The adventurers had not anticipated a reception of this sort, for the hospitality of the Indians was proverbial. Credentials surely were not necessary in the social circles of the Cherokees, and two men to six thousand offered no foundation for fear. O'Kimmon had such confidence in his own propitiating wiles and crafty policy that he did not realize how his genial deceit was emblazoned upon his face, how blatant it was in his voice. But for its challenging duplicity there would hardly have arisen a suggestion of suspicion. Many men on various errands easily found their way into the Indian tribes when at peace with the British, and suffered no injury. Nevertheless as the wise Oo-koo-koo looked at O'Kimmon thus steadily, with so discerning a gaze, the Irishman felt each red hair of his scalp rise obtrusively into notice, as if to suggest the instant taking of it. He instinctively put on his coonskin cap again to hold his scalp down, as he said afterward.
"Why come?" Oo-koo-koo demanded sternly.
"Tell the truth, for God's sake!" L'Épine adjured O'Kimmon in a low voice.
"I'm not used to it! 'T would give me me death o' cold!" quavered the Irishman, in sad sincerity, at a grievous loss.
"Asgaya uneka (White man), but no Ingliss," said the astute Indian, touching the breast of each with the bowl of his pipe, still in his hand and still alight as it was when the interruption of their advent had occurred.
"No, by the powers,—not English!" exclaimed the Irishman impulsively, seeing he was already discovered. "I'm me own glorious nation!—the pride o' the worruld,—I was born in the Emerald Isle, the gem o' the say! I'm an Oirishman from the tip o' me scalp—in the name o' pity why should I mintion the contrivance" (dropping his voice to an appalled muffled tone)—"may the saints purtect ut! But surely, Mister Injun, I've no part nor lot with the bloody bastes o' Englishers either over the say or in the provinces. If I were the brother-in-law o' the Governor o' South Carolina I'd hev a divorce from the murtherin' Englisher before he could cry, 'Quarter!'"
Oo-koo-koo, the wise Owl, made no direct answer.
"Asgaya uneka (White man), but no Ingliss," he only said, now indicating L'Épine.
"Frinch in the mornin', plaze yer worship, an' only a bit o' English late in the afternoon o' the day," cried O'Kimmon, officiously, himself once more.
"French father, English mother," explained L'Épine, feeling that the Indian was hardly a safe subject for the pleasantries of conundrums.