War Drums (Sass)/Chapter 29
THEY will say, down yonder," Almayne remarked thoughtfully, "that the Thunder God is sleeping on his sacred mountain and that he has drawn his white buffalo robe over him so that the sun may not shine upon his face."
He sat, with Jolie Stanwicke and Lachlan McDonald, upon the brow of a great precipice of rock. How high that precipice was Jolie could only guess, for below them a white blanket of mist shut the world from her view. She knew only that they were on the summit of a lofty mountain whichf Almayne called Sani'gilagi, and that the dangers that had encompassed them were past.
They had ridden, without pause or rest, all of the previous day and all of that night. Before the darkness came upon them the hills had changed to mountains. At sunset, to Almayne's and Lachlan's great joy, a rain had set in, and for hours they had ridden on through a drenching downpour, while thunder rolled and crashed around them and vivid flashes of lightning lit the forest. A cape of some thin leatherlike material, which Lachlan had carried under his saddle, kept Jolie dry. Save when the lightning flashed, the blackness was impenetrable; yet Almayne had led them on and on without a halt, along a winding ascending way through interminable woods.
She was too weary to ask questions, too weary even to wonder why they would be safe on that mountain with the fantastic name which they were seeking as a refuge. She did not know when, after hours of riding, they began the ascent of the mountain itself. By that time she was asleep on her horse's back; and she did not know that Little Mink and Striking Hawk, walking on either side of her, had held her in her saddle as Selu struggled up the steep slope. Nor was she aware of it when, late in the night, after the rain had ceased, they reached the summit.
It was noon of the next day when she awoke, to find herself lying under a shelter of bark and hemlock boughs built against a rock.
All this now seemed strangely remote. She had eaten and had swallowed some strong rum, of which Almayne had a little left, but she was still desperately tired; and for an hour or more she had Iain in the sun above the precipice's brow while the men busied themselves in various ways some few yards behind her.
Slowly her strength returned and her mind, drugged with fatigue, awoke from its lethargy. She moved as close to the edge of the precipice as she dared and looked down and out; but she could see below her only clouds and mist. She caught Lachlan's eye and beckoned him, and when he came to her, Almayne came with him, and the two sat beside her near the edge of the cliff. She learned from them where they were and what had happened since she fell asleep; then, because by now she knew Almayne's moods, she waited for him to tell her more.
He sat silent for a while, puffing at his pipe. Then, as though talking to himself, he muttered:
"Old mountain, I know every inch of you. Lord, Lord, the times I've had in the valley down yonder—the hunts with Corane the Raven and Sinnawa the Hawk's-Head warrior, and old moon-faced Nunda who looks so much like my horse that I named the pony after him."
He turned to Jolie with a short laugh.
"You will wonder, Mistress, why we are here. I will tell you now about Sani'gilagi, the mountain of the Thunder God, and about Aganuntsi, the Great Conjurer of the Overhills."
For some moments he smoked silently. Presently he took the pipe from his mouth and with it made a sweeping gesture, taking in the whole horizon.
"When the mist clears," he said, "you will see below you and all around you the kingdom of the Cherokees. You will see a wilderness of mountains, the fairest wilderness this side of Paradise—range after range and peak after peak, and valleys sweeter than any in England, and all covered over with noble forest, the end of which no Englishman has ever seen. Oh, it is a grand kingdom, none grander upon earth, and it is alive with game. Lachlan, here, loves his sunny land of Tallasee, far to the southward and westward of these mountains, and that is a sweet land, too, and there is good hunting in it and warriors equal to the Cherokees' best. But if, like Lachlan's father, I should become an Indian king some day, I should ask nothing better than to be king of these Overhills.
"That is what the Cherokees call these mountains, Mistress—the Overhills—though I think the name rightfully belongs only to the great range that the traders sometimes call the Smokies. I know the Cherokees well. I have lived with them and hunted with them and I have fought them, and they are good hunters and good warriors. From end to end of the Overhills James Almayne is known, and he has friends in many villages and enemies, too. I have sat at the right hand of their old chief, Moytoy of Tellico, and of their new chief, Atta-Kulla-Kulla. I have followed the war trail with Occonostota, their greatest war captain, and I have hunted with Corane the Raven and Yonah the Bear and Wayah the Wolf and many others. All these are my friends; yet, because there is now war with the English, any of these would kill me to-day if the chance came. But my closest friend among them is Aganuntsi, the Groundhog's Mother (though he is a man), the Great Conjurer of the Overhills.
"I will tell you about this Aganuntsi, Mistress, the sharpest rascal in the Overhills and my very good friend.
"Once, on a long hunt far over on Ocona Lufta, I saved the life of Aganuntsi's son when a big bear had the boy down. That was the beginning. Aganuntsi made me his blood-brother then, and since then the bond has tightened. He was a hunter as well as a wizard until he grew too old to hunt, and I hunted with him often and a strong friendship grew between us."
