Girty was as she had many times remembered him—a deeply-tanned man perhaps forty years of age, with gray, sunken eyes, thin and compressed lips, hyena chin, and dark shaggy hair bound with a handkerchief above a low forehead, across which stretched a ghastly half-healed wound. In his arms he carried a great bale, carefully wrapped.
The other—Alagwa had never seen his like before—was tall and powerful looking. His carriage was graceful and easy. His dark face, handsome in a way though plainly not so handsome as it had been some years before, was characterized by a powerful jaw that diverted attention from his strong mouth and aquiline nose. He was regarding the girl with an expression evidently intended to be friendly, but which somehow grated. It seemed at once condescending, appraising, and insolent.
All this Alagwa took in at a glance as she shrank backward, intent on flight. But before she could move Girty’s voice broke in.
“Stop!” he ordered, sharply, in the Shawnee tongue. “The white chief from afar would speak with the Star maiden.”
Alagwa paused, looking fearfully backward. But she did not speak and Girty went on.
“The white chief is of the House of Alagwa,” he declared. “His heart is warm toward her. He brings good news and many presents to lay at her feet.” He laid down the bale.
Alagwa looked from it to the man and back again. “Let him speak,” she said, in somewhat halting English.
At the sound of his own tongue the Englishman’s face lighted up and he took an impulsive step forward. “You speak English?” he exclaimed, with a note of wonder in his voice. “Why did nobody tell me that? How did you learn?” His surprise did not seem altogether complimentary.
Alagwa was studying him shyly. She found his pink and white complexion very pleasing after the coppery skins of the Indians and the no less swarthy faces of most of the white men she had seen. Besides, this man wore a red coat and the redcoats were the friends of Tecumseh. “I speak it a little,” she said, hesitatingly. As a matter of fact she spoke it rather well, having picked up much from time to time from Colonel Johnson, the Indian agent, from two or three white prisoners, and from Tecumseh himself.
“That’s lucky. If I’d known that I’d have spoken to you before and settled the business out of hand. You wouldn’t guess it, of course, little forest maiden that you are, but you are a cousin of mine?”