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They were awaiting the coming of certain pettiaugres from New Orleans,–a long journey by way of the Mississippi, the Ohio, the Cherokee, and the Tennessee rivers,–with a cargo of French goods cheaper than the English. They designed to establish a trading-post at some convenient point, out of reach of the grasping British, and thus to compete with the monopoly of the Cherokee commerce which the English government sought to foster. And then, to furnish a leaven of truth to this mass of lies, he detailed, with such a relish as only an Irishman can feel in a happy incongruity, that the French, having no market in old France for deerskins, the chief commodity of barter that the Indians possessed, disposed of them to ships of the British colonies, from New York and elsewhere, lured thus to New Orleans, in exchange for English cloths and other British manufactures, which the French then surreptitiously furnished to the Indians of the British alliance, underselling them on every hand.

“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!”

Albeit the Cherokee treaty with the British forbade the Indians to trade with white men of any other nationality than the English, these professed aliens were promised protection and concealment from the British government, and the pretext of their mission served to countenance their lingering stay.

Soon their presence seemed a matter of course. The Indians had recurred to their methods of suave hospitality. The two strangers encountered only friendly looks and words, while affecting to gratify curiosity by peering into all the unaccustomed habitudes,–the preparation of food, the manufacture of deerskin garments, the care of the sick, the modeling of bowls and jars of clay, in which the Cherokees were notably expert as well as in the weaving of feather-wrought fabrics and baskets, the athletic games, the horse-races, the continual dances and pantomimic plays,–and were presently domiciled as it were in the tribe. Of so little note did they soon become that when they gradually ceased these manifestations of interest, as if familiarity had sated their curiosity, it seemed to occasion no comment. They were obviously free to rove, to stay, to live their lives as they would without interference or surveillance.

Nevertheless, they still maintained the utmost caution. Sometimes, idleness being no phenomenon, they would lie half the day in the shade on the river-bank. The Tennessee was shrunken now in the heated season, and great gravelly slopes were exposed. The two loiterers were apparently motionless at first, but as their confidence increased and the chances of being observed lessened, L’Epine, always dreading discovery, began to casually pass the gravel and sand through his fingers as he lay; sometimes he idly trifled with the blade of a hoe in a shallow pool left by the receding waters, while the jolly Irishman, now grave and solicitous, watched him breathlessly. Then L’Epine 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’Epine’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!

This find chanced below a bluff in a sort of grotto of rock, which the water filled when the river was high, and left quite dry and exposed as it receded in the droughts of summer.

Whether the two strangers were too much and too long out of sight; whether attention was attracted by certain perforated dippers or pans which they now brought into assiduous use, but which they sought to conceal; whether they had been all the time furtively watched, with a suspicion never abated, one can hardly say. They had observed every precaution of secrecy that the most zealous heed could suggest. Only one worked with the pan while the other lay motionless and idle, and vigilantly watched and listened for any stealthy sign of approach. They fully realized the jealousy of the Indians concerning the mineral wealth of their territory, lest its discovery bring hordes of the craving white people to dispossess them. This prophetic terror was later fulfilled in the Ayrate division of the tribe, but to the northward, along the Tennessee River, they sedulously guarded this knowledge. Traditions there are to the present day in the Great Smoky Mountains concerning mines of silver and lead, and of localities rich in auriferous gravel which are approximately ascertained, but which the Cherokees knew accurately and worked as far as they listed;–they carried their secret with them to the grave or the far west.