From his pouch the chief drew a belt of beautiful white wampum. “Will my brother listen?” he asked.
Jack nodded. “Brother! I listen,” he answered.
“It is well! Many years ago a chief of the elder branch of my brother’s house was the friend of Tecumseh. They dwelt in the same cabin and followed the same trails. They were brothers. Ten years ago the white chief travelled the long trail to the land of his fathers. But before he died he said to Tecumseh: ‘Brother! To you I leave my one child. Care for her as you would your own. Perhaps in days to come men of my own house may seek her, saying that to her belong much land and gold. If they come from the south, from the branch of my house living in Alabama, at the ancient home of the Shawnees, let her go with them. But if they come from the branch of my house that dwells in England do not let her go. The men of that branch, the branch of the chief Brito, are wicked and vile, men whose hearts are bad and who speak with forked tongues. If they come for her, then do you seek out my brothers in the south and tell them, that they may take her and protect her. If they fail you then let her live with you forever.’
“Since the chief died ten years have passed, and the maid has grown straight and tall in the lodge of Tecumseh. Now the chief Brito has come, wearing the redcoat of the English warriors. He speaks fair, saying that to the maid belong great lands and much gold and that he, her cousin, would take her across the great water and give them into her keeping. He is a big man, strong and skilful, to all seeming a fit mate for the maiden. If his tongue is forked, Tecumseh knows it not. But Tecumseh remembers the words of his dead friend and wishes not to give the maid up to one whom he hated. Yet he would not keep her from her own. Therefore he sends this belt to his younger brother, he of whom his friend spoke, he whom the mother of Tecumseh raised up as a member of the Panther clan, and says to him: ‘Come quickly. The maid is of your house; come and take her from my lodge at Wapakoneta and see that she gets all that is hers.’”
Jack took the belt eagerly. To go to the lodge of Tecumseh to bring back a kinswoman to whom had descended great estates and against whom foes—he at once decided that they were foes—were plotting—What boy of twenty-one would not jump at the chance.
And to go to Ohio—the very name was a challenge. The Ohio of 1812 was not the Ohio of today, not the smiling, level country, set with towns, crisscrossed with railways, plastered with rich farms where the harvest leaps to the tickling of the hoe. It was far away, black with the vast shadow of perpetual forests, beneath which quaked great morasses. Within it roved bears, deer, buffalo, panthers, venomous snakes, renegades, murderers, Indians—the bravest and most warlike that the land had yet known.
Across it ran the frontier, beyond which all things were possible. For thirty years and more, in peace and in war, British officers and British agents had crossed it and had passed up and down behind it, loaded with arms and provisions and rewards for the scalps of American men and women and children. Steadily, irresistibly, unceasingly, the Americans had driven back that frontier, making every fresh advance with their blood, their sweat, and their agony; and as steadily the redcoats had retreated, but had ever sent their savage emissaries to do their devilish work. Ohio had taken the place of Kentucky as a watchword with the adventurous youth of the east; to grow old without giving Ohio a chance to kill one had become almost a reproach.
Besides, war with Great Britain was unquestionably close at hand. All over the country troops were mustering for the invasion of Canada. General Hull in Ohio, General Van Rensselaer at Niagara, and General Bloomfield at Plattsburg were preparing to cross the northern border at a moment’s notice. In Ohio, Jack would be in the very forefront of the fighting. Both by instinct and ancestry the lad was a born fighter, always on tip-toe for battle; he had shown this before and was to show it often afterwards. But the last three months had been an interlude, during which Sally Habersham had been the one real thing in a world of shadows. Now he had awakened. He would not dream in just the same way again.
With swelling heart he grasped the proffered belt.
“The maiden is white?” he questioned.