The eyes of both the Indians followed the gold pieces, as he swept them from the table and into his purse, with a glitter of greed akin to the look of a dog who gazes at a bone for which he is too well trained to beg. Then Tus-ka-sah, with a slow and circumspect motion, took the pearls from his neck and spoke with a deliberate dignity.
“When you return to your own country call all your people together,”—Raymond hardly smiled at this evidence of the Indian’s idea of the population of England, so heartily were his own feelings enlisted in the acquisition,—“tell them this is the necklace of the ‘Jewel King,’ ‘He-who-walks-bedizened.’ Then name to them the pearls, for they have true names,—these, the smaller of the string, are the little fish that swim in the river, and these are the birds that fly in the clouds. These twelve large ones are the twelve months of the year,—this, the first, is the green corn moon; this is the moon of melons; this the harvest moon; this the moon of the hunter.” As he told them off one by one, and as Raymond leaned forward listening like a three years’ child, his cheek scarlet, his dark eyes aglow, the wind whisking the powder off his auburn hair despite his cocked hat, the Fox watched the two with indignant impatience.
If the Terrapin observed the officer’s eagerness he made no sign,—he only said suddenly:—
“And all are yours—if—you go not to Choté.”
The young officer recoiled abruptly—in disappointment, in mortification, in anger.
He could not speak for a moment, so sudden was the revulsion of sentiment. Then he said coldly, “You trifle with me, Tus-ka-sah!”
He checked more candid speech. For prudential reasons he could not give his anger rein. Harmony must be maintained. If cordial relations were not conserved it should not be the ambassador of a friendly mission to break the peace.
The Cherokees were as eager as he to let slip no chance. The Fox, understanding at last the trend of his colleague’s diplomacy, uttered guttural soothing exclamations. But Tus-ka-sah, perceiving the reluctance of the officer’s relinquishment of the opportunity, the eagerness of his desire, his angry disappointment, sought to whet his inclination and made a higher bid. He took from some pocket or fold of his fur garments a buck-skin bag and thence drew a single unpierced pearl, so luminous, so large, so satin-smooth, so perfect of contour, that Raymond, forgetting his indignation at the attempted bribery, exclaimed aloud in inarticulate delight, for this indeed was a gem which those who love such things might well fall down and worship.
It came from the Tennessee River. Tus-ka-sah made haste to recite its history to slacken the tension of the difference which had supervened.
The jewel king of the mussels, he said, had worn it on his breast; but when his shell, which was his house, was harried and his people scattered, and he torn ruthlessly out, this treasure fell as spoils to the victor. Only its custodian was Tus-ka-sah—this gem belonged to the Cherokee nation—one of the jewels of the crown, so to speak. And it too had a name, the “sleeping sun.” The chief paused to point from the moony lustre of the great pearl, shown by the light of the fire, to the pearly lustre of the moon, now unclouded and splendid in the dark vault of the deep blue sky.