however much or little the catawba understood of richard jennifer's grief or its cause, the faithful indian had a thing to do and he did it, loosing his grasp of me to turn and fall upon dick with pullings and haulings and buffetings, fit to bring a man alive out of a very stiffening rigor of despair.
so, in a hand-space he had him up, and we were pressing on again, in midnight darkness once we had passed beyond the light of our grilling fires. no word was spoken; under the impatient urging of the indian there was little breath to spare for speech. but when richard's afterthought had set its fangs in him, he called a halt and would not be denied.
"go on, you two, if you are set upon it," he said. "i must go back. bethink you, jack; what if she be only maimed and not killed outright. 'tis too horrible! i'm going back, i say."
the catawba grunted his disgust.
"captain jennif' talk fas'; no run fas'. what think? white squaw yonder—no yonder," pointing first forward and then back in the direction of the stricken camp.
richard spun around and gripped the indian by the shoulders. "then she is alive and safe?" he burst out. "speak, friend, whilst i leave the breath in you to do it!"
"ugh!" said the chief, in nowise moved either by jennifer's vehemence or by the dog-like shake. "what for captain jennif' think papoose thinks 'bout the gray wolf and poor injun? catch um white squaw firs'; then blow um up chelakee camp and catch um captain jennif' and captain long-knife if can. heap do firs' thing firs', and las' thing las'. wah!"
it was the longest speech this devoted ally of ours was ever known to make; and having made it he went dumb again save for his urgings of us forward. but presently both he and i had our hands full with the poor lad. the swift transition from despair to joy proved too much for dick; and, besides, the fever was in his blood and he was grievously burned.
so we went stumbling on through the cloud-darkened wood, locked arm in arm like three drunken men, tripping over root snares and bramble nets spread for our feet, and getting well sprinkled by the dripping foliage. and at the last, when we reached the ravine at the valley's head, dick was muttering in the fever delirium and we were well-nigh carrying him a dead weight between us.
'twas a most heart-breaking business, getting the poor lad up that rock-ladder of escape in the darkness; for though i had come out of the fire with fewer burns than the roasting of me warranted, the battle preceding it had opened the old sword wound in my shoulder. so, taking it all in all, i was but a short-breathed second to the faithful catawba.
none the less, we tugged it through after some laborious fashion, and were glad enough when the steep ascent gave place to leveler going, and we could sniff the fragrance of the plateau pines and feel their wire-like needles under foot.
by this the shower cloud had passed and the stars were coming out, but it was still pitch black under the pines; so dark that i started like a nervous woman and went near to panic when a horse snorted at my very ear, and a voice, bodiless, as it seemed, said; "well, now; the lord be praised! if here ain't the whole enduring—"
what ephraim yeates would have said, or did say, was lost upon me. for now my poor dick's strength was quite spent, and when the chief and i were easing him to lie full length upon the ground, there was a quick little cry out of the darkness, a swish of petticoats, and my lady darted in to fall upon richard in a very transport of pity.
"oh, my poor dick! they have killed you!" she sobbed; "oh, cruel, cruel!" then she lashed out at us. "why don't you strike a light? how can i find and dress his hurts in the dark?"
"your pardon, mistress margery," i said; "'tis only that the fever has overcome him. he has no sore hurts, as i believe, save the fire-scorching."
"a light!" she commanded; "i must have a light and see for myself."
we had to humor her, though it was something against prudence. ephraim found dry punk in a rotten log, and firing it with the flint and steel of a great king's musket—one of his reavings from the enemy—soon had a pine-knot torch for her. she gave it to the catawba to hold; and while she was cooing over her patient and binding up his burns in some simples gathered near at hand by the indian, i had the story of the double rescue from the old hunter.
set forth in brief, that which had come as a miracle to dick and me figured as a daring bit of strategy made possible by the emptying of the indian camp at our torture spectacle.
yeates and the catawba, following out the plan agreed upon, had come within spying distance while yet we were in the midst of that hopeless back-to-back battle, and had most wisely held aloof. but later, when every indian of the cherokee band was busy at our torture trees, they set to work.
with no watch to give the alarm, 'twas easy to rifle the indian wigwams of the firearms and ammunition. the latter they threw into the stream; the muskets they loaded and trained over a fallen tree at the northern edge of the savanna, bringing them to bear pointblank upon the light-horse guard gathered again around the great fire.
