The next moment more serious considerations claimed his thoughts.  He saw that two men, fully armed, for Digatiski had secured ammunition for his own gun from the cartouch-box of the soldier, could force his withdrawal, bound as he was, farther and farther from the ensign and his party, whose attention had been temporarily diverted from the scout’s delay in returning by signs of the enemy ambushed in another direction.

MacVintie still struggled, albeit he knew that it was vain to resist, more especially when another Cherokee joined the party and dedicated himself solely to the enterprise of pushing and haling the captive over the rugged way,—­often at as fair a speed as if his good will had been enlisted in the endeavor.  Now and again, however, the Highlander contrived to throw himself prone upon the ground, thus effectually hampering their progress and requiring the utmost exertions of all three to lift his great frame.  The patience of the Indians seemed illimitable; again and again they performed this feat, only to renew it at the distance of a few hundred yards.

At length the fact was divined by MacVintie.  More than the ordinary fear of capture animated Attusah of Kanootare.  Colonel Grant’s treatment of his prisoners was humane as the laws of war require.  Moreover, his authority, heavily reinforced by threats of pains and penalties, had sufficed, except in a few instances, to restrain the Chickasaw allies of the British from wreaking their vengeance on the captive Cherokees in the usual tribal method of fire and torture.  The inference was obvious.  Attusah of Kanootare was particularly obnoxious to the British government, the civil as well as the military authorities, and fleeing from death himself, he intended at all hazards to prevent the escape of his prisoner, who would give the alarm, and inaugurate pursuit from the party of the ensign.

In this connection a new development attracted the attention of MacVintie.  As they advanced deeper and deeper into the Cherokee country and the signs and sights of war grew remote,—­no sounds of volleys nor even distant dropping shots clanging from the echoes, no wreaths of smoke floating among the hills, no flare of flames flinging crude red and yellow streaks across the luminous velvet azure of distant mountains with their silver haze, viewed through vistas of craggy chasms near at hand,—­he observed a lessening of cordiality in the manner of the other two Indians toward the Northward Warrior, and a frequency on his part to protest that he was a great ada-wehi, and was dead although he appeared alive.  The truth soon dawned upon the shrewd Scotchman, albeit he understood only so much Cherokee as he had chanced to catch up in his previous campaign in this region with Montgomerie and the present expedition.  Attusah was for some reason obnoxious to his own people as well as to the British, and was in effect a fugitive from both factions.  Indeed, the other two Indians