Almayne rose, walked to the edge of the precipice and pointed downward with his pipe.
"Down there," he said, "right under us in a deep valley is a Cherokee town that they call Sequilla. You will see it when the clouds lift. That is where Aganuntsi lives. He is now the Chief Conjurer of all the mountain tribes, and we owe our lives to his rascality."
The hunter laughed and came and sat beside them again.
"I will tell you why," he said, as he refilled his pipe.
"Long ago Aganuntsi made up his mind that he needed a mountain of his own where he could concoct his deviltries in secret. In the Cherokee myths, the stories that the old men had handed down, Sani'gilagi was the home of the Thunder God, the Red Man of the Lightning. Aganuntsi said that Sani'gilagi was the home also of Tsulkalu, the Master of Game, a slant-eyed invisible giant who strides about over the mountains and of whom all the Cherokees are afraid. And he said that Tsulkalu had told him to warn all the Indian hunters not to kill game on Sani'gilagi because the game there was his. Two Cherokee hunters who did not believe him were killed mysteriously not far from the summit, and after that all the others believed him, so that now no Cherokee dares hunt up here and very few ever come here except Aganuntsi himself. He comes sometimes, with a great panther that he has tamed, to gather roots for his magic medicines and to talk to Tsulkalu, so he says, but it is a rare thing for any of the others to come, because they are afraid to hunt on this mountain and they seldom go where they cannot hunt."
Almayne turned to Jolie with a grin.
"So you see now, Mistress, why we came to Sani'gilagi when it got too hot for us down yonder. So long as they do not see us from the valley, we are fairly safe on this mountain top."
She nodded, her eyes bright, for his tale had fascinated her strangely.
"And if Aganuntsi himself comes?" she asked, "will he betray us?"
"Once, years ago," Almayne answered, "when there was war, I was coming with two pack ponies loaded with fine beaver skins from the country of the Chicasaws. I did not know that there was war with the Cherokees, and they surprised me and took my pelts and killed my horse. I got away with an arrow through my arm, and I managed to throw them off the track and got up here, but the wound mortified and I was very sick. By luck, Aganuntsi found me. He healed my wound, and brought me food, and my scalp is still where I like to wear it."
He stretched his long arms lazily and yawned.
"Come," he said, "the mists are lifting. We can see something now."
A few paces from the brink of the precipice he halted them.
"They have sharp eyes," he explained. "If we stand on the edge against the sky line, they might see us from down yonder."
They stood where they could see everything, yet could not be seen. Almayne waved his hand in a wide gesture.
"The Kingdom of the Cherokees," he said.
Jolie stood silent, her eyes wide with wonder, her bosom heaving. Nothing in her past experience had prepared her for such a spectacle, for the little hills of Hampshire were pygmies beside this mountain. The grandeur of what she saw took her breath; the beauty of it benumbed her mind and paralyzed her tongue; the vastness of it filled her with something that was like terror.
The cloud blanket beneath them had disappeared except a few drifting fragments which melted as she gazed. Spread beneath her now she saw a blue hazy world of hills and valleys and mountains billowing to the horizon, while, directly in front, her gaze dropped down, down, down—down through space that seemed unfathomable to a deep wide valley which the long humped ridge of Sani'gilagi partly encircled like a wall. There was a clearing in this valley, she noticed; but except this one clearing, which resembled a tiny lake of vivid green, all the valley floor was clothed in forest, while the great mountains looming beyond—mountains that seemed as huge as Sani'gilagi itself—were mantled with forest to their rounded summits, where wisps of white cloud still clung. Beyond these again rose other mountains, range upon range, as far as her eye could see, their dim outlines merging at last with the blue of the sky; and over all these also the forest lay, blue as the sea except where it darkened to purple beneath the shadow of some drifting cloud, unending, illimitable, continuous as the sea itself.
"The Kingdom of the Cherokees," Almayne repeated. "The Empire of the Overhills. What do you think of it, Mistress?"
She did not answer. A faint sound had come to her, a sound so faint that at first she was not sure it was a sound—a strange, low throbbing. Faint as it was, it caught and held her attention instantly; for there was something in it that was compelling and insistent, something cruel and menacing. She listened keenly, and so low was it that for a moment she believed it to be only the beating of her own heart or the pulsing of blood in her ears; but, glancing at Lachlan, she knew that he also heard it and that Almayne, too, was listening.
"The war drums," said the hunter slowly. "They are beating the war drums down in Aganuntsi's town."
He pointed to the green clearing in the valley far below. Watching it closely, Jolie saw that there were many dark spots in it, which were huts or houses, because from some of them thin columns of smoke curled upward.
"The war drums," Almayne muttered again, as though talking to himself. "I've heard them a hundred times, but I hate the sound of them still."
Jolie shivered. She stepped quickly back, moving farther from the precipice's edge. She had a strange feeling that eyes had been watching her from that distant clearing in the valley under them and that the war drums were beating because those eyes had seen her.