From behind an oak an Indian stepped out, raising his right hand, palm forward, as he came. In the hollow of his left arm he carried a heavy rifle. Fastened in his scalp-lock were feathers of the white-headed eagle, showing that he was a chief.
“Necana!” he said. “Friend!”
Instinctively Jack threw up his hand. “Necana!” he echoed. The tongue was that of the Shawnees. Jack had not heard it for ten years, not since the last remnant of the Shawnee tribe had left the banks of the Tallapoosa and gone northward to join their brethren on the Ohio; but at the stranger’s greeting the almost forgotten accents sprang to his lips. “Necana,” he repeated. “What does my brother here, far from his own people?”
Wonderingly, he stared at the warrior as he spoke. The man was a Shawnee; so much was certain, but his costume differed somewhat from that of the Shawnees to whom Jack had been accustomed, and the intonation of his speech rang strange. His moccasins, the pouch that swung to his braided belt, all were foreign. His accent, too, was strange. Moreover, though clearly a chief, he was alone instead of being well escorted, as etiquette demanded. Plainly he had travelled fast and long, for his naked limbs were lean and worn, mere skin and bone and stringy muscles. Hunger spoke in his deep-set eyes.
At Jack’s words his face lighted up. Evidently the sound of his own tongue pleased him. Across his breast he made a swift sign, then waited.
Dazedly Jack answered by another sign, the answering sign learned long ago when as a boy he had sat at a Shawnee council and had been adopted as a member of the clan of the Panther.
In response the savage smiled. “I seek the young chief Telfair,” he said. “He whom the Shawnees of the south raised up as Te-pwe (he who speaks with a straight tongue). Knowest thou him, brother?”
Jack stared in good earnest. “I am Jack Telfair,” he said, haltingly, dragging the Shawnee words from his reluctant memory. “Ten years ago the squaw Methowaka adopted me at the council fire of the Panther clan.” He hesitated. Ten years had blurred his memory of the ritual of the clan, but he knew well that it required him to proffer hospitality.
“My brother is welcome,” he went on, stretching out his hand. “Will he not eat at the campfire of my father and rest a little beneath our rooftree?”
The Shawnee clasped the hand gravely. “My brother’s words are good,” he answered. “Gladly would I stop with him if I might. But I come from a far country and I must return quickly. I turn aside from my errand to bring a message and a belt to my brother.”