The amulet: A novel

by Charles Egbert Craddock

Not go to Choté? They thought it not worth the while?—he would always ask with a note of affected surprise, as if the subject had never before been broached.

For this was the gravamen of their arguments, their persuasion, their insistence—that he should not go to Choté.

Was there not Nequassee, on the hither side of the tumultuous Joree mountains? The head-men of the Cherokee nation would delight to meet him there and confer with him on whatever subject the splendid and brave Captain Howard might desire to open with them by the mouth of his chosen emissary, Ensign Raymond.

It was diplomacy, certainly, but it jumped with Raymond’s adolescent relish of tantalizing, to give them no intimation of the fact that he, himself, had as yet no knowledge of the purpose of his embassy, his instructions being to open his sealed orders at Choté. Thus he turned, and evaded, and shifted ground, and betrayed naught, however craftily they sought to surprise him into some revelation of his intent.

Only to Choté he must go, he said.

Two Indians who sat with him particularly late one night, head-men from the neighboring town of Cowetchee, were peculiarly insistent,—first, that he and his command should accept the hospitality of their municipality, that he, himself, might lie in the comforts of their “stranger house,” and then, since he could not so far depart from his orders as to break up his camp—if he must repair to one of the Overhill towns—how near was Talassee, just beyond a precipitous ridge of the mountains, or Ioco, or Chilhowee, or Citico,—but not to Choté, surely. So far,—nearly as far as Tellico Great! Not to Choté,—oh, no; never so far as to Choté!

“But to Choté,” said Ensign Raymond, “to Choté must I go.”

They never looked at each other, these crafty sages of Cowetchee. Only the suspicion bred of long experience could discern aught of premeditation in their conduct of the interview. One conserved a peculiarly simple expression. His countenance was broad, with high cheek bones and a long flat mouth. He had a twinkling eye and a disposition to gaze about the camp with a sort of repressed quizzical banter, as if he found the arrangement of the troops and their accoutrements, the dress and arms of the officer, the remnants of his supper, the methods of its service, the china and silver, all savoring strongly of the ludicrous and provocative of covert ridicule. He held his head canted backward as he looked from half-closed lids, across the shimmering heated air rising above the coals, into the young man’s face, infinitely foreign to him. Youth is intensely averse to the slightest intimation of ridicule, and Raymond, with his personal pride, his impulsive temperament, his imperious exactingness, could not have brooked it for one moment had he not early observed that each demonstration was craftily designed to shake his equilibrium, and preceded some cogent question, some wily effort to elicit a betrayal of the purport of his mission to Choté, and only to the “beloved town.” The other Indian was grave, suave, the typical chief, wearing his furs and his feathers with an air of distinction, showing no surprise at his surroundings, hardly a passing notice indeed. He was erect, dignified, and walked with an easy light tread, different in every particular from the jocose rolling gait affected by the Terrapin.

The giddy Raymond began to pique himself on his capacity to meet these emergencies which obviously Captain Howard had not anticipated. They invested the expedition with a subtler difficulty than either had dreamed he might encounter. He flushed with a sense of triumph, and his bright eyes were softly alight as he gazed on the glowing coals. He bethought himself with great relish how these adventures would garnish his account of his trip, and having naught to do with its official purpose might serve to regale the fireside group, where a golden-haired girl might be pleased again to call him “prodigiously clever.” He was suddenly reminded of the string of pearls around her bare white throat which he had noticed at the commandant’s table, with the depressing reflection that Captain Howard came of well-to-do people while he, himself, had little but his commission and his pay, and that Mervyn was rich,—rich in his own right,—and would eventually be a baronet. For here were pearls around the savage throat of the Terrapin,—pearls indeed of price. A single gem of his string were worth the whole of Arabella Howard’s necklace. These were the fine fresh-water pearls from the Unio margaritiferus of the southern rivers, and they had a satin-like lustre and rarely perfect shape, which bespeak a high commercial value. The Terrapin wore strings of shell beads, which he appraised more dearly,—the wampum, or “roanoke” as the southern tribes called it,—and which fell in heavy fringes over his shirt of otter fur. He had a collar of more than two hundred elk teeth; his leggings were of buck-skin and solid masses of embroidery. As Ensign Raymond’s well-bred observation, that sees all without seeming to notice aught, took in these details, he began to have an idea of utilizing the visit of the Indians in a method at variance with their weary marching and counter-marching upon the citadel of his secret,—the purport of his mission to Choté, Old Town.

He meditated gravely on this, as he sat in his camp chair by the smooth stump of a great tree, felled for fuel, on which had been laid his supper, serving as table, and now holding the case-bottle of brandy, the contents of which had been offered and sparingly accepted by the Indians, for the chiefs were by no means the victims of fire-water in the degree in which the tribesmen suffered.