Chapter VII: Part 7

The Catawba's negative was his guttural "Wah," and Ephraim Yeates, having carefully restored the final grain of the priming to his powder-horn, proceeded to enlighten us at some length.

"Mighty cur'is, ez I was a-saying. Them Injuns fixed up an ambush_ment_, blazed in a volley at the clostest sort o' range, and followed it up with a tomahawk and knife rush,--lessen that there Afrikin was too plumb daddled to tell any truth, whatsomedever. And, spite of all this here rampaging, they never drawed a single drop o' blood in the whole enduring scrimmage! Mighty cur'is, that; ain't it, now? And that ain't all: some o' them same Injuns, or leastwise one of 'em, was a-wearing boots with spurs onto 'em. What say, Chief?"

Uncanoola held up all the fingers of one hand and two of the other. "Sebben Injun; one pale-face," he said, in confirmation.

I looked at Richard, and he gave me back the eyeshot, with a hearty curse to speed it.

"Falconnet!" said he, by way of tail-piece to the oath; and I nodded.

"'Twas that there same hoss-captain, sure enough, ez I reckon," drawled Yeates. "Maybe one o' you two can tell what-all he mought be a-driving at."

Jennifer shook his head, and I, too, was silent. 'Twas out of all reason to suppose that the baronet would resort to sheer violence and make a terrified captive of the woman he wanted to marry. It was a curious mystery, and the hunter's next word involved it still more.

"And yit that ain't all. Whilst some o' the Injuns was a-whooping it up acrost the creek, a-chasing the folks that was making tracks for their city o' refuge, t'others run the two gals off into the big woods at the side o' the road. Then Mister Hoss-Captain picks up the Afrikin, chucks him on a hoss and sends him a-kiting with his flea in his ear; after which he climbs _his_ hoss and makes tracks hisself--not to ketch up with the gals, ez you mought reckon, but off yon way," pointing across the creek and down the road to the southward.

Jennifer heard him through, had him set it all out again in plainest fashion, and after all could only say: "You are sure you have the straight of it, Eph?"

The borderer appealed to Uncanoola. "Come, Chief; give us the wo'th of your jedgment. Has the old Gray Wolf gone stun-blind? or did he read them sign like they'd ort to be read?"

"Wah! the Gray Wolf has sharp eye--sharp nose--sharp tongue, sometime. Sign no can lie when he read 'um."

Jennifer turned to me. "What say you, Jack? 'Tis all far enough beyond me, I'll confess."

I was as much at sea touching the mystery as he was; yet the thing to do seemed plain enough.

"Never mind the baronet's mystery; 'tis Mistress Margery's hazard that concerns us," I would say. And then to Ephraim Yeates: "Will this rain kill the trail, think you?"

He shook his head dubiously. "I dunno for sartain; 'twill make a heap o' differ' if they was anyways anxious to hide it. Ez it starts out, with the women a-hossback, 'tis plain enough for a blind man to lift on the run."

"Then let us be at it," said I. "We can very well afford to let the mystery untangle itself as we go." And with this the pursuit began in relentless earnest.

The trail of the two horses ridden by Margery and her woman cut a right angle with the road, turning northwest along the left bank of the stream; and, despite the rain, which was now pouring steadily even in the thick wood, the hoof-prints were so plainly marked that we could follow at a smart dog-trot.

In this speeding the old hunter and the Indian easily outwearied Jennifer and me. They both ran with a slow swinging leap, like the racking gait, half pace, half gallop, of a well-trained troop horse. Mile after mile they put behind them in these swinging bounds; and when, well on in the afternoon, we stopped to eat a snack of the cold meat and to slake our thirst at one of the many rain pools, I was fain to follow Jennifer's lead, throwing myself flat on the soaking mold to pant and gasp and pay off the arrears of breathlessness.

This breathing halt was of the briefest; but before the race began again, Ephraim Yeates took time to make a careful scrutiny of the trail, measuring the stride of the horses, and looking sharply on the briars for some bit of cloth or other token of assurance. When we came up with him he was mumbling to himself.

"Um-hm; jes' so. They was a-making tracks along hereaway, sartain, sure; larruping them hosses to a keen jump, lickity-split. Now, says I to myself, what's the tarnation hurry? Ain't they got all the time there is to get where they're a-going, immejitly, _if_ not sooner?" Then he turned upon me. "Cap'n John, can't you and the youngster lay your heads side and side and make out what-all this here hoss-captain mought be up to? It do look like he had some sort o' hatchet to grind, a-sending that Afrikin back to raise a hue and cry, and then a-letting his Injuns leave a trail like this here that any tow-head boy from the settlemints could follow at a canter."

Richard said he could never guess the meaning of it all; and my mind was to the full as blank as his. I made sure some deep-laid plot was at the bottom of the mystery; but we had measured many weary miles in the wilderness, and the plotter's trap had been fairly baited, set and sprung, before the lightning flash of explication came to show us all its devilish ingenuity.

But now "Forward," was the word, and we fell in line again, and again the tireless running of the two guides stretched and held us on the rack of weariness. Happily for us two who were out of training, the rainy-day dusk came early; and though Yeates and the Indian, running now with their bodies bent double and their noses to the ground, held on long after Richard Jennifer and I were bat-blind for any seeing of the hoof-prints, the end came at length and we bivouacked as we were, fireless, and with the last of the cooked ration of deer's meat for a scanty supper.

