The amulet: A novel

by Charles Egbert Craddock

But birds were builders in these days, and he could hardly see a beak that was not laden with a straw. Oh, joyous architects, how benign that no foreknowledge of the storm that was to wreck these frail tenements, so craftily constructed, or of the marauder that was to rifle them, hushed the song or weighted the wing! Human beings have a hard bargain in their vaunted reason.

There was none of the delight in the spring; none of the bliss of sheer existence in days so redundant of soft sheen, of sweet sound, of fragrant winds, of the stirring pulse of universal revivification; none of that trust in the future which is itself the logic of gratitude for the boons of the past, expressed in the hard-bitten faces of the head-men and in the serious eyes of the young officer when they sat in a circle around the fire in the centre of the council-house at Choté. They were all anxious, troubled, each determined to mould the days to come after the fashion of his individual will, only mindful enough of the will of others to have a sense of doubt, of poignant hope, and a strenuous realization of conflict. Thus the young officer was wary, and the Indian chiefs were even wilier than their wont as he opened the subject of his mission.

The interpreter of each faction stood behind his principal, for a long time silent as the official pipe was smoked. The council-house of the usual type, a great rotunda built on a high mound near the “beloved square,” and plastered within and without with red clay, was dark, save for the glimmer of the dull fire and the high, narrow door, through which could be seen the town of similar architecture but of smaller edifices, with here and there a log cabin of the fashion which the pioneers imitated in their earlier dwellings, familiar to this day, and the open shed-like buildings at each side of the “beloved square.” The river was in full view, a burnished steely gray, and the further mountains delicately blue, but more than once, as Raymond glanced toward them, his eyes were filled with a blinding red glare, sudden, translucent, transitory.

Only the nerve of a strong man, young, hearty, well-fed, enabled him to be still and make no sign. The first thought in his mind was that this was a premonition of illness, and hence it behooved him to address himself swiftly to the business in hand that no interest of the government might suffer. As he pressed his palm to his brow for a moment, it occurred to him that the strange feather-crested faces were watching him curiously, inimically,—but perhaps that was merely because they doubted the intent of his mission.

And so in Choté, in the unbroken peace of its traditional sanctity, he began with open hostility.

“You signed a treaty, Cunigacatgoah,” he addressed the ancient chief, “and you Oconostota, and other head-men for the whole Cherokee nation,—in many things you have broken it.”

Several chiefs held out their hands to receive “sticks,” that they might reply categorically to this point when he had finished. But he shook his head. He did not intend to conform to Indian etiquette further than in sitting on a buffalo rug on the floor, with his legs in their white breeches and leggings folded up before him like the blades of a clasp knife. He gesticulated much with his hands, around which his best lace frills dangled, and he wore a dress sword as a mark of ceremony; his hair was powdered, too, and he carried his cocked hat in his left hand. He did not intend to be rude, but he was determined to lose no time in useless observances, because of that strange affection, that curious red glare which had seemed to suffuse his eyes, portending some disturbance of the brain perchance.

“No,” he said firmly, declining to receive or to give the notched sticks, “I am not going to enter into the various details. There is only one thing out of kilter about that treaty which I am going to settle. It relates to the cannon which you brought here after the capitulation of Fort Loudon. They were to be delivered up to the British government according to the last treaty. Eight of these guns were taken down to Fort Prince George, one was burst by an overcharge at Fort Loudon, but others you have not relinquished. You have evaded compliance.”

A long silence ensued, while the chiefs gazed inscrutably into the fire. Their pride, their dignity suffered from this cavalier address. All their rancor was aroused against this man,—even his callowness was displeasing to them. They revolted at his incapacity for ceremonial observance, save, indeed, such as appertained to his military drill, which they esteemed hideous and of no value to the British in the supreme test of battle. They resented his persistence in having ensconced himself here under the protection of the sanctities of Choté until after his offensive mission should be disclosed and answered. He had evidently neither the will nor the art to disguise it with euphemistic phraseology that might render it more acceptable to a feint of consideration. It was not now, however, at the moment of the French withdrawal, that the Cherokees could resist by force an English demand. Diplomacy must needs therefore fill the breach. In some way Captain Howard had evidently learned that the three missing cannon were not sunk in the river by the garrison of Fort Loudon as the Cherokees had declared. With this thought in his mind, Cunigacatgoah said suddenly, “Only three cannon failed to be relinquished,—they had been in the river, and they were all sick,—they could not speak.”

“Sick,—are they? I have a sovereign remedy for a sick cannon,” declared Raymond. “They shall speak and—” Once more as he glanced mechanically through the open door toward the brilliant outer world, with the gleam of the river below the clifty mountains and a flight of swans above, that curious translucent red light flashed through his eye-balls.