Tecumseh smiled. “Truly have the people named you Bobapanawe (Little Lightning),” he said slowly. “And yet—Let not my daughter think that this is a small matter. It is a very great matter. If my daughter will——”
“Oh! I will! I will!” Alagwa’s white blood spoke in her outcry. No Indian woman would have interrupted a chief.
Tecumseh did not resent the outcry. “If my daughter will, she can go south, not as Alagwa, not as a Shawnee, but as a prisoner escaping from captivity. As such she can get and send word of the plans and doings of the whites to Tecumseh and the redcoats and so help the people who have fostered her! Will my daughter do this?”
Alagwa did not hesitate. To her all Americans were base and vile, robbers and thieves. “I will! I will,” she cried.
“It is well. Perhaps my daughter may meet the young chief——If she does, let her join herself to him and follow him. He should not be far from Wapakoneta. All Americans are robbers and murderers at heart. But the young chief is not as bad as most of them. Alagwa can trust him.”
But the girl shook her head stubbornly. “I will trust none of the Long Knives,” she protested.
Tecumseh ignored the refusal. “If you go south as a spy you can not go as an Indian, nor even as a woman,” he said. “You must go as a white and as a boy. So shall you pass through perils that would otherwise overtake you. Tonight there will be a great council. Wait till it is over. Then dress yourself from the clothes yonder”—he pointed to a heap at the side of the cabin—“and go to the squaw Wabetha and tell her to cut your hair and to wash the paint from your cheeks and to dress you as a boy. Let no one see you, for your enemies keep close watch. The chief Wilwiloway will come for you at dawn and will go with you to the bend of the Piqua and perhaps farther. Then you must shift for yourself. From time to time I will send a runner to bring back the information you gain.”
Alagwa bowed. “It is well,” she said.
The chief slipped his hand into the braided pouch that hung at his side and drew forth a small packet wrapped in doeskin. From it he took a flat oval case containing the miniature of a lady with a proud, beautiful face, a chain so finely woven that the links could scarcely be distinguished, and a packet of gold coins whose value even Alagwa—child of the forest though she was—well knew. All of them he handed to the girl.
“Your father left them,” he said. “Spend the money, but keep the picture safe. Your father said it would prove your rights if need be. Hang it around your neck by the chain and show it to no one till you must. Now, farewell.”