: The Story of Old Fort Loudon by Craddock Charles Egbert Peixotto Ernest C Illustrator - Historical fiction; War stories; Cherokee Indians Wars 1759-1761 Fiction; Pioneers Tennessee Fiction

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ldiers having become almost uncontrollable on discovering the body of an Englishman who had only that morning suffered death by torture at the hands of the savages. Sugaw Town next met this fate--in fact, almost every one of the Ayrate towns of the Cherokee nation, before Colonel Montgomery wiped his bloody sword, and sheathed it at the gates of Fort Prince George, having personally made several narrow escapes.

These details, however, were to Fort Loudon like the flashes of lightning of a storm still below the horizon, and of which one is only made aware by the portentous conditions of the atmosphere. The senior officers of the post began to look grave. The idea occurred to them with such force that they scarcely dared to mention it one to the other, lest it be developed by some obscure electrical transmission in the brain of Oconostota, that Fort Loudon would offer great strategic value in the possession of the Indians. The artillery, managed by French officers, who, doubtless, would appear at their appeal, might well suffice to check the English advance. The fort itself would afford impregnable shelter to the braves, their French allies and non-combatants. Always they had coveted it, always they claimed that it had been built for them, here in the heart of their nation. Stuart was not surprised by the event. He only wondered that it had not chanced earlier.

That night the enmity of the Indians was prefigured by a great glare suddenly springing into the sky. It rose above the forests, and from the open spaces about Fort Loudon, whence the woods had been cleared away, one could see it fluctuate and flush more deeply, and expand along the horizon like some flickering mystery of the aurora borealis. But this baleful glare admitted of no doubt. One needed not to speculate on unexplained possibilities of electrical currents, and resultant thrills of light. It only epitomized and materialized the kindling of the fires of hate.

It was Odalie's little home; much that she valued still remained there--left to be quietly fetched to the fort next day. Their flitting had taken place at dusk, with but a load of wearing apparel, and it was supposed that the rest was quite safe, as the Cherokees were not presumed to be apprised of their absence. The spinning-wheel and the loom; her laborious treasures of home-woven linen for bed and table; the fine curtains on which the birds flickered for the last time; the beds and pillows, adding pounds on pounds of dry balsam needles to the fire; the flaunting, disguised tabourets, showing themselves now at their true value, and burning stolidly like the chunks of wood they were; the unsteady tables and puncheon benches; all the uncouth, forlorn little makeshifts of her humble housekeeping, that her embellishing touch had rendered so pretty, added their fuel to the flames which cast long-glancing lines of light up and down the silvery reaches of the river she had loved.

Captain Stuart and Captain Demer?, who had gone instantly to the tower in the block-house by the gate, on the report of a strange, distant light, saw her as they came down, and both paused, Demer? wincing a trifle, preferring not to meet her. She was standing beside one of the great guns and had been looking out through the embrasure. The moon was directly overhead above the parade, and the shadows of the palisades fell outward. The officers could not avoid her; their way led them down near at hand and they needs must pass her. She turned, and as she stood with one hand on the big cannon, her white dress richly a-gleam in the moonlight, she looked at them with a smile, something of the saddest, in her eyes.

"If I wanted to scream, Mrs. MacLeod, I should scream," exclaimed Demer?, impulsively.

She laughed a little, realizing how he would have upbraided the futility of tears had she shed them--he was always so ready with his staid, kind, undeniably reasonable rebukes.

"No," she said, "I am trying to remember that home is not in a house, but in the heart."

"I think you are trying to show us the mettle of a soldier," said Demer?, admiringly.

"Mrs. MacLeod would like the king's commission!" cried Stuart, breaking the tension with his bluff raillery, striking the cannon a smart tap with the butt of the pistol he carried in his hand, while the metal gave out a deep, hollow resonance. "Her unbridled ambition was always to be the commanding officer!"

Both Stuart and Demer? thought more seriously of the demonstration as affecting the public weal than did the pioneers of the settlement. Still hoping for the best, it seemed to them not unnatural that an abandoned station should be fired as merely wanton mischief, and not necessarily with the knowledge or connivance of the head-men of the Cherokees.

The next day, the hunters of the fort went out betimes as usual, and Hamish found it agreeable to make one of the party. Corporal O'Flynn was among the number, and several horses were taken to bring in the game; a bright, clear day it was, of that sweet season when the spring blooms gradually into the richness of summer. The wind was fresh; the river sang; the clouds of a glittering whiteness, a flocculent lightness, floated high in the blue sky. Suddenly the sentry at the gate called out sharply for the corporal of the guard. The men, lounging about the parade, turned to look and listen.

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