The chief looked puzzled at the strange words of the old Indian.
“Ke-ne-ha-ha does not understand; will my father speak straighter?”
“The chief does not fear then to learn the future?”
“No,” said the Shawnee warrior, proudly.
“Not even when he is to hear of the manner of his death?”
“A warrior must die some time. Ke-ne-ha-ha is ready when the Great Spirit calls him.”
“Good; the Great Medicine will speak then. He must speak words that cause him tears of blood, for they tell of the death of the Shawnee chieftain.”
“Ke-ne-ha-ha’s ears are open—he listens.”
“Before the moon dies, a terrible figure will be in the Shawnee village. All fly from its path—the birds of the night, and the insects of the earth—for it is not of human mold. The moonbeams shining in fear will show the figure of a huge gray wolf. The wolf walks on its hind legs like a man. It has the face of a human, and it is striped with war-paint, black and white. In its paw it carries a tomahawk—the edge is crusted with blood that dims the brightness of the steel. The blood comes from the veins of some of the best warriors of the Shawnee nation. The Little Crow hunted the brown deer in the woods of the Scioto. He came not back. His brother found him in the forest dead—the print of a tomahawk in his skull and a Red Arrow graven on his breast. Watega is another great brave of the Shawnee nation. Not two sleeps ago he went with the white red-men—the renegades—on a scout. He has not come back to his wigwam, though the others have returned. His squaw sits in his lodge and wonders where he is. He will never come back. In a little glade on the other side of the Ohio is his body—a tomahawk cut in the skull, and on his breast the totem of the Red Arrow.”
Ke-ne-ha-ha started. The death of Watega, who was one of his favorite warriors, startled him.