HOW REGINALD BRANDON RETURNED TO MOOSHANNE WITH HIS SISTER, ACCOMPANIED BY WINGENUND; AND WHAT BEFELL THEM ON THE ROAD.

Lucy Brandon was not a little surprised at the chief’s sudden departure; and, with the frankness natural to her character, inquired of her brother whether he could explain its cause. Reginald appeared either unable or unwilling to do so; and an appeal to the guide produced only the following unsatisfactory reply:

“War–Eagle is like the bird after which he’s called—it ain’t easy to explain or to follow his flight.”

Wingenund remained silent, but every now and then he fixed his bright and speaking eyes upon Lucy, as if he would divine her thoughts. That young lady, though at a loss to account for her embarrassment, entertained a fear that all was not right, and proposed to her brother to return to Mooshanne.

Snowdrop was soon caught, and the little party moved leisurely homeward, Reginald and the guide leading the way, and Wingenund walking by the side of Lucy’s pony; after riding a few minutes, she recovered her spirits, and remembering that there was no foundation for any surmises of evil, she resumed the conversation with her young companion, which the chief’s departure had interrupted. “Tell me, Wingenund, who is the ‘Black Father,’ of whom you speak?”

“He is very good,” said the boy, seriously; “He talks with the Great Spirit; and he tells us all that the Great Spirit has done; how He made the earth, and the water; and how He punishes bad men, and makes good men happy.”

“He is a white man, then?” said Lucy.

“He is,” replied the lad; “but though he is a white man, he always speaks truth, and does good, and drinks no fire–water, and is never angry.”

What a humiliating reflection is it, thought Lucy to herself, that in the mind of this young savage the idea of white men is naturally associated with drunkenness and strife! “Tell me, Wingenund,” she continued, “is the ‘Black Father’ old?”

“Many winters have passed over his head, and their snow rests upon his hair.”

“Does he live with you always?”

“He comes and he goes, like the sunshine and the rain; he is always welcome; and the LenapÉ love him.”

“Can he speak your tongue well?”

“He speaks many tongues, and tries to make peace between the tribes; but he loves the LenapÉ, and he teaches ‘the Prairie–bird’ to talk with the Great Spirit.”

“Does your sister speak to the Black Father in her own tongue?”

“Sometimes, and sometimes in the English; but often in a strange tongue, written on a great book. The Black Father reads it, and the Prairie–bird opens her ears, and looks on his face, and loves his words; and then she tells them all to me. But Wingenund is a child of the LenapÉ—he cannot understand these things!”

“You will understand them,” said Lucy, kindly, “if you only have patience: you know,” she added, smiling, “your sister understands them, and she is a LenapÉ too!”

“Yes,” said the boy; “but nobody is like Prairie–bird.”

“She must, indeed, be a remarkable person,” said Lucy, humouring her young companion’s fancy; “still, as you have the same father and mother, and the same blood, whatever she learns, you can learn too.”

“I have no father or mother,” said Wingenund, sadly, and he added, in a mysterious whisper, drawing near to Lucy, “Prairie–bird never had a father or mother.”

“Never had a father or mother!” repeated Lucy, as the painful thought occurred to her, that poor Wingenund was deranged.

“Never,” said the boy, in the same tone; “she came from there,” pointing, as he spoke, towards the north–west quarter of the heaven.

“How melancholy is it,” said Lucy to herself, “to think that this brave, amiable boy should be so afflicted! that so intelligent and quick a mind should be like a lyre with a broken string! Still,” thought she, “I will endeavour to understand his meaning, and to undeceive him.”

“Dear Wingenund, you are mistaken—your sister had the same father and mother as yourself; she may have learnt much, and may understand things strange to you, but you might learn them too.”

“Wingenund’s father and mother are dead,” said the boy, in a voice of deep and suppressed emotion; “he will not tell you how they died, for it makes his heart throb and his eyes burn; but you are good to him, and shall not see his anger. Prairie–bird never had a father; the Great Spirit gave her to the LenapÉ.”

While Lucy was musing how she should endeavour to dispel this strange delusion, which seemed to have taken such firm hold of her young companion’s mind, Reginald and Baptiste halted, and the latter said, “You see that party approaching; they may put some troublesome questions, leave me to answer them. Wingenund, you know what I mean?”

“Wingenund does not understand English,” said the boy, a slight smile of irony lurking in the corner of his mouth.

The approaching party consisted of eight or ten men, all armed with rifles, excepting two, who were mounted, and who carried cutlasses and large horse–pistols; among the pedestrians towered the gigantic form of young Mike Smith, who has already been presented to the reader before the store of David Muir in Marietta; and among the horsemen was the younger Hervey, leading his friends to scour the whole country in search of the slayer of his brother: they were all in a high state of excitement; and despite the cool and unmoved demeanour of the guide, he was not without apprehension that they might desire to wreak their vengeance on Wingenund.

