having a definite thing to do, we set about it forthwith, taking to the fields and making a wide circuit around the manor house and the quarters where the blacks were already stirring, to come out to the river and so to cross in our canoe.
the morning, soft and warm enough, threatened now to break the fair weather promise of the starlit night. away in the east a heavy cloud bank curtained off the sunrise, and in the fields the few dry maize blades left by the partizan harriers were whispering to the gusts.
in the great forest all was yet dim and shadowy, and silent as the grave but for the whispering murmur of the rising wind in the higher tree-tops; a sound so like the babbling of brooks as most cunningly to deceive the ear and make it set the eye at work to look for water where there was none.
not to take a certain hazard for the sake of better speed, we shunned the road, and for the first hour or so were not greatly hindered by keeping to the forest paths. in vast areas this virgin wood was free of undergrowth, open and park-like as a well-kept grove. fireside tradition on the border tells how the indians kept the forest clear by yearly burnings of the smaller growth; this for the better hunting of the deer. i vouch, not for the truth of this accounting for the fact, but for the fact itself. for endless miles between the watercourses these park-like stretches covered hill and dale; a vast mysterious temple of god's own building, its naves and choirs and transepts columned by the countless trees, with all their leafy crowns to interlace and form the groined arches overhead.
through these pillared aisles we tramped abreast, shunning the road, as i have said, yet holding it parallel with our course where its direction served. in the open vistas we had frequent glimpses of it, winding, at feud with all the points of the compass, among the trees. but farther on we came into the lower land of a creek bottom, and here a thickset undergrowth robbed us of any view and made the march a toilsome struggle with the bushes.
it was in the densest of this underwood, when we could hear the purring of the stream ahead, that jennifer stopped suddenly and began to sniff the air.
"smoke," he said, briefly, in answer to my query. "a camp-fire, with meat abroil. never tell me you can't smell it."
i said i could not—did not, at all events.
"then you are not as sharp set for breakfast as i am. call up your woodcraft and we'll stalk it." and, suiting the action to the word, he dropped noiselessly on hands and knees to inch his way cautiously out of the thicket.
i followed at his heels, marveling at his skill in threading the maze with never a snapped twig to betray him. for though i have called him a youthling, he came of great, square-shouldered english stock, and was well upon fourteen stone for weight. yet upon occasion, as now, he could be as lithe and cat-like as an indian, stealthy in approach and tiger-strong to spring.
in due time our creeping progress brought us out of the thicket on the brink of the higher creek bank. just here the stream ran in a shallow ravine with shelving banks of clay, and on its hither margin was a bit of grassy intervale big enough for a horse to roll upon. though it was sadly out of season, the carcass of a deer, fresh killed, hung upon a branch of the nearest tree, with a rifle leaning against the trunk as if to guard it. in the middle of the bit of sward a tiny camp-fire burned; and at the fire, squatting with their backs to us and each toasting a cut of the deer's meat on a forked stick, were two men.
one of these men would pass by courtesy as a white. his hunting-shirt and leggings were of deer skin, well grimed and greasy, with leather fringes at the seams of leg and sleeve. for all the summer heat, he wore a cap fashioned of raccoon-skin with the fur on; and for this great cap his iron-gray hair, matted and unkempt, served as a fringe to keep the other tasselings in countenance. the hunting-shirt was belted at the waist, and in the belt was thrust a sheathless knife huge enough to serve a butcher's purpose. from two leather thongs crossed upon his shoulders hung the powder-horn and bullet-pouch; and these, with the knife and rifle, summed up his accoutrements.
the other was a red man, and his attire was simpler. like all our southern indians, he went naked to the waist; but the savage's love of ornament showed forth in the fringe of colored porcupine quills on his leggings and in his raven hair bestuck with feathers. for arms he had an arsenal in his belt; two great pistols, a tomahawk, and the scalping-knife, this last smaller than the white man's carving tool, but far more vicious looking.
for a moment or two we crouched irresolute on the brink of the ravine, neither of us recognizing the two below. then my young rashling must needs let out a yell.
