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 ma.s.sacre. 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 d.i.c.k 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 pa.s.sages 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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k"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 d.i.c.k 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-b.u.t.t 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 s.p.a.ce. 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 G.o.d 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 unG.o.dly perish at the presence of G.o.d....""
x.x.xI
IN WHICH WE MAKE A FORCED MARCH
It could have been but little short of midnight when we came down into the Great Trace near the ambush ground where we had set our trap for the peace men.
The night had cleared most beautifully, and overhead the stars were burning like points of white fire in the black dome of the heavens. As often happens after a shower, the night shrillings of the forest were in fullest tide; and a whip-will"s-widow, disturbed by our approach, fluttered to a higher perch and set up his plaintive protest.
At our turning eastward on the trace, the old hunter ma.s.sed our little company as compactly as the path allowed, and giving us the word to follow cautiously, tossed his bridle rein to the Catawba and went on ahead to feel out the way.
This rearrangement set me to ride abreast with Margery; and for the first time since that fateful night in the upper room at Appleby Hundred we were together and measurably alone.
Since death might be lying in wait for us at any turn in the winding bridle-path, I had no mind to break the strained silence. But, womanlike, she would not miss the chance to thrust at me.
"Are you not afire with shame, Captain Ireton?" she said, bitterly; and then: "How you must despise me!"
I knew not what she meant; but being most anxious for her safety, I begged her not to talk, putting it all upon the risk we ran in pa.s.sing the outlet of the sunken valley. Now, as you have long since learned, my tongue was but a skilless servant; and though I sought to make the command the gentlest plea, she took instant umbrage and struck back smartly.
"You need not make the danger an excuse. I will be still; and when I speak to you again, you will be willing enough to hear me, I promise you!"
"Nay, then, dear lady; you must not take it so!" I protested. ""Tis my misfortune to be ever blundering."
But to this she gave me no answer at all; and barring a word or two of heartening for her serving woman, she never opened her lips again throughout the pa.s.sage perilous.