The amulet: A novel

by Charles Egbert Craddock

“Gad! I’d like to see her draw this thing!” And Jerrold pulled the taut line of deer-sinews, noting admiringly the elasticity of the wood as the bow bent and he fitted an arrow in place.

He laid it aside, presently, and turned to the table. “And what is this?” he asked, picking up a bag of bead embroidery, rich and ornate, with long bead fringes, and a stiff bead-wrought handle, like a bail.

“Oh, that’s for Mrs. Annandale—I think it must be intended for a tobacco pouch, but it occurred to me she might use it for a knotting-bag, and as a souvenir of the country.”

Mervyn silently cursed himself for a fool. Possibly Raymond had naught in mind other than the ordinary civil attentions incumbent in such a situation. He was merely making his compliments to the two ladies, members of the commandant’s family, visiting the post under circumstances so unusual. Jerrold evidently thought the selection and presentation of the curios very felicitous, and was obviously racking his brains to devise some equally pretty method of expressing his pleasure and interest in their presence here.

Even the acute Mrs. Annandale viewed the incident in much the same light. The simultaneous appearance of the bow and quiver with the gorgeous little “knotting-bag” seemed only well-devised compliments to the ladies,—guests in the fort,—and she thought it very civil of Mr. Raymond, and said she was glad to have something worth while to take back to Kent to prove she had ever been to America,—she apparently did not rely on her own word.

In truth it was not every day that such things could be picked up here. The Cherokees were growing dull and disheartened. The cheap, tawdry European trifles with which the Indian trade had flooded the country had served to disparage in their estimation their own laborious ornaments and articles of use. When a pipe or a bowl of a kind turned out by millions in a mould, strange and new to their perverted taste, could be bought in an instant of barter, why should they expend two years in the slow cutting of a pipe of moss agate, by the method of friction, rubbing one stone on another; when a bushel of glass beads was to be had for a trifle how should they care to drill holes through tiny cylinders of shell, with a polish that bespoke a lifetime of labor? There could be blankets bought at the traders in lieu of fur robes and braided mantles. Now-a-days, except grease, and paint, and British muskets,—the barrels sawed off as the Indians liked them,—there was little to choose for souvenirs in the Cherokee country.

Arabella was unaccountably disappointed. Not in the weapons, themselves—she cried out in delighted pleasure and astonishment on beholding them. Then, certainly, she did not grudge Mrs. Annandale the trophy of her knotting-bag. But she had felt that he had not intended the present as a mere bit of gallantry, a passing compliment. She had valued the gift because of its thoughtfulness for her pleasure; he had noted the need it filled; it contributed to her entertainment; it came as a personal token from him to her. But now since it was relegated to the category of a compliment to the ladies, along with the knotting-bag which was already blazing in considerable splendor at Mrs. Annandale’s side, and lighting up her black satin gown with a very pretty effect, Arabella felt as if she had lost something. A light that the skies had not bestowed on that dark landscape was dying out of the recollection of the day on the river,—she remembered it as it was, with its dull sad monotone of the hills, the gray sky, the cold rippled steel of the waters, and the cutting blasts of the wind. She had returned home all aglow, and now she was cold, and tired, and dispirited; and she wondered that Raymond did not come to play “Whisk” or Quadrille if he desired to make a general compliment to the ladies—and why her father had grown to be such dull company.

For Captain Howard did naught but sit after dinner in his great chair, with his decanter on the table beside him, and his glass of wine untouched in his hand, and stare at the flaming logs in deep revery, agreeing with a nod or an irrelevant word to all his sister might say while she detailed practically the whole history of the county of Kent, not merely since his departure thence, but since indeed it was erected.

Captain Howard, tall, bony, muscular, stout of heart, rude of experience, seemed hardly a man to see visions, but he beheld in the flames of the fire that evening things that were not there.

Cannon in the Cherokee country! How they volleyed and smoked from between the logs of the commandant’s fire. Here and there in the brilliant dancing jets he beheld a score of war bonnets. He could see quick figures circle, leap, and turn again in the lithe writhings of the protean shadow and blaze. The piles of red-hot coals between the fire-dogs were a similitude of the boulders, the cliffs, the rocky fastnesses of those almost inaccessible wilds. Above a swirling current of blazes bursting forth from a great hickory log he beheld a battery planted on a commanding promontory, harassing with its scintillating explosions, the shadowy craft that sought to escape on the turbulent stream below.