The next moment he felt choking. He was balked, helpless, hopeless, at the end. He knew that Captain Howard had anticipated no strategy. The savages could not by force hold the guns in the teeth of the British demand, and the commandant of Fort Prince George had fancied that they would be yielded, however reluctantly, on official summons. They were necessary to Captain Howard, to complete his account of the munitions of war intrusted to his charge, upon being transferred from Fort Prince George. And this was the result of Raymond’s mission,—to return empty-handed, outwitted, to fail egregiously in the conduct of an expedition in which he had been graced with an independent command,—Raymond was hot and cold by turns when he thought of it! Yet the guns had disappeared, the Indians craftily held their secret, the impossible checks even martial ardor. Raymond, however, was of the type of stubborn campaigner that dies in the last ditch. The imminence of defeat had quickened all his faculties.
“Ha-nagwa dugihyali” (I’ll make a search), he blustered.
But the threat was met with sarcastic smiles, and Cunigacatgoah said again with urgent candor,—“Agiyahusa cannon.” (My cannon are dead.)
As Raymond hesitated, half distraught with anxiety and eagerness, the red light suddenly flashed once more through his eye-balls from its invisible source. He was inherently and by profession a soldier, and it was not of his nature nor his trade to receive a thrust without an effort to return a counter-thrust.
“Hidden!” he cried suddenly, with eyes distended. “Hidden!” he paused, gasping for effect. “I know the spot,” he screamed wildly, springing to his feet; for he had just remembered the peculiar track he had noticed on soft ground near the river, and he now bethought himself that only the trunnion of a dismounted gun could have made an imprint such as this. It suggested a recent removal and a buoyant hope. “The cannon are in the ravine by the river. I know it! I know it!”
In the confusion attendant upon this sudden outburst they all rose turning hither and thither, awaiting they hardly knew what in this untoward mystery of divination or revelation. Making a bull-like rush amongst them, actually through the fire, Raymond fairly charged upon the conjurer, felling him to the ground, and ran at full speed out into the air and down the steep mound.
“Fall in! Fall in!” he cried out to his “zanies” as he went, hearing in a moment the welcome sound of his own drum beating “the assembly.”
He led the way to the locality where he had seen the track, followed by all his score of men at a brisk double-quick. In a ravine by the river a close search resulted in the discovery of the guns ambushed in a sort of grotto, all now mounted on their carriages. Not so sick were they but that they could speak aloud, and they shouted lustily when the charges of blank cartridges issued from their smoking throats. For the giddy young officer had them dragged up to the bluffs and trained them upon the “beloved town” of peace itself, and by reason of the Indians’ terror of artillery hardly five minutes elapsed before Choté was deserted by every inhabitant.
Raymond found his best capacity enlisted to maintain his authority and prevent his twenty men flushed with victory, triumphant and riotous with joy, from pillaging the city of refuge, thus left helpless at their mercy. But the behests of so high-handed and impetuous a commander were not to be trifled with, and the troops were soon embarked in the large pettiaugre belonging to the British government, which chanced to be lying abandoned at the shore. In this they transported the three guns, which they fired repeatedly as they rowed up the Tennessee River, with the echoes bellowing after all along the clifty banks and far through the dense woods,—effectually discouraging pursuit.