"Yes. Audubon told me the whole affair. Now finish this broth."
Leaning back, Norton obeyed, in a mingling of disappointment and content. It was hard that Grigg should have escaped, yet this Red Hugh seemed a capable person to trust in. Norton could not but wonder at the man. According to Boone, Red Hugh had spent the past twenty years here on the border, yet his manners and speech were those of a cultivated gentleman—and Norton could not understand the incongruity of it.
The rich broth gave him new life. When the last drop was gone, Red Hugh proceeded to cram an ancient pipe with tobacco, sternly denying the luxury to his guest, and settled himself beside the couch.
"Shawnee moccasins! Shawnee moccasins!" he muttered slowly, then brought his keen eyes to Norton's face. "Audubon said you were from New Orleans?"
"Yes," returned the Louisianian, with curiosity again stirring in him. "You seemed to recognize those moccasins, sir—how shall I call you?"
"Call me by my name—Red Hugh," said the other gruffly. "That is all the name I have held these twenty years, and it is good enough to die under. As to those moccasins, sir, you seem to have entertained an angel and a devil unawares."
"Those two Indians?" demanded Norton eagerly. "Who were they, then?"
"He with one eye is called the Prophet," puffed Red Hugh slowly. "The bitterest-hearted devil unhung! The other, his brother, is the finest man on the border to-day, the one redskin I am proud to call friend. He has sat here where you now lie, telling me of his dream; he has built a town on the Wabash, not far from Vincennes, where he hopes to gather all the Indian tribes in peace, teaching them to lay aside the rifle and till the soil. Neither he nor his followers touch liquor—sir, God will punish our race for the evils we have brought upon these Indians! The man of whom I speak is a Shawnee, humbly born yet recognized as chieftain by a dozen tribes. His name is Tecumthe, or as the border makes it, Tecumsey."
The amazed Norton listened to this speech in blank astonishment. He had heard little of the two Indians in the South, and only on his Northern trip had he learned much of Tecumthe or his famous brother, the Prophet. Along the border they were hated bitterly, and that he had himself aided the two was no small surprise.
Even more amazing, however, was the way in which Red Hugh spoke. From Boone, Norton had understood that the man hunted Indians, as more than one frontiersman did, like wild animals.