Part 23 (2/2)

”And what is the alternative that you offer us?”

”We admit that we would lose lives in taking your fort, lives that we wish to save. So we promise you that if you surrender, your women and young children shall go safely up the Ohio on boats to Pittsburgh, the men to be held for ransom.”

”Don't think of accepting, Major!” exclaimed Henry. ”Don't think of it, even if they had ten thousand warriors! If you put your people in his power, Girty would never dream of keeping his promise, and I doubt if the chiefs understand what he is saying while he is speaking Englis.h.!.+”

”Never fear that I shall do such a thing, my boy,” said Major Braithwaite. ”Meekly surrender a place like this to a scoundrel like Girty!”

Then he called out loudly:

”It may be that you can take us in two days as you say, but that you will have to prove, and we are waiting for you to prove it.”

”You mean, then,” said Girty, ”that we're to have your scalps?”

”Major,” said Henry earnestly, ”let me speak to them. I've lived among the Indians, as I told you before, and I know their ways and customs.

What I say may do us a little good!”

”I believe in you, my boy,” said Major Braithwaite with confidence.

”Speak as you please, and as long as you please.”

He stepped from the high point of the ledge, and Henry promptly took his place. Braxton Wyatt uttered a cry of surprise and anger as the figure of the great youth rose above the palisade, and it was repeated by Simon Girty. The two knew instinctively who had put Fort Prescott on guard, and their hearts were filled with black rage.

”Simon Girty,” called Henry in the language of the Shawnees, which he spoke well, ”do you know me?”

He had deliberately chosen the Shawnee tongue because he was sure that all the chiefs understood it, and he wished them to hear what he would have to say.

”Yes, I know you,” said Girty angrily, ”and I know why you are here.”

Henry suddenly put on the manner of an Indian orator. He had learned well from them when he was a captive in the Northwestern tribe, and for the moment the half-taunting, half-boastful spirit which he wished to show really entered into his being.

”Simon Girty,” he called loudly, ”I came here to save these people and to defeat you, and I have succeeded. You cannot take this fort and you cannot frighten its men to surrender it. Renegade, murderer of your kind, wretch, liar, I know and these people know that if they were to surrender you would not keep your word if you could. How can any one believe a traitor? How can your Indian allies believe that the man who murders his own people would not murder them when the time came?”

Girty's face flamed with furious red, but Henry went on rapidly:

”If Manitou told me that I should fall in fair fight with a Wyandot or a Shawnee or a Miami I should not feel disgraced, but if I were to be killed by the dirty hand of you, Girty, or the equally dirty hand of Braxton Wyatt, who stands behind you, I should feel myself dishonored as long as the world lasts.”

Girty, choking with rage, drew his tomahawk from his belt and shook it at Henry, who was more than a hundred yards away. The chiefs remained motionless, silent and majestic as before.

”And you great chiefs,” continued Henry, ”listen to me. You will fail here as you have failed before. Help, great help, is coming for these people. I brought them the warning. I aroused them from sleep, and I know that many men are coming. Pay heed to me, Yellow Panther, head chief of the Miamis, and Red Eagle, head chief of the Shawnees, that you may know who I am, and that my words are worth hearing. I am that bearer of belts, Big Fox, who came with Brown Bear and The Bat into the council lodge of the Miamis and sent the warriors of the Shawnees and the Miamis astray. I was white and my comrades were white, but you did not know me, cunning as you are.”

Now Yellow Panther and Red Eagle stirred. These were true things that he told, and curiosity and anger stirred in them.

”Who is this that taunts us?” they asked of Girty.

”It's a young fiend,” replied the renegade. ”Wyatt has told me all about him. Boy as he is, he's worth a whole band of warriors to the people behind those walls.”

”There is more that you should remember, Red Eagle and Yellow Panther,”

continued Henry, wis.h.i.+ng to impress them. ”It was I and my comrades who carried the message to the wagon train that you fought at the ford, where you were beaten, where you lost many warriors. I see that you remember. Tell your warriors that Manitou favors my friends and me, that we have never yet failed. We were present when the Indians of the south and many renegades like Girty and Wyatt here, men with black hearts who told lies to their red friends, were beaten in a great battle. As they failed in the south, so will you fail here. A mighty fleet is coming, and it will scatter you as the winter wind scatters the dead leaves.”

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