After the meal, which was swallowed hastily in the silence of utter fatigue, we scooped a hollow in a last year's leaf bed and lay down to sleep, wet to the skin as any four half-drowned water rats, and to the full as miserable.

Fagged as I was, 'twas a long time before sleep came to make me forget; a weary interval fraught with dismal mental miseries to march step and step with the treadmill rackings of the aching muscles. What grievous hap had befallen my dear lady? and how much or how little was I to blame for this kidnapping of her by my relentless enemy? Was it a sharp foreboding of some such resort to savage violence that had tortured her into sending the appeal for help?

With this, I fell to dwelling afresh upon the wording of her message, hungering avidly for some hint to give me leave to claim it for my own. Though I made sure she did not love me,--had never loved me as other than a make-shift confidant, whose face and age would set him far beyond the pale of sentiment,--yet I had hoped this friendship-love would give her leave to call upon me in her hour of need.

Was I the one to whom her message had been sped? Suddenly I remembered what Richard had said; that the arrow was the Catawba's. If Uncanoola were the bearer of the parchment, he would surely know to whom he had been sent.

His burrow in the leaf bed chanced to be next to mine, and I could hear his steady breathing, light and long-drawn, like that of some wild creature--as, truly, he was--sleeping with all the senses alert to spring awake at a touch or the snapping of a twig. A word would arouse him, and a single question might resolve the doubt.

I thought of all this, and yet, when I would have wakened the Indian, a shaking ague-fit of poltroon cowardice gave me pause. For while the doubt remained there was a chance to hope that she had sent to me, making the little cry for help a token, not of love, perchance, but of some dawning of forgiveness for my desperate wronging of her. And in that hesitant moment it was borne in upon me that without this slender chance for hope I should go mad and become a wretched witling at a time when every faculty should be superhuman sharp and strong for spending in her service.

So I forebore to wake the Indian; and following out this thought of service fitness, would force myself to go to sleep and so to gather fresh strength for the new day's measure.

XXI

HOW WE KEPT LENTEN VIGILS IN TRINITYTIDE

'Twould weary you beyond the limit of good-nature were I to try to picture out at large the varied haps and hazards of our wanderings in the savage wilderness. For the actors in any play the trivial details have their place and meaning momentous enough, it may be; yet these are often wearisome to the box or stall yawning impatiently for the climax.

So, if you please, you are to conceive us four, the strangest ill-assorted company on the footstool, pushing on from day to day deeper and ever deeper into the pathless forest solitudes, yet always with the plain-marked trail to guide us.

At times the march measured a full day's length amid the columned aisles of the forest temple through lush green glades dank and steaming in the August heat, or over hillsides slippery with the fallen leaves of the pine-trees. Anon it traced the crooked windings of some brawling mountain stream through thicket tangles where, you would think, no woman-ridden horse could penetrate.

One day the sun would shine resplendent and all the columned distances would fill with soft suffusings of the gray and green and gold, with here and there a dusky flame where the sweet-gum heralded the autumn, whilst overhead the leafy arches were fine-lined traceries and arabesques against the blue. But in the night, mayhap, a dismal rain would come, chill with the breath of the nearing mountains; and then the trees turned into dripping sprinkling-pots to drench us where we lay, sodden already with the heaviness of exhaustion.

Since the hasting pursuit was a thing to tap the very fountain-head of fortitude and endurance, we fared on silent for the better part; and in a little time the hush of the solitudes laid fast hold of us, scanting us of speech and bidding us go softly. And after this the march became a soundless shadow-flitting, and we a straggling file of voiceless mechanisms wound up and set to measure off the miles till famine or exhaustion should thrust a finger in among the wheels and bid them stop forever.

This was the loom on which we wove the backward-reaching web of strenuous onpressing. But through that web the scarlet thread of famine shuttled in and out, and hunger came and marched with us till all the days and nights were filled with cravings, and we recked little of fair skies or dripping clouds, or aught besides save this ever-present specter of starvation.

You will not think it strange that I should have but dim and misty memories of this fainting time. Of all privations famine soonest blunts the senses, making a man oblivious of all save that which drives him onward. The happenings that I remember clearest are those which turned upon some temporary bridging of the hunger gulf. One was Yeates's killing of a milch doe which, with her fawn, ran across our path when we had fasted two whole days. By this, a capital crime in any hunter's code, you may guess how cruelly we were nipped in the hunger vise. Also, I remember this: as if to mock us all the glades and openings on the hillsides were thicketed with berry bushes, long past bearing. And, being too late for these, we were as much too early for the nuts of the hickory and chestnut and black walnut that pelted us in passing.

The doe's meat, coming at a time of sharpest need, set us two days farther on the march; and when that was spent or spoiled we did as we could, being never comfortably filled, I think, and oftener haggard and enfeebled for the want of food. Since we dared not stop to go aside for game, the Catawba would set over-night snares for rabbits; and for another shift we cut knobbed sticks for throwing and ran keen-eyed along the trace, alert to murder anything alive and fit to eat. In this haphazard hunting nothing ever fell to Jennifer's skilless clubbing, or to mine; but the old borderer and the Indian were better marksmen, and now and then some bird or squirrel or rabbit sitting on its form came to the pot, though never enough of all or any to more than sharpen the famine edge of hunger.

