It was very dark about midnight when the whole place lay locked in slumber. The sentries, watchful as ever in the block-house towers and at the chained and barred gates, noted now and again shadowy figures about the region of the southeast bastion,—the old exhausted smoke-house had been in that locality,—and thence suppressed voices sounded occasionally in low-toned, earnest talk. No light showed save in glimpses for a while through the crevices in the walls of the building itself, and once or twice when the door opened and was suddenly shut. There Corporal O'Flynn and three soldiers and Captain Stuart himself, armed with mattocks, dug a deep trench in the tough red clay, carefully drawing to one side the dead ashes and cinders left by the fires of his earnest preparations against the siege. Then the lights were extinguished, and from the great traverse, in which was the powder magazine, they brought ten heavy bags of powder, and laid them in the trench, covering them over with the utmost caution, lest a mattock strike a spark from a stone here and there in the earth. At last, still observing great care, they tramped the clay hard and level as a floor, and spread again the ashes and cinders over the upturned ground, laying the chunks of wood together, as they had burnt half out after the last fire many weeks ago.
When Captain Stuart inveigled Captain Demeré thither the next morning, on some pretext concerning the removal of the troops, he was relieved to see that although Demeré was most familiar with the place he had not even the vaguest suspicion of what lay under his feet, for this was the best test as to whether the work had been well done. It was only at the moment of departure, of rendering up the spare arms, and serving out ammunition to the soldiers for the journey, that he was made aware how mysteriously the warlike stores had shrunken, but Oconostota's beadlike eyes glistened with rapture upon attaining the key of the magazine with its hoard of explosives, unwitting that it had ever contained more.
The soldiers went out of the gates in column, in heavy marching order, their flags and uniforms making a very pretty show for the last time on the broad open spaces about Fort Loudon. For the last time the craggy banks and heavily wooded hills of the Tennessee River echoed to the beat of the British drums. Behind, like a train of gypsies, were the horses purchased from the Indians, on which were mounted the women and little girls, with here and there a sick soldier, unable to keep his place in the ranks and guyed by his comrades with reviving jollity, in the face of hope and freedom, as "a squaw-man." The more active of the children, boys chiefly, ran alongside, and next in order came the settlers, now in column as "fencibles," and again one or two quitting the ranks to cuff into his proper place some irrepressible youngster disposed to wander. In the rear were the Indian safe-guards through the Cherokee nation, with their firelocks and feathers and scanty attire that suggested comfort this hot day. For the August sun shone from a sky of cloudless blue; a wind warm but fresh met them going the other way; the dew was soon dried and the temperature rose; the mountains glimmered ethereally azure toward the east with a silver haze amongst the domes and peaks, and toward the west they showed deeply and densely purple, as the summit lines stretched endlessly in long parallel levels.
And so these pioneers and the soldiers set forth on their way out of the land that is now Tennessee, to return no more; wending down among the sun-flooded cane-brakes, and anon following the trail through the dense, dark, grateful shades of the primeval woods. So they went to return no more,—not even in the flickering guise of spectral visitants to the scenes that knew them once,—scarcely as a vague and vagrant memory in the country where they first planted the home that cost them so dearly and that gave them but little.
Nevertheless, a hearty farewell it bestowed this morning,—for they sang presently as they went, so light and blithe of heart they were, and the crags and the hills, and the rocky banks of that lovely river, all cried out to them in varying tones of sweet echoes, and ever and again the boom of the drums beat the time.
CHAPTER XII
The definite ranks were soon broken; the soldiers marched at ease in and out amongst the Indians and the settlers, all in high good humor; jest and raillery were on every side. They ate their dinner, still on the march, the provisions for the purpose having been cooked with the morning meal. Thus they were enabled, despite the retarding presence of the women and children, and the enfeebling effects of the long siege, to make the progress of between fifteen and twenty miles that day. They encamped on a little plain near the Indian town of Taliquo. There, the supper having been cooked and eaten—a substantial meal of game shot during the day's march—and the shades of night descending thick in the surrounding woods, Captain Stuart observed the inexplicable phenomenon that every one of their Indian guards had suddenly deserted them.
The fact, however contemplated, boded no good. The officers, doubtless keenly sensitive to the renewal of anxiety after so slight a surcease of the sufferings of suspense, braced themselves to meet the emergency. A picket line was thrown out; sentinels were posted in the expectation of some imminent and startling development; the soldiers were ordered to sleep on their arms, to be in readiness for defense as well as to gain strength for the morrow's march and rest from the fatigues of the day. The little gypsy-looking groups of women and children, too, were soon hushed, and naught was left the anxious senior officers but to sleep if they might, or in default, as they lay upon the ground, to watch the great constellations come over the verge of the gigantic trees at the east of the open space, and deploy with infinite brilliance across the parade of the sky, and in glittering alignment pass over the verge of the western woods and out of sight. So came the great Archer, letting fly myriads of arrows of flakes of light in the stream near the camp. So came in slow, gliding majesty the Swan, with all the splendor of the Galaxy, like infinite unfoldings of white wings, in her wake. So came the Scorpio, with coil on coil of sidereal scintillations, and here and again the out-thrust dartings of a malign red star. And at last so came the morn.