when the beautiful sally habersham accepted dick ogilvie her girl associates rejoiced quite as much as she did, foreseeing the return to their orbits of sundry temporarily diverted masculine satellites. her mother’s friends did not exactly rejoice, for dick ogilvie had been a great “catch” and his capture was a sad loss, but they certainly sighed with relief; for they had always felt that sally habersham was altogether too charming to be left at large. about the only mourners were a score or so of young men, whose hearts sank like lead when they heard the news.
the young men took the blow variedly, each according to his nature. one or two made such a vehement pretense of not caring that everybody decided that they cared a great deal; two or three laughed at themselves in the vain hope of preventing other people from laughing at them; several got very drunk, as a gentleman might do without disgrace in that year of 1812; others hurriedly set[8] off to join the army of thirty-five thousand men that congress had just authorized in preparation for the coming war with great britain; the rest stayed home and moped, unable to tear themselves away from the scene of their discomfiture.
of them all none took the blow harder than jaqueline telfair, commonly known as jack. jack was just twenty-one, and the fact that he was a full year younger than miss habersham, had lain like a blight over the whole course of his wooing. in any other part of the land he might have concealed his lack of years, for he was unusually tall and broad and strong, but he could not do so at his home in alabama, where everybody had known everything about everybody for two hundred years and more. still, jack hoped against hope and refused to believe the news until he received it from miss habersham’s own lips.
miss habersham, by the way, was not quite so composed as she tried to be when she told him. jack was so big and fine and looked at her so straight and, altogether, was such a lovable boy that her heart throbbed most unaccountably and before she quite knew what she was doing she had leaned forward and kissed him on the lips. “good-by, jack, dear,” she said softly. then, while jack stood petrified, she turned and fled. she did not love jack in the least and she did love dick ogilvie,[9] but—oh! well! jack was a gentleman; he would understand.
jack did understand. for a few seconds he stood quite still; then he too walked away, white faced and silent.
the next morning he went out to hunt; that is, he took a light shot-gun and tramped away into the half dozen square miles of tangled woodland that lay at the back of the telfair barony along the tallapoosa river. but as he left his dog and his negro body-servant, cato, at home, he probably went to be alone rather than to kill.
spring was just merging into summer, and the sun spots were dancing in the perfumed air across the tops of the grasses. great butterflies were flitting over the painted buttercups and ox-eyed daisies, skimming the shiny gossamers beneath which huge spiders lay in wait. from every bush came the twitter of nestlings or the wing flash of busy bird parents. squirrels, red and gray, flattening themselves against the bark, peered round the trunks of great trees with bright, suspicious eyes. molly cottontails crouched beneath the growing brambles. round about lay the beautiful woodland, range after range of cobweb-sheeted glades splashed with yellow light. crisp oaks and naked beeches, mingled with dark green hemlocks and burnished quivering pines, towered above bushes of[10] sumach and dogwood, twined and intertwined with swift-growing dewberry vines. from somewhere on the right came the sound of water rippling over a pebbly bed.
abruptly jack halted, stiffening like a pointer pup, and leaned forward, gun half raised, trying to peer through the sun-soaked bushes of the moist glade. he had heard no sound, seen nothing move, yet his skin had roughened just as that of a wildcat roughens at the approach of danger. instinct—the instinct of one born and brought up almost within sight of the frontier—told him that something dangerous was watching him from the jungly undergrowth before him. it might be a bear or a wolf or a panther, for none of these were rare in alabama in the year 1812. but jack thought it was something else.
he took a step backward, cocking his gun as he did so and questing warily to right and to left.
“come out of those bushes and show yourself,” he ordered sharply.
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.[11] 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[12] 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.”
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[13] 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[14] 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[15] 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.
“as thyself, little brother. she is the daughter of delaroche telfair, the friend of tecumseh, who[16] died at pickawillany fifteen years ago. moreover, she is very fair.”
the indian spoke simply. he did not ask whether jack would come; the latter’s acceptance of the belt pledged him to that course and to question him further would be insulting. he did not ask any pledge as to the treatment of the girl; apparently he well knew that none was necessary.
jack considered. “i will find the maiden at wapakoneta?” he questioned.
