‘Maybe, but they can’t. Tell it aloud,’ said Puck.
Pharaoh shook himself, laid his fiddle beside him, and began:
‘I’d left Red Jacket and Cornplanter riding home with me after Big Hand had said that there wouldn’t be any war. That’s all there was to it. We believed Big Hand and we went home again—we three braves. When we reached Lebanon we found Toby at the cottage with his waistcoat a foot too big for him—so hard he had worked amongst the yellow-fever people. He beat me for running off with the Indians, but ’twas worth it—I was glad to see him,—and when we went back to Philadelphia for the winter, and I was told how he’d sacrificed himself over sick people in the yellow fever, I thought the world and all of him. No I didn’t neither. I’d thought that all along. That yellow fever must have been something dreadful. Even in December people had no more than begun to trinkle back to town. Whole houses stood empty and the niggers was robbing them out. But I can’t call to mind that any of the Moravian Brethren had died. It seemed like they had just kept on with their own concerns, and the good Lord he’d just looked after ’em. That was the winter—yes, winter of Ninety-three—the Brethren bought a stove for the Church. Toby spoke in favour of it because the cold spoiled his fiddle hand, but many thought stove-heat not in the Bible, and there was yet a third party which always brought hickory coal foot-warmers to service and wouldn’t speak either way. They ended by casting the Lot for it, which is like pitch and toss. After my summer with the Senecas, church-stoves didn’t highly interest me, so I took to haunting round among the French emigrés which Philadelphia was full of. My French and my fiddling helped me there, d’ye see. They come over in shiploads from France, where, by what I made out, every one was killing every one else by any means, and they spread ’emselves about the city—mostly in Drinker’s Alley and Elfrith’s Alley—and they did odd jobs till times should mend. But whatever they stooped to, they were gentry and kept a cheerful countenance, and after an evening’s fiddling at one of their poor little proud parties, the Brethren seemed old-fashioned. Pastor Meder and Brother Adam Goose didn’t like my fiddling for hire, but Toby said it was lawful in me to earn my living by exercising my talents. He never let me be put upon.
‘In February of Ninety-four—No, March it must have been, because a new ambassador called Fauchet had come from France, with no more manners than Genêt the old one—in March, Red Jacket came in from the Reservation bringing news of all kind friends there. I showed him round the city, and we saw General Washington riding through a crowd of folk that shouted for war with England. They gave him quite rough music, but he looked ’twixt his horse’s ears and made out not to notice. His stirrup brished Red Jacket’s elbow, and Red Jacket whispered up, “My brother knows it is not easy to be a chief?" Big Hand shot just one look at him and nodded. Then there was a scuffle behind us over some one who wasn’t hooting at Washington loud enough to please the people. We went away to be out of the fight. Indians won’t risk being hit.’
‘What do they do if they are?’ Dan asked.
‘Kill, of course. That’s why they have such proper manners. Well, then, coming home by Drinker’s Alley to get a new shirt which a French Vicomte’s lady was washing to take the stiff out of (I’m always choice in my body-linen) a lame Frenchman pushes a paper of buttons at us. He hadn’t long landed in the United States, and please would we buy. He sure-ly was a pitiful scrattel—his coat half torn off, his face cut, but his hands steady; so I knew it wasn’t drink. He said his name was Peringuey, and he’d been knocked about in the crowd round the Stadt—Independence Hall. One thing leading to another we took him up to Toby’s rooms, same as Red Jacket had taken me the year before. The compliments he paid to Toby’s Madeira wine fairly conquered the old man, for he opened a second bottle and he told this Monsieur Peringuey all about our great stove dispute in the Church. I remember Pastor Meder and Brother Adam Goose dropped in, and although they and Toby were direct opposite sides regarding stoves, yet this Monsieur Peringuey he made ’em feel as if he thought each one was in the right of it. He said he had been a clergyman before he had to leave France. He admired at Toby’s fiddling, and he asked if Red Jacket, sitting by the spinet, was a simple Huron. Senecas aren’t Hurons, they’re Iroquois, of course, and Toby told him so. Well, then, in due time he arose and left in a style which made us feel he’d been favouring us, instead of us feeding him. I’ve never seen that so strong before—in a man. We all talked him over but couldn’t make head or tail of him, and Red Jacket come out to walk with me to the French quarter when I was due to fiddle at a party. Passing Drinker’s Alley again we saw a naked window with a light in it, and there sat our button-selling Monsieur Peringuey throwing dice all alone, right hand against left.
‘Says Red Jacket, keeping back in the dark, “Look at his face!”
‘I was looking. I protest to you I wasn’t frightened like I was when Big Hand talked to his gentlemen. I—I only looked, and I only wondered that even those dead dumb dice ’ud dare to fall different from what that face wished. It—it was a face!
‘“He is bad,” says Red Jacket. “But he is a great chief. The French have sent away a great chief. I thought so when he told us his lies. Now I know.”
‘I had to go on to the party, so I asked him to call round for me afterwards and we’d have hymn-singing at Toby’s as usual.