“Ha! Baptiste,” said Hervey, grasping the guide’s hand; “you are the very man we are in search of; we have already been to the Colonel’s, and he told us we should find you with his son, and with Miss Brandon, in this quarter. We want your assistance, man, and that speedily too.”

“How can I serve you?” said the guide; “what is the matter? you seem bent on a hunt.”

“A hunt?” exclaimed Hervey, “yes, a hunt of a red–skin devil! Harkee, Baptiste!” and stooping from his horse, he repeated to the guide, in a low voice, but clear enough to be heard by all present, the circumstances attending his brother’s death.

“A daring act, indeed,” said the guide musing: “but could not you follow the trail while it was fresh, yesterday?”

“We followed it to a creek leading to the Muskingum, and there we lost it.”

“Can you describe the appearance of the Indian?” inquired the guide.

“A tall, handsome fellow, as straight as a poplar, and with a leap like a painter, so he seemed; but d—n him, he gave me such a knock on the head, that my eyes swam for five minutes.”

A cold shudder ran through Lucy’s limbs as, comparing this slight sketch of War–Eagle with his sudden departure and the guide’s caution to Wingenund, she recognised in the chief the object of their search: glancing her eye timidly at Wingenund, she could read on his countenance no traces of uneasiness; he was playing with Snowdrop’s mane; his gun resting on the ground, and he himself apparently unconscious of what was passing.

After a minute’s reflection, the guide continued: “You say that the Indian’s rifle was broken in half; did you notice anything about it?”

“Nothing: it was a strong coarse piece; we have brought the stock with us; here it is,” he added, calling up one of his party to whom it had been entrusted.

The guide took it in his hand, and at the first glance detected the imitation of a feather, roughly but distinctly cut with a knife: his own suspicions were at once confirmed, although his countenance betrayed no change of expression; but Mike Smith, who had been looking over his shoulder, had also observed the marks of the feather, and noticed it immediately aloud, adding, “Come, Baptiste, you know all the Ingian marks between Alleghany and the Missouri; what red–skin has this belonged to?”

“Mike,” said the guide coolly, “a man’s tongue must shoot far and true to hit such a mark as that.”

“And yet, Baptiste, if I’d been as long at the guiding and trapping as you, I think I’d a’ know’d something about it.”

“Ay, that’s the way of it,” replied Baptiste; “you young ‘uns always think you can shave a hog with a horn spoon! I’spose, Master Mike, you can tell a buzzard from a mockingbird; but if I was to show you a feather, and ask you what buzzard it belonged to, the answer might not be easy to find.”

“You’re an old fool,” growled Mike, angrily; and he added, as his eye rested suddenly upon Wingenund, “What cub is that standing by Miss’s white pony? we’ll see if he knows this mark. Come here, you devil’s brat.”

Not a muscle in the boy’s face betrayed his consciousness that he was addressed.

“Come here, you young red–skin!” shouted Mike yet more angrily, “or I’ll sharpen your movements with the point of my knife.”

Reginald’s fiery temper was ill calculated to brook the young backwoods–man’s coarse and violent language: placing himself directly between him and Wingenund, he said to the former in a stern and determined tone, “Master Smith, you forget yourself; that boy is one of my company, and is not to be exposed either to insult or injury.”

“Here’s a pretty coil about a young red–skin,” said Mike, trying to conceal his anger under a forced laugh; “how do we know that he ain’t a brother or a son of the Ingian we’re in search of? s’ blood, if we could find out that he was, we’d tar him, and burn him over a slow fire!”

“I tell you again,” said Reginald, “that he is guilty of no crime; that he saved my life, yesterday, at the risk of his own; and that, while I live, neither you nor any of your party shall touch a hair of his head.”

Baptiste fearing the result of more angry words, and moved by an appealing look from Miss Brandon, now interposed, and laying his hand on Smith’s shoulder, said, “Come, Master Mike, there is no use in threatening the young red–skin, when you see that he does not understand a word that you say: tell me what you wish to inquire of him, and I will ask him in his own tongue.”

“His tongue be d——d,” said Mike; “I’ll wager a hat against a gallon of David Muir’s best, that the brat knows English as well as you or I, although he seems to have nothing to do but to count the tassels on the edge of his shirt. I’ll show you, without hurting him,” he added in a lower tone, “that I’m not far wrong.”

“You swear not to injure him?” said Reginald, who overheard what passed.

“I do,” said Mike; “I only want to show you that he can’t make a fool of Mike Smith.” Here he called up one of the men from the rear; and having whispered something in his ear, he said, in a loud and distinct tone of voice, “Jack, we have found out that this Indian cub belongs to the party, one of whom murdered poor Hervey. Life for life is the law of the backwoods: do you step a little on one side; I will count four, and when I come to the four, split me the young rascal’s head, either with a bullet or with your axe.”

“For Heaven’s sake, as you are men,” exclaimed Lucy, in an agony, “spare him!”

“Peace, Miss Brandon,” said Mike; “your brother will explain to you that it must be so.”

