United States or Saint Martin ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Then L'Épine would shake his head, and the mercurial O'Kimmon groaned his deep despondency. Once the Frenchman's head was not shaken. A flush sprang up among the pragmatic lines of L'Épine's face; his dark eyes glittered; his hand shook; for as he held out the hoe, on its blade were vaguely glimmering particles among the sand. Later the two adventurers cherished a small nugget of red, red gold!
The exploration of L'Épine and O'Kimmon of necessity was conducted chiefly by day, but one night the prospectors could not be still, the moon on the sand was so bright! The time which they had fixed for a silent, secret departure was drawing near. Their bags were almost filled, but they lingered for a little more, and covetously a little more still.
Credentials surely were not necessary in the social circles of the Cherokees, and two men to six thousand offered no foundation for fear. O'Kimmon had such confidence in his own propitiating wiles and crafty policy that he did not realize how his genial deceit was emblazoned upon his face, how blatant it was in his voice.
L'Épine adjured O'Kimmon in a low voice. "I'm not used to it! 'T would give me me death o' cold!" quavered the Irishman, in sad sincerity, at a grievous loss. "No, by the powers, not English!" exclaimed the Irishman impulsively, seeing he was already discovered. "I'm me own glorious nation! the pride o' the worruld, I was born in the Emerald Isle, the gem o' the say!
"The intellects of the Frinch are so handsome!" cried O'Kimmon, the tears of delighted laughter in his eyes. "Faix, that is what makes 'em so close kin to the Oirish!" Soon their presence seemed a matter of course. The Indians had recurred to their methods of suave hospitality.
"Frinch in the mornin', plaze yer worship, an' only a bit o' English late in the afternoon o' the day," cried O'Kimmon, officiously, himself once more. "French father, English mother," explained L'Épine, feeling that the Indian was hardly a safe subject for the pleasantries of conundrums.
"If it plaze yer honor," said O'Kimmon in English, taking off his coonskin cap with a lavish flourish as a tall and stately Indian hastily garbed in fine raiment of the aboriginal type, a conspicuous article of which was a long feather-wrought mantle, both brilliant and delicate of effect, detached himself from the group and came forward, "I can't spake yer illigant language, me eddication bein' that backward, but I kin spake me own so eloquent that it would make a gate-post prick up the ears of understanding.
Nevertheless as the wise Oo-koo-koo looked at O'Kimmon thus steadily, with so discerning a gaze, the Irishman felt each red hair of his scalp rise obtrusively into notice, as if to suggest the instant taking of it. He instinctively put on his coonskin cap again to hold his scalp down, as he said afterward. "Why come?" Oo-koo-koo demanded sternly. "Tell the truth, for God's sake!"
L'Épine felt entrapped, regretful, and wished to recede. He winced palpably as O'Kimmon's rich Irish voice, full of words, struck once more upon the air. "Me godson, the Governor o' South Carolina," Terence O'Kimmon resumed, lying quite recklessly, "sint his humble respects, an' he's that swate upon yez that he licks his fingers ter even sphake yer name!
They rob us not of the yellow stone which the Carolina people think so precious!" rejoined Oo-koo-koo, while O'Kimmon and L'Épine looked from one to the other as the cheera-taghe sustained this fugue of satiric accusation. "Not they," croaked the responsive voice, "for behold, we have long time fed and lodged them and given them of our best. We have believed them and trusted them.
Word Of The Day