“Oh…then I came just in time to rescue you, Laura,” Will said. “Miles reads too much. I was hoping he had gotten out of the habit over the years. Perhaps he is incurable.”
“No, really,” she protested, “we were talking about Lalla Rookh.”
Will Rounce turned slowly and looked searchingly into Miles’ eyes. It was an utterly cold, probing stare.
Miles felt a queer, leaping excitement. For some reason the title had some special meaning for Will, and whatever the meaning was, Will was not pleased that Miles might know of it.
“Why that poem?” Will inquired abruptly.
“It is one of Moore’s.” Miles brushed the comment away as if no longer interested. “We were talking of Moore and Byron.”
“I am not interested in poetry,” Will replied abruptly. “Poetry is for women.”
“Many of us in the Army,” Miles replied quietly, “found poetry very interesting. It is easy to recall, and sometimes on the long marches one can remember it with real pleasure. You might be interested to know, Will, that every war brings on a new interest in poetry…and it is the soldiers who are interested.”
—
During the meal that followed Miles found it difficult to believe that the people among whom he sat were mostly of Cherokee extraction, and that at least two of them were full-bloods. Yet they had been in contact with Europeans for upward of three hundred years, some say from the time of de Soto and his conquistadors. After the Spanish had come Frenchmen, and then the Scots, Irish, and English traders.
Will Rounce was in great form. Always an easy, graceful conversationalist, he was at his best tonight, turning from topic to topic with ease. Strange, that with his admitted attitude toward the Cherokees he should be here. Miles’ thoughts returned to Will’s queer reaction to the title of the poem. Obviously it meant something more to him than just the title of a book…but what?
Laura’s laughter drew his attention and he found all eyes on him. “Will was telling us about the time you were thrown from the black horse.”
“Did he tell you,” Miles replied dryly, “that it was because he’d put a burr under the saddle blanket?”
“Will!” Laura protested. “Did you do that?”
Rounce looked up, laughing. “Probably…Miles was growing too sure of himself, and I thought the fall would do him good.”
As he spoke the last words he looked down the table, but his expression was cold, almost threatening.
So here it was again, Miles thought: They sometimes worked together but they always fought…and who would win this time?
CHAPTER 4
Yes, that was the way of it. Will had put the burr beneath his saddle to give him a fall. What Miles neglected to tell his dinner companions was that it was a contest with a gold guinea as the prize, offered by Elias Rounce.
Trust Will to pull a stunt like that with a prize at stake. It was a good thing to remember, Miles told himself, and helpful to have recalled it just now. He would remain with the Army and let Will make his money with whatever scheme he had planned.
There were other stories Will Rounce could have told, like the time the four Dutch boys had set upon them. It was four to two, but unequal at that, for the two had been trained at fighting, well taught in boxing, wrestling, and the quarterstaff by that man of many wisdoms, Phineas Cronkite.
The first thing Phineas had taught them was that most such fights are won by the first blow, so to strike first and strike hard…and strike hard they did, and from then on it was two and two, and a fair fight except that the remaining two Dutch boys had seen what had happened to the first two. Victory had been complete.
There had been a subsequent occasion when two rough-looking men had set upon them in Philadelphia. Neither boy was yet sixteen, and the two men had followed them up a dark street and demanded their money.
Miles struck first. He was quick with his fists and the two men were expecting no trouble, and Miles’ blow had been an underhanded blow to the belly, and in the darkness the man had not seen it coming. As he doubled over with pain, his face made a perfect target for Miles’ jerked-up knee, and as he fell, Miles hit him again. It took Will Rounce little longer to finish off his man.
It was a time when little was known of boxing and wrestling beyond the usual frontier sort of back-heel and hip-lock, a strong back type of gripping and throwing with relatively no science to it. Phineas Cronkite was a master at Cornish-style wrestling and while in England he had picked up a fancy bit of fist work, which he taught them. No doubt about it, the school directed by Elias Rounce had been an odd one, but efficient.
It was seventeen years since then, and Will a man of importance now, far more than any mere lieutenant of cavalry who owned a few blocks of land out west, land of so little value that a neighbor traded off three square miles of it for a pair of red-top boots.
Yet it was good to be here, dining in the candlelight on the fine old silver and crystal, with the soft movements of Negro servants and a distant sound of music to lend background to their talk. It was a long way from the campfires of the Comanche or the Sac and Fox, and farther still from the fo’c’sle of a windjammer beating up to Vigo Bay.
Seventeen years…What a lot could happen to a man in that time! And what a lot had happened to him. He was a different man now than he had been when he left Rounceville to go out into the world by himself.
Later, alone in the library, Laura found him. He was looking over the books again, a glass of Madeira in his hand.
“Do you find time to read, Lieutenant?”
“There is always time. Those who say they do not have time for books simply do not want to read badly enough. Often they have been my only companions, and their advantage is that they say the same words to everyone.”
“And people do not?”
“They tell you what you wish to hear…or what they believe you wish to hear.”
“And what about Will?”
