Page:War Drums (1928).pdf/20

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of Carolina with blood and which still waited wrathfully, in its impregnable fortress of St. Augustine two hundred miles to the south, for the day when Charles Town could be destroyed forever.

Edward Stanwicke spoke to her seldom during that short drive; the stooped gray man, her father, seemed wholly lacking in a father's warmth. But Captain Lance Falcon, sitting opposite in the forward seat, chatted easily in his deep voice, pointing out this and that, with a keen eye for what would be new and strange or pleasantly like England.

Jolie saw, meeting and mingling in Charles Town's streets, the life of the sea and the life of the wilderness; sun-tanned, earringed, bare-armed men of the tall topsail ships that brought merchandise from England and returned laden with pelts and rice; hawk-eyed, lynx-footed men of the forest whose lives were spent for the most part on the wilderness trails. She saw a Cherokee war captain in a black bearskin cloak attended by two tall plumed and painted braves; lean, shaggy wilderness hunters in stained, weather-worn buckskins, and packhorse men in leather jerkins and leggins fantastically beaded and fringed; Sir Robert Mapleton, of Greentree Barony, a Landgrave of Carolina, in town that morning for a conference with the Governor; a squad of sailors from the provincial scout boat that kept watch against the Spaniards of St. Augustine; a butcher's stall where whole deer hung by their hind legs and great wild turkeys were suspended by their necks;