Recollections of the items and values of his invoices, afflicting to Varney’s commercial spirit, threaded his consciousness only when again safe in Charlestown.  He reached that haven at last by the exercise of great good judgment.  He realized that another party would presently be sent out when no news of capture came from the earlier pursuers; he divined that the second expedition would take the Chickasaw path, for being friendly to the British, that tribe would naturally be thought of as a refuge to an Englishman in trouble with the Cherokees; therefore Varney, lest he be overtaken on the way, avoided with a great struggle the temptation, mustered all his courage, and adopting an unprecedented expedient, turned off to the country of the Muscogees.  These Indians, always more or less inimical to the colonists, bloodthirsty, cruel, crafty, and but recently involved in a furious war against the Cherokees, were glad to thwart Colannah in any cherished scheme of revenge, and received the fugitive kindly.  Although but for this fact his temerity in venturing among them would have cost him his life, they ministered to his needs with great hospitality, and forwarded him on his way to Charlestown, sending a strong guard with him as far as Long Cane settlement, a little above Ninety-Six.

Wyejah also made his escape.  Appalled by the calamity of the accidental blow, he “took sanctuary.”  In the supreme moment of excitement he flung himself into the Tennessee River, and while eagerly sought by the emissaries of Colannah in the woods, he swam to Chote, “beloved town,” the city of refuge of the whole Cherokee nation, where the shedder of blood was exempt from vengeance.  As years went by, however, either because of the death of Colannah, or because time had so far softened the bereavement of the friends of Otasite that they were prevailed upon to accept the “satisfaction,” the presents required even from an in voluntary homicide, he was evidently freed from the restricted limits of the “ever-sacred soil,” for his name is recorded in the list of warriors who went to Charlestown in 1759 to confer with Governor Lyttleton on the distracted state of the frontier, and being held as one of the hostages of that unlucky embassy, he perished in the massacre of the Cherokees by the garrison of Fort Prince George, after the treacherous murder of the commandant, Captain Coytmore, by a ruse of the Indian king, Oconostota.

Abram Varney never ventured back among “the Nation,” as he called the Cherokees, as if they were the only nation on the earth.  Now and again in their frequent conferences with the Governor at Charlestown, rendered necessary by their ever-recurrent friction with the British government, he sought out members of the delegation for some news of his old friends, his old haunts.  Not one of them would take his hand; not one would hear his voice; they looked beyond him, through him, as if he were the impalpable atmosphere, as if he did not exist.