CHAPTER XXI.

THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS.

Yes, at last, reason had resumed its throne, and Alaska was no longer the “mad queen of the Shawnees.”

Torches enabled her to gaze long and deeply into the hermit’s face, before her lips parted to utter his name:

“William!”

He started, and bent nearer her face.

The renegade’s hatchet had brought reason back to its own, even as a blow had hurled that peerless queen from her throne.

She had forgotten the wild life she had led; and when her eyes fell upon her wolves, a shudder crept over her frame, and she motioned for the animals to be removed from her sight.

“Oh! William, I am so glad that you have returned,” she continued. “He did not die--my brother, whom some bad man shot through the window of our cabin.”

The hermit’s face lighted up into a joyful smile, and he murmured:

“Her brother! Oh, God, I thank thee that I am not a murderer!”

“Where is my boy--my Edgar?” and her eyes wandered around, as though they were searching for a particular object.

At length they fell upon Mayne.

“Edgar!” she cried, stretching forth her hands. “Come to me.”

Unable to speak, the young hunter advanced.

“William, this is our boy,” she said, taking our hero’s hands, and looking up at Hewitt. “Long I waited for your return, William; but you came not. At last I resolved to go to Richmond, where I thought you were detained. I took our boy--a little babe--to Ronald Fairfax, and told him to keep him till I should return. Then, all alone, I plunged into the wilderness, but soon the Shawnees circled around me, and I was a prisoner. While they were conducting me to the village I tried to escape, but a chief struck me with his tomahawk, and then all was dark. Oh, William, how long have I been in darkness? You are so old now, and our Edgar a man!”

“For twenty years, Agnes, you have lived among the Shawnees, reft of reason,” whispered Hewitt.

A shudder crept to the woman’s heart.

“Twenty years a maniac! My God!” she cried. “Oh, William, speak not to me of that time. I would forget it. Let us leave this horrid place.”

Almost unassisted, she gained her feet, and Tecumseh bade the hermit conduct her to his beaded lodge, while the chief chivalrously occupied a meaner one near by.

The hours of that night were sacred to the reunited trio; and beyond earshot a band of warriors encircled the beaded wigwam.

Tecumseh would keep his vow.

During the late war-expedition the knife of a vengeful mother struck at his heart; but the intervention of a white prisoner, whom he liberated, saved his life.

When the Indians saw the whites beyond the portals of the chief’s lodge, they returned to the bloody spot for the purpose of attending to the wounded and the dead.

The wolves had deserted Jim Girty, and during the absence of Tecumseh’s band, one of his spies had borne his insensible form to the river, where they entered a boat, and the spy rowed away. After much suffering the renegade recovered, and remained from the sight of his brother Simon the remainder of his life.

While the savages were attending to the wounded, a groan rose from a dark form on the earth. It grew into a death-song.

“Oonalooska is near the great waters! Oonalooska’s dream was from spirit land! Now let Oonalooska die, for he has seen the Lone Man find his long-lost squaw and pappoose. Oonalooska is not afraid to die. Tecumseh can not torture him now, ha! ha! ha!” and thus, stoically--proud of having cheated his enemies, the soul of the bravest chief of the Shawnee tribe stepped upon the “trail of death.”

When morning came Tecumseh tenderly bade the whites farewell, and a band of trusty warriors escorted them to Chillicothe.

Thence they set out for Virginia, and Edgar Hewitt--Mayne Fairfax no longer--presented his long-lost parents to those who had been a father and mother to him from childhood to manly years.

A month after the happy reunion in the wood, Edgar wedded the beautiful girl who had led him to a father and a mother in the wilderness, and not far from Fairfax Manor arose a stately mansion, where the quartette peacefully and pleasantly passed the remaining days of life.

To this day eleven miles south of Chillicothe on the Portsmouth road is still to be seen the cave occupied by the hermit for many years, and over it stands a monument, erected to his memory by the people of Ross county, Ohio.

The subsequent life of Tecumseh, and his brother, the Prophet, are too well known to be rehearsed here. Often, in disguise, the great chief visited the home of the Hewitts, whose salt he ate with welcome; but suddenly his visits ceased--he lay dead before Colonel Johnson.

A few years subsequent to the incidents related in the foregoing pages, Simon Girty met the doom he richly deserved. In Proctor’s defeat he was literally ground to atoms by Johnson’s mounted men. James, too, fell beneath the arm of white avengers; while Giangomah, his tool, fell beside his chief at the battle of the Thames.

After his son’s death, Okolona, the old Medicine, fled to the neutral Mingoes, where he died a natural death. It was upon his ears, that Eudora’s shriek first fell, while he and the rescuing party stood, horror-stricken, before the empty lodge, and its murdered guards.

And now, reader, having seen mystery unraveled, the actions of wicked men result in good, and the triumph of right, in a startling drama of the forest, we lay aside the pen, hoping soon to renew it for the record of other scenes.

THE END.

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] The Shawnees called the Ohio river _Kiskepila_ Sepe, _i. e._, Eagle river.

[2] Simon Girty was often called the White Shawnee by the Indians.

Transcriber’s Notes

The Table of Contents at the beginning of the book was created by the transcriber.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation such as “mad-woman”/“madwoman” have been maintained.

Minor punctuation and spelling errors have been silently corrected and, except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text, especially in dialogue, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.

Page 89: “He made no pretentions” changed to “He made no pretensions”.