Bondie stared at her with his little black eyes. “Go where, madame?” he questioned, respectfully but wonderingly.
“To Major Stickney. We must warn him. The fort must be saved.”
CHAPTER XVIII
THE August night was close and still as Alagwa and Peter Bondie stole out of the hotel to make their way to Major Stickney’s. The moon had not yet risen but the great stars that blazed across the immeasurable vault of the sky diffused almost as great a light. Fire-flies sparkled and pale-winged moths, white blots amid the shadows, fluttered over the dried grass and dusty trails that crossed the prairie. The hum of mosquitoes and the ceaseless rune of locusts filled the air. In the distance the unruffled waters of the Maumee reflected the stars and the blue-black interstices of the sky.
Neither Alagwa nor Bondie, however, was thinking of the beauty of the night. Carefully they stole along, moving like dark shadows, every nerve tense, every faculty of body and mind concentrated, watching every bush lest it might hide some of the savages of whom Metea had spoken. Foot by foot they crept along, using every artifice that years upon the frontier had taught to Bondie and that life among the Shawnees had taught to Alagwa.
Nothing happened, however. Either Metea had lied about his men or else had not thought it worth while to set a guard on the hotel, well knowing that escape was hopeless and not dreaming that ether Bondie or Alagwa would take the extreme step of warning the fort.
Beside the walls of the fort, close to the ford across the shrunken waters of the Maumee, stood the United States factory. At one side of it, beneath a tree, Captain Wells’s Miami wife and his three children were laughing softly, not knowing that far to the west their husband and father was lying dead amid a ring of blood-stained bodies. In front of the door itself Major Stickney was sitting, striving to get a breath of fresh air to cool the fever that racked his body.
When he saw Alagwa and Bondie his face lighted up. “Come and sit down,” he called, eagerly, scrambling to his feet. “Is it hot enough for you?”
Neither visitor answered the question. Alagwa glanced at Bondie, and the Frenchman stepped closer. “Captain Wells is kill,” he whispered. “Captain Heald and all the garrison at Fort Dearborn are kill. Winnemac and his Pottawatomies have kill them. Perhaps some are prisoners, but I think it not.”
Stickney’s fever-flushed face suddenly paled. “Good God!” he cried. Then with sudden recollection he gestured toward the woman and children beneath the tree. “Careful! Careful!” he begged, tense and low. Then again: “Good God! it can’t be true. Are you sure?”