“Tus-ka-sah,” Raymond said suddenly, “tell me your real name. I know you are never the ‘Terrapin.’” For an alias was reputed to be the invariable rule of Indian nomenclature. The Cherokees were said to believe that to divulge the veritable cognomen divested the possession of the owner, destroyed his identity, and conferred a mysterious power over him never to be shaken off. Thus they had also war names, official names, and trivial sobriquets sufficing for identification, and these only were communicated to the world at large, early travellers among the tribe recording that they often questioned in vain.
Tus-ka-sah’s real face showed for one moment, serious, astute, suspicious, and a bit alarmed, so closely personal, so unexpected was the question. Then he canted his head backward and looked out from under heavy lowered lids.
“La-a!” he mocked. He had caught the phrase from English settlers or soldiers. “La-a!” he repeated derisively. Then he said in Cherokee, “If I should tell you my name how could I have it again?”
Raymond pondered a moment on this curious racial reasoning. “It would still be yours. Only I should know it,” he argued.
“La-a!” bleated Tus-ka-sah derisively, vouchsafing no further reply, while the other Indian knitted his perplexed brow, wondering how from this digression he could bring back the conversation to the trail to Choté.
“I know what your name ought to be,” declared Raymond.
Once more a sudden alarm, a look of reality flickered through the manufactured expressions of the Terrapin’s face, as if the ensign might absolutely capture his intimate identity in his true name. Then realizing the futility of divination he said “La-a!” once more, and thrust out his tongue facetiously. Yet his eyes continued serious. Like the rest of the world, he was to himself an object of paramount interest, and he experienced a corrosive curiosity as to what this British officer—to him a creature of queer, egregious mental processes—thought his name ought to be.
“It ought to be something strange and wonderful,” said Raymond, speciously. “It ought to be the ‘Jewel King’—or,” remembering the holophrastic methods of Indian nomenclature—“this would be better—‘He-who-walks-bedizened.’”
The eyes of the Indian had no longer that predominant suffusion of ridicule. They were large, lustrous, and frankly delighted.
“Agwa duhiyu! Agwa duhiyu!” (I am very handsome), he exclaimed apparently involuntarily. He glanced down complacently over his raiment of aboriginal splendor, passing his hand over his collar of elk teeth and tinkling his many strings of shell beads, but it was only casually that he touched his necklace of pearls. The gesture gave Raymond an intimation as to the degree in which were valued the respective ornaments. It reinforced his hope that perhaps the pearls might be purchased for a sum within the scope of his slender purse. How they would grace the hair of the fair Arabella, her snowy neck or arm. To be sure, he could not presume to offer them were they bought in a jeweller’s shop in London. But as a trophy from the wilderness, curiously pierced by the heated copper spindle, by means of which they were strung on the sinews of deer, the price a mere pittance as for a thing of trifling worth,—surely Captain Howard would perceive no presumption in such a gift, the young lady herself could take no offence. Nevertheless, the pearls were rarely worth giving in a sort he could not hope to compass otherwise, nor indeed she to own, for, but for the method of piercing, rated by European standards their size and lustre would have commanded a commensurate price.