FullReads

“For what? My God!” Varney had not before called upon the Lord for twenty years. To hold a diplomatic conversation with an enraged wild Indian, flourishing a lighted candle in a powder magazine, is calculated to bring even the most self-sufficient and forgetful sinner to a sense of his dependence and helplessness. The lighted candle was a more subjugating weapon than a drawn sword. He had contemplated springing upon the stanch old warrior, although, despite the difference in age, he was no match for the Indian, in order to seek to extinguish it. He reflected, however, that in the struggle a flaring spark might cause the ignition of scattered particles of the powder about the floor, and thus precipitate the explosion which he shuddered to imagine. “For what, Colannah?” he asked again, in a soothing smooth cadence, “for what, my comrade, my benefactor for years, my best-beloved friend–avenged on me for what? Let’s go upstairs!”

The flicker of the wavering candle showed a smile of contempt on the face of the angry Indian for a moment, and admonished Varney that in view of the Cherokees’ relish of the torture his manifestations of anxiety but prolonged his jeopardy. It brought, too, a fuller realization of the gravity of the situation in that the Indian should so valiantly risk himself. He evidently intended to take the trader’s life, but in such wise that no vengeance for his death should fall upon the Cherokee nation. Abram Varney summoned all his courage, which was not inconsiderable, and had been cultivated by the wild and uncertain conditions of his life. Assured that he could do naught to hasten his release, he awaited the event in a sort of stoical patience, dreading, however, every motion, every sound, the least stir setting his expectant nerves aquiver. Silence, quiescence, brought the disclosure earlier than he had feared.

“When I took the boy Jan Queetlee–why do I call him thus, instead of by the name he has earned for himself, the noble Otasite of Tennessee Town?”–the old chief began as deliberately, as disregardfully of the surroundings as if seated under the boughs of one of the giant oaks on the safe slopes of Chilhowee yonder–“when I took him away from the braves who had overcome the South Carolina stationers, I owed him no duty. He was puny and ill and white and despised! You British say the Indian has no pity. A man’s son or brother or father or mother has claims upon him. Otasite was naught to me, a mere eeankke!” (a captive). “I owed the child no duty. My love was voluntary. I gave it a free gift; no duty! And he was little, and drooping, and meagre, and ill all the time! But he grew; soon no such boy in the Cherokee nation, soon hardly such a warrior in all the land–not even Otasite of Watauga, nor yet Otasite of Eupharsee; perhaps at his age Oconostota excelled” (Oconostota always was preeminently known as the “Great Warrior”). He paused to shake his head and meditate on difficult comparisons and instances of prowess. After an interval which, long enough, seemed to the trembling trader illimitable, he recommenced abruptly: “Says the Goweno long time ago to me, ‘Is not there a white youth among you?’ I say, ‘He is content; he has no white friends, it seems.’ Says the Goweno to me, ‘Ah, ah, we must look into this!’ and says no more.”

Colannah flung back his head and laughed so long and so loud that every echo of the sarcastic guttural tones, striking back from the stone walls of the cavern, smote Varney with as definite a shock as a blow.

“And now,” the Cherokee resumed, with a changed aspect and a pathetic cadence, “I am an old man, and I lean upon Otasite. My sons are all dead–one in the wars with the Muscogee and two slain by the Chickasaw. And the last he said to me, with his lingering latest breath, loath to go and leave me desolate, ‘But you have an adopted son, you have the noble Otasite.’ And now,” his voice was firm again, “if I have him not, I go too, and you go. We go together.”