For all the sharp privations of the forced march there was no hint on any lip of turning back. With Margery's desperate need to key us to the unflinching pitch, Richard and I would go on while there was strength to set one foot before the other. But for the old borderer and the Indian there was no such bellows to blow the fire of perseverance. None the less, these two did more than second us; they set the strenuous pace and held us to it; the Catawba Spartan-proud and uncomplaining; the old hunter no whit less tireless and enduring. At this far-distant day I can close my eyes and see the gaunt, leather-clad figure of Ephraim Yeates, striding on always in the lead and ever pressing forward, tough, wiry and iron to endure, and yet withal so elastic that the shrewdest discouragement served only to make him rebound and strike the harder. Good stuff and true there was in that old man; and had Richard or I been less determined, his fine and noble heroism in a cause which was not his own would have shamed us into following where he led.

We had been ten days in this starving wilderness, driving onward at the pace that kills and making the most of every hour of daylight, before Yeates and the Indian began to give us hope that we were finally closing in upon our quarry.

The dragging length of the chase grew upon two conditions. From the beginning the kidnappers were able to increase their lead by stretching out the days and borrowing from the nights; also, they were doubtless well provisioned, and they had horses for the captives and their impedimenta. But as for us, we could follow only while the daylight let us see the trail; and though we ran well at first, the lack of proper food soon took toll of speed.

So now, though the hoof prints grew hourly fresher, and we were at last so close upon the heels of the kidnappers that their night camp-fires were scarcely cold when we came upon them, we ran no longer--could hardly keep a dogged foot-pace for the hunger pains that griped and bent us double.

The tenth day, as I well remember, was furnace-hot, as were all the fair-weather days of that never-to-be-forgotten summer, with a still air in the forest that hung thick and lifeless like the atmosphere of an oven; this though we were well among the mountains and rising higher with every added mile of westering.

The sun had passed the meridian, and we were toiling, sweaty-weak, up a rock-strewn mountain side, when a thing occurred to rouse us roughly from the famine stupor and set us watchfully alert. In the steepest part of the ascent where the wood, scanted of rooting ground by the thickly sown strewing of boulders, was open and free of undergrowth, Ephraim Yeates halted suddenly, signed to us with upflung hand, and dropped behind a tree as one shot; and in the same breath the Catawba, running at Yeates's heels, lurched aside and vanished as if the earth had gaped and swallowed him.

A moment later the twang of a bow-string buzzed upon the breathless noontide stillness, and Jennifer clutched and dragged me down in good time to let the arrow whistle harmless over us. Then, like a distorted echo of the buzzing bow-string, the sharp crack of the old borderer's rifle rang out smartly, setting the cliff-crowned mountain side all a-clamor with mocking repetitions.

"Missed him, slick and clean, by the eternal coon-skin!" growled the marksman, sitting up behind his tree to reload. "That there's what comes o' being so dad-blame' hongry that ye can't squinch fair atween the gun-sights. I reckon ez how ye'd better hunker down and lie clost, you two. 'Twouldn't s'prise me none if that redskin had a wheen more o' them sharp-p'inted sticks in his--The Lord be praised for all His marcies! the chief's got him!"

But Uncanoola had not. He came in presently, his black eyes snapping with disappointment, saying in answer to Yeates's question that the yell had been his own; that his tomahawk had sped no truer than the old borderer's bullet.

"Chelakee snake heap slick: heap quick dodge," was all we could get out of him; and when that was said he squatted calmly on a flat stone and fell to work grinding the nick out of the edge of the mis-sped hatchet.

This incident told us plainly enough that the kidnappers were now but a little way ahead, and that their rear-guard scouts were holding us well in hand. So from that on we went as men whose lives are held in pawn by a hidden foe, looking at every turn for an ambushment. Nevertheless, we were not waylaid again; and when at length the long hot afternoon drew to its close with the mountain of peril well behind us, we had neither seen nor heard aught else of the Cherokees.

That night we camped, fireless and foodless, on the banks of a swift-flowing stream in a valley between two great mountains. We reached this stream a little before dark, and since the trail led straight into the water, we would have put this obstacle behind us if we could. But though the little river was not above five or six poles in width it was exceeding swift and deep; so impassable, in truth, that we were moved to wonder how the captive party had made shift to cross.

We guessed at it a while, Richard and I, and then gave it up until we might have the help of better daylight. But the old borderer's curiosity was not so readily postponed. Cutting a slim pole from a sapling thicket, he waded in cautiously, anchoring himself by the drooping branches of the willows whilst he prodded and sounded and proved beyond a doubt that the current was over man-head deep, and far too rapid for swimming.

Satisfied of this, he came out, dripping, and with a monitory word to us to keep a sharp lookout, disappeared up-stream in the growing dusk, his long rifle at the trail, and his body bent to bring his keen old eyes the nearer to the ground.

XXII

HOW THE FATES GAVE LARGESS OF DESPAIR

Ephraim Yeates was gone a full hour. When he returned he gave us cause to wonder at his lack of caution, since he filled his earthen Indian pipe and coolly struck a light wherewith to fire it. But when the pipe was aglow he told us of his findings.

