The Story of Old Fort Loudon

by Charles Egbert Craddock

Captain Demeré's suggestion broke discordantly on the serenity of the hour and the theme.

"Oh! oh!" cried Odalie, "and have Fifine forever tracing the map of anguish all around that terrible head, never tiring of 'Here's where the tomahawk hit him a clip!' and 'Here's where the scalping-knife began!'"

"What a consideration!" exclaimed the officer, with some asperity. "And if you will excuse me, how very French! The man's rifle—the finest marksman I ever saw—is the point for your consideration. And you find his looks not convenable."

"Fifine, herself, will be less likely to have a head like his, perhaps, if he will come and strengthen our station," suggested Alexander MacLeod, astutely.

"Oh,—yes, yes!" assented Odalie, with a sudden expression of fright.

"Besides," said Captain Stuart, with his bluff nonchalance, "the river-bend will be so easily famous for the good looks of the stationers that a trifle of discount upon Gilfillan will not mar the sum total."

"And then," said Captain Demeré, "he is a very exceptional kind of man—you are fortunate to find such a man—for a single man, in the settlements. You would not like it if he were one of the rattling, roaring blades that such irresponsible single fellows are here, usually."

"Mighty sprightly company, some of these rufflers," remarked Captain Stuart, with a twinkling eye. "Rarely good company," he averred.

"And besides," added Captain Demeré, whose extreme sensitiveness enabled him better to appreciate her sentiment than the others, despite his rebuke, "you need not have him in the same house with you; you can have two cabins within the stockade and connected by the palisades from one house to the other. Otherwise, in the present state of feeling among the Cherokees it would hardly be safe so far from the fort."

It had been explained that Alexander was especially solicitous concerning the choice of his location, since the quality of the land had not been well selected in his former home on New River. Here he had found in a comparatively small compass the ideal conjuncture for those growths so essential to the pioneer who must needs subsist on the produce of his own land. In that day and with the extremely limited and difficult means of transportation, no deficit could be filled from the base of a larger supply. The projected station, he thought, would be as safe as any other place outside the range of the guns of the fort, but he welcomed the idea of numbering among its denizens the hardy hunter, Gilfillan, and cared no more for his bald head than he did for the broad, smooth, handsome plait of Captain Stuart's fair hair. MacLeod had all the desperate energy of one who seeks to retrieve good fortune, although no great deal of money was involved in his earlier disasters. His father had had shipping interests, and the loss of a barque and her cargo at sea had sufficed to swamp the young man's financial craft on shore. As to the possessions of his wife's family—they were a few inconsiderable heirlooms, some fine traditions, growing now a trifle stale and moldy with age, and a brave, proud spirit in facing the world, the result of the consciousness of having a fine old record to sustain; her forefathers had been of that class of refugees from religious persecution whose property was of such a character and whose emergency was so imminent that they had fled from France with little else than the garments in which they stood. They had not prospered since, nor multiplied, and Odalie was nearly the last of the family. A certain innate refinement in both, MacLeod's gravity and dignity of carriage and the distinction of Odalie's manner, notwithstanding its simplicity, marked their exceptional quality to a discerning judgment, despite their precarious plight. The two officers had grave doubts as to the wisdom of their adventuring so boldly in the quest of fortune in these savage wildernesses, but both felt that it was well for the community that harbored them, and each knew of isolated instances elsewhere when such folly had been transmuted into a potent sapience by the bounty of uncovenanted good luck. They had experienced a sort of pleasure in the advent of the newcomers, for Sandy's intelligence and information were far above the average, and they were more or less isolated in this remote frontier post from those dainty charms of toilette and manner which Odalie would have found means to practice were she cast away on a desert island, all the more marked, perhaps, from their demure simplicity and a sort of unstudied elegance.