the next step was the cutting out of the women; this was effected whilst the baronet-captain was paying his courtesy call on us. like the looting of the indian camp, 'twas quickly planned and daringly done; it asked but the quieting of the two trooper guards on the forest side of the tepee-lodge, a warning word to margery and her woman, and a shadow-like flitting with them over the dead bodies of their late jailers to the shelter of the wood.
once free of the camp, yeates had hurried his charges to a place of temporary safety farther up the valley, leaving the catawba to cross the stream to lay a train of dampened powder to the makeshift magazine. when he had led the women to a place of safety, the old man left them and ran back to his masked battery of loaded muskets. here, at an owl-cry signal from uncanoola, he opened fire upon the redcoats.
the outworking of the coup de main was a triumph for the old borderer's shrewd generalship. at the death-dealing volley the englishmen were thrown into confusion; whilst the indians, summoned by the firing and the shrilling of the captain's whistle, dashed blindly into the trap. at the right moment uncanoola touched off his powder train and cut in with a clear field for his rescue of dick and me.
of the complete success of these various climaxings, ephraim yeates had his first assurance when we three came safely to the rendezvous; for, after firing his masked battery, the old hunter lost no time in rejoining the women and in hastening with them out of the valley. had these three been afoot we might have overtaken them; but yeates had been lucky enough to stumble upon the black mare peacefully cropping the grass in a little glade; and with this mount for margery and her tire-woman he had easily outpaced us.
all this i had from yeates what time margery was pouring the wine and oil of womanly sympathy into richard's woundings; and i may confess that whilst the ear was listening to the hunter's tale, the eye was taking note of these her tender ministrations, and the heart was setting them down to the score of a great love which would not be denied. 'twas altogether as i would have had it; and yet the thought came unbidden that she might spare a niggard moment and the breath to ask me how i did. and because she would not, i do think my burns smarted the crueler.
it was to have surcease of these extra smartings that i turned my back upon the trio under the flaring torch and took up with ephraim yeates the pressing question of the moment.
"as i take it, we may not linger here," i said. "have you marked out a line of retreat?"
the old borderer was busied with his loot of the indian camp—'twas not in his nature to come off empty-handed, however hard pressed he had been for time. in the raffle of it, guns and pistols, dressed skins and warrior finery, he came upon my good old blade and richard's great claymore—trophies claimed by the head men of the cherokees after our taking, as we made no doubt.
"found 'em hanging in the lodge that usen to belong to the great bear," said the hunter, and then with grim humor: "'lowed to keep 'em to ricollect ye by if so be ye was foreordained and predestinated to go up in a fiery chariot, like the good old elijah." the weapons disposed of, he made answer to my query. "ez for making tracks immejitly, if not sooner, i allow there ain't no two notions about that. but i'm dad-daddled if i know which-a-way to put out, cap'n john, and that's the gospil fact."
"why not strike for the great trace, and so go back the way the powder convoy came?" i asked.
it could be done, he said, but the hazard was great. 'twas out of all reason to hope that there were no survivors left in the sunken valley to carry the news of the earthquake massacre. that news once cried abroad in the near-by cowee towns, the entire tuckasege nation would turn out to run us down. moreover, the avengers would look to find us in the only practicable horse-path leading eastward.
"ez i'm telling you right now, cap'n john, we made one more blunder in this here onfall of our'n, owin' to our having ne'er a seventh son of a seventh son amongst us to look a little ways ahead. where we flashed in the pan was in not making our rendyvoo down yonder where you and cap'n dick got in. ever' last one of 'em able to crawl is a-making straight for that crivvis dodge-hole right now, and if we was there we could do 'em like the gileadites did the men o' ephraim at the passages o' the jordan."
fresh as i was from the torture fire, i could not forbear a shudder at this old man's savagery.
"kill them in cold blood?" i would say.
"anan?" he queried, as not understanding my point of view; and i let the matter rest. he was of those who slay and spare not where an enemy is concerned.
but when we came to consider of it there seemed to be no alternative to the eastward flitting by way of the great trace. to the west and south there was only the trackless wilderness; and to the north no white settlement nearer than that of the over-mountain folk on the watauga. i asked if we might hope to reach this.
"'tis a long fifty mile ez the crow flies, over e'enabout the mountainousest patch o' land that ever laid out o' doors," was the hunter's reply. "and there ain't ne'er a deer-track, ez i knows on, to p'int the way."
"then we must ride eastward and run the risk of pursuit by the tuckaseges," said i.
"ez i reckon, that's about the long and short of it. and i do everlastedly despise to make that poor little gal jump her hoss and ride skimper-scamper again, when she's been fair living a-horseback for a fortnight."
