The Frontiersmen

by Charles Egbert Craddock

To a torrent of questions as to how the news had first come, how the menace lowered, what disposition for defense the stationers could make, the little girl seemed bewildered. She only answered definitely and very indifferently that they could easily get Ralph Emsden if they would go now to Blue Lick, and take his hide,—that is, if the French and their Choctaw Indians had not already possessed themselves of that valuable integument,—as if this were their primal object.

"Why, God-a-mercy, child," cried the superintendent of the ranch, "this news settles all scores; when it comes to a foreign foe the colonists are brothers."

"And besides," admitted one of the most truculent of the cow-drivers, "the cattle are all pretty well rounded in again; I doubt if more are lost than the wolves would have pulled down anyhow."

"And the Blue Lick Stationers' horses can be herded easy enough,—they are all on their old grass,—and be driven up to the settlement."

A courier had been sent off full tilt to the commandant at Fort Prince George, and night though it was, a detail of mounted soldiers appeared presently with orders to escort the ambassador and his linguister into the presence of that officer.

For this intelligence was esteemed serious indeed. Although hostilities had now practically ceased in America, the Seven Years' War being near its end, and peace negotiations actually in progress, still the treaty had not been concluded. So far on the frontier were such isolated garrisons as this of Fort Prince George, so imperfect and infrequent were their means of communicating with the outside world, that they were necessarily in ignorance of much that took place elsewhere, and a renewal of the conflict might have supervened long before their regular advices from headquarters could reach them. Even a chance rumor might bring them their first intimation of a matter of such great import to them. Therefore the commandant attached much significance to this account of an alarm at Blue Lick Station, because of a menace from the nearest French at Fort Toulouse, often called in that day, by reason of this propinquity, "the dangerous Alabama garrison."

For this reason, also, the hospitable hosts made no protest against the removal of the guests to Fort Prince George, although it might seem that the age of the one and the tender youth of the other ill fitted them to encounter this sudden transition from the cosy fireside to the raw vernal air on a misty midnight jaunt of a dozen miles through a primeval wilderness. And in truth the little lady seemed loath to leave the hearth; she visibly hesitated as she stood beside her chair with her hand on its back, and looked out at the black night, and the vague vista which the ruddy flare, from the wide door, revealed amidst the dense darkness; at the vanishing point of this perspective stood a group of mounted soldiers, "in column of twos" with two led horses, the scarlet uniforms and burnished accoutrements appearing and disappearing elusively as the flames rose and fell. The sounds of the champing of bits and the pawing of hoofs and the jingle of spurs were keenly clear on the chill rare air and seemed somehow consonant with the frosty glitter of the stars, very high in the black concave of the moonless sky. The smell of the rich mould, permeated with its vernal growths; the cool, distinct, rarefied perfume of some early flower already abloom; the antiphonal chant of frogs roused in the marsh or stream hard by, so imbued her senses with the realization of the hour and season that she never afterward thought of the spring without a vivid renewal of these impressions.

Her grandfather also seemed vaguely to hold back, even while he slowly mounted his horse; yet aware that naught is so imperative as military authority, it was only his inner consciousness that protested. Outwardly he professed alacrity, although in great surprise declaring that he could not imagine what the commandant could want with him. The little linguister, for her part, had no doubts. She was well aware indeed of the cause of the summons, and so dismayed by the prospect was even her doughty heart that the swift ride through the black forest was less terrible to her than the thought of the ordeal of the arrival. But the march was not without its peculiar trials. She shrank in instinctive affright from the unaccustomed escort of a dragoon on either side of her, looming up in the darkness like some phantom of the midnight. Even her volition seemed wrested from her by reason of the military training of the troop-horse which she rode;—he whirled about at the command "right-wheel!" ringing out in the darkness in the crisp peremptory tones of the non-commissioned officer, and plunged forward at the words "trot, march!" and adjusted his muscles instantaneously to the acceleration implied in "gallop!" and came to an abrupt and immovable pause at "halt!"—all with no more regard to her grasp on the reins than if she had been a fly on the saddle. As they went the wind beset her with cool, damp buffets on chin and cheek; the overhanging budding boughs, all unseen, drenched her with perfumed dew as she was whisked through their midst; the pace was adopted rather with reference to military custom and the expectation of the waiting commandant than her convenience; at every sudden whirl responsive to the word of command she was in momentary fear of being flung beneath the swiftly trampling hoofs of the horses on either side of her, and despite her recoil from the bigness and bluffness and presumable bloody-mindedness of the two troopers beside her she was sensible of their sympathy as they took heed of the instability with which she bounced about, perched up side-wise on a military saddle. Indeed, one was moved to ask her if she would not prefer to be strapped on with a girth, and to offer his belt for the purpose; and the other took the opportunity to gird at the forgetfulness of the cow-drivers to furnish her with her own pillion.

Nevertheless she dreaded the journey's end; and as they came out of the forests on the banks of the Keowee River, and beheld the vague glimmers of the gray day slowly dawning, albeit night was yet in the woods, and the outline of the military works of Fort Prince George taking symmetry and wonted proportions against the dappled eastern sky, all of blended roseate tints and thin nebulous grays, her heart so sank, she felt so tremulously guilty that had all the sixteen guns from the four bastions opened fire upon her at once she would not have been surprised.

No such welcome, however, did the party encounter. The officer commanding it stopped the ambassador and the linguister and let the soldiers go on at a round trot toward the great gate, which stood open, the bayonet on the musket of the sentry shining with an errant gleam of light like the sword of fire at the entrance of Paradise. For now the sun was up, the radiance suffusing the blue and misty mountains and the seas of fog in the valleys. Albeit its dazzling focus was hardly visible above the eastern heights, it sent a red glow all along the parapet of the covered way and the slope beyond to the river bank, where only two years before Captain Coytmore, then the commandant, had been murdered at a conference by the treacherous Cherokees. The senior officer, Captain Howard, being absent on leave, the present commandant, a jaunty lieutenant, smart enough although in an undress uniform, was standing at the sally-port now, all bland and smiling, to receive the ambassador and his linguister. He perceived at once that the old gentleman was deaf beyond any save adroit and accustomed communication. He looked puzzled for a moment, then spoke to the sergeant.