before all things forbade interference with the effects of the dead.

Despite the curling contempt on the lip of Atta-Kulla-Kulla the council did not immediately acquiesce in his view, and thus for a time flattered the hope of the ada-wehi that they were resting in suspension on the details of this choice argument. There was an illogical inversion of values in the experience of the tribe, and while they could not now accept the worthless figments of long ago, it was not vouchsafed to them to enjoy the substantial merits of the new order of things. Reason, powder, diplomacy, had brought the Cherokee nation to a point of humiliation to which superstition, savagery, and the simplicities of the tomahawk had never descended in "the good old times." Reason was never so befuddled of aspect, civilization never so undesired as now. In their own expanded outlook at life, however, they could not afford to ignore the views of Atta-Kulla-Kulla, the advocate of all the newer methods, in so important a matter as the release of a British prisoner of war on the strange pretext that his captor was a ghost of a peculiar spectral power, an ada-wehi, although this course would have been more agreeable to the "old beloved" theories of their halcyon days of eld, when the Cherokee name was a terror and a threat.

Therefore, averse as they were to subscribe to the modern methods which had wrought them such woe and humiliation and defeat, the dominant superstition of the race now fell far short of the fantasy of liberating a British prisoner at this crisis under the influence of any spectral manifestation whatsoever. The council was obviously steeled against this proposition, as MacVintie shortly perceived, and equally determined that the ada-wehi must needs exert phenomenal and magical powers indeed to avoid yet making good the nation's pledge of his death to the British government, and becoming a ghost in serious earnest. MacVintie's heart sank within him as he noted the hardening of the lines of their grave harsh faces and the affirmative nodding of the feather-crested heads, conferring together, as the decision was reached.

It accorded, however, with their ancient custom to postpone over a night the execution of any sentence of special weight, and therefore the council adjourned to the next day, the two prisoners being left in the deserted building, each securely bound with a rope to a pillar of the series which upheld the roof of the strange circular edifice. This colonnade stood about four feet from the wall, and the interval between was occupied by a divan, fashioned of dexterously woven cane, extending around the room; and as the prisoners could seat themselves here, or lie at full length, they were subjected to no greater hardship than was consistent with their safe custody.

A sentinel with his musket on his shoulder stood at the door, and the sun was going down. Kenneth MacVintie could see through the open portal the red glow in the waters of the Tennessee River. Now and then a flake of a glittering white density glided through it, which his eyes, accustomed to long distances, discriminated as a swan. Thunder-heads, however, were gathering above the eastern slopes and the mountains were a lowering slate-toned purple, save when a sudden flash of lightning roused them to a vivid show of green.

The dull red hue of the interior of the council-house darkened gradually; the embers of the council-fire faded into the gray ash, and the night came sullen and threatening before its time.

The young Highlander sought to bend his mind to the realization that his days on earth were well-nigh ended, and that it behooved him to think on the morrow elsewhere. He had an old-fashioned religious faith presumed to be fitted for any emergency, but in seeking to recall its dogmas and find such consolation in its theories as might sustain a martyr at the stake, he was continually distracted with the momentous present.

The two prisoners could no longer see each other, and the little gestures and significant glances which had supplemented their few words, and made up for the lack of better conversational facilities were impracticable in the darkness.

The silent obscurity was strangely lonely. MacVintie began to doubt if the other still lived.

"Attusah!" he said at length.

"_Tsida-wei-yu!_" (I am a great ada-wehi) murmured the ghost mechanically.

He was quite spent, exhausted by the effort to logically exist as a ghost in a world which had repudiated him as a live man.