THE WARD OF TECUMSEH
_By CRITTENDEN MARRIOTT_
SALLY CASTLETON, SOUTHERNER
_Six Illustrations by N. C. Wyeth. $1.25 net._
“A swiftly moving, entertaining tale of love and daring secret service
work.”
--_Chicago Record Herald_
OUT OF RUSSIA
_Illustrated by Frank McKernan. $1.25 net._
“There is everything that goes to make up a story wholesomely exciting.”
--_The Continent, Chicago_
THE ISLE OF DEAD SHIPS
_Illustrated by Frank McKernan. $1.00 net._
“Chapter after chapter unfolds new and startling adventures.”
--_Philadelphia Press_
J. B. LIPPINCOTT CO.
PUBLISHERS PHILADELPHIA
[Illustration: ALAGWA COMES TO THE COUNCIL FIRE
_Page 304_]
THE WARD OF
TECUMSEH
BY
CRITTENDEN MARRIOTT
AUTHOR OF “SALLY CASTLETON, SOUTHERNER,” “THE ISLE OF DEAD
SHIPS,” ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
FRANK McKERNAN
[Illustration]
PHILADELPHIA & LONDON
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
1914
COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY CRITTENDEN MARRIOTT
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER, 1914
PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS
PHILADELPHIA, U. S. A.
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
ALAGWA COMES TO THE COUNCIL FIRE _Frontispiece_
ALAGWA, BEING WOUNDED, IS RESCUED BY JACK TELFAIR 80
ALAGWA SHOOTS CAPTAIN BRITO 194
JACK TELFAIR AND CAPTAIN BRITO SETTLE THEIR DISPUTE 330
THE WARD OF TECUMSEH
CHAPTER I
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 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, 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
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. 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 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 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.
“As thyself, little brother. She is the daughter of Delaroche Telfair,
the friend of Tecumseh, who 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 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 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 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.”