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"If we do not keep our word, how can we expect Oconostota to keep his word?" asked Demeré. "But do we really expect it? Have we any guarantee?" Once more Stuart hesitated, then suddenly decided. "But if you have scruples" he broke off with a shrug of the shoulders. "I should leave Oconostota enough powder to amuse him with the guns for a while, but not enough to undertake a siege.
Captain Demeré, coming in at the gate of the stockade one afternoon, exclaimed in surprise and pleasure at the prettiness and the completeness of this rude comfort.
At the grand council, Atta-kulla-kulla, the great Cherokee chieftain, passionately declared to the head men, who listened approvingly, that "as to the few soldiers of Captain Demere that was there, he would take their Guns, and give them to his young men to hunt with and as to their clothes they would soon be worn out and their skins would be tanned, and be of the same colour as theirs, and that they should live among them as slaves."
In so doing, he acknowledged defeat, since he was compelled to abandon his original intention of relieving the beleaguered garrison of Fort London. Captain Demere and his devoted little band, who had been resolutely holding out, were now left to their tragic fate.
An odd interpretation of things of value, certainly a flimsy memento of some bright day, long ago, and far away, when, not all unwelcome, he had ridden at a lady's bridle-rein. Demeré looked at him with sudden interest, seemed about to speak, checked himself and said nothing. And thus with this souvenir the romance of Stuart's life perished unstoried.
But he had overheard Captain Demeré say to Captain Stuart that her husband had no right to bring her to this western wilderness, and that that terrible journey of so many hundred miles, keeping up on foot with men, was enough to have killed her; and Captain Stuart had replied that she would make a fine pace-setter for infantry in heavy marching order.
"When one of the soldiers died of the pleurisy last winter in the fort and Captain Demeré was ill himself, Captain Stuart read the service all solemn and proper, and had men to march with arms reversed and fire a volley over the grave." Mrs. Halsing rose to the occasion by demanding what good such evidences of religion might do in such a lot as there was at the fort.
"When our government armed these savage fiends against the French, civilized men and 'palefaces' like ourselves," said Captain Demeré, "and the American colonists fought with them as allies, side by side, despite their hideous barbarities, we fell upon our own sword." "Honors are easy," returned Captain Stuart, lightly. "Have the French armed no Indian allies? Did they not do it first?"
"I always knew it, such a proclivity for the military life! In the king's service at last." Odalie laughed, but Captain Demeré could not compass a smile. Stuart's next question she thought a bit of his fun. "Have you here," he said, with deep gravity, "some stout gown, fashioned with plaits and fullness in the skirt, and a cape or fichu, is that what you call it, about the shoulders?
He and Captain Demeré, accompanied by the newcomer, turned into the block-house, in order to question Sandy as to any information he might have been able to acquire concerning French emissaries, the disposition of the Cherokees, the devastation of the Virginia settlements, and any further news of General Forbes and the fall of Fort Duquesne now called Fort Pitt.
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