The dawn was long past. The sun had risen above the tree tops and was flooding the fort with yellow glory, making plain the havoc that the brief fight had wrought, searching out the tumbled dead and crowning their broken forms with pitiful gold. Prone they lay, grotesquely tossed, grim with the majesty of death. Round them life bourgeoned, careless of their fate. The waters rippled, the wind whispered overhead, the birds chorused in the tree tops, the jewelled flies, already gathering, buzzed in the glowing air. Far down the Maumee, on the sunlit water, a black spot shaped itself for a moment, and then was gone. Alagwa saw it and guessed that it was Captain Brito and his boat.
Cato was lying face down where he had fallen. Across his body lay that of the warrior who had stricken him down. Close at hand lay two other braves, their well-oiled bodies and shaven heads glistening in the sun. Alagwa did not even look at them; they were not friends—they were outlaws—outlaws suborned by Brito to attack Jack because he had been in search of her. The Shawnees were still her friends—she was still true to Tecumseh. But these were private foes. She had been trained in a hard school and their deaths affected her no more than would those of so many wild beasts.
She bent over Cato. His posture, to her trained eyes, spoke eloquently of death. Nevertheless, she would see. Panting, for the fight had torn open the half-healed wound upon her leg, she dragged the dead Indian away and gently fingered the long, broad gash that ran across the negro’s head. Blood from it had stiffened his wool into a mat of gore. The hatchet had struck slantingly or had been deflected, but it had cut deep. Never had Alagwa seen such a wound upon the head of a living man. Sorrowfully she stared at it, for Cato had been kind to her. At last, hopelessly but determinedly she rolled his body over and placed her hand above his heart.
It was beating, slowly but strongly.
Amazed, the girl sprang up. Heedless of her injured leg she raced to the river and back again and poured the cooling water on his head, washing away the blood that had run down his forehead and had filled his eyes.
Instantly Cato gasped and groaned. “Here! You Mandy,” he protested. “You quit dat! Don’t you go flingin’ no more of Mars’ Telfair’s plates at me. Massa ain’t gwine to stand havin’ his plates busted that a-way, no, he ain’t, not by no nigger living. You hear me.”
Alagwa heard but she did not understand. The negro accent and forms of speech were still partly beyond her. But she knew that Cato was alive and she dashed what was left of the water into his blood-streaked face.
The shock completed her work. Intelligence snapped back into the negro’s eyes and he sat up. “Lord! Massa!” he cried. “What’s done happen? Whar dem Injuns go? Whar’s Mars’ Jack?”
“Mr. Jack’s badly hurt. Very near he go to die. But Gitchemanitou save him. You are wounded, too. I thought you were dead.”
Cato fingered the cut upon his head. Then he grinned. “Lord!” he exclaimed. “Dat Injun oughter knowed better than to hit a nigger on the head. But”—his grin faded—“but whar Mars’ Jack?”