The amulet: A novel

by Charles Egbert Craddock

It was well for the fort’s “second man” that he was already seated on a buffalo rug on the ground, his legs doubled up, tailor-wise, in front of him, or he might have fallen to the earth in his sputtering indignation. His rubicund, round face grew scarlet. Portly as he was already he seemed puffed up with rage, and his features visibly swelled as he retorted.—Had he not offered the Frog to pay the town in golden guineas for the corn—he had not begged; he had asked to purchase.

Walasi, the Frog, shook his head. Of what good were English guineas to people who had no corn. Corn was more precious than gold—could he plant those golden guineas of the fort’s “second man,” and make corn? Could horses eat guineas?

“No,” said the fort’s “second man,” “but asses could, and did.”

Whereupon the Keowee “second man” said the fort’s “second man” spake in riddles, and relapsed into silence.

Thus brought to a dead-lock the quarter-master looked appealingly at the commandant, who, albeit sensible of the discourtesy offered him by the non-appearance of the chief, and his derogation of dignity in conferring with a “second man,” came to his subordinate’s relief.

The British officer did not wish to inconvenience the town of Keowee in any manner, he said, and regretted much that their visits were not welcome. Whereupon the Frog showed visible uneasiness, for with the Cherokees hospitality was the very first and foremost virtue, and for it to be impugned was a reflection upon the town. He hastened to say volubly that the beloved Capteny was much mistaken; the chief’s heart was wrung not to take him by his noble hand. But they had feared—they much deprecated that the British Capteny had come, too, to beg—to beg for corn; and it would wrench the very soul of the chief of Keowee to refuse him aught.

“The chief is fortunate to be so well furnished with gold as to throw it away,” said Captain Howard.

That the Frog had learned somewhat in his intercourse with the commercial French who, with covert strategy, had plied a brisk trade with the Indians despite their treaty with the British, was evidenced in the shrug with which he declared he could not say. The Indian wanted little—he wanted his own corn—that was all. It belonged to him—he asked for no man’s gold.

Captain Howard was at a loss. The military resource of the seizing of supplies was impracticable since the treaty of peace. The British government owned merely the ground on which Fort Loudon and Fort Prince George stood, and a right of way to those works. Moreover, with his small force the measure was impossible. Therefore it was indeed necessary to beg for corn at six—nay, ten prices, in English gold. He sat for a few moments, gazing absently at the prospect, the austere wintry mountains under the gray sky, the illimitable, leafless wilderness, the shining line of the river that caught and focussed such chill light as the day vouchsafed, the bastions and flying flag of Fort Prince George on the opposite bank, and close in to the hither side the brilliant fleck of color that the scarlet coats of the oarsmen and Ensign Raymond gave to the scene, as sombre, otherwise, as a sketch in sepia. He noted that the rowers had thrust out from the shore five or six oars’ length, perhaps, and that they now and again gently dipped their oars to keep the craft at a fixed distance and obviate drifting with the current. The people of Keowee Town were not altogether proof against curiosity. From the vantage ground of the second men’s cabin Captain Howard could see stealthy figures, chiefly of women and children, peering out from doors or skulking behind bushes, all eyes directed toward the shallop rocking in a steely gleam of light aslant upon a steely ripple of water, the only vivid chromatic tone in the neutral tinted scene.

There is a certain temperament which is incapable of sustaining success. It may cope with difficulty or it may endure disaster. But a degree of prosperity destroys its values, annuls good judgment, and distorts the perspective of all the world in the range of vision. The British Captain was at his wits’ end. He had no corn, and if none were to be bought he could get no corn. Few people have shared the Frog’s pleasure of seeing their victorious enemies the victims of so insoluble a problem. The declination of the chief of Keowee to receive the magnate from across the river was in itself a blow to pride, an insult, a flout, as contemptuous as might be devised. But as a matter of policy it was an error. If it had been a question of crops, a démêlé with a neighboring town, a matter of boundary, the selection of timbers for building purposes, no man could have acted with finer judgment than Walasi, the Frog. But he was a Cherokee and he hated the British Capteny with rancor. He must twist the knife in the wound, already gaping wide with anguish for the famishing stock. He assumed an air of reproach, and knowing even as he spoke that he transcended politic monitions, he stipulated that it was but the accident of the Capteny’s absence at Tamotlee which had precipitated disaster. When the Indians at Keowee had beheld the flames of the granary they had rushed to the assistance of their neighbors, the soldiers. Many hands do much work. But the great gates were closed against them, and when the Cherokees approached, he declared, the cannon were fired upon them from the fort, and many great balls rolled along, and popped hissing hot into the river. And it was only on account of the defective aim of the garrison that any were now left alive. And their hearts had become very poor because of their despised friendship. But cannon there were in the Cherokee nation!—and, he boasted, some day the garrison of Fort Prince George would hear, and shake with fear to hear, the loud whooping from out their throats, and the deep rumble of their howls; and would see, and be dazzled with terror to see, the fire come whizzing out of their muzzles with red-hot balls—but—but—