"'Twas about ez I reckoned; them varmints waded in the shallows a spell to throw us off, and then came out and forded higher up."

"That will be a shrewd guess of yours, I take it, Ephraim?" said I; for the night was black as Erebus.

"Ne'er a guess at all; I've had 'em fair at eyeholts," this as calmly as if we had not been for ten long days pinning our faith to an ill-defined trace of foot-prints. "Ez I was a-going on to say, they're incamped on t'other bank ruther eenside o' two sights and a horn-blow from this. I saw 'em and counted 'em: seven redskins and the two gals."

"Thank God!" says Richard, as fervently as if our rescue of the women were already a thing accomplished. Then he fell upon the scout with an eager question: "How does she look, Ephraim?--tell me how she looks!"

"Listen at him!" said the old man, cackling his dry little laugh. "How in tarnation am I going to know which 'she' he's a-stewing about? There's a pair of 'em, and they both look like wimmin ez have been dragged hilter-skilter through the big woods for some better 'n a week. Natheless, they're fitting to set up and take their nourishment, both on 'em. They was perching on a log afore the fire, with ever' last idintical one o' them redskins a-waiting on 'em like they was a couple of Injun queens. I reckon ez how the hoss-captain gave them varmints their orders, partic'lar."

Dick was upon his feet, lugging out the great broadsword.

"Show us the way, Eph Yeates!" he burst out impatiently. "We are wasting a deal of precious time!"

But the old man only puffed the more placidly at his pipe, making no move to head a sortie.

"Fair and easy, Cap'n Dick; fair and easy. There ain't no manner o' hurry, ez I allow. Whenst I've got to tussle with a wheen o' full redskins, and me with my stummick growed fast to my backbone, I jest ez soon wait till them same redskins are asleep. Bime-by they'll settle down for the night, and then we'll go up yonder and pizen 'em immejitly, _if_ not sooner. But there ain't no kind o' use to spile it all by rampaging 'round too soon."

There was wisdom undeniable in this, and, accordingly, we waited, taking turns at the hunter's terrible pipe in lieu of supper, and laying our plan of attack. This last was simple enough, as our resources, or rather our lack of them, would make it. At midnight we would move upon the enemy, feeling our way along the river till we should discover the ford by which the captive party had crossed. The stream safely passed, we would deploy and surround the camp of the Indians, and at the signal, which was to be the report of Yeates's rifle, we were to close in and smite, giving no quarter.

The old borderer dwelt at length upon the need for this severity, saying that a single Cherokee escaping would bring the warriors of the Erati tribe down upon us to cut off all chance of our retreat with the women.

"Onless I'm mightily out o' my reckoning, this here spot we're a-setting on ain't more than a day's Injun-running from the Tuckasege Towns. With them gals to hender us we ain't a-going to be in no fettle for a skimper-scamper race with a fresh wheen o' the redskins. Therefore and wherefore, says I, make them chopping-knives o' your'n cut and come again, even to the dividing erpart of soul and marrer."

Dick laughed, and, speaking for both of us, said between his teeth that we were not like to be over-merciful.

But now the old wolf of the border gave us a glimpse of an unsuspected side of him, taking Jennifer sharply to task and reading him a homily on the sin of vengeance for vengeance's sake. In this harangue he evinced a most astonishing tongue-grasp of Scripture, and for a good half-hour the air was thick with texts. And to cap the climax, when the sermon paused he laid his pipe aside, doffed his cap, and went upon his knees to pour forth such a militant prayer as brought my father's stories of the grim old fighting Roundheads most vividly to mind.

Here, being as good a place as any, I may say frankly that I never fully understood this side of Ephraim Yeates. Like all the hardy borderers, he was a fighter by instinct and inclination; and I can bear him witness that when he smote the "Amalekites," as he would call them--red skin or red coat--he smote them hip and thigh, and was as ruthless as that British Captain Turnbull who slew the wounded. Yet withal, on the very edge of battle, or mayhap fair in the midst of it, he was like to fall upon his knees to pray most fervently; though, as I have hinted, his prayers were like his blows--of the biting sort, full of Scriptural anathema upon the enemy.

Richard Jennifer, carelessly profane as all men were in that most godless day, would say 'twas the old borderer's way of swearing; that since he left out the oaths in common speech,--as, truly, he did,--he would fetch up the arrears and wipe out the score in one fell blast upon his knees. Be this as it may, he was a good man and a true, as I have said; and his warlike supplication that our blades should be as the sword of the Lord and of Gideon in the coming onfall was no whit out of place.

It wanted yet a full hour of midnight when Richard began again to plead piteously for instant action. Yeates thought it still over-early; but when Jennifer pressed him hard the old borderer left the casting vote to me.

"What say ye, Cap'n John? Your'n will be the next oldest head, and I reckon it hain't been turned plumb foolish rampaging crazy by this here purty gal o' Gilbert Stair's."

Now you have read thus far in my poor tale to little purpose if you have not yet discovered the major weakness of an old campaigner, which is to weigh and measure all the chances, holding it to the full as culpable to strike too soon as too late. This weakness was mine, and in that evil moment I gave my vote for further waiting, arguing sapiently that my old field-marshal would never set a night assault afoot till well on toward the dawn.

