The Story of Old Fort Loudon. Mary Noailles Murfree

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СКАЧАТЬ puncheons secured together with cleats and laid across trestles when in use, but at other times placed against the wall beside the ladder which gave access to the room above. The table was now in the center of the floor, spread with some hasty refreshments, of which Captain Demeré invited the forlorn travelers to partake. At the other end lay a draughtsman's board, a Gunter's scale, a pair of dividers and other materials, where he had been trying to reduce to paper and topographical decorum for transference to an official report a map of the region which Rayetaeh, a chief from Toquoe, who had visited the fort that afternoon, had drawn on the sand of the parade ground with a flint-headed arrow. The officer had found this no slight task, for Rayetaeh was prone to measure distance by the time required to traverse it—"two warriors, a canoe, and one moon" very definitely meaning a month's journey by watercourse, but requiring some actively minute calculation to bring the space in question to the proportional scale. Rayetaeh might be considered the earliest cartographer of this region, and some of his maps, copied from the sand, are extant to this day. Captain Demeré laid the papers of this unfinished task carefully aside, and by way of giving his hospitality more grace took the head of the table himself.

      But Odalie could not eat, and wept steadily on as if for the purpose of salting her food with tears, and Fifine's hunger seemed appeased by the feast of her eyes. Now and again her head in its little white mob-cap turned actively about, and she seemed as if she might have entered upon a series of questions save for the multiplicity of objects that enthralled her attention at once. Captain Demeré desisted from insistence after one or two well-meant efforts, and the man who had served the table waited in doubt and indecision.

      "It's a hard life for women on the frontier," the officer observed as if in polite excuse for Odalie's ill-mannered tears that she could not control.

      "And for men," she sobbed, thinking of Alexander and marveling if the Indians would carry him on without resistance to Choté—for he could not know she had found lodgement in the fort—or further still and enslave him—many captives had lived for years in Indian tribes—she had heard of this even in Carolina; or would they murder him in some trifling quarrel or on the discovery of his nationality or to make easier the robbery of the packhorses. Ah, why had she brought so much; why had she hampered their flight and risked their lives for these paltry belongings, treasures to the Indians, worth the shedding of much blood? How could she have sacrificed to these bits of household gear even her own comfort! She remembered, with an infinite yet futile wish to recall the moment, how eagerly Sandy had urged the abandonment of these poor possessions, that she might herself mount the horse and ease her bleeding and torn feet. Is every woman an idolater at heart, Odalie wondered. Do they all bow down, in the verity of their inner worship, to a few fibers of woven stuff and some poor fashioning of potter's clay, and make these feeble, trivial things their gods? It seemed so to her. She had bled for the things she had brought through the wilderness. She had wept for others that she had left. And if for such gear Sandy had come to grief—"I wonder—I wonder if I could find a pretext to care for them still!"

      But she only said aloud, with a strong effort to control her attention, "And for men, too."

      "Men must needs follow when duty leads the way," said Captain Demeré, a trifle priggishly.

      Odalie, trying to seem interested, demanded, lifting her eyes, "And what do women follow?"

      If Captain Demeré had said what he truly thought, he would have answered:—

      "Folly! their own and that of their husbands!"

      He had had close observation of the fact that the pioneers gave heavy hostages to fate in their wives and children, and a terrible advantage to a savage foe, and the very bravery of so many of these noble helpmeets only proved the value of all they risked. He could not elaborate, however, any scheme by which a new country should be entered first by the settlers aided by a strong occupancy of soldiery, and only when the lands should be cleared and the savages expelled the women and children venture forth. So he said:—

      "They follow their destiny."

      He had a smile in his eyes as if appealing to her clemency not to tax him with ascribing a humbler motive to the women than to the men, as he was only making talk and spoke from a natural deprecation of dangers to non-combatants who of right should be exempt from peril. His eyes, which were large, were of a color between gray and brown—darker than the one and lighter than the other. His hair was brown and smooth; he was slender and tall; his aquiline nose and finely cut lips gave a certain cast of distinction to his face, although the temples were slightly sunken and the thinness of his cheek revealed the outline of the jaw and chin which showed determination and force, despite his mild expression at present. Josephine fixed an amazed stare upon his polished shoes as he crossed his legs, never having seen any men's foot-gear save a buskin of deer hide.

      "The men have a natural interest in warfare," suggested Odalie, forlornly, seeking to be responsive to his conversational efforts.

      "Warfare!" exclaimed Captain Demeré, with sudden animation. "Contention with savages is not warfare! It cannot be conducted on a single recognized military principle." He went on to say that all military tactics counted for naught; the merely mechanical methods of moving bodies of troops were unavailable. Discipline, the dexterities of strategy, an enlightened courage, and the tremendous force of esprit de corps were alike nullified.

      The problem of Indian fighting in America was then far greater than it has been since the scene has shifted to the plains, the densely wooded character of the tangled wilderness affording peculiar advantage to the skulking individual methods of the savage and embarrassing inconceivably the more cumbrous evolutions of organized bodies. But long before Captain Demeré's time, and often since, the futility of opposing regular scientific tactics to the alert wiles of the savage native in his own difficult country has been commented upon by observers of military methods, and doubtless recognized in the hard knocks of experience by those whose fate it has been to try again the experiment.[6]

      "As to military ethics," he added, "to induce the Indian to accept and abide by the principles governing civilized warfare seems an impossibility. He cannot be constrained for a pledge of honor to forego an advantage. He will not respect his parole. He continually violates and sets at naught the provisions of his solemn treaty."

      Odalie would not ask if the white man never broke faith with the red—if the Indian had not been taught by example near at hand of what brittle stuff a treaty was made. It was not worth while to reason logically with a mere man, she said to herself, with a little secret sentiment of derision, which served to lighten a trifle the gloom of her mental atmosphere, and since she could not eat and little backwoods Fifine's eyes had absorbed her appetite, it was just as well that Hamish, who had been greatly interested in being shown over the fort by the jolly Corporal O'Flynn, appeared at the door with the intelligence that their quarters were assigned them. The courteous Captain Demeré handed her to the door, and she stepped out from the bizarre decorated mess-hall into the dark night, with the stars showing a chill scintillation as of the approach of winter in their white glitter high in the sky, and the looming bastion close at hand. The barracks were silent; "tattoo" had just sounded; the great gates were closed, and the high walls shut off the world from the deserted parade.

      Naught was audible in all the night save the measured tread of a sentry walking his beat, and further away, seeming an echo, the step of another sentinel, while out in the wilderness the scream of a wildcat came shrilly on the wind from the darkness where Alexander roamed with savage beasts and still more savage men far from the sweet security so trebly protected here.

      Not even the flare of another big homelike fire in the cabin assigned to her could efface the impression of the bleak and dark loneliness outside the walls of the fort, and when the three were together, untrammeled by the presence of others, they were free to indulge their grief and their awful terror for husband and brother and father. СКАЧАТЬ