"now, by all that's lucky!" he cried, and would have leaped to his feet. but at the instant the earth-edge gave way under him, and he was sent tumbling with the small landslide of clay down upon the twain at the fire.
it went within a trembling hair's-breadth of a tragedy. the two at the fire sprang up as one man; and the bound that set the hunter afoot brought his long rifle to his shoulder. but that the indian was the quicker, richard's life would have paid the penalty of his slip, i think. at the trigger-pulling instant the catawba thrust the thick of his hand between stone and steel, and the flint bit, harmless for jennifer, into the palm of the indian.
"wah!" he ejaculated, in his soft guttural. "no want kill captain jennif', hey?"
ephraim yeates lowered his weapon and released the pinched hand held fast by the gun-flint.
"well, i'm daddled, fair and square, cap'n dick!" he declared. "jest one more shake of a dead lamb's tail, and i'd 'a' had ye on my mind, sartain sure! i allowed ye knowed better than to come whammling down that-away behint a man whilst he's a-cooking his ven'son."
dick laughed and called to me to follow as i could. and his answer to the old borderer was no answer at all.
"'tis to be hoped you and the chief don't mean to be niddering with that deer's meat. we were guessing but a half-hour back, captain ireton and i, whether or no we'd have to take up belt-slack for our breakfast."
at the word the catawba whipped out his knife and fell to work hospitably on the meat supply. meanwhile i came upon the scene, something less hurriedly than richard. ephraim yeates looked me up and down with a sniff for my foreign-cut coat, another for my queue, and a third for the german ritter-boots i wore.
"umph!" said he. "now if here ain't that there dad-blame' turkey-fighter again! what almighty cur'is things the good lord do let loose on a stiff-necked and rebellious gineration!" then to me, most pointedly: "say, cap'n; the big woods ain't no fitting place for such as you, ez i allow. ye mought be getting them purty boots o' your'n all tore up on the briars."
he ended with a dry little laugh not unlike mr. gilbert stair's parchment crackle; and, being his guest for the nonce, i laughed with him.
"have your joke and welcome, mr. yeates," said i. "i am too near famished to quarrel with my chance of breakfast."
much to my astoundment he flung his raccoon-skin cap into the air, spat upon his hands and began that insane war-dance of his.
"whoop!" he yelled. "no band-box dandy from the settlemints ever sot out to call me 'mister' and got away alive to brag on't! ketch hold, you infergotten, turkey-fighting, silver-buttoned jack-a-dandy till i dip ye in the creek and soak a flour-ration 'r two out 'n that there pig-tail top-knot o' your'n! yip-pee!"
by this jennifer was trying, as well as a man bent double with laughter might, to interpose in the interest of peace and amity; and even the stoical catawba was all a-grin. so, seeing i was like to lose countenance with all of them, i watched my chance, and closing with my capering ancient, gave him a hearty wrestler's hug.
for all he was so gaunt and thin, and full twenty years or more my senior, he was a pretty handful. 'twas much like trying to catch a fall out of some piece of steel-wired mechanism. none the less, after some wild stampings and strivings in which the old man all but made good his promise to put me in the creek, i took him unawares with a cornishman's trick—a cross-buttock shifted suddenly to a shoulder-lift—which sent him flying overhead to land all abroad in the soft clay of the landslide.
the effect of this little triumph was magical and wholly unlooked for. when he had gathered himself and set his limbs in order, ephraim yeates sat up and thrust out a claw-like hand.
