The little handful of pioneers, with their main possessions in the fate of the pack-train, looked at one another in dismay.

“And tell me, friend Feather-pate, why did it seem good to you to shoot a wolf in the midst of a herd of cattle?” demanded Richard Mivane.

Ralph Emsden, bewildered by the results of this untoward chance, and the further catastrophe shadowed forth in the threatened seizure of the train, rallied with all his faculties at the note of scorn from this quarter.

“Sir, I did not shoot the wolf among the cattle.  There was not a horn nor a hoof to be seen when I fired.”

Mivane turned to “X” with both hands outstretched as much as to say, “Take that for your quietus!” and shouldering his stick, which had an ivory head and a sword within, strode off after his jaunty fashion as if there were no more to be said.

It was now Alexander Anxley’s turn to sustain the questioning clamor.  “I will not deny”—­“That is, I said”—­“I meant to say,”—­but these qualifications were lost in the stress of Emsden’s voice, once more rising stridently.

“Not a horn nor a hoof to be seen till after I had fired.  I didn’t know there were any cow-pens about—­didn’t use to be till after you had crossed the Keowee.  But if there had been, is a man to see a wolf pull down a yearling, say, and not fire a rifle because Madam Cow will take the high-strikes or Cap’n Bull will go on the rampage?  Must I wait till I can make a leg,”—­he paused to execute an exaggerated obeisance, graceful enough despite its mockery,—­“‘Under your favor, Cap’n Bull,’ and ‘With your ladyship’s permission,’ before I kill the ravening brute, big enough to pull down a yearling?  Don’t talk to me!  Don’t talk to me!” He held out the palms of his hands toward them in interdiction, and made as if to go—­yet went not!

For a reactionary sentiment toward him had set in, and there were those fair-minded enough, although with their little all at stake, to admit that he had acted with reasonable prudence, and that it was only an unlucky chance which had sent the panic through the herds with such disastrous effect.

“The herders should not stop the pack-train, if I had my will,” declared one of the settlers with a belligerent note.

“No, no,” proclaimed another; “not if it takes all the men at Blue Lick Station to escort it!”

“Those blistered redcoats at Fort Prince George are a deal too handy to be called on by such make-bates as the herders on the Keowee River.”

“Fudge!  The commandant would never let a bayonet stir.”

“Gad!  I’d send an ambassador for an ambassador.  Tit for tat,” declared Emsden.  “I’d ask ’em what’s gone with all our horses,—­last seen in those desolated cow-pens,—­that the voice of mourning is now lifted about!”

There was a chuckle of sheer joy, so abrupt and unexpected that it rose with a clatter and a cackle of delight, and culminated in a yell of pleasurable derision.