“It is for you to make your own judgment on that score.”
“You don’t like him?”
“I did not say that, nor did I mean to imply it. How can one judge a man one has not seen in seventeen years?”
“You are quibbling.”
“Perhaps.”
“But you were his best friend!”
He considered that. “Yes…yes, I believe I was.”
“Then how can you talk so against your best friend?”
Miles returned the book to its place on the shelf.
“Miss McCrae, they were your words, not mine. I have said that I believed I was his best friend. It does not necessarily follow that he was also my best friend.”
She studied him curiously, and without, he suspected, much liking for him. “You make me very curious, Lieutenant. Will has told me of the education you two received, and unless I am mistaken you two were together for twelve years. He said you came to them when you were five.”
“Yes.”
“Who were your people?”
He hesitated, then he said, “I do not know.”
She tilted her head to the side a little. “Do you know, Lieutenant, Will told me the same thing, and I believe he told me the truth, but I do not believe you have told the truth. I believe there is something you knew that you never told them, not Will, nor your Phineas nor Elias Rounce.”
He smiled, listening to the drum of horses’ hooves upon the road outside.
“What would it matter?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” She was puzzled. “But I am curious.”
Several people came into the library and Miles walked toward the door. He was in time to see a horseman arrive, the same he had heard approaching.
The rider was a uniformed soldier who swung alongside the veranda, dismounted, and tendered him a letter. “You are Lieutenant Tolan, sir? The Colonel’s orders, sir. You are to go to him at once!”
“You mean I must leave tonight?”
“Tonight, sir. The Colonel was most explicit.”
Miles ripped open the envelope.
Report to me at once. This station.
I will accept neither delay nor excuses.
Miles spoke to a waiting slave. “Have my horse saddled and brought around.”
He went hurriedly to his room and gathered his few possessions together. He was hurrying down the steps when he met McCrae. Laura was right behind him.
“Here! What’s this? You’re not leaving?”
“Sorry, sir. Orders from Colonel White.”
John McCrae was serious. “I hope you are in no trouble. Colonel Lorin White has the reputation of being a very difficult man.”
Laura walked with him to the door. She looked up at him, her expression showing her curious indecision. “I can’t make up my mind about you,” she said.
“Is it necessary?”
“I don’t know. Somehow I feel that it is. I want to thank you for helping us tonight. I am afraid there would have been trouble. James…my brother…is not very coolheaded at times.”
“It was nothing.”
“I was rude to you, too. I could at least have been polite.”
He chuckled. “It was nothing.”
—
It was very late and he was bone-tired. He walked to the horse, who looked at him reproachfully. “Nothing for it, old fellow,” he whispered. “Believe me, I’d rather you rested.”
There was a step on the porch behind him and he looked around to see Will Rounce standing there, and he was smiling.
“You see, Miles? This comes of interfering with my men. You will find it much simpler to keep out of things that do not concern you.”
Anger choked him. For an instant he felt like striking Rounce, and then he asked calmly, “So this is your doing?”
Will grinned at him, a taunting, challenging grin. “If you want to work for me, Miles, I could use a man of your training. It is hard to find good men…who know how to take orders.”
“Go to hell, will you?”
He stepped into the saddle and reined the black horse around. As the horse leaped into a run, Will’s sardonic voice came to him.
“Good-bye, Miles,” Will said.
And then it began to rain again, a soft, drizzling, soaking rain.
—
Laura McCrae awakened to the sound of rain, and for a long time she lay still, listening to the drops pattering on the roof and looking out her window at the far-off hills, veiled now with streamers of moon-touched cloud.
The old house was silent, for it was very early. The old stones and timbers slumbered with their memories of a hundred years of McCraes who had lived and worked, loved and dreamed within its walls. It was impossible they should be forced to move, to leave their home, the soil they had tilled, the forests they had used and protected, the land that meant so much to them all. Wide awake now, she looked up at the ceiling. All her memories of childhood and girlhood were here; the few years she had been away had been filled with longing for Brignole….To her it had always been home, and she had never thought seriously of leaving it.
Angus McCrae had been the first to come here…a lone man with a rifle, ax, knife, and blankets. He had brought with him a few odds and ends of trade goods, having landed from a ship that lay briefly off the coast and that had put him ashore at his own request.
He had been a strong man, Angus McCrae, but a kind man. A fighting Highlander, he had feared neither man nor devil, and had the gift of making friends, and from the first he had found a place among the Cherokees. He studied their customs, found much in them to admire, and remained among them, taking the daughter of a Cherokee chief to wife. That had been in 1680. For several years he had been hunter, trapper, and trader.
That same year he had come upon the site of Brignole and laid the foundation stones with his own hands, completing the first room that first season, and using it for a one-room cabin. Yet he had never thought of it as one room, only as the beginning of a mansion. He built of granite and he built solidly, as a man would descended from a long line of working masons.
