How Ronald MacDonnell became separated from one of these parties was never very clear afterward to his own mind. His attention was attracted first by the sight of a canny Scotch face or two, which he knew, lying very low and very still; he suffered a pang which he could never evade. These were the men who had followed him to the finish, and he took out his note-book and holding it against a tree, made a memorandum of the locality for the burial parties, and then, with great particularity, of the names, “For the auld folks at hame,” and he quoted, mournfully a line of the old Gaelic lament much sung by the Scotch emigrants “Ha til mi tulidh” (we return no more), which was sadly true of the Highland soldiery in the British ranks,—an instance is given of a regiment of twelve hundred men who served in America of whom only seventy-six ever saw their native hills again. Then, briskly putting up the book he went on a bit, glancing sharply about for the living of his command, even now thrusting their reckless heads into the den of the Cherokee lion. “Ill-fau’rd chields, and serve them right,” he said, struggling with the dismay in his heart for their sake.
Perhaps he did not realize how far those active strides were carrying him from the command. In fact the march continued that night until the sinking of the moon, the army pressing resolutely on through the broken region of the mountain defiles. MacDonnell noted no Cherokee in sight, that is to say, not a living one. Several of the dead lay on the ground, their still faces already bearing that wan, listening, attentive look of death; they were heedless indeed of the hands that had rifled them of their possessions, for there were a few of the Chickasaw allies intent on plunder.
Presently as he went down a sunset glade, MacDonnell saw advancing a notable figure, a Chickasaw chief, tall, lithe, active, muscular, with a gait of athletic grace. He was wearing the warrior’s “crown,” a towering head-dress in the form of a circlet of white swan’s feathers of graduated height, standing fifteen inches high in front, and at the bottom woven into a band of swan’s down—all so deftly constructed that the method of the manufacture of the whole could not be discerned, it is said, without taking it into the hand. To the fringed borders of a sort of sleeveless hunting shirt of otter-skin and his buckskin leggings bits of shells were attached and glittered, and this betokened his wealth, for these beads represented the money of the Indians, with the unique advantage that when not in active circulation, one’s currency could be worn as an ornament. It has been generally known under the generic name “wampum,” although several of the Southern tribes called it “roanoke” or “pe-ack.” It was made in tiny, tubular beads, of about an inch in length, of the conch and mussel-shells, requiring the illimitable leisure of the Indian to polish the cylinder to the desired glister, and drill through it the hollow no larger than a knitting-needle might fill. His chest and arms were painted symbolically in red and blue arabesques, and his face, of a proud, alert cast was smeared with vermilion and white. All his flesh glistened and shone with the polishing of some unguent. MacDonnell had heard a deal of preaching in his time of the Scotch Presbyterian persuasion, and in the dearth of expression Biblical phrases sometimes came to him. “Oil to give him a cheerful countenance,” he quoted, still gazing at the grim face and figure. So intently he gazed, indeed, that the Indian hesitated, doubting if the Highland officer recognized him as a friend. Breaking off a branch of a green locust hard by and holding it aloft at one side, after the manner of a peaceful embassy, he continued his stately advance until within a yard of the silent Scotchman, also advancing. Then they both paused.
“Ish la chu; Angona?” said the Indian, in a sonorous voice. (Are you come, a friend?)
With the true Briton’s aversion to palaver, intensified by his own incapacity for its practice, Ronald MacDonnell discovered little affinity for barbaric ceremonial. Nevertheless he was constrained by the punctilious sense that a gentleman must reply to a courteous greeting in the manner expected of him. His experience with the Chickasaws had acquainted him with the appropriate response.
“Arabre—O, Angona,” (I am come, a friend) he returned, a trifle sheepishly, and without the ore rotunda effect of the elocution of the Indian.
The young chief looked hard at him, evidently desirous of engaging him in conversation, unaware that it was a game at which the Scotchman was incapacitated for playing.
“Big battle,” he observed, after a doubtful interval.
“A bonny ploy,” assented the officer, who had seen much bigger ones.