Jennifer heard me through and yielded, perforce, though with little good-will.

"I can not compass it alone, or, by the gods, I'd go!" he asserted, angrily. "Mark you, John Ireton, this delay is a thing you'll rue whilst you live. Your cold-cut pros and cons mouth well enough, and I'm no soldier-lawyer to argue them down. But something better than your damnable reasons tells me that the hour has struck--that these very present seconds are priceless." Whereupon he flung himself face down in the grass and would not speak again until the waiting time was fully over and Yeates gave the word to fall in line for the advance.

Having learned the lay of the land in his earlier reconnaissance, the old borderer shortened the distance for us by guiding us across the neck of a horseshoe bend in the stream; and a half-hour's blind groping through the forest fetched us out upon the river bank again, this time precisely opposite the Indians' lodge fire on the other side.

Here there was a little pause for three of us while Ephraim Yeates crept down the bank to try with his sounding-pole what chance we had of crossing.

Measured by what could be seen from our covert, the narrow width of quick water seemed the last of the many obstacles.

Lulled to security, as we guessed, by the apparent success of their ruse to throw us off the scent, six of the Cherokees were lying feet to fire like the spokes of a wheel for which the fitful blaze was the hub. The seventh man was squatted before a small tepee-lodge of dressed skins, which, as we took it, would be the sleeping quarters of the captives. Whilst all the others lay stiff and stark as if wrapped in soundest sleep, this sentry guard, too, it seemed, was scarcely more than half awake, for as we looked, his gun was slipping from the hollow of his arm and he was nodding to forgetfulness.

Richard was a-crouch beside me in this peeping reconnaissance, and I could feel him trembling in impatient eagerness.

"It should be easy enough--what think you?" he whispered; and then, with a sudden grasp upon my wrist: "You are cool and steady-nerved, John Ireton; I swear you do not love her as I do!"

"Nay, I grant you that, Dick," said I, making sure that his excitement would obscure the double meaning in the admission. And then I added, sincerely enough: "She has never given me the right to love her at all."

"God help her at this pass!" he said, more to himself than to me; and then he would go in a breath from blessing Margery to cursing Ephraim Yeates for this fresh delay.

It was Uncanoola who broke in upon the muttered malediction.

"Wah! Captain Jennif' cuss plenty heap, like missionary medicine-man. Look-see! Uncanoola no can find white squaw horse yonder. Mebbe Captain Jennif' see 'um, hey?"

At his word we both looked for the horses, marking now that they were nowhere to be seen within the circle lighted by the lodge fire. The Catawba grunted his doubt that the enemy was as inalert as he appeared to be; then he set the doubt in words. "Chelakee heap slick. Sleep only one eye, mebbe, hey? Injun warrior no hide horse and go sleep _both_ eye on war-path!"

Here our scout came gliding back, so noiselessly that he was within arm's reach before we heard him. Dick had said I was over-cool, but the old man's ghostlike reappearance gave me such a start as made me prinkle to my fingers' ends.

"How will it be, Eph?" Dick queried, hotly eager to be at work. "We can make it across? Never say we can't pass that bit of still water, man!"

But Ephraim Yeates did say so in set terms.

"I reckon ez how we've got to cross, but not jest here-away, Cap'n Dick. She ain't making any fuss about it, but she's a-slipping along like greased lightning, deep and mighty powerful. I ain't saying we mought n't swim her and come out somewheres this side o' Dan'l Boone's country; but we'll make it a heap quicker by projec'ing 'round till we find the ford where them varmints made out to cross."

"God!" said Dick, deep in his throat; "more time to be killed! By--"

The old man was parting the bushes to have a better sight of the encampment opposite, but at Dick's outbreak he fell back quickly and clapped a hand on the lips of cursing.

"Hist! Lookee over yonder, will ye!" he cut in. And then in a whisper meant for no ear but mine: "The Lord be marciful to that little gal, Cap'n John; we've fooled our chance away--the game's afoot, and we ain't in it!"

I looked and saw nothing save that the sentry guard had risen to throw a handful of dry branches on the dying fire. But on the instant the dry wood blazed up, and in the wider circle of firelight I saw what the keener eyes of Ephraim Yeates had descried the sooner. In the shadowy background of the surrounding forest a dozen horsemen were converging in orderly array upon the encampment, and at the blazing up of the dry branches their leader gave the command to charge.

What sham battle there was, or was meant to be, was over in the briefest space. The troopers galloped in with shouts and aimless pistolings, raising a clamor that was instantly doubled by the yells of the Indians. As for resistance, the charging troop met with nothing worse than the yellings and a scattering fusillade in air. Then the ring of horsemen narrowed in to closer quarters and there was some flashing of bare steel in the firelight, at which the Cherokee kidnappers melted away and vanished as if by magic.

With the shouts and the firing Margery and her maid had burst out of the sleeping-lodge to find themselves in the thick of the sham battle; and it was but womanlike that they should add their shrieks to the din, being as well terrified as they had a right to be. But now the leader of the attacking troop speedily brought order with a word of command; and when his men fell back to post themselves as vedettes among the trees, the officer dismounted to uncover courteously and to bow low to the lady.