Three sons had been born of that union, the first killed fighting the Spanish from Florida, the second to die in war with the Creeks. The third son had gone north for a wife, selling his furs in Virginia and finding a Devonshire girl there, who took readily to Cherokee ways. And that same year they had added a fourth and fifth room to the house on the hill, and William McCrae had gone north again to Virginia, this time to drive back a bull, three cows, a ram, and seven sheep to Brignole.
It was William who added to the lands Angus had bought from the Cherokees, and who began the fur trading business. Old Angus had already begun farming, planting wheat, barley, and rye, as well as Indian corn. William set up a smithy, and brought hand looms into the area. On that ground the family had lived for one hundred and fifty-eight years, and now they were being forced from their lands, driven out because they were Cherokee.
They bore the name with pride. How much Cherokee blood did they have? Nobody knew exactly; there was no generation or branch of the family that had not seen intermarriage. Regardless, they considered themselves Cherokees and were so considered by others.
The Cherokees were a proud people, and a great nation among the Indians of eastern America, related although not allied to the Iroquois, a strong people, vital, energetic, and filled with love of the land in which they lived.
They had learned early that the way to survive was to study the white man’s way. They had fenced their fields, tilled them carefully, and learned the crafts and the small arts. But they were still Cherokee, and now they lived upon land the white men wanted.
Intelligent and keenly perceptive, the Cherokee had among them men who not only understood their old ways, but who grasped the effect changing times were to have. The result was that by 1830 great herds of cattle grazed the Cherokee hills, and their fields produced corn, tobacco, wheat, oats, indigo, and potatoes. Their cotton was exported to New Orleans on their own boats, apple and peach orchards were common, and butter and cheese of their own manufacture was upon their tables.
A printing press and a newspaper were established. A metalsmith named Sequoyah had devised an alphabet, one so well designed that within a short time several thousand Cherokees had learned to read their own language. A library and a museum were built, and the schools increased in number each year.
Yet each success angered many of the white citizens of Georgia and each success became an additional tool for the politicians. Throughout the state there were many who found much to admire in Cherokee progress, and who had done what they could to prevent encroachments on Cherokee lands. Unhappily, these men of goodwill were in the minority.
Laura McCrae got up and slipped into her robe, then went to the window. It was light now, and the sun would soon be over the trees that crested the hills in the east. Yet she never saw the sun first in the east, but from the west, for the western hills were higher and the first rays always brought to them a crown of pale light that strengthened and grew rose and red with growing dawn.
How could she leave this? How could she trek west riding in a wagon or walking behind one? It was unthinkable! But no, it would not happen. Will would not let it happen. He loved Brignole as she did, and he would do what he could to keep it for them, and to see that the McCraes did not have to go.
Was she selfish to think of herself and her own family now? What of the others? She had heard her father and John Ross discussing the arrival of Tsali at the raided farm on the previous day, and they had worried for fear something would happen, some incident that would give the Georgia militia an excuse to move into the Cherokee Nation in force. Tsali was a recalcitrant, a hard old man who loved his hills and would fight to the death for them. Those who hoped for a reprieve feared what he might do as much as they admired his convictions.
Her thoughts returned to Miles Tolan. There was something disturbing about him, and he kept coming between her and her thoughts of Will. Somehow it was hard to feel the old excitement for Will since sh
e had seen Miles. Yet there was no reason for it. He was nothing to her and she was not interested in him.
She was, she told herself, very sure of this. She was not interested in Miles Tolan.
He was a striking man…not so handsome as Will Rounce, but a fine-looking figure in his uniform, with such splendid shoulders….Yes, she admitted it reluctantly, he was exciting.
She could imagine the girls in Atlanta. What a fuss they would make over him!
For some reason the thought made her impatient. After all, he was a friend of Will’s, and she would not like to see them make a fool of him. Remembering the dark, clean lines of his face, the quiet amusement of his eyes, she was suddenly not so sure the girls of Atlanta would make a fool of Miles…or that any girls would, or could.
And then she remembered the book. He had mentioned Lalla Rookh…but it must have been a coincidence. Surely, there could be no connection.
She must talk to Will…but could he tell her? Would he tell her anything at all? He had never talked to her about it, had always brushed off all her questions. Yet something was going on that she did not understand.
Books by Thomas Moore were just not very common in Georgia at the time. He was a modern poet, and only slightly more acceptable than Lord Byron. But then Lord Byron was quite shocking and no nice girl read his poetry…at least, not in public or where it could be seen.
It was impossible that Miles could know her, and his mention of Lalla Rookh must have been an accident, although Laura knew that Will had gotten her a copy of the book just before she disappeared.
The rain fell steadily. It was a pity Miles Tolan had to leave in the middle of a storm…it was a long ride to Atlanta.
It would be a longer ride to the lands on the Arkansas, and so many of her people had already taken it, marching through forest and swamp, dying of fever, falling by the way, pillaged and robbed by those who pursued them with their hatred. Already thousands had gone…and there was bitterness among the Cherokee for those who had not proved loyal, or those who yielded.
Volume 1: Unfinished Manuscripts, Mysterious Stories, and Lost Notes from One of the World's Most Popular Novelists Page 9