"she will not fail you," i ventured to say, adding: "but jennifer is in poor fettle for making speed."
"it's ride or be skulped for him, and i allow he'll ride," quoth the old hunter, hastening his preparations for the start. "reckon we can get him on a hoss right now."
i went to see. margery rose at my approach, and even in the poor light i could see her draw herself up as if she would hold me at my proper distance.
"your patient, mistress margery,—we must mount and ride at once. is he fit?"
"no."
"but we must be far to the eastward before daybreak."
"i can not help it. if you make him ride to-night you will finish what those cruel savages began, captain ireton."
"we have little choice—none, i should say."
"oh, you are bitter hard!" she cried, though wherein my offending lay just then i was wholly at a loss to know.
"'tis your privilege to say so," i rejoined. "but as for making dick ride, that will be but the kindest cruelty. we are only a little way from the nearest indian towns, and if the daylight find us here—"
"spare me," she broke in; and with that she turned shortly and asked ephraim yeates to put her in her saddle.
richard was still in the fever stupor, but he roused himself at my urging and let us set him upon his beast. once safe in the saddle, we lashed him fast like a prisoner, with a forked tree-branch at his back to hold him erect. this last was the old hunter's invention and 'twas most ingenious. the forked limb, in shape like a y, was set astride the cantle, with the lower ends thonged stoutly to dick's legs and to the girths. thus the upright stem of the inverted y became an easy back-rest for the sick man; and when he was securely lashed thereto there was little danger for him save in some stumbling of the beast he rode.
when all was ready we had first to find our way down from the mountain top; and now even the old borderer and the indian confessed their inability to do aught but retrace their steps by the only route they knew: namely, by that ravine which we had twice traversed in daylight, and up which they had led the captured horses in the dusk.
this route promised all the perils of a gantlet-running, since by it we must take the risk of meeting the fleeing fugitives from the convoy camp, if the explosion had spared any fit to lift and carry the vengeance-cry. but here again there was no alternative, and we set us in order for the descent, with yeates and the catawba ahead, the women and dick in the midst, and her apostolic majesty's late captain of hussars, masquerading as a british trooper, to bring on the rear.
once in motion beneath the blue-black shadows of the pines, i quickly lost all sense of direction. after we had ridden in wordless silence a short half hour or less, and i supposed we should be nearing the head of our descending ravine, our little cavalcade was halted suddenly in a thickset grove of the pines, and ephraim yeates appeared at my stirrup to say:
"h'ist ye off your nag, cap'n john, and let's take a far'well squinch at the inimy whilst we can."
"where? what enemy?" i would ask, slipping from the saddle at his word.
"why, the hoss-captain's varmints, to be sure; or what-all the abomination o' desolation has left of 'em. we ain't more than a cat's jump from the edge o' the big rock where we first sot eyes on 'em this morning."
i saw not what was to be gained by any such long-range espial in the darkness. none the less, i followed the old man to the cliff's edge. he was wiser in his forecastings than i was in mine. there was a thing to look at, and light enough to see it by. one of the missile stones, it seems, had crashed into the great fire, scattering the brands in all directions. the pine-bough troop shelters were ablaze, and creeping serpents of fire were worming their way hither and yon over the year-old leaf beds in the wood. ever and anon some pine sapling in the path of these fiery serpents would go up in a torch-like flare; and so, as i say, there was light enough.
what we looked down upon was not inaptly pictured out by ephraim yeates's scripture phrase, the abomination of desolation. every vestige of the camp save the glowing skeletons of the troop shelters had disappeared, and the swarded savanna was become a blackened chaos-blot on the fair woodland scene. i have said that the powder-sheltering boulder was a cliff for size; the mighty upheaval of the explosion had toppled it in ruins into the stream, and huge fragments the bigness of a wine-butt had been hurled with the storm of lighter debris broadcast upon the camp.
at first we saw no sign of life in all the firelit space. but a moment later, when three or four of the sapling torches blazed up together, we made out some half dozen figures of human beings—whether red or white we could not tell—stumbling and reeling about among the rocks like blind men drunken.
at sight of these the old hunter doffed his cap and fell upon his knees with hands uplifted to pour out his zealot's soul in the awful sentences of the psalmist's imprecation.
"'let god arise, and let his inimies be scattered; let them also that hate him flee before him. like as the smoke vanisheth, so shalt thou drive them away; and like as the wax melteth at the fire, so let the ungodly perish at the presence of god....'"
