CHAPTER VI
LITTLE sleep was there for any one in the Shawnee camp that night. Hour after hour the witchdrums boomed and the leaping ghost fires flamed to the far-off blinking stars. Hour after hour the thunderous chanting of the braves shivered through the forest, waking the resting birds and scaring the four-footed prowlers of the night. Hour after hour the chiefs debated peace and war, now listening to the words of the redcoat emissary of the British king, now hearkening to Tecumseh, now turning ear to Catahecasa (Black Hoof) or to Wathethewela (Bright Horn), as they spoke for peace, declaring that the British would fight for a time and then go away, but that the Long Knives from the south would stay forever. Hour after hour the wheeling stars, a silver dust behind the chariot of the moon, rose, passed, and sank. Hour after hour the mounting mists of the Black Swamp wavered and fell back, driven away by the heat of the fires and the hot breaths of the warriors. Dawn was breaking in the east as Tecumseh and his devoted few struck their hatchets into the war post and left the council to prepare for their northward venture, leaving the bulk of the Shawnees loyal to the Seventeen Fires.
Long before this, Alagwa had sought Wabetha, wife of Tecumseh, and had told her the will of the great chief. In the privacy of the lodge she had dropped her Indian garments from her one by one, till she stood revealed in the firelight, a slender shape amazingly fair compared to the red tints of the Indians. Wabetha, softly marvelling over the ever-new wonder of her white beauty, had hacked at the two heavy plaits of burnished hair till they fell like two great snakes to the trampled clay of the floor, leaving the girl bare indeed. Then, one by one, she had clothed her in the unfamiliar garments of the whites, the strong calico shirt, the deerskin knee breeches, the leggings wrapped about each slender limb and bound at the top and at the bottom with pliant thongs, the high moccasins padded as a protection against the snakes that infested the whole region. When the squaw placed on her head the inevitable coonskin cap of the white hunter, it would have taken a sharp eye to suspect the sex of this Indian-trained daughter of the Huguenots. Straight as a fir and supple as a willow, retaining longer than most of her sex the slender lines of childhood, she hid all feminine curves beneath the loose garb of the woodsman.
When, with the first peep of dawn Wilwiloway came slipping through the rolling mists to scratch at the cabin door, she was ready, her good-bys said. Without a word she fell in at his heels and together they took the long trail south, the trail whose only end, so far as known to her, would be beneath alien stars at the borders of a sea unknown.
Wilwiloway moved cautiously. No sign of danger was visible, but he was too well versed in the war trail not to know that the unseen danger is ever the deadliest. Alagwa followed, also cautiously, not because she feared, for she did not, but because she had been trained to obey the will of the leaders. Close at Wilwiloway’s heels she trod, putting her feet carefully into his footprints. Only once she paused, at the edge of the clearing, and looked backward at the vast wavering draperies of mist that hid the only home she could remember. Her eyes were dim and her cheeks wet, not merely from the clinging fingers of the fog, as she strove to penetrate the blanket of mist that hung before her. For a moment she gazed, then, with a choking sob, she hurried on.
Hour after hour the two sped southward. Neither spoke. Wilwiloway, at his great leader’s command, was giving up the hope of his life, and was giving it up silently and stolidly, with Indian stoicism. Alagwa was giving up all she had known, all her friends, all the familiar scenes of her childhood.
And yet, after the first pang, her thoughts went forward, not backward, ranging into the strange new world into which she was hurrying. Alagwa was skilled in all forms of woodcraft; she could make fire where a white man would freeze; catch game where he would starve; sleep warm and snug where he would shiver and rack with wet and fever and ague. She knew the forest trails, knew the rocks on which the rattlesnake sunned and the tufts of grass beneath which the copperhead lurked, knew the verdure that hid the quagmire, the firm-appearing ice that splintered at a touch, the tottering tree that dealt ruin at a breath.
But of the white man’s ways she knew almost nothing. Before her father died he had taught her to speak French, but in the years that had passed since then she had nearly forgotten it. From one source or another, from Colonel Johnson and his family, from two or three prisoners, she had learned English—enough to understand if not enough to speak fluently. But other than this she knew nothing—except that there was a world of things to be known.
Much she wondered concerning the strange new life into which she was hurrying. Her woman’s heart quaked at the dangers she must face, but her woman’s soul, burning high with zeal to serve her people, bore her on. If for a moment the thought that she was to play a treacherous part, to worm her way into the Americans’ confidence in order to betray them, came to vex her she drove it back. For years the Long Knives had cheated her people, had lied to them, had despoiled them, had slain them. Treaty after treaty they had made, determining boundaries which they swore not to cross; and then, the moment they grew strong enough to take another forward step, they had broken their pledges and had surged forward, driving her people back. Treachery for treachery. Against such shameless foes all things were fair. If she could requite them some small proportion of the woe they had dealt out to her and hers she would glory in the deed. Afterwards, if they detected her they might slay her as they pleased—burn her at the stake if they would. She would show them how a Shawnee could die.
Concerning the man in the red coat she thought very little. She might have to think of him again at some time in the future, but for the moment he was one of the things she was leaving behind. He was an Englishman and therefore her ally, but he was her father’s foe and therefore hers. After she had done her duty, after these shameless Americans had been driven back, after the hatchet had been buried in victory for her tribe, she would consider what he had offered. For the moment she merely wondered idly whether he had come to America really desirous of putting her in her place across the water or whether he had come in order to kill her and take her estates. Either alternative seemed entirely possible to Alagwa’s Indian-trained mind. He was of her clan and therefore bound to aid her loyally. But he was her father’s foe and therefore was free to kill her and take her property. She would be slow to trust him. Fortunately she did not have to trust him now. It never once crossed the girl’s mind that Captain Count Brito might wish to wed her rather than kill her or that by so doing he could easily get possession of her property. Among the Indians the lover gave presents to the father of his bride; he did not receive them with her.