I remembered that smiling Eden I had seen from that hill-top, and how Shalah had spoken that very name.

“We dwelt there,” he continued, “while I grew to manhood, living happily in peace, hunting the buffalo and deer, and tilling our cornlands.  Then the time came when the Great Spirit called for my father, and I was left with the kingship of the tribe.  Strange things meantime had befallen our nation in the West.  Broken clans had come down from the north, and there had been many battles, and there had been blight, and storms, and sickness, so that they were grown poor and harassed.  Likewise men had arisen who preached to them discontent, and other races of a lesser breed had joined themselves to them.  My own tribe had become fewer, for the young men did not stay in our valley, but drifted back to the West, to that nation we had come from, or went north to the wars with the white man, or became lonely hunters in the hills.  Then from the south along the mountain crests came another people, a squat and murderous people, who watched us from the ridges and bided their chance.”

“The Cherokees?” I asked.

“Even so.  I speak of a hundred moons back, when I was yet a stripling, with little experience in war.  I saw the peril, but I could not think that such a race could vie with the Children of the Sun.  But one black night, in the Moon of Wildfowl, the raiders descended in a torrent and took us unprepared.  What had been a happy people dwelling with full barns and populous wigwams became in a night a desolation.  Our wives and children were slain or carried captive, and on every Cherokee belt hung the scalps of my warriors.  Some fled westwards to our nation, but they were few that lived, and the tribe of Shalah went out like a torch in a roaring river.

“I slew many men that night, for the gods of my fathers guided my arm.  Death I sought, but could not find it; and by and by I was alone in the woods, with twenty scars and a heart as empty as a gourd.  Then I turned my steps to the rising sun and the land of the white man, for there was no more any place for me in the councils of my own people.

“All this was many moons ago, and since then I have been a wanderer among strangers.  While I reigned in my valley I heard of the white man’s magic and of the power of his gods, and I longed to prove them.  Now I have learned many things which were hid from the eyes of our oldest men.  I have learned that a man may be a great brave, and yet gentle and merciful, as was the Master, I have learned that a man may be a lover of peace and quiet ways and have no lust of battle in his heart, and yet when the need comes be more valiant than the best, even as you, brother.  I have learned that the God of the white men was Himself a man who endured the ordeal of the stake for the welfare of His enemies.  I have seen cruelty and cowardice and folly among His worshippers; but I have also seen that His faith can put spirit into a coward’s heart, and make heroes of mean men.  I do not grudge my years of wandering.  They have taught me such knowledge as the Sachems of my nation never dreamed of, and they have given me two comrades after my own heart.  One was he who died yesterday, and the other is now by my side.”