"The hoss-captain!" muttered Ephraim Yeates, under his breath; but we did not need his word for it. 'Twas but a child's pebble-toss across the barrier stream, and we could both see and hear.

"I give you joy of your escape, Mistress Margery," said the baronet, mouthing his words like a player who had long since conned his lines and got them well by heart and letter-perfect. "These slippery savages have given us a pretty chase, I do assure you. But you are trembling yet, calm yourself, dear lady; you are quite safe now."

I was watching her intently as he spoke. 'Twas now hard upon two months since I had seen her last in that fateful upper room at Appleby Hundred, and the interval--or mayhap it was only the hardships and distresses of the captive flight--had changed her woefully. Yet now, as when we had stood together at the bar of Colonel Tarleton's court, I saw her pass from mood to mood in the turning of a leaf, her natural terror slipping from her like a cast-off garment, and a sweet dignity coming to clothe her in a queenlier robe, making her, as I would think, more beautiful than ever.

"I thank you, Sir Francis--for myself and for poor Jeanne," she said. "You have come to take us back to my father?"

He bowed again and spread his hands as a friend willing but helpless.

"Upon my honor, my dear lady, nothing would give me greater pleasure. But what can I say? We are upon the king's business, as you well know, and our mission will not brook an hour's delay--indeed, we are here only by the good chance which led your captors to choose our route for theirs. I have no alternative but to take you and your woman with us to the west; but I do assure you--"

She stopped him with an impassioned gesture of dissent, and darting a despairing glance around that minded me of some poor hunted thing hopelessly enmeshed in the net of the fowler, she clasped her hands and wrung them, breaking down piteously at the last, and begging him by all that men hold sacred to send her and her maid back to her father, if only with a single soldier for a guard.

'Twas then we had to drag my dear lad down and hold him fast, else he had flung himself into the torrent in some mad endeavor to spend his life for her. So I know not in what false phrase the baronet refused her, but when I looked again she was no longer pleading as his suppliant; she was standing before him in the martyr steadfastness of a true, clean-hearted woman at bay.

"Then you will not by so much undo the wrong you have done me, Captain Falconnet?" she said.

"A wrong? How then; do you call it a wrong to rescue you from these brutal savages, Mistress Margery?"

She took a step nearer, and though the dry-stick blaze was dying down and I could no longer see her face distinctly, I knew well how the scornful eyes were whipping him.

"Listen!" she said. "When you set Tallachama and his braves upon us in the road that night, you were not cautious enough, Captain Falconnet. I saw and heard you. More than that, Tallachama and the others have spoken freely of your plans in their own tongue, not knowing that my poor Jeanne had been three years a captive among the Telliquos."

The attack was so sudden-sharp and so completely a surprise that he was taken off his guard, else I made sure he would not at such a time have dropped the gentlemanly mask to stand forth the confessed ravisher.

"So ho? Then you have been playing fast and loose with me as you did with the handsome young planter and that beggarly captain of Austrians? 'Twas a bold game, _ma petite_, but you have lost and I have won, for my game was still bolder than yours. What I need, I take, Mistress Madge, be it the body of a woman or the life of a man. _Savez-vous un homme désespéré, ma chérie?_ I am that man. You pique me, and I need the dowry you will bring. If I could have killed your lover out of hand, I might have been content to leave you for a time. Since I could not, you go where I go; and when we return I shall do you the honor to make you Lady Falconnet!"

The effect of this fierce tirade, poured out in a torrent of hot words, was less marked upon his helpless captive than it was upon her four would-be defenders. It moved us variously, each after his kind; nevertheless, I think the same thought lighted instantly upon each of us. Though we might not reach and rescue her, her sharpest peril would be blunted upon the quieting of this fiend-in-chief.

So Ephraim Yeates stretched himself face downward in the damp grass and brought his long rifle to bear, while the Indian sprang up and poised his hatchet for the throw; but neither lead nor steel was loosed because the light was poor, and a hair's-breadth swerving of the aim might spare the man and slay the woman. As for the two of us who must needs come within stabbing distance, the same thought set us both to stripping coats and foot-clogs for a plunge into the barrier torrent. But when we would have broken cover, the old borderer dropped his weapon and gripped us with a hand for each.

"No, no; none o' that!" he whispered, hoarsely. "Ye'd drown like rats, and we can't afford no sech foolish sakerfices on the altar o' Baal. Hunker down and lie clost; if there's any dying to be done, ye've got a good half o' the night ahead of ye, and there's all o' to-morrow that ain't teched yet."

It takes a pitiless avalanche of words to spread these interlinear doings out for you; but you are to conceive that the pause is mine and not the action's. While the old man was yet pulling us down, my fearless little lady had drawn back a pace and was giving the villain his answer.

"I am glad I know you now for what you are, Captain Falconnet," she said, coldly. And then: "You can take me with you, if you choose, having the brute strength to make good so much of your threat. But that is all. You can not take for yourself what I have given to another."

"Can not, you say?" He clapped his hat on smartly and whistled for his horse-holder; and when the man was gone to fetch the mounts for the women, he finished out the sentence. "Listen you, in your turn, Mistress Spitfire. I shall take what I list, and before you see your father's house again, you'll beg me on your knees, as other women have, to marry you for very shame's sake!"