"put it there, stranger," he said. "i reckon ez how that settles it. old eph yeates'll share fair, powder and lead, parched corn and pan-meat with the man that can flop him that-away. whilst ye're a-needing a friend in the big woods—a raw-meat-eating injun-skinner that can jest or'narily whop his weight in wildcats—why, old eph's your man; from now on, if not sooner." and in this wise began an alliance the like of which, for true-blue loyalty on this old borderer's part, these colder-hearted times of yours, my dears, will never see.
as you would guess, i gripped the hand of pledging most heartily, pulling the old man to his feet and protesting it was but a trick he would never let another play on him. and then we four fell upon the deer's meat which was by this time—not cooked, to be sure, but seared a little on the outside in true hunter fashion.
while we ate, richard spoke freely of our intendings; and in return ephraim yeates was able to confirm mr. gilbert stair's war news to the letter. for all his tory bias and prejudice, it seemed that margery's father had spoken by the book. gates' army was crushed and scattered to the four winds; thomas sumter's free-lances had been attacked, worsted and driven, with the leader himself so sorely wounded that he was carried from the field in a blanket slung between the horses of two of his men; and, as was to be expected, the tories were up and arming in all the north country. truly, the prospect was most gloomy and the outlook for the patriot cause was to the full as desperate as king george himself could wish.
"but you, ephraim, and the chief, here; are you two running away like all the others?" richard would ask.
the old hunter growled his denial between the mouthfuls of scarce-warmed meat. "i reckon ez how 'tis t'other way 'round; we're sort o' camping on the redcoats' trail, ez i allow. ain't we, chief, hey?"
the catawba's assent was a guttural "wah!" and ephraim yeates went on to explain.
"ye see, 'tis this-away. you took a laugh out'n me, cap'n dick, for spying 'round on that there britisher hoss-captain and his redskins; but 'long to'ards the last i met up with a thing 'r two wo'th knowing. 'twas a powder and lead cargo they was a-waiting for; and they're allowing to sneak it through the mountings to the overhill cherokees."
"well?" says dick.
the old man cut another slice of the venison and took his time to impale it on the forked toasting stick.
"well, then i says to the chief, here, says i, 'chief, this here's our a-number-one chance to spile the 'gyptians; get heap gun, heap powder, heap lead, heap scalp.' the chief, he says, 'wah!'—which is good injun-talk for anything ye like,—and so here we are, hot-foot on the trail o' that there hoss-captain and his powder varmints."
"alone?" said i, in sheer amazement at the brazen effrontery of this chase of half a hundred well-armed men by two.
the old hunter chuckled his dry little laugh. "we ain't sich tarnation big fools ez we look, cap'n john. there's a good plenty of 'em to wallop us, ez i'll allow, if it come to fighting 'em fair and square. but there'll be some dark night 'r other whenst we can slip up on 'em and raise a scalp 'r two and lift what plunder we can tote; hey, chief?"
but now richard would inquire what time in the night the powder convoy left appleby hundred, and if gilbert stair's york district guests had traveled with it. to these askings yeates made answer that falconnet and his troop, with the cherokee contingent, had taken the road at midnight, or thereabouts; and that the witherbys, with mistress margery riding her own black mare, and her maid on a pillion behind a negro groom, had passed some two hours later.
this was as we had hoped it might be; but when dick's satisfaction would have set itself in words, the old hunter made a sudden sign for silence and quickly flung himself full length to lay his ear to the ground. whereat we all began likewise to listen, but i, for one, heard nothing till yeates said: "a hoss; a-taking the back track like old jehu the son of nimshi was a-giving him the whip and spur," and then we all marked the distant drumming of hoofbeats.
the old borderer sprang afoot, kicked the fire into the stream, and caught up his rifle. "let's be a-moving," he said. "we must make out to stop that there hoss-galloper at the ford and find out what-all he's a rip-snorting that-away for."
the road crossing of the stream was but a little way above our breakfast camp; and we were out of the thicket in time to see the horseman, a negro clinging with locked arms to the neck of his mount, come tearing down to the ford. at sight of us, or else because he would not take the water at full speed, the horse reared, pawed the air, and fell clumsily, carrying his skilless rider with him.
we picked the black up and soused him in the stream till he found his tongue; and the first wagging of that useful member gave us news to fire the blood in our veins—in jennifer's and mine, at any rate.
"yah!" he screamed, choking out the muddy creek water that had well-nigh strangled him. "yah! red debbil injins kill ebberybody and tote off mistis marg'y and dat jeanne 'ooman! dat's what dey done!"
