"The Cherokees?" I asked.
"Even so. I speak of a hundred moons back, when I was yet a stripling, with little experience in war. I saw the peril, but I could not think that such a race could vie with the Children of the Sun. But one black night, in the Moon of Wildfowl, the raiders descended in a torrent and took us unprepared. What had been a happy people dwelling with full barns and populous wigwams became in a night a desolation. Our wives and children were slain or carried captive, and on every Cherokee belt hung the scalps of my warriors. Some fled westwards to our nation, but they were few that lived, and the tribe of Shalah went out like a torch in a roaring river.
"I slew many men that night, for the gods of my fathers guided my arm. Death I sought, but could not find it; and by and by I was alone in the woods, with twenty scars and a heart as empty as a gourd. Then I turned my steps to the rising sun and the land of the white man, for there was no more any place for me in the councils of my own people.
"All this was many moons ago, and since then I have been a wanderer among strangers. While I reigned in my valley I heard of the white man's magic and of the power of his gods, and I longed to prove them. Now I have learned many things which were hid from the eyes of our oldest men. I have learned that a man may be a great brave, and yet gentle and merciful, as was the Master, I have learned that a man may be a lover of peace and quiet ways and have no lust of battle in his heart, and yet when the need comes be more valiant than the best, even as you, brother. I have learned that the God of the white men was Himself a man who endured the ordeal of the stake for the welfare of His enemies. I have seen cruelty and cowardice and folly among His worshippers; but I have also seen that His faith can put spirit into a coward's heart, and make heroes of mean men. I do not grudge my years of wandering. They have taught me such knowledge as the Sachems of my nation never dreamed of, and they have given me two comrades after my own heart. One was he who died yesterday, and the other is now by my side."
These words of Shalah did not make me proud, for things were too serious for vanity. But they served to confirm in me my strange exaltation. I felt as one dedicated to a mighty task.
"Tell me, what is the invasion which threatens the Tidewater?"
"The whole truth is not known to me; but from the speech of my tribesmen, it seems that the Children of the West Wind, twelve moons ago, struck their tents and resolved to seek a new country. There is a restlessness comes upon all Indian peoples once in every five generations. It fell upon my grandfather, and he travelled towards the sunset, and now it has fallen upon the whole race of the Sun. As they were on the eve of journeying there came to them a prophet, who told them that God would lead them not towards the West, as was the tradition of the elders, but eastwards to the sea and the dwellings of the Palefaces."
"Is that the crazy white man we have heard of?"
"He is of your race, brother. What his spell is I know not, but it works mightily among my people. They tell me that he hath bodily converse with devils, and that God whispers His secrets to him in the night-watches. His God hath told him—so runs the tale—that He hath chosen the Children of the Sun for His peculiar people, and laid on them the charge of sweeping the white men off the earth and reigning in their stead from the hills to the Great Waters."
"Do you believe in this madman, Shalah?" I asked.