She would join Metea and go with him to Tecumseh. After all, to go was no more than her duty. Tecumseh had called her and she must obey. She would go and confess to him that she had failed in her mission and that she had warned his enemies of his coming attack on the fort. She would tell him why she had failed, and she would accept whatever punishment he meted out to her. Almost she hoped that it might be that of the stake, so that she might expiate her fault by extremest suffering. Whatever it was, she would submit. Now that she knew that Jack’s heart belonged to another, life held nothing for her. Yes! She would go to Tecumseh.
It did not occur to her that the great chief might not have sent for her—that Metea might have been bought by the gold of Brito Telfair.
Once more she looked at Jack. The smoky candle gave little light, but the moon, now riding in glorious majesty across a cloudless sky, shone through the open window with a radiance almost like that of day. By its gleam Jack’s boyish features stood out clear and distinct. Slowly she bowed her head; and with a sob, she kissed him on the lips. “Take care of him, Cato,” she ordered, to the round-eyed negro who stood by. “Take care of him.” Then, dry-eyed, mute, she passed to the square and across it to the gate of the fort.
The sentry made no attempt to stop her; he had no orders to stop those who wished to go out; and without a word she passed forth into the outer world.
CHAPTER XX
JACK’S relapse lasted longer than either the surgeon or Alagwa had anticipated. When the emotions of the day cumulated in the rush of blood that ruptured anew the delicate half-healed membranes of his brain August lay hot upon the land. When he once more looked out upon the world with sane eyes September was far advanced. The autumn rains had transformed the hot, dry prairie into a fresh green carpet starred with late blossoms that would persist until frost. The winds were tearing the ripened leaves front the branches and heaping them in windrows of scarlet and gold; the rustling of their fall whispered through the air. From unseen pools along the Maumee the ducks were rising.
Many things had happened while Jack lay unconscious. The siege of the fort had begun, had taken its toll of dead and wounded, and had ended with the arrival of General Harrison and the troops from Ohio and Kentucky. The Indians had fled down the Maumee to meet the advancing British and warn them that “Kentuck were coming as numerous as the trees.” Harrison had destroyed the towns of the Miamis and Pottawatomies, had turned the command over to General Winchester, and had left for Piqua. Winchester had marched down the Maumee and had built a new fort at the ruins of Fort Defiance. Fort Wayne itself was almost as it had been before the siege began, but the settlement around it had been burned to the ground.
In the three weeks that had elapsed Jack had not regained consciousness sufficiently to understand that Alagwa had left him. After he was better, Cato, fearing the effect of the news, kept it back until his master’s insistence grew too great to be longer denied.
Jack received the information in bewildered silence. He could not understand it. Many of the happenings of that eventful evening had been blotted from his mind, but some of them remained fresh and clear. He remembered how the girl had fought against marrying him and how he had forced her to consent. But he remembered, too, that she had consented and had married him, irrevocably and forever. Why, then, should she leave him an hour later? And whither had she gone?
Vainly he questioned Cato. The negro had grown confused with anxiety, responsibility, and the lapse of time. “Deed I don’t know whar she went, an’ I don’t know why she went, Mars’ Jack,” he pleaded, “’c’epin’ it was somethin’ in the letter dat poor white trash read out to her.”