Creeping out into the invisibility of the clouded day, Abram Varney had not great fear of detection. The mists that shielded him from view furthered still his flight, for his footsteps were hardly to be distinguished amidst the continual dripping of the moisture from the leaves of the dank autumnal woods. At night he knew the savages would be most on the alert. They would scarcely suspect his flight in the broad day. Moreover, their suspicions of his presence here were lulled; craftily enough he followed after the horsemen who fancied they were pursuing him—they would scarcely look for their quarry hard on their own heels. He experienced no sentiment but one of intense satisfaction when, as invisible as a spirit, he passed his own trading-house, and divined from the sounds within that the Indians were busy in sacking it, albeit a greater financial loss than seems probable at the present day; for the Indian trade was a very considerable commerce, as the accounts of those times will show. The English and French governments did not disdain to compete for its monopoly with various nations of Indians, for the sake of gaining control of the savages thereby, in view of supplies furnished by the white traders vending these commodities and resident in the tribes.
Recollections of the items and values of his invoices, afflicting to Varney's commercial spirit, threaded his consciousness only when again safe in Charlestown. He reached that haven at last by the exercise of great good judgment. He realized that another party would presently be sent out when no news of capture came from the earlier pursuers; he divined that the second expedition would take the Chickasaw path, for being friendly to the British, that tribe would naturally be thought of as a refuge to an Englishman in trouble with the Cherokees; therefore Varney, lest he be overtaken on the way, avoided with a great struggle the temptation, mustered all his courage, and adopting an unprecedented expedient, turned off to the country of the Muscogees. These Indians, always more or less inimical to the colonists, bloodthirsty, cruel, crafty, and but recently involved in a furious war against the Cherokees, were glad to thwart Colannah in any cherished scheme of revenge, and received the fugitive kindly. Although but for this fact his temerity in venturing among them would have cost him his life, they ministered to his needs with great hospitality, and forwarded him on his way to Charlestown, sending a strong guard with him as far as Long Cane settlement, a little above Ninety-Six.
Wyejah also made his escape. Appalled by the calamity of the accidental blow, he "took sanctuary." In the supreme moment of excitement he flung himself into the Tennessee River, and while eagerly sought by the emissaries of Colannah in the woods, he swam to Choté, "beloved town," the city of refuge of the whole Cherokee nation, where the shedder of blood was exempt from vengeance. As years went by, however, either because of the death of Colannah, or because time had so far softened the bereavement of the friends of Otasite that they were prevailed upon to accept the "satisfaction," the presents required even from an in voluntary homicide, he was evidently freed from the restricted limits of the "ever-sacred soil," for his name is recorded in the list of warriors who went to Charlestown in 1759 to confer with Governor Lyttleton on the distracted state of the frontier, and being held as one of the hostages of that unlucky embassy, he perished in the massacre of the Cherokees by the garrison of Fort Prince George, after the treacherous murder of the commandant, Captain Coytmore, by a ruse of the Indian king, Oconostota.
Abram Varney never ventured back among "the Nation," as he called the Cherokees, as if they were the only nation on the earth. Now and again in their frequent conferences with the Governor at Charlestown, rendered necessary by their ever-recurrent friction with the British government, he sought out members of the delegation for some news of his old friends, his old haunts. Not one of them would take his hand; not one would hear his voice; they looked beyond him, through him, as if he were the impalpable atmosphere, as if he did not exist.
It was a little thing,—the displeasure of such men—mere savages,—but it cut him to the heart. So long they had been his friends, his associates, as the chief furniture of the world!
He busied himself with the affairs of his firm at Charlestown, but for a time he was much changed, much cast down, for he had a sense of responsibility, and his conscience was involved, and although he had sought to do good he had only wrought harm, and irreparable harm. He grew old very fast, racked as he was by rheumatism, a continual reminder of the stern experiences of his flight. He had other reminders in his unquiet thoughts, but he grew garrulous at a much later date. Years intervened before he was wont to sit in front of the warehouse, with his stick between his knees, his hands clasped on the round knob at its top, his chin on his hands, and cheerily chirp of his days in "the Nation." The softening touch of time brought inevitably its glamours and its peace; his bleared old eyes, fixed on the glittering expanse of the harbor, beheld with pleasure, instead of the sea, the billowy reaches of that mighty main of mist-crested mountains known as the Great Smoky Range, and through all his talk, and continually through his mind, flitted the bright animated presence of the victor at chungke.
THE CAPTIVE OF THE ADA-WEHI
Attusah was obviously an impostor. Many, however, had full faith in his supernatural power, and often he seemed to believe in his own spectral account of himself.