It was then that Uncanoola did the skilfulest bit of jugglery it has ever been my lot to witness. Posturing like one of those old Grecian discus-throwers, he sent his scalping-knife handle foremost to glide snake-like through the grass to stop at Margery's feet. Though I think she knew not how it got there, she saw it, and the courage of the sight helped her to say, quickly:

"When it comes to that, sir, I shall know how to keep faith with honor."

His laugh was the harshest mockery of mirth. "You will keep faith with me, dear lady; do you hear? Otherwise--"

He turned to take the black mare from his man. At this my brave one set her foot upon the weapon in the grass.

"I have no faith to keep with you, Captain Falconnet," she said.

He struck back viciously. "Then, by heaven, you'd best make the occasion. It has happened, ere this, that a lady as dainty as you are has become a plaything for an Indian camp. It lies with me to save you from that, my Mistress."

She stooped to gather her skirts for mounting, and in the act secured and hid the knife. So her answer had in it the fine steadfastness of one who may make desperate terms with death for honor's sake.

"I thank you for the warning, Captain Falconnet," she said, facing him bravely to the last. "When the time comes, mayhap the dear God will give me leave to die as my mother's daughter should."

"Bah!" said he; and with that he whistled for his troopers; and while we looked, my dear lady and her tirewoman were helped upon their horses, and at the leader's word of command the escort formed upon the captives as a center. A moment later the little glade, with the smoldering embers of the lodge fire to prick out its limits in dusky red, was empty, and on the midnight stillness of the forest the minishing hoofbeats of the horses came fainter and fainter till the distance swallowed them.

Then it was that my poor lad, famine-mad and frenzied, rose up to curse me bitterly.

"Now may all the devils in hell drag you down to everlasting torments, John Ireton, for your cold-hearted caution that made us lose when we had good hope to win!" he cried. "One little hour I begged for, and that hour had fought her battle and set her free. But now--"

He broke off in the midst, choking with what miserable despair I knew, and shared as well; and throwing himself down in the wet grass, he would eke out the bitter words with such ravings and sobbings as bubble up in sheer abandonment of rage and misery.

XXIII

HOW WE KEPT THE FEAST OF BITTER HERBS

You may be sure that Richard Jennifer's bitter reproachings came home to me in sharpest fashion, the more since now I saw how we had lost our chance by neglecting the commonest precautions. Having determined to attack, the merest novice of a general would have moved his forces to the nearest point; would have had his scouts search out the ford beforehand; and, above all, would never have delayed the blow beyond the earliest moment of the enemy's unwatchfulness.

So now, when all was lost, I fell to kneading out this sodden dough of afterwit with Ephraim Yeates; but when I sought to carry off the blame as mine by right, the old borderer would not give me leave.

"Fair and easy, Cap'n John; fair _and_ easy," he protested. "Let's give that old sarpent, which is the devil and Satan, his dues. Ez I allow, there was the whole enduring passel of us to ricollact all them things. To be sure, we had our warnings, mistrusting all along that this here dad-blame' hoss-captain had his finger in the pie. But, lawzee! we had ne'er a man o' God 'mongst us to rise up and prophesy what was a-going to happen if we didn't get up and scratch gravel immejitly, _if_ not sooner; though I won't deny that Cap'n Dick did try his hand that-away."

"True; and I would now we had listened to him," said I, gloomily enough. "We have lost our chance, and God knows if we shall ever have another. Falconnet must have half a hundred men, red and white, in the powder train; and by this time he has learned from the Indian who reconnoitered us on the mountain that we are within striking distance. With the enemy forewarned, as he is, we might as well try to cut the women out of my Lord Cornwallis's headquarters."

The old man chuckled his dry little laugh, though what food for merriment he could find in the hopeless prospect was more than I could understand.

"Ho! ho! Cap'n John; I reckon ez how ye're a-taking that word from yonder down-hearted boy of our'n. Wait a spell till ye're ez old ez I be; then you'll never say die till ye're plumb dead."

Now, truly, though I was dismally disheartened, I could reassure him on the point of perseverance. 'Tis an Ireton failing to lose heart and hope when the skies are dark; but this is counterbalanced in some of us by a certain quality of unreasoning persistence which will go on running long after the race is well lost. My father had this stubborn virtue to the full; and so had that old Ironside Ireton from whom we are descended.

"That's the kind o' talk!" was the old man's comment. "Now we'll set to work in sure-enough arnest. Ez I said a spell back, my stummick is crying cupboard till I can't make out to hear my brain a-sizzling. Maybe you took notice o' me a-praying down yonder that the good Lord'd vouchsafe to give us scalps _and_ provender. For our onfaithfulness He's seed fit to withhold the one; but maybe we'll find a raven 'r two, or a widder's mite 'r meal-bar'l, somewheres in this howling wilderness, yit."

So saying, he summoned the Catawba with a low whistle, and when Uncanoola joined us, told him to stay with Jennifer whilst we should make another effort to find the ford.

"There's nobody like an Injun for a nuss when a man's chin-deep into trouble," quoth this wise old woodsman, when we were feeling our way cautiously along the margin of the swift little river. "If Cap'n Dick rips and tears and pulls the grass up by the roots, the chief'll only say, 'Wah!' If he sits up and cusses till he's black in the face, the chief'll say, 'Ugh!' And that's just about all a man hankers for when his sore's a-running in the night season, and all Thy waters have gone over his head. Selah!"

