The Riflemen of the Ohio Part 7

Thunder, old but brave warrior of the Wyandots, was a judge of promising youth, and he thought that in his sixty years of life he had never seen another so satisfactory as this prisoner, save perhaps the mighty young chief, known to his own people as Timmendiquas and to the settlers as White Lightning. He looked at the length of limb and the grand development of shoulders and chest, and he sighed ever so gently. He sighed because in his opinion Manitou should have bestowed such great gifts upon a Wyandot, and not upon a member of the white race. Yet Heno did not actually hate the prisoner. Coiled at the bottom of his heart, like a tiny spring in a watch, was a little hope, and this little hope, like the tiny spring, set all the machinery of his mind in motion.

"You no like being captive, held in lodge, with arms tied?" he said gently.

Henry smiled.

"No, I don't enjoy it," he replied. "It's not the situation that I should choose for myself."

"You like to be free," continued old Heno with the same gentle gravity.

"You like to be out in the forest with Whoraminta?"

"Yes," replied Henry, "I'd like to be free, and I'd like to be out in the forest, but I don't know about Whoraminta. I'm not acquainted with him, and he might not be a pleasant comrade."

"Whoraminta! Whoraminta!" repeated Heno. "Cannot think of your word for it. It is this!"

He threw himself into a firm att.i.tude, held out one hand far, extended the other about half so far, shut his left eye, and looked with the right intently along the level of his two hands. Henry understood the pantomime perfectly.

"I know," he said. "Whoraminta is a rifle. You're right, Thunder, I'd like mighty well to be out in the forest with my Whoraminta, one of the trustiest and best comrades I ever had."

Heno's smile answered that of the captive.

"And with plenty of Teghsto?" he said.

"Teghsto?" said Henry. "That's new to me. Can't you think of the English word for it?"

Heno shook his head, but closed his right hand until it formed approximately the shape of a horn, then elevated it and held it as if he were pouring something into the open palm of his left hand.

"Use in Whoraminta," he said.

"That's not hard," said Henry. "Powder you mean."

"That right," said Heno, smiling again. "Teghsto go in Whoraminta, and Yeatara go in Whoraminta, too. You want plenty of Yeatara."

"Lead! bullets!" said Henry at a guess.

"Yes. That it. Yeatara is lead, and you snap with Taweghskera; fire spark jump out flas.h.!.+ bang! You want Taweghskera, too."

"Taweghskera must be flint," said Henry, and old Heno nodded. "Yes, Thunder, I'd want the flint, too, or I couldn't do anything at all with Whoraminta, Teghsto and Yeatara. I'll remember those words, my friend.

Thanks for your free teaching."

"You learn fast. You make good Wyandot," said Heno in the most friendly manner. "You have your arms, your feet free, Whoraminta with you, you go with the warriors on great hunt, you gone many moons, you kill the deer, buffalo, bear, panther, you have no care, no sorrow, you live. I, too, was a young hunter and warrior once."

Old Heno slowly drew his figure up at the glorious picture that he had painted. His nostrils were distended, and the fire of his youth came back into his eyes. He saw the buffaloes trampling down the gra.s.s, and heard the shout of his enemies in the forest combat.

"I'm thinking, Heno," said Henry sincerely, "that you're yet a good deal of a young hunter and warrior."

"You not only make good warrior, but you make good chief, too. You know how to talk," said Heno.

Nevertheless, he was pleased, and he was still smiling when he left a few moments later. n.o.body else came for a day and night, old Heno bringing him his food and water. He did not suffer any actual physical pain, as his bonds permitted him to move a little and the circulation was not impeded, but he chafed terribly. The picture that Heno had drawn of the great forest and the great hunt was most alluring. He longed for freedom and his "Whoraminta."

A visitor came on the second morning. The lodge door was opened and a thick figure filled it a moment as a man entered. Henry was sitting on a mat at the farthest part of the lodge, and he could see the man very clearly. The stranger was young, twenty-seven or twenty-eight perhaps, thick set and powerful, tanned to the brownness of an Indian by sun, wind and rain, but the features obviously were those of the white race.

It was an evil face, but a strong one. Henry felt a s.h.i.+ver of repulsion.

He felt that something demoniac had entered the lodge, because he knew that this was Simon Girty, the terrible renegade, now fully launched upon the career that made his name infamous throughout the Ohio Valley to this day.

But after the little s.h.i.+ver, Henry was without motion of expression.

Show apprehension in the presence of such a man! He would rather die.

Girty laughed and sat down on the mat on the other side of the lodge.

But it was a small lodge, and their faces were not more than four feet apart. Henry read in the eyes of Girty a satisfaction that he did not seek to conceal.

"It isn't so pleasant to be trussed up in that fas.h.i.+on, is it?" he asked.

Henry refused to answer.

Girty laughed again.

"You needn't speak unless you feel like it," he said. "I can do the talking for both of us. You're tied up, it's true, but you're treated better than most prisoners. I've been hearing a good deal about you. A particular friend of yours, one Braxton Wyatt, a most promising lad, has told me a lot of stories in which you have a part."

"I know Braxton Wyatt very well," said Henry, "and I'm glad to say that I've helped to defeat some of his designs. He has a great ambition."

"What is that?" asked Girty.

"To become as bad a man as you are."

But Girty was not taken aback at all. His lips twisted into a peculiar grin of cruel satisfaction.

"They do fear me," he said, "and they'll fear me more before long. I've joined the Indians, I like them and their ways, and I'm going to make myself a great man among them."

"At the expense of your own kind?"

"Of course. What is that to me. I'm going to get all the tribes together, and sweep the whites out of the Ohio Valley forever."

"I've heard that these same Indians with whom you're so thick burned your step-father at the stake?" said Henry.

"That's true," replied the renegade without the slightest feeling. "That was when I was a little child, and they captured our family. But they didn't burn me. So what have I to complain of?"

Henry could not repress a shudder, but Girty remained as cool as ice.

"Why shouldn't I be a great man among the Indians?" he said. "I know the tricks of both white and red now. The Continentals, as they call themselves--rebels I call them--held McKee, Eliot and myself prisoners at Fort Pitt, the place they call Pittsburgh, but we escaped and here we are. We've been joined by Blackstaffe, Quarles, and the boy, Braxton Wyatt. The Indians trust us and listen to us; we're going to draw all the valley Indians together--Shawnees, Miamis, Wyandots, Ottawas, Delawares and Illinois--and we'll light such a flame on both sides of the river that no white man will ever be able to put it out."

"You've got to reckon with some brave men first," said Henry.

"Yes, I know that the settlers have good woodsmen, Boone and Kenton--Simon Kenton was my comrade once--but they are too few, and as for this expedition to which you belonged, that is coming up the river, we're going to cut that off, too, not only because we'll be glad to wipe out those people, but because we want the rifles, the ammunition, the stores, and, above all, the cannon that your fleet carries. What will the wooden walls in Kentucky be to us when we get those big guns?"

"When you get them!" said Henry defiantly. This man inspired increasing horror and repulsion. The exulting way in which he talked of destroying his own people would have been incredible, had Henry merely heard of it from others. But the man was here before his face, glorying in the deeds that he expected to commit.

"Oh, we'll get them," said Girty confidently. "You think you can help to keep us from it, but you won't be there when it's done. Two things are going to be offered to you, and you'll have to choose between them."

"What are they?" asked Henry, who had resumed his calm, at least, so far as looks went.