The amulet: A novel

by Charles Egbert Craddock

“Well, but ’tis a pity a man should have no resource but the army. Faith, I’m glad George Mervyn is not to be forever marching and counter-marching.”

She glanced slyly at Arabella, who looked pale in faint blue and a little dull. She did not respond, and Mrs. Annandale had a transient fear that she might say she did not care how George Mervyn spent his future. The girl’s mind, like her father’s, was elsewhere, but with what different subjects of contemplation! Captain Howard was saying to himself that he could never leave the Cherokee country with British cannon in the hands of the Indians. Even without this menace the evacuation of Fort Prince George seemed a trifle premature, in view of their inimical temper. How far this was fostered by the expectation of securing an adequate supply of powder to utilize the guns to the destruction of the British defences, which could not stand for an hour against a well-directed fire of artillery, and the massacre of the garrison, none could say. The French, now retiring from the country on every hand, might, as a Parthian dart, supply the Indians’ need of powder, and then indeed the Cherokee War would be to fight anew,—with much disaster to the infant settlements of the provinces to the southward, for the stalwart pioneers were hardily pushing into the region below, their “cow-pens,” or ranches along the watercourses, becoming oases of a rude civilization, and their vast herds roaming the savannas in lordly promise of bucolic wealth.

Cannon in the Cherokee country!

Captain Howard could but laugh, even in his perplexity, when he thought of the resilient execution of the insult offered him by the chief of Keowee Town in declining to receive the military mendicant and setting a “second man,” Walasi, the Frog, a commercial man, so to speak, to deal with the soldier.

“Tell us the joke,” said his sister, insistently, with no inclination to be shut out of mind when she was aware it was closed against her.

“Only reflecting on the events of the day,” he said evasively, and Arabella, brightening suddenly, declared with a gurgling laugh, “Yes, we had a fine time on the river.”

CHAPTER XIV

Many an anxious perplexity had harassed Captain Howard’s repose in the night watches during his tour of duty at Fort Prince George. Never one like this, he thought. Try as he might, the problem seemed to have no possible solution. Every plan bristled with difficulties. Every chance seemed arrayed against his eager hopes. The British cannon were in the Cherokee country, withheld, in defiance of the terms of the treaty, capable of incalculable harm both to the garrison as matters now stood, and to the frontier settlements in the future. The moral effect of supinely permitting the Indians to overreach and outwit the government was in itself of disastrous possibilities, reinstating their self-confidence, renewing their esprit de corps, and fostering that contempt for the capacities of their enemy, from which the Cherokees always suffered as well as inflicted so many futile calamities. The cannon must be surrendered in accordance with the terms of the treaty, or he would be obliged to call down the retributive wrath of the British War Office upon the recalcitrant and perfidious Cherokee nation. But while with his handful of troops he awaited British aid,—an expeditionary force sent out to compel compliance with the treaty and to discipline the Indians,—he must needs expect to sustain the preliminary violence of such wars. Fort Prince George might well be razed to the ground by the very cannon in contention, the settlers to the southward would certainly be massacred as of old, and all the dearly-bought fruits of the late terrible conflict would be lost and brought to naught. If it were only possible to secure the cannon without an appeal to the government, without jeopardizing the peace of the frontier!

Captain Howard held himself no great tactician, but when he rose in the morning from a sleepless pillow he believed he had formulated a scheme to compass these ends which might possibly stand the strain of execution. True, it had its special and great dangers, against which he would provide as far as he was able, but he feared nevertheless it would cost some lives. And then a new and troublous doubt rose in his mind. It would not be consonant with his duty to again absent himself from Fort Prince George at this crisis. He must needs delegate the active execution of his scheme, and somehow the material on which he could depend impressed him as strangely unavailable when it came to such a test. Mervyn, by virtue of his rank, might seem best fitted for the enterprise, and he had been considered a steady and capable officer. The matter was extra hazardous. It necessitated a clear judgment, an absolute obedience to orders if possible, great physical endurance, and a cool head. In many respects he thought Mervyn filled these requirements, but a mistaken appraisement of his qualities by his commanding officer would be an error of fatal results, and somehow Captain Howard found on sifting his convictions that he had, albeit for slight cause, lost confidence in Mervyn. To be sure, Mervyn had in his formal report rectified the false impression under which he had permitted the commandant to rest for a time, but Captain Howard was a straightforward man himself and he could not easily recover from the impression created by the captain-lieutenant’s duplicity in standing by and receiving commendations for the acts of another man—the fact of being in that other man’s presence made it a futile folly, which implied a lack of logic. Oddly enough, logic was one of the essential requisites on an expedition among the Indians. Such emergencies might arise that the officer could only act on his own initiative, and Mervyn seemed not capable of striking out the most effective course and holding to it at all odds.

Captain Howard groaned under the weight of responsibility. He was compelled to trust the lives of a score of his men to the wisdom or unwisdom of his selection of an officer to command them. While Mervyn, by virtue of his rank, had the first claim to the conduct of an important matter requiring tact, discretion, mental poise, he was ruled out of the possibilities. He was too self-conscious, too uncertain, too slack in judgment, too obtuse to fine distinctions. Ensign Innis also was out of the question. He was too young, too inexperienced, and Ensign Lawrence was too young, not only in years, but in mind,—a mere blundering boy. It would be suicidal to match his unthinking faculties against the subtle wiles of the sages of the upper towns. Lieutenant Jerrold then it must be,—but Jerrold was the most literal-minded of men! He was absolutely devoid of imagination, of speculation, of that capacity to see through the apparent fact to the lurking truth beyond. He was a very efficient man in his place, but his place was a subordinate station. He would do with thoroughness the obviously necessary, but he would not be conscious of an emergency till it was before his feet as a pitfall, or immediately in his path as an enemy. He would take the regulation precautions, but he would not divine a danger, nor detect duplicity, nor realize a subtlety which he did not share. He was the predestined victim of ambush. He was a martinet on the drill ground and a terror at inspection. He laid great stress on pipe-clay and rotten-stone, and whatever the stress of the situation the men of his immediate command always showed up preternaturally smart. Captain Howard was no prophet, but he felt he could view with the eye of accomplished fact the return of Jerrold in ten days with the calm announcement that there were no British cannon in the Cherokee country, for he had been given this solemn assurance by no less a personage than Cunigacatgoah.