The guide would fain have whispered a word to the boy, but he was too closely watched by Smith, and he was obliged to trust to Wingenund’s nerves and intelligence.

“Are you ready, Jack?” said Mike, audibly.

“Yes!” and he counted slowly, pausing between each number, “one—two—three!” At the pronunciation of this last word, Wingenund, whose countenance had not betrayed, by the movement of a muscle, or by the expression of a single feature, the slightest interest in what was passing, amused himself by patting the great rough head which Wolf rubbed against his hand as if totally unconscious that the deadly weapon was raised, and that the next word from the hunter’s lips was to be his death warrant.

“D—n it, you are right, after all, Baptiste,” said Mike Smith; “the brat certainly does not understand us, or he’d have pricked his ears when I came to number three; so, do you ask him, in his own lingo, if he knows that mark on the rifle–butt, and can tell us to what red–skin tribe it belongs?”

The guide now addressed a few words to Wingenund in the Delaware tongue, while Reginald and Lucy interchanged a glance of wonder and admiration at the boy’s sagacity and courage.

“He tells me that he has seen this mark before,” said the guide.

“Has he?” replied Mike; “ask him whether it is that of a Shawnee or a Wyandot, of an Iroquois or of a Delaware?”

After again conferring with Wingenund, the guide muttered to himself, “This youngster won’t tell a lie to keep a bullet from his brain or a halter from his neck; I must act for him.” He added, in a louder tone, “Mike, a word with you: it is not unlikely that the Ingian you’re in search of, is the same who gave the boy that wound, and who tried to kill Master Reginald yesterday: if it is so, he wants no more punishing; he has his allowance already.”

“How so?” said Mike.

“He is dead, man,—killed on the spot. Do you and Hervey meet me here to–morrow, an hour before noon; I will take you to the place where the body is buried, and you shall judge for yourselves whether it is that of the man you seek.”

“It’s a bargain,” said Mike; “we’ll come to the time. Now, lads, forward to Hervey’s clearing. Let’s have a merry supper to–night; and to–morrow, if the guide shows us the carcase of this rascal, why we can’t hurt that much; but we’ll pay off a long score, one day or other, with some of the red–skins. Sorry to have kept you waitin’, Miss; and hope we haven’t scared you,” said the rough fellow, making, as he drew off his party, an awkward attempt at a parting bow to Lucy.

“That was a clever turn of Baptiste’s,” said Reginald in a low voice to his sister; “he has made them believe that the cowardly knave who tried to stab me was the perpetrator of the daring outrage which they seek to avenge!”

“And was it really War–Eagle?” said Lucy, with a slight shudder,—“he who looks so noble and so gentle,—was it he who did it?”

“I believe so,” said Reginald.

“But is it not wrong in us to be friends with him, and to aid his escape?”

“Indeed,” replied her brother, “it admits of doubt; let us ask the guide, he will speak now without reserve;” and accordingly Reginald repeated to Baptiste the question and his sister’s scruples.

“Why you see, Miss,” said the wary hunter, “there is no proof that War–Eagle did it; though I confess it was too bold a deed to have been done by that dog of a Wyandot: but I will tell you, Miss,” he added, with increasing energy and vehemence, “if the War–Eagle did it, you will yourself, when you know all, confess that he did it nobly, and that he deserves no punishment from man. That elder Hervey was one of the bloodthirsty band by whom the harmless Christian Indians[21] were murdered; and it is believed that it was by Hervey’s own hand that Wingenund’s father fell; if War–Eagle revenged this cruel murder, and yet spared the life of the younger brother, when lying helpless at his feet, who shall dare to blame him, or move a foot in his pursuit?”

“He speaks the truth, Lucy,” said her brother; “according to the rules by which retaliation is practised by mankind, War–Eagle would have been justified in punishing with death such an act of unprovoked atrocity: but it is a dangerous subject to discuss; you had better forget all you have heard about it; and in case of further inquiries being made in your presence, imitate the happy unconsciousness lately displayed by Wingenund.”

“Come here, my dear young brother,” he added in a kindly tone, “and tell us,—did you really think that hot–headed chap was going to shoot you when he counted number three?”

“No,” said the boy with a scornful smile.

“And why not? for he’s a violent and angry man.”

“He dared not,” was the reply.

“How so?”

“He is a fool!” said the boy, in the same scornful tone; “a fool scarcely fit to frighten the fawn of an antelope! If he had touched me or attempted to shoot me, Netis and Grande–HÂche would have killed him immediately.”

“You are right, my young brave,” said Reginald, “he dared not hurt you. See, dear Lucy,” he added apart to his sister, “what a ripe judgment, what an heroic spirit, what nerves of iron, are found in the slender frame of this wounded boy, exhausted by fatigue and suffering!”

“We will at least give him a hearty supper,” said Lucy, “and an affectionate welcome to our home.”

Wingenund thanked her with his dark eyes, and the little party proceeded leisurely, without incident or interruption, to Mooshanne.