“When a fox sees a fat partridge in the grass he does not fly at it, because he has no wings; he creep and glides, while the birds nestle; and though they do fly, he is quicker than they, and runs into the woods with his prize.”
“I understand you, Custa; you are up to some devilry you learnt among the Wyandots. Well, well, it’s your natur’, Custa, and I won’t gainsay it. Besides, in the woods it’s right—I know it is. Indians ain’t regiments, and forests ain’t regular battle-fields. What do you propose?”
The young Indian rose to speak. There was none of the semi-educated gentleman about him now. He was all red. He laid down his calumet and his rifle, and assumed all the dignified mien of a chief and a warrior. The two white men looked at him—Harrod vacantly and listlessly, Harvey with that deep earnestness, that strong affection, which, by some strange instinct, the secret of which he little knew, he had always felt for Custaloga.
“The Shawnees are women. There are beasts in the forest, and birds in the air, and fish in the streams, and warriors in the great hunting-ground under the setting sun; but they are too lazy to hunt the forest, too idle to shoot the bird, too stupid to fish the stream, too cowardly to fight with men. There are a few long-knives in the woods, men who make themselves wigwams, and grow corn to make themselves their bread, and hunt, and fish like red-men, doing them no harm. And they buried the hatchet, and smoked the calumet of peace with the Indians. But the Shawnees are skunks—they shake hands with the right arm, and kill with the left. They have come like red foxes, and they have stolen the queen bird”—here he spoke fiercely, and then his voice sunk to a melancholy softness that was quite musical in its deep mellow sadness—“they came like cowards, like skunks and polecats, and they have killed a woman, and the little pappoose that could not walk, and stolen the little bounding-deer, the son of the pale-face with the large heart. They are gone, like beasts, to burrow in their holes. But men are behind. Let them look, and they will gaze on warriors; one of them has already seen the face of a brave.”
And he bowed gracefully to Harrod, who, however, made no sign.
“The great heart is weary; the friends of Custa need rest. Let them lie in the cache to-night, and follow on the trail when the sun lights the earth. Custa will go alone.
“Where to?” asked Harvey, quickly.
Custaloga then developed his plan, which was simple enough.
There was an Indian village about nine or ten miles off, and though in a straight line, the way was difficult, yet one used to the woods could go and return in a night. Custaloga, believed from his intimate knowledge of the tribe to which Tecumseh—the young chief who had saved Amy—belonged, that the prisoners would in the first instance be taken to that place, as the nearest, and also because it was close to the village of Tecumseh himself, who doubtless would claim Amy as his prize.
“But how do you know it was Tecumseh at all?” said Harvey.