A Spectre of Power by Mary Noailles Murfree

HOW he fared on his return to Ioco Town, Laroche never knew. The interval of his transit was a blank in his recollection. He was only aware of the crisis when he plunged out of the encompassing woods, still urging the horse to a wild gallop, lashing him at every bound with his cap, in default of a whip, which he had lost, when or where he could not say.

The town lay before him, idealized in a suffusion of roseate purpling light as the sun was going down beyond those dark, heavily wooded ranges in the west into which the mountain plateau, even then called the Cumberland, splits at its southern extremity. The eastern loftier heights, the Great Smoky, bore an almost visible sentiment of peace on their slopes, which were of an etherealized azure with a reflection of the red west in the suave sky above their domes. The Cherokee dwellings were all solidly dark against the fine, delicate intimations of color in the opalescent atmosphere. Where a fire was glimpsed in the "beloved square," the red and white and yellow of the blaze were like a crude overlay of coarse pigment on some exquisite mosaic. The figures of the Indians themselves in groups of varied aspect, -- sundry of them arrayed in aboriginal splendor, feathered and mantled; others almost nude; still again others clad in the coarse and unpicturesque buckskin shirt and leggings, -- all stood as if petrified at the first disordered sound of the wildly galloping hoofs of the horse. They watched in blank surprise the equestrian apparition speeding across the open spaces until, hardly pausing in front of the trading-house, Laroche flung himself from the saddle. He took no heed to secure the creature. With the reins loose on his neck the horse, amazed at this unwonted liberty and lack of care, reared aimlessly once or twice. Then motionless, with a gaze of obvious surprise, he turned to look after his eccentric rider, who had burst into the trading-house with his warning of the danger upon his lips, that all who cared might hear and tremble. No more would he trust to the foolhardiness of the sturdy trader, who had weathered many a gale of disaffection, signs of Indian displeasure, rumors of massacres impending, and threats of reprisal; nor to the young Highland soldier's unquestioning reliance on the superior judgment of Jock Lesly. The under-trader and the young packmen responded as alertly with fears and precautions as Laroche could wish. With his martial habitudes reasserted in the emergency, Laroche gave the necessary orders with such dispatch, such decision, such obvious discrimination, that the men, discerning their value and aware that none other of the group could have originated the plan, as instantly obeyed as if he had been a military superior entitled to the authority he wielded. Jock Lesly, coming in at haphazard, found himself a mere supernumerary in his own trading-house, where his word had been law. He stared for a moment with stunned surprise, and then at last and after so long a time, hearing the interpretation of the dream he had derided, he began to admit to himself that perhaps more mischief was brewing in the air than he wot of.