The Story of Old Fort Loudon

by Charles Egbert Craddock

"By the howly poker!" exclaimed Corporal O'Flynn, beneath his breath, "that is the cravat of a man of quality,—some British officer of rank, belike."

He glanced with anxiety at Captain Stuart, whose every faculty seemed concentrated on the matter in hand.

"The Cherokees know that a white flag is a sign which we respect, and that that squaw is as safe with it as if she were the commandant of the post. I only wish Mrs. MacLeod could have a like security." This aspiration had the effect of fastening O'Flynn's eye and mind to the sighting of his firelock and obliterating his speculations concerning the cravat as spoil stripped from some slain officer of rank.

The two women met in the open space, with the rifles of how many keen-sighted, capricious savages leveled toward the spot Demeré hardly dared to think, as he watched Odalie in a sort of agony of terror that he might have felt had she been a cherished sister. They stood talking for a time in the attitudes and the manner of their age, which was near the same, swinging a little apart now and then, and coming together with suddenly renewed interest, and again, with free, casual gestures, and graceful, unconstrained pose, they both laughed, and seemed to take a congenial pleasure in their meeting. They sat down for a time on a bit of grass,—the sward springing anew, since it was so little trodden in these days, and with a richness that blood might have added to its vigor. Odalie answered, with apparent unsuspiciousness, certain shrewd questions concerning the armament of the fort, the store of ammunition, the quantity of provisions, the manner in which Stuart and Demeré continued to bear themselves, the expectation held out to the garrison of relief from any quarter,—questions which she was sure had never originated in the brain of Choo-qualee-qualoo, but had been prompted by the craft of Willinawaugh. Odalie, too, had been carefully prompted, and Stuart's anticipatory answers were very definitely delivered, as of her own volition. Then they passed to casual chatting, to the presentation of a bauble which Odalie had brought, and which seemed to touch Choo-qualee-qualoo to the point of detailing as gossip the fact that the attack on the white people had been intended to begin at MacLeod Station, Willinawaugh retaining so much resentment against the Scotchman to whom he had granted safe-conduct, thinking him French, when he only had a French squaw as a captive. Savanukah, who really spoke French, had made capital of it, and had rendered Willinawaugh's pretensions ridiculous in the eyes of the nation, for Willinawaugh had always boasted, to Savanukah at least, that he understood French, although it was beneath his dignity to speak it. This was done to reduce Savanukah's linguistic achievements, and to put him in the position of a mere interpreter of such people, when Savanukah was a great warrior, and yet could speak many languages, like the famous Baron Des Johnnes. And what was there now at MacLeod Station? Nothing: stockade, houses, fields, all burnt! Great was the wrath of Willinawaugh!

This talk, however, was less to the taste of Choo-qualee-qualoo than questions and answers concerning the young sentinel, whom the Cherokees had named Sekakee, "the grasshopper," as he was so loquacious; she often paused to put the strings of red beads into her mouth, and to gaze away at the glittering reaches of the river with large liquid eyes, sending now and then a glance at the window where that gruff young person leaned on his firelock. Savanukah's wife said Sekakee must be hungry, Choo-qualee-qualoo told Odalie. Was Sekakee hungry? She would bring him some beans. Savanukah said they would all be hungry soon. And the fort would be the Indians', and there would be nobody in the land but the Cherokees, and the French to carry on trade with them—was Odalie not glad that she was French?—for there had been great fighting with the English colonel's men, and Willinawaugh had told her to tell the captains English both that fact: much blood did they shed of their own blood, as red as their own red coats!

Odalie regarded this merely as an empty boast, the triumphs of Montgomery's campaign rife this day in the garrison, but it made her tremble to listen. Nevertheless, she had the nerve to walk with Choo-qualee-qualoo almost to the water-side, near the shadowy covert of the dense woods. Nothing lurked there now,—no flickering feather, no fiercely gay painted face. Her confidence seemed the ally of the Indians. The French captive of the Carolina Scotchman would be to them like a spy in the enemy's camp!

Perhaps the ordeal made the greater draughts on the courage of the men who stood in the shelter of the works and sighted the guns. The tension grew so great as she lingered there in the shadows that cold drops stood on Demeré's face, and the hand with which Stuart held the firelock trembled.

"It's a woman that can't get enough of anything," O'Flynn muttered to himself. "I'll have the lockjaw in me lungs, for I'm gittin' so as I can't move me chist to catch me breath."

But Odalie turned at last, and still signaling anxiously to the sentry, as if to implore silence and forbearance, she crossed the open space with her swift, swinging step, climbed the red clay slope among the spiked staves of the fraises, knelt down, slipped through the embrasure, and was lifted to her feet by Demeré, while the gunners stood by looking on, and smiling and ready to cry over her.

Twice afterward, the same detail, all enjoined to secrecy, loaded their cannon, and stood with burning matches ready to fire at the word, while the maneuver was repeated; an interval of a day or so was allowed to elapse on each occasion, and the hour was variously chosen—when it was possible for the French woman to escape, as Choo-qualee-qualoo was given to understand. Both times Demeré protested, although he had accorded the plan his countenance, urging the capricious temper of the Indians, who might permit Mrs. MacLeod's exit from the fort one day, and the next, for a whim, or for revenge toward her husband, who had incurred their special enmity for outwitting them on his journey hither, shoot her through the heart as she stood on the crest of the counterscarp. And of what avail then the shotted cannon, the firelocks in the loop-holes!