“Your father left them,” he said. “Spend the money, but keep the picture safe. Your father said it would prove your rights if need be. Hang it around your neck by the chain and show it to no one till you must. Now, farewell.” CHAPTER VI LITTLE sleep was there for any one in the Shawnee camp that night. Hour after hour the witchdrums boomed and the leaping ghost fires flamed to the far-off blinking stars. Hour after hour the thunderous chanting of the braves shivered through the forest, waking the resting birds and scaring the four-footed prowlers of the night. Hour after hour the chiefs debated peace and war, now listening to the words of the redcoat emissary of the British king, now hearkening to Tecumseh, now turning ear to Catahecasa (Black Hoof) or to Wathethewela (Bright Horn), as they spoke for peace, declaring that the British would fight for a time and then go away, but that the Long Knives from the south would stay forever. Hour after hour the wheeling stars, a silver dust behind the chariot of the moon, rose, passed, and sank. Hour after hour the mounting mists of the Black Swamp wavered and fell back, driven away by the heat of the fires and the hot breaths of the warriors. Dawn was breaking in the east as Tecumseh and his devoted few struck their hatchets into the war post and left the council to prepare for their northward venture, leaving the bulk of the Shawnees loyal to the Seventeen Fires. Long before this, Alagwa had sought Wabetha, wife of Tecumseh, and had told her the will of the great chief. In the privacy of the lodge she had dropped her Indian garments from her one by one, till she stood revealed in the firelight, a slender shape amazingly fair compared to the red tints of the Indians. Wabetha, softly marvelling over the ever-new wonder of her white beauty, had hacked at the two heavy plaits of burnished hair till they fell like two great snakes to the trampled clay of the floor, leaving the girl bare indeed. Then, one by one, she had clothed her in the unfamiliar garments of the whites, the strong calico shirt, the deerskin knee breeches, the leggings wrapped about each slender limb and bound at the top and at the bottom with pliant thongs, the high moccasins padded as a protection against the snakes that infested the whole region. When the squaw placed on her head the inevitable coonskin cap of the white hunter, it would have taken a sharp eye to suspect the sex of this Indian-trained daughter of the Huguenots. Straight as a fir and supple as a willow, retaining longer than most of her sex the slender lines of childhood, she hid all feminine curves beneath the loose garb of the woodsman.