Now you are to remember the sky was overcast and the night was pitchy dark, and how the old borderer could read a sign of any sort was far beyond my comprehension. Yet when we had gone a scant half-mile along the river brink he stopped short, sniffed the air and stooped to feel and grope on the ground like a blind man seeking for something he had lost.

"Right about here-away is where they made out to cross," he announced; "the whole enduring passel of 'em, ez I reckon--our seven varmints and the hoss-captain's powder train. Give me the heft o' your shoulder till we take the water and projec' 'round a spell on t'other side."

We squared ourselves, wholly by the sense of touch, with the river's edge, locked arms for the better bracing against the swift current, and so essayed the ford. It was no more than thigh deep, and though the water lashed and foamed over the shoal like a torrent in flood, there was a clean bottom and good footing. Once safe across, we turned our faces down-stream, and in a little time came to the deserted glade with the embers of the kidnappers' fire glowing dully in the midst.

Here a sign of some later visitants than Falconnet's horsemen set us warily on our guard. The tepee-lodge of dressed skins, which had been left undisturbed by the sham rescuers, had vanished.

"Umph! The redskins have been back to make sure o' what they left behind," said Yeates, in a whisper. "I jing! that's jest the one thing I was a-hoping they'd forget to do. I reckon ez how that spiles our last living chance o' finding anything that mought help slack off on the belly-pinch."

So he said, but for this once his wisdom was at fault and tricky fortune favored us. When we had found the covert in the bushes where the two horses had been concealed we lighted upon a precious prize. 'Twas a bag of parched corn in the grain; some share of the provision of the captive party overlooked by those who had returned to gather up the leavings.

With this treasure-trove we made all haste to rejoin our companions. And now behold what a miracle of reanimation may be wrought by a few handfuls of bread grain! In a trice the Catawba had found a water-worn stone to serve for a mortar, and another for a pestle. These and the bag of corn were carried back to a sheltered ravine which we had crossed on our late advance; and here the Indian fell to work to grind the corn into coarse meal, whilst Yeates and I kindled a fire to heat the baking-stones.

In these preparations for the breaking of our long fast even Richard bestirred himself to help; and when the cakes were baked and eaten--with what zestful sharp-sauce of appetite none but the famished may ever know--we were all in better heart, and better able to face the new and far more desperate plight in which our lack of common foresight had entangled us.

For now, since we knew the full measure of the peril menacing our dear lady, there was need for swift determination and a blow as swift and sure; a _coup de main_ which should atone in one shrewd push for the sleeveless failure of the night. So we would grip hands around, even to the stolid Indian, and swear a solemn oath to cut the women out or else to leave our bones to whiten in the forest wilderness.

You'll laugh at all these vowings and handstrikings, I dare say, and protest there was a deal of such fustian heroics in your doddering old chronicler's day.

Mayhap there was. But, my dears, I would you might remember as you laugh that we of that simple-hearted elder time lived by some half-century nearer to that age of chivalry you dote on--in the story-books. Also, I would you might mingle with your merriment a little of the saving grace of charity; letting it hint that, perchance, these you call "heroics" were but the free, untrammeled folk-speech of that sincerer natural heart which you have learned to silence and suppress. For I dare affirm that now, as then and always, there will be some spark of the Promethean fire in every heart of man or maid, else this would indeed be a sorry world to live in.

So, as I say, we four struck hands anew on the desperate venture; and, after carefully burying the fire to the end that it might not betray us while we slept, we burrowed in the nearest leaf bed to snatch an hour or two of rest before the toils and hazards of the chase should begin afresh.

In the thick darkness following hard upon the douting of the fire, I saw not who my nearest bed-fellow might be. But ere I slept a hand was laid on my shoulder, and a voice that I knew well, said: "Are you waking yet, Jack?"

I said I was; and at that my poor lad would blurt out all his sorrow and shame for the mad fit of despair that had set him on to rail and curse me.

"You will say with good reason that I am but a sorry jockey for a friend--to fly out at you like a madman as I did," he added, by way of fitting epilogue; and to this I gave him the answer he wished, bidding him never let a thought of it spoil him of the rest he needed.

"The debt of obligation and forgiveness is all upon the other side, as you will some day know, Dick, my lad," said I, hovering, as a coward always will, upon the innuendo-edge of the confession he will never make.

He mistook the pointing of this protest, as he was bound to.

"Never say that, Jack. 'Twould be a dog-in-the-manger trick in me to blame you for loving her. And since you speak of debts, I do protest I owe you somewhat, too. With so fair a chance to cut a clean swath in that fair-weather month at Appleby Hundred, another man would have left me scant gleanings in the field, I'll be bound; whereas--"

"Damn you!" I broke in roughly, "will you never have done and go to sleep?" And so, taking surly harshness for a mask when my heart was nigh bursting with shame and grief, I turned my back and cut him off.

XXIV

HOW WE FOUND THE SUNKEN VALLEY

Looking back upon the hazards and chance-takings of our adventure in the wilderness, I recall no more promising risk than that we ran by sleeping unsentried within rifle-shot, for aught we knew, of the camp of the enemy.