“Read!” thundered the chieftain. “Read! And read true!”
Williams moistened his dry lips. At last he spoke. “I don’t know how to read,” he mumbled.
Jack leaned forward, every nerve tense. He did not need to be told that the letter was the one he had lost, the one from which Williams had read the words that had sent his bride of an hour fleeing into the night. Some disclosure was coming; he read it in the trader’s frightened eyes and in Tecumseh’s deadly mien. What would it be? His blood ran cold as he waited.
Chill as death came the great chief’s voice. “Surely the white man errs,” he said. “A year ago he read from this very letter a message from a maid dwelling in the far south.”
Williams’s courage deserted him. His whole figure seemed to crumple. Clearly he remembered that the Shawnees were Alagwa’s friends. “I didn’t read nothin’,” he whined. “I was only jokin’. That fellow Jack done me a dirty trick and he hit me when I wasn’t lookin’ and I wanted to get even. I reckoned he had a sweetheart down south and I made up something about her and let on that it was in the letter. I didn’t mean no harm. I reckoned he’d get well and read the letter and make it all right with the girl. How was I to know she’d run off right away?”
“You cur!” Heedless of Tecumseh’s possible wrath Jack hurled himself at the trader. But before his gripping fingers could fasten upon the other’s throat the two braves stepped between, forcing him backward. A second later Alagwa slipped to his side and clasped his hand in hers.
Absorbed in the scene none saw Brito Telfair come through the woods to the edge of the clearing and stand there, watching the scene with gleaming eyes.
Meanwhile Tecumseh was speaking. “Tecumseh does not kill prisoners,” he said. “He challenges any white man to say that he has ever taken vengeance on the helpless. He has spared even snakes in the grass, lying and treacherous. But, like the chiefs of all nations, Tecumseh punishes murder.” He turned to Williams. “You dog,” he grated. “A year ago you murdered Wilwiloway, friend of Tecumseh. You shot him down without cause, in cold blood, when he was making the peace sign. For that I have doomed you. I have let you live only that you might say what you have said today. Now you die.” He waved his hand to the guards. “Take him away,” he ordered. “Let his end be swift.”
The guard closed in, but the doomed man flung himself at Jack’s feet. “For God’s sake don’t let them kill me!” he screamed. “For God’s sake!” He clutched at Jack’s feet. “Here’s your letter,” he jabbered, forcing it into the other’s hand. “You can show it to her and make everything right. But for God’s sake save me. You’re a white man, not an Injun. Save me! Don’t let these devils murder me.”
Jack’s fury died. The indefinable bond between white and white, the bond that has lifted the race above all other races of the world, tugged at him. After all, Williams was a white man; murderer though he was, he was a white man. Forgetful that he too was a prisoner, a detected spy, Jack turned to the chief.