“if my brother comes quickly. my brother knows that war is in the air. if my brother is slow let him inquire of colonel johnson at upper piqua. the maiden is known as alagwa (the star). has my brother more to ask?”
jack shook his head. if he held been speaking to a white man he would have had a score of questions to ask; but he had learned the indian taciturnity. all had been said; why vainly question more?
“no!” he answered. “i have nothing more to ask. my brother may expect me at wapakoneta as quickly as possible. i go now to make ready.” he did not again press his hospitality on the chief. he knew it would be useless.
the shawnee bowed slightly; then he turned on his heel and melted noiselessly into the underbrush.
jack stared after him wonderingly. then he stared at the belt in his hand. so quickly the chief[17] had come and so quickly he had gone that jack needed the sight of something material to convince himself that he had not been dreaming.
not the least amazing part of the chief’s coming had been the message he had brought. jack had heard of delaroche telfair, but he had heard of him only vaguely. when his huguenot forefathers had fled from france, a century and a quarter before, one branch had stopped in england and another branch had come to america. the american branch, at least, had not broken off all connection with the elder titled branch of the family, which had remained in france. indeed, as the years went by and religious animosities died out, the connection had if anything grown closer. communication had been solely by letter, but it is not rare that relatives who do not see each other are the better friends. a hundred years had slipped by and then the terror had driven the count telfair and his younger brother, delaroche, from france. the count had stayed in london and bye and bye had gone back to join the court of napoleon. but delaroche had shaken the soil of france from his feet and had crossed to america with a number of his countrymen and had founded gallipolis, on the banks of the ohio, the second city in the state. later he had become a trader to the indians and at last was rumored to have joined the shawnees. that had[18] been fifteen years before and none of the alabama telfairs had heard of him since.
and now had come this surprising news. he was dead! his daughter had been brought up by the great chief tecumseh and was nearly grown and was the heiress of great estates. brito telfair—jack vaguely recalled the name as that of the head of the branch that had stopped in england—sought to get possession of her. tecumseh liked him, but, bound by a promise to the girl’s dead father, had refused to give her up and had sent all the weary miles from ohio to alabama to seek out the american telfairs and keep his pledge. more, he might have long contemplated the necessity of keeping it. it might have been at his suggestion that his mother, methowaka, who had been born in alabama, at takabatchi, on the tallapoosa river, not twenty miles from the telfair barony, had revisited her old home about ten years before, shortly before her tribe had gone north for good and all, and had “raised up” jack as a member of the great panther clan.
and now he had sent for him, sent for him over nearly a thousand miles of prairie, swamp, and forest, past hostile indian villages and suspicious white men. jack thought of it and marvelled. few white men would do so much to keep a pledge to a friend ten years dead!
as he pondered jack had been pacing slowly homeward. at last he halted on a rustic bridge[19] thrown across a swift-flowing little creek that sang merrily through the woodland. on the hill beyond, at the crest of a velvety shadow-flecked lawn, rose the white-stoned walls of the home where he had been born and bred. around it stretched acres of field and orchard, vivid with the delicate blossoms of apples and of plums, the pink-white haze of peach, the light green spears of corn, and the darker green of tobacco. over his head a belted kingfisher screamed, a crimson cardinal flashed like a live coal from tree to tree, a woodpecker drummed at a tree. below flashed the creek, a singing water pebbled with pearls. jack did not see nor hear them; arms on rail he stared blankly, pondering.
a voice startled him and he swung round to face his body-servant, cato, a negro a few years older than himself.
cato was panting. “massa colonel’s home, suh,” he gasped. “an’ he want you, suh. he’s in a pow’ful hurry.”
jack stared at the boy. “father home!” he exclaimed, half to himself. “i didn’t expect him for hours.”
“he’s done got home, suh. he ride black rover most near to death, suh. yes, suh! he